Page:The German Novelists (Volume 2).djvu/379

Rh taking out of his portfolio, his lead pencil, paper and ruler, at his accustomed hour, in order to draw designs, which he afterwards exhibited for the instruction of the young artizans, as headmaster of the joiners’ trade.

For the same reason he kept but little company, living quite retired, attended only by a single maid servant, and his little granddaughter.

She had, by this time, seated herself opposite to him, began to turn over the leaves of a huge richly bound folio in parchment, and proceeded to read as follows:

“And it likewise once happened in the famed city of the sea, at Venice, that a gondolier, whose occupation there is to row backwards and forwards in boats, hung with black, upon the canals, had taken into his service a stranger, for his rower, of uncommon size and strength. Neither the gondolier, nor any one else, could learn whence the lusty varlet had last come, nor where was his native place. Some there were, more deeply read, who observing that this huge hireling was deprived of the use of speech, though he could drink well, and hail passengers politely enough, imagined that he must be some great animal metamorphosed through the wondrous power of some sorcerer into the human shape; and that from his strength and docility, he was most likely formed out of an elephant.

“Be that, however, as it may, the gondolier was