re glory of the verily inspired singer, even if it does not
happen before the late autumn of his days! And to this, ye Serapion
Brethren, let us drink in happy expectation."

The friends, forming a semicircle round the picture, clinked their
glasses together. "And then," said Vincenz, "it won't matter whether he
is Private Secretary, Abbe, or Privy Councillor, Cardinal, or the very
Pope; or even a Bishop _in partibus infidelium_, that's to say, of
Paphos!"

As was usually the case with Vincenz, he had without intending it, or
even being aware of it, stuck a comic tail on to a serious subject. But
the friends felt too strangely moved to pay particular attention to
this. They sat down again in silence at the table, while Theodore
carried the poet's picture back into the next room.

"I had meant," said Sylvester, "to read you this evening a story, for
the idea of which I am indebted to a strange chance, or rather, to a
strange remembrance. But it is so late that Serapiontic hours would be
long over before I had finished it."

"That is very much my case too," said Vincenz, "with my long-promised
tale, which I have got pressed against my heart here in the
breast-pocket of my coat (that usual _boudoir_ of literary productions)
like a pet child. It has sucked itself fat and lusty at the mother's
milk of my imagination, and has thereby got so forward and so talkative
that if I were to let it begin, it would go on till daybreak. So that
it must wait till the next meeting. To talk, I mean to converse,
appears dangerous to-night; for, before one knows where one is, some
heathen king, or Pater Molinos (or some _mauvais sujet_ or another of
the sort), suddenly sits in the midst of us, talking all kinds of
unintelligible nonsense. So that if either of us can out with a
manuscript with something amusing in it, I hope he will let us hear
it."

"If anything which any one of us may be able to produce to-night," said
Cyprian, "must seem to be nothing more than a stop-gap, or an
intermezzo between other melodies, I may pluck up courage to read
to you a trifle which I wrote down many years ago, when I had been
passing through a period of much mystery and some danger. I had
completely forgotten the existence of the pages in question, until they
accidentally came into my hands a short time ago, vividly recalling
the times to which they relate. My belief is that what led to the
production of this rather chimerical story is much more inte