place, with solemn, thoughtful eyes fixed, when his
father was there, upon him; when his father was not there, upon the
strip of sky which was to be seen, through the window above the
house-tops.

The child's name was Sigmund; he displayed a friendly disposition toward
me, indeed, he was passively friendly and--if one may say such a thing
of a baby--courteous to all he came in contact with. He had inherited
his father's polished manner; one saw that when he grew up he would be a
"gentleman," in the finest outer sense of the word. His inner life he
kept concealed from us. I believe he had some method of communicating
his ideas to Eugen, even if he never spoke. Eugen never could conceal
his own mood from the child; it knew--let him feign otherwise never so
cunningly--exactly what he felt, glad or sad, or between the two, and no
acting could deceive him. It was a strange, intensely interesting study
to me; one to which I daily returned with fresh avidity. He would let me
take him in my arms and talk to him; would sometimes, after looking at
me long and earnestly, break into a smile--a strange, grave, sweet
smile. Then I could do no otherwise than set him hastily down and look
away, for so unearthly a smile I had never seen. He was, though fragile,
not an unhealthy child; though so delicately formed, and intensely
sensitive to nervous shocks, had nothing of the coward in him, as was
proved to us in a thousand ways; shivered through and through his little
frame at the sight of a certain picture to which he had taken a great
antipathy, a picture which hung in the public gallery at the Tonhalle;
he hated it, because of a certain evil-looking man portrayed in it; but
when his father, taking his hand, said to him, "Go, Sigmund, and look at
that man; I wish thee to look at him," went without turn or waver, and
gazed long and earnestly at the low type, bestial visage portrayed to
him. Eugen had trodden noiselessly behind him; I watched, and he
watched, how his two little fists clinched themselves at his sides,
while his gaze never wavered, never wandered, till at last Eugen, with a
strange expression, caught him in his arms and half killed him with
kisses.

"_Mein liebling!_" he murmured, as if utterly satisfied with him.

Courvoisier himself? There were a great many strong and positive
qualities about this man, which in themselves would have set him
somewhat apart from other men. Thus he had crotchety ideas about truth
and hon