I had known him above twenty years ago as a child of eleven or twelve at Boulogne, where I sat next him at a table d'hôte. He was then a fat, short man – shortsighted, and with a sensual mouth. He heard me speak German to my mother, and soon began to talk to me, and then said, ‘When you go to England you can tell your friends that you have seen Heinrich Heine.’ I replied, ‘And who is Heinrich Heine?’ He laughed heartily, and took no offence at my ignorance, and we used to lounge on the end of the pier together, where he told me stories in which fish, mermaids, watersprites, and a very funny old French fiddler with a poodle, who was diligently taking three sea baths a day, were mixed up in the most fanciful manner, sometimes humorous, and very often pathetic, especially when the watersprites brought him German greetings from the ‘Nord See’. […]