“You seem to be fond of map-studying,” said the consul pleasantly.  “You are not thinking of emigrating again?”

“Ach, no!” said Karl simply; “it is my cousine vot haf lif near here.  I find her.”

But he left on Trudschen’s return, and the consul was surprised to see that, while Karl’s attitude towards her had not changed, the girl exhibited less effusiveness than before.  Believing it to be partly the effect of the return of the corporal, the consul taxed her with faithlessness.  But Trudschen looked grave.

“Ah!  He has new friends, this Karl of ours.  He cares no more for poor girls like us.  When fine ladies like the old Frau von Wimpfel make much of him, what will you?”

It appeared, indeed, from Trudschen’s account, that the widow of a wealthy shopkeeper had made a kind of protege of the young soldier, and given him presents.  Furthermore, that the wife of his colonel had employed him to act as page or attendant at an afternoon Gesellschaft, and that since then the wives of other officers had sought him.  Did not the Herr Consul think it was dreadful that this American, who could vote and make laws, should be subjected to such things?

The consul did not know what to think.  It seemed to him, however, that Karl was “getting on,” and that he was not in need of his assistance.  It was in the expectation of hearing more about him, however, that he cheerfully accepted an invitation from Adlerkreutz to dine at the Caserne one evening with the staff.  Here he found, somewhat to his embarrassment, that the dinner was partly in his own honor, and at the close of five courses, and the emptying of many bottles, his health was proposed by the gallant veteran Adlerkreutz in a neat address of many syllables containing all the parts of speech and a single verb.  It was to the effect that in his soul-friend the Herr Consul and himself was the never-to-be-severed union of Germania and Columbia, and in their perfect understanding was the war-defying alliance of two great nations, and that in the consul’s noble restoration of Unser Karl to the German army there was the astute diplomacy of a great mind.  He was satisfied that himself and the Herr Consul still united in the great future, looking down upon a common brotherhood,—­the great Germanic-American Confederation,—­would feel satisfied with themselves and each other and their never-to-be-forgotten earth-labors.  Cries of “Hoch!  Hoch!” resounded through the apartment with the grinding roll of heavy-bottomed beer-glasses, and the consul, tremulous with emotion and a reserve verb in his pocket, rose to reply.  Fully embarked upon this perilous voyage, and steering wide and clear of any treacherous shore of intelligence or fancied harbor of understanding and rest, he kept boldly out at sea.  He said that, while his loving adversary in this battle of compliment had disarmed him and left him no words to reply to his generous panegyric, he could not but join with that gallant