Whenever the gardener was away and I was
alone, I took out my short tobacco-pipe, sat down, and thought of all
the beautiful, polite things with which I could have entertained
that lovely young lady who had brought me to the castle, had I been a
cavalier walking beside her. Or on sultry afternoons I lay on my
back on the grass, when all was so quiet that you could hear the bees
humming, and I gazed up at the clouds sailing away toward my native
village, and around me at the waving grass and flowers, and thought of
the lovely lady; and it sometimes chanced that I really saw her in the
distance walking in the garden, with her guitar or a book, tall and
beautiful as an angel, and I was only half conscious whether I were
awake or dreaming.
Thus, once as I was passing a summer-house on my way to work, I was
singing to myself--
"I gaze around me, going
By forest, dale, and lea,
O'er heights where streams are flowing,
My every thought bestowing,
Ah, Lady fair, on thee!"--
when, through the half-opened lattice of the cool, dark summer-house
buried amid flowers, I saw the sparkle of a pair of beautiful,
youthful eyes. I was so startled that I could not finish my song, but
passed on to my work without looking round.
In the evening--it was Saturday, and, in joyous anticipation of the
coming Sunday, I was standing, fiddle in hand, at the window of
the gardener's house, still thinking of the sparkling eyes--the
lady's-maid came tripping through the twilight--"The gracious Lady
fair sends you this to drink her health, and a 'Good-Night' besides!"
And in a twinkling she put a flask of wine on the window-sill and
vanished among the flowers and shrubs like a lizard.
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