rt; and
wept and laughed and raised her trembling hands high above her gray
head and cried louder than the hundred voices of the on-rushing
villagers--cried into the tumult of the bellowing beasts, into the
crashing of the beams and the crackling of the flames:

"My William! Now he will come!"

EDUARD VON KEYSERLING

* * * * * *

GAY HEARTS (1909)

TRANSLATED BY BAYARD QUINCY MORGAN, PH.D.
Assistant Professor of German, University of Wisconsin

At Kadullen dinner was served in summer as early as four o'clock, so
as to leave the evening clear for summer amusements. Then the afternoon
light rested steadily on the extensive white garden-front and the three
ponderous gables of the manor. In the rectilinear beds the stocks
glinted like bright, wavy silk, and the scent of the box-hedges was
warm and bitter. A servant stationed himself on the steps of the garden
porch and rang a large bell as signal that it was time to dress for
dinner.

The host, old Count Hamilcar of Wandl-Dux, was already completely
dressed and came out into the garden with his guest, Professor von
Pinitz. Count Hamilcar, very tall and slender in his black frock-coat,
had a slight stoop. His Panama was pulled low on his forehead. The
smooth-shaven face with the long, thin-lipped mouth had a touch of the
ascetic, like those faces in which everything that life has inscribed
upon them seems mitigated and as it were disavowed. With long strides
he began to walk down the garden path. The professor could hardly keep
step, for he was short and stout; his white vest was stretched tight
over his round paunch, and his face was red and heated under the
cinnamon-colored, stubbly whiskers. He was telling the count a
remarkable dream he had had; this was his interest at present, for he
intended to write a treatise on the theory of dreams, and the count was
giving him the material which he too had once gathered on this subject.
Count Hamilcar always had material gathered for the books which others
planned to write, but had never written one himself.

"I never knew," he was wont to say, "which one of my books to write,
and so I never wrote any."

"Imagine, then," the professor was reporting, "I was at the house of my
colleague Domnitz, in my dream, you know. Well, Domnitz laid both hands
on my shoulders, put on a very solemn face, and said in a very