in
betraying himself: he was soon deep in the drama. He knew every play of
Schiller by heart, and quoted the Wallenstein, the Bobbers, Don Carlos,
and Maria Stuart at will; so, too, was he familiar with Goethe and
Leasing. He had all the swinging intonation of the boards, and declaimed
so very professionally that, as he concluded a passage, I cried out,
without knowing it,--

"Take that for your benefit,--it's the best you have given yet."

Oh, Lord, how they laughed! She covered up her face and smothered it;
but he lay back, and, holding the table with both hands, he positively
shouted and screamed aloud. I would have given ten years of life for the
courage to have thrown my glass of wine in his face; but it was no use.
Nature had been a niggard to me in that quarter, and I had to sit and
hear it,--exactly so, sit and hear it,--while they made twenty attempts
to recover their gravity and behave like ladies and gentlemen, and when,
no sooner would they look towards me, than off they were again as bad as
before.

I revolved a dozen cutting sarcasms, all beginning with, "Whenever I
feel assured that you have sufficiently regained the customary calm
of good society;" but the dessert was served ere I could complete the
sentence, and now they were deep in the lyric poets, Uhland, and
Koerner, and Freiligrath, and the rest of them. As I listened to their
enthusiasm, I wondered why people never went into raptures over a cold
in the head. But it was not to end here: there was an old harpsichord
in the room, and this he opened and set to work on in that fearful
two-handed fashion your German alone understands. The poor old crippled
instrument shook on its three legs, while the fourth fell clean off, and
the loose wires jangled and jarred like knives in a tray; but he only
sang the louder, and her ecstasies grew all the greater too.

Heaven reward you, dear old Mrs. Keats, when you sent word down that
you could n't sleep a wink, and begging them to "send that noisy band
something and let them go away;" and then Miss Herbert wished him a
sweet goodnight, and he accompanied her to the door, and then there was
more good-night, and I believe I had a short fit; but when I came to
myself, he was sitting smoking his cigar opposite me.

"You are no relative, no connection of the young lady who has just
left the room?" said he to me with a grave manner, so significant of
something under it that I replied hastily, "None,--none whateve