Page:Specimens of German Romance (Volume 2).djvu/20

 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