All turned their heads to listen. "Bravo! Bravissimo! A delicious idea!" cried the merry connoisseur of Art, running from one to another to arrange a rustic divertissement, as he called it. He made a beginning himself by leading out the lady who had played the guitar in the arbor. Thereupon he began to dance with extraordinary artistic skill, and describe all sorts of letters on the grass with the points of his toes, really trilling with his feet, and now and then jumping pretty high in the air. But he soon had enough of it, for he was rather corpulent. His jumps grew fewer and clumsier, until at last he withdrew from the circle, puffing violently, and mopping the moisture from his forehead with a snowy pocket-handkerchief. Meanwhile, the young man, who had regained his composure, brought from the inn some castanets, and before I was aware all were dancing merrily beneath the trees. The sun had set, but the crimson sky in the west cast bright reflections among the shadows, and upon the old walls and the half-buried columns covered with ivy in the depths of the garden, while below the vineyards we could see the Eternal City bathed in the evening glow. The dance in the still, clear air was charming, and my heart within me laughed to see how the slender girls and the lady's-maid glided among the trees with arms upraised like heathen wood-nymphs, and kept time to the music with their castanets. At last I could no longer restrain myself; I joined their ranks, and danced away merrily, still fiddling all the time.
I had been hopping about thus for some minutes, not noticing that the others were beginning to be tired and were dropping out of the dance, when I felt some one twitch me by the coat-tail. It was the lady's-maid. "Don't be a fool," she said under her breath; "you are jumping about like a kid! Read your note, and come soon; the beautiful young Countess awaits you." She slipped out of the garden in the twilight and vanished among the vineyards.
My heart beat fast; I longed to follow her. Fortunately, a waiter was just lighting the lantern over the garden gate. I took out my note, which contained a somewhat rudely penciled plan of the gate and the streets leading to it, just as I had been directed by the lady's-maid, and in addition the words "Eleven o'clock, at the little door."
Two long hours to wait! Nevertheless I should have set out immediately, for I could not stay still, had not the painter, who had brought me hither, rushed up. "Did you speak to the girl?" he asked. "I cannot see her now. It was the German Countess's maid." "Hush, hush!" I replied; "the Countess is still in Rome." "So much the better," said the painter; "come then and drink her health." And in spite of all I could say he forced me to return to the garden with him.
It looked quite deserted. The merry company had departed, and were sauntering toward Rome, each lad with his lass upon his arm. We could hear them talking and laughing among the vineyards in the quiet evening, until at last their voices died away in the valley below, lost in the rustling of the trees and the murmur of the stream. I stayed with my painter and Herr Eckbrecht, which was the name of the other young painter who had been quarreling with the maid. The moon shone brilliantly through the tall, dark evergreens; a candle on the table before us flickered in the breeze and gleamed over the wine spilled copiously around it. I had to sit down with my companions, and my painter chatted with me about my native village, my travels, and my plans for the future. Herr Eckbrecht had seated upon his knee the pretty girl who had brought us our wine, and was teaching her the accompaniment of a song on the guitar. Her slender fingers soon picked out the correct chords, and they sang together an Italian song; first he sang a verse, and then the girl sang the next; it sounded deliciously, in the clear, bright evening. When the girl was called away, Herr Eckbrecht, taking no further notice of us, leaned back on his bench with his feet on a low stool and played and sang many an exquisite song. The stars glittered; the landscape turned to silver in the moonlight; I thought of the Lady fair, and of my far-off home, and quite forgot the painter at my side. Herr Eckbrecht had occasionally to tune his instrument; whereat he grew downright angry, and at last he screwed a string so tight that it broke, whereupon he tossed aside the guitar and sprang to his feet, noticing for the first time that my painter had laid his head on his arm upon the table and was fast asleep. He hastily wrapped around him a white cloak which hung on a bough near by, then suddenly paused, glanced keenly at my painter, and then at me several times, then seated himself on the table directly in front of me, cleared his throat, settled his cravat, and instantly began to hold forth to me. "Beloved hearer and fellow-countryman," he said, "since the bottles are nearly empty, and morality is indisputably the first duty of a citizen when the virtues are on the wane, I feel myself moved, out of sympathy for a fellow-countryman, to present for your consideration a few moral axioms. It might be supposed," he went on, "that you are a mere youth, whereas your coat has evidently seen its best years; it might be supposed that you had leaped about like a satyr; nay, some might maintain that you are a vagabond, because you are out here in the country and play the fiddle; but I am influenced by no such superficial considerations; I form my judgment on your delicately chiseled nose; I take you for a strolling genius." His ambiguous phrases irritated me; I was about to retort sharply. But he gave me no chance to speak. "Observe," he said, "how you are puffed up by a modicum of praise. Retire within yourself and ponder upon your perilous vocation. We geniuses—for I am one too—care as little for the world as it cares for us; without any ado, in the seven-league boots which we bring into the world with us, we stride on directly into eternity. A most lamentable, inconvenient straddling position this—one leg in the future, where nothing is to be discerned but the rosy morn and the faces of future children, the other leg still in the middle of Rome, in the Piazza del Popolo, where the entire present century would fain seize the opportunity to advance, and clings to the boot tight enough to pull the leg off! And then all this restlessness, wine-bibbing, and hunger solely for an immortal eternity! And look you at my comrade there on the bench, another genius; his time hangs heavy on his hands here and now, what under heaven is he to do in eternity? Yes, my highly-esteemed comrade, you and I and the sun rose early together this morning, and have pondered and painted all day long, and it was all beautiful—and now the drowsy night passes its furred sleeve over the world and wipes out all the colors." He kept on talking for a long while, his hair all disheveled with dancing and drinking, and his face looking deadly pale in the moonlight.
But I was seized with a horror of him and of his wild talk, and when he turned and addressed the sleeping painter I took advantage of the opportunity and slipped round the table, without being perceived by him, and out of the garden. Thence, alone and glad at heart, I descended through the vine-trellises into the wide moonlit valley.
The clocks in the city were striking ten. Behind me, in the quiet night, I still heard an occasional note of the guitar, and at times the voices of the two painters, going home at last, were audible. I ran on as quickly as possible, that they might not overtake me.
At the city-gate I turned into the street on the right hand, and hurried on with a throbbing heart among the silent houses and gardens. To my amazement, I suddenly found myself in the very Square with the fountain, for which, by daylight, I had vainly searched. There stood the solitary summer-house again in the glorious moonlight, and again the Lady fair was singing the same Italian song as on the evening before. In an ecstasy I tried first the low door, then the house door, and at last the big garden gate, but all were locked. Then first it occurred to me that eleven had not yet struck. I was irritated by the slow flight of time, but good manners forbade my climbing over the garden gate as I had done yesterday. Therefore I paced the lonely Square to and fro for a while, and at last again seated myself upon the basin of the fountain and resigned myself to meditation and calm expectancy.
The stars twinkled in the skies; the Square was quiet and deserted; I listened with delight to the song of the Lady fair, as it mingled with the ripple of the fountain. All at once I perceived a white figure approach from the opposite side of the Square and go directly toward the little garden door. I peered eagerly through the dazzling moonlight—it was the queer painter in his white cloak. He drew forth a key quickly, unlocked the door, and, before I knew it, was within the garden.
I had from the first entertained a special dislike of this painter on account of his nonsensical talk. But now I fell into a rage with him. "The low fellow is certainly intoxicated again," I thought; "he has got the key from the maid, and intends to surprise, and perhaps to assault, the Lady fair." And I rushed precipitately through the low door, which was still open, into the garden.