istance of a zealous and
active cavalier. Consequently, Schnetz was her last hope, and he could
assure him of Irene's kindest welcome, and of his own eternal gratitude
if he would come and be her knight! "You will readily understand, my
dear baron," concluded the grumbling cavalier, slapping his high boots
with his riding-whip, "that there are moral impossibilities which
prevent the slave from breaking his chain. But to the hundred times I
have already cursed this Algerian camp-friendship, I have added to-day
the one hundred and first. It is true, I certainly have a certain
curiosity to see how this 'kindest welcome' of her proud little
highness will seem. You know I have a secret weakness for this gracious
little tyrant of mine. But it is asking a great deal of me to expect
that I should bear with her whims and humors for a whole day. Pity me,
happy man! you who are free from all service, and receive no other
orders than those which come from the genius of art."

His speech had been long enough for Felix to think of some appropriate
and sufficiently cheerful answer.

"You are terribly mistaken, my dear friend," he said, "if you think I
wear no chain. Art, do you say? She is a gracious mistress to him alone
who has gotten so far as to be able to rule her while he serves her.
But, as for a wretched beginner and blunderer to whom she has not yet
given her little finger to kiss, no raftsman or woodsman in the
mountains groans under such a load. A thousand times I ask myself
whether it was not, after all, a piece of folly for me, at my time of
life, to join the scholars who are learning her first A B C; and
whether I shall not discover to my horror, after the lapse of many
weary years, that all this precious time has been thrown out of the
window of Jansen's studio. It is certainly large enough for such a
purpose."

"Hm!" growled the tall lieutenant. "You are singing a bad song to an
old tune. Nowhere do you come across existences that are failures, more
frequently than in a city of art like this. It's so damned seductive to
go singing--

'Free, ah, free, is the life we lead,
A life filled full of pleasure--'

and yet, what you say is quite right--he who cannot rule art, him she
oppresses; and that to a worse degree than does any duty of life. You,
as I know you, don't seem to me quite in your proper place. Both of us
ought to have come into the world a few centuries earlier; and then I,
as a