memory got him many a keen little thrust from her saucy tongue. If Max
resented her sauciness, she ran away from him with the full knowledge
that he would miss her. She was much surer that she pleased and
delighted him than he was that he pleased her, though of the latter fact
she left, in truth, little room for doubt.

Max was very happy. He had never before known a playmate. But here in
Basel the good Franz and his frau, Yolanda, Twonette, fat old Castleman,
and myself were all boys and girls together, snatching the joys of life
fresh from the soil of mother earth, close to which we lived in rustic
simplicity.

Since we had left Styria, our life, with all its hardships, had been a
delight to Max, but it was also a series of constantly repeated shocks.
If the shocks came too rapidly and too hard, he solaced his bruised
dignity with the thought that those who were unduly familiar with him
did not know that he was the heir of the House of Hapsburg. So day by
day he grew to enjoy the nestling comfort of a near-by friend. This, I
grieve to say, was too plainly seen in his relations with Yolanda, for
she unquestionably nestled toward him. She made no effort to conceal her
delight in his companionship, though she most adroitly kept him at a
proper distance. If she observed a growing confidence in Max, she
quickly nipped it by showing him that she enjoyed my companionship or
that of old Franz just as much. On such occasions Max's dignity and
vanity required balm.

"Oh, Karl," he said to me one evening while we were preparing for bed,
"it seems to me I have just wakened to life, or have just got out of
prison. No man can be happy on a pinnacle above the intimate friendships
of his fellow-man and--and woman."