A smile of triumph flitted faintly o’er the features of the Frenchman.  He evidently thought he had made a “ten strike.”  I whispered approvingly, “Tres bien, Monsieur, tres bien!”

BISMARCK:  “Does the German heart yearn for the Rhine?  Does it yearn for Strasbourg?  Does it yearn for Metz? and if not, what does it yearn for?”

He was looking straight at me when he said this, and so I answered “Bier.”

A dark scowl flitted frantically over the features of the German, but he went right on:  “Are all the longings of all these years, dating from the birth of CHARLEMAGNE and extending through GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS to FREDERICK the Great and WILLIAM the First, by his father on his maternal grandmother’s side, who lies in the iron coffin of the domkirche at Potsdam, whence we derive the consolidated grandeur of HOHENZOLLERN mingling its rich ancestral dyes with the dark woof of fate to dispel the expanding dream of German aspiration?”

I had not time to witness the effect upon FAVRE, but, gasping for breath, I started from my seat and uttered these words, which I remembered to have read in a German-English libretto of MARIE STUART:  “Mein Gott, ich kenne eures Eifers reinen Trieb, Weiss, dass gediegne Weissheit aus Euch redet!”

It did not matter to me that FAVRE lay swooning on the floor.  That the Count glared at me savagely and crunched his jaws with maniacal energy.  My knowledge of German was up.  It had caught the fierce impulse, the majestic sweep of his ponderous linguosity.  I remembered another sentence, and hurled it wildly at him:  “Bei Gott, Du wirst, ich hoff’s, noch viele Jahre auf ihrem Grabe wandeln, ohne dass du selber sie hinabzustuerzen brauchtest!”

Again I looked at the Count.  His jaw had ceased working, and the expression of his eye had changed.  His arm moved furtively beneath the table.  What could he be doing?  Horrible moment of uncertainty.  Still the arm worked, as if tugging at something.  I could stand it no longer.  Seizing the soda-water bottle, I stooped to cast the rays of the sixpenny dip beneath the table.  As I did so, a boot-heel flashed in the air, the Count’s arm descended with a terrific detonation, and I saw no more.

(Interval of twenty-four hours.)

The result of the interview will be communicated to the American public by a Tribune special, as soon as a carrier-pigeon can reach SMALLEY at London.  I am still suffering from a sensation of having been recently hit,

DICK TINTO.

* * * * *

ASPIRATION.

Of all sorts of people in the world, the Cockney has the queerest notions about vegetable nature.  Show him the first letter of the alphabet, for instance, and he pronounces it “hay.”

* * * * *

APPARENTLY ANOMALOUS.

Should the Prussians ever succeed in entering Paris, it is hardly possible that they can be well received by the citizens, whether they find FAVRE there or not.