-existent, or at
least as having no right to exist.

Eric had an equally good figure, but he was more easy and dignified.
Eric's voice was a fine, deep baritone, while Pranken's was a tenor.
Their different characters could be seen also in their way of speaking.
Eric pronounced every word and letter distinctly; Pranken, on the other
hand, spoke with a lazy drawl, as if the vowels and consonants were too
much for him, and as if he must avoid all straining of the organs of
speech; the words dropped, as it were, out of his lips, and yet he
liked to talk, and made excellent points. Pranken's remarks were
forcible, and came out in jets, like the short canter peculiar to the
Royal bodyguard. When talking upon the most ordinary occurrence, his
manner was somewhat rattling and noisy, like one handling his
shoulder-belt, and joining or leaving a convivial company. Eric had
thought more than he had talked. A secluded student in the almost
cloister-like retirement of home, this bearing was wholly novel and
strange to him.

"Herr Baron," said the waiter, as he brought in a bottle of native,
sparkling wine, "your coachman wishes to know if he shall unharness the
horses."

"No," he replied; and while he was turning the bottle in the
wine-cooler he added to Eric: "I dislike to interrupt the brief joy of
this meeting with you. Ah! you have no idea what a terrible bore this
extolled poetry of rural life is!" Pouring out a glass from the
uncorked bottle, he said laughing, "Compost, and again compost, is the
word. The compost-heap is an Olympus, and the God enthroned upon it is
called Jupiter Ammonia." Pranken laughed aloud at his own witty
outburst, then drank off his glass, and complacently twirled with both
hands the ends of his moustache.

Eric led the conversation back to the beauty of the Rhine-life, but
Pranken interrupted by saying, "If now somebody would only take off the
paint from this lying Lorelei, with her song about the beauty of life
on the Rhine! So the poets always speak of the dewy morning, and we had
to-day a blast from the mountains, as if the angels in heaven had spilt
all their milk into the fire."

Eric could not help laughing; sipping at his glass, he said, "But the
joy of the wine!" "O, yes," replied Pranken, "the old topers drink as a
matter of business, but without any poetry. They sit together by the
hour, always the same set, and the same half-dozen anecdotes on hand;
or they interchange a superannuate