d in mental review the conduct and manners that had hitherto
distinguished me, and was forced to admit that the Bailiff was right.
And so, before I knew it, I was Receiver of Toll. I took possession of
my dwelling, and was soon comfortably established there. The deceased
toll-gate keeper had left behind him for his successor various
articles, which I appropriated, among others a magnificent scarlet
dressing-gown dotted with yellow, a pair of green slippers, a tasseled
nightcap, and several long-stemmed pipes. I had often wished for
these things at home, where I used to see our village pastor thus
comfortably provided. All day long, therefore--I had nothing else to
do--I sat on the bench before my house in dressing-gown and nightcap,
smoking the longest pipe from the late toll-gate keeper's collection,
and looking at the people walking, driving, and riding on the
high-road. I only wished that some of the folks from our village, who
had always said that I never would be worth anything, might happen to
pass by and see me thus. The dressing-gown became my complexion, and
suited me extremely well. So I sat there and pondered many things--the
difficulty of all beginnings, the great advantages of an easier mode
of existence, for example--and privately resolved to give up travel
for the future, save money like other people, and in time do something
really great in the world. Meanwhile, with all my resolves, anxieties,
and occupations, I in no wise forgot the Lady fair.

I dug up and threw out of my little garden all the potatoes and
other vegetables that I found there, and planted it instead with the
choicest flowers, which proceeding caused the Porter from the castle
with the big Roman nose--who since I had been made Receiver often came
to see me, and had become my intimate friend--to eye me askance as a
person crazed by sudden good fortune. But that did not deter me. For
from my little garden I could often hear feminine voices not far off
in the castle garden, and among them I thought I could distinguish
the voice of my Lady fair, although, because of the thick shrubbery,
I could see nobody. And so every day I plucked a nosegay of my finest
flowers, and when it was dark in the evening, I climbed over the wall
and laid it upon a marble table in an arbor near by, and every time
that I brought a fresh nosegay the old one was gone from the table.

One evening all the castle inmates were away hunting; the sun was just
setting, fl