f republics to shame. Here every man is fortunate as long as he
is free; but, once immured in the walls of a prison, his rights and his
comforts become every man's business, and therefore nobody's, and
society neither knows nor cares whether he is properly fed, clothed,
and watched, or whether his jailors enrich themselves on the sale of
the food he should eat, or make his ordinary comforts contingent
upon the alacrity he displays in doing their menial services. In
Europe it is otherwise. There the government, and its hirelings the
office-holders, consider every individual their natural enemy so long
as he lives on his own exertions, and withholds a fragment of his
existence from the surveillance of the high and mighty. With
unrelenting taxation, and interminable regulations, prohibitions, and
prescriptions, they waste his substance and goad him into prison; but,
once there, their wishes are accomplished, and they treat him
henceforth with paternal kindness. Favors shown to prisoners can never
be regarded as concessions to civil liberty, and therefore they are
freely extended. Whoever finds his way there may calculate upon
friendly treatment. Perhaps, instead of opposing the government, it
would be better for the citizens to bring about a general measure of
criminal incarceration as the surest road to the good-will of their
sovereigns.

Still, the time passed but slowly. He learned the art of making
brushes. When at length and at last the day of delivery came, he
hastened to Crescence. He was received with open arms. With a little
money, which she had saved out of her earnings, they both travelled
from village to village as brush-makers. But soon Florian renounced
this trade for one more satisfactory to his peculiar desire for
admiration. He attended the fairs, markets, and harvest homes as
rope-dancer and juggler. His great exploit was the sword-trick, which
consisted in throwing three swords around in a circle and always
catching them by the handle: he had mastered the principle when engaged
in chopping sausage-meat. Crescence clung to him faithfully through all
this; and once, when he fell from the rope and broke his leg, she
nursed him with the most tender care.

After this he purchased a gambling-table and frequented the markets and
harvest-homes of the adjoining countries of Germany,--the game of dice
having been, in the mean time, prohibited in Wurtemberg. It is the
peculiar good fortune of Germany that every o