I took a spring and cleared the ditch. To that leap I was indebted for life and limb; the beast would have torn me to atoms.     

       CHARLES VON M. And to what does all this tend?     

       SPIEGEL. To this—that you may be taught that strength grows with the occasion. For which reason I never despair even when things are the worst. Courage grows with danger. Powers of resistance increase by pressure. It is evident by the obstacles she strews in my path that fate must have designed me for a great man.     

       CHARLES VON M. (angrily). I am not aware of anything for which we still require courage, and have not already shown it.     

       SPIEGEL. Indeed! And so you mean to let your gifts go to waste? To bury your talent? Do you think your paltry achievements at Leipsic amount to the ne plus ultra of genius? Let us but once get to the great world—Paris and London! where you get your ears boxed if you salute a man as honest. It is a real jubilee to practise one's handicraft there on a grand scale. How you will stare! How you will open your eyes! to see signatures forged; dice loaded; locks picked, and strong boxes gutted; all that you shall learn of Spiegelberg! The rascal deserves to be hanged on the first gallows that would rather starve than manipulate with his fingers.     

       CHARLES VON M. (in a fit of absence). How now? I should not wonder if your proficiency went further still.     

       SPIEGEL. I begin to think you mistrust me. Only wait till I have grown warm at it; you shall see wonders; your little brain shall whirl clean round in your pericranium when my teeming wit is delivered. (He rises excited.) How it clears up within me! Great thoughts are dawning in on my soul! Gigantic plans are fermenting in my creative brain. Cursed lethargy       (striking his forehead), which has hitherto enchained my faculties, cramped and fettered my prospects! I awake; I feel what I am—and what I am to be!     

       CHARLES VON M. You are a fool! The wine is swaggering in your brain.     

       SPIEGEL. (more excited). Spiegelberg, they will say, art thou a magician, Spiegelberg? 'Tis a pity, the king will say, that thou wert not made a general, Spiegelberg, thou wouldst have thrust the Austrians through a       

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