Such music at such an hour would have charmed Oswald even if he had not suspected who the singer was. But now that he knew there was no one else who could sing here but the beautiful girl, before whom he had that night bowed his soul in adoration as before an apparition from on high, at seeing whom he had felt as if a new revelation was vouchsafed to him--now it touched the innermost chords of his heart, and he felt as if he must seek words to give vent to the overwhelming impression which he could not otherwise master. He rose like a drunken man from his seat at the window, he went to the table and wrote in wild, incoherent words, which gradually arranged themselves and finally assumed the shape of a sonnet. He locked it up carefully and went back to the window. The moon and the stars were hid behind a dark storm-cloud, which had risen behind them and now overhung that part of the heavens. The song had ceased and the night wind alone sang in the trees.
He closed the window and went to his couch. A heavy sleep fell upon him, disturbed by anxious dreams. Now he was in a terrible fire, and now he was to be torn by wild beasts; then again he felt that indescribable anguish which seems to be a horror coming down to us from another world, but always at the moment of greatest need an angel appeared at his side and stretched a protecting hand over him, and this angel bore the features of--Melitta.
CHAPTER XV.
As Oswald was looking for something among the papers on his writing-table, on the following morning, he came upon a note, which he had overlooked the night before. He recognized at once the handwriting, which was as problematic as the writer, with its now bold and grand, now scribbled and confused characters. Oldenburg wrote:--
"I have just received information which compels me to start immediately on a distant journey, which may be extended I know not how long. Certainly not less than a week. I write these lines to drop them at Grenwitz, if I should not see you, which I would regret very much, as I have much to tell you. I take our Czika with me, as the solitude does not seem to me a safe place for her during my absence. I shall certainly be back for the day appointed by the gypsy woman. Until then, farewell.
"In great haste, and with still greater friendship,
"A. O."
Oswald was strangely impressed by this letter, for that divining power which plays so prominent a part in matters of the heart, made him at once suspect some connection between this sudden departure of Oldenburg and Melitta's departure. Whether much that he heard about the relations existing between the two appeared to him now in a new light since Melitta's recital, or whether it was merely the vagueness of Oldenburg's statement--enough, Oswald resented it as a kind of insult, that he was continually encountering riddles in that direction. He determined to go across to Berkow this very day, and to see if old Baumann had a letter for him from Melitta.
Then his thoughts turned into another channel when his eye fell upon the verses he had written the night before. He smiled now as he read them over. "There your wretched imagination has played you another trick," he said to himself. "You have only to hear of a pretty girl who is to marry somebody else and not your highness, and you have a paroxysm of pity with the girl and a paroxysm of hate against the man. And then you have only to see the girl, and to find that she has large bright eyes, and looks more attractive than half-grown girls generally do, and a boy has only to tell you stories about this half-grown girl, and you are forced to write miserable verses like these, which I would put instantly in the fire if we were not unfortunately in the dog-days."
But Oswald held no auto da fe, although the light of a candle would have done him the same service, but put the paper away again in his desk.