" This goal, for that matter, was very indefinite, and
was to the general effect that I intended to make myself strongly felt,
and bring about great changes in the intellectual world; of what kind,
was uncertain.
Meanwhile, as the time drew near for us to enter the University, and I
approached the years of manhood which the other, in spite of his modest
position as schoolboy, had already long attained, Sebastian grew utterly
miserable. He had, as he expressed it, made up his mind to be my
_Melanchthon_. But through an inward collapse which I could not
understand he now felt that the time in which he could be anything to me
had gone by; it seemed to him that he had neglected to acquire the
knowledge and the education necessary, and he reproached himself
bitterly. "I have not been in the least what I might have been to you,"
he exclaimed one day, and without betraying it he endured torments of
jealousy, and thought with vexation and anxiety of the time when a
larger circle would be opened to me in the University, and he himself
would become superfluous.
His fear was thus far unfounded, that, naive in my selfishness, as in my
reliance on him, I still continued to tell him everything, and in return
constantly sought his help when philological or mathematical
difficulties which I could not solve alone presented themselves to me.
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