ame over the
bystanders that none but she who hid them in that mountain of wearables
would ever be able to discover them again.

'Ach Gott,' exclaimed the Hofrath, as she crowned him with a quilted
nightcap, whose jaws descended and fastened beneath the chin like an
antique helmet, leaving the miserable old face, like an uncouth pattern,
in the middle of the Berlin embroidery--'Ach Gott, but for that!'

'But for that!' reiterated old Hausman, in a solemn tone, as if he knew
the secret grief his friend alluded to, and gave him all his sympathy.

'Sit down again, Froriep,' said Blumenbach; 'it is an hour too soon for
young folk like us to separate. We'll have a glass of Rosenthaler, and
you shall tell us that story.'

'Be it so,' said the Hofrath, as he made signs to the madchen that he
would cast his skin. 'Ich bin dabei (I 'm ready).'

'Wi' tippenny we fear nae evil;
Wi' usquebaugh we 'd face the devil,'

quoth Burns; and surely Tarn's knowledge of human nature took a wide
circuit when he uttered those words. The whole philosophy of temptation
is comprised in the distich, and the adage of coming up 'to a man's
price' has no happier illustration; and certainly, had the poet been a
Bursche in Germany, he could not have conveyed the 'sliding scale' of
professors' agreeability under a more suitable formula. He who would be
civil with a pipe becomes communicative with coffee, and brotherly with
beer; but he opens every secret of his nature under the high-pressure
power of a flask of Rhenish. The very smack of the Hofrath's lips as he
drained his glass to the bottom, and then exclaimed in a transport, 'Er
ist zum kuessen, der Wein!' announced that the folding-doors of his heart
stood wide open, and that he might enter who would.

'Rosenthaler was Goethe's favourite,' quoth Stromeyer; 'and he had a
good taste in wine.'

'Your great folk,' said Hausman, 'ever like to show some decided
preference to one vintage above the rest; Napoleon adopted chambertin,
Joseph the Second drank nothing but tokay, and Peter the Great found
brandy the only fluid to his palate.'

'A plague on their fancies!' interrupted old Blumenbach. 'Let us have
the story!'

'Ah, well, well,' said the Hofrath, throwing up his eyes with an air of
sentimentalism, 'so you shall. Love's young dream was sweet, after all!
We were in the Hartz,' continued he, at once springing into his story
with a true Demosthenic abruptness--'we were in the Ha