“If she is not a heroine of romance,” he was thinking to himself, “she is a young and fresh and very pretty girl. Very often a great soul, a great thought, hidden in solitude, blooms like the rose in the midst of the forest; it will be sufficient to bring it forth to the light, and put it before the sun, to have it amaze by a thousand bright colours those who gaze upon it!”
The little gardener meanwhile remained silent. She merely lifted up one child, who was hanging on her arm, took another by the hand, and, driving several of them before her like geese, moved on through the garden.
“Can you not,” she said turning around, “drive my stray birds back into the grain?”
“I drive birds!” cried the Count in amazement.
Meanwhile she had vanished behind the shade of the trees. Only for a moment there shone from behind the hedgerow, through the dense greenery, something like two blue eyes.
The deserted Count long remained standing in the garden; his soul, like the earth after sunset, gradually grew cool, and took on dark colours. He began to muse, but he had very unpleasant dreams; he awoke, not knowing himself with whom he was angry. Alas, he had found little, and had had too great expectations! For, when he was crawling over the field towards that [pg 68] shepherdess, his head had burned and his heart leapt high; so many charms had he seen in the mysterious nymph, so wondrously had he decked her out, so many conjectures had he made! He had found everything quite different; to be sure, she had a pretty face, and a slender figure—but how lacking in elegance! And that tender face and lively blush, which painted excessive, vulgar happiness! Evidently her mind was still slumbering and her heart inactive. And those replies, so village-like, so common!
“Why should I deceive myself?” he exclaimed; “I guess the secret, too late! My mysterious nymph is simply feeding geese!”
With the disappearance of the nymph, all the magic glory had suffered a change; those bright bands, that charming network of gold and silver, alas! was that all merely straw?
The Count, wringing his hands, gazed on a bunch of cornflowers tied round with grasses, which he had taken for a tuft of ostrich plumes in the maiden's hand. He did not forget the instrument: that gilded vessel, that horn of Amalthea, was a carrot! He had seen it being greedily consumed in the mouth of one of the children. So good-bye to the spell, the enchantment, the marvel!
So a boy, when he sees chickory flowers enticing the hand with soft, light, blue petals, wishes to stroke them and draws near—he blows—and with the puff the whole flower flies away like down on the wind, and in his hands the too curious inquirer sees only a naked stalk of grey-green grass.