nity. There
is a morbidness about it which may give you some trouble one of these
days. For my part I shun mad people like the plague; and even people of
over-excitable temperaments, which lead them into marked eccentricities
of any kind, are repulsive and repugnant to me."

"You go too far," said Theodore, "in your distaste for every expression
of feeling which takes any rather peculiar or unusual form. The
incongruity which _excitable_ people, as they are called, perceive
between their inner selves and the world without them makes them
grimace, in a manner which quiet folks, over whom pain has as little
power as pleasure, can't understand, and are only annoyed with. Yet you
yourself, Ottmar, with all your sensitiveness to this kind of behaviour
in others, often lay yourself open to be accused of very distinct
eccentricity.

"I happen to remember a man whose eccentricities were so extreme that
half his fellow-citizens considered him a lunatic, although no one
really less deserved to be so characterized. The way in which I made
his acquaintance was as quaintly comic as the circumstances in, which I
met with him at a later period were tragic and terrible. I should like
to tell you all this story, as a sort of transition from pure insanity,
_via_ eccentricity, to the realms of every-day rationality. Only I am
afraid that, as I should have to say a good deal about music, I should
be open to the objection which I made to Cyprian's story--that of
giving my own particular hobby undue prominence, and introducing too
much of my own personality into my tale. In the meantime, I see that
Lothair is casting longing looks at that vase which Cyprian calls
'mysterious,' so we may as well break the spell which binds it."

"Now," said Lothair, when glasses of a fluid which would have merited
the encomiums of the fraternity of the "Clucking Hen" had been passed
round, "tell us about your eccentric friend--be entertaining, be
affecting, be merry, or sad; but get us away from the atmosphere of
that abominable mad anchorite, and out of the bedlam where Cyprian has
been keeping us immured."

[THE STORY OF KRESPEL.]

"The man," said Theodore, "whom I am going to tell you about was
Krespel, a Member of Council in the town of H----. This Krespel was the
most extraordinary character that I have ever, in my lifetime, come
across. When I first arrived in H---- the whole town was talking of
him, because one of his _most_ extraordinary prank