ning."

It was not without great difficulty I could prevent his carrying my
knapsack for me, and even the girl herself would gladly have borne some
of my load. At last, however, we set forth, Tintefleck lightening the
way with a merry can-zonette that had the time of a quickstep.

CHAPTER XXXI. A GENIUS FOR CARICATURE

What a pleasant little dinner we had that day! It was laid out in a
little summer-house of the inn-garden. All overgrown with a fine old
fig-tree, through whose leaves the summer wind played deliciously,
while a tiny rivulet rippled close by, and served to cool our
"Achten-thaler,"--an amount of luxury that made Tintefleck quite wild
with laughter.

"Is it cold enough?" she asked archly, in her peasant dialect, each time
the old man laid down his glass.

As I came gradually to pick up the occasional meaning of her words,--a
process which her expressive pantomime greatly aided,--I was struck by
the marvellous acuteness of a mind so totally without culture, and I
could not help asking Vaterchen why he had never attempted to instruct
her.

"What can I do?" said he, despondently; "there are no books in the only
language she knows, and the only language she will condescend to
speak. She can understand Italian, and I have read stories for her,
and sonnets, too, out of Leopardi; but though she will listen in all
eagerness till they are finished, no sooner over than she breaks out
into some wild Calabrian song, and asks me is it not worth all the fine
things I have been giving her, thrice told."

"Could you not teach her to write?"

"I tried that. I bought a slate, and I made a bargain with her that she
should have a scarlet knot for her hair when she could ask me for it in
written words. Well, all seemed to go on prosperously for a time; we
had got through half the alphabet very successfully, till we came to the
letter H. This made her laugh immediately, it was so like a scaffold we
had in the circus for certain exercises; and no sooner had I marked down
the letter, than she snatched the pencil from me, and drew the figure
of a man on each bar of the letter. From that hour forth, as though
her wayward humor had been only imprisoned, she burst forth into every
imaginable absurdity at our lessons. Every ridiculous event of our daily
life she drew, and with a rapidity almost incredible. I was not very
apt, as you may imagine, in acquiring the few accomplishments they
thought to give me, and she cari