an absence of five years, he was
returning home again.

But was the stately city before him really his home?

When he had just gazed down upon it from the height, this question had
occupied his thoughtful mind.

He had not been born on the shore of this river, but of the Main. All
who had been dearest to him in Ratisbon--the good people who had reared
him from his fourth year as their own child, the woman who gave him
birth, and the many others to whom he was indebted for kindnesses--were
no longer there.

But why had he not thought first of the mother, who is usually the
centre of the circle of love, and whose figure precedes every other, now
that he was approaching the place where she rested beneath the turf? He
asked himself the question with a faint feeling of self-reproach, but he
did not confess the true reason.

When the summons to Ratisbon had reached him in Brussels, he had been
joyously ready to obey it--nay, he had felt it a great happiness to see
again the beloved place for which he had never ceased to long. And yet,
the nearer he approached it, the more anxiously his heart throbbed.

When, soon after noonday, the rain drenched him, he had experienced
no discomfort, because such exquisite sunny visions of the future had
hovered before him; but as the sky cleared they had shrivelled and
doubt of the result of the decision which he was riding to meet had cast
everything else into the shade.

Now the whole city appeared before him, and, as he looked at the
cathedral, whose machicolated tower permitted the rosy hue of the sky to
shine through, his heart rose again, and he gazed with grateful delight
at the verdant spring attire of his home and the magnificence with which
she greeted him; her returning son.

"Isn't it beautiful here?" he asked, suddenly breaking the silence as
he turned to Massi, the violinist, who rode at his side, and then
was secretly grateful to him when, after a curt "Very pleasant," he
disturbed him with no further speech.

It was so delightful to listen to the notes of the bells, so familiar to
him, whose pure tones had accompanied with their charming melody all his
wanderings in childhood and youth. At the same time, the mood in which
the best musical ideas came to him suddenly overpowered him. A new air,
well worth remembering, pressed itself on him unbidden, and his excited
imagination showed him in its train himself, and by his side, first,
a romping, merry child, and then a