go up stairs. He did not try to prevent
them, however, and they climbed to the first floor above, where a placard
on the door declared it private and implored them not to knock. Was this
the outcome of the inmate's despair from the intrusion of other pilgrims
who had wised to see the Heine dwelling-rooms? They durst not knock and
ask so much, and they sadly descended to the ground-floor, where they
found a butcher boy of much greater apparent intelligence than the
butcher himself, who told them that the building in front was as new as
it looked, and the house where Heine was really born was the old house in
the rear. He showed them this house, across a little court patched with
mangy grass and lilac-bushes; and when they wished to visit it he led the
way. The place was strewn both underfoot and overhead with feathers; it
had once been all a garden out to the street, the boy said, but from
these feathers, as well as the odor which prevailed, and the anxious
behavior of a few hens left in the high coop at one side, it was plain
that what remained of the garden was now a chicken slaughteryard. There
was one well-grown tree, and the boy said it was of the poet's time; but
when he let them into the house, he became vague as to the room where
Heine was born; it was certain only that it was somewhere upstairs and
that it could not be seen. The room where they stood was the
frame-maker's shop, and they bought of him a small frame for a memorial.
They bought of the butcher's boy, not so commercially, a branch of lilac;
and they came away, thinking how much amused Heine himself would have
been with their visit; how sadly, how merrily he would have mocked at
their effort to revere his birthplace.

They were too old if not too wise to be daunted by their defeat, and they
drove next to the old court garden beside the Rhine where the poet says
he used to play with the little Veronika, and probably did not. At any
rate, the garden is gone; the Schloss was burned down long ago; and
nothing remains but a detached tower in which the good Elector Jan
Wilhelm, of Heine's time, amused himself with his many mechanical
inventions. The tower seemed to be in process of demolition, but an
intelligent workman who came down out of it, was interested in the
strangers' curiosity, and directed them to a place behind the Historical
Museum where they could find a bit of the old garden. It consisted of two
or three low trees, and under them the statue of