enveloped in the flowing red silk curtain, so that scarcely any one
noticed him. His curls had been shorn, and his thick dark hair only
just waved, otherwise nothing was changed in his appearance since
the Hornberg days. His black eyes wandered thoughtfully over the
changing picture before him. The expression on his face, now
slightly melancholy, bore more resemblance to that of a young
Christian devotee than to that of the beautiful Antinous, and the
intoxication of the gayety around him appealed so little to him,
that not once did he beat his foot, nod his head, or move a muscle
in time to the satanic music of the Parisian enchanter.

For the first time in his life Wilhelm found himself in fashionable
society, and for the first time he wore evening dress. Certainly to
look at him no one would have guessed it, for there was no
awkwardness in his manner, not a trace of the anxiety and inability
to do the right thing, which in most men placed amid new
surroundings and in unaccustomed dress would have been so apparent.
He wore his evening dress with the same natural self-possession as
one of the gray-haired diplomats. The secret of this demeanor was
the sense of equality he felt toward the others. It never occurred
to him to think, "How do I look? Am I like everyone else?" and so he
was as free from constraint in his dress coat as in his student's
jacket. He had even the gracefulness which every man has in the
flower of his age, if he allows the unconscious impulses of his
limbs to assert themselves, and does not spoil the freedom of their
play by confusing efforts to improve them. The company did not
disconcert him either, in spite of their epaulettes and orders, and
titles thick as falling snowflakes. An impression received in his
boyhood came back to him, in which he, among strange people in a
foreign land, had been accustomed by his father to consider himself