a dramatized fairy tale, a pantomime called _The Devil's
Betrothed_, which ran for two hundred nights. In the interval, after the
first act, Wilhelm Schwab and Schmucke were left alone in the orchestra,
with a house at a temperature of thirty-two degrees Reaumur.

"Tell me your hishdory," said Schmucke.

"Look there! Do you see that young man in the box yonder?... Do you
recognize him?"

"Nefer a pit--"

"Ah! That is because he is wearing yellow gloves and shines with all
the radiance of riches, but that is my friend Fritz Brunner out of
Frankfort-on-the-Main."

"Dat used to komm to see du blav und sit peside you in der orghestra?"

"The same. You would not believe he could look so different, would you?"

The hero of the promised story was a German of that particular type
in which the sombre irony of Goethe's Mephistopheles is blended with
a homely cheerfulness found in the romances of August Lafontaine
of pacific memory; but the predominating element in the compound of
artlessness and guile, of shopkeeper's shrewdness, and the studied
carelessness of a member of the Jockey Club, was that form of disgust
which set a pistol in the hands of a young Werther, bored to death less
by Charlotte than by German princes. It was a thoroughly German face,
full of cunning, full of simplicity, stupidity, and courage; the
knowledge which brings weariness, the worldly wisdom which the veriest
child's trick leaves at fault, the abuse of beer and tobacco,--all these
were there to be seen in it, and to heighten the contrast of opposed
qualities, there was a wild diabolical gleam in the fine blue eyes with
the jaded expression.

Dressed with all the elegance of a city man, Fritz Brunner sat in full
view of the house displaying a bald crown of the tint beloved by Titian,
and a few stray fiery red hairs on either side of it; a remnant spared
by debauchery and want, that the prodigal might have a right to spend
money with the hairdresser when he should come into his fortune. A face,
once fair and fresh as the traditional portrait of Jesus Christ, had
grown harder since the advent of a red moustache; a tawny beard lent
it an almost sinister look. The bright blue eyes had lost something of
their clearness in the struggle with distress. The countless courses by
which a man sells himself and his honor in Paris had left their traces
upon his eyelids and carved lines about the eyes, into which a mother
once looked with a mother's rapture t