a wild shoot; but it had sprung from an enthusiastic heart. At
that time he preserved it as a treasure. A little incident which
is connected with it, and is characteristic of Otto's wild outbreaks
of temper when a boy, we will here introduce.

A child of one of the domestics, a little merry boy with whom Otto
associated a good deal, was playing with him in his garret. Otto
was then writing his play. The boy bantered him, pulling the paper
at the same time. Otto forbade him with the threat,--"If thou dost
that again I will throw thee out of the window!" The boy again
immediately pulled at the paper. In a moment Otto seized him by the
waist, swung him toward the open window, and would certainly have
thrown him out, had not Rosalie fortunately entered the room, and,
with an exclamation of horror, seized Otto's arm, who now stood
pale as death and trembling in every limb.

In this manner had Napoleon awoke Otto's interest for France.
Rosalie also spoke, next to her Switzerland, with most pleasure of
this country. The Revolution had livingly affected her, and
therefore her discourse regarding it was living. It even seemed to
the old preacher as though the Revolution were an event which he
had witnessed. The Revolution and Napoleon had often fed his
thoughts and his discourse toward this land. Otto had thus, without
troubling himself the least about politics, grown up with a kind of
interest about France. The mere intelligence of this struggle of
the July days was therefore not indifferent to him. He still only
knew what the horse-dealer had related; nothing of the congregation,
or of Polignac's ministry: but France was to him the mighty world-crater,
which glowed with its splendid eruptions, and which he admired
from a distance.