siness alone in his sovereign manner. This
had made him grow odder and odder. After he had left the reins in his
son's hands for a time, the old imperative desire to rule, intensified
by the monotony of enforced idleness, had caused him to rouse himself
once more. Finally, however, he had been obliged to realize that
things could not go on in his way. To subordinate himself to another
merely as an advisory assistant, and particularly when the other was
his own son who until recently had carried out his commands without
being consulted and without any will of his own, this proved to be
impossible for the old man. He found occupation in the little garden.
There he could remove the old, think of something new, and again make
room for something newer; and he did so. Ruling unrestrictedly in the
little green realm in which from now on no "why" might be heard,
where, beside the law of nature, only one other governed and that his
will, he forgot or seemed to forget that he had formerly borne a
mightier sceptre.

But his brother's following letters were not so full of the business
and of the odd old gentleman as they were of the festivities of the
shooting society of the home town and of a club which had been formed
to keep its pleasures separate from those of the lower classes. In all
the descriptions of bird and target shooting, concerts and balls of
which he and his young wife appeared as the centre, shone the utmost
gratification of the writer's vanity. Only in a postscript to the last
letter did he mention the more serious fact that the town wanted to
have repairs made to the tower and roof of St. George's, and that the
work had been entrusted to him. The old gentleman in the blue coat
urged him to ask Apollonius to return to his home town and the
business. It was his brother's opinion that Apollonius would not care
to leave the life in Cologne of which he had become fond for such a
trifling matter. The repairs could be completed in a short time with
the present working force. There were only a few damaged places on the
tower and roof. Moreover, apart from his wife's dislike of Apollonius
which he had continued to combat in vain, it would be a useless
torture to his brother to refresh in his mind all that he must be glad
to have forgotten. He would easily find an excuse for refusing to obey
a command which only oddity had suggested. The conclusion of the
letter contained a teasing insinuation of a relation between our hero