From the broader, but completely neglected road that had hitherto followed the course of the forest stream, and, turning to the right, still pursued its windings deeper into the woods to the sea, a foot-path branched off to the left and led upward, at first between the trunks of huge trees, but gradually through more and more stunted underbrush, which finally dwindled into heather and broom that covered the whole crest of the hill to its highest point, where the men of ancient times, in memory of one of their princes, had reared a huge monument of massive blocks of stone, now covered with thick moss, and partly buried in the earth. It was the spot from which Gotthold, with an unsteady hand, had made the colored sketch he afterwards used for the painting that hung in Frau Wollnow's room.
And now he stood there again, after ten long years--in, the shadow of one of the blocks of stone which protected him from the burning rays of the sun, while before him stretched the landscape with whose wondrous beauty the boy's eyes had never been satiated. Ah! Time had not obliterated a single charm; nay, it seemed as if the hour was expressly adapted to show him the Paradise of his youth in all its magic.
The hour of noon! The brilliant sunlight bathed the tops of the beeches, over which his eyes wandered to emerald meadows and golden cornfields--the meadows and fields of Dollan, which lay like a quiet sunny Eden among the shaded, wood-covered hills that enclosed it on all sides. Amid the meadows and fields, relieved against the darker foliage of the trees in the garden, appeared the straw thatched roofs of the farm buildings, and the tiled roof of the long, low mansion-house, in whose red gable he could distinctly perceive the tiny window of the little room he had occupied with Curt whenever he went to Dollan. What memories that little window evoked! It seemed as if his eyes were fixed upon it by some magic spell, and could scarcely turn away either to the right, where the hills opened and afforded a view of the blue sea upon which the distant white sails glittered like stars, or to the left, to glance over the wide brown moorland, upon which the lonely smithy stood under an ancient oak, the only tree in the shadeless waste, above whose verge towered other wood-crowned heights which closed the view on the land side.
The hour of noon, the hour of the great Pan! Not the faintest breath stirred the shining air; motionless were the dazzling white clouds upon the steel blue vault of the heavens; motionless the tops of the trees, the blossoming bushes, even the long blades of grass. Not a sound disturbed the profound stillness; even the locust, which had chirped among the stones of the giant's monument, was silent, perhaps terrified by the brown serpent, which, with its head upraised and its round glittering eyes fixed steadily upon Gotthold, lay motionless upon one of the masses of rock a few paces off, with the rest of its scaly body buried in a dense mass of heather. He had not noticed it before, and now perceived it with a sort of shudder. It seemed as if the torpor into which Nature had sunk had been embodied; as if the spirit of loneliness and desolation had assumed a material form. Woe betide you when the loneliness of yonder mansion with its neglected garden, the desolation of this remote valley, so far away from all human society, stares at you with those cold, cruel eyes; when you listen in the stillness for a beloved voice, and hear only the blood seething in your temples, and the heavy, anxious throbbing of your heart.
Avaunt, fiend, avaunt!
He raised his staff; the serpent disappeared; when he reached the rock upon which it must have been lying, he could see nothing but the swaying of the flowers through whose closely interwoven roots it was gliding away.
Or was it only an illusion of his excited fancy, and did the flowers bend to the soft breeze that now breathed through the hot air, growing constantly stronger and stronger, so that a rustling and murmuring arose in the forest behind him, the treetops at his feet began to whisper, and at last the cool fresh wind from the sea blew over the panting earth.
The spell was broken; Gotthold again looked at the landscape; but now with the eye of the artist, who is seeking to obtain the best view of his subject.
"I chose the morning light then, if one can call it choice; it was a mistake and I must arrange the atmospheric effect artistically, but the sun should be at a moderate height above the horizon, almost directly over the smithy; that will be about six o'clock, and I can have what I need until eight. I think it will prove a picture which might satisfy others as well as yonder talkative lady."