AT last he said, in a low voice, to some people who were near him at the table, ‘You are English gentlemen, I observe. Most extraordinary people, these Germans. Students, as a body, raving mad, gentlemen!’

‘Oh, no,’ said somebody else: ‘excitable, but very good fellows, and very sensible.’

‘By God, sir!’ returned the old gentleman, still more disturbed, ‘then there’s something political in it, and I’m a marked man. I went out for a little walk this morning after shaving, and while I was gone’ — he fell into a terrible perspiration as he told it — ‘they burst into my bedroom, tore up my sheets, and are now patrolling the town in all directions with bits of ’em in their button-holes.’

I needn’t wind up by adding that they had gone to the wrong chamber.