He had forbidden the idle young singers who wanted to go with him to
follow, but one had secretly slipped after, and, in one of the dark
corridors of the big house, full of nooks and corners, he suddenly heard
a voice call his name. Ere he was aware of it, little Hannibal Melas, a
young Maltese in the boy choir, whose silent, reserved nature had
obtained for him from the others the nickname Tartaruga, the tortoise,
seized his right hand in both his own.

It was done with evident excitement, and his voice sounded eagerly urgent
as he exclaimed:

"I fix my last hope on you, Sir Knight, for you see there is scarcely one
of the others who would not have an intercessor. But I! Who would
trouble himself about me? Yet, if you would only put in a good word, my
time would surely come now."

"Your time?" asked Wolf in astonishment; but the little fellow eagerly
continued:

"Yes, indeed! What Johann of Cologne or at least what Benevenuto can do,
I can trust myself to do too. The master need only try it with me, and,
now that both are ill, put me in place of one or the other."

Wolf, who knew what each individual chorister could do, shook his head,
and began to tell the boy from Malta for what good reason the master
preferred the two sick youths; but little Hannibal interrupted by
exclaiming, in tones of passionate lamentation:

"So you are the same? The master having begun it, all misjudge and crush