side, and her son
and son-in-law on the back seat, both in uniform and decorated with
medals of honor. The happy old woman, who was taking the fresh glories
of her family out for a ride, and gazing around her with proud eyes,
recognized Schnetz immediately, and nodded to him with amiable
familiarity. She looked at his companion through her eye-glass, but did
not appear to know him.

"Brave youngsters," muttered Schnetz. "Whatever else you may say of
them, they certainly fought well. But now let's take a drosky. Of
course, our young husband lives outside there where the last houses
are."

As they drew up before Rossel's quarters--a plain little house in
the Schwanthalerstrasse--they caught sight of a woman's head at the
flower-framed window above; but it was instantly drawn in again.

"Madame is at home," said Schnetz, with a smile. "Of course, she has
been expecting your visit, and has probably arrayed herself in great
style. Hold on tight to your heart, _triumphator_!"

Upon arriving up-stairs, they were not received by the lady of the
house herself, as he had expected, but by a servant-girl, who conducted
them into the studio. In comparison with the luxuriously-furnished
room in which their friend used to recline on his picturesque
bear-skin in his own house, this one was very scantily decorated.
There were no costly Gobelin tapestries, beautiful bronze vases,
and brilliantly-polished pieces of furniture in the style of the
Renaissance. But on some of the easels stood pictures in various stages
of completion, and the artist himself advanced to meet them, in his
shirt-sleeves and with his palette on his arm.

"So here you are again!" he cried. "Now thanks be to all the gods that
you have come back with sound limbs and unscratched faces! You have a
fine piece of work behind you. Nor have we stay-at-homes been lazy in
the mean while; and though not fighting for emperor and empire, we can
at least say of ourselves that we have been working _pour le roi de
Prusse_. But it makes no odds, let us hope for better times; in the
mean while I am trying to drive away the blues with this daubing. For
Heaven's sake, don't look at the things; they are wretched efforts,
merely made in order to try my brush again. For that matter, you
mustn't look about you here at all--_quantum mutatus ab illo!_ Of all
my household goods, I have retained nothing but my Boecklin; a thing of
that sort is like a tuning-fork when one has lost the k