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.

I stood looking at the wonderful flask for a long time, not knowing what to think.  And if before I played the fiddle merrily, I now played it ten times more so, and I sang the song of the Lady fair all through, and all the other songs that I knew, until the nightingales wakened outside and the moon and stars lit up the garden.  Ah, that was a lovely night!

No cradle-song tells the child’s future; a blind hen finds many a grain of wheat; he laughs best who laughs last; the unexpected often happens; man proposes, God disposes:  thus did I meditate the next day, sitting in the garden with my pipe, and as I looked down at myself I seemed to myself to be a downright dunce.  Contrary to all my habits hitherto, I now rose betimes every day, before the gardener and the other assistants were stirring.  It was most beautiful then in the garden.  The flowers, the fountains, the rose-bushes, the whole place, glittered in the morning sunshine like pure gold and jewels.  And in the avenues of huge beeches it was as quiet, cool, and solemn as a church, only the little birds fluttered around and pecked in the gravel paths.  In front of the castle, just under the windows, there was a large bush in full bloom.  Thither I used to go in the early morning, and crouch down beneath the branches where I could watch the windows, for I had not the courage to appear in the open.  Thence I sometimes saw the Lady fair in a snow-white robe come, still drowsy and warm, to the open window.  She would stand there braiding her dark-brown hair, gazing abroad over the garden and shrubbery, or she would tend and water the flowers upon her window-sill, or would rest her guitar upon her white arm and sing out into the clear air so wondrously that to this day my heart faints with sadness when one of her songs recurs to me.  And ah, it was all so long ago!

So my life passed for a week and more.  But once—­she was standing at the window and all was quiet around—­a confounded fly flew directly up my nose, and I was seized with an interminable fit of sneezing.  She leaned far out of the window and discovered me cowering in the shrubbery.  I was overcome with mortification and did not go there again for many a day.