His humorous lectures had been received with great approbation in different hotels frequented by many foreign tourists. And still, his earnings were not sufficient to support him and his motherless child, pretty little Marie, whom he had left in the meantime with a family of friends in Dresden. Every silver groschen he had earned was for the support of his child.
He had come all the way from Hallstadt, and this long walk had exhausted his strength considerably; and his heart was sick and heavy. Now he felt a frightful nervousness, fearing not to be able to reach in time the hotel where he was announced to deliver his humorous lecture.
He walked as quickly as he could to the farther end of the valley, where he expected to see a clearing in the forest, and an open road to the hotel. But on all sides he met high, unfamiliar cliffs. Apprehension fell over him like an icy rain.
"Can I have lost my way?" he murmured, breathing heavily, while great beads of perspiration broke out on his forehead.
In an hour's time he was supposed to be at the Mountain View Hotel, and now.... He looked helplessly around. Darkness began to fall, contesting every inch of ground with retreating daylight. His teeth were chattering with a cold chill, when he set out to find another opening.
The continuous excitement of this wandering from one hotel to another, the consuming sorrow, the bleeding wound in his heart, had gradually undermined his constitution, originally none too strong, and now this wearing cough, the insidious fever!... "How upset I feel; it's the peculiar atmosphere," he said to himself. At the same time he remembered that the entertainment he proposed to offer this evening, was not sufficiently furnished with witty epigrams and bons mots. So, bowing and smiling to an imaginary audience of cosmopolitan taste, he began to rehearse his lecture as he walked on, sharpening the humour and adding some popular Austrian witticisms in vogue as trump cards.
Suddenly he looked up and saw a dark cloud threatening down upon him. Heavy gusts of wind commenced to bend the tops of the high, impenetrable trees. The songs of the mocking birds rang from the cedars in the distance in his ear and startled him.
He stopped in alarm and looked distractedly around him. Where was he? He could not make out. In the marshy places the fireflies were seen, wandering about and looking in the distance like malicious eyes of wicked sprites.
There was no longer any doubt, he had taken an entirely wrong direction.
Trembling with excitement, fearing delay, he rushed back to look for the right path, while his hot breath grated audibly on his weak lungs. A fearful storm was gathering, whispering and sobbing like complaining, frightened witches now whirling the leaves into the air vehemently as if driven by the furies of Hades.