Stories in Light and Shadow | Page 5

they were returned,--and thus the
temper and peace of two great nations were preserved.
"He says," said the inspector severely, "that he is an American citizen,
but has lost his naturalization papers. Yet he has made the damaging

admission to others that he lived several years in Rome! And,"
continued the inspector, looking over his shoulder at the closed door as
he placed his finger beside his nose, "he says he has relations living at
Palmyra, whom he frequently visited. Ach! Observe this
unheard-of-and-not-to-be-trusted statement!"
The consul, however, smiled with a slight flash of intelligence. "Let me
see him," he said.
They passed into the outer office; another policeman and a corporal of
infantry saluted and rose. In the centre of an admiring and sympathetic
crowd of Dienstmadchen sat the culprit, the least concerned of the party;
a stripling--a boy--scarcely out of his teens! Indeed, it was impossible
to conceive of a more innocent, bucolic, and almost angelic looking
derelict. With a skin that had the peculiar white and rosiness of fresh
pork, he had blue eyes, celestially wide open and staring, and the thick
flocculent yellow curls of the sun god! He might have been an
overgrown and badly dressed Cupid who had innocently wandered
from Paphian shores. He smiled as the consul entered, and wiped from
his full red lips with the back of his hand the traces of a sausage he was
eating. The consul recognized the flavor at once,--he had smelled it
before in Lieschen's little hand-basket.
"You say you lived at Rome?" began the consul pleasantly. "Did you
take out your first declaration of your intention of becoming an
American citizen there?"
The inspector cast an approving glance at the consul, fixed a stern eye
on the cherubic prisoner, and leaned back in his chair to hear the reply
to this terrible question.
"I don't remember," said the culprit, knitting his brows in infantine
thought. "It was either there, or at Madrid or Syracuse."
The inspector was about to rise; this was really trifling with the dignity
of the municipality. But the consul laid his hand on the official's sleeve,
and, opening an American atlas to a map of the State of New York, said
to the prisoner, as he placed the inspector's hand on the sheet, "I see

you know the names of the TOWNS on the Erie and New York Central
Railroad. But"--
"I can tell you the number of people in each town and what are the
manufactures," interrupted the young fellow, with youthful vanity.
"Madrid has six thousand, and there are over sixty thousand in"--
"That will do," said the consul, as a murmur of Wunderschon! went
round the group of listening servant girls, while glances of admiration
were shot at the beaming accused. "But you ought to remember the
name of the town where your naturalization papers were afterwards
sent."
"But I was a citizen from the moment I made my declaration," said the
stranger smiling, and looking triumphantly at his admirers, "and I could
vote!"
The inspector, since he had come to grief over American geographical
nomenclature, was grimly taciturn. The consul, however, was by no
means certain of his victory. His alleged fellow citizen was too
encyclopaedic in his knowledge: a clever youth might have crammed
for this with a textbook, but then he did not LOOK at all clever; indeed,
he had rather the stupidity of the mythological subject he represented.
"Leave him with me," said the consul. The inspector handed him a
precis of the case. The cherub's name was Karl Schwartz, an orphan,
missing from Schlachtstadt since the age of twelve. Relations not living,
or in emigration. Identity established by prisoner's admission and
record.
"Now, Karl," said the consul cheerfully, as the door of his private office
closed upon them, "what is your little game? Have you EVER had any
papers? And if you were clever enough to study the map of New York
State, why weren't you clever enough to see that it wouldn't stand you
in place of your papers?"
"Dot's joost it," said Karl in English; "but you see dot if I haf declairet
mine intention of begomming a citizen, it's all the same, don't it?"

"By no means, for you seem to have no evidence of the
DECLARATION; no papers at all."
"Zo!" said Karl. Nevertheless, he pushed his small, rosy, pickled-
pig's-feet of fingers through his fleecy curls and beamed pleasantly at
the consul. "Dot's vot's der matter," he said, as if taking a kindly
interest in some private trouble of the consul's. "Dot's vere you vos,
eh?"
The consul looked steadily at him for a moment. Such stupidity was by
no means phenomenal, nor at all inconsistent with his appearance.
"And," continued the consul gravely, "I must tell you that, unless you