"Well and good," said Ottmar, "but please to remember what your own experience has been of him already; how he once dogged and pursued you wherever you went, with a fat--fat dramatic poem; how you always managed to give him the slip, till he asked you and me to a splendid dinner, with grand cuisine and first-rate wines, so that we might swallow the poem, thus washed down, like a dose of medicine; how I endured two acts of it like a man, and was screwing up my courage for a third, when you lost patience, and got up, declaring that you were suddenly taken very unwell, and left poor Leander in the lurch, wines, dinner, and all. Recollect how he came to your house once when you had several people with you; how he now and then rustled papers in his pockets, looking from one to the other with sly, crafty glances, in hopes that somebody would say, 'You've brought something good, haven't you, dear Leander?' How you privately implored us all, for God's sake, to take no notice whatever of this menacing rustling, but to hold our tongues. Remember how you used to liken old Leander--with a tragedy always in his breast pocket, always armed and eager for the fray--to Meros creeping to slay the tyrant, with a dagger in his breast; how once, when you were obliged to ask him to dinner, he came with a great fat manuscript in his hand, so that our hearts sunk within us; how he then announced, with the sweetest smiles, that he could only stay for an hour or so, because he had promised to go to Madame So-and-so's to tea, and to read her his last epic poem in twelve cantos; how we then breathed freely again, like men relieved from a terrible burden; and when he went away all cried, with one voice, 'Oh, poor Madame So-and-so!--what an unfortunate woman!'" "Stop, stop, Ottmar," said Lothair; "what you say is all true enough, of course, but nothing of that sort could take place amongst Serapion Brethren. We form a strongly organized opposition to everything that is not in harmony with our fundamental principle, and I would give odds that Leander conforms to our rule." "Don't imagine anything of the kind, dear Lothair," said Ottmar. "Leander has a fault which many conceited writers have in common with him--he won't listen; and, just for that reason, he always wants to be the person who reads or speaks. He would always be trying to occupy the whole of our evenings with his own interminable compositions; he would take our efforts to obviate this in the worst possible part, and, consequently, mar the whole of our enjoyment: he even spoke to-day of works to be undertaken in common; and with that idea in his head he would torture us terribly."