"'Then I must play my last trump,' cried Berger, jumping up. 'Hear, then, you incredulous man, that the house to which I wish to send you owns an angel in the shape of a most lovely girl. She is the sister of your Alexander, and, God be thanked, as yet at a boarding-school in Hamburg. I hate her, for she has caused me infinite trouble. All the mad dreams of my youth revived when I saw her, and worried me like fair ghosts. At last I ran away as soon as I saw her coming on the smooth sand of the beach, with her light straw-hat. Yes, I must tell you; I wrote those sonnets which I read to you the other day, and which I told you I had composed thirty years ago at Heligoland, only last year at Ostend. You were good enough to call them glowing with love, and heaven knows what else--well, I was bewitched by the fair demon, and I wrote them with blood, the blood of my heart. But you will not tell that to anybody?'
"'Why not? Not a soul would believe me.'
"'There you are right And now?'
"'Now I am less inclined than ever. I do not wish to repeat the foolish story of the love affair between a tutor and the daughter of a noble house, which I have read over and over again in so many a novel. And if the girl is really so beautiful and lovely, that----'
"'That even the dry branches put out fresh leaves--what might then happen to the green wood?' interrupted me Berger, laughing aloud. 'Well, then, fall in love! why not? My dear fellow, the book of life, for people like ourselves, has the same title as one of Balzac's novels: Illusions Perdues. Every day only adds a new chapter, and the shorter the book, the better and the more interesting it is. But since it must needs be written, and cannot be written by any other means, it is, after all, immaterial whether we go east or west; we pass through the same experiences here and there. Therefore I say once more: Go to Grenwitz!'
"What could I do? It seemed to me my duty to fulfil the wish of my friend, to whom I owed so much. And then, was not Berger right in saying that it was immaterial whether I went east or west? In fine, I packed my trunks, bade my Mentor farewell, and went across to this island."
CHAPTER III.
Oswald had always lived in the city. His manners, his views, his attachments were all those of a city man. Thus it happened that when he saw himself suddenly, and as if by magic, transferred to the country, he was charmed and almost intoxicated with the unspeakable beauty of the first bright summer days at a beautiful country place. He enjoyed it more than most men. Everything was so new and yet so strangely familiar to him, as when we find ourselves in a country which we fancy we have seen before in a dream. Was the dark blue vault, which rose higher and higher every day, the same sky which hung so sadly and mournfully over the ocean of houses in the great city? Were these sparkling lights the same lonely stars to which he had now and then glanced up as he came from the opera or from a party? Could a summer morning really be so rich in splendor, a summer evening really so soft and almost lascivious? Had he never heard birds sing, that he must now listen forever to their simple piping? Had he never seen flowers, that he must stand and gaze at their bright colors and strange forms without ever being tired? He felt like a person who comes back to life again after a severe illness. The recent past lay behind him, covered with a thick veil; but days long since gone by, memories drowned in an ocean of oblivion, rose once more before his mind's eye like a dazzling, deceiving Fata Morgana. "Why, there is larkspur!" he cried out one of those days, full of happy surprise, as he saw the flower blooming brightly on many a bed of the garden in which he was walking up and down.
"To be sure," replied Bruno, who accompanied him; "have you never seen it before?"
"Yes, long since," murmured the young man, bending down and looking with deep emotion at the fanciful flower. He saw in his memory a little cozy garden near the town wall, where he played about, gathering small stones, flowers, and other rarities, and carried them to a beautiful but pale young woman, who always stroked his head when he came to throw his burden into her lap, and with a mother's patience never tired to answer his thousand questions. Then he had brought her such a flower, too, and the beautiful lady had said: "That is larkspur!" And then she had gazed so long at the flower that the tears had gathered in her eyes, and she had taken him passionately and pressed him to her bosom, and there he must have fallen asleep, tired from playing so long, for he remembered nothing more. The beautiful young lady he knew was his mother; she had died before he was five years old. Who has not experienced it himself, that amid the stir and turmoil of life, where one image continually crowds out another, and we are forever tyrannically held fast by the moment, everything gradually fades away, even what we held dearest upon earth, even the parents to whom we owe our life! Thus Oswald also had almost forgotten that he had ever had a mother; now the simple little flower awakened in him forcibly the memory of the long lost mother. The first weeks which he spent in the solitude of country life recalled to him the first years of his life, for he had never since communed so closely, so intimately, with nature, or beheld her charming face so near by. He remembered now also his father, who had died two years ago in the same isolation in which he had lived, and felt for him now that grateful affection, which, unfortunately, never blooms out fully till those are long gone whom its fragrance would have rejoiced most. He remembered his father, a strange pygmy in form, whom the son at eighteen years already overtopped by more than two feet; an eccentric misanthrope, who was known all over town as the "Old Candidate," and whose wornout black dress coat, in which he appeared winter and summer alike, was familiar to every child in the street. He remembered how the strange, enigmatical man jealously locked up the rich wealth of his learning and his goodness from all the world except from his only son, whom he loved with ineffable affection, whom he nursed and tended with all a mother's tenderness, and for whom even he, the miser, thought nothing too dear.