e presence of my own cool effrontery. I could see easily
that the man of thought and reflection was succumbing before the man
of action and of the world, and I was selfish enough to revel in the
triumph.

In a low, diffident voice he proceeded to ask me if there was anything
in the nature of my situation that induced me to quit a service where I
had given the fullest satisfaction.

I replied by an easy caress of my long black moustache, and a certain
expressive gesture of the shoulders, meant to convey that my objections
were of a nature that did not admit exactly of discussion,--rather
questions of delicate personal feeling than of actual difficulty. Hinted
that I had rarely served anything less than a royal highness, and feared
that I should be likely to injure myself,--of degenerating into an
easy and familiar manner, by associating with those so nearly of my own
level.

I saw the blood mantle in the pale cheek of the student as he listened
to this impertinence, and thought that I could mark the struggle that
was passing within him, while, in a calm, collected tone, he said that
those were questions on which he could not give any opinion, and that
if I desired to leave, of course no further objections would be offered.
"Might I ask," added he, with a manner where a most courteous politeness
prevailed,--"might I ask what are the qualifications of a person in your
condition of life?"

"I think," replied I, "that I appreciate the meaning of your question.
You would ask by what right a man humbly born, educated to mere menial
duties, can aspire to the position and the pay a courier claims. I
am willing to tell you. To begin, then: He must be familiar with
the geography of Europe,--I speak here of the merely Continental
courier,--he must know the boundaries, the high roads, the coinage,
the customs, the privileges of every petty State, from the smallest
principality of Germany to the greatest sovereignty of a Czar. He must
know the languages, not as scholars and grammarians know them, but in
all their dialects and 'patois.' It is not enough that he has learned
the tongue in which Dante wrote, or Metastasio sung, he must speak
Venetian and Milanese, Neapolitan and Piedmontese. He should know the
Low German of the Black Forest, the Wiener dialect of the Austrian, and
talk every gradation of French, from the frontiers of Flanders to the
vine-groves of Provence and Auvergne. He must be as familiar with every
city of Euro