econd birthday, and an old horse or an old
servant stands a long time in the market-place before any one will buy
them. There might probably be a place in Brussels for a Catholic steward,
who understands his business, but this old heart longs to return to
Naples--ardently, ardently, unutterably. You have seen our blue sea and
our sky, young sir, and I yearn for them, but even more for other,
smaller things. It now seems a joy that I can speak in my native language
to you, Herr Wilhelm, and you, holy Father. But there is a country where
every one uses the same tongue that I do. There is a little village at
the foot of Vesuvius--merciful Heavens! Many a person would be afraid to
stay there, even half an hour, when the mountain quakes, the ashes fall
in showers, and the glowing lava pours out in a stream. The houses there
are by no means so well built, and the window-panes are not so clean as
in this country. I almost fear that there are few glass windows in
Resina, but the children don't freeze, any more than they do here. What
would a Leyden house-keeper say to our village streets? Poles with vines,
boughs of fig-trees, and all sorts of under-clothing on the roofs, at the
windows, and the crooked, sloping balconies; orange and lemon-trees with
golden fruit grow in the little gardens, which have neither straight
paths nor symmetrical beds. Everything there grows together topsy-turvy.
The boys, who in rags that no tailor has darned or mended, clamber over
the white vineyard walls, the little girls, whose mothers comb their hair
before the doors of the houses, are not so pink and white, nor so nicely
washed as the Holland children, but I should like to see again the
brown-skinned, black-haired little ones with the dark eyes, and end my
days amid all the clatter in the warm air, among my nephews, nieces and
blood-relations."

As he uttered these words, the old man's features had flushed and his
black eyes sparkled with a fire, that but a short time before the
northern air and his long years of servitude seemed to have extinguished.
Since neither the priest nor the musician answered immediately, he
continued more quietly:

"Monseigneur Gloria is going to Italy now, and I can accompany him to
Rome as courier. From thence I can easily reach Naples, and live there on
the interest of my savings free from care. My future master will leave on
the 15th, and on the 12th I must be in Antwerp, where I am to meet him."

The eyes of th