Our confirmation classes were drawing to an end, and the closing lessons were devoted to the Last Supper. The clergyman thought this very important, and he took pains to make us feel something of the inspiration and sacred character of his teaching. However, precisely in those last few lessons, thoughts were diverted to another object, to the person of my friend. Looking forward to my confirmation, which was explained to us as being our solemn admission into the community of the Church, the thought presented itself imperatively to me that the value of this half-year’s religious instruction did not lie for me in what I had learned in class, but rather in Demian’s presence and influence. It was not into the Church that I was ready to be received, but into something else, into an order of ideas and of personalities which surely existed somewhere or other on earth, and of which I felt my friend was the representative or messenger.