the pain come on again in
my knee, and it grew more and more unendurable. Just at that moment
Victorine said, loud enough to be heard by the other people who were
dancing, "We seem all to be going to sleep." Signs were made to the
band, people clapped their hands to them, and the pace grew faster
and faster. With all my might I struggled with the diabolical pain,
and conquered it. I danced along daintily, and put on a delighted
expression of countenance; but for all I could do, Victorine kept
saying: 'What is the matter, Herr Baron? You are not one bit the
partner that you generally are.' Burning dagger thrusts into my heart!"

"Poor, dear friend," said Euchar, laughing; "I see the full extent of
your sufferings!"

"And yet," continued Ludwig, "all this was only the prelude to the most
terrible of all events. You know that I have been for a long time
applying my mind to arranging the figures of a '_seize_:' and you know
of your own experience, how little I have made of the very considerable
amount of china, glass, and stoneware that I have knocked off the
tables in my lodgings here, in my practice of the intricacies of those
'tours, or figures,' that I might attain to the perfection of
performance which was my dream. One of them is the most utterly
glorious that the mind of man has ever hit upon, of its kind. Four
couples stand, picturesquely grouped, the gentleman, balancing on his
right tip-toe, places his right-arm about his partner, raising, at the
same time, his left-arm in a graceful curve above his head--whilst the
other couples make the 'ronde.' Such an idea never entered the heads of
Vestris or Gardel. Very well. I had based my hopes of highest happiness
upon this particular '_seize_.' I had been destining it for Count
Walther Puck's birthday: I intended to whisper into Victorine's ear
during this more than earthly 'tour'--'Most divine countess, I love you
unutterably--I adore you! Be mine, angel of light!' that was the
reason, dear Euchar, why I was so overwhelmed with joy when I got the
invitation to the ball there, for I had had great doubts about it.
Count Walther Puck had appeared to be a good deal annoyed with me a
little while ago, one day when I was explaining to him the theory
of the mutual interdependence of things--the mechanism of the
macrocosm--when he took it into his head that I was making out that he
was a pendulum. He said it was a piece of chaff in very bad taste; but
that he would take no