ra!"
But I went home, weeping and lamenting because "the Prince Elector had
abdicated!" My mother tried hard to comfort me, but I would hear
nothing. I knew what I knew, and went weeping to bed, and in the night
dreamed that the world had come to an end--that all the fair flower
gardens and green meadows were taken up from the ground and rolled away,
like carpets; that a beadle climbed up on a high ladder and took down
the sun, and that the tailor Kilian stood by and said to himself, "I
must go home and dress myself neatly, for I am dead and am to be buried
this afternoon." And it grew darker and darker--a few stars glimmered
meagrely on high, and these too, at length, fell down like yellow leaves
in autumn; one by one all men vanished, and I, poor child, wandered
around in anguish, and finally found myself before the willow fence of a
deserted farmhouse, where I saw a man digging up the earth with a spade,
and near him an ugly, spiteful-looking woman, who held something in her
apron like a human head--but it was the moon, and she laid it carefully
in the open grave--and behind me stood the Palatine invalid, sighing,
and spelling out "The Prince Elector has abdicated."

When I awoke the sun shone as usual through the window, there was a
sound of drums in the street, and as I entered the sitting-room and said
"good morning" to my father, who was sitting in his white dressing-gown,
I heard the little light-footed barber, as he dressed his hair, narrate
very minutely that allegiance would be sworn to the Grande Duke Joachim
that morning at the City Hall. I heard, too, that the new ruler was of
excellent family, that he had married the sister of the Emperor
Napoleon, and was really a very respectable man; that he wore his
beautiful black hair in flowing locks, that he would shortly make his
entrance into the town, and, in fine, that he was sure to please all the
ladies. Meanwhile the drumming in the streets continued, and I went out
before the house-door and looked at the French troops marching in that
joyous people of glory, who, singing and playing, swept over the world,
the serious and yet merry-faced grenadiers, the bear-skin shakoes, the
tri-colored cockades, the glittering bayonets, the _voltigeurs_, full of
vivacity and _point d'honneur_, and the omnipotent giant-like
silver-laced tambour major, who could cast his _baton_ with a gilded
head as high as the first story, and his eyes even to the second, where
also there