I still took my flowers every day, when the sun had set, to the marble table in the dim arbor. But since that evening all had been over. Not a soul took any notice of them, and when I went to look after them early the next morning, there they lay as I had left them, gazing sadly at me with their heads hanging, and the dew-drops glistening upon their fading petals as if they were weeping. This distressed me, and I plucked no more flowers. I let the weeds grow in my garden as they pleased, and the flowers stayed on their stalks until the wind blew them away. Within me there were the same desolation and neglect.
In this critical state of affairs it happened once that, as I was leaning out of my window gazing dully into vacancy, the lady's-maid from the castle came tripping across the road. When she saw me she came and stood just outside the window. "His Grace returned from his travels yesterday," she remarked, hurriedly. "Indeed!" I said, surprised, for I had taken no interest in anything for several weeks, and did not even know that his Grace had been traveling. "Then his lovely daughter will be very glad." The maid looked at me with a strange expression of face, so that I began to wonder whether I had said anything especially stupid. "He knows absolutely nothing!" she said at last, turning up her little nose. "Well," she resumed, "there is to be a ball and masquerade this evening at the castle in honor of his Grace. My lady is to be dressed as a flower-girl—understand, as a flower-girl. And she has noticed that you have particularly pretty flowers in your garden." "That's strange," I thought to myself; "there is hardly a flower to be seen there for the weeds!" But she continued: "And since my lady needs perfectly fresh flowers for her costume, you are to bring her some this evening, and wait under the big pear-tree in the castle garden when it is dark until she comes for the flowers herself."
I was completely dazed with joy at this intelligence, and in my rapture I leaped out of the window and ran after the maid.
"Ugh, what an ugly dressing-gown!" she exclaimed, when she saw me with my fluttering robe in the open air. This vexed me, but, not to be behindhand in gallantry, I capered gaily after her to give her a kiss. Unluckily, my feet became entangled in my dressing-gown, which was much too long for me, and I fell flat on the ground. When I had picked myself up the maid was gone, and I heard her in the distance laughing fit to kill herself.
Now I had delightful food for my reflections. After all, she still remembered me and my flowers! I went into my garden and hastily tore up all the weeds from the beds, throwing them high above my head into the sunlit air, as if with the roots I were eradicating all melancholy and annoyance from my life. Once more the roses were like her lips, the sky-blue convolvulus was like her eyes, the snowy lily with its pensive, drooping head was her very image. I put them all tenderly in a little basket; the evening was calm and lovely, not a speck of a cloud in the sky. Here and there a star appeared; the murmur of the Danube was heard afar over the meadows; in the tall trees of the castle garden countless birds were twittering to one another merrily. Ah, I was so happy!
When at last night came I took my basket on my arm and set out for the large garden. The flowers in the little basket looked so gay, white, red, blue, and smelled so sweet, that my very heart laughed when I peeped in at them.
Filled with joyous thoughts, I walked in the lovely moonlight over the trim paths strewn with gravel, across the little white bridge, beneath which the swans were sleeping on the bosom of the water, and past the pretty arbors and summer-houses. I soon found the big pear-tree; it was the same under which, while I was gardener's boy, I used to lie on sultry afternoons.
All around me here was dark and lonely. A tall aspen quivered and kept whispering with its silver leaves. The music from the castle was heard at intervals, and now and then there were voices in the garden; sometimes they passed quite near me, and then all would be still again.
My heart beat fast. I had a strange uncomfortable sensation as if I were a robber. I stood for a long time stock-still, leaning against the tree and listening; but when no one appeared I could bear it no longer. I hung my basket on my arm and clambered up into the pear-tree to breathe a purer air.
The music of the dance floated up to me over the tree-tops. I overlooked the entire garden and gazed directly into the brilliantly illuminated windows of the castle. Chandeliers glittered there like galaxies of stars; a multitude of gaily-dressed gentlemen and ladies wandered and waltzed and whirled about unrecognizable, like the gay figures of a magic-lantern; at times some of them leaned out of the windows and looked down into the garden. In front of the castle the brilliant light gilded the grass, the shrubbery, and the trees, so that the flowers and the birds seemed to be aroused by it. All around and below me, however, the garden lay black and still.