_A NOVEL_

FROM THE GERMAN OF
PAUL HEYSE

VOL. I

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
549 AND 551 BROADWAY
1878

***_It has been decided to omit from this translation the poems which
are scattered through the novel in the German. A few trifling changes
in certain passages have been made necessary by this omission; and the
translator has in two or three cases very slightly condensed the text._

* * * * *

COPYRIGHT BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
1878.

IN PARADISE.

_BOOK I_.

CHAPTER I.

It was a Sunday in the midsummer of 1869.

The air, cleared by a thunderstorm the night before, was still
tremulous with that soft, invigorating warmth which, farther south,
makes breathing such an easy matter, but which, north of the Alps,
seldom outlasts the early morning. And yet the bells, that sounded from
the Munich Frauenkirche far across the Theresienwiese, and the field
where stands the great statue of Bavaria, were already ringing for high
mass. Here, outside the city, there seemed to be no human ear to
listen. The great bronze maiden stood there in the deepest solitude,
holding her wreath above her head, and with a mazed and dreamy look, as
though she might be thinking whether this were not an opportune moment
to step down from her granite pedestal, and to wander at will through
the town, that to-day raised its towers and roofs like a city of the
dead above the bare green plain. Now and then a bird flew out of the
little grove behind the Ruhmes-halle, and fluttered about the shoulders
of the giant maiden, or rested for a moment on the mane of the lion
that sat lazily listening, pressed close to the knee of his great
mistress. But away in the city the bells rang on. The air grew drowsy
with the steadily increasing heat, with the hum and the vibration of
the distant ringing, and the strong fragrance that rose from the
meadow, which had been mown the day before. At last the bells ceased;
and now not a sound was to be heard, save that there came from a house
in o