lligence, whose dark eyes
blazed with life and fire, and whose every gesture betrayed spirit,
grace, and quick understanding. A child for a father to be proud of. No
meanness there; no littleness in the fine, high-bred features;
everything that the father's heart could wish, except perhaps some
little want of robustness; one might have desired that the limbs were
less exquisitely graceful and delicate--more stout and robust.

As Eugen laid aside his violin, he drew the child toward him, and asked
(what I had never heard him ask before):

"What wilt thou be, Sigmund, when thou art a man?"

"_Ja, lieber Vater_, I will be just like thee."

"How just like me?"

"I will do what thou dost."

"So! Thou wilt be a musiker like me and Friedel?"

"_Ja wohl!_" said Sigmund, but something else seemed to weigh upon his
small mind. He eyed his father with a reflective look, then looked down
at his own small hands and slender limbs (his legs were cased in the new
stockings).

"How?" inquired his father.

"I should like to be a musician," said Sigmund, who had a fine
confidence in his sire, and confided his every thought to him.

"I don't know how to say it," he went on, resting his elbows upon
Eugen's knee, and propping his chin upon his two small fists, he looked
up into his father's face.

"Friedhelm is a musician, but he is not like thee," he pursued. Eugen
reddened; I laughed.

"True as can be, Sigmund," I said.

"'I would I were as honest a man,'" said Eugen, slightly altering
"Hamlet;" but as he spoke English I contented myself with shaking my
head at him.

"I like Friedel," went on Sigmund. "I love him; he is good. But thou,
_mein Vater_--"

"Well?" asked Eugen again.

"I will be like thee," said the boy, vehemently, his eyes filling with
tears. "I will. Thou saidst that men who try can do all they will--and I
will, I will."

"Why, my child?"

It was a long earnest look that the child gave the man. Eugen had said
to me some few days before, and I had fully agreed with him:

"That child's life is one strife after the beautiful in art, and nature,
and life--how will he succeed in the search?"

I thought of this--it flashed subtly through my mind as Sigmund gazed at
his father with a childish adoration--then, suddenly springing round his
neck, said, passionately:

"Thou art so beautiful--so beautiful! I must be like thee."

Eugen bit his lip momentarily, saying to me in English:

"I am his God, you s