hich, Germanlike, he wore upon his neck. His
voice--the index of his nature--soft, low, and musical, would have
predisposed you at once in his favour. Still, those disparities did not
prevent the attachment of the two youths; on the contrary, they
seemed rather to strengthen the bond between them--each, as it were,
supplying to the other the qualities which Nature had denied him. They
were never separate in lecture-room, at home, or in the _allee_ (as the
promenade was called) or in the garden, where each evening the students
resorted to sup, and listen to the music of the Jager band. Eisendecker
and Muehry were names that no one ever heard separated, and when one
appeared the other was never more than a few yards off.

Such was their friendship, when an unhappy incident occurred to trouble
its even course, and sow dissension between these who never had known
a passing difference in their lives. The sub-rector of Goettingen was in
the habit of giving little receptions every week, to which many of
the students were invited, and to which Eisendecker and Muehry were
frequently asked, as they both belonged to the professor's class. In
the quiet world of a little University town, these soirees were great
occasions; and the invited plumed themselves not a little on the
distinction of a card which gave the privilege of bowing in the Herr
professor's drawing-room, and kissing the hand of his fair daughter
the Frederica von Ettenheim, the belle of Goettingen. Frederica was the
prettiest German girl I ever saw; for this reason, that having been
partly educated at Paris, French _espieglerie_ relieved what had been
otherwise the too regular monotony of her Saxon features, and imparted
a character of sauciness--or _fierte_ is a better word--to that quietude
which is too tame to give the varied expression so charming in female
beauty. The _esprit_, that delicious ingredient which has been so
lamentably omitted in German character, she had imbibed from her French
education; and in lieu of that plodding interchange of flat commonplaces
which constitute the ordinary staple of conversation between the young
of opposite sexes beyond the Rhine, she had imported the light, delicate
tone of Parisian raillery--the easy and familiar gaiety of French
society, so inexpressibly charming in France, and such a boon from
heaven when one meets it by accident elsewhere.

Oh, confess it, ye who, in the dull round of this world's so-called
pleasure, in