The first thing the grave TRISTAN heard, as he followed the seneschal, was 'an uproarious peal of laughter from an upper story and a female organ.' The Baron EHRENFRIEDERSDORF and his family were at the dinner-table; and finishing his third bottle, he was telling one of his favorite High Dutch stories; at which his guests, as in duty bound, including his fair daughter, were in a roar of laughter, of that sort which the little fat schepen died of, as related by DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER. An antique figure of a man, at the right of the baron, with lantern-jaws and a long proboscis of a nose, tipped with a pair of green goggles, a dubious figure of fun, had a peculiar asthmatic '_Hugh! hugh! hugh!_'--an ancient maiden of sixty or thereabout, sat near him, whose stiff, starched deportment belied the compulsory '_He! he! he!_' which issued from her inward person--and by _her_ side sat a reverend, round-faced, jolly-looking personage, from whose rosy gills and oral cavity issued an obstreperous '_Ho! ho! ho!_' which seemed to have been fabricated in the inmost recesses of his _præcordia_. Other nameless, or from their German patronymics unnameable guests there were, with kindred voices and physiognomies, who expressed their delight in the same variety of intonation. The apparition of TRISTAN'S wo-begone phiz in the midst of this assembly struck so forcibly the fair CUNEGUNDA'S perceptions of the ludicrous, that she burst into a peal of tremendous cachinnation; while the under-jaw of the baron fell convulsively, as he gazed upon 'the man who couldn't laugh,' and the merry notes of his guests died away into a quaver of consternation. This was a 'pretty fix' for the melancholy TRISTAN! He was taken all aback with the beauty of the lovely heiress of EHRENFRIEDERSDORF. Fair, plump, and just turned of eighteen, she might have served as a model for Hebe. A forehead smooth and white as Parian marble; arching brows, from beneath which glanced the fires of two of the brightest eyes that ever sparkled at a merry tale; cheeks tinted with the rose's deepest dye, and graced by a pair of dimples which seemed the impress of Love's own fingers; and two ruby lips, whose innocent smile disclosed a row of ivory, fairer and purer than the pearls which gemmed her bosom, formed a combination of beauty and expression that would well have become the laughter-loving goddess Euphrosyne in her happiest moments. TRISTAN made a profound obeisance to the lady, and endeavored to put a smirk upon his face, which the sage MARASCALLERUS had tried to teach him, and which he had been practising upon the road; but it was such an utter distortion, that the young lady burst forth into another exorbitant peal of laughter. Being a comely-looking youth, however, and possessed of a sufficiency of the _savor faire_, he soon removed the unpleasant feelings which his ill-timed entrance had produced. He listened to, although he could not laugh at, the baron's stories;