"Thou art a boy, and that is to be a man-child,--the beautiful fate! But it is thy beautiful fate to teach others also, as only children teach." "I, sir,--how?" "Charles, a man may be always longing to be an angel, and never consider what it is to be a man." His voice was as a sudden wind springing up amidst solitary leaves, it was so fitful, so vaguely sweet. I looked upon him indeed for the first time with trembling, since I had been with him that day. He had fallen into a stiller step, for we had reached the foot of the ascent. It never occurred to me that I was not expected at Cecilia. I thought of nothing but that I should accompany him. He suddenly again addressed me in English. "Did St. Michel ever recover the use of his arm?" I was quite embarrassed. "I never asked about him, sir; but I daresay he did." "I thought you would have known. You _should_ have asked, I think. Was he a rich man or a poor man?" "How do you mean, sir? He was well off, I should suppose, for he used to dress a great deal, and had a horse, and taught all over the town. Mr. Davy said he was as popular as Giardini." "Mr. Davy was who,--your godfather?" "My musical godfather I should say, sir. He took me to the festival, and had I not accidentally met him I should never have gone there, have never seen you. Oh, sir!--" "Nothing is accidental that happens to you, to such as you. But I should have been very sorry not to have seen you. I thought you were a little messenger from the other world." "It does seem very strange, sir,--at least two things especially." "What is the first, then?" "First, that I should serve you; and the second, that you should like me." "No, believe me, it is not strange,"--he still spoke in that beautiful pure English, swift and keen, as his German was mild and slow,--"not strange that you should serve me, because there was a secret agreement between us that we should either serve the other. Had you been in my place, I should have run to fetch you water; but I fear I should have spilled a drop or two. And how could I but like you when you came before me like something of my own in that crowd, that multitude in nothing of me?" "Sir," I answered, to save myself from saying what I really felt, "how beautifully you speak English!" He resumed in German: "That is nothing, because we can have no real language. I make myself think in all. I dream first in this, and then in that; so that, amidst the floating fragments, as in the strange mixture we call an _orchestra_, some accent may be expressed from the many voices of the language of our unknown home."