ide or throw
somersaults through hoops of the whole of them."

"And how do they live now?"

"Very hardly, I believe, sir; and but for Tintefleck,--that's what they
call her,--they might starve; but she goes about with her guitar through
the _cafes_ of an evening, and as she has a sweet voice, she picks up
a few batzen. But the maire, I hear, won't permit this any longer, and
says that as they have no passport or papers of any kind, they must be
sent over the frontier as vagabonds."

"Let that maire be brought before me," said I, with a haughty
indignation. "Let me tell him in a few brief words what I think of his
heartless cruelty--But no, I was forgetting,--I am here _incog_.
Be careful, my good man, that you do not mention what I have so
inadvertently dropped; remember that I am nobody here; I am Number Five
and nothing more. Send the unfortunate creatures, however, here, and let
me interrogate them. They can be easily found, I suppose?"

"In a moment, sir. They were in the Platz just when I served the
pheasant."

"What name does the man bear?"

"I never heard a name for him. Amongst the company he was called
Vaterchen, as he was the oldest of them all; and, indeed, they seemed
all very fond of him."

"Let Vaterchen and Tintefleck, then, come hither. And bring fresh
glasses, waiter."

And I spoke as might an Eastern despot giving his orders for a "nautch;"
and then, waving my hand, motioned the messenger away.

CHAPTER XXVI. VATERCHEN AND TINTEFLECK

Had Fortune decreed that I should be rich, I believe I would have been
the most popular of men. There is such a natural kindness of disposition
in me, blended with the most refined sense of discrimination. I love
humanity in the aggregate, and, at the same time, with a rare delicacy
of sentiment, I can follow through all the tortuous windings of the
heart, and actually sympathize in emotions that I never experienced.
No rank is too exalted, no lot too humble, for the exercise of my
benevolence. I have sat in my arm-chair with a beating, throbbing heart,
as I imagined the troubles of a king, and I have drunk my Bordeaux with
tears of gratitude as I fancied myself a peasant with only water
to slake his thirst. To a man of highly organized temperament, the
privations themselves are not necessary to eliminate the feeling they
would suggest. Coarser natures would require starvation to produce the
sense of hunger, nakedness to cause that of cold, and so on; t