en down to the smallest detail--after
all makes me like them very much, and I have enjoyed many a pleasant
hour in my solitary rambles. Perhaps the fact has something to do with
it that my heart can once more swing out its pendulum undisturbed,
without having wise people tinkering and twisting at the clock-works.

I have even become poetic--what do you say to that, old Ernst? I have
jotted down something to which a divinely beautiful Sunday that I spent
some time ago in the wooded glens of the Spessart inspired me. I think
you will like it. It is called: "The Marvels of the Spessart."

What I like best is to sit up on the hill in a quiet spot between the
Justice's cornfields, which terminate there. In front of me there is a
large depression in the ground, grown over with weeds and blackberry
bushes, around which, in a circle, lie a lot of large stones. Over the
largest of these, directly opposite the field, the branches of three old
lindens spread out. Behind me rustles the forest. The spot is infinitely
lonesome, secluded and secret, especially now that the corn is grown up,
as tall as a man, behind it. I spend a great deal of time up there--not
always, to be sure, in sentimental contemplation of nature; it is my
usual evening watchpost, from which I shoot the stags and roes out of
the Justice's corn.

They call the place the "Freemen's Tribunal." Presumably, in days of
yore, the Fehme used to hatch out its sentences there in the darkness of
the night. When I praised the place to my Justice, an expression of
friendliness passed over his face. He made no reply, but after a time
conducted me, without any inducement on my part, to a room on the upper
floor of the house. There he opened an iron-bound trunk, showed me an
old, rusty sword which was lying in it, and said with great solemnity:
"That is a great curiosity; it is the sword of Charles the Great,
preserved for a thousand and more years in the Oberhof, and still in
full strength and power." Without adding any further explanations, he
clapped the cover down again. I wouldn't for anything have shaken his
belief in this sacred relic, although a fleeting glance convinced me
that the broad-sword could scarcely be more than a few hundred years
old. But he showed me too a formal attestation concerning the genuineness
of the weapon, made out for him by an obliging provincial scholar.

[Illustration: THE FREEMEN'S TRIBUNAL _By Benjamin Vautier_]

Well, then, I shall stay