Not a sound was yet to be heard outside, except from an early robin
that was singing his morning song, perched upon a spray growing out of
the wall beneath my window. "No," said I, "you shall not shame me by
singing all alone your early hymn of praise to God!" I hastily fetched
my fiddle, which I had laid upon the table the night before, and left
the room. Everything in the castle was silent as death, and I was a
long while finding my way through the dim corridors out into the open
air.
There I found myself in a large garden extending half-way down the
mountain, its broad terraces lying one beneath the other like huge
steps. But the gardening was slovenly. The paths were all grass-grown,
the yew figures were not trimmed, but stretched long noses and caps a
yard high into the air like ghosts, so that really they must have been
quite fearsome at nightfall. Linen was hanging to dry on the broken
marble statues of an unused fountain; here and there in the middle
of the garden cabbages were planted beside some common flowers;
everything was neglected, in disorder, and overgrown with tall weeds,
among which glided varicolored lizards. On all sides through the
gigantic old trees there was a distant, lonely prospect of range after
range of mountains stretching as far as the eye could reach.
After I had been sauntering about through this wilderness for a while
in the dawn, I descried upon the terrace below me, striding to and fro
with folded arms, a tall, slender, pale youth in a long brown surtout.
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