“Besides, many a good Catholic entreated me to give up my opposition. They, do not grudge the girl her progress, and how much she already owes to the music teacher who now directs the Collegium Musicuin! Singing is everything to her, and what else can I give the poor child? At any rate, the Netherlander whom the Council brought here three years ago--so connoisseurs say--scarcely has his equal anywhere in knowledge and ability. The man came to me and frankly said that he needed the girl’s voice for the Convivium, and, if I refused to let Wawerl take part, he would stop teaching her. As he is a just man of quiet temperament and advanced in years.” “Where is he from, and what is his name?” Wolf eagerly interrupted. “Damian Feys,” replied the captain, “and he is a native of Ghent in the Netherlands. Although he is in the pay of the city, he has remained--he told me so himself--a good Catholic. There was nothing to be feared for the child on the score of religion. The anxieties which are troubling me on her account come from another source.” Then, with a mischievous mirthfulness usually foreign to his nature, Wolf raised his goblet, exclaiming: “Cast them upon me, Father Blomberg! I will gladly help you bear them as your loyal son-in-law.” “So that’s the way of it,” was the captain’s answer, his honest eyes betraying more surprise than pleasure. Yet he pledged Wolf, and, touching his glass to his, said: “I’ve often thought that this might happen if you should see how she has grown up. If she consents, nothing could please me better; but how many lovers she has already encouraged, and then, before matters became serious, dismissed! I have experienced it. If you succeed in putting an end to such trifling, may this hour be blessed! But do you know the huge maggots she keeps under her golden hair?” “Both large and small ones,” cried Wolf, with glowing cheeks. “Truthful as she is, she did not conceal from the playmate of her youth a single impulse of her ambitious soul.” “And did she give you hope?” asked the captain, thrusting his head eagerly forward. “Yes,” replied the youth firmly; but he quickly corrected himself, and, in a less confident tone, added, “That is, if I could offer her a care-free life.” “There it is,” sighed the old man. “She knows what she wants, and holds firmly to it. You are the son of a knight, and on account of the music which you can pursue together--With her everything is possible and little is impossible. In any case, you will have no easy life with her, and, ere you order the wedding ring----” Here he suddenly stopped, for a bird-song, high, clear, and yet as insinuatingly sweet as though, on this evening in late April, the merriest and most skilful feathered songsters which had recently found their way home to the fresh green leafage on the shore of the Danube had made an appointment on the steps of the gloomy house in Red Cock Street, rose nearer and nearer to the two men who were sitting over their wine.