My meeting with Berkley Junior was not precisely similar, but connected with the same feelings and associations.  I dashed down four steps at a time, precipitated myself on him like a bird of prey, and wrung his hands again and again with fondest violence.

Now, up to that date my relations with Sylvester Berkley had been of a frigid and formal description.  I had met him two or three times with his hearty old relation, and had borne away the distinct impression that he was a prig.  While the uncle would breakfast in his tub, like Diogenes, off simple bones and cutlets, Sylvester ate some sort of a mash made of bruised oats:  while the nephew made an untenable pretension to family honors, the elder talked familiarly of the porcelain trade, freely alluding to the youth as a piece of precious Sevres that had cracked.

He met my advances with a calmness, imprinted with astonishment, that recalled me to myself.  Against such a refrigerator my heart and fancy recovered their proper level:  I had been caressing an iceberg in a white cravat.  I examined my emotions, and found, to my shame, that my warmth had a selfish origin in the fact that I was alone in Carlsruhe, greatly in need of a passport and a purse.

“Do you intend shortly to quit the archducal seat?” asked Sylvester, by way of an agreeable remark.

“I have the strongest obligations to be at home,” I returned.  “I only await your kind assistance about my passport.”

“It is expected at the office, but I fear it will not be received in time for you to take the next train.  I fear we shall be obliged to keep you with us until thirty minutes past one.”

He conferred on me, with his neck and his hand, a salute which had the effect of being made from a distant window.  Then he departed.

To ask such a man for money was not easy.  I dressed myself and marched in great haste to the gay quarter of the town, having made up my mind to depend on the mercies of the chief jeweler and the merits of my Poitevin watch.  It had cost a thousand francs, and would surely, after many a service rendered, help me now to regain my home.

Another disappointment—­not a pawn-broker to be found in Carlsruhe!  I was ready to look upon myself as a fixture in the town, when a brilliant idea flashed upon me.  One of my neighbors at table was transportation-agent at the railway depot.  What so opportune for me as a credit on the railway company?  With his recommendation my watch would surely be security enough.

Delighted with the thought, and with my own cleverness in originating it, I made briskly for the Ettlingen Gate, before which the road passes.  Glancing at the clock on the depot, I regulated first my watch by the time of the place, in order that no doubt might be cast on its perfect regularity.  I was holding it in my hand, my eyes still riveted on the great clock, as I stepped over the nearest rails.  A shout, mixed with imprecations, was audible.  My coat was seized by a vigorous fist, I was rudely pushed, my watch escaped, and the train from Frankfort, which was just entering the depot, only rendered it to my hands crushed, peeled and pounded.  Instead of a thousand francs, my old friend would hardly bring five dollars.