breakfast for eighteen Bohemians of all nationalities--a complex, irregular affair, but for that reason all the more delightful. When we were well along in the bill of fare, a little incident occurred which put me out of the mood for further enjoyment of the breakfast, and for the rest of the day my position was that of silent spectator, watching the amusements with an expression not calculated to encourage sport. To begin with, I was unusually sensitive to nervous shocks, from the fact that my first impression of Rome had been intensely disagreeable. I found myself in a strangely exciting atmosphere, and subject to unpleasant influences. The first night passed in Rome was crowded with visions, and I cannot recall a period of twenty-four hours during my residence in that city that has not its unpleasant souvenir of strange hallucinations, wonderful dreams, or some shock to my nerves. The meeting with Tyck was doubtless the occasion of my visions and restlessness on the night before the Bohemian breakfast. The events of the previous winter in Antwerp came freshly to my mind; I lived over again that dark season of horrors, and the atmosphere of Rome nourished the growth of similar strange fancies. There was, however, in my train of thoughts on Christmas Eve no foreboding that I can recall, no prophetic fear of a continuance of the strange relations with that black poodle which had already taken away the best half of our circle. It needed little, nevertheless, to put me in a state of mind very similar to that which tortured me for months in Antwerp.