the inconvenience I have occasioned you. I
entreat you to think no more of it."

My match was out, and I had not another.
"Was ever a man robbed of such ecstasy
for a mere pennyworth of stick and a little
sulphur ? O Fortune! is not this downright
cruelty ?"

As I mumbled my complaints, I searched
away with an honest zeal, patting the cushions
all over, and poking away into most inscrutable
pockets and recesses, while she, in a most
beseeching tone, apologised for her request, and
besought me to forget it.

"Found! found !" cried I, in true delight, as
I chanced upon the treasure at my feet.

"Oh, sir, you have made me so happy, and I
am so much obliged, and so grateful to you!"

"Not another word, I beseech you," whispered
I; "you are actually turning my head with
ecstasy. Give me your hand, let me clasp it
on your arm, and I am repaid,"

"Will you kindly pass it to me, sir, through
the window," said she, timidly.

"Ah," cried I, in anguish, " your gratitude
has been very fleeting."

She muttered something I could not catch,
but I heard the rustle of her sleeve against the
window-frame, and dark as it was, pitch dark, I
knew her hand was close to me. Opening the
bracelet, I passed it round her wrist as
reverently as though it were the arm of a Queen of
Spain, one touch of whom is high treason. I
trembled so, that it was some seconds before I
could make the clasp meet. This done, I felt
she was withdrawing her hand, when with something
like that headlong impulse by which men
set their lives on one chance, I seized the fingers
in my grasp, and implanted two rapturous kisses
on them. She snatched her hand hastily away,
closed the window with a sharp bang, and I was
alone once more in my darkness, but in such
a flutter of blissful delight that even the last
reproving gesture could scarcely pain me. It
mattered little to me that day that the lightning
felled a great pine and threw it across the road,
that the torrents were so swollen that we only
could pass them with crowds of peasants around
the carriage with ropes and poles to secure it,
that four oxen were harnessed in front of our
leaders to enable us to meet the hurricane, or
that the postboys were paid treble their usual
fare for all their perils to life and limb. I cared
for none of these. Enough for me that, on this
day, I can say with Schiller,

Ich habe genossen das irdische Glück,
Ich habe gelebt und geliebt!

CHAPTER XXIII

WE arrived at a small inn on the borders of
the Titi-see at nightfall; and though the rain
continued to come down unceasingly, and large
masses of cloud hung half way down the
mountains, I could see that the spot was highly
picturesque and romantic. Before I could descend
from my lofty eminence, so strapped and
buttoned and buckled up was I, the ladies had time
to get out and reach their rooms. When I asked
to be shown to mine, the landlord, in a very
free-and-easy tone, told me that there was
nothing for me but a double-bedded room, which I
must share with another traveller. I scouted
this proposition at once with a degree of force
and, indeed, of violence, that I fancied must
prove irresistible; but the stupid German,
armed with native impassiveness, simply said,
" Take it or leave it, it's nothing to me," and left
me to look after his business. I stormed and
fumed, I asked the chambermaid if she knew
who I was, and sent for the Hausknecht to tell
him that all Europe should ring with this
indignity. I more than hinted that the landlord
had sealed his own doom, and that his
miserable cabaret had seen its last days of
prosperity.

I asked next, where was the Jew pedlar? I
felt certain he was a fellow with pencil-cases
and pipe-heads, who owned the other half of the
territory. Could he not be bought up? He
would surely sleep in the cow-house, if it were
too wet to go up a tree!

François came to inform me that he was out
fishing; that he fished all day, and only came
home after dark; his man had told him so
much.

"His man? Why, has he a servant?" asked I.

"He's not exactly like a servant, sir; but a
sort of peasant, with a green jacket and a tall
hat and leather gaiters, like a Tyrolese."

"Strolling actors, I'll be sworn," muttered
I; " fellows taking a week's holiday on their
way to a new engagement. How long have they
been here?"

"Came on Monday last in the diligence, and
are to remain till the twentieth; two florins a
day they give for everything."

"What nation are they?"

"Germans, sir, regular Germans; never a
pipe out of their mouths, master and man. I
learned all this from his servant, for they have
put up a bed for me in his room."

A sudden thought now struck me: " Why
should not François give up his bed to this
stranger, and occupy the one in my room?"
This arrangement would suit me better, and it
ought to be all the same to Hamlet or Goetz, or
whatever he was. "Just lounge about the
door, François," said I, " till he comes back;
and when you see him, open the thing to him,
civilly, of course; and if a crown piece or even
two, will help the negotiation, slip it slyly into
his hand. You understand ?"

Francois winked like a man who had corrupted
custom-house officers in his time, and even bribed
bigger functionaries at a pinch.

"If he's in trade, you know, François, just
hint that if he sends in his pack in the course
of the evening, the ladies might possibly take a
fancy to something."

Another wink.

"And throw out—vaguely, of course, very
vaguely—that we are swells, but in strict
incog."