obstacles are removed. I take a private opportunity to be the first to
write you the good news. Come, hasten back. It is so lonely here, and
I can scarcely bear to live since you left us. Aurelia."

As I read, my eyes grew dim with rapture, alarm, and ineffable
delight. I was ashamed in presence of the old woman, who began to
smirk and wink odiously, and I flew like an arrow to the loneliest
nook of the garden. There I threw myself on the grass beneath the
hazel-bushes and read the note again, repeating the words by heart,
and then re-reading them over and over, while the sunlight danced
between the leaves upon the letters, so that they were blended and
blurred before my eyes like golden and bright-green and crimson
blossoms. "Is she not married, then?" I thought; "was that young
officer her brother, perhaps, or is he dead, or am I crazy, or--but no
matter!" I exclaimed at last, leaping to my feet. "It is clear enough,
she loves me! she loves me!"

When I crept out of the shrubbery the sun was near its setting. The
heavens were red, the birds were singing merrily in the woods,
the valleys were full of a golden sheen, but in my heart all was a
thousand times more beautiful and more glad.

I shouted to them in the castle to serve my supper out in the garden.
The old woman, the grim old man, the maids--I made them all come and
sit at table with me under the trees. I brought out my fiddle and
played, and ate and drank between-whiles. Then they all grew merry;
the old man smoothed the grim wrinkles out of his face, and emptied
glass after glass, the old woman chattered away--heaven knows about
what, and the maids began to dance together on the green-sward. At
last the pale student approached inquisitively, cast a scornful glance
at the party, and was about to pass on with great dignity. But I
sprang up in a twinkling, and, before he knew what I was about,
seized him by his long surtout and waltzed merrily round with him.
He actually began to try to dance after the latest and most approved
fashion, and footed it so nimbly that the moisture stood in beads upon
his forehead, his long coat flew round like a wheel, and he looked
at me so strangely withal, and his eyes rolled so, that I began to be
really afraid of him, and suddenly released him.

The old woman was very curious to know the contents of the note,
and why I was so very merry of a sudden. But the matter was far too
intricate for me to be able to explain it to her.