e council."

"Ha! That's a fact," cried I, crumpling up the paper, "come on."

We descended the hill.

My worthy cousin met me, with a smiling face, at the threshold of his
house.

"Well! well! Christian, so you've found no trace of the imbecile who
hanged himself?"

"No."

"I thought as much. He was some lunatic who escaped from Stefansfeld or
somewhere--Faith, he did well to hang himself. When one is good for
nothing, that's the simplest way for it."

The following day I left Hirschwiller. I shall never return.

_The Invisible Eye_

About this time (said Christian), poor as a church mouse, I took refuge
in the roof of an old house in Minnesaenger Street, Nuremberg, and made
my nest in the corner of the garret.

I was compelled to work over my straw bed to reach the window, but this
window was in the gable end, and the view from it was magnificent, both
town and country being spread out before me.

I could see the cats walking gravely in the gutters; the storks, their
beaks filled with frogs, carrying nourishment to their ravenous brood;
the pigeons, springing from their cotes, their tails spread like fans,
hovering over the streets.

In the evening, when the bells called the world to the Angelus, with my
elbows upon the edge of the roof, I listened to their melancholy
chimes; I watched the windows as, one by one, they were lighted up; the
good burghers smoking their pipes on the sidewalks; the young girls in
their red skirts, with their pitchers under their arms, laughing and
chatting around the fountain "Saint Sebalt." Insensibly all this faded
away, the bats commenced their rapid course, and I retired to my
mattress in sweet peace and tranquillity.

The old curiosity seller, Toubac, knew the way to my little lodging as
well as I did, and was not afraid to climb the ladder. Every week his
ugly head, adorned with a reddish cap, raised the trapdoor, his fingers
grasped the ledge, and he cried out in a nasal tone:

"Well, well, Master Christian, have you anything?"

To which I replied:

"Come in. Why in the devil don't you come in? I am just finishing a
little landscape, and you must tell me what you think of it."

Then his great back, seeming to elongate, grew up, even to the roof,
and the good man laughed silently.

I must do justice to Toubac: he never haggled with me about prices; he
bought all my paintings at fifteen florins, one with the other, and
sold them again for forty each. "Thi