worthy citizen seemed to hold them cheaply,
and I rambled along to the end, where, by a broad flight of steps, the
terrace communicated with the lake; a spot, doubtless, where, once on
a time, the burghers took the water and went out a-pleasuring with fat
fraus and fraeuleins. I had reached the end, and was about to turn back
again, when I caught sight of a man, seated on one of the lower steps,
employed in watching two little toy ships which he had just launched.
Now, this seemed to me the very climax of indolence, and I sat myself
down on the parapet to observe him. His proceedings were indeed of the
strangest, for as there was no wind to fill the sails and his vessels
lay still and becalmed, he appeared to have bethought him of another
mode to impart interest to him. He weighted one of them with little
stones till he brought her gunwale level with the water, and then
pressing her gently with his hand, he made her sink slowly down to the
bottom. I 'm not quite certain whether I laughed outright, or that some
exclamation escaped me as I looked, but some noise I must unquestionably
have made, for he started and turned up his head, and I saw Harpar the
Englishman whom I had met the day before at Constance.

"Well, you 're not much the wiser after all," said he, gruffly, and
without even saluting me.

There was in the words, and fierce expression of his face, something
that made me suspect him of insanity, and I would willingly have retired
without reply had he not risen and approached me.

"Eh," repeated he, with a sneer, "ain't I right? You can make nothing of
it?"

"I really don't understand you!" said I. "I came down here by the merest
accident, and never was more astonished than to see you."

"Oh, of course; I am well used to that sort of thing," went he on in
the same tone of scoff. "I 've had some experience of these kinds of
accidents before; but, as I said, it's no use, you 're not within one
thousand miles of it, no, nor any man in Europe."

It was quite clear to me now that he _was_ mad, and my only care was to
get speedily rid of him.

"I 'm not surprised," said I, with an assumed ease,--"I'm not surprised
at your having taken to so simple an amusement, for really in a place so
dull as this any mode of passing the time would be welcome."

"Simple enough when you know it," said he, with a peculiar look.

"You arrived last night, I suppose?" said I, eager to get conversation
into some pleasanter chann