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“You should have seen the bow Fiddles gave her, and the courtesy she returned.

“‘Madame the Baroness,’ said the rascal, with an irradiating smile as I approached them, ‘has been good enough to ask us to accompany her to the house. Permit me, Madame, to present my friend, a distinguished American painter who is visiting our country, and who was so entranced at the beauty of your grounds and the regal splendor of your gate and chateau that rather than disappoint him–‘

“‘You are both doubly welcome, gentlemen,’ ‘This way, please,’ replied the old lady with a dip of her aristocratic head; and before I knew it we were seated in an oak-panelled dining-room with two servants in livery tumbling over each other in their efforts to find the particular wine best suited to our palates.

“Fiddles sipped his Rudesheimer with the air of a connoisseur, blinking at the ceiling now and then after the manner of expert wine tasters, and complimenting the old lady meanwhile on the quality of the vintage. I confined myself to a glass of sherry and a biscuit, while Fiddles, rising from his seat, later on, stood enraptured before this portrait and that, commenting on their coloring, ending by drawing an ancient book from the library and going into ecstasies over the binding and type.

“On our way home to the inn from the chateau there was, so far as I could see, no change in Fiddles’s manner. Neither was his speech or gait at all affected by the bottle of Rudesheimer (and he managed to get away with it all). I mention this because it is vitally important to what follows. Only once did he seem at all excited, and that was when he passed the cobbler’s corner. But then he was always excited when he passed the cobbler seated at work–so much so sometimes that I have seen him shake his fist at him. To-day he merely tightened his jaw, stopped for a moment as if determined to step in and have it out with him (the cobbler, I afterward found out, was to leave the village for good the next day, his trade having fallen off, owing to his being so unpopular), and then, as if changing his mind, followed along after me, muttering: ‘Spy–informer–beast–‘ as I had often heard him do before.

“Judge of my astonishment then, when, an hour later, Gretchen came running into my room wringing her hands–I had caught him kissing her the night before–and burst out with:

“‘He is under the table–the huckster’s feet on him–He is there like a dog–Oh, it is dreadful! Mine Herr–won’t you come?’

“‘Who is under the table?’

“‘Wilhelm.’

“‘Where?’

“‘At the public-house.’

“‘How do you know?’

“‘Fritz, the stable-boy has just seen him.’

“‘What’s the matter with him?’

“Gretchen hung her head, and the tears streamed down her cheeks,

“‘He is–he is–Oh, Meinherr–it is not the beer–nobody ever gets that way with our beer–it is something he–‘

“‘ Drunk!’

“‘Yes, dead drunk, and under the table like a hog in the mud–Oh, my poor Wilhelm! Oh, who has been so wicked to you! Oh! Oh!’ and she ran from the room.

“I started on the run, Gretchen and the good landlady close behind. If the Rudesheimer had upset Fiddles it had worked very slowly; maybe it had revived an old conquered thirst, and the cheap cognac at the public-house was the result. That he was not a man of humble birth, nor one without home refinements, I had long since divined. Had I not suspected it before, his manner in presenting me to the old Baroness, and his behavior in the dining-hall, especially toward the servants, would have opened my eyes. How then could such a man in an hour become so besotted a brute?

“And yet every word of Gretchen’s story was true. Not only was Fiddles drunk, soggy, helplessly drunk, but from all accounts he was in that same condition when he had staggered into the place, and, falling over a table, had rolled himself against the wall. There he had lain, out of the way, except when some dram-drinking driver’s heavy cowhide boots had made a doormat of his yielding body–not an unusual occurrence, by the way, at the roadside taverns frequented by the lower classes.