man who was sitting at the table as if to an old
acquaintance.

"Ha!" he cried, "here _you_ are again, after all this time. How do you
feel? Are you all alive and kicking?"

"Just as you see," the old man growled. "Sound as a roach. All ready on
my legs at the proper time. All _there_--when there's anything up."

"I'm not quite so sure about that," the stranger said, laughing loudly;
"we shall see!" And he ordered the waiter to bring a bottle of the
oldest claret in the cellar.

"My good Mr. Privy Councillor," Tussmann began, deprecatingly. But the
stranger interrupted him hastily, saying:

"Let us drop the 'titles,' Tussmann, for once and all! I am neither a
Privy Councillor nor a Clerk of the Privy Council. What I am is an
artist, a worker in the noble metals and the precious jewels; and my
name is Leonhard."

"Oh, indeed!" Tussmann murmured to himself--"a goldsmith! a jeweller!"
And he bethought himself that he might have seen at the first glance
that the stranger could not possibly be an ordinary Privy Councillor,
seeing that he had on an antique mantle, collar, and barret cap, such
as Privy Councillors never went about in nowadays. Leonhard and
Tussmann sat down at the same table with the old Jew, who received them
with a grinning kind of smile.

When Tussmann, at Leonhard's instigation, had taken two or three
glasses of the full-bodied wine, his pale cheeks began to glow, and as
he swallowed the liquor, he glanced about him with smirks and smiles,
as if the most delightful ideas were rising in his brain.

"And now," Leonhard said, "tell me openly and candidly, Mr. Tussmann,
why you went on in such an extraordinary manner when the lady showed
herself at the Tower-window; and what it is that your head is so very
full of at the present moment. You and I are very old acquaintances,
whether you believe it or not; and as to this old gentleman here, you
need be on no ceremony with him."

"Oh, heavens!" answered the Privy Chancery Clerk--"Oh, good heavens!
most respected Herr Professor--(I do beg you to allow me to address you
by that title; I am sure you are a most celebrated artist, and quite in
a position to be a professor in the Academy of Arts)--and so, most
respected Herr Professor, how can I hide from you that I am, as the
proverb puts it, 'walking on wooer's feet.' I am expecting to bring the
happiest of brides home about the vernal equinox. Could it be otherwise
than a rather startling thing, when you