and lowering his foot, but also by a corresponding movement of his entire bent body.  But all his efforts to bring uniformity into his performance were fruitless, for what he was playing seemed to be an incoherent succession of tones without time or melody.  Yet he was completely absorbed in his work; his lips quivered, and his eyes were fixed upon the sheet of music before him, for he actually had notes!  While all the other musicians, whose playing pleased the crowd infinitely better, were relying on their memories, the old man had placed before him in the midst of the surging crowd a small, easily portable music-stand, with dirty, tattered notes, which probably contained in perfect order what he was playing so incoherently.  It was precisely the novelty of this equipment that had attracted my attention to him, just as it excited the merriment of the passing throng, who jeered him and left the hat of the old man empty, while the rest of the orchestra pocketed whole copper mines.  In order to observe this odd character at my leisure, I had stepped, at some distance from him, upon the slope at the side of the causeway.  For a while he continued playing.  Finally he stopped, and, as if recovering himself after a long spell of absent-mindedness, he gazed at the firmament, which already began to show traces of approaching evening.  Then he looked down into his hat, found it empty, put it on with undisturbed cheerfulness, and placed his bow between the strings. “Sunt certi denique fines” (there is a limit to everything), he said, took his music-stand, and, as though homeward bound, fought his way with difficulty through the crowd streaming in the opposite direction toward the festival.

The whole personality of the old man was specially calculated to whet my anthropological appetite to the utmost—­his poorly clad, yet noble figure, his unfailing cheerfulness, so much artistic zeal combined with such awkwardness, the fact that he returned home just at the time when for others of his ilk the real harvest was only beginning, and, finally, the few Latin words, spoken, however, with the most correct accent and with absolute fluency.  The man had evidently received a good education and had acquired some knowledge, and here he was—­a street-musician!  I was burning with curiosity to learn his history.

But a compact wall of humanity already separated us.  Small as he was, and getting in everybody’s way with the music-stand in his hand, he was shoved from one to another and had passed through the exit-gate while I was still struggling in the centre of the causeway against the opposing crowd.  Thus I lost track of him; and when at last I had reached the quiet, open space, there was no musician to be seen far or near.