s stopped at once by being told that my claim had
never been submitted to the authorities, and that in my outrage on
the imperial force I had forfeited all consideration on that score. My
offence was easily proven. I did not deny it, and I was lectured for
nigh an hour on the enormity of my crime, and then sentenced to pay
a fine of a thousand zwanzigers to the Emperor, and to receive
four-and-twenty blows with the stick. 'It should have been
eight-and-forty but for my age,' he said.

"On the same stool where I sat to hear my sentence was a circus man,
waiting the Platz Commandant's leave to give some representation in the
village. I knew him from his dress, but had never spoken to him nor he
to me; just, however, as the Commandant had delivered the words of my
condemnation, he turned to look at me,--mayhap to see how I bore up
under my misfortune. I saw his glance, and I did my best to sustain it.
I wanted to bear myself manfully throughout, and not to let any one know
my heart was broken, which I felt it was. The struggle was, perhaps,
more than I was able for, and, while the tears gushed out and ran down
my cheeks, I buret out laughing, and laughed away fit after fit, making
the most terrible faces all the while; so outrageously droll were my
convulsions, that every one around laughed too, and there was the whole
court screaming madly with the same impulse, and unable to control it.

"'Take the fool away!' cried the Commandant, at last, 'and bring him to
reason with a hazel rod.' And they carried me off, and I was flogged.

"It was about a week after I was down near Commachio. I don't know how
I got there, but I was in rags, and had no money, and the circus people
came past and saw me. 'There's the old fellow that nearly killed us with
his droll face,' said the chief. 'I 'll give you two zwanzigers a day,
my man, if you 'll only give us a few grins like that every evening. Is
it a bargain?'

"I laughed. I could not keep now from laughing at everything, and the
bargain was made, and I was a clown from that hour. They taught me a
few easy tricks to help me in my trade, but it is my face that they care
for,--none can see it unmoved."

He turned on me as he spoke with a fearful contortion of countenance,
but, moved by his story, and full only of what I had been listening to,
I turned away and shed tears.

"Yes," said he, meditatively, "many a happy heart is kindled at the fire
that is consuming another. As for myse