both grew angry,
and I actually thought the Signor would have liked to peck me with his
hooked beak, until the maids, who had been listening to our confusion
of tongues, laughed heartily at us. I put down my knife and fork and
went out of doors; for in this strange land I, with my German tongue,
seemed to have sunk down fathoms deep into the sea, where all sorts
of unfamiliar, crawling creatures were gliding about me, peopling the
solitude and glaring and snapping at me.

Outside, the summer night was warm and inviting. From the distant
vineyards a laborer's song now and then fell on the ear; there was
lightning low on the horizon, and the landscape seemed to tremble and
whisper in the moonlight. Sometimes I thought I perceived a tall,
dim figure gliding behind the hazel hedge in front of the house and
peeping through the twigs, and then all would be motionless. Suddenly
Herr Guido appeared on the balcony above me. He did not see me, and
began to play with great skill on a zither which he must have found in
the house, singing to it like a nightingale:

"When the yearning heart is stilled
As in dreams, the forest sighing,
To the listening earth replying,
Tells the thoughts with which 'twas filled:
Days long vanished, soothing sorrow--
From the Past a light they borrow,
And the heart is gently thrilled."

I do not know whether he sang any more, for I had stretched myself on
a bench outside the door, and I fell asleep in the warm air from sheer
exhaustion.

A couple of hours must have passed, when I was roused by the winding
of a post-horn, which sounded merrily in my dreams for a while before
I fully recovered consciousness. At last I sprang up; day was
already dawning on the mountains, and I felt through all my limbs the
freshness of the morning. Then it occurred to me that by this time we
ought to be far on our way. "Aha!" I thought, "now it is my turn to
laugh. How Herr Guido will shake his sleepy, curly head when he hears
me outside!" So I went close beneath the window in the little garden
at the back of the house, stretched my limbs well in the morning air,
and sang merrily--

"If the cricket's chirp we hear,
Then be sure the day is near;
When the sun is rising--then
'Tis good to go to asleep again."

The window of the room where my masters were stood open, but all
within was quiet; the breeze alone rustled the leaves of the vine that
clambered into the window itself. "What