“I am very much obliged to whoever did think of it,” said Friedrich.

“And plenty more there are,” said the good woman to Marie afterwards, as they were dishing the dinner.  “Luise Jansen’s shop is full of them.  But, bless the boy! he’s too clever for anything.  There’s no playing St. Nicholas with him.”

The day went by at last, and the evening came on.  The tradesman went off of himself to see if he could meet with the Burgomaster, and the children became rabid in their impatience for Friedrich’s ballad.

He would not read it himself, so Marie was pressed into the service, and crowned with the hood and cloak, and elected Maerchen-Frau.

The author himself sat in an arm-chair, with a face as white and miserable as if he were ordered for execution.  He formed a painful contrast to his ruddy brothers and sisters; and it would seem as if he had begun already to experience the truth of Marie’s assertion, that “great men are not always happy ones.”

The ballad was put into the Maerchen-Frau’s hands, and she was told that Friedrich had written it.  She gave a quick glance at it, and asked if he had really invented it all.  The children repeated the fact, which was a pleasant but not a surprising one to them, and Marie began.

The young poet had evidently a good ear, for the verses were easy and musical, and the metre more than tolerably correct; and as the hero of the ballad worked harder and harder, and got higher and higher, the children clapped their hands, and discovered that it was “quite like Friedrich.”

Why, when that hero was almost at the height of fortune, and the others gloried in his success, did the foolish author bury his face upon his arms, and sob silently but bitterly in sympathy?—­moreover, with such a heavy and absorbing grief that he did not hear it, when Marie stopped for an instant and then went on again, or know that steps had come behind his chair, and that his father and the Burgomaster were in the room.

The Maerchen-Frau went on; the hero awoke from his unreal happiness to his real fate, and bewailed in verse after verse the heavy weights of birth, and poverty, and circumstance, that kept him from the heights of fame.  The ballad was ended.

Then a voice fell on Friedrich’s ear, which nearly took away his breath.  It was his father’s asking sternly, “What is all this?”

And then he knew that Marie was standing up, with a strange emotion on her face, and he heard her say—­

“It is a poem that Friedrich has written.  He has written it all himself.  Every word.  And he is but twelve years old!” She was pointing to him, or, perhaps, the Burgomaster might not have recognized in that huddled miserable figure the genius of the family.

His was the next voice, and what he said Friedrich could hardly remember; the last sentences only he clearly understood.

“GOD has not blessed me with children, neighbour.  My wife, as well as I, would be ashamed if such genius were lost for want of a little money.  Give the child to me.  He shall have a liberal education, and will be a great man.”