thing; therefore, the rising dawn seemed
to them a message from the sun, of fortune that was to gleam
brightly upon them. They heard the dying nightingale sing; it was no
false prophet, but a harbinger of fortune. The wind whistled,
therefore they did not understand that the nightingale sung, 'Fare
away over the sea! Thou hast paid the long passage with all that was
thine, and poor and helpless shalt thou enter Canaan. Thou must sell
thyself, thy wife, and thy children. But your griefs shall not last
long. Behind the broad fragrant leaves lurks the goddess of Death, and
her welcome kiss shall breathe fever into thy blood. Fare away, fare
away, over the heaving billows.' And the caravan listened well pleased
to the song of the nightingale, which seemed to promise good
fortune. Day broke through the light clouds; country people went
across the heath to church; the black-gowned women with their white
head-dresses looked like ghosts that had stepped forth from the church
pictures. All around lay a wide dead plain, covered with faded brown
heath, and black charred spaces between the white sand hills. The
women carried hymn books, and walked into the church. Oh, pray, pray
for those who are wandering to find graves beyond the foaming
billows."

FIFTEENTH EVENING

"I know a Pulcinella," the Moon told me. "The public applaud
vociferously directly they see him. Every one of his movements is
comic, and is sure to throw the house into convulsions of laughter;
and yet there is no art in it all--it is complete nature. When he
was yet a little boy, playing about with other boys, he was already
Punch. Nature had intended him for it, and had provided him with a
hump on his back, and another on his breast; but his inward man, his
mind, on the contrary, was richly furnished. No one could surpass
him in depth of feeling or in readiness of intellect. The theatre
was his ideal world. If he had possessed a slender well-shaped figure,
he might have been the first tragedian on any stage; the heroic, the
great, filled his soul; and yet he had to become a Pulcinella. His
very sorrow and melancholy did but increase the comic dryness of his
sharply-cut features, and increased the laughter of the audience,
who showered plaudits on their favourite. The lovely Columbine was
indeed kind and cordial to him; but she preferred to marry the
Harlequin. It would have been too ridiculous if beauty and ugliness
had in reality paired together.

"When P