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The droll story of his coquetry with the terrible free spirit which he got from France to be his guest is vividly reanimated at Sans Souci, where one breathes the very air in which the strangely assorted companions lived, and in which they parted so soon to pursue each other with brutal annoyance on one side, and with merciless mockery on the other.

This ended a truly beautiful Christmas, for, aside from being unexpected and in striking contrast to the forlornness we had anticipated, we had been taken into the families of beautiful people, whose home life was an honor and an inspiration to share. On New Year's day we started early and went to Potsdam to visit the palace of Sans Souci.

After lunch was over the guests went back to the Shell Room, and here the Emperor, taking Mr. Roosevelt apart, began a conversation so long and animated that the shades of evening began to fall before it ended. The Roosevelts did not return to Berlin by train, but were first driven by the Emperor to inspect Sans Souci, and were afterwards whirled back to Berlin in the yellow imperial motors.

You see, therefore, why I speed to Texas. Should I not, with my philosophy, my horse and my rifle not to speak of stout heart and hand reasonably aspire to the principality of Sans Souci? Laugh, if you please, but be not irreverent. You shall have carte blanche then if you will have a becoming faith now, on the word of a prince. "Altissimo, excellentissimo, serenissimo!"

No pressing invitation was requisite to incline our English travellers to take their seats around the table well arranged with French fare, and fatigue seemed to lose itself in the exhilaration proceeding from the chablis, champagne, and chambertin; but there was one traveller, whose melancholy defied eradication an English lady, genteelly but plainly habited, to appearance about seven and twenty years of age; her features handsome and strongly marked; when in health of mind and body, they might have possessed the "besoin du souci," habitual to the country in which she was then travelling, but were now too deeply clouded with that "apparence de la misère," to which the English seem alone to give fullness of effect a fault, perhaps, but a sentimental one, worthy of that or any other country.

This was owing to our position between the store and the bar the Sans Souci, as the last was called. Mr. Rick was not only Messrs. Wightman's manager, but consular agent for the States; Mrs.

Wicks came across to the Sans Souci, as the saloon was called, his face nigh black, his eyes almost closed and all bloodshot, and yet bright as lighted matches. "Come out here, boys," he said; and when they were some way off among the palms, "I hold twenty-four," he added in a voice scarcely recognizable, and doubtless referring to the venerable game of cribbage. "What do you mean?" asked Tommy.

Seven men were bidden privately to come on board the Sans Souci, moored in the Hudson off the Eighty-sixth Street landing-stage, and there enjoy a quiet session of auction bridge. "We'll duck before the trouble gets fairly started," explained Van Hofen to his cronies.

They wished immediately to see Sans Souci for the great Frederick's sake, and they drove through a lively shower to the palace, where they waited with a horde of twenty-five other tourists in a gusty colonnade before they were led through Voltaire's room and Frederick's death chamber.

The French philosopher comes before the Prussian prince at Sans Souci even in the palatial villa which expresses the wilful caprice of the great Frederick as few edifices have embodied the whims or tastes of their owners. The whole affair is eighteenth-century French, as the Germans conceived it.