t your faculties, man, or I
shall immediately have you arrested and sent to a madhouse. I repeat,
collect your faculties, and utter not such palpably idle tales. Very
likely that I should have taken your wife and child into my keeping.
Bethink yourself, Master Gabriel Nietzel, be rational, and remember that
you are happily unincumbered and a free bachelor!"

"No, no, I am not free!" shrieked Gabriel Nietzel. "I have a wife, I have
a child, and see them again I must! Deliver them up to me, Sir Count. I
beseech you by all that is sacred--deliver them up to me! I must have my
wife and boy again!"

"Well then, go and look for them," said Schwarzenberg composedly "Apply to
the police, and furnish them with a description of both their persons.
Show your marriage license and your child's certificate of baptism, that
every one may be convinced of the truth of your deposition. Then write a
description of your wife, or, as you are a painter, draw a likeness of
her, publish her name and family, call upon her relatives to render you
their assistance, and in that way, if you really have a wife, you will in
the end succeed in discovering her."

"Sir Count, you well know that I can not do so," groaned Gabriel Nietzel.
"You well know that I am a poor, ruined man, entirely in your power. I
beseech you, have mercy upon me! Restore to me my wife and child, and I
will do all that you require of me. Give me back my wife, and I swear to
you that I will do here what I was to have done on the journey. I swear
to you that I will make good what I missed, that I--"

"I do not believe your oaths, Gabriel Nietzel," interposed the count. "You
are liberal with your oaths and promises, but come short in deeds, in
performances. Nobody will pay for a picture before he has seen it, or at
least a sketch of the same. Therefore take yourself off, devise a plan,
sketch your outline, and bring it to me. If it pleases me, and is
practicable, if I see that you are zealous and well disposed, then will I
gladly aid you in its execution and pay you in princely style. That is my
last word, Master Court Painter Gabriel Nietzel, and now go, and do not
show your face here again until you can show me that sketch. You have
understood me, have you not, Master Gabriel Nietzel? I bespeak a picture,
and you are to furnish me with a sketch of it; then, as you are in want, I
shall gladly pay you for it in advance."

"Yes, I have understood your lordship," said Gabriel Nie