d with
a fine lusty boy, who was our identical Master Peregrine Tyss. The
boundless joy of the elders may be imagined, and the people of
Frankfort yet talk of the splendid christening given by the old Tyss,
at which the noblest hock was filled out as if at a coronation
festival. But what added still more to the posthumous fame of Mr. Tyss
was, that he invited to this christening a couple of people who, in
their enmity, had often injured him; and not only them, but others too
whom he thought he had injured; so that the feast was really one of
peace and reconciliation.

Alas! the good man did not suspect that this same child, whose birth so
much rejoiced him, would soon be a cause of sorrow. At the very first,
the boy Peregrine showed a singular disposition. After he had cried
night and day uninterruptedly for some weeks, without their being able
to find out any bodily ailment, he became on the sudden quite quiet and
as it were stupified into a motionless insensibility: he seemed
incapable of the least impression. The little brow, which appeared to
belong to a lifeless puppet, was wrinkled neither by tears nor
laughter. His mother maintained that it was owing, on her part, to the
sight of the old book-keeper, who had for twenty years sat in the
counting-house before the great cash-book, with the same lifeless
countenance; and she wept bitter tears over the little automaton.

At last an old gossip hit upon the lucky thought of bringing Peregrine
a very motley, and, in fact, a very ugly harlequin. The child's eyes
quickened in a strange fashion, the mouth contracted to a gentle smile,
he caught at the puppet, and, the moment it was given to him, hugged it
tenderly. Then again he gazed upon the manikin with such intelligent
and speaking eyes, that it seemed as if reason and sensation had
suddenly awakened in him, and with much greater vigour than is usual
with children of his age.

"He is too wise," said the godmother; "you'll not keep him. Only look
at his eyes; he already thinks more than he ought to do."

This declaration greatly comforted the old merchant, who had in some
measure reconciled himself to the idea of having begot an idiot, after
so many years of fruitless expectation. Soon, however, he fell into a
fresh trouble; and this was, that the time had long since gone by in
which children usually begin to speak, and yet Peregrine had not
uttered a syllable. The boy would have been thought dumb, but that he
often