hold till after his house-warming. His friends were
expecting a grand entertainment on that occasion. However, he invited
nobody but the workmen who built the house. Them he entertained with
the most _recherche_ dishes. Journeymen masons feasted on venison
pasties, carpenters' apprentices and hungry hodmen, for once in their
lives stayed their appetites with roast pheasant and _pate de foie
gras_. In the evening their wives and daughters came, and there was a
fine ball. Krespel just waltzed a little with the foremen's wives,
and then sat down with the town-band, took a fiddle, and led the
dance-music till daylight.

"On the Thursday after this house-warming, which had established
Krespel in the position of a popular character--'a friend to the
working classes'--I at last met him at Professor M----'s, to my no
small gratification. The most extravagant imagination could not invent
anything more extraordinary than Krespel's style of behaviour. His
movements were awkward, abrupt, constrained, so that you expected him
to bump against the furniture and knock things down, or do some
mischief or other every moment. But he never did; and you soon noticed
that the lady of the house never changed colour ever so little,
although he went floundering heavily and uncertainly about, close to
tables covered with valuable china, or man[oe]uvring in dangerous
proximity to a great mirror reaching from floor to ceiling; even when
he took up a valuable china jar, painted with flowers, and whirled it
about near the window to admire the play of the light on its colours.
In fact, whilst we were waiting for luncheon, he inspected and
scrutinised everything in the room with the utmost minuteness, even
getting up upon a cushioned arm-chair to take a picture down from the
wall and hang it up again. All this time he talked a great deal; often
(and this was more observable while we were at luncheon) darting
rapidly from one subject to another, and at other times--unable to get
away from some particular idea--he would keep beginning at it again and
again, and get into labyrinths of confusion over it, till something
else came into his head. Sometimes the tone of his voice was harsh and
screaming, at other times it would be soft, sustained, and singing; but
it was always completely inappropriate to what he happened to be
talking about. For instance, we were discussing music, and some one was
praising a new composer: Krespel smiled, and said in his gentl