uments, where the point is to reconcile the nobility and citizens!"

"I can't help it, niece, since, as a nobleman and a proprietor at
Schweidnitz, I have become a sort of doubtful thing, and don't well
know whether I am a bird or a mouse. I am compelled, therefore, to
speak in the way of reconciliation on both sides, lest a feud should
break out, and it should eventually fare with me as with the
flittermouse in the fable. May I call up the petitioner?"

"Call him in God's name, uncle," said Tausdorf: "I read my Althea's
_yes_ in her lovely and peaceful countenance."

"Excellently spoken!" cried the uncle, and hurried out.

"Heaven grant that we may never repent this _yes_," said Althea with
heavy heart. "I only wish the wild Francis were not of the party!"

"Why is he so terrible to you?" asked Tausdorf, smiling.

"Because he is so rough, so fond of frays and drinking, and because he
detests the nobles so irreconcilably. Since too he has been forced to
submit to the long imprisonment, on account of the late unlucky affair,
there is no managing with him."

"I have never seen him; but I should not like to subscribe to the
damnatory sentence pronounced against him by the nobles of our
acquaintance. Hot-headed men are frequently the best. As I have heard
from good authority, this Francis fought bravely against the Turks, and
I find it natural and pardonable that a soldier should not willingly
suffer himself to be played upon. His late misfortune grieved me much.
As he was absolved after all, he certainly did not belong to Bieler's
murderers; and to suffer a year's undeserved imprisonment must embitter
even the heart of a lamb."

"Heaven grant that you may never come in contact with this lamb; you
would find in him a furious wolf. I tremble at the thoughts of it, for
I think fire and water could not meet more hostilely than your
dispositions. Your person would show him a true mirror of what he
ought to be and is not; that would shame him, and shame exasperates
vulgar minds. His roughness and your cultivation, his furious violence
and your noble calmness, his inclination to every excess and your
purity----"

"Still! still!" interrupted Tausdorf, ashamed, and gently pressing his
hand upon the lips of the animated eulogist. "Do not forget that I also
am no more than a frail man, and that exaggerated praise from an
estimable mouth can corrupt even better than I am."

"Come along," cried Schindel, dragging in the sky-