"Let me be your slave," the Stock Exchange baron replied ardently, "and I will gladly put up with everything from you. Really, in this sable cloak, and with a whip in your hand, you would make a most lovely picture of the heroine of that story." The baroness looked at the man for a moment with a peculiar smile. "Then if I were to listen to you favorably, you would let me flog you?" she said after a pause. "With pleasure." "Very well," she replied quickly. "You will let me give you twenty-five cuts with a whip, and I will be yours after the twenty-fifth blow." "Are you in earnest?" "Fully." The man from the _Ghetto_ took her hand, and pressed it ardently to his lips. "When may I come?" "To-morrow evening at eight o'clock." "And I may bring the sable cloak and the whip with me?" "No, I will see about that myself." The next evening the enamored stockbroker came to the house of the charming little Baroness, and found her alone, lying on a couch, wrapped in a dark fur, while she held a dog whip in her small hand, which the man from the _Ghetto_ kissed. "You know our agreement," she began. "Of course I do," the Stock Exchange baron replied. "I am to allow you to give me twenty-five cuts with the whip, and after the twenty-fifth you will listen to me." "Yes, but I am going to tie your hands first of all." The amorous baron quietly allowed this new Delila to tie his hands behind him, and then at her bidding, he knelt down before her, and she raised her whip and hit him hard. "Oh! That hurts me most confoundedly," he exclaimed. "I mean it to hurt you," she said with a mocking laugh, and went on thrashing him without mercy. At last the poor fool groaned with pain, but he consoled himself with the thought that each blow brought him nearer to his happiness. At the twenty-fourth cut, she threw the whip down. "That only makes twenty-four," the beaten would-be, _Don Juan_, remarked. "I will make you a present of the twenty-fifth," she said with a laugh. "And now you are mine, altogether mine," he exclaimed ardently. "What are you thinking of?" "Have I not let you beat me?" "Certainly; but I promised you to grant your wish after the twenty-fifth blow, and you have only received twenty-four," the cruel little bit of virtue cried, "and I have witnesses to prove it." With these words, she drew back the curtains over the door, and her husband, followed by two other gentlemen came out of the next room, smiling. For a moment the stockbroker remained speechless on his knees before the beautiful woman; then he gave a deep sigh, and sadly uttered that one, most significant word: _"Crash!"_ AN HONEST IDEAL Among my numerous friends in Vienna, there is one who is an author, and who has always amused me by his childish idealism.