s itself to those poor men, no picture by some
pious master speaks to those blunted hearts! Therefore do their
Theologians rage and argue as to how the Incomprehensible in the
inconceivable mystery is to be comprehended as if the mystery did not
consist in our not being able to grasp it. I can endure all: bad music,
inartistic pictures, statues by Bandinelli, but when I hear this
heretical twaddle, then do I think, that a lunatic asylum as high as
the tower of Babel should be built in which all heretics should be
locked up, till they recovered out of disgust with one another." Thus
thinking the young man proceeded on the way which had been pointed out
to him, and already saw before him the gate in the corner tower of the
convent wall, when the merry, teazing sound of girls' voices roused him
from his dream.

CHAPTER V.

The young artist was about turning to the gate pointed out to him by
the miller, when he suddenly found himself surrounded by a crowd of
young girls, who ran out laughing and screaming from behind the convent
wall. So full of fun were these maidens that they never saw the young
man coming towards them. Several had joined hands and surrounded a
beautiful fair-haired girl who vainly attempted to free herself from
her persecutors. Her companions however danced only the more calling
out: caught, kept.

"Let me out, or I shall tell the lady Abbess," called out the prisoner,
who looked more like crying than laughing. Her obstinate jailors
answered her by singing: "Wegewarte,[1] Wegewarte, Sonnenwende,
Sonnenwirbel," and danced around her till their hair waved in the wind
around their young necks. The pretty maiden began to cry.

"Leave the Lieblerin," said Countess Erbach, "she cannot help it, she
is bewitched."

"The bewitched maiden," called out the Baroness von Venningen.

"Wait till we make her a wreath of chicory flowers," called out
Baroness von Eppingen, "with which to crown her. That will suit her
well, the blue flowers and the fair hair."

"Bewitched Maiden, lend me thy locks, I should much wish to be gazed at
so tenderly by those well-known black eyes during lesson-hours," called
out Bertha von Steinach.

And again they surrounded the weeping girl, and their cheeks glowed
with life and supercilious arrogance, and they danced around her
singing: "Wegewarte, Sonnenwirbel." Others in the meantime had plucked
certain blue flowers which grew by the wayside,