I grew tired of playing after a while, for I stumbled every minute over the tiresome roots of the trees, and I began to grow very hungry, while the wood seemed endless.  Thus I wandered for the entire day, until the sun’s rays came aslant through the trunks of the trees, when at last I emerged on a little grassy vale shut in by the mountains and gay with red and yellow flowers, above which myriads of butterflies were fluttering in the golden light of the setting sun.  It was as secluded here as though the world had been hundreds of miles away.  The crickets chirped, and a shepherd lad lying among the tall grasses blew so melancholy an air upon his horn that it was enough to break one’s heart.  “Yes,” thought I to myself, “who has as happy a lot as a lazy lout!  Some of us, though, have to wander about among strangers, and be always on the go.”  As a lovely, clear stream separated me from him, I called to him to ask where the nearest village was.  But he did not disturb himself to reply—­only stretched his head a little out of the grass, pointed with his horn to the opposite wood, and coolly resumed his piping.

I marched on briskly, for twilight was at hand.  The birds, which had made a great clatter while the sun was disappearing on the horizon, suddenly fell silent, and I began to feel almost afraid, so solemn was the perpetual rustling of the lonely forest.  At last I heard dogs barking in the distance.  I walked more quickly, the forest grew less and less dense, and in a little while I saw through the last trees a beautiful village-green, where a crowd of children were frolicking, and capering around a huge linden in the centre.  Opposite me was an inn, and at a table before it were seated some peasants playing cards and smoking.  On one side a number of lads and lasses were gathered in a group, the girls with their arms rolled in their aprons, and all gossiping together in the cool of the evening.

I took very little time for consideration, but, drawing my fiddle from my pocket, I played a merry waltz as I came out from the forest.  The girls were surprised, and the old folks laughed so that the woods reechoed with their merriment.  But when I reached the linden, and, leaning my back against it, went on playing gay waltzes, a whisper went round among the groups of young people to the right and left; the lads laid aside their pipes, each put his arm around his lass’s waist, and in the twinkling of an eye the young folk were all waltzing around me; the dogs barked, skirts and coat-tails fluttered, and the children stood around me in a circle gazing curiously into my face and at my briskly-moving fingers.