became gradually a sort of nourishment and support, as it
grew more clear and fond. Even after his religious belief, for want of the
due confirmation, had almost died away, or yielded to his Moorish master's
commands, yet the recollection of childish years came in its place,
growing and strengthening the more the longer his captivity endured. In
his master's train did this youth visit first Mecca, which followers of
the Prophet consider holy, and finally also Jerusalem itself. In the
latter place, which, so many years before, he and his companions had
ignorantly set out to reach, he now was struck with painful wonder, both
at all things there, and at himself. Nothing more beautiful or holy was
there here than elsewhere. The fields, the woods, and the hut where he was
born were, in his mind, fairer far than this pale, scattered city, with
its deep, dark valleys of tombs, into which the gray Desert crept. Almost
a scorn of all beliefs flashed upon him as he saw the dusty pilgrims
prostrate around a piece of silent stone in the church of the Sepulchre,
while the turbaned faces of the Moslem sneered behind. Only there still
abode in his heart _one_ deep holy Thought, which seemed alone to contain
many others unknown--the thought of that one place on earth which had been
the source to him of pure feelings, and where he had once been so near to
some different beginning of life. It appeared to him that _it_ indeed was
worthy to make a pilgrimage to, and that, if he could again return
thither, he should from it behold the true opening into things which were
at present to him dead and unintelligible. The last hope of his better
nature had, as it were, passed unnoticed over his head, and now shone far
behind, instead of in the airy future; and thus be remembered how, long
ago, on their childish adventure, he had seen with misgiving the Eastern
morning sun before them renew its splendour over again in the West.

"At last, accordingly, this same wanderer did escape from thraldom, and
come back to his native Germany. On reaching the place where his father's
little hut had stood, by the side of the clear forest stream, which he
remembered well, yet he found it gone, to the very threshold-posts. The
clear stream ran past still under the old tree roots, and the entrance
into the wood was there; but nothing remained of the dwelling whence he
had stolen forth in the early morning to join the children's march, before
its blue smoke had rise