Czardas and folk-airs he played, and the wonderful spinning-song of Oberthal, in which you can hear, through the drone of the wheel and the flying flax, the history of the poor. Just a thread of song told by the thread of flax--the flax that forms the swaddling-clothes, the bridal linen, and the shroud of man. And lastly a tune of his own, more beautiful than any of the others. "But why don't you write music?" I said, when we were seated in the railway-train on our way back to Paris. "You are a greater musician than any of those men who are famous and rich." "My friend," said Franzius, "I am the second violin at La Closerie de Lilas." It was the first time I had heard him speak at all bitterly, and I said no more. I did not approach the subject again, but that did not prevent me from making plans. I would rescue this nightingale from its cage in a beer-garden and put it back in the woods; but the thing would require great tact and infinite discretion. "Have you any music written out--you know what I mean, written out on paper--that I could show to a friend?" I asked him, as we parted at the station. "I have several 'Lieder,'" replied Franzius. "Very small--just, as you might say, snatches." "If I send a man for them to-morrow morning, will you give them to him? I will take the greatest care of them." "But they are so small!" "Never mind--never mind! I have influence, and may get them published." He promised. And I saw the light of a new hope in his face as he departed through the gaslit streets on foot--this child of the forest and the dawn, to whom God had given wings, and to whom the world had given a cage! I went to the Opera that night. It was "Don Giovanni"; and as I sat with all the splendour of the Second Empire around me, tier upon tier of beauty and magnificence drawn like gorgeous summer night-moths around the flame of Mozart's genius, the vision of Franzius wandering through the gaslit streets, with his violin under his arm, passed and repassed before me. He seemed so far from this; his music, before this triumphant burst of song, so like the voice of a cicala, faint and thin, and of no account. Yet, when I went to bed, the tune that pursued me from the day was the haunting spinning-song of Oberthal--the song so simple and full of fate, the song of the flax, caught and interpreted by the humming strings, telling the story of the cradle, the marriage-bed, and the grave! I did not go to Etiolles next day, for I had business that detained me in Paris; but I went the day following, and Eloise received me, pouting. "Ah well, wait!" said I, as I followed her into the Pavilion. "Wait till I tell you what I have been doing, and then you won't scold me for leaving you alone." "Tell, then!" said Eloise, putting a bunch of violets in my coat, and pressing them flat with her little hand.