to what
their ancestors had carried into personal conflict.

CHAPTER XIX. AT THE FETE

If, seated on my rustic bench under a spreading ilex, I was not joining
in the pleasures and amusements of those around me, I was tasting an
amount of enjoyment to the full as great It was my first holiday after
many months of monotonous labor. It was the first moment in which I felt
myself free to look about me without the irksome thought of a teasing
duty,--that everlasting song of score and tally, which Hans and I sang
duet fashion, and which at last seemed to enter into my very veins and
circulate with my blood.

The scene itself was of rare beauty. Seated as I was, the bay appeared a
vast lake, for the outlet that led seaward was backed by an island, and
thus the coast-line seemed unbroken throughout. Over this wide expanse
now hundreds of fishing-boats were moving in every direction, for the
wind was blowing fresh from the land, and permitted them to tack and
beat as they pleased. If thus in the crisply curling waves, the flitting
boats, and the fast-flying clouds above, there was motion and life,
there was, in the high peaked-mountain that frowned above me, and in the
dark rocks that lined the shore, a stern, impassive grandeur that became
all the more striking from contrast. The plashing water, the fishermen's
cries, the merry laughter of the revellers as they strayed through brake
and copse, seemed all but whispering sounds in that vast amphitheatre of
mountain, so solemn was the influence of those towering crags that rose
towards heaven.

"Have you been sitting there ever since?" asked the cashier, as he
passed me with a string of friends.

"Ever since."

"Not had any breakfast?"

"None."

"Nor paid your compliments to Herr Ignaz and the Fraulein?"

I shook my bead in dissent.

"Worst of all," said he, half rebukingly, and passed on. I now bethought
me how remiss I had been. It is true it was through a sense of my own
insignificant station that I had not presented myself to my host; but
I ought to have remembered that this excuse could have no force outside
the limits of my own heart; and so, as I despaired of finding Hanserl,
whose advice might have aided me, I set out at once to make my respects.

A long, straight avenue, flanked by tall lime-trees, led from the sea to
the house; and as I passed up this, crowded now like the chief promenade
of a city, I heard many comments as I went on my dress and app