Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-13.pdf/14

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1874.]
THE NEW HYPERION.
13

ceeded from human bones and weapons reduced to rust.

I did not consider that the adventure of the aforesaid Love was tabulable in a class of historical events sufficiently grave to allow me to make a weapon of it against Sylvester.

The more I studied the character of the latter, the more it puzzled me. With his correctness, his measured phrases, his politeness, he united a strange obstinacy and an obvious exaggeration. As we emerged from the dungeons of the Neues Schloss, our discussion still proceeding, he combated my views with a vivacity and a personal strenuousness that surprised me. Here evidently was no man, like Flemming, content to hold his dearest opinions by a thread of fable or sentiment. But the trait was hardly noticed ere it was handsomely apologized for. Berkley, his own accuser, complained of a temper the reverse of diplomatic. "My poor uncle was just so," he observed, "and has been known to dance on his own chinaware like a dervish. He tried cold tubs, and I am trying whey. Every one, as Socrates observes, should know himself."

It appeared to me that there were depths in Berkley which I had not sounded. I took his arm and returned with him to dinner. Habituated to Baden-Baden, the dinner was for him a continual series of bows, compliments, sending off of brimming glasses to bowing and complimenting people at a distance. Of two especial friends of his, one was a German literary gentleman, so famous that I do not venture to mention his name—the other a landscape-painter.

After dining, I, for my part, discovered an acquaintance, one of the disputants of the table at Carlsruhe. After asking for a few points, such as whether the St. Lawrence River did not keep its color for a long time after running into Lake Superior, and whether Washington Territory were not synonymous with the District of Columbia, he gave me a chance for a question, to hear whose answer my ears were throbbing. I asked, as indifferently as possible, after Francine Joliet.

THE CHAPEL OF THE POOR.

It appeared that since my departure Francine did nothing but sing from morning till night. Exceedingly dissatisfied with this reply, I turned to Sylvester, who with his friends intended to drop in at the Casino of Holland, a rendezvous for the archæologists and curiosity-hunters of the country. There is at the Casino a library of limited numbers, but composed exclusively of works connected with the traditions of the grand duchy. I found there several persons of my own kidney, capital fellows, Germans of that noble stomach that digests science equally with beer.

The next day I counted, of course, on returning to Paris, but the thing was not feasible. The clothes in which I stood would hardly bear the journey, while my funds, though unlimited in the letter which I carried in my pocket, were practically reduced to a few coppers. To change these conditions a little time was absolutely necessary.

For the matter of pocket-money, however, small change is perfectly useless at Baden-Baden. Once deposited by the train at the station of Oos, you become a privileged subject of the proprietor. He takes charge of your pleasures, treats you to balls, races, hunts and concerts, and will not let you pay so much as a cab-driver or a washerwoman. For these,