child. "My object in this journey is a happy marriage,"
she had told me when to my unworthy care her guardianship had been
transferred. If I timorously suspected the marriage to be her own,
whose fault was it but mine? My heart leaped up at the successive
stages of this recital, its hopes confirmed by every additional fact:
the Dark Ladye's hand was certainly free. Fortnoye, I should surmise,
was not too desirous to abandon this magnificent companion at
Schwetzingen; but the serpent, he knew, was left behind, in company
with two or three of his and my friends: it was necessary to take
the youth by the ear, as it were, and dismiss him from the country,
without loss of time, to his future of counter-jumping. His dueling
experience may be of some use to him among the bowie-knives of
Louisiana. If his subsequent path is not strewn with roses, let him
rejoice that it is at least lubricated with cologne-water.

[Illustration: INTERRUPTED REPOSE.]

An hour had passed, and into my room from his own adjoining one now
ambled amicably my friend the baron. He greeted Joliet as an old
friend. Many a smoking-match had they had in my garden at Marly. But
Hohenfels this morning was in robes of state, with shoes that shone
even beside old Father Joliet's, and as a concession to elegance he
had abandoned his cavernous pipes in favor of cigarettes. A scroll of
this description, flavored with his Cologne pastille and very badly
rolled, was trying to exhale itself between his lips.

"What a genius for conversation you have to-day, my Flemming! This
hour I have rocked back and forth in bed, trying to understand your
observations or to cover my ears and go to rest. Your tongue has been
like the tongue of a monastery-bell summoning all hands to penance."
But I had hardly spoken ten consecutive words. The ears of the baron
were this morning quite muffled, I think, with the abundance of his
hair, which he had evidently been dressing with an avalanche of soap
and water, for the topknot was as harsh and tight as a felt. He had
lemon-blossoms on his lappel and lemon kids on his fists.

It was then I remembered that my bags were all in the steamer, where
I had left them when surprised by Charles's indisposition. My tin box
would possibly yield me a button-nosegay, but otherwise I might beat
my breast, like the wedding-guest in the _Ancient Mariner_, for I
heard the summons and was unable to attend in right attire. "We two
must take you out in t