"I wander on, in God confiding,
For all are His, wood, field, and fell;
O'er earth and skies He, still presiding,
For me will order all things well."
As I was looking around, a fine traveling-carriage drove along very near me; it had probably been just behind me for some time without my perceiving it, so filled with melody had I been, for it was going quite slowly, and two elegant ladies had their heads out of the window, listening. One was especially beautiful, and younger than the other, but both pleased me extremely. When I stopped singing the elder ordered the coachman to stop his horses, and accosted me with great condescension: "Aha, my merry lad, you know how to sing very pretty songs!" I, nothing loath, replied, "Please Your Grace, I know some far prettier." "And where are you going so early in the morning?" she asked. I was ashamed to confess that I did not myself know, and so I said, boldly, "To Vienna." The two ladies then talked together in a strange tongue which I did not understand. The younger shook her head several times, but the other only laughed, and finally called to me, "Jump up behind; we too are going to Vienna." Who more ready than I! I made my best bow, and sprang up behind the carriage, the coachman cracked his whip, and away we bowled along the smooth road so swiftly that the wind whistled in my ears.
Behind me vanished my native village with its gardens and church-tower, before me appeared fresh villages, castles, and mountains, beneath me on either side the meadows in the tender green of spring flew past, and above me countless larks were soaring in the blue air. I was ashamed to shout aloud, but I exulted inwardly, and shuffled about so on the foot-board behind the carriage that I well-nigh lost my fiddle from under my arm. But when the sun rose higher in the sky, while heavy, white, noonday clouds gathered on the horizon, and the air hung sultry and still above the gently-waving grain, I could not but remember my village and my father, and our mill, and how cool and comfortable it was beside the shady mill-pool, and how far, far away from me it all was. And the most curious sensation overcame me; I felt as if I must turn and run back; but I stuck my fiddle between my coat and my vest, settled myself on the foot-board, and went to sleep.
When I opened my eyes again, the carriage was standing beneath tall linden-trees, on the other side of which a broad flight of steps led between columns into a magnificent castle. Through the trees beyond I saw the towers of Vienna. The ladies, it appeared, had left the carriage, and the horses had been unharnessed. I was startled to find myself alone, and I hurried into the castle. As I did so I heard some one at a window above laughing.
An odd time I had in this castle. First, as soon as I found myself in the cool, spacious vestibule, some one tapped me on the shoulder with a stick. I turned quickly about, and there stood a tall gentleman in state apparel, with a broad bandolier of silk and gold crossing his breast from his shoulder to his hip, a staff in his hand, gilded at the top, and an extraordinarily large Roman nose; he strutted up to me, swelling like a ruled-up turkey-cock, and asked me what I wanted there. I was taken entirely aback, and in my confusion was unable to utter a word. Several servants passed, going up and down the staircase; they said nothing, but eyed me superciliously. Then a lady's-maid appeared; she came up to me, declared that I was a charming young fellow, and that her mistress had sent to ask me if I did not want a place as gardener's boy. I put my hand in my pocket—the few coins I had possessed were gone. They must have been jerked out by my shuffling on the foot-board behind the carriage. I had nothing to depend upon save my skill with the fiddle, for which the gentleman with the staff, as he informed me in passing, would not give a farthing. Therefore, in my distress, I said "yes" to the maid, keeping my eyes fixed the while upon the portentous figure pacing the hall to and fro like the pendulum of a clock in a church-tower, appearing from the background with imposing majesty and with unfailing regularity. At last a gardener came, muttering something about boors and vagabonds, and led me off to the garden, preaching me a long sermon on the way about my being diligent and industrious and never loitering about the world any more, and how, if I would give up all my idle and foolish ways, I might come to some good in the end. There was a great deal of exhortation in this strain, very good and useful, but I have since forgotten it nearly all. In fact, I really hardly know how it all came about; I went on saying "yes" to everything, and I felt like a bird with its wings clipped. But, thank God, in the end I was earning my living!
I found life delightful in that garden. I had a hot dinner every day and plenty of it, and more money than I needed for my glass of wine, only, unfortunately, I had quite a deal to do. The pavilions, and arbors, and long green walks delighted me, if I could only have sauntered about and talked pleasantly like the gentlemen and ladies who came there every day. Whenever the gardener was away and I was alone, I took out my short tobacco-pipe, sat down, and thought of all the beautiful, polite things with which I could have entertained that lovely young lady who had brought me to the castle, had I been a cavalier walking beside her. Or on sultry afternoons I lay on my back on the grass, when all was so quiet that you could hear the bees humming, and I gazed up at the clouds sailing away toward my native village, and around me at the waving grass and flowers, and thought of the lovely lady; and it sometimes chanced that I really saw her in the distance walking in the garden, with her guitar or a book, tall and beautiful as an angel, and I was only half conscious whether I were awake or dreaming.
Thus, once as I was passing a summer-house on my way to work, I was singing to myself—
"I gaze around me, going
By forest, dale, and lea,
O'er heights where streams are flowing,
My every thought bestowing,
Ah, Lady fair, on thee!"—
when, through the half-opened lattice of the cool, dark summer-house buried amid flowers, I saw the sparkle of a pair of beautiful, youthful eyes. I was so startled that I could not finish my song, but passed on to my work without looking round.
In the evening—it was Saturday, and, in joyous anticipation of the coming Sunday, I was standing, fiddle in hand, at the window of the gardener's house, still thinking of the sparkling eyes—the lady's-maid came tripping through the twilight—"The gracious Lady fair sends you this to drink her health, and a 'Good-Night' besides!" And in a twinkling she put a flask of wine on the window-sill and vanished among the flowers and shrubs like a lizard.