I was sitting after dinner in the public room of the hotel, and planning a walk abroad in hopes of obtaining another glimpse of the lady of my thoughts, when I heard my name pronounced. The door was half open, and by a slight change of position I saw into the entrance-hall, where Herr Damfnudel, landlord of the Fleckenberger Arms, was exhibiting, to a stranger in a dapper brown coat and of smug and courtly aspect, the folio volume in which, according to German custom, each visitor to the hotel was expected to inscribe his name and calling, his whence-come and his whither-go. Presently the stranger entered the room and paced it twice in its entire length, whilst I sat at the table turning over a newspaper, in whose perusal I affected to be busied, but at the same time observing, by the aid of a friendly mirror, the appearance and movements of the stranger, to whom I was evidently an object of curiosity and examination. Presently he took up a paper, sat down at no great distance from me, offered me snuff, and glided into talk. Aided by tolerable familiarity with the ways and style of little German courts and courtiers, I soon made up my mind as to what he was. His manner, appearance, and tone of conversation convinced me he was in some way or other attached to the ducal residence, although I had difficulty in conjecturing his motive for trying to extract from me various particulars concerning myself and my country, and especially concerning the object of my visit to Mauseloch. He either did not possess, or thought it unnecessary to employ, any great amount of _finesse_, and I soon detected his drift. My pure German accent could have left him no doubt that in me he addressed a countryman; the hotel-book told him little besides my name, for I had inscribed myself as a _particulier_ or private gentleman, coming from the last town I had slept at, and proceeding to the next at which I proposed pausing on my journey homewards. Hope and vanity combined to flatter me with the belief that the chamberlain, or whatever else he was, acted merely as an agent in the affair; and, at any rate, I thought it wise to affect the mysterious, being sufficiently acquainted with optics to know that a fog magnifies the objects it envelops. The stranger could make nothing of me. At times his sharp little grey eyes assumed an expression of doubt, and at others his manner had a tinge of deep respect that puzzled me not a little. At last he took his departure, and it was my turn to play the inquisitor. Calling for Herr Damfnudel, I preferred those two requests which no innkeeper was ever known to refuse--namely, a bottle of his best wine, and his company to drink it. The generous juice of the Rhine grape speedily oiled the hinges of his tongue; and at the very first assault, by speaking of the stranger as the Kammerherr or chamberlain, I ascertained that he really held a somewhat similar post in the duke's household. Before the bottle, of which I took care my host should