“God bless you, Marie, now and forever.”
With that he left her.
In a fair November gloaming, the bronze-brown light of the sun is slowly receding from the windows still gleaming singly in high gables; an instant it rests on the slender twin spires of the church, is caught up there by cross and golden wreath, then freed in luminous air, and fades, while the moon lifts a shining disc over the distant, long-flowing lines of the rounded hills.
Yellow, bluish, and purple, the fading tints of the sky are mirrored in the bright, silently running river. Leaves of willow and maple and elder and rose drop from golden crowns and flutter down to the water in tremulous flight, rest on the glittering surface and glide along, under leaning walls and stone steps, into the darkness, beneath low, massive bridges, around palings black with moisture. They catch the glow from the red coal fire in the lighted smithy, are whirled round in the rust-brown eddies by the grinder’s house, then drift away among rushes and leaky boats, lost among sunken barrels and muddy, water-soaked fences.
Blue twilight is spreading a transparent dusk over squares and open markets. In the fountains the water gleams as through a delicate veil, as it runs from wet snake-snouts and drips from bearded dragon-mouths, among fantastic broken curves and slender, serrated vessels. It murmurs gently and trickles coldly; it bubbles softly and drips sharply, making rapidly widening rings on the dark surface of the brimming basin. A breath of wind soughs through the square, while round about the dusky space, a deeper darkness stares from shadowy portals, black window-panes, and dim alleys.
Now the moon is rising and throwing a silvery sheen over roofs and pinnacles, dividing light and shadow into sharp-cut planes. Every carved beam, every flaunting sign, every baluster in the low railing of the porches is etched on houses and walls. The stone lattice-work over the church-doors, St. George with his lance there at the corner, the plant with its leaves here in the window, all stand out like black figures. What a flood of light the moon pours through the wide street, and how it glitters on the water in the river! There are no clouds in the heavens, only a ring like a halo around the moon, and nothing else except myriads of stars.
It was such a night as this at Nürnberg, and in the steep street leading up to the castle, in the house known as von Karndorf’s, a feast was held that same evening. The guests were sitting around the table, merry, and full of food and drink. All but one were men who had left youth behind, and this one was but eighteen years. He wore no periwig, but his own hair was luxuriant enough, long, golden, and curly. His face was fair as a girl’s, white and red, and his eyes were large, blue, and serene. They called him the golden Remigius, golden not only because of his hair, but because of his great wealth. For all his youth, he was the richest nobleman in the Bavarian forest—for he hailed from the Bavarian forest.
They were speaking of female loveliness, these gay gentlemen around the groaning board, and they all agreed that when they were young the world was swarming with beauties, beside whom those who laid claim to the name in these days were as nothing at all.
“But who knew the pearl among them all?” asked a chubby, red-faced man with tiny, sparkling eyes. “Who ever saw Dorothea von Falkenstein of the Falkensteiners of Harzen? She was red as a rose and white as a lamb. She could clasp her waist round with her two hands and have an inch to spare, and she could walk on larks’ eggs without crushing them, so light of foot was she. But she was none of your scrawny chicks for all that; she was as plump as a swan swimming in a lake, and firm as a roe-deer running in the forest.”
They drank to her.