ient creature often knocked with his head,
would call out, "Euphorion, mind the oil."

And he each time answered with the same threatening gesture and the same
glare in his black eyes:

"The little brutes!"

The singer had been diligently practising his musical exercises for about
an hour, when the dogs rushed into the court-yard, not barking this time,
but yelping loudly with joy. The old woman laid aside the washing and
listened, but the tall man said:

"As many birds come flying before the Emperor as gulls before a storm. If
only they would leave us in peace--"

"Hark, that is Pollux; I know by the dogs," said the woman, hastening as
fast as she could over the threshold and out to meet him. But the
expected visitor was already at the door. He picked up the three
four-footed Graces who leaped round him, one after the other by the skin
of the neck, and gave each a tap on its nose. Then, seeing the old woman,
he took her head between his hands, and kissed her forehead, saying,
"Good-evening, little Mother," and shook hands with the singer, adding,
"How are you, great, big Father?"

"You are as big as I am," replied the man thus addressed, and he drew the
younger man towards him, and laid one of his broad hands on his own grey
head and the other on that of his first-born, with its wealth of brown
hair.

"As if we were cast in the same mould," cried the youth; and in fact he
was very like his father--like, no doubt, as a noble hunter is like a
worn-out hack--as marble is like limestone--as a cedar is like a
fir-tree. Both were remarkably tall, had thick hair, dark eyes, and
strongly aquiline noses, exactly of the same shape; but the cheerful
brightness which irradiated the countenance of the youth had certainly
not been inherited from the lute-player, but from the little woman who
looked up into his face and patted his arm.

But whence did he derive the powerful, but indescribable something which
gave nobility to his head, and of which it was impossible to say whether
it lay in his eye, or in the lofty brow, arched so differently to that of
either parent?

"I knew you would come," cried his mother. "This afternoon I dreamed it,
and I can prove that I expected you, for there, on the brazier, stands
the stewed cabbage and sausage waiting for you."

"I cannot stay now," replied Pollux. "Really, I cannot, though your kind
looks would persuade me, and the sausage winks at me out of the
cabbage-pan. My master, Papi