of epigrams, The Raven of Zurich and Other Rhymes, came out, and being bright and saucy was reprinted in America.  The knowledge that he could not tax on a foreign soil his own ideas, the plastic pottery of his brain, was quite too much for his mental balance, and he took to inveighing against free trade in literary manufactures without the slightest perception of inconsistency, and with all the warmth, if not the eloquence, of Mr. Dickens on the same theme.  The gradual accumulation of subjects like these—­subjects taboo in gentle society—­soon made it apparent that in a Colony of such diverse colors, where every man had a sore spot or a grievance, and even the Cinderellas had corns in their little slippers, harmony could only be obtained by keeping to general considerations of honor, nobility, glory, and the politics of Beloochistan; on which points we all could agree, and where Mr. Berkley’s witty eloquence was a wonder.

[Illustration:  On with the dance!]

It is to my uneasy period, when I was sick with private griefs and giddy with striving to reconcile incompatibilities, that the episode of the Chickens belongs.  I was looking dissatisfied out of one of my windows.  Hohenfels, disappointed of a promenade by an afternoon shower, was looking dissatisfied out of the other.  Two or three people, waiting for four o’clock lunch, were lounging about.  I had just remarked, I believe, that I was a melancholy man, for ever drinking “the sweet wormwood of my sorrows.”  A dark phantom, like that of Adamastor, stood up between me and the stars.

“Nonsense, you ingrate!” responded the baron from his niche, “you are only too happy.  You are now in the precise position to define my old conception of the Lucky Dog.  The Lucky Dog, you know, in my vocabulary, is he who, free from all domestic cares, saunters up and down his room in gown and slippers, drums on the window of a rainy afternoon, and, as he stirs his evening fire, snaps his fingers at the world, saying, ’I have no wife nor children, good or bad, to provide for.’”

[Illustration:  Endymion.]

I replied that I did not willingly give way to grief, but that the main-spring of my life was broken.

“Did you ever try,” spoke up a buxom lady from a sofa—­it was the Frau Kranich, widow of the Frankfort banker, the same who used to give balls while her husband was drugged to sleep with opium, and now for a long time in Paris for some interminable settlement with Nathan Rothschild—­“Did you ever try the tonic of a good action? I never did, but they actually say it rejuvenates one considerably.”

I avowed that I had more faith in the study of Geography.  Nevertheless, to oblige her, I would follow any suggestion.

[Illustration:  How the modern dog treats Lazarus.]

“Benefit the next person who applies to you.”