“Groan and sigh,” cried Frederic, “and murmur as much as you like, you green giants that you are! It is then that the real woodsman’s heart rejoices in you! I love all, the green bushes, the flowers, and you trees!”
“You are quite right!” splashed the brook as it sparkled over its stones. “Come sit down among this moss, dear children, and listen to me. I come from afar; out of a deep, cool, dark rock I gush. Look into my waves, and I will show you the loveliest pictures in my clear mirror, the blue of the sky, the fleecy clouds, bushes, trees, and blossoms; and your very selves, dear children, I draw tenderly into my transparent bosom!”
“Fanchon and Frederic,” said the Stranger Child, looking around with wondrous blissfulness. “Only listen how they all love us! But the redness of evening is rising behind the hills, and the nightingale is calling me home!”
“Oh, but first let us fly a little, as we did yesterday!” begged Frederic.
“Yes,” said Fanchon, “but not quite so high. It makes my head giddy.”
Then the Stranger Child took them each by the hand again, and they went soaring up into the golden purple of the evening sky, while the birds crowded and sang around them.
Among the shining clouds, Frederic saw, as if in wavering flame, beautiful castles all of rubies and other precious stones.
“Look! Look! Fanchon!” he cried, full of rapture. “Look at those splendid palaces! Let us fly along as fast as we can, and we shall soon get to them.”
Fanchon, too, saw the castles, and forgot her fear, and kept looking upward.
“Those are my beloved castles-in-the-air,” the Stranger Child said. “But we must go no farther to-day!”