She started when she perceived me and paused
involuntarily. I was as if intoxicated with intense joy, dread, and
the throbbing of my heart, and when I saw that she actually wore at
her breast the flowers I had left yesterday, I could no longer keep
silent, but said in a rapture, "Fairest Lady fair, accept these
flowers too, and all the flowers in my garden, and everything I have!
Ah, if I could only brave some danger for you!" At first she had
looked at me so gravely, almost angrily, that I shivered, but then
she cast down her eyes, and did not lift them while I was speaking. At
that moment voices and the tramp of horses were heard in the distance.
She snatched the flowers from my hand, and without saying a word,
swiftly vanished at the end of the avenue.
After this evening I had neither rest nor peace. I felt continually,
as I had always felt when spring was at hand, restless and merry, and
as if some great good fortune or something extraordinary were about
to befall me. My wretched accounts in especial never would come right,
and when the sunshine, playing among the chestnut boughs before my
window, cast golden-green gleams upon my figures, illuminating "Bro't
over" and "Total," my addition grew sometimes so confused that I
actually could not count three. The figure "eight" always looked to
me like my stout, tightly-laced lady with the gay head-dress, and
the provoking "seven" like a finger-post pointing the wrong way, or a
gallows.
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