urname--was not a professor, and did not
even wear spectacles, but he was a sort of monitor, had long silky
eyelashes, and he certainly was in love. He never told me so, but I am
sure he was, and remembering him and his eyelashes as I do, I can easily
reconstruct the simple story of his love. She was a Gretchen, a sweet
German maiden, blue-eyed and golden-haired. They first met at a
Kraenzchen where their feet waltzed to the same step and their hearts
beat to the same tune. Then on two ever-to-be-remembered Sunday
afternoons they took coffee together in the "Restauration zum blauen
Stern," and on the second occasion, as they were going home through the
pine-woods, he said something to her she had never heard before; her
answer was inaudible, but I know she left her hand where he wanted it to
remain, and the good old moon did the rest. They soon received the
paternal and maternal blessings, and now they were happy in the
knowledge that in six or eight years nothing would stand between them
and their fondest hopes, when he probably would have passed his
examinations and have secured his first appointment.

I must have caught the loving mood from Oscar, or else some wood-nymphs
or sprites must have been trying their hands on me, or perhaps I was
only tired and lagged behind. Certain it is that a new sort of feeling
came over me, a semi-conscious yearning for an unknown quantity that was
waiting for me somewhere; and as I lay on my back under the trees, my
imagination shot upwards, starting from the gnarled roots by my side,
along the mast-like perpendiculars the pines, past jolly little
squirrels, patches of moss and garlands of creepers, right to the top
where the sky's blue eyes were winking at me. Nature was whispering some
secret and I was dreaming my first Midsummer-Day's Dream.

All around there was humming and buzzing, piping and singing; mysterious
sounds, joyous notes, and pensive ditties. Some bird with a flute-like
voice sang a pretty little musical phrase, just a bar of five or six
notes, and kept on repeating it at intervals. Another little bird, deep
down in the forest, answered it--birds of a feather flirt together--only
there were so many chirping chatterboxes about, enjoying themselves in
their way, that the warbling flirtation was carried on under
difficulties. For all that, the flute-like voice never tired of saying
its say, and putting its question, pleased as it evidently was with its
mate's reply. I