As I did so, I heard a voice at my ear.
"_Mein Gott_, man, do not! You break it, surely." I started at this.

I had not heard any one approach.

I discovered now that the speaker had taken a seat near me at the table, and could not fail to see this object which lay before me.
"I beg pardon," he said, in a broken speech which showed his foreign birth; "but it iss so beautiful; to break it iss wrong." Something in his appearance and speech fixed my attention.

He was a tall, bent man, perhaps sixty years of age, of gray hair and beard, with the glasses and the unmistakable air of the student.

His stooped shoulders, his weakened eye, his thin, blue-veined hand, the iron-gray hair standing like a ruff above his forehead, marked him not as one acquainted with a wild life, but better fitted for other days and scenes.
I pushed the trinket along the table towards him.
"'Tis of little value," I said, "and is always in the way when I would find anything in my pocket." "But once some one hass made it; once it hass had value.