came across the Petrarch volumes in their beautiful binding. He opened
one and saw--not a word of that fair-looking Italian, but--his own
ballad that he could not write, written and printed in good German
character with his name on the title-page. He took it in his hands and
went out of the shop, and as he did so it seemed to him, in his dream,
that he had become a man. He dreamt that as he came down the steps,
the people in the street gathered round him and cheered and shouted.
The women held up their children to look at him; he was a Great Man!
He thought that he turned back into the shop and went up to the
counter. There sat the smiling little bookseller as natural as life,
who smiled and bowed to him, as Friedrich had a hundred times seen
him bow and smile to the bearded men who came in to purchase.

"How many have you sold of this?" said Friedrich, in his dream.

"Forty thousand!" with another smile and bow.

Forty thousand! It seemed to him that all the world must have read it.
This was Fame.

He went out of the shop, through the shouting market-place, and home,
where his father led him in and offered pipes and a mug of ale, as if
he were the Burgomaster. He sat down, and when his mother came in,
rose to embrace her, and, doing so, knocked down the mug. Crash! it
went on the floor with a loud noise, which woke him up; and then he
found himself in bed, and that he had thrown over the mug of water
which he had put by his bedside to drink during the thirsty feverish
hours that he lay awake.

He was not a great man, but a child.