main
thing, whether we drink it from the cask, the bottle, or a broken cup.
My friends, let me tell you that this is the first pleasant hour, that
spiteful quean, Fate, has bestowed upon me for the last three years.
I'm glad to be once more among people who fare worse than they deserve.
I know this is true of you and myself. As for our philanthropist, he at
least shows a face that will dull the sharpest sting of envy. Upon my
word, Franzel, you look as if things were going wrong. Has Delitzsch
passed you to-day without lifting his hat? Did a dozen blood-thirsty
millionaires spring from the earth during the last shower? Or were you
called upon at the last workmen's meeting, instead of making fine
speeches, to tear your breast like the pelican and let a fountain of
real St. Julien gush forth, and did you fail to accomplish the trick?"

"I see I'm only in the way here," replied the printer, glancing at Mohr
with an expression of indescribable contempt. "I'll not intrude any
longer."

He nodded to Balder and walked hastily toward the door, but Edwin
seized his hand and detained him.

"Stop!" said he. "We shall not let you go so, Mohr is incorrigible. But
there's something the matter with you, Franzel, I see it in your face,
and by our old friendship--"

The angry man compressed his lips still more firmly, and said after a
long pause: "Why should I speak of it? Ruin takes its own course."

"Ruin?"

"Why yes, sometimes sooner, sometimes later, what does it matter? And
we can only rejoice that it should proceed from this cause. It shows
in the clearest manner to what our diseased form of government has
come--and where it will arrive, if--supposing that--"

He paused again. The friends looked at each other inquiringly.

"If I'm one too many here," said Mohr phlegmatically, rising and
seizing the bottle--"I've no objection to drinking this paltry heeltap
in your courtyard."

"I have no secrets," muttered the gloomy visitor. "What has happened
took place in public; the consequences which still fear the light will
soon be noised abroad. A cry of indignation will resound through
Germany, when it is known that even now, in the light of the nineteenth
century--"

"But, man," interrupted Edwin, "torture has certainly been discarded in
the nineteenth century, and yet for the last fifteen minutes you have
been applying the thumb-screws of curiosity. Out with it; _what_ has
happened, and _what_ consequences still fear the l