"Wunderschön!" said he. "Wunderschön indeed," replied I, laughing. "But I have much more to tell you. Come, let us walk down the Boulevard together, if you have a moment to spare. You saved my life that night--you and those friends of yours--and I must tell you about it." I knew this man quite well, though I had never spoken to him before. A really good man is the friend of all the world; you speak to him, and you know him as though you had known him all your life, for the soul and essence of his goodness is simplicity, and instinct tells you he has no dark corners in his soul. In his greatness he does not dream of dark corners in yours, and so at a word you become friends. I told him my story, and then he told me his. He had belonged to a band of wandering musicians, long since dispersed; and on that eventful day in September, nine years ago, he and the rest of the band had been playing at Homburg. They had done badly; and, after a long day's tramp, making for Friedrichsdorff, they saw before them, just at sunset, the towers of Lichtenberg in the distance. He, Franzius, pointed them out to the others, and proposed that they should try their luck there, but Marx, the leader of the band, demurred. A coin was tossed, and the answer of Fate was "Go," so they went. "Ah, yes," said Franzius, as he finished. "And well it was we did so. And the child who was with you in the gallery--the little boy--how is he?" "What child?" said I. "He in the gallery standing beside you, dressed as a soldier, with cross-belt like the grenadiers of Pomerania." A cold hand seemed laid on my heart, for no child had been with me in the gallery on that night; and the description given by Franzius was the description of little Carl. "Franzius," said I, stopping and facing him, "there was no one in the gallery but myself. Of that I am positive." There we stood facing each other in the glare of a café, with the roar of the Boul' Miche around us, each equally astonished. Then Franzius laughed at the absurdity of the notion that he was wrong. "With these two eyes I saw him," said he. "And, more: once, when you made a movement as if to go, he plucked you by the sleeve of your little nightshirt--so--"--and he plucked my coat--"as if to hold you back, to keep you there listening to the music." "He did that?" "Mais oui." "Ah, well," I said, with a laugh that was rather forced, "I suppose I was so taken up with the music that I did not see him. Let us walk on." We walked on. I was perturbed. This, and the occurrence that day when I had seen little Carl in the forest of Sénart, my father's death and all that had gone before, made me feel that there was something working in my life that I but dimly understood.