p and down the
staircase; they said nothing, but eyed me superciliously. Then
a lady's-maid appeared; she came up to me, declared that I was a
charming young fellow, and that her mistress had sent to ask me if
I did not want a place as gardener's boy. I put my hand in my
pocket--the few coins I had possessed were gone. They must have been
jerked out by my shuffling on the foot-board behind the carriage. I
had nothing to depend upon save my skill with the fiddle, for which
the gentleman with the staff, as he informed me in passing, would not
give a farthing. Therefore, in my distress, I said "yes" to the maid,
keeping my eyes fixed the while upon the portentous figure pacing
the hall to and fro like the pendulum of a clock in a church-tower,
appearing from the background with imposing majesty and with unfailing
regularity. At last a gardener came, muttering something about boors
and vagabonds, and led me off to the garden, preaching me a long
sermon on the way about my being diligent and industrious and never
loitering about the world any more, and how, if I would give up all my
idle and foolish ways, I might come to some good in the end. There was
a great deal of exhortation in this strain, very good and useful, but
I have since forgotten it nearly all. In fact, I really hardly know
how it all came about; I went on saying "yes" to everything, and I
felt like a bird with its wings clipped. But, thank God, in the end I
was earning my living!

I found life delightful in that garden. I had a hot dinner every day
and plenty of it, and more money than I needed for my glass of wine,
only, unfortunately, I had quite a deal to do. The pavilions, and
arbors, and long green walks delighted me, if I could only have
sauntered about and talked pleasantly like the gentlemen and ladies
who came there every day. Whenever the gardener was away and I was
alone, I took out my short tobacco-pipe, sat down, and thought of all
the beautiful, polite things with which I could have entertained
that lovely young lady who had brought me to the castle, had I been a
cavalier walking beside her. Or on sultry afternoons I lay on my
back on the grass, when all was so quiet that you could hear the bees
humming, and I gazed up at the clouds sailing away toward my native
village, and around me at the waving grass and flowers, and thought of
the lovely lady; and it sometimes chanced that I really saw her in the
distance walking in the garden, with her gui