shly."

"With your permission, however, I shall back my pieces against
yours,"--and he drew five from a little green silk purse, and put them
on the table. I deposited an equal number.

"Now," said I, "how is this dispute to be settled? where can I get
myself weighed?"

"I believe," answered he, "there is a pair of scales in the room hard
by, and weights too, if I mistake not." He accordingly got up and opened
the door of the adjoining chamber, where, to my surprise, I beheld a
pair of immense scales hanging from the roof, and hundred and
half-hundred weights, &c. lying around. I seated myself in one of the
scales, chuckling very heartily at the scrape into which the little
fellow had brought himself. He lifted up weight after weight, placing
them upon the opposite scale. Eleven stones had been put in, and he was
lifting the twelfth;--"Now," says I, eyeing him waggishly, "for your
five gilders." He dropped the weight, but the beam never moved, and I
still sat on the lowest scale. Thirteen were put on, but my weight yet
triumphed. With amazement I saw fourteen and fifteen successively added
to the number, without effect. At last, on putting down the sixteenth,
the scale on which I sat was gently raised from the ground. I turned my
eyes upwards towards the needle, which I saw quivering as if uncertain
where to stop; at last it paused exactly in the centre, and stood erect:
the beam lay perfectly horizontal, and I sat motionless, poised in
middle air.

"You will observe, sir, that my calculation was correct," observed my
companion, taking a fresh pinch of snuff. "You are just sixteen stones.
Nothing now remains but to measure your height."

"There is no occasion for that," I replied, rising slowly from the
scale. "If you can contrive to make me weigh sixteen stones, you can
readily make me measure six feet two inches." I now threw myself down
on a seat in the study, which both of us had re-entered, placed my
elbows on the table, and buried my face in my hands, absorbed in deep
reflection. I thought and thought again upon every event which had
befallen me since the morning. The students of Gottingen--Doctor Dedimus
Dunderhead--the domestics of Wolstang--the little man with the
snuff-coloured surtout, scarlet waistcoat, and wooden leg, passed like
a whirlwind through my brain. Then the bust of Cicero, which I had
seen in the Louvre, the busts of the others which he drew from his
pockets--geometry--geomancy--transmigrat