"But, best friend," said Evelina, "why are you so vexed? Most people have still----"
"Ah, don't go and make yourself an _ange de clémence_ for mankind," said he, "in order to exalt secretly yourself over me, otherwise I shall be vexed with you; and you belong to the class that I can best endure. Why do I vex myself? What a stupid question! Why are people stupid and wearisome, and yet make themselves important with their stupidity? And wherefore am I myself such a melancholy personage, worse than anybody else, and should have withal such a pair of quick eyes, as if only on purpose to see the infirmities and perversions of the world? There may, however, in my case be sufficient reason for all this. When one has had the fancy to come into the world against all order and Christian usage; has seen neither father nor mother beside one's cradle; heard nothing, seen nothing, learned nothing, which is in the least either beautiful or instructive--one has not entered upon life very merrily. And then, after all, to be called Munter![11] Good heavens! Munter! Had I been called Blannius, or Skarnius, or Brummerius, or Grubblerius, or Rhabarberius, there might have been some sense in the joke; but Munter! I ask you now, is it not enough to make a man splenetic and melancholy all the days of his life? And then, to have been born into the world with a continual cold, and since then never to have been able to look up to heaven without sneezing--do you find that merry or edifying. Well, and then! after I had worked my way successfully through the schools, the dust of books, and the hall of anatomy, and had come to hate them all thoroughly, and to love that which was beautiful in nature and in art, am I to thank my stars that I must win my daily bread by studying and caring for all that is miserable and revolting in the world, and hourly to go about among jaundice, and colic, and disease of the lungs? On this account I never can be anything but a melancholy creature! Yes, indeed, if there were not the lilies on the earth, the stars in heaven, and beyond all these some one Being who must be glorious--and were there not among mankind the human-rose Eva--the beautiful, fascinating Eva, then----"