drove this expeditionary force down from the
hills, and back into the fortifications, notwithstanding the
superiority of its numbers. "'Tis a strange thing," people said, "that
our friends outside were informed of the enemy's plans, for that signal
fire on the Meissner Hills had the effect of assembling the troops, so
that they might make a resistance in force, just at the very time and
place where he intended to concentrate his attacking bodies."

For several days Dorothea did not come in the morning with my coffee;
and my landlord, pale with terror, told me had seen her, along with the
mad beggar of the Elbe bridge, marched off from the marshal's quarters
to Neustadt under a strong escort.

"Oh, good heavens!" said Anselmus's friend, "they were discovered and
executed."

But Anselmus gave a strange smile and said, "Agafia got away; and,
alter the Peace was signed, I received, from her own hands, a beautiful
white wedding-cake of her own making."

The reticence of Anselmus was proof against every effort to induce him
to say anything more concerning this astonishing affair.

When Cyprian had finished, Lothair said, "You told us that the events
which suggested this sketch would be more interesting than it is
itself; so that I consider those suggesting circumstances are an
essential part of it, without which it is not complete. Therefore, I
think you ought at once to give us your why and wherefore, as a sort of
explanatory note."

"Does it not seem to you to be as unusual as remarkable," said Cyprian,
"that all that I have read to you is literally true, and that even the
little 'wind up,' has its kernel of actuality?"

"Let us hear!" the friends cried.

"To begin with," said Cyprian, "I must tell you that the fate which
befell Anselmus in my sketch was actually my own, as well. My being ten
minutes late decided my destiny, so that I was shut up in Dresden just
as it was surrounded on all sides. It is a fact that after the battle
of Leipzig, when our condition became more painful and trying day by
day, certain friends, or mere acquaintances, whom a similar lot and a
like way of thinking had drawn together, used to assemble in the back
room of a coffee-house, much as the disciples did at Emmaus. The
landlord, one Eichelkraut, was a reliable, trustworthy man, who made no
secret of his hostility to the French, and always obliged them to treat
him with proper respect and keep their due distance from him when they
c