a little mistake. We saluted each other slightly and gravely, and
separated once more, as wise in our looks as that irreproachable hero
who, after marching up the hill with his men, pocketed his thoughts
and marched down again.

My meeting with Berkley Junior was not precisely similar, but
connected with the same feelings and associations. I dashed down four
steps at a time, precipitated myself on him like a bird of prey, and
wrung his hands again and again with fondest violence.

Now, up to that date my relations with Sylvester Berkley had been of
a frigid and formal description. I had met him two or three times with
his hearty old relation, and had borne away the distinct impression
that he was a prig. While the uncle would breakfast in his tub, like
Diogenes, off simple bones and cutlets, Sylvester ate some sort of
a mash made of bruised oats: while the nephew made an untenable
pretension to family honors, the elder talked familiarly of the
porcelain trade, freely alluding to the youth as a piece of precious
Sèvres that had cracked.

He met my advances with a calmness, imprinted with astonishment, that
recalled me to myself. Against such a refrigerator my heart and fancy
recovered their proper level: I had been caressing an iceberg in a
white cravat. I examined my emotions, and found, to my shame, that my
warmth had a selfish origin in the fact that I was alone in Carlsruhe,
greatly in need of a passport and a purse.

"Do you intend shortly to quit the archducal seat?" asked Sylvester,
by way of an agreeable remark.