concerning which I sometimes have
a word or two to say in military periodicals; and so, when the wretched
campaign of '66 came, in which we had hard work to save the honor of
our arms, to say nothing of our having been delightfully fooled by
Austria, I thanked the Lord that I was not forced to march with the
rest, but had done forever with a trade which can make a man act
against his convictions. Since then, we have lived on unmolested, and I
devote my spare hours, as you see, to illustrating my prosaic existence
according to the best of my ability."

His eyes wandered over the little room, which certainly did not seem
very cheerful, and had, even on this summer day, a strangely chilling
air. It is possible that this impression was caused in part by the
peculiar decoration of the walls, that were but sparsely relieved by a
few plain articles of furniture, a black leather sofa and a carved,
worm-eaten wardrobe. Instead of framed pictures or engravings, wherever
there was a vacant spot, and even behind the stove and in the niche of
the solitary window, there were the most grotesque _silhouettes_ cut
out of black paper and pasted on the bare plaster, which had once been
painted white. They formed an extraordinary collection of figures,
taken from the most different stations of life, most of them
exhibited in ridiculous postures appropriate to their respective
occupations--pedantic scholars, students, artists, women,
ecclesiastics, and soldiers--all as if caught _in flagrante_ in their
pet weaknesses and sins, and fixed upon the wall, standing revealed in
shadowy outline. Yet an artist could not help taking delight in the
broad yet spirited strokes with which each figure was portrayed; and it
was simply the superabundance of these weird groups that covered the
walls, and had already begun to overspread the smoke-stained ceiling,
which was calculated to excite feverish dreams in a quiet brain if they
were looked at for any length of time.

"You see now why I dragged you up here," said Schnetz, throwing off his
riding-jacket and crossing his lean arms (round which flapped a pair of
coarse shirtsleeves) behind his back. "From my intercourse with artists
I have caught vanity enough to mercilessly entice inoffensive people
into my den, although the black art which I pursue appears to very
few of them to be worth the trouble of toiling up four flights of
stairs to examine. Life viewed from the wrong side--the fancies of a
misan