forty pounds of lovely beef, placed in a Mediterranean Sea of brewis,” might have seen his ample desires almost realized at the table d’hôte of the Rheinischen Hof, in Mayence, where Flemming dined that day. At the head of the table sat a gentleman with a smooth, broad forehead, and large, intelligent eyes. He was from Baireuth in Franconia; and talked about poetry and Jean Paul to a pale, romantic-looking lady on his right. There was music all dinner-time, at the other endofthe.hall,—a harp and a horn and a voice,—so that a great part of the fat gentleman’s conversation with the pale lady was lost to Flemming, who sat opposite to her, and could look right into her large, melancholy eyes. But what he heard so much interested him,—indeed, the very name of the beloved Jean Paul would have been enough for this,—that he ventured to join in the conversation, and asked the German if he had known the poet personally.
“Yes, I knew him well,” replied the stranger. “I am a native of Baireuth, where he passed the best years of his life. In my mind, the man and the author are closely united. I never read a page of his writings without hear-
