utiful gardens with which the place abounds. I have now been long
in these southern lands, but I cannot but believe that the dreams which
transport me nightly back to my German home are the cause for my feeling
everything here so strange and astonishing. At all events, every morning
when I wake I wonder anew, as if I were only just arrived. So I was
walking then, like one infatuated, among the aloe trees, which were
scattered among the laurels and oleanders. Suddenly a cry sounded near
me, and a slender girl, dressed in white, fled into my arms, fainting,
while her companions dispersed past us in every direction. A soldier
can always tolerably soon gather his senses together, and I speedily
perceived a furious bull was pursuing the beautiful maiden. I threw
her quickly over a thickly planted hedge, and followed her myself, upon
which the beast, blind with rage, passed us by, and I have heard no more
of it since, except that some young knights in an adjacent courtyard had
been making a trial with it previous to a bull-fight, and that it was on
this account that it had broken so furiously through the gardens.

"I was now standing quite alone, with the fainting lady in my arms, and
she was so wonderfully beautiful to look at that I have never in my life
felt happier than I then did, and also never sadder. At last I laid
her down on the turf, and sprinkled her angelic brow, with water from a
neighboring little fountain. And so she came to herself again, and when
she opened her bright and lovely eyes I thought I could imagine how the
glorified spirits must feel in heaven.

"She thanked me with graceful and courteous words, and called me her
knight; but in my state of enchantment I could not utter a syllable, and
she must have almost thought me dumb. At length my speech returned, and
the prayer at once was breathed forth from my heart, that the sweet lady
would often again allow me to see her in this garden; for that in a few
weeks the service of the emperor would drive me into the burning land
of Africa, and that until then she should vouchsafe me the happiness
of beholding her. She looked at me half smiling, half sadly, and said,
'Yes.' And she has kept her word and has appeared almost daily, without
our having yet spoken much to each other. For although she has been
sometimes quite alone, I could never begin any other topic but that of
the happiness of walking by her side. Often she has sung to me, and I
have sung to her a