adually recognized all the
faces. The old gardener beat the drum, the students from Prague in
their cloaks played away, and among them the Porter fingered his
bassoon like mad. When I suddenly perceived him thus unexpectedly, I
ran to him and embraced him with enthusiasm, causing him to play quite
out of time. "Upon my word, if he should travel to the ends of
the earth he would never be anything but a goose!" he said to the
students, and then went on blowing away at his bassoon in a fury.

Meanwhile, the lovely Lady fair had privately escaped from all the
noise and confusion, and had fled like a startled fawn far into the
depths of the garden.

I caught sight of her in time and hurried after her. In their zeal
the musicians never noticed us; after a while they thought that we had
decamped to the castle, and then the entire band took up the line of
march in that direction.

We, however, almost at the same moment reached a summer-house on the
borders of the garden, whence through the open window there was a
view of the wide, deep valley. The sun had long since set behind the
mountains, a rosy haze glimmered in the warm fading twilight, through
which the murmur of the Danube ascended clearer and clearer the
stiller grew the air. I looked long at the lovely Countess, who stood
before me heated with her flight and so close that I could almost hear
her heart beat. Now that I was alone with her I could find no words to
speak, so great was my awe of her. At last I took heart of grace, and
clasped in mine one of her little white hands--and in one moment her
head lay on my breast and my arms were around her.

In an instant she extricated herself and turned to the window to cool
her glowing cheeks in the evening air. "Ah," I cried, "my heart is
full to bursting, but it all seems like a dream to me!" "And to me
too," said the lovely Lady fair. "When, last summer," she went on
after a while, "I came back with the Countess from Rome where we
fortunately found Fraeulein Flora, and had brought her back with us but
could hear nothing of you either there or here, I never thought all
this would come to pass. It was only at noon today that Jocky, the
good, brisk fellow, came breathless into the court-yard and brought
the news that you had come by the mail-boat." Then she laughed quietly
to herself. "Do you remember," she said, "that time when I came out on
the balcony? It was just such an evening as this, and there was music
in the ga