tioning Signor Pastrini to seat
himself.

"Your excellencies permit it?" asked the host.

"Pardieu!" cried Albert, "you are not a preacher, to remain standing!"

The host sat down, after having made each of them a respectful bow,
which meant that he was ready to tell them all they wished to know
concerning Luigi Vampa. "You tell me," said Franz, at the moment Signor
Pastrini was about to open his mouth, "that you knew Luigi Vampa when he
was a child--he is still a young man, then?"

"A young man? he is only two and twenty;--he will gain himself a
reputation."

"What do you think of that, Albert?--at two and twenty to be thus
famous?"

"Yes, and at his age, Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon, who have all made
some noise in the world, were quite behind him."

"So," continued Franz, "the hero of this history is only two and
twenty?"

"Scarcely so much."

"Is he tall or short?"

"Of the middle height--about the same stature as his excellency,"
returned the host, pointing to Albert.

"Thanks for the comparison," said Albert, with a bow.

"Go on, Signor Pastrini," continued Franz, smiling at his friend's
susceptibility. "To what class of society does he belong?"

"He was a shepherd-boy attached to the farm of the Count of San-Felice,
situated between Palestrina and the lake of Gabri; he was born at
Pampinara, and entered the count's service when he was five years old;
his father was also a shepherd, who owned a small flock, and lived by
the wool and the milk, which he sold at Rome. When quite a child, the
little Vampa displayed a most extraordinary precocity. One day, when he
was seven years old, he came to the curate of Palestrina, and asked to
be taught to read; it was somewhat difficult, for he could not quit his
flock; but the good curate went every day to say mass at a little hamlet
too poor to pay a priest and which, having no other name, was called
Borgo; he told Luigi that he might meet him on his return, and that then
he would give him a lesson, warning him that it would be short, and that
he must profit as much as possible by it. The child accepted joyfully.
Every day Luigi led his flock to graze on the road that leads from
Palestrina to Borgo; every day, at nine o'clock in the morning, the
priest and the boy sat down on a bank by the wayside, and the little
shepherd took his lesson out of the priest's breviary. At the end of
three months he had learned to read. This was not enough--he must now
learn