or, such as one might expect from so knightly looking a
personage. It was Karl Linders, who, at a later period of our
acquaintance, amused himself by chalking up, "Prinz Eugen, der edle
Ritter," beneath his name. His musical talent--or rather genius, it was
more than talent--was at that time not one fifth part known to me, yet
even what I saw excited my wonder. But these, and a long list of other
active characteristics, all faded into insignificance before the
towering passion of his existence--his love for his child. It was
strange, it was touching, to see the bond between father and son. The
child's thoughts and words, as told in his eyes and from his lips,
formed the man's philosophy. I believe Eugen confided everything to his
boy. His first thought in the morning, his last at night, was for _der
Kleine_. His leisure was--I can not say "given up" to the boy--but it
was always passed with him.

Courvoisier soon gained a reputation among our comrades for being a sham
and a delusion. They said that to look at him one would suppose that no
more genial, jovial fellow could exist--there was kindliness in his
glance, _bon camaraderie_ in his voice, a genial, open, human
sympathetic kind of influence in his nature, and in all he did. "And
yet," said Karl Linders to me, with gesticulation, "one never can get
him to go anywhere. One may invite him, one may try to be friends with
him, but, no! off he goes home! What does the fellow want at home? He
behaves like a young miss of fifteen, whose governess won't let her mix
with vulgar companions."

I laughed, despite myself, at this tirade of Karl. So that was how
Eugen's behavior struck outsiders!

"And you are every bit as bad as he is, and as soft--he has made you
so," went on Linders, vehemently. "It isn't right. You two ought to be
leaders outside as well as in, but you walk yourselves away, and stay at
home! At home, indeed! Let green goslings and grandfathers stay at
home."

Indeed, Herr Linders was not a person who troubled home much; spending
his time between morning and night between the theater and concert-room,
restauration and verein.

"What do you do at home?" he asked, irately.

"That's our concern, _mein lieber_," said I, composedly, thinking of
young Sigmund, whose existence was unknown except to our two selves, and
laughing.

"Are you composing a symphony? or an opera buffa? You might tell a
fellow."

I laughed again, and said we led a peaceable life, a