e key into the lock of
the door, and bringing down my foot firmly and proudly on the first step.

"This is all mine!" I cried enthusiastically.

I enter the hall--"Mine!" I open the wardrobes--"Mine!" Mine--all that
linen piled up to the top! I pace majestically up the broad staircase,
repeating like a fool, "This is mine, and that is mine! Here I am, owner
of all this! No more uneasiness about the future! Not an anxious thought
for the morrow! Now I am going to make a figure in the world!--not on the
weak ground of merit--not for anything that fashion can alter. I am a
great man because I hold really and effectually that which the world
covets.

"Ye poets and artists! what are you in comparison with the rich
proprietor who has everything he wants, and who feeds your inspiration
with the crumbs that fall from his table? What are you but ornamental
portions of his feasts and banquets, just to fill up a weary interval?
You are no more than the sparrow that warbles in his hedges, or the
statue that figures in his garden-walk. It is by him and for him that you
exist. What need has he to envy you the incense of pride and vanity--he
who possesses the only solid good this world has to offer?"

At that moment of inflated conceit if the poor Kapellmeister Haas had
appeared before me I might very likely have turned and looked at him over
my shoulder and asked, "What fool is that? What business has he with me?"

I threw a window open; evening was closing in. The setting sun gilded my
orchards and my vines as far as I could see. On the declivity of the hill
a few white patches indicated the cemetery.

I turned round. A great Gothic hall, with rich mouldings decorating the
ceiling, pleased my taste exceedingly. This was the Seigneur Burckhardt's
hunting-saloon.

An old spinet stood between two windows; I ran my fingers absently over
the keys, and the loose strings jingled with the disagreeable squeaking
of a toothless old woman trying to sing like a young damsel.

At the end of this long apartment was an arched alcove closed in by deep
red curtains, and containing a lofty four-post bedstead with a kind of
grand baldacchino covering it in. The sight of this reminded me that I
had been six hours on horseback, and undressing with a self-satisfied
smirk on my face all the time--

"It is the first time," I said, "that I shall sleep in a bed of my own."

And laying myself comfortably down, with my eyes dreamily wandering over
t