The wheel of my father's mill rushed and roared again right merrily,
the melting snow trickled steadily down from the roof, the sparrows
twittered and bustled about. I sat on the door-sill and rubbed the
sleep out of my eyes; I felt so comfortable in the warm sunshine. Just
then my father came out of the house. He had worked since daybreak in
the mill, and had his tasseled cap awry upon his head. To me he
said:--"You Good-for-Nothing! There you are sunning yourself again and
stretching and straining your bones tired, and leave me to do all the
work alone. I cannot feed you here any longer. Spring is at the door;
go out into the world and earn your own bread." "Now," said I, "if I
am a Good-for-Nothing, well and good; I will go out into the world and
seek my fortune." And really I was very well pleased, for it had
shortly before occurred to me too to travel, when I heard the
yellow-hammer, who always sung his note in autumn and winter so
plaintively at our window, now calling again in the beautiful spring
so proudly and merrily from the trees. I went accordingly into the
house and got my violin, which I played quite cleverly, down from the
wall; my father gave me besides a few groschens to take along, and so
I sauntered out through the long village. It gave me in truth a
secret pleasure when I saw all my old acquaintances and comrades,
right and left, just as yesterday, and day before yesterday, and
always, going out to work, to dig and to plow; while I thus wandered
out into the free world. I called out to the poor people on all sides
proudly and contentedly, Adieu! but nobody paid very much attention to
it. In my soul it seemed to me like an eternal Sunday. And when I at
last came out into the open fields, I took up my dear violin and
played and sang as I walked along the highway....
When I presently looked about, a fine traveling carriage came up quite
near to me, that may have been for some time driving along behind me
without my having noticed it, since my heart was so full of music; for
it went along quite slowly, and two ladies put their heads out of the
carriage and listened to me. The one was particularly beautiful and
younger than the other, but really both of them pleased me. When I now
ceased singing, the elder one had the driver stop and spoke to me
kindly: "Ah, you happy fellow, you know how to sing very pretty
songs." To which I, not at all backward, answered, "If it please your
Excellency, I may have some that are prettier still." Thereupon she
asked me again, "Where then are you wandering so early in the
morning?" Then I was ashamed that I did not know, myself, and said
boldly, "To Vienna." Thereupon both spoke together in a foreign
language that I did not understand. The younger one shook her head
several times, but the other laughed continuously and finally called
out to me, "Spring up behind us: we are also going to Vienna." Who was
happier than I! I made a bow, and at a jump was on behind the
carriage, the coachman cracked his whip, and we flew along over the
glistening road, so that the wind whistled about my hat.
Behind me disappeared village, gardens, and church towers; before
appeared new villages, castles, and mountains. Below me grain fields,
copse, and meadows flew in many colors past; above me were countless
larks in the blue air. I was ashamed to cry aloud, but inwardly I
exulted, and stamped and danced about on the footboard of the
carriage, so that I had nearly lost my violin which I held under my
arm. As the sun, however, rose continually higher, and heavy white
noonday clouds came up round about the horizon, and everything in the
air and on the broad plains became so empty and close and still over
the gently waving grain fields,--then for the first time came into my
mind my village, and my father, and our mill, and how it was so
comfortable and cool there by the shady pond, and that now everything
lay so far, far behind me. I felt so strangely, and as if I must turn
back again. I put my violin in between my coat and waistcoat, sat down
full of thought upon the footboard, and fell asleep.
When I opened my eyes the carriage stood still under tall
linden-trees, behind which a broad stairway led up between columns
into a splendid castle. On one side, through the trees, I saw the
towers of Vienna. The ladies, it appeared, had long since got out, and
the horses were unharnessed. I was much frightened when I found myself
all at once alone. As I sprang quickly up into the castle, I heard
somebody above laughing out of the window.
In this castle it fared strangely with me. In the first place, as I
was looking about in the wide cool hall, some one tapped me with a
stick upon the shoulder. I turned quickly, and there stood a great
gentleman in court dress, a broad scarf of gold and silk hanging down
to his hips, with a silver-topped staff in his hand, and an
extraordinarily long, hooked, princely nose, big and splendid as a
puffed-up turkey, who asked me what I wanted there. I was quite taken
aback, and for fear and astonishment could not bring forth a sound.
Thereupon more servants came running up and down the stairs, who said
nothing at all, but looked at me from head to foot. Straightway came a
lady's-maid (as I afterward learned she was) right up to me and said
that I was a charming fellow, and her ladyship desired to ask me
whether I would take service here as a gardener. I put my hand to my
waistcoat. My couple of groschens, God knows, must have sprung out of
my pocket in my dancing about in the carriage, and were gone. I had
nothing but my violin-playing, for which, moreover, the gentleman with
the staff, as he said to me curtly, would not give a farthing. In my
anguish of heart I accordingly said yes to the lady's-maid, my eyes
still directed from one side to the uncomfortable figure which
continually, like the pendulum of a steeple clock, moved up and down
the hall, and just then again came majestically and awfully up out of
the background. Last of all the head gardener finally came, growled
something to himself about rabble and country bumpkins, and led me to
the garden, preaching to me on the way a long sermon--how I should be
sober and industrious, should not rove about in the world, should not
devote myself to unprofitable arts and useless stuff: in that case I
might in time be of some account. There were still more very pretty,
well-put, useful maxims, only since then I have forgotten almost all
of them again. On the whole, I did not really at all rightly know how
everything had come about. I only said yes continually to everything,
for I was like a bird whose wings had been wet. Thus I was, God be
praised, in possession of my daily bread.
In the garden, life went on finely. I had every day my warm food in
plenty, and more money than I needed for wine,--only, alas! I had
quite a good deal to do. The temples, too, the arbors, and the
beautiful green walks,--all that would have pleased me very well, if I
had only been able to walk placidly about and converse rationally,
like the ladies and gentlemen who came there every day. As often as
the head gardener was away and I was alone, I immediately pulled out
my short tobacco pipe, sat down and thought out pretty polite
speeches, such as I would use to entertain the young and beautiful
lady who brought me along with her into the castle, if I were a
cavalier and walked about with her. Or I lay down on my back on sultry
afternoons, when everything was so still that one could hear the bees
buzzing, and watched the clouds as they floated along to my own
village, and the grasses and flowers as they moved hither and thither,
and thought of the lady; and then it often happened too that the
beautiful lady, with her guitar or a book, really went through the
garden at a distance, as gently, as lofty and gracious, as an angel,
so that I did not rightly know whether I dreamed or was awake....
Close by the castle garden ran the highway, only separated from it by
a high wall. A very neat little toll-keeper's house with a red tile
roof was built there, and behind it was a little flower garden,
inclosed with a gay-colored picket fence, which, through a break in
the wall of the castle garden, bordered on its shadiest and most
concealed part. The toll-keeper had just died, who had occupied it
all. Early one morning while I still lay in the soundest sleep, the
secretary from the castle came to me and called me in all haste to the
head steward. I dressed myself quickly and sauntered along behind the
airy secretary, who on the way, now here, now there, broke off a
flower and stuck it on the lapel of his coat, now brandished his cane
skillfully in the air, and talked to the wind all sorts of matters of
which I understood nothing, since my eyes and ears were still full of
sleep. When I entered the office, where it was not yet wholly light,
the steward looked at me from behind a tremendous inkstand and piles
of paper and books and a portly wig, like an owl from her nest, and
began, "What's your name? Where do you come from? Can you write, read,
and cipher?" When I had answered this affirmatively, he added, "Well,
her ladyship designs to offer you, in consideration of your good
behavior and your particular merits, the vacant toll-keeper's
position." I went over quickly in my mind my previous behavior and
manners, and I was obliged to confess that I found at the end, myself,
that the steward was right. And so I was, then, really toll-keeper,
before I was aware of it.
I moved now immediately into my new dwelling, and in a short time was
settled. I found a number of things that the late toll-keeper had left
behind, among others a splendid red dressing-gown with yellow dots,
green slippers, a tasseled cap, and some pipes with long stems. All
these things I had wished for when I was still at home, when I always
saw our pastor going about so comfortably. The whole day (I had
nothing further to do) I sat there on the bench before my house in
dressing-gown and cap, smoking tobacco out of the longest pipe that I
had found among those left by the late toll-keeper, and looked at the
people on the highway as they went to and fro, and drove and rode
about. I only wished all the time that people too out of my own
village, who always said that nothing would come of me all the days of
my life, might come by and see me. The dressing-gown was very becoming
to me, and in point of fact all of it pleased me very well. So I sat
there and thought of all sorts of things: how the beginning is always
hard, how a higher mode of life is nevertheless very comfortable; and
secretly came to the decision henceforth to give up all traveling
about, to save money, too, like others, and in good time surely to
amount to something in the world. In the mean time, however, with all
my decisions, cares, and business, I by no manner of means forgot the
beautiful lady.
The potatoes and other vegetables that I found in my little garden I
threw away, and planted it entirely with the choicest flowers; at
which the janitor from the castle, with the big princely nose, who
since I lived here often came to me and had become my intimate
friend, looked askance and apprehensively at me, and regarded me as
one whom sudden fortune had made mad. But I did not allow this to
disturb me, for not far from me in the manor garden I heard low
voices, among which I thought to recognize that of my beautiful lady,
although on account of the thick shrubbery I could see nobody. Then I
bound every day a nosegay of the most beautiful flowers that I had,
climbed every evening when it was dark over the wall, and placed it on
a stone table which stood in the middle of an arbor, and every evening
when I brought the new bouquet the old one was gone from the table....
I continually felt as I always feel when spring is at hand,--so
restless and glad without knowing why, as if a piece of great good
fortune or something else extraordinary awaited me. The hateful
accounts, in particular, would no longer get on at all; and when the
sunshine through the chestnut-tree before the window fell green-golden
upon the figures, and added them up so nimbly from "amount brought
forward" to "balance," and then up and down again, very strange
thoughts came to me, so that I often became quite confused and
actually could not count up to three. For the eight appeared always to
me like the stout, tightly laced lady with the broad hat that I knew,
and the unlucky seven was wholly like a guide-post always pointing
backward, or a gallows. The nine however played the greatest pranks,
in that often, before I was aware of it, it stood itself as a six
merrily on its head; while the two looked on so cunningly, like an
interrogation point; as if it would ask:--"What shall be the outcome
of all this in the end, you poor naught? Without her, this slender
one-and-all, you will always be nothing!"
Sitting outside before the door, too, no longer pleased me. I took a
footstool out with me, in order to make myself more comfortable, and
stretched out my feet upon it, and I mended an old parasol of the
toll-keeper's and held it against the sun above me, like a Chinese
summer-house. But it did not at all avail. It seemed to me as I sat
thus, and smoked and speculated, that my legs gradually became longer
from very weariness, and my nose grew from idleness, as I looked down
on it for hours at a time. And when many a time before daybreak an
extra post came by, and I stepped half asleep out into the cool air,
and a pretty little face, of which in the dim light only the sparkling
eyes were to be seen, bent with curiosity out of the carriage and
gave me pleasantly a good-morning, and in the village round about the
cocks crew so freshly out over the gently waving grain fields, and
between the morning clouds high in the heavens already soared a few
too early awakened larks, and the postilion took his post-horn and
drove on, and blew and blew--then I stood for a long time still and
looked after the coach, and it seemed to me as if nothing else would
do, except to go along with them, far, far out into the world.
The nosegays I always placed, in the mean time, as soon as the sun
went down, on the stone table in the dim arbor. But that was just it.
That was all over now, since that evening; no one troubled himself
about them. As often as I, early in the morning, looked after them,
the flowers still lay there just as they did the day before, and
looked at me in real sorrow with their wilted hanging heads, and the
dew-drops standing on them as if they wept. That grieved me very much.
I bound no more nosegays. In my garden the weeds might now flourish as
they would, and the flowers I let stand and grow until the wind blew
away the leaves. My heart was just as waste and wild and
disordered....
In these critical times it came to pass that once when I was lying in
the window at home and looking gloomily out into the empty air, the
lady's-maid from the castle came tripping along the road. When she saw
me, she turned quickly toward me and stood still at the window. "His
Lordship returned yesterday from his journey," said she briskly. "Is
it so?" I replied in astonishment, for for several weeks past I had
not concerned myself about anything, and did not even know that his
Lordship was away. "Then his daughter, the gracious young lady, has
also had, I am sure, a very pleasant time." The lady's-maid looked at
me oddly from top to toe, so that I really was forced to consider
whether I had not said something stupid. "You don't know anything at
all," she finally said, and turned up her little nose. "Now," she
continued, "there is going to be a dance and masquerade this evening
at the castle in his Lordship's honor. My mistress is also to go in
mask, as a flower-girl--do you quite understand?--as a flower-girl.
Now my mistress has noticed that you have particularly beautiful
flowers in your garden." "That is strange," thought I to myself,
"since there are now scarcely any more flowers to be seen on account
of the weeds." But she continued: "As my mistress needs beautiful
flowers for her costume, but quite fresh ones that have just come out
of the flower-bed, you are to bring her some, and wait with them this
evening, when it has grown dark, under the great pear-tree in the
castle garden. She will come and get the flowers."
I was quite dumbfounded by this news, and in my rapture ran from the
window out to the lady's-maid.
"Pah! the nasty dressing-gown!" she cried out when she saw me all at
once out-of-doors in my costume. That vexed me. I did not wish to be
behind her in gallantry, and made a few pretty motions to catch her
and kiss her. But unfortunately the dressing-gown, which was much too
long for me, got tangled up at the same time under my feet and I fell
my whole length on the ground. When I pulled myself together again the
lady's-maid was far away, and I heard her still laughing in the
distance; so that she had to hold her sides.
Now, however, I had something to think about and to make me happy.
_She_ still thought of me and of my flowers! I went into my garden and
quickly pulled all the weeds out of the flower-beds, and threw them
high up over my head away into the glistening air, as if I drew out
with the roots every bit of evil and melancholy. The roses were again
like _her_ mouth; the sky-blue morning-glories like her eyes; the
snow-white lily with its sorrowfully drooping head looked quite like
her. I laid them all carefully in a little basket together.
It was a still, beautiful evening, with not a cloud in the heavens. A
few stars were already out in the sky; from afar came the sound of the
Danube over the fields; in the tall trees in the castle garden near me
joyfully sang innumerable birds. Ah, I was so happy!
When night finally came on, I took my little basket over my arm and
set out on my way to the great garden. In my basket all lay so bright
and pretty together--white, red, blue, and so fragrant that my heart
fairly laughed when I looked in.
Full of happy thoughts, I went along in the beautiful moonlight
through the quiet paths tidily strewed with sand, over the little
white bridges, under which the swans sat sleeping upon the water, and
past the pretty arbors and summer-houses. I had soon found the great
pear-tree, for it was the same one under which I had lain on sultry
afternoons when I was still a gardener.
Here it was so lonely and dark. Only a tall aspen continually
whispered with its silver leaves. From the castle sounded now and then
the dance music. At times I heard, too, in the garden human voices,
which often came quite near to me, and then all at once it was again
perfectly still.
My heart beat fast. A strange feeling of dread came over me, as if I
intended to steal from somebody. I stood for a long time stock still,
leaning against the tree and listened on all sides; but as nobody
came, I could no longer endure it. I hung my basket on my arm and
climbed quickly up into the pear-tree, in order to breathe again in
the open air....
I now directed my eyes immovably toward the castle, for a circle of
torches below on the steps of the entrance threw a strange light
there, over the sparkling windows and far out into the garden. It was
the servants, who were just then serenading their young master and
mistress. In the midst of them, splendidly dressed like a minister of
state, stood the porter before a music stand, working hard on his
bassoon.
Just as I had seated myself aright in order to listen to the beautiful
serenade, all at once the doors opened, up on the balcony of the
castle. A tall gentleman, handsome and stately in his uniform and with
many glittering stars on his breast, stepped out upon the balcony,
leading by the hand--the beautiful young lady in a dress all of white,
like a lily in the night or as if the moon passed across the clear
firmament.
I could not turn my glance from the place, and garden, trees, and
fields vanished from my senses; as she, so wondrously illuminated by
the torches, stood there tall and slender, and now talked pleasantly
with the handsome officer and then nodded kindly down to the
musicians. The people below were beside themselves with joy, and I too
could not restrain myself at last, and joined in the cheers with all
my might.
As she however soon afterward again disappeared from the balcony, and
below one torch after the other went out and the music stands were
taken away, and the garden now round about also became dark again and
rustled as before,--for the first time I noticed all this,--then it
fell all at once upon my heart that it was really only the aunt who
had sent for me with the flowers, and that the beautiful lady did not
think of me at all and was long since married, and that I myself was a
great fool.
All of this plunged me truly into an abyss of reflection. I wrapped
myself up like a hedgehog in the stings of my own thoughts; from the
castle the dance music came more rarely across, the clouds wandered
lonely along over the dark garden. And so I sat up in the tree, like a
night owl, all night long in the ruins of my happiness.
The cool morning air waked me finally from my dreamings. I was fairly
astonished when I looked all at once about me. Music and dance was
long over, and in the castle and round about the castle, on the lawn,
and the stone steps, and the columns, everything looked so still and
cool and solemn; only the fountain before the entrance plashed
solitarily along. Here and there in the twigs near me the birds were
already awakening and shaking their bright feathers; and while they
stretched their little wings they looked with curiosity and
astonishment at their strange bedfellow. The joyous beaming rays of
morning sparkled along over the garden upon my breast.
Then I straightened myself out up in my tree, and for the first time
for a long while, once more looked fairly out into the land, and saw
how a few ships were already sailing down the Danube between the
vineyards, and how the still empty highways swung themselves like
bridges across the glistening country, far out over the mountains and
valleys.
I do not know how it came about, but all at once my old desire to
travel seized hold of me again: all the old sadness and joy and great
anticipation. It came into my mind, at the same time, how the
beautiful lady up in the castle was sleeping among the flowers and
under silken coverlets, and an angel was sitting beside her on the bed
in the stillness of the morning.--"No," I cried out, "I must go away
from here, and on and on, as far as the sky is blue!"
And at this I took my basket and threw it high into the air, so that
it was very pretty to see how the flowers lay gayly round about in the
twigs and on the greensward below. Then I climbed down quickly and
went through the quiet garden to my dwelling. Often indeed I stopped
still at many a place where I had once seen her, or where lying in the
shade I had thought of her.
In and about my house everything still looked just as I had left it
yesterday. The garden was plundered and bare; in my room inside, the
great account-book still lay open; my violin, which I had almost
wholly forgotten, hung covered with dust on the wall. A morning beam,
however, from the window opposite fell gleaming across the strings.
That struck a true accord within my heart. "Yes," I said, "do thou
come here, thou faithful instrument! Our kingdom is not of this
world!"
And so I took the violin from the wall, left the account-book,
dressing-gown, slippers, pipes, and parasol lying, and wandered, as
poor as I had come, out of my little house away on the glistening
highway.
I still often looked back. A strange feeling had taken possession of
me. I was so sad and yet again so thoroughly joyous, like a bird
escaping from its cage. And when I had gone a long way I took up my
violin, out there in the free air, and sang.
The castle, the garden, and the towers of Vienna had already
disappeared behind me in the fragrance of morning; above me exulted
innumerable larks high in the air. Thus I went between the green
mountains and past cheerful cities and villages down toward Italy.
Translation of William H. Carpenter.