ed to him with radiant smiles or
with large, troubled eyes when he growled and cursed or when he drew
fanciful pictures of what he would do if any one lent him a thousand
marks.

Lukas Heller, on the other hand, cleverly kept up his relations with
Finkenbein. It was true that in the early days he had exposed the new
friendship to grave peril. One night, in his characteristic fashion, he
had gone through his roommate's clothes, and found thirty pfennigs in
them which he appropriated. The victim of the theft, who was not
asleep, watched him calmly through his half-closed eyelids. Next
morning he congratulated the sailmaker on his dexterity, paid him high
compliments, requested the return of the money, and behaved as though
it had all been a good joke. In this way he got Heller completely in
his power; and although the latter had in him a good, lively comrade,
he could not pour out his complaints against Huerlin to him quite as
unrestrainedly as could Huerlin to his ally. And his diatribes against
women soon became wearisome to Finkenbein.

"That's all right, sailmaker, that's all right. You're like a
hand-organ with only one tune--you haven't any changes. As far as the
women are concerned, I dare say you're right. But enough of anything is
enough. You ought to get another waltz put in--anything else, you
know--otherwise I wouldn't care if some one stole you."

The manufacturer was secure against such declarations. This was well
enough, but it did not make him happy. The more patient his auditor
was, the deeper he sank in his melancholy. A few times the sovereign
light-heartedness of the good-for-nothing Finkenbein infected him
for half an hour to the extent of reviving the grand gestures
and sententious utterances of his golden days--but his hands had
grown stiff, and the words no longer came from his heart. In the
last sunshiny days of autumn he sometimes sat under the decaying
apple-trees; but he never looked on town and valley now with envy or
desire. His glance was far-away and strange, as if all this meant
nothing to him and was out of his range. As a matter of fact, it did
mean nothing to him, for he was visibly breaking up and had nothing
more ahead of him.

His decline came on him very swiftly. It was true that soon after his
downfall, in the thirsty days when he first grew well acquainted with
the "Sun," he had grown very gray and begun to lose his agility. But he
had been able for years to get about and dri