r, smiling at us so
benignantly. It seems to me almost incredible that he can have come
away, so soon from his country dwelling, which he so much preferred to
our city life; and I keep believing that he is merely some pleasing
apparition, presently to vanish from our sight amongst those clouds
which he is blowing from his cigar."

"Heaven forefend!" cried Sylvester, laughing. "Do you suppose that a
quiet, happy personage, such as I am, has assumed the form of an
enchanter, and is deluding honest folks with his mere _simulacrum_? Do
you think I have anything of the Philadelphia, or the Swedenborg about
me? If you blame me for my silence, Theodore, let me say that I am
sparing my breath because I want to read you a story, suggested to me
by one of Kolbe's pictures, which I wrote during my long stay in the
country. If it surprises you, Ottmar, that I have come back here,
although I am so fond of the quiet and the leisure of the country,
remember that, though the constant turmoil, and the endless, empty
business of this great town are uncongenial to my whole nature, still,
if I am to turn my being a poet and a writer to any account, I stand in
need of many incitements which I can meet with here only. The tale
which I wish to read to you--and which I believe to possess a certain
amount of merit--would never have been written if I had not seen
Kolbe's picture at the Exhibition, and then worked the affair out in
the quiet of the country."

"Sylvester is right," said Lothair, "in seeking--as a writer of plays
and tales--suggestions and incitements in the whirl of city life, and
then in giving quiet leisure to his mind, in which to work those
suggestions out. Of course he might have seen the picture in the
country; but he would not have seen, there, the living characters whom
it inspired with life and movement, and into whom the people portrayed
in the picture passed and entered. A poet such as he is ought not to
retire into solitude. He ought to live in the most stirring and varied
society, so as to see, and grasp, its endlessly manifold aspects."

"Ha!" cried Vincent, "as Jaques, in 'As You Like It,' calls out when he
sees Touchstone,

'A fool, a fool! I met a fool i' the forest,
A motley fool; oh, lamentable world!'

So I cry 'a poet! a poet! I met a poet! He came stumbling out of the
third wineshop at high noon, looked up with his moist, drunken eyes at
the sun, and cried, in his inspiration "Oh,