o not let it get serious, my boy," I warned. "You could not marry
any one in this country."

"Why not?"

"Have you been regularly baptized? Was your father? Was your
grandfather? Unless you can answer these simplest of questions and
prove them, you could not get a license; and no priest or preacher
would dare marry you without a license."

"Hang you, who's talking about getting married? All I want to know is,
who is Hildegarde von Heideloff, and how am I to return her purse? I
shall ask the blacksmith."

"Do so,"--taking up my egg-spoon.

Max slipped the purse into his breast-pocket and sat down.

VII

"The one fault I have to find with European life is the poor quality of
tobacco used."

It was eight o'clock, Thursday night, the night of the dinner at
Mueller's. I was dressing when Max entered, with a miserable cheroot
between his teeth.

"They say," he went on, "that in Russia they drink the finest tea in
the world, simply because it is brought overland and not by sea.
Unfortunately, tobacco--we Americans recognize no leaf as tobacco
unless it comes from Cuba--has to cross the sea, and is, in some
unaccountable manner, weakened in the transit. There are worse cigars
in Germany than in France, and I wouldn't have believed it possible, if
I had not gone to the trouble of proving it. Fine country! For a week
I've been trying to smoke the German quality of the weed, as a
preventive, but I see I must give it up on account of my throat. My
boy, I have news for you,"--tossing the cheroot into the grate.

"Fire away," said I, struggling with a collar.

"I have a box of Havanas over at the custom house that I forgot to bail
out."

"No!" said I joyfully. A Havana, and one of Scharfenstein's!

"I've an idea that they would go well with the dinner. So, if you
don't mind, I'll trot over and get 'em."

"Be sure and get around to Mueller, at half-past eight, then," said I.

"I'll be there." He knew where to find the place.

Mueller's Rathskeller was the rendezvous of students, officers and all
those persons of quality who liked music with their meat. The place
was low-ceilinged, but roomy, and the ventilation was excellent,
considering. The smoke never got so thick that one couldn't see the
way to the door when the students started in to "clean up the place,"
to use the happy idiom of mine own country. There were marble tables
and floors and arches and light, cane-bottomed chairs from Kohn