"OTTO VON PRANKEN."

Pranken walked about in the tasteful, well-arranged grounds of the
station, looked up to the mountains, down to the river, to the island;
the whole world was as if freshly created to him, he seemed to himself
in a new earth; a veil was removed from everything, and all was
ravishingly beautiful. In a copse, where no one saw him, he knelt down;
and while he knelt he felt inexpressibly happy, and as if he never
wished to rise again. He heard a noise in his vicinity, stood upright,
and brushed his knees carefully. It was nothing but a beggar that
disturbed him. Without waiting to be spoken to, Pranken gave him a
considerable sum of money, and after the beggar had gone away, he
called him back and gave him as much again.

The air was loaded with aromatic fragrance, intermingled with that
delicate resinous perfume that comes from the opening buds; innumerable
rose-buds hung from the trellises, as if waiting for the word to open;
from the steep wall of rock, where a passage for the railroad had been
cut, a cuckoo called, and thousands of birds joined in with their
song. The whole world was full of blossoming fragrance and music of
birds,--all was redeemed, ransomed, blessed.

The people at the station thought that the young man who was thus
walking to and fro, sometimes hurrying, sometimes standing still,
sometimes looking up, and then casting his eyes to the ground, must be
expecting a relative by the next train; but Pranken was waiting for no
person and no thing. What could there be in the world to come to him?
He had everything. He could not conceive how he could stay here, and
Manna be over there; no moment ought to pass away without their being
together, one, inseparable.

A finch now flew away from the tree beneath which he was standing; it
flew over the river to the island. Ah! could I also fly over and
look at her and greet her from the tree, and at evening fly to her
window-sill, and look upon her until she went to sleep, and in the
morning when she awoke!

All the feelings that ever moved the heart of youth now took possession
of Pranken, and he was frightened at himself, when that demon of vanity
and self-conceit, whose growth he had so fostered within him, whispered
in his ear. Thou art a noble, enthusiastic youth! All great qualities
are thine! He now hated this evil spirit, and he found means of driving
him out.

He sat in a retired arbor and read in Thomas a Kempis.