ich was split as
neatly down the middle as you would split an orange at dessert. In a
word what man could do to repair my defeat, I did.

There is but one thing now of which I am ashamed--of those killing
epigrams which I wrote (mon Dieu! must I own it?--but even the fury of
my anger proves the extent of my love!) against the Speck family.
They were handed about in confidence at court, and made a frightful
sensation:

"IS IT POSSIBLE?"

"There happened at Schloss P-mp-rn-ckel,
A strange mishap our sides to tickle,
And set the people in a roar;--
A strange caprice of Fortune fickle:
I never thought at Pumpernickel
To see a SPECK UPON THE FLOOR!"

LA PERFIDE ALBION; OR, A CAUTION TO WALTZERS.

"'Come to the dance,' the Briton said,
And forward D-r-th-a led,
Fair, fresh, and three-and-twenty!
Ah, girls; beware of Britons red!
What wonder that it TURNED HER HEAD?
SAT VERBUM SAPIENTI."

"REASONS FOR NOT MARRYING.

"'The lovely Miss S.
Will surely say "yes,"
You've only to ask and try;'
'That subject we'll quit;'
Says Georgy the wit,
'I'VE A MUCH BETTER SPEC IN MY EYE!'"

This last epigram especially was voted so killing that it flew
like wildfire; and I know for a fact that our Charge-d'Affaires at
Kalbsbraten sent a courier express with it to the Foreign Office in
England, whence, through our amiable Foreign Secretary, Lord P-lm-rston,
it made its way into every fashionable circle: nay, I have reason to
believe caused a smile on the cheek of R-y-lty itself. Now that Time has
taken away the sting of these epigrams, there can be no harm in giving
them; and 'twas well enough then to endeavor to hide under the lash of
wit the bitter pangs of humiliation: but my heart bleeds now to think
that I should have ever brought a tear on the gentle cheek of Dorothea.

Not content with this--with humiliating her by satire, and with wounding
her accepted lover across the nose--I determined to carry my revenge
still farther, and to fall in love with somebody else. This person was
Ottilia v. Schlippenschlopp.

Otho Sigismund Freyherr von Schlippenschlopp, Knight Grand Cross of
the Ducal Order of the Two-Necked Swan of Pumpernickel, of the
Porc-et-Siflet of Kalbsbraten, Commander of the