His gifts in the juridical line appeared to be equally remarkable. When
he turned up in a morning with his Danish fellow-students at the coach's
house it might occasionally happen that he was somewhat tired and slack,
but more often he showed a natural grasp of the handling of legal
questions, and a consummate skill in bringing out every possible aspect
of each question, that were astonishing in a beginner.
His gifts were of unusual power, but for the externalities of things
only, and he possessed just the gifts with which the sophists of old
time distinguished themselves. He himself was a young sophist, and at
the same time a true comedian, adapting his behaviour to whomsoever he
might happen to be addressing, winning over the person in question by
striking his particular note and showing that side of his character with
which he could best please him. Endowed with the capacity of mystifying
and dazzling those around him, exceedingly keen-sighted, adaptable but
in reality empty, he knew how to set people thinking and to fascinate
others by his lively, unprejudiced and often paradoxical, but
entertaining conversation. He was now colder, now more confidential; he
knew how to assume cordiality, and to flatter by appearing to admire.
With a young student like myself who had just left school, was quite
inexperienced in all worldly matters, and particularly in the chapter of
women, but in whom he detected good abilities and a very strained
idealism, he affected ascetic habits.
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