I must say which I most love, the point becomes less difficult of
decision. I would prefer each in its season, or rather the two united,
with a gradual change in their influence. Let the youth commence with the
first in the ascendant, and close with the last. He who begins life too
cold a reasoner may end it a calculating egotist; and he who is ruled
solely by his imagination is in danger of having his mind so ripened as to
bring forth the fruits of a visionary. Had it pleased heaven to have left
me the dear son I possessed for so short a period, I would rather have
seen him leaning to the side of exaggeration in his estimate of men,
before experience came to chill his hopes, than to see him scan his
fellows with a too philosophical eye in boyhood. 'Tis said we are but clay
at the best, but the ground, before it has been well tilled, sends forth
the plants that are most congenial to its soil, and though it be of no
great value, give me the spontaneous and generous growth of the weed,
which proves the depth of the loam, rather than a stinted imitation of
that which cultivation may, no doubt, render more useful if not more
grateful."

The allusion to his lost son caused another cloud to pass athwart the brow
of the Genoese.

"Thou seest, Adelheid," he continued, after a pause--"for Adelheid will I
call thee, in virtue of a second father's rights--that we are making our
folly respectable, at least to ourselves--Master Patron, thou hast a
well-charged bark!"

"Thanks to your two honors;" answered Baptiste, who stood at the helm,
near the group of principal passengers. "These windfalls come rarely to
the poor, and we must make much of such as offer. The games at Vevey have
called every craft on the Leman to the upper end of the lake, and a little
mother-wit led me to trust to the last turn of the wheel, which, as you
see, Signore has not come up a blank."

"Have many strangers passed by your city on their way to these sports?"

"Many hundreds, noble gentleman; and report speaks of thousands that are
collecting at Vevey and in the neighboring villages. The country of Vaud
has not had a richer harvest from her games this many a year."

It is fortunate, Melchior, that the desire to witness these revels should
have arisen in us at the same moment. The hope of at last obtaining
certain tidings of thy welfare was the chief inducement that caused me to
steal from Genoa, whither I am compelled to return forthwith. There is
tru