at Palmyra, whom he frequently visited. Ach! Observe this
unheard-of-and-not-to-be-trusted statement!"

The consul, however, smiled with a slight flash of intelligence. "Let me
see him," he said.

They passed into the outer office; another policeman and a corporal of
infantry saluted and rose. In the centre of an admiring and sympathetic
crowd of Dienstmadchen sat the culprit, the least concerned of the
party; a stripling--a boy--scarcely out of his teens! Indeed, it was
impossible to conceive of a more innocent, bucolic, and almost angelic
looking derelict. With a skin that had the peculiar white and rosiness
of fresh pork, he had blue eyes, celestially wide open and staring, and
the thick flocculent yellow curls of the sun god! He might have been
an overgrown and badly dressed Cupid who had innocently wandered from
Paphian shores. He smiled as the consul entered, and wiped from his
full red lips with the back of his hand the traces of a sausage he was
eating. The consul recognized the flavor at once,--he had smelled it
before in Lieschen's little hand-basket.

"You say you lived at Rome?" began the consul pleasantly. "Did you take
out your first declaration of your intention of becoming an American
citizen there?"

The inspector cast an approving glance at the consul, fixed a stern eye
on the cherubic prisoner, and leaned back in his chair to hear the reply
to this terrible question.

"I don't remember," said the culprit, knitting his brows in infantine
thought. "It was either there, or at Madrid or Syracuse."