“He graciously gave you leave of absence.”

“And Gugelkopf is already installed in the palace as my successor!  My gracious master knows that he won’t have to pay the pension long.  He would willingly have supported me up yonder till I died; but my wish to go to Genoa suited him exactly.  The more distance there is between his healthy highness and the miserable invalid, the better.”

“Why didn’t you wait till spring, before taking your departure?”

“Because Genoa is a hot-house, that the poor consumptive does not need in summer.  It is pleasant to be there in winter.  I learned that three years ago, when we visited the duke.  Even in January the sun in Liguria warms your back, and makes it easier to breathe.  I’m going by way of Marseilles.  Will you give me the corner in your carriage as far as Avignon?”

“With pleasure!  Your health, Pellicanus!  A good wish on Christmas day is apt to be fulfilled.”

The artist’s deep voice sounded full and cordial, as he uttered the words.  The young soldier heard them, and as Moor and the jester touched glasses, he raised his own goblet, drained it to the dregs, and asked modestly:  “Will you listen to a few lines of mine, kind sir?”

“Say them, say them!” cried the artist, filling his glass again, while the lansquenet, approaching the table, fixed his eyes steadily on the beaker, and in an embarrassed manner, repeated: 

              “On Christmas-day, when Jesus Christ,
               To save us sinners came,
               A poor, sore-wounded soldier dared
               To call upon his name. 
               ‘Oh! hear,’ he said, ’my earnest prayer,
               For the kind, generous man,
               Who gave the wounded soldier aid,
               And bore him through the land. 
               So, in Thy shining chariot,
               I pray, dear Jesus mine,
               Thou’lt bear him through a happy life
               To Paradise divine.’”

“Capital, capital!” cried the artist, pledging the lansquenet and insisting that he should sit down between him and the jester.

Pellicanus now gazed thoughtfully into vacancy, for what the wounded man could do, he too might surely accomplish.  It was not only ambition, and the habit of answering every good saying he heard with a better one, but kindly feeling, that urged him to honor the generous benefactor with a speech.

After a few minutes, which Moor spent in talking with the soldier, Pellicanus raised his glass, coughed again, and said, first calmly, then in an agitated voice, whose sharp tones grew more and more subdued: 

              “A rogue a fool must be, ’t is true,
               Rog’ry sans folly will not do;
               Where folly joins with roguery,
               There’s little harm, it seems to me. 
               The pope, the king, the youthful squire,