to the belt of colour which goes nearly
round the walls, on which you see long trains of soldiers, in various
costumes of the old Imperial-City times, going marching along. Worthy
burgomasters, with shrewd, significant faces, ride at their head on
spirited horses, richly caparisoned. The drummers and fifers, and the
Hallebardiers march along so briskly and bravely that you begin to hear
the stirring martial music, and expect them to go tramping out at the
great window yonder on to the market-place--looking at all this, you
would, if you were a draughtsman, set to work and make a pen-and-ink
sketch of that fine stately Burgomaster there, with the strikingly
handsome page in attendance on him. There is always plenty of pens,
ink, and paper on the tables--provided at the public expense for the
merchants' use--so that you would not be able to resist the temptation.

"There would be no objection to your so employing your time, kind
reader; but that was by no means the case with Traugott, the young
merchant, who was continually getting into the most terrible scrapes on
this very account.

"'Write off at once and advise our correspondent in Hamburg of the
day's transactions, Herr Traugott,' said Elias Roos, the head of a
flourishing firm, of which Traugott had just been admitted a partner,
being moreover engaged to Roos's only daughter Christina. Traugott with
some difficulty found a vacant place at the crowded tables, took a
sheet of paper, dipped his pen in the ink, and was just going to begin
with a fine caligraphic flourish, when--as he was rapidly revolving in
his mind what he was going to say--he lifted his eyes mechanically to
the wall above him.

"Now, chance had so ordained matters that he was sitting just in front
of a certain little group of two figures, the sight of which always
caused him a strange, inexplicable sense of sorrow. It represented a
grave-looking, almost sombre man, with a dark, curling beard,
handsomely dressed, riding a black horse, with a page at his bridle
whose masses of hair and richly-tinted costume gave him almost the
appearance of a girl. The face and figure of the man caused Traugott a
certain feeling akin to fear, but a world of sweet presage streamed
forth upon him from the face of the page. Somehow he never could
withdraw his eyes from this couple whenever he happened to look at
them; consequently, instead of writing the Hamburg letter as he ought
to have done, he kept gazing at these