"To think of it," Jurgen reflected, "that the world I inhabit is
ordered by beings who are not one-tenth so clever as I am! I have
often suspected as much, and it is decidedly unfair. Now let me see
if I cannot make something out of being such a monstrous clever
fellow."

Jurgen said aloud: "I do not wonder that no practising poet ever
presumed to make a song of you. You are too majestical. You frighten
these rhymesters, who feel themselves to be unworthy of so great a
theme. So it remained for you to be appreciated by a pawnbroker,
since it is we who handle and observe the treasures of this world
after you have handled them."

"Do you think so?" says she, more pleased than ever. "Now, may be
that was the way of it. But I wonder that you who are so fine a poet
should ever have become a pawnbroker."

"Well, and indeed, Mother Sereda, your wonder seems to me another
wonder: for I can think of no profession better suited to a retired
poet. Why, there is the variety of company! for high and low and
even the genteel are pressed sometimes for money: then the plowman
slouches into my shop, and the duke sends for me privately. So the
people I know, and the bits of their lives I pop into, give me a
deal to romance about."

"Ah, yes, indeed," says Mother Sereda, wisely, "that well may be the
case. But I do not hold with romance, myself."

"Moreover, sitting in my shop, I wait there quiet-like while tribute