"It is a very odd
name! And your companion there? Has he as strange a one?"
"You must ask the thunder to tell it you!" replied Quicksilver, putting
on a mysterious look. "No other voice is loud enough."
This remark, whether it were serious or in jest, might have caused
Philemon to conceive a very great awe of the elder stranger, if, on
venturing to gaze at him, he had not beheld so much beneficence in his
visage. But, undoubtedly, here was the grandest figure that ever sat so
humbly beside a cottage door. When the stranger conversed, it was with
gravity, and in such a way that Philemon felt irresistibly moved to
tell him everything which he had most at heart. This is always the
feeling that people have, when they meet with anyone wise enough to
comprehend all their good and evil, and to despise not a tittle of it.
But Philemon, simple and kind-hearted old man that he was, had not many
secrets to disclose. He talked, however, quite garrulously, about the
events of his past life, in the whole course of which he had never been
a score of miles from this very spot. His wife Baucis and himself had
dwelt in the cottage from their youth upward, earning their bread by
honest labour, always poor, but still contented. He told what excellent
butter and cheese Baucis made, and how nice were the vegetables which he
raised in his garden. He said, too, that, because they loved one another
so very much, it was the wish of both that death might not separate
them, but that they should die, as they had lived, together.
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