excommunicate him with a big stick.  The truth is that the ex-autocrat of all the States does not like rebels against the sullen order of our universe.  Make the best of it or perish—­he cries.  A sane lineal successor of the Barber and the Priest, and a sagacious political heir of the incomparable Sancho Panza (another great Governor), that distinguished litterateur has no mercy for dreamers.  And our author happens to be a man of (you may trace them in his books) some rather fine reveries.

Every convert begins by being a rebel, and I do not see myself how any mercy can possibly be extended to Mr. Luffmann.  He is a convert from the creed of strenuous life.  For this renegade the body is of little account; to him work appears criminal when it suppresses the demands of the inner life; while he was young he did grind virtuously at the sacred handle, and now, he says, he has fallen into disgrace with some people because he believes no longer in toil without end.  Certain respectable folk hate him—­so he says—­because he dares to think that “poetry, beauty, and the broad face of the world are the best things to be in love with.”  He confesses to loving Spain on the ground that she is “the land of to-morrow, and holds the gospel of never-mind.”  The universal striving to push ahead he considers mere vulgar folly.  Didn’t I tell you he was a fit subject for the cage?

It is a relief (we are all humane, are we not?) to discover that this desperate character is not altogether an outcast.  Little girls seem to like him.  One of them, after listening to some of his tales, remarked to her mother, “Wouldn’t it be lovely if what he says were true!” Here you have Woman!  The charming creatures will neither strain at a camel nor swallow a gnat.  Not publicly.  These operations, without which the world they have such a large share in could not go on for ten minutes, are left to us—­men.  And then we are chided for being coarse.  This is a refined objection but does not seem fair.  Another little girl—­or perhaps the same little girl—­wrote to him in Cordova, “I hope Poste-Restante is a nice place, and that you are very comfortable.”  Woman again!  I have in my time told some stories which are (I hate false modesty) both true and lovely.  Yet no little girl ever wrote to me in kindly terms.  And why?  Simply because I am not enough of a Vagabond.  The dear despots of the fireside have a weakness for lawless characters.  This is amiable, but does not seem rational.

Being Quixotic, Mr. Luffmann is no Impressionist.  He is far too earnest in his heart, and not half sufficiently precise in his style to be that.  But he is an excellent narrator.  More than any Vagabond I have ever met, he knows what he is about.  There is not one of his quiet days which is dull.  You will find in them a love-story not made up, the coup-de-foudre, the lightning-stroke of Spanish love; and you will marvel how a spell so sudden and