n: 'I drew
her gently over to a grassy bench on the roadside, and, taking my
purse from my pocket, poured out before her its humble contents, in all
something less than twenty sovereigns, but to her eyes a very Pactolus
of wealth.'"

"What if I were to try this experiment?" thought I; "what if I were,
so to say, to anticipate my own biography?" The notion pleased me much.
There was something novel in it, too. It was making the experiment in
the _carpore vili_ of accident, to see what might come of it.

"Come here, Catinka," said I, pointing to a moss-covered rock at the
roadside, with a little well at its base,--"come here, and let me have a
drink of this nice clear water."

She assented with a smile and a nod, detaching at the same time a little
cup from the flask she wore at her side, in _vivandiere_ fashion. "And
we 'll fill my flask too," said she, showing that it was empty. With a
sort of childish glee she now knelt beside the stream, and washed the
cup. What is it, I wonder, that gives the charm to running water, and
imparts a sort of glad feeling to its contemplation? Is it that its
ceaseless flow suggests that "forever" which contrasts so powerfully
with all short-lived pleasures? I cannot tell, but I was still musing
over the difficulty, when, having twice offered me the cup without my
noticing it, she at last raised it to my lips. And I drank,--oh, what
a draught it was! so clear, so cold, so pure; and all the time my
eyes were resting on hers, looking, as it were, into another well, the
deepest and most unfathomable of all.

"Sit down here beside me on this stone, Catinka, and help me to count
these pieces of money; they have got so mingled together that I scarcely
know what is left me." She seemed delighted with the project, and sat
down at once; and I, throwing myself at her feet, poured the contents of
my purse into her lap.

"_Madonna mia!_" was all she could utter as she beheld the gold. Aladdin
in the cave never felt a more overwhelming rapture than did she at sight
of these immense riches. "But where did it come from?" cried she, wildly.
"Have you got mines of gold and silver? Have you got gems, too,--rubies
and pearls? Oh, say if there be pearls; I love them so? And are you
really a great prince, the son of a king; and are you wandering the
world this way to seek adventures, or in search, mayhap, of that lovely
princess you are in love with?" With wildest impetuosity she asked these
and a hundre