's clothes,
including a feather hat and a veil. A new keg of beer was tapped on the
Gambrinus wagon, while the people in the houses rushed to the windows
and roared.

"You have forgotten the railing," cried Daniel in a loud voice to the
people on the Goose Man wagon.

"What did he say?" they asked, and looked at each other in astonishment.
The on-lookers were filled with curious silence: many of them gazed at
Daniel, bewildered.

"You forgot the railing," he repeated, with glistening eyes, "you have
forgotten the iron railing. Without his protection the poor Goose Man is
to be sure your buffoon, your zany, your clown."

He laughed quietly, and, with opened mouth and shining teeth, quickly
withdrew from the innumerable gapers. Having reached a deserted alley,
he began to sing with a frenzied expression on his face: "Whom thou dost
not desert, oh Genius, him wilt thou raise up with wings of fire. He
will wander on as if with feet of flowers across Deucalion's seas of
slime, killing Python, light-footed, famed Pythius Apollo."

XVI

A few weeks later a real singer came to Daniel. She sang several of the
songs he had written. He had thought they were completely forgotten by
everybody. Her art was not merely perfect; it was wonderful.

It was a very mysterious visit the singer paid him. One afternoon during
a fearful snow storm the bell rang; and when Gertrude opened the door,
she saw a woman wearing a heavy black veil standing before her, who said
she wished to speak to Kapellmeister Nothafft. Gertrude took her up to
Daniel's room. The stranger told Daniel she had been wishing to make his
acquaintance for a long time, and, now on her way to Italy, she had been
detained in the city for a few days by the illness of a near friend.
This, she said, she regarded as a hint from fate itself. She had come to
extend him her greetings, and particularly to thank him for his songs, a
copy of which a friend had been good enough to present to her at a time
when she was living under the weight of a great sorrow.

She spoke with an accent that had a Northern note in it, but easily and
fluently; she gave the impression of a woman who had seen a great deal
of the world and had profited by her travels. Daniel asked her with whom
he had the pleasure of speaking, but she smiled, and asked permission to
conceal her name for the present. She said that it really did not make
much difference, and that it