realism in his comedy, and thus show the world that he was equally at home both in heaven and on earth. At a subsequent meeting George got him to read as much of the first act of the opera as he had finished. He found the verses very singable and asked Heinrich to allow him to take the manuscript to Anna. Anna could not bring herself to fancy much what George read out to her; but he asserted, though without any real conviction, that what she felt was just the very longing for these verses to be set to music, and that that must necessarily strike her as a weakness. When George came into Heinrich's room to-day the latter was sitting at the big table in the middle of the room, which was covered over with papers and letters. Written papers of all kinds lay about on the piano and on the ottoman. Heinrich still had a sheet of faded yellow paper in his hand when he got up and hailed George with the words, "Well, how goes the country?" This was the way in which he was accustomed to inquire after Anna's health, a way which George felt afresh every single time to be unduly familiar. "Quite well, thanks," he replied. "I have just come to ask you if perhaps you would care to come out there with me to-day." "Oh yes, I should like to very much. The thing is, though, that I am just in the middle of putting various papers in order. I can't come before the evening about seven or so. Will that suit you?" "Quite," said George. "But I see I am disturbing you," he added as he pointed to the littered table. "Not at all," replied Heinrich. "I am only tidying up, as I just told you. They're my father's posthumous papers. Those there are letters to him and here are rough notes more or less like a diary, written for the most part during his parliamentary period. Tragic, I tell you! How that man loved his country! And how did they thank him? You've no idea of the refinement with which they drove him out of his party. A complicated network of intrigue, bigotry, brutality.... Thoroughly German, to put the matter in a nutshell." George felt a sense of antagonism. "And he dares," he thought, "to hold forth about Anti-Semitism. Is he any better? any juster? Does he forget that I am a German myself...?" Heinrich went on speaking. "But I will give this man a memorial.... He and no other shall be the hero of my political drama. He is the truly tragi-comic central figure which I have always been wanting." George's antagonism became intensified. He felt a great desire to protect old Bermann against his son. "A tragi-comic figure," he repeated, almost aggressively.