Spring smiled cheerfully on the country; the flowering shrubs and the beds in the garden combined their colors brilliantly; this year, starlings actually sang in Mr. Hahn's cages, and rananculi and other wild flowers in the meadow in front of Mr. Hummel's garden rejoiced in the moist warmth. It was a pleasant time for our academical citizens; the quarrels of the winter were settled, the beadles put on their night-caps at ten o'clock, and the lectures of the Professors went on smoothly and pleasantly.
The Rector also enjoyed the repose, and he needed it, for Ilse saw with anxiety that his cheeks were thinner, and that in the evening a lassitude came over him that formerly he had not known.
"He ought to rest from his work a few months," advised the physician; "that will lend him new life and strength for years to come; every man of studious habits requires such relaxation two or three times during his life; traveling would be the best thing."
Felix laughed, but his wife kept this counsel faithfully in mind, and endeavored, meanwhile, as often as possible, to draw her husband from his books into the air. She put her arm within his and took him into the wood and green meadows; she pointed out to him the butterflies that fluttered over the wild flowers, and the flights of birds that enjoyed themselves in the warm sun-light.
"Now is the time for that restlessness of which you once told me. Have you not noticed it?"
"Yes," said the Professor, "and if you will go with me, we will, at least in fancy, travel together into foreign parts."
"Will you take me with you?" exclaimed Ilse, delighted. "I am like the woodchuck: I only know the hole from which my master brought me, and the cover of the cage in which I am fed. If I could have my wish, I should like to see snow-capped peaks rising high above the clouds, and abysses of immeasurable depths. But from the mountains I would descend to olive-trees and oranges. For years I have heard of the men who have lived there, and have seen how your heart leaps for joy whenever you speak of the blue ocean and of the grandeur of the old cities. I would gladly see all this, and hear you talk and feel the pleasure which you would have in revisiting the scenes so dear to you."
"Very well," said the Professor; "to the Alps and then to Naples; but in passing I must work a few weeks at Florence upon Tacitus."
"Ah!" thought Ilse, "there is the manuscript again."
They were sitting under a large oak, one of the giants of the Middle Ages, that towered above the new generation of trees in the forest, as the cupola of St Peter's does above the towers and roofs of the Holy City.