The cunning director could not have made a better choice. The genius--it was hard to tell whether it was a boy or a girl--had a pair of magnificent brown eyes, which looked with such bewitching modesty and so imploringly into every face that the purses opened together with the hearts. Kindly words followed the child everywhere, and one or the other of the well-to-do citizens seemed to think himself entitled by his gift of a few cents to pinch the brown cheeks; but the genius appeared by no means disposed to appreciate the caress. The driver had been on the point of leaving as soon as the crowd allowed him to pass, but Franz and Oswald, who had followed the drama of the artist's earthly career and his apotheosis with great interest, and now and then with hearty laughter, ordered him to stop till the genius should have made his way through the dense crowd to the carriage. They had not to wait long, for a travelling carriage with two gentlemen inside was surely worth more than a dozen of poor citizens of Fichtenau. Franz was looking for some small change in his purse when he was startled by a loud exclamation. "What is the matter?" he asked, looking wonderingly up at Oswald, who had jumped up and uttered the cry. Oswald did not reply, but leaped with a single bound out of the carriage, and hurried to meet the genius, who no sooner recognized the young man than he dropped the plate with all the silver and copper coins, and fell into his arms. "Czika, is it really you?" "Yes, man with the blue eye," replied the child, eagerly and affectionately, still hanging on his neck; but then suddenly tearing herself away and anxiously looking toward the carriage: "Is the other one there also?" "No, Czika," said Oswald, knowing very well that the other of whom she spoke was Oldenburg. "But are you quite alone?" "No, mother is with me; mother does not leave the Czika. Come and help me to collect the money again." And the child stooped down to pick up the coins that were half hid in the dust. "Oldenburg's child among rope-dancers," said Oswald to himself, mechanically obeying the child's injunction and unconscious of what he was doing, kneeling down and picking up here and there the scattered pennies. The highly-cultivated public thought this meeting of an apparently great personage with a rope-dancer's child, and their warm embrace, more remarkable than anything they had seen that evening. Young and old they crowded around them, forming a close circle, and apparently determined not to leave the place till they had solved the mystery of this extraordinary meeting.