All this scene was tinted with that deep rich amber light in which the old Flemish painters delighted, and of which they alone possessed the secret, and never left it to the generations after them.

“So you went out last night, doctor?” inquired my host, after we had both installed ourselves, and while I had my hands in a warm place upon the stove.

“Yes, pretty early,” I answered.  “I had to look after a patient.”

This brief explanation seemed to satisfy the little hunchback, and he lighted his blackened boxwood pipe, which was hanging over his chin.

“You don’t smoke, doctor?”

“I beg your pardon, I do.”

“Well, fill any one of these pipes.  I was here,” he said, spreading his yellow hand over the open volume.  “I was reading the chronicles of Hertzog when you came.”

“Ah, that accounts for the time I had to wait!  Of course you stayed to finish the chapter?” I said, smiling.

He owned it, grinning, and we both laughed together.

“But if I had known it was you,” he said, “I should have finished the chapter another time.”

There was a short silence, during which I was observing the very peculiar physiognomy of this misshapen being—­those long deep wrinkles that moated in his wide mouth, his small eyes with the crow’s feet at the outer corners, that contorted nose, bulbous at its end, and especially that huge double-storied forehead of his.  The whole figure reminded me not a little of the received pictures of Socrates, and while warming myself and listening to the crackling of the fire, I went off into contemplations on the very diversified fortunes of mankind.

“Here is this dwarf,” I thought, “an ill-shaped, stunted caricature, banished into a corner of Nideck, and living just like the cricket that chirps beneath the hearthstone.  Here is this little Knapwurst, who in the midst of excitement, grand hunts, gallant trains of horsemen coming and going, the barking of the hounds, the trampling of the horses, and the shouts of the hunters, is living quietly all alone, buried in his books, and thinking of nothing but the times long gone by, whilst joy or sorrow, songs or tears, fill the world around him, while spring and summer, autumn and winter, come and look in through his dim windows, by turns brightening, warming, and benumbing the face of nature outside.  Whilst men in the outer world are subject to the gentle influences of love, or the sterner impulses of ambition or avarice, hoping, coveting, longing, and desiring, he neither hopes, nor desires, nor covets anything.  As long as he is smoking his pipe, with his eyes feasting on a musty parchment, he lives in the enjoyment of dreams, and he goes into raptures over things long, long ago gone by, or which have never existed at all; it is all one to him.  ’Hertzog says so and so, somebody else tells the tale a different way,’ and he is perfectly happy!  His leathery face gets