"The younger, yes, but not the youngest," interrupted Protarch. "You must have your wedding in three days, children. Phaon will live here in your house, Lysander, with his Xanthe, end I in the old one yonder with my Praxilla. Directly after your marriage I shall go back to Messina with Leonax and bring home my wife." "We have long needed a mistress in the house, and I bless your bold resolution!" exclaimed Jason. "Yes, you were always brave," said the invalid. "But not so very courageous this time as it might seem," answered Protarch, smiling. "Praxilla is an estimable widow, and it was for her I purchased in Messina the matron's robes for which you asked, Semestre." "For her?" murmured the old woman. "There is a blue one among them too, which will be becoming, for she has light brown hair very slightly mixed with gray. But she is cheerful, active, and clever, and will aid Phaon and Xanthe in their young house-keeping with many a piece of good advice." "I shall go to my daughter in Agrigentum," said Semestre, positively. "Go," replied Lysander, kindly, "and enjoy yourself in your old age on the money you have saved." "Which my father," added Leonax, "will increase by the sum of a thousand drachmae. "My Alciphron has a heart!" cried the house-keeper. "You shall receive from me, on the day of your departure, the same sum and a matron's blue robe," said Lysander. Shortly after the marriage of Xanthe and Phaon, Semestre went to live with her daughter. The dike by the sea was splendidly repaired without any dispute, for the estate once more belonged to the two brothers in common, and Xanthe found in Praxilla a new, kind mother. The marble seat, on which the young people's fate was decided, was called by the grandchildren of the wedded pair, who lived to old age in love and harmony, "the bench of the question." THE ELIXIR. By Georg Ebers Every Leipziger knows well the tall gabled house in the Katherinenstrasse which I have in mind. It stands not far from the Market Place, and is particularly dear to the writer of this true story because it has been in the possession of his family for a long time. Many curious things have happened there worthy of being rescued from oblivion, and though my relatives would now like to relieve me of this task, because I have found it necessary to point out to certain ingenuous ones among them the truth which they were endeavoring to conceal, I rejoice that I have sufficient leisure to chronicle for future generations of Ueberhells the wonderful life and doings of their progenitor as I learned them from my grandmother and other good people. So here, then, begins my story.