"I maintain," said I, in the billiard-room at Scheerau, at a moment when I was not striking, "that dukes, margraves, and other graves, and many of high nobility, would be stupid, if in our day,--or, in fact, in future days,--when the crown grows bald before the chin gets a beard,--when many a face wants no requisite for spectacles except the bridge,--when particularly the man of rank is glad to be, instead of a _cast_, at least an _outline_, of a man,--they would not be wise, I recapitulate, if they celebrated no better marriage than a true one,--that is, no pictured--one; if their busts were stamped on nothing better--that is, on no breast--than on the pewter covers of beer-pitchers, so that they could _intoxicate_ people in no other way than this latter; and if they, who uniformly act by plenipotentiaries, on imperial benches, in session-chairs, in bridal beds (marrying by ambassadors), should conceive that in the last-mentioned case there were any truer and more innocent chief commissary than their own picture on an ell of canvas." ... As we just then played in mass, and I happened to be king, and in my fiery state went on to say, "What the Devil! we kings understand how to substitute skilfully enough, for the _plastic_ arts in virtue and in marriage, the _delineative_ arts; and _not merely_ in billiards does a king stand quite idle with his sceptre-cue!"--then the fire of my speech might well seem far from strange. _End of the Extra Leaflet on the above Bust-pieces_. At the house of the Count of O---- (so was called also a famous officer in the Seven Years' War, and by Shakespeare the world, and the whole territory of an old lady; and, according to Bruce, with the Hebrews this vowel was a particular favorite; but this is, after all, unprofitable learning here) the Princess and the painted bridegroom alighted. Victor would not, with his to-day's dress and his to-day's heart, mingle in the tumult of the world; and yet he would gladly have seen all.