He was not put out by his new friend's devoutness, which was really something quite alien to him, coming as he did from a free-thinking middle-class family. He accepted it without a qualm, going so far as to see it, indeed, as something especially admirable in the prince, since it intensified the essential quality of this other boy's personality, which he felt was so unlike his own as to be in no way comparable.

In the prince's company he felt rather as though he were in some little chapel far off the main road. The thought of actually not belonging there quite vanished in the enjoyment of, for once, seeing the daylight through stained glass; and he let his gaze glide over the profusion of futile gilded agalma in this other person's soul until he had absorbed at least some sort of indistinct picture of that soul, just as though with his finger-tips he were tracing the lines of an arabesque, not thinking about it, merely sensing the beautiful pattern of it, which twined according to some weird laws beyond his ken.

And then suddenly there came the break between them.

Törless blundered badly, as he had to admit to himself afterwards.

The fact was: on one occasion they did suddenly find themselves arguing about religion. And as soon as that happened, it was really all over and done with. For as though independently of himself, Törless's intellect lashed out, inexorably, at the sensitive young prince; he poured out torrents of a rationalist's scorn upon him, barbarously desecrating the filigree habitation in which the other boy's soul dwelt. And they parted in anger.

After that they never spoke to each other again. Törless was indeed obscurely aware that what he had done was senseless, and a glimmer of intuitive insight told him that his wooden yardstick of rationality had untimely shattered a relationship that was subtle and full of rare fascination. But this was something he simply had not been able to help. It left him, probably for ever, with a sort of yearning for what had been; yet he seemed to have been caught up in another current, which was carrying him further and further away in a different direction.

And then some time later the prince, who had not been happy there, left the school.

* * *

Now everything around Törless was empty and boring. But meanwhile he had been growing older, and with the onset of adolescence something began to rise up in him, darkly and steadily. At this stage of his development he made some new friends, of a kind corresponding to the needs of his age, which were to be of very great importance to him. He became friends with Beineberg and Reiting, and with Mote and Hofmeier, the boys in whose company he was today seeing his parents off at the railway station.

Remarkably enough, these were the boys who counted as the worst of his year; they were gifted and, it went without saying, of good family, but at times they were wild and reckless to the point of brutality. And that it should be precisely their company to which Törless now felt so strongly drawn was doubtless connected with his own lack of self-certainty, which had become very marked in-deed since he had lost touch with the prince. It was indeed the logical continuation of that break, for, like the break itself, it indicated some fear of all over-subtle toyings with emotions; and by contrast with that sort of thing the nature of these other friends stood out as sound and sturdy, giving life its due.

Törless entirely abandoned himself to their influence, for the situation in which his mind now found itself was approximately this: At schools of the kind known as the Gymnasium, at his age, one has read Goethe, Schiller, Shakespeare, and perhaps even some modern writers too, and this, having been half digested, is then written out of the system again, excreted, as it were, through the finger-tips. Roman tragedies are written, or poems, of the most sensitive lyrical kind, that go through their paces garbed in punctuation that is looped over whole pages at a time, as in delicate lace: things that are in themselves ludicrous, but which are of inestimable value in contributing to a sound development. For these associations originating outside, and these borrowed emotions, carry young people over the dangerously soft spiritual ground of the years in which they need to be of some significance to themselves and nevertheless are still too incomplete to have any real significance. Whether any residue of it is ultimately left in the one, or nothing in the other, does not matter; later each will somehow come to terms with himself, and the danger exists only in the stage of transition. If at that period one could bring a boy to see the ridiculousness of himself, the ground would give way under him, or he would plunge headlong like a somnambulist who, suddenly awaking, sees nothing but emptiness around him.

That illusion, that conjuring trick for the benefit of the personality's development, was missing in this school. For though the classics were there in the library, they were considered 'boring', and for the rest there were only volumes of sentimental romances and drearily humorous tales of army life.

Young Törless had read just about all of them in his sheer greed for books, and this or that conventionally tender image from one story or another did sometimes linger for a while in his mind; but none had any influence-any real influence-on his character.

At this period it seemed that he had no character at all.

Under the influence of this reading, he himself now and then would write a little story or begin an epic romance, and in his excitement over the sufferings of his heroes, crossed in love, his cheeks would flush, his pulse quicken, and his eyes shine.

But when he laid down his pen, it was all over; his spirit lived only, as it were, while in motion. And so too he found it possible to dash off a poem or a story at any time, whenever it might be required of him. The doing of it excited him, yet he never took it quite seriously, and this occupation in itself did not strike him as important. Nothing of it was assimilated into his personality, nor did it originate within his personality. All that happened was that under some external pressure he underwent emotions that transcended the indifference of ordinary life, just as an actor needs the compulsion that a role imposes on him.

These were cerebral reactions. But what is felt to be character or soul, a person's inner contour or aura, that is to say, the thing in contrast with which the thoughts, decisions, and actions appear random, lacking in characteristic quality, and easily exchangeable for others-the thing that had, for instance, bound Törless to the prince in a manner beyond the reach of any intellectual judgment-this ultimate, immovable background seemed to be utterly lost to Törless at this period.

In his friends it was enjoyment of sport, the animal delight in being alive, that prevented them from feeling the need for anything of this kind, just as at the Gymnasium the want is supplied by the sport with literature.

But Törless's constitution was too intellectual for the one, and, as for the other, life at this school, where one had to be in a perpetual state of readiness to settle arguments with one's fists, made him keenly sensitive to the absurdity of such borrowed sentiment. So his being took on a vagueness, a sort of inner helplessness, that made it impossible for him to be sure where he stood.

He attached himself to these new friends because he was impressed by their wildness. Since he was ambitious, he now and then even tried to outvie them in this. But each time he would leave off half-way, and on this account had to put up with no small amount of gibes, which would scare him back into himself again. At this critical period the whole of his life really consisted in nothing but these efforts, renewed again and again, to emulate his rough, more masculine friends and, counterbalancing that, a deep inner indifference to all such strivings.

Now, when his parents came to see him, so long as they were alone he was quiet and shy. Each time he dodged his mother's affectionate caresses under one pretext or another. He would really have liked to yield to them, but he was ashamed, as though he were being watched by his friends.

His parents let it pass as the awkwardness of adolescence.

Then in the afternoon the whole noisy crowd would come along.