He would diligently sit at the feet of the professors of law in the university, and at the end of three years he would return to Frankfort with the attainments requisite to make him a future ornament of the legal profession.

But, as we have seen, he had other schemes in his head than the course which his father had prescribed for him, and, if we are to accept his own later testimony, in forming these schemes he was but following the deepest instincts of his nature.

"Anything," he exclaimed to his secretary Riemer, when he was approaching his sixtieth year, "anything but an enforced profession! That is contrary to all my instincts.

So far as I can, and so long as the humour lasts, I will carry out in a playful fashion what comes in my way.

So I unconsciously trifled in my youth; so will I consciously continue to do to the end."[18] The step he now took is a curious illustration of the solemn self-importance which was one of his characteristics as a youth.