it was a joy to her to see with what
diligence he made search for the lost youth. Herdegen, indeed, had
ill-repaid her childish love, yet she knew of no nobler revenge than to
lay him under the debt of thanks to her and her husband for release and
ransom. These words doubtless came from the bottom of her heart; she were
no true woman if she could not forgive a man in misfortune for the sins
of a happier time. And above all she was ever of a rash and lawless mind,
and truthful even to the scorn of modesty and good manners, rather than
crafty and smooth of tongue.

Yet she likewise failed to find the vanished wanderer, and the weeks and
months grew to be years while we waited in vain. It was on the
twenty-second day of March in the second twelve month after Herdegen's
departing that the treasures of the realm, and among them a nail from the
Cross and the point of the spear wherewith they pierced the Lord's side,
were to be brought into the town in a solemn procession, and I, with many
others, rode forth to meet it. They were brought hither from Blindenberg
on the Danube, and the Emperor sent them in token of his grace, that we
might hold them in safe keeping within our strong walls. They had been
brought thus far right privily, under the feint that the waggon wherein
they were carried bore wine vats, and a great throng gathered with shouts
of joy to hail these precious things. Prisoners were set free in honor of
their coming; and for my own part I mind the day full well, by reason
that I put off my black mourning weed and went forth in a colored holiday
garb for the first time in a long while.

If I had, in truth, been able by good courage to shake off in due time
the oppressing weight of my grief, I owed it in no small measure to the
forest-whither we went forth, now as heretofore, to sojourn in the spring
and autumn seasons--and to its magic healing. How many a time have I
rested under its well-known trees and silently looked back on the past.
And, when I mind me of those days, I often ask myself whether the real
glad times themselves or those hours of calmer joy in remembrance were
indeed the better.

As I sat in the woods, thinking and dreaming, there was plenty for the
eye to see and the ear to hear. The clouds flew across in silence, and
the soft green at my feet, with all that grew on tree and bush, in the
grass, and by the brink of the pool, made up a peaceful world, innocently
fair and full of precious charm. H