"Have you an Italian grammar?"

"Only this," said the other, as he picked a book from the shelf and
laid it on the counter with a twinkle in his eye. The boy opened it
and looked up disappointed.

"It is all Italian," said he.

"No, no," was the answer; "it is in French and Italian, and was
printed at Paris. But what wouldst thou with a grammar, my child?"

The boy blushed as if he had been caught stealing, and said hastily--

"I _must_ read those poems, and I cannot if I do not learn the
language."

"And thou wouldst read Petrarch with a grammar," shouted the
bookseller; "ho! ho! ho!"

"And a dictionary," said Friedrich; "why not?"

"Why not?" repeated the other, with renewed laughter. "Why not?
Because to learn a language, my Friedrich, one must have a master, and
exercises, and a phrase-book, and progressive reading-lessons with
vocabulary; and, in short, one must learn a language in the way
everybody else learns it; that is why not, my Friedrich."

"Everybody is nobody," said Friedrich, hotly; "at least nobody worth
caring for. If I had a grammar and a dictionary, I would read those