'Tell me how he is, and if he is not angry with me for staying away so long.'
Pluizer shrugged his shoulders. 'Even if I could tell you, what good would it do you?'
But the spring still called him, louder and louder. Night after night he dreamed of the dark green moss and the downs, and the sunbeams falling through the fine, fresh verdure.
'I can bear it no longer,' thought Johannes. 'I cannot stay.'
And as he could not sleep he softly got out of bed, went to the window, and looked out on the night. He saw the drowsy, fleecy clouds slowly sailing beneath the full moon, peacefully floating in a sea of pale light. He thought of the downs far away, sleeping through the warm night; how beautiful it must be in the low woods where none of the baby leaves would be stirring, and where the air was smelling of damp moss and young birch sprouts! He fancied he could hear the rising chorus of frogs, sounding mysteriously from afar over the meadows, and the pipe of the only bird which accompanies the solemn stillness—which begins its song with such soft lament and breaks off so suddenly that the silence seems more still than before. And it called to him—everything called to him. He bowed his head on the window-sill and sobbed in his sleeve.
'I cannot, I cannot bear it! I shall die soon, if I do not get away!'
When Pluizer came to call him next day he was still sitting by the window, where he had fallen asleep with his head on his arm.
The days went by, longer and warmer, and still there was no change. But Johannes did not die, and had to bear his troubles.
One morning Doctor Cypher said to him—
'Come with me, Johannes; I have to visit a sick man.'