When the Gallic tribe, to which he belonged, formed one of their sudden plans (_Gallorum subita sunt consilia_), he was always in the front of the battle; but when he was at home he used to smoke his pipe in the back yard, because his wife and her mother would not allow it in the house. He had plenty of fighting courage, but no domestic courage. And there were other points in which he saw that he was weak. Sometimes, for instance, he found some aged veteran in the streets, in a state of destitution, with a card on his breast to say that he had lost his wife in a colliery explosion, selling _sulfura_, or playing on the _tuba telescopica_, an instrument resembling the trombone, but more deleterious. Whenever this happened, he would buy the matches, or give the man money. It was weak of him, but he couldn’t help it. The tribe to which he belonged was transcendental, heterodox, habitually untruthful, and characterised by a belief that the affections resided in the heart. So, when this poor chieftain found that he was getting too good and kind (ah, how many of us have felt like that!--I often have), he concluded that something must be wrong with his heart, and went to a medicine man or _fakir_. And he said: “O fakir, would you fake me up a tin heart? For the heart which I have is too unpleasantly soft, and I want a metal one.” The fakir agreed to make the change for twelve ducats. But just at this time an accident happened to the budget of this tribe, and a tax of ten ducats per pound was put on _plumbum album_--no, my boy, not white lead: it means tin. So it was quite clear to the fakir that he could not afford to give the man a tin heart, and yet he had signed the document. Besides, he wanted those twelve ducats. So he gave the man chloroform, removed his heart, and then proceeded to do his best with a cheap substitute. But the cheap substitute refused to be faked, and the fakir was still hard at work trying to make something which should do quite as well as a tin heart and last longer, when he noticed signs of reviving consciousness in the chieftain. He had no more chloroform to give him, and no time to lose. So he hurriedly sewed up the incision, and left the man with no heart at all, neither of flesh, nor of tin, nor of cheap substitute. Then the chieftain started off home, and he looked very cheerful indeed. He tripped up two blind men, and threw their _sulfura_ down a grating. Then he went into a public-house, and spent his week’s _stipendium_. Finally, he reeled home, kicked his wife, smoked two cigars in the drawing-room, broke his mother-in-law’s head, forgot to wipe his boots, said he wanted some tea, and went to sleep with his feet on the crimson plush mantelpiece.