ht spirits of dinner-parties,--the charming men of society. All
the animosities of political or religious hate are mild compared to the
detestation this rivalry engenders; and now, though the audience was a
foreign one, which I could have no pretension to amuse, I conceived the
most bitter dislike for the man who had engaged their attention.

I do not know how it may be with others, but to myself there has always
been this difficulty in a foreign language, that until I have accustomed
myself to the tone of voice and the manner of a speaker, I can rarely
follow him without occasional lapses. Now, on the present occasion, the
narrator., though speaking distinctly, and with a good accent, had a
very rapid utterance, and it was not till I had familiarized my ear
with his manner that I could gather his words correctly. Nor was my
difficulty lessened by the fact that, as he pretended to be witty and
epigrammatic, frequent bursts of laughter broke from his audience and
obscured his speech. He was, as it appeared, giving an account of a
fishing excursion he had just taken to one of the small mountain lakes
near Poppenheim, and it was clear enough he was one who always could eke
an adventure out of even the most ordinary incident of daily life.

This fishing story had really nothing in it, though he strove to make
out fifty points of interest or striking situations out of the
veriest commonplace. At last, however, I saw that, like a practised
story-teller, he was hoarding up his great incident for the finish.

"As I have told you," said he, "I engaged the entire of the little inn
for myself; there were but five rooms in it altogether, and though I
did not need more than two, I took the rest, that I might be alone and
unmolested. Well, it was on my second evening there, as I sat smoking my
pipe at the door, and looking over my tackle for the morrow, there came
up the glen the strange sound of wheels, and, to my astonishment, a
travelling-carriage soon appeared, with four horses driven in hand; and
as I saw in a moment, it was a _lohnkutscher_ who had taken the wrong
turning after leaving Ragatz, and mistaken the road, for the highway
ceases about two miles above Poppenheim, and dwindles down to a mere
mule-path. Leaving my host to explain the mistake to the travellers,
I hastily re-entered the house, just as the carriage drove up. The
explanation seemed a very prolix one, for when I looked out of the
window, half an hour afterwa