In the street I hailed a fiacre and bundled the violinist in, protesting. The mad extravagance of the business shocked him. He had never been in a fiacre before; even omnibuses were luxuries to this son of St. Cecilia, who had tramped the continent of Europe on foot. Yet he wanted to pay when we reached the station; and the return ticket I bought for him pained his sense of independence so much that I took the fare from him. Then he was happy--happy as a child; and I do not know what the other passengers thought of the young beau, elegantly dressed, seated beside the shabby violinist, both happy, laughing, and in the highest of spirits; the violinist, unconsciously, now and then plucking pizzicato notes from the strings of his instrument, caressing it as a man caresses the woman he loves. We walked from Evry to Etiolles under the bright May morning, under the sparkling blue, along the delightful white dusty roads, the larks singing lustily, and the wind blowing the vanishing hawthorn-blossoms upon the dust like snow. Then, at the drawbridge over the moat, Eloise was waiting for us, and we followed her into the Pavilion, Franzius with his hat crushed to his heart, bowing, the violin under his arm forgotten, his whole simple soul worshipping, very evidently, the beautiful and gracious goddess who had received us. Ah, that was the day of Franzius's life! We had déjeûner in the little garden, under the chestnut-tree alight with a thousand clusters of pink blossom. He forgot his shyness completely, and told us stories of his wanderings, unconsciously dominating the conversation and leading us hundreds of miles away from Etiolles to the forests of the Roth Alps and the Hartz. The great forests of the Vosges, so soon to resound to the drums of war and the tramping of armies, spread their perfumed shade around us as we listened. Castle Nidek, whose ruined walls still echo to the ghostly hunting-horn of Sebalt Kraft; the Rhine and its storeyed hills; the white roads of Germany; Pirmasens and the Swan Inn, with its rose-decked porch; mountain rivers, leaping waterfalls, skies turquoise-blue against the black-green armies of the high mountain pines--all spread before us, lay around us, domed us in as he talked the morning into afternoon, and the afternoon half away. What a gift of description was his; and how we listened as children may have listened to the story of the wanderings of Ulysses! Then, to forge his simple chains more completely--to give the last touch to his magic--he played to us. Gipsy dances! And you could hear, as the smoke of the camp-fires blew across the figures of the dancers, the feet of the women and the men who had wandered all day keeping time on the turf to the tune--a tune wild as the cry of the mountain kestrel, filled with all sorts of wandering undertones, heart-snatching subtleties.