ld tree itself.

Nevertheless, he could not remain. Why not? Ask the willow tree, ask
the blooming elder! And therefore he bade farewell to his master in
Nuremberg, and journeyed onward.

To no one did he speak of Joanna--in his secret heart he hid his
sorrow; and he thought of the deep meaning in the old childish story
of the two cakes. Now he understood why the man had a bitter almond in
his breast--he himself felt the bitterness of it; and Joanna, who was
always so gentle and kind, was typified by the honey-cake. The strap
of his knapsack seemed so tight across his chest that he could
scarcely breathe; he loosened it, but was not relieved. He saw but
half the world around him; the other half he carried about him, and
within himself. And thus it stood with him.

Not till he came in sight of the high mountains did the world appear
freer to him; and now his thoughts were turned without, and tears came
into his eyes.

The Alps appeared to him as the folded wings of the earth; how if they
were to unfold themselves, and display their variegated pictures of
black woods, foaming waters, clouds, and masses of snow? At the last
day, he thought, the world will lift up its great wings, and mount
upwards towards the sky, and burst like a soap-bubble in the glance of
the Highest!

"Ah," sighed he, "that the Last Day were come!"

Silently he wandered through the land, that seemed to him as an
orchard covered with soft turf. From the wooden balconies of the
houses the girls who sat busy with their lace-making nodded at him;
the summits of the mountains glowed in the red sun of the evening;
and when he saw the green lakes gleaming among the dark trees, he
thought of the coast by the Bay of Kjoege, and there was a longing in
his bosom, but it was pain no more.

There where the Rhine rolls onward like a great billow, and bursts,
and is changed into snow-white, gleaming, cloud-like masses, as if
clouds were being created there, with the rainbow fluttering like a
loose band above them; there he thought of the water-mill at Kjoege,
with its rushing, foaming water.

Gladly would he have remained in the quiet Rhenish town, but here too
were too many elder trees and willows, and therefore he journeyed on,
over the high, mighty mountains, through shattered walls of rock, and
on roads that clung like swallows' nests to the mountain-side. The
waters foamed on in the depths, the clouds were below him, and he
strode on over thistles, A