“That’s just what I’ve come for,” said the merry fiddler, shaking hands all round. “Good evening, Wolf; good evening, Pfifer-Karl! Hallo! Is that you, Daniel? How are you? And you, my little Nightingale, how long have you had this chick? My eyes! how everything increases and multiplies! Let’s see if he’s the right kind: black eyes, curly hair. Very good! all as it should be, and nobody can say a word in objection, Nightingale. Gipsies with blue eyes always strike me as deucedly suspicious; they are like warren rabbits that taste of cabbage-leaf.” “Ha! ha! ha!” cried the gipsies, pressing about him; “Coucou Peter has always his joke!” While this little scene was passing, Mathéus tied Bruno to one of the neighbouring trees; when he turned round Coucou Peter was bending over the cauldron. “There’s no meat in the soup to-day,” he said, shaking his head. “No,” replied the Nightingale; “we are fasting in honour of Saint Florent.” “Oh!” said Coucou Peter; “a little patience—a little patience; all the troop are not together yet.” Then turning towards Mathéus— “No ceremony here, Maître Frantz,” he cried; “sit you down by the fire, and make yourself at home. And you there, don’t let your hands stray into the pockets of the illustrious philosopher.” “Do you take us for thieves?” asked a young gipsy, dressed in a long overcoat that hung down to his heels. “On the contrary, Melchior, I look on you as the most honest people in the universe; only you have crooked fingers, and, in spite of yourselves, something is always hanging itself on to them.” Mathéus slowly approached and looked closely at the gipsies. “Like the most virtuous Aristides,” he said, in a grave tone, “an object of party hatred and victim to the ingratitude of my fellow-citizens, I come to seat myself by the fireside of a foreign nation, and to demand of you the sacred rights of hospitality. Happy is he who lives in solitude, in face of the immense heavens and of the boundless forests; he there sees not vice triumphant and virtue humiliated; his heart is not corrupted by selfishness nor withered by envy. Happiest of all is he who believes in eternal justice, for he will not be disappointed, but will receive the reward of his labours, of his courage, of his virtue!” So spoke the good man; then, after seating himself by the fire, he appeared to lose himself in an abyss of meditations. The astonished gipsies looked at one another, and asked, in whispers, who this man was, and what was the meaning of what he had been saying. Coucou Peter thereupon undertook to relate to them the distant peregrinations of the illustrious philosopher, and the vicissitudes of his journey; but they could make nothing of it. Pfifer-Karl, the trombone, asked—