foreheads; good solid men, who knew the world, and how to make their
way in it; withal, good judges of a wine and great drinkers, like
that William the Silent, who braved and met and conquered the
European scourge of mediaeval times--it was whispered that these
were reviving the Tugendbund.

Amid such contending interests, and in a free city so near to
several frontiers, men came and went without attracting undesired
attention. Each party suspected a new-comer of belonging to the
other.

"He scrapes a fiddle," Koch had explained to the inquiring fishwife.
And perhaps he knew no more than this of Antoine Sebastian.
Sebastian was poor. All the Frauengasse knew that. But the
Frauengasse itself was poor, and no man in Dantzig was so foolish at
this time as to admit that he had possessions.

This was, moreover, not the day of display or snobbery. The king of
snobs, Louis XVI., had died to some purpose, for a wave of manliness
had swept across human thought at the beginning of the century. The
world has rarely been the poorer for the demise of a Bourbon.

The Frauengasse knew that Antoine Sebastian played the fiddle to
gain his daily bread, while his two daughters taught dancing for
that same safest and most satisfactory of all motives.

"But he holds his head so high!" once observed the stout and matter-
of-fact daughter of a Councillor. "Why has he that grand manner?"

"Because he is a dancing-master," replied Desiree with a grave