something different; but now I think the cooper's craft the
finest in the world, and I have based many of my fairest life-hopes on
it. Is not this _your_ case, too, comrade? But it almost seems to me as
if some dark cloud-shadow had come over the happiness of your life,
preventing you from looking around you with any gladness. Your song was
all love-longing and sorrow; but there were tones in it which seemed to
come shining out of my own breast, and I feel as though I knew
everything which is imprisoned within you. That is all the more reason
why you should tell me all about it. As we are going to be intimate
friends and companions in Nuernberg, confide in me." Reinhold put an arm
about Friedrich, and looked him kindly in the eyes.

"The more I look at you, you charming fellow," Friedrich said, "the
more I am drawn to you. I distinctly hear a wondrous voice within me
echoing a monition of my soul, which tells me you are my true friend.
So I _must_ tell you everything. Not that a poor fellow such as I has
anything really important to confide to you, but merely because the
breast of a true friend has room for a man's sorrows; and, from the
first moment of our acquaintance, I felt that you are the truest friend
I possess. I am a cooper now, and I may say I know my craft well. But
all my devotion was given to another--perhaps a better--art. From my
childhood my desire was to be a silversmith, a great Master in the art
of modelling and working in silver, such as Peter Fischer, or the
Italian, Benvenuto Cellini. I worked at this with fervent zeal, under
Master Johannes Holzschuer, the famous silversmith in my native town,
who, although he did not himself cast images of the kind I refer to,
had it in his power to give me instruction in that direction and
province. Into Herr Holzschuer's house came, not seldom, Herr Tobias
Martin, the master cooper, with his daughter, the beautiful charming
Rosa. I fell in love with her, without quite being aware of it myself.
I left home, and went to Augsburg, to learn image-casting properly, and
it was not till then that the love-flames blazed up in my heart. I saw
and heard only Rosa. I loathed every effort, every endeavour that did
not lead to _her_; so I started off upon the only path which _did_ lead
to her. Master Martin will give his daughter to no man save the cooper
who, in his house, shall make the most perfect masterpiece which a
cooper can produce, and whom at the same time his daug