I was in Heidelberg when the curtain rose again on the Grier drama. “Adventures come to the adventurous,” says the old saw, and the homeless literary free-lance of to-day has his surfeit of excitement, full measure, just as spicy a draught as ever tickled the palate of any wanderer through the Dark Ages. I have already commented on the peculiar way in which the tragedy of life obtains its stage effects, for all the world like any writer of those thrilling “spectacular” plays which in England used to be labelled “transpontine.” Here is a typical first act. Scene, a peaceful village; the good young man and the rustic beauty are discovered living in Sunday-school innocence with their bucolic parents. Enter two well-dressed villains, of both sexes, and, after quarter of an hour’s excitement, the stalwart hero is lugged off, R., to penal servitude for a crime he never committed, and the heroine falls fainting, L., while the cloth descends to slow music, _tremolo con molto espressione_. Something of the kind happened to me. We, that is Mr., Mrs., Master and friends, had been enjoying a boating excursion on the Neckar, with a grand drive through the Schonau woods, a fine meal in an ancient inn, and a moonlight-cum-mandolin journey homewards. And there, at our comfortable lodgings, I found a telegram awaiting me: “Karl is causing us some trouble. Can you come and help?--GRIER.” My wife had heard from Mrs. Grier only a month ago. There was no mention of any shortcoming on Karl’s part in that missive. Indeed, it was chiefly intended to warn us of an impending visit by a tremendous person, the Baroness von Liebenzell-Zavelstein, one of Karl’s maternal great-aunts, the stoutest and most aristocratic lady in the Grand Duchy. Yet Grier was not a man to telegraph for me without good cause. Never did I regret more keenly the inspissated brains which refused to exhibit the least sign of a sixth sense. How useful it would have been now if I could “send out” Hertzian waves and “call up” Karl on our private installation of wireless telephony! But my dense membranes forbade any such short cut towards knowledge, even if the remainder of the machinery were not rusty with disuse, so, while I was packing, I could only indulge in theorizing. “The sure thing is that Maggie has vacated the Castello Rondo,” said I to my better half. “A beautiful and rich young Englishwoman could never immure herself for life in the Italian hinterland.” “It is the height of the season in town. Karl and she have met in society,” was the practical response. “Um! A coincidence.” “What is the coincidence?” “It is just five years ago to-day since I went to London with Karl. It was then the ‘height of the season’ as you call it.” “That is what everybody else calls it.” “My dear, the phrase is hackneyed. The wife of a writer should seek a polished synonym. Let me help you to a selection: the fashionable zenith, the apotheosis of Park Lane, even the saturnalia of society--”