Page:Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field.djvu/79

 so long, and as the poet was quite contented "with his French Soucisson," he must be with his "Frankfurter." As a matter of fact, for its length, the room was extremely narrow.

"If it had legs, I would call it a dachshund," suggested Mark, when Livy kept on grumbling.

I asked whether he had many visitors and he said:

"Yes, a few every day. As many as I can stand. But the women have all deserted me. There is a bunch of American girls in Berlin just now, but none find their way to the Royal. I am without a "Mouche" (French for fly)—I mean the human kind—the same as enlivened Heine's dying days. What a girl that Mouche was! I think she inspired some of his finest shorter poems. She was a real comfort to him, too. Maybe she was after advertising and liked to make Mathilda jealous. But, what of it? She made Heine laugh and Heine's songs will make the world happier as long as it stands."

While talking, he was groping in the air after flies and at last caught one[.] He held it in the hollow of his hand listening to its buzzing for a while, then asked me to take it in my own hand, never hurt it, open the window and let it fly out.

"I learned that from Tolstoy," he said. "Tolstoy, you know, used to catch lots of mice in his house, but never killed them or gave them to the cat. He carried them out 75