o find a copy of her own fashioned
by God's hand.

This precocious philosopher, this wizened youth was the work of a
stepmother.

Herewith begins the curious history of a prodigal son of
Frankfort-on-the-Main--the most extraordinary and astounding portent
ever beheld by that well-conducted, if central, city.

Gideon Brunner, father of the aforesaid Fritz, was one of the famous
innkeepers of Frankfort, a tribe who make law-authorized incisions in
travelers' purses with the connivance of the local bankers. An innkeeper
and an honest Calvinist to boot, he had married a converted Jewess and
laid the foundations of his prosperity with the money she brought him.

When the Jewess died, leaving a son Fritz, twelve years of age, under
the joint guardianship of his father and maternal uncle, a furrier at
Leipsic, head of the firm of Virlaz and Company, Brunner senior was
compelled by his brother-in-law (who was by no means as soft as his
peltry) to invest little Fritz's money, a goodly quantity of current
coin of the realm, with the house of Al-Sartchild. Not a penny of it
was he allowed to touch. So, by way of revenge for the Israelite's
pertinacity, Brunner senior married again. It was impossible, he said,
to keep his huge hotel single-handed; it needed a woman's eye and hand.
Gideon Brunner's second wife was an innkeeper's daughter, a very pearl,
as he thought; but he had had no experience of only daughters spoiled by
father and mother.

The second Mme. Brunner behaved as German girls may be expected to
behave when they are frivolous and wayward. She squandered her fortune,
she avenged the first Mme. Brunner by making her husband as miserable
a man as you could find in the compass of the free city of
Frankfort-on-the-Main, where the millionaires, it is said, are about to
pass a law compelling womankind to cherish and obey them alone. She was
partial to all the varieties of vinegar commonly called Rhine wine in
Germany; she was fond of _articles Paris_, of horses and dress; indeed,
the one expensive taste which she had not was a liking for women. She
took a dislike to little Fritz, and would perhaps have driven him mad if
that young offspring of Calvinism and Judaism had not had Frankfort for
his cradle and the firm of Virlaz at Leipsic for his guardian. Uncle
Virlaz, however, deep in his furs, confined his guardianship to the
safe-keeping of Fritz's silver marks, and left the boy to the tender
mercies of this stepmother.