in something, so that he might have had a couple of
rooms "_parterre_"--as the Germans call the _rez-de-chaussee_--and could
have been as comfortable as he pleased. But no one ever attempted to
account for Dr. Claudius at all. He was a credit to the University,
where first-rate men are scarce,--for Heidelberg is not a seat of very
great learning; and no one troubled to inquire why he did not return to
his native country when he had obtained his "Phil.D." Only, if he meant
to spend the rest of his life in Heidelberg, it was high time he married
and settled down to genuine "Philisterleben"--at least so Dr. Wiener had
said to Dr. Wurst over the second "schoppen" every night for a year
past.

But Claudius did not marry, nor did he even allow his blue eyes to rest
contemplatively on black-eyed Fraeulein Wiener, or red-cheeked Fraeulein
Wurst. He would indeed occasionally accept an invitation to drink coffee
at his colleagues' houses, but his talk was little and his manner a
placid blank. He had been wild enough ten years before, when his yellow
hair and tall straight presence were the admiration of every burgher's
daughter in the Hirschgasse or the Langestrasse; but years and study had
brought out the broad traits of his character, his uniformly quiet
manner, his habits of regularity, and a certain deliberateness of gait
and gesture which well became his towering figure and massive strength.
He was utterly independent in all his ways, without the least trace of
the arrogance that hangs about people whose independence is put on, and
constantly asserted, in order to be beforehand with the expected
opposition of their fellow-men.

Dr. Claudius was a Swede by birth and early education, and finding
himself at twenty free to go where he would, he had wandered to
Heidelberg in pursuit of the ideal student-life he had read so much of
in his Northern home. Full of talent, independent and young, he cared
little for the national enmities of Scandinavians and Germans, and, like
all foreigners who behave sensibly, he was received with open arms by
the enthusiastic students, who looked upon him as a sort of typical
Goth, the prototype of the Teutonic races. And when they found how
readily he learned to handle schlaeger and sabre, and that, like a true
son of Odin, he could drain the great horn of brown ale at a draught,
and laugh through the foam on his yellow beard, he became to them the
embodiment of the student as he should be. But th