"With your natural abilities," I asked with interest, "do you never feel a
desire for fame?"

"Fame? Certainly not. I cannot even understand it!"

"Well, then, would you have no pleasure in the thought that you had
rendered a service to humanity?"

Margrave looked bewildered; after a moment's pause, he took from the table
a piece of bread that chanced to be there, opened the window, and threw
the crumbs into the lane. The sparrows gathered round the crumbs.

"Now," said Margrave, "the sparrows come to that dull pavement for the
bread that recruits their lives in this world; do you believe that one
sparrow would be silly enough to fly to a house-top for the sake of some
benefit to other sparrows, or to be chirruped about after he was dead? I
care for science as the sparrow cares for bread,--it may help me to
something good for my own life; and as for fame and humanity, I care for
them as the sparrow cares for the general interest and posthumous
approbation of sparrows!"

"Margrave, there is one thing in you that perplexes me more than all
else--human puzzle as you are--in your many eccentricities and
self-contradictions."

"What is that one thing in me most perplexing?"

"This: that in your enjoyment of Nature you have all the freshness of a
child, but when you speak of Man and his objects in the world, you talk in
the vein of some worn-out and hoary cynic. At such times, were I to close