Next day, when I returned to the Pavilion of Saluce, I took a companion with me—Franzius.

I called early at his wretched lodging in the Rue Dijon; the sound of his violin led me upstairs, and I found him, seated on the side of his bed, playing, his soul in Germany or dreamland.

A day in the country, away from Paris, the houses, the streets! If I had offered him a day in paradise the simple soul could not have expressed more delight.

"Well," I said, "it is nine o'clock. We will just have time to catch the train at Evry. Get ready and come on."

He took his hat from a shelf, placed it on his head, put his violin under his arm, and declared himself ready.

"But surely you are not taking your violin?"

"My violin—but why not?"

"Going into the country!"

"But why not? Ah, my friend, it never leaves me; without it I am not I. It is myself, my soul, my heart. Ach!"

"Come on—come on!" I said, laughing and pushing him and his violin before me. "Take anything you like, so long as you are happy. That's right—mind the stairs. Don't you lock your door when you go out?"

"There is nothing to steal," replied Franzius simply.

In the street I hailed a fiacre and bundled the violinist in, protesting. The mad extravagance of the business shocked him. He had never been in a fiacre before; even omnibuses were luxuries to this son of St. Cecilia, who had tramped the continent of Europe on foot. Yet he wanted to pay when we reached the station; and the return ticket I bought for him pained his sense of independence so much that I took the fare from him. Then he was happy—happy as a child; and I do not know what the other passengers thought of the young beau, elegantly dressed, seated beside the shabby violinist, both happy, laughing, and in the highest of spirits; the violinist, unconsciously, now and then plucking pizzicato notes from the strings of his instrument, caressing it as a man caresses the woman he loves.

We walked from Evry to Etiolles under the bright May morning, under the sparkling blue, along the delightful white dusty roads, the larks singing lustily, and the wind blowing the vanishing hawthorn-blossoms upon the dust like snow.

Then, at the drawbridge over the moat, Eloise was waiting for us, and we followed her into the Pavilion, Franzius with his hat crushed to his heart, bowing, the violin under his arm forgotten, his whole simple soul worshipping, very evidently, the beautiful and gracious goddess who had received us.

Ah, that was the day of Franzius's life! We had dÉjeÛner in the little garden, under the chestnut-tree alight with a thousand clusters of pink blossom. He forgot his shyness completely, and told us stories of his wanderings, unconsciously dominating the conversation and leading us hundreds of miles away from Etiolles to the forests of the Roth Alps and the Hartz. The great forests of the Vosges, so soon to resound to the drums of war and the tramping of armies, spread their perfumed shade around us as we listened. Castle Nidek, whose ruined walls still echo to the ghostly hunting-horn of Sebalt Kraft; the Rhine and its storeyed hills; the white roads of Germany; Pirmasens and the Swan Inn, with its rose-decked porch; mountain rivers, leaping waterfalls, skies turquoise-blue against the black-green armies of the high mountain pines—all spread before us, lay around us, domed us in as he talked the morning into afternoon, and the afternoon half away.

What a gift of description was his; and how we listened as children may have listened to the story of the wanderings of Ulysses! Then, to forge his simple chains more completely—to give the last touch to his magic—he played to us.

Gipsy dances! And you could hear, as the smoke of the camp-fires blew across the figures of the dancers, the feet of the women and the men who had wandered all day keeping time on the turf to the tune—a tune wild as the cry of the mountain kestrel, filled with all sorts of wandering undertones, heart-snatching subtleties.

Czardas and folk-airs he played, and the wonderful spinning-song of Oberthal, in which you can hear, through the drone of the wheel and the flying flax, the history of the poor. Just a thread of song told by the thread of flax—the flax that forms the swaddling-clothes, the bridal linen, and the shroud of man. And lastly a tune of his own, more beautiful than any of the others.

"But why don't you write music?" I said, when we were seated in the railway-train on our way back to Paris. "You are a greater musician than any of those men who are famous and rich."

"My friend," said Franzius, "I am the second violin at La Closerie de Lilas."

It was the first time I had heard him speak at all bitterly, and I said no more. I did not approach the subject again, but that did not prevent me from making plans.

I would rescue this nightingale from its cage in a beer-garden and put it back in the woods; but the thing would require great tact and infinite discretion.

"Have you any music written out—you know what I mean, written out on paper—that I could show to a friend?" I asked him, as we parted at the station.

"I have several 'Lieder,'" replied Franzius. "Very small—just, as you might say, snatches."

"If I send a man for them to-morrow morning, will you give them to him? I will take the greatest care of them."

"But they are so small!"

"Never mind—never mind! I have influence, and may get them published."

He promised. And I saw the light of a new hope in his face as he departed through the gaslit streets on foot—this child of the forest and the dawn, to whom God had given wings, and to whom the world had given a cage!

I went to the Opera that night. It was "Don Giovanni"; and as I sat with all the splendour of the Second Empire around me, tier upon tier of beauty and magnificence drawn like gorgeous summer night-moths around the flame of Mozart's genius, the vision of Franzius wandering through the gaslit streets, with his violin under his arm, passed and repassed before me.

He seemed so far from this; his music, before this triumphant burst of song, so like the voice of a cicala, faint and thin, and of no account.

Yet, when I went to bed, the tune that pursued me from the day was the haunting spinning-song of Oberthal—the song so simple and full of fate, the song of the flax, caught and interpreted by the humming strings, telling the story of the cradle, the marriage-bed, and the grave!

I did not go to Etiolles next day, for I had business that detained me in Paris; but I went the day following, and Eloise received me, pouting.

"Ah well, wait!" said I, as I followed her into the Pavilion. "Wait till I tell you what I have been doing, and then you won't scold me for leaving you alone."

"Tell, then!" said Eloise, putting a bunch of violets in my coat, and pressing them flat with her little hand.

"I will tell you," said I, kissing the little violet-perfumed hand. And sitting down, I told her of how I had asked Franzius to let me have his music.

"He sent me the three songs yesterday morning," I went on. "I cannot read music, though I love it; but that did not matter. I had my plan. I ordered the Vicomte's best carriage to the door, and drove to the Opera House, where I inquired of the doorkeeper the address of the best music-publisher in Paris. Flandrin, of the Rue St. HonorÉ, it seems, is the best, so I drove there.

"It was a big shop. Flandrin sells pianos as well as songs. He is a big man, with a big, white, fat face with an expression like this." I puffed out my cheeks and opened my eyes wide to show Eloise what Flandrin was like. She laughed; and I went on: "He was very civil. He had seen me drive up to his door in a carriage and pair, and I suppose he thought I had come to buy a piano. When he heard my real business his manner changed. He said he was sick of musical geniuses; he would not even look at poor Franzius's 'Lieder.' 'Take them to Barthelmy,' he said. 'He lives in the Passage de l'Opera; he publishes for those sort of people, and he is going bankrupt next week, so another genius won't do him any harm.' 'I haven't time to go to Barthelmy,' I replied. 'Besides, I don't want you to buy these things. I want to buy them.'

"'Well, my dear sir,' said Flandrin, 'if you want to buy them, why don't you buy them?'

"'Just for this reason,' I replied. 'M. Franzius, who wrote these things, is not a shopman who sells pianos; he is a poet. He would be offended if I offered him money for his productions, for he would know that I did it for charity's sake. I want you to buy these things from him. I will give you the money to do so, and, by way of commission, I will buy a piano from you. My only condition is that you come with me now in my carriage and see M. Franzius, and pay him the money yourself. Of course, you will have to publish the things, too; but I will give you the money to do that as well. Here are a thousand francs, which you are to give M. Franzius. Send one of your pianos round to No. 14, Place VendÔme, M. le Vicomte de Chatellan's. And now, if you are ready, we will start.'

"He came like a lamb. The purchase of the piano had put him into a very good humour. He seemed to look upon the thing as a practical joke; and the idea of paying an unknown musician a thousand francs for three pieces of music seemed to tickle him immensely, for he kept repeating the sum over and chuckling to himself the whole way to the Rue Dijon.

"Franzius was in bed and asleep when we got there. I led Flandrin right up to the attic; and you may imagine Franzius's feelings when he woke up and found us in his room—the best music-publisher in Paris standing at the foot of his bed waiting to offer him a thousand francs for his 'Lieder'! A thousand francs down! Oh, there is nothing like money! It was just as if I had opened a window in his life and let in spring. I saw him grow younger under my eyes as he sat up in bed unconscious of everything but the great idea that luck had come at last and some hand had opened the door of his cage. Even old Flandrin was a bit moved, I think. Ah, well! I bundled Flandrin off when the business was done, and then I made Franzius write a note to the Closerie de Lilas people, telling them that at the end of the week he was leaving there, and then I told him my plan. You know old Fauchard, the forest-keeper's cottage? It's only half a mile from here; it's right in the forest. Well, he has a room to spare, and he will put Franzius up for twelve francs a week. He will be free to write his music——"

"Ah, Toto," cried Eloise, who had been trying to in a word for the last two minutes, "how good of you!"

"Good of me! Why, I have only done what pleased myself! It's a debt. The man saved my life—but no matter about that. Get your hat and come with me, and we will go to Fauchard's and make arrangements about the room."