Max is gone.

I heard of him, sometimes, from certain
members of his family, with whom I was
acquainted. He was doing well, behaving
well, studying manfully, and always wrote
home in high spirits.

After a period, no news of him came for a
long time. The year and a quarter, since he
had left the old town in Southern Germany,
had passed away. Easter-Eve, the Easter-
Eve had come, had gone. Three months
afterwards I visited the town.

"So," said Johann to me (Johann was
telling me the story of what had happened
on the Easter-Eve which had come and
gone), "we were all, all but Max, at the
Blaue Stern, according to our agreement.
We had assembled at about eleven o'clock,
in order that every thing might be as like
the old evening as possible. We never
doubted but that Max would come:
though of his arrival in town no one had
heard. But, he was a lazy correspondent, and
had only written his great crony, Ernest, one
letter during his absence at Bologna; that
letter was a very cheerful one, and gaily
alluded to the grand meeting on Easter-Eve,
which he again promised to attend, for, said
he, not for worlds would I break my true old
German faith.

"Of course, when we met, we asked each
other:—

"' Has anybody heard lately of Max?'

"No one had heard of Max.

" 'Ay, he means to surprise us,' said some
of the party, 'and to step in, like a ghost, at
the witching hour of One, when we signed
the agreement.' Yet we were a little surprised
that, as time wore on, no Max appeared, and
I, and perhaps others, felt an unexpressed
uneasiness, which each thought it would be
a bad omen, and a damping thing, to shape
into language. This very uneasiness, I believe,
set us all upon drinking more than usual.
Max's health was thundered out again and
again, with an energy that seemed as if it
would secure the result which it invoked. If
the wind shook the door, we cried out, 'Here
he comes!' but, under all this was a lurking
doubt. So the time went on till one o'clock
was nearly come.

"Now of what followed" (Johann is always
speaking), "I can give you but a very faint,
confused, and strange account; yet no one of
us, who were present at the scene, could give
you a better. We have all questioned one
another as to our thoughts and sensations at
the moment. When I tell you how the matter
appeared to me, I tell you how it appeared
to all us Green-caps, some of us who were
assembled at the Blaue Stern that night. I
speak in the name of all.

"We had taken wine till we were queer—
that is the truth of it—and the thing
seemed to pass in the nature of a dream—a
very real dream, though. The door seemed
to open; but no one heard it open, and there,
somehow, was Max amongst us. He was
always pale, you know; but now he was deadly
pale. He was dressed just as he was the
night before he left us, and seemed to be
sitting just in the very place where he had
sat before. We saw him walk in, we saw
him sit down. Some, afterwards declared
that they heard, at the time when Max
walked in, a faint rustling sound, as if a
silken robe were shaken: I heard nothing of
the kind. It is the only point on which
we Green-caps differ."

"Did you see Max very plainly?" I
interrupted.

"As plainly as I now see you," said
Johann. "But all my senses, except that of
sight, seemed spell-bound. We, none of us,
got up, or attempted to take Max by the
hand. Some of us, at the time, were half
lying on the benches; but nobody stirred.
Indeed there was something solemn and
awful in Max's appearance which chilled
us. He looked so pale and sad. And
the flickering lights, and the atmosphere,
made dim by our having smoked, cast about
the figure and the face of our friend, not so
much a shadowy, as a mournful and uncheering
aspect. How long this state of things
lasted, neither I nor any of us can exactly
tell. Silently we looked at Max, and silently
Max looked at us. I imagine the whole
appearance did not last many minutes. When
some one called out, 'Why, Max has been
here!'—Max was already gone; but gone as
he had come, no one knew how. After the
Green-cap had spoken, there was immediately
a stir, and a search for Max. Some of us, I
believe, looked under the benches; thinking
he had tricked us, and that we should find
him hidden somewhere for a joke. Then,
we hallooed up the Kellner and the
Wirth, and, with them, stumbled about the
house, looking and calling everywhere for
Max.

"But no Max was to be found.

"Then, I own, we felt uncomfortable;
though, in spite of our thinking that it was
very unlike Max so to have acted, we persisted
in saying that the odd fellow had played us a
trick.

"When morning light come, and we could
go out into the town to inquire at the
Bureau of the Post whether Max had lately
arrived there, and we were answered,
'Certainly not;' when, later in the day, we went
up to the old Schloss, and found that Max's
family had had no news of him; when we
had sought him vainly at the houses of all
his friends; then, indeed, the matter began
to assume a serious aspect. Was it possible
that we had all been consentaneously
deluded by some coinage of our own brains?
This was hard, impossible, to believe;
and, after all, was only explaining one
difficulty by another—miracle by miracle—for
we had seen him plainly! We could talk
of nothing else.