“Everybody is nobody,” said Friedrich, hotly; “at least nobody worth caring for.  If I had a grammar and a dictionary, I would read those beautiful poems.”

“Hear him!” said the cheerful little bookseller.  “He will read Petrarch.  He!  If my volumes stop in the shelves till thou canst read them, my child—­ho! ho! ho!” and he rubbed his brushy little beard with glee.

Friedrich’s temper was not by nature of the calmest, and this conversation rubbed its tenderest points.  He answered almost fiercely—­

“Take care of your volumes.  If I live, and they do stop in the shelves, I will buy them of you some day.  Remember!” and he turned sharply round to hide the tears which had begun to fall.

For a moment the good shopkeeper’s little mouth became as round as his round little eyes and his round little face; then he laid his hands on the counter, and jumping neatly over flung his dead weight on to Friedrich, and embraced him heartily.

“My poor child! (a kiss)—­would that it had pleased Heaven to make thee the son of a nobleman—­(another kiss).  But hear me.  A man in Berlin is now compiling an Italian grammar.  It is to be out in a month or two.  I shall have a copy, and thou shalt see it; and if ever thou canst read Petrarch I will give thee my volumes—­(a volley of kisses).  And now, as thou hast stayed so long, come into the little room and dine with me.”  With which invitation the kind-hearted German released his young friend and led him into the back room, where they buried the memory of Petrarch in a mess of vegetables and melted butter.

It may be added here, that the Petrarchs remained on the shelf, and that years afterwards the round-faced little bookseller redeemed his promise with pride.

Of these visits the father was to all intents and purposes ignorant.  He knew that Friedrich went to see the bookseller, and that the bookseller was good-natured to him; but he never dreamt that his son read the books with which his neighbour’s shop was lined, and he knew nothing of the wild visions which that same shop bred and nourished in the mind of his boy, and which made the life outside its doorstep seem a dream.  The father and son saw that life from different points of view.  The boy felt that he was more talented than other boys, and designed himself for a poet; the tradesman saw that the boy was more talented than other boys, and designed him for the business; and the opposite nature of these determinations was the one great misery of Friedrich’s life.

If, however, this source of the child’s sorrows was a secret one, and not spoken of to his brothers and sisters, or even to his friend the bookseller, equally secret also were the sources of his happiness.  No eye but his own ever beheld those scraps of paper which he begged from the bookseller, and covered with childish efforts at verse-making.  No one shared the happiness of those hours, of which perhaps a quarter