creamed my loudest, the
great height at which I was placed, and the humming din of the crowd,
totally drowned my words. Again and again I tried it, but to no purpose.
There she sat, slowly making the round of the circus, while the stranger
walked at her side, to all seeming conversing as though no busy and
prying multitude stood watching and observing them. Wearied with my
failure to attract notice, I turned to address the jailer; but he had
already gone, and I was alone. I next endeavored by a signal to call
attention to me, and, at last, saw how two or three of the crowd had
observed my waving a handkerchief, and were pointing it out to others.
Doubtless they wondered how a poor captive could care for the pleasant
follies of a life of whose commonest joys he was to be no sharer,
and still greater was their astonishment as I flung forth a piece of
money,--a gold Napoleon, it was,--which they speedily caught up and
gave to Catinka. How I watched her as she took it and showed it to the
stranger! He, by his gesture, seemed angry, and made a motion as though
asking her to throw it away; and then there seemed some discussion
between them, and his petulance increased; and she, too, grew
passionate, and, leaping from the horse, strode haughtily across the
circus and disappeared. And then arose a tumult and confusion, the mob
shouting madly for the Moorish girl to come back, and many much disposed
to avenge her absence on the stranger. As for him, he pushed the mob
haughtily aside and went his way; and though for a while the crowd
continued to vent its expressions of displeasure and disappointment, the
performance soon concluded, and all went their several roads homeward;
and when I looked out upon the empty Platz, over which the dusky shadows
of the old houses were now stealing to mingle together, and instead of
the scene of bustle and excitement saw a few lingering townsfolk moody
and purposeless, T asked myself if the whole incidents were not a vision
mind-drawn and invented. There was not one single clew by which I could
trace it to reality.

More than once in my life had my dreamy temperament played me such
pranks; and, strangely too, even when I had assured myself of the
deception, there would yet linger in my mind thoughts and impressions
strong enough to influence my actions, just as we often see that our
disbelief in a scandalous story is not sufficient to disabuse us of a
certain power it wields over us.

Oh, what