though Mephistopheles might have stepped out from behind the huge
green store as a wandering scholiast at any moment.

"I studied everything in a jumble without system, without selection:
chemistry, alchemy, history, astronomy, philosophy, law, anatomy, and
literature; I read Homer, Virgil, Ossian, Schiller, Goethe,
Shakespeare, Cervantes, Voltaire, Moliere, the Koran, the Kosmos,
Casanova's Memoirs. I grew more confused each day, more fantastical,
more supersensual. All the time a beautiful ideal woman hovered in my
imagination. Every so and so often she appeared before me like a
vision among my leather-bound books and dead bones, lying on a bed of
roses, surrounded by cupids. Sometimes she appeared gowned like the
Olympians with the stern white face of the plaster Venus; sometimes in
braids of a rich brown, blue-eyes, in my aunt's red velvet
_kazabaika,_ trimmed with ermine.

"One morning when she had again risen out of the golden mist of my
imagination in all her smiling beauty, I went to see Countess Sobol,
who received me in a friendly, even cordial manner. She gave me a
kiss of welcome, which put all my senses in a turmoil. She was
probably about forty years old, but like most well-preserved women
of the world, still very attractive. She wore as always her fur-edged
jacket. This time it was one of green velvet with brown marten. But
nothing of the sternness which had so delighted me the other time was
now discernable.

"On the contrary, there was so little of cruelty in her that without
any more ado she let me adore her.

"Only too soon did she discover my supersensual folly and innocence,