seems trivial as set against the producing of this tousled brat. No, to
be sure, she is backward as compared with Emmerick, or even Dorothy, and
she is not, as you say, an at all remarkable child, though very often, I
can assure you, she does things that would astonish you. Now, for
instance--"

"Spare me!" said Hinzelmann.

"Well, but it really was very clever of her," Dom Manuel stipulated,
with disappointment. "However, I was going to say that I, who have
harried pagandom, and capped jests with kings, and am now setting terms
for the Holy Father, have come to regard the doings of this ill-bred,
selfish, ugly, little imp as more important than my doings. And I cannot
resolve to leave her, just yet. So, Hinzelmann, my friend, I think I
will not thoroughly commit myself, just yet. But after Christmas we will
see about it."

"And I will tell you the two reasons of this shilly-shallying, Count
Manuel. One reason is that you are human, and the other reason is that
in your head there are gray hairs."

"What, can it be," said the big warrior, forlornly, "that I who have not
yet had twenty-six years of living am past my prime, and that already
life is going out of me?"

"You must remember the price you paid to win back Dame Niafer from
paradise. As truth, and not the almanac, must estimate these things you
are now nearer fifty-six."

"Well," Manuel said, stoutly, "I do not regret it, and for Niafer's sake
I am willing to become a hundred and six. But certainly it is hard to
think of myself as an old fellow on the brink of the scrap-pile."

"Oho, you are not yet so old, Count Manuel, but that Suskind's power is
greater than the power of the child: and besides, there is a way to
break the power of the child. Death has merely scratched small wrinkles,
very lightly, with one talon, to mark you as his by and by. That is all
as yet: and so the power of my high sister Suskind endures over you, who
were once used to follow after your own thinking and your own desire,
for there remains in you a leaven even to-day. Yes, yes, though you deny
her to-day, you will be entreating her to-morrow, and then it may be she
will punish you. Either way, I must be going now, since you are
obstinate, for it is at this time I run about the September world
collecting my sister's revenues, and her debtors are very numerous."

And with that the boy, still smiling gravely, slipped out of the third
window into the gray sweet-smelling dusk, and lit