Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 13

by Unknown

I moved now immediately into my new dwelling, and in a short time was settled. I found a number of things that the late toll-keeper had left behind, among others a splendid red dressing-gown with yellow dots, green slippers, a tasseled cap, and some pipes with long stems. All these things I had wished for when I was still at home, when I always saw our pastor going about so comfortably. The whole day (I had nothing further to do) I sat there on the bench before my house in dressing-gown and cap, smoking tobacco out of the longest pipe that I had found among those left by the late toll-keeper, and looked at the people on the highway as they went to and fro, and drove and rode about. I only wished all the time that people too out of my own village, who always said that nothing would come of me all the days of my life, might come by and see me. The dressing-gown was very becoming to me, and in point of fact all of it pleased me very well. So I sat there and thought of all sorts of things: how the beginning is always hard, how a higher mode of life is nevertheless very comfortable; and secretly came to the decision henceforth to give up all traveling about, to save money, too, like others, and in good time surely to amount to something in the world. In the mean time, however, with all my decisions, cares, and business, I by no manner of means forgot the beautiful lady.

The potatoes and other vegetables that I found in my little garden I threw away, and planted it entirely with the choicest flowers; at which the janitor from the castle, with the big princely nose, who since I lived here often came to me and had become my intimate friend, looked askance and apprehensively at me, and regarded me as one whom sudden fortune had made mad. But I did not allow this to disturb me, for not far from me in the manor garden I heard low voices, among which I thought to recognize that of my beautiful lady, although on account of the thick shrubbery I could see nobody. Then I bound every day a nosegay of the most beautiful flowers that I had, climbed every evening when it was dark over the wall, and placed it on a stone table which stood in the middle of an arbor, and every evening when I brought the new bouquet the old one was gone from the table....

I continually felt as I always feel when spring is at hand,—so restless and glad without knowing why, as if a piece of great good fortune or something else extraordinary awaited me. The hateful accounts, in particular, would no longer get on at all; and when the sunshine through the chestnut-tree before the window fell green-golden upon the figures, and added them up so nimbly from "amount brought forward" to "balance," and then up and down again, very strange thoughts came to me, so that I often became quite confused and actually could not count up to three. For the eight appeared always to me like the stout, tightly laced lady with the broad hat that I knew, and the unlucky seven was wholly like a guide-post always pointing backward, or a gallows. The nine however played the greatest pranks, in that often, before I was aware of it, it stood itself as a six merrily on its head; while the two looked on so cunningly, like an interrogation point; as if it would ask:—"What shall be the outcome of all this in the end, you poor naught? Without her, this slender one-and-all, you will always be nothing!"

Sitting outside before the door, too, no longer pleased me. I took a footstool out with me, in order to make myself more comfortable, and stretched out my feet upon it, and I mended an old parasol of the toll-keeper's and held it against the sun above me, like a Chinese summer-house. But it did not at all avail. It seemed to me as I sat thus, and smoked and speculated, that my legs gradually became longer from very weariness, and my nose grew from idleness, as I looked down on it for hours at a time. And when many a time before daybreak an extra post came by, and I stepped half asleep out into the cool air, and a pretty little face, of which in the dim light only the sparkling eyes were to be seen, bent with curiosity out of the carriage and gave me pleasantly a good-morning, and in the village round about the cocks crew so freshly out over the gently waving grain fields, and between the morning clouds high in the heavens already soared a few too early awakened larks, and the postilion took his post-horn and drove on, and blew and blew—then I stood for a long time still and looked after the coach, and it seemed to me as if nothing else would do, except to go along with them, far, far out into the world.

The nosegays I always placed, in the mean time, as soon as the sun went down, on the stone table in the dim arbor. But that was just it. That was all over now, since that evening; no one troubled himself about them. As often as I, early in the morning, looked after them, the flowers still lay there just as they did the day before, and looked at me in real sorrow with their wilted hanging heads, and the dew-drops standing on them as if they wept. That grieved me very much. I bound no more nosegays. In my garden the weeds might now flourish as they would, and the flowers I let stand and grow until the wind blew away the leaves. My heart was just as waste and wild and disordered....

In these critical times it came to pass that once when I was lying in the window at home and looking gloomily out into the empty air, the lady's-maid from the castle came tripping along the road. When she saw me, she turned quickly toward me and stood still at the window. "His Lordship returned yesterday from his journey," said she briskly. "Is it so?" I replied in astonishment, for for several weeks past I had not concerned myself about anything, and did not even know that his Lordship was away. "Then his daughter, the gracious young lady, has also had, I am sure, a very pleasant time." The lady's-maid looked at me oddly from top to toe, so that I really was forced to consider whether I had not said something stupid. "You don't know anything at all," she finally said, and turned up her little nose. "Now," she continued, "there is going to be a dance and masquerade this evening at the castle in his Lordship's honor. My mistress is also to go in mask, as a flower-girl—do you quite understand?—as a flower-girl. Now my mistress has noticed that you have particularly beautiful flowers in your garden." "That is strange," thought I to myself, "since there are now scarcely any more flowers to be seen on account of the weeds." But she continued: "As my mistress needs beautiful flowers for her costume, but quite fresh ones that have just come out of the flower-bed, you are to bring her some, and wait with them this evening, when it has grown dark, under the great pear-tree in the castle garden. She will come and get the flowers."

I was quite dumbfounded by this news, and in my rapture ran from the window out to the lady's-maid.

"Pah! the nasty dressing-gown!" she cried out when she saw me all at once out-of-doors in my costume. That vexed me. I did not wish to be behind her in gallantry, and made a few pretty motions to catch her and kiss her. But unfortunately the dressing-gown, which was much too long for me, got tangled up at the same time under my feet and I fell my whole length on the ground. When I pulled myself together again the lady's-maid was far away, and I heard her still laughing in the distance; so that she had to hold her sides.

Now, however, I had something to think about and to make me happy. She still thought of me and of my flowers! I went into my garden and quickly pulled all the weeds out of the flower-beds, and threw them high up over my head away into the glistening air, as if I drew out with the roots every bit of evil and melancholy. The roses were again like her mouth; the sky-blue morning-glories like her eyes; the snow-white lily with its sorrowfully drooping head looked quite like her. I laid them all carefully in a little basket together.

It was a still, beautiful evening, with not a cloud in the heavens. A few stars were already out in the sky; from afar came the sound of the Danube over the fields; in the tall trees in the castle garden near me joyfully sang innumerable birds. Ah, I was so happy!