"Senius" was our "Stiefelfuchs"--which means a great deal more than having to "polish our boots." And in some capacity or other--it must have been a subordinate one--it had been his fate to be employed in the Prince Consort's household while the latter was a student at Bonn. What qualified him for either of these positions I am at a loss to conjecture. He was nothing of a valet. We used to beg him, for mercy's sake, not to attempt to remove stains from our clothes, inasmuch as in doing so (in the only way which seemed to suggest itself to his untutored mind) he invariably made two smudges out of one by spitting just a little wide of the mark. At least that was the tradition. For any delicate mission, such as smuggling liquor into the "Carcer," he was absolutely useless. He knew well enough how to bandage a man for a "Mensur." And on the bitter cold days of a North-German winter the huge bowl of his ever-smoking pipe would be very acceptable as a hand-warmer to those gloved for the fight. He was honest, no doubt, and strictly faithful, and that must have helped to ingratiate him with the Prince. But his main recommendation appears to have been his curious capacity for saying odd things in an odd way, and in the quaintest of broad Rhenish _patois_, which made them sound doubly droll. What with quaint habits and quaint sayings, he had become a "character" at Bonn, generally popular as such, known to every man, woman and child in the place, and allowed almost any latitude of speech. The Prince, whose relish for humour was, in his student days, fully as keen as ever in after-life, appears to have been tickled with the man's unintended drollery; for, according to "Senius's" own naïvely frank account, he made it his amusement to "draw" him, eliciting odd answers by inoffensively unmerciful chaff. And this may account for "Senius" remaining in the princely household, and experiencing much kindness at his master's hands. If gratitude be a return, the Prince had it in ample measure. That "dat war 'ne johde Heer" was spoken with unmistakable feeling, and it proved the prelude to a whole string of little anecdotes which--though not perhaps in themselves particularly remarkable or worth repeating--were poured forth with such simple earnestness as sufficiently testified, how firmly a sense of regard and affection had taken root in the old man's heart, to live there through many years of separation.