may have taken. All efforts to carry them along with the
stream of the conversation are vain; when one at last flatters oneself
that one has got them into the current of the talk, lo and behold, they
return _a leurs moutons_ again, just as before, and consequently dam up
the beautiful, rushing stream of conversation. In contradistinction to
them are those who forget one second what they said in the immediately
preceding one; who ask a question, and, without waiting for an answer,
introduce something completely irrelevant and heterogeneous; to whom
everything suggests everything else, and consequently nothing which has
any connection with the subject of the talk--who, in a few words, throw
together a many-tinted lumber of ideas in which nothing that can be
called distinct is discoverable. Those latter destroy everything like
agreeable conversation and drive us to a state of despair, and the
former produce intolerable tedium and annoyance. But, don't you think
there lies in those people the germ of real insanity in the one
case, and in the other of _folie_, whose character is very much,
if not exactly, what the psychological doctors term 'looseness' or
'incoherence' of ideas?"

"There is no doubt," said Theodore, "that I should like to say a great
deal concerning the art of _relating_ in society, for there is much
which is mysterious about it, depending, as it does, on place, time,
and individual relationships, and difficult to be ranged under special
heads. But it seems to me that this matter might carry us too far, and
be opposed to the real tendency of the Serapion Club."

"Most certainly," said Lothair. "We want to tranquillise ourselves with
the thought that we--neither madmen nor fools--are, on the contrary,
the most delightful companions to each other; who not only can talk,
but can listen; more than that, each of us can listen quite patiently
when another reads aloud, and that is saying a good deal. Friend Ottmar
told me a day or two ago that he had written a story in which the
celebrated poet-painter Salvator Rosa played a leading part. I hope he
will read it to us now."

"I am a little afraid," said Ottmar, as he took the manuscript from his
pocket, "that you won't think my story Serapiontic. I had it in mind to
imitate that ease and genial liberty of breadth which predominates in
the 'Novelli' of the old Italians, particularly of Boccaccio; and over
this endeavour I acknowledge that I have grown prolix. Also