ttern when I
saw it), and to let me know as soon as it arrived. I wanted it
particularly to wear the evening of that Whit Monday when we were all
in the Webersche Zelt. I wanted to put it on to go to a singing tea in;
you know what we call a singing tea here? A place where people sing in
order to drink tea, and drink tea for the purpose of singing. Very
well! The hat had come, but it was so badly made that it had to be all
altered before I could wear it. This was the fatal news that made me
shed a tear or two. I didn't want my father to see that it had made me
cry, but he soon found out what I was vexed about, and chaffed me
unmercifully on the subject. You know I have a habit of holding my
handkerchief to my face, as I did that day, when anything annoys me?"

"Pauline burst out laughing again. But a bitter frost seemed to go
through my veins and marrow, and a voice within me seemed to cry,
"Wretched, shallow, disgusting dress-worshipper!"

"'Come, come!' interrupted Alexander, 'that's terribly severe, and not
true of her. I call it going too far.... However, let's hear the rest
of your story.'

"'My feelings,' said Marzell, 'I really cannot describe to you. I had
awakened from the mocking dream in which some wicked demon had held me
enthralled. I felt, now, that I had never really been in love with
Pauline, but had only been the sport of some incomprehensible
self-mystification. I could scarcely find a syllable to say; my whole
body shook and trembled with rage and vexation. When Pauline, in alarm,
asked what was the matter with me, I pretended that I was taken
suddenly unwell, and I fled, like a hunted deer, out of the house for
ever. As I was crossing the square of the Gendarmerie, I saw a body of
volunteers falling in to march off and join the army. This showed me
clearly the course I ought to adopt, for the calming of my mind, and to
forget this miserable business. Instead of going home, I went off and
enrolled myself for service in the field. Everything was arranged in a
couple of hours' time. I ran home, put on my uniform, packed my
knapsack, took my musket and bayonet, and went to hand over to the
charge of my landlady what things I was going to leave behind. While I
was talking to her, I heard some commotion going on on the stairs
outside.

"'"Ah! they're bringing him down," said the landlady, and opened the
door. I saw Nettelmann, the madman, coming down between two keepers. He
had on a lofty crown of gil