Page:The genius - Carl Grosse tr Joseph Trapp 1796.djvu/153

 a groom had sold the dog to the pauper for a trifle. "Don Carlos de Grandez," pursued the mendicant, "is gone abroad and nobody knows whither. Don Antonio lives in great splendor at the villa, and does not imagine, that he will ever be brought to an account for it. A strange Lady with a little boy is with him, but whence the came, is unknown. She seems to live very modest and retired, and is often seen weeping in the bowers of the garden."

After racking my brain with a thousand conjectures about that strange Lady with the boy, who appeared so fad and melancholy while Don Antonio was so wondrous merry, and that most probably at my expence too I formed the plan of going to reconnoitre them in my disguise as a vagrant ballad-singer. It was not difficult to put it in execution, as my long beard, and uncombed hair, my sunburnt face, and my mean and shabby-grown coat, with foul linen made me look rather like a vagabond or a thief, than like my self I redeemed my Fidello from the beggar that very night, and with the instrument on my