little garden that the
Court apothecary had owned outside the Petersthor.

After supper Frau Schimmel helped the mother to bathe the little Zeno and
to put him to bed, and Melchior also assisted at the performance. As the
old lady looked from mother to child a great pity filled her heart for
the dear son of her late master who had staked his happiness on a
creature so ethereal that the first wind might blow her away; such
delicate perfection as that, if her experience did not deceive her, was
hardly adapted to the needs of an everyday German husband. But then did
Melchior look like such an one? No.

Again she felt a cold shiver go down her back, for Melchior had taken the
bath sheet and was holding it in front of him waiting to wrap the child
in it as it was taken out of its tub, and it seemed to her as if he had
on a shroud and his bloodless emaciated face with his black hair and
moustache looked ghostly over the top of it.

It annoyed her that she should have these stupid, sad thoughts on the
occasion of such a happy home coming!

She did her best to drive them away and the child helped her, for it, at
least, looked lively enough as it sat in the warm water, and kicked, and
splashed, and laughed, and cooed, calling to its parents and then to Frau
Schimmel. When it tried to pronounce her name, her heart overflowed and
she answered absently, for she was saying a silent Paternoster for the
health and welfare of this blessed child who somehow seemed even lovelier
than Melchior had once been, though in his time she had considered him
"the sweetest baby that had ever lived."

When the child was in bed the mother folded its hands and murmured what
Frau Schimmel knew to be a prayer, but the father touched, its forehead
and the place about the heart with an essence, speaking at the same time
some incomprehensible words. Whatever they meant, they seemed to agree
well enough with the incomparable child.

The young wife was tired after her long journey and went early to bed,
and when the housekeeper was finally left alone with Melchior, he begged
her to tell him how things had gone with his father, after his departure.

The son of her late master had, then, brought back from Italy his tender
and affectionate heart, however stern and anxious his long and colourless
face might seem; and when he heard of the old man's longing to see him,
and death, his eyes were wet with tears.

He interrupted the course of her narrative but