It was dawn when he reached his own bed-room, alone, annihilated,
robbed of his faith in life, in love, and, of course, in women, for to
him there was but one woman in the world, and that was Rieke from "The
Equerry." On the fifteenth of September he went to Upsala to study
theology.

* * * * *

The years passed. His sound common-sense was slowly extinguished by
all the nonsense with which he had to fill his brain daily and hourly.
But at night he was powerless to resist. Nature burst her bonds and
took by force what rebellious man denied her. He lost his health; all
his skull bones were visible in his haggard face, his complexion was
sallow and his skin looked damp and clammy; ugly pimples appeared
between the scanty locks of his beard. His eyes were without lustre,
his hands so emaciated that the joints seemed to poke through the
skin. He looked like the illustration to an essay on human vice, and
yet he lived a perfectly pure life.

One day the professor of Christian Ethics, a married man with very
strict ideas on morality, called on him and asked him pointblank
whether he had anything on his conscience; if so, he advised him to
make a clean breast of it. Theodore answered that he had nothing to
confess, but that he was unhappy. Thereupon the professor exhorted him
to watch and pray and be strong.

His brother had written him a long letter, begging him not to take a
certain stupid matter too much to heart. He told him that it was absurd
to take a girl seriously. His philosophy, and he had always found it