se court he jested
for, certainly made no such mark upon his town and time as Perkeo did,
and in that, perhaps, there is a moral for sovereigns, although the
Senator advises me not to dwell upon it. At all events, one writes of
Heidelberg but one thinks of Perkeo, as he swings from the sign-boards
of the Haupt-Strasse, and stands on the lids of the beer mugs, and
smiles from the extra-mural decoration of the wine shops, and lifts his
glass, in eternally good wooden fellowship, beside the big Tun in the
Castle cellar. There is a Hotel Perkeo, there must be Clubs Perkeo,
probably a suburb and steamboats of the same name, and the local oath
"Per Perkeo!" has a harmless sound, but nothing could be more binding
in Heidelberg. Momma thought his example a very unfortunate one for a
University town, but the rest of us were inclined to admire Perkeo as a
self-made man and a success. As Dicky protested he had made the fullest
use of the capacities Nature had given him, it was evident from his
figure that he had even developed them, and what more profitable course
should the German youth follow? He was cheerful everywhere--as the
forerunner of the comic paper one supposes he had to be--but most
impressive in his effigy by his master's wine vat, in the perpetual
aroma that most inspired him, where, by a mechanical arrangement inside
him, he still makes a joke of sorts, in somewhat graceless aspersion of
the methods of the professional humorists. Emmeline found him very like
her father, and confided her impression to Mrs. Malt. "But of course,"
she added condoningly, "poppa was different when you married him."

Perkeo was not so sentimental as the Trumpeter of Sakkingen, and the
Trumpeter of Sakkingen was not so sentimental as the Heidelberg
University student. The Heidelberg University student was as a rule very
round and very young, and he seemed to give up the whole of his spare
time to imitating the passion which I hope has not been permitted to
enter too largely into this book of travels.

Dicky and I agreed that it was a mere imitation; that is, Dicky said it
was and I agreed. It could not possibly amount to anything more, for it
consisted wholly in walking up and down in front of the house in which
its object lived. We saw it being done, and it looked so uninteresting
that we failed to realise what it meant until we inquired. Mrs.
Portheris's nephew, Mr. Jarvis Portheris, who was acquiring German in
Heidelberg, told us about