al to understand this man's
warnings, and at the same time to suspect his motives; and from that
moment my life became invested with new interests and new anxieties, and
to my own heart I felt myself a hero of romance.

As I sauntered on, revolving very pleasant thoughts to myself, I came
upon a party who were picnicking under a tree. Some of them graciously
made a place for me, and I sat down and ate my dinner with them. They
were very humble people, all of them, but courteous and civil to my
quality of stranger in a remarkable degree. Nor was I less struck by
the delicate forbearance they showed towards the host; for, while the
servant pressed them to drink Bordeaux and champagne, they merely took
the little wines of the country, perfectly content with simple fare and
the courtesy that offered them better.

When one of them asked me if I had ever seen a fete of such magnificence
in my own country, my mind went back to that costly entertainment of our
villa, and Pauline came up before me, with her long dark eyelashes, and
those lustrous eyes beaming with expression, and flashing with a light
that dazzled while it charmed. Coquetry has no such votaries as the
young. Its artifices, its studied graces, its thousand rogueries, to
them seem all that is most natural and most "naive;" and thus every toss
of her dark curls, every little mock resentment of her beautiful mouth,
every bend and motion of her supple figure, rose to my mind, till I
pictured her image before me, and thought I saw her.

"What a hunt I have had after you, Herr Englander!" said a servant, who
came up to me all flushed and heated. "I have been over the whole park
in search of you."

"In search of _me?_ Surely you mistake."

"No; it is no mistake. I see no one here in a velvet jacket but
yourself; and Herr Ignaz told me to find you and tell you that there
is a place kept for you at his table, and they are at dinner now in the
large tent before the terrace."

I took leave of my friends, who rose respectfully to make their adieux
to the honored guest of the host, and I followed the servant to the
house. I was not without my misgivings that the scene of the morning,
with its unpleasant cross-examination of me, might be repeated, and I
even canvassed myself how far I ought to submit to such liberties; but
the event was not to put my dignity to the test I was received on terms
of perfect equality with those about me; and though the dinner had made
some