That was enough.  That very evening the old man beckoned our hero to follow him into the little garden.  He stopped in front of the old pear-tree and, removing a little twig that was growing out of its trunk, said:  “Tomorrow you will go to your cousin in Cologne.”

With a rapid movement he turned toward his son, and saw with astonishment that Apollonius nodded his head obediently.  It seemed almost to displease him that he should have no self-will to break.  Did he think that the poor boy was nursing defiant thoughts, even if he did not express them, and did he want to break down even the defiance of thoughts?  “You pack your knapsack this very day, do you hear?” he shouted at him.

“Yes, father,” said Apollonius.

“You start tomorrow at sunrise.”  After he had seemed to try almost to force a defiant answer, he may have regretted his anger.  He made a gesture of dismissal; Apollonius went obediently.  The old man followed him, and several times he came up to the brothers’ room with milder sternness to remind his son, who was packing, of this and that which he was not to forget.

And the last of four strokes was just ringing out from the tower of St. George’s when the door of the house with the green shutters opened, and our young wanderer stepped out, accompanied by his brother.  At the same spot where he now stood looking down on the town lying below him, his brother had taken farewell of him, and he had looked after him a long, long time.  “Perhaps I can win her for you after all,” his brother had said; “and then I’ll write you so at once.  And if you can’t get her, she isn’t the only one in the world.  I can tell you, you are as good-looking a fellow as any; and if you’ll only lay aside your stupid way you can get on with any of them.  Once for all, things are so that the girls can’t court us—­and I shouldn’t even want one that threw herself at my head of her own accord.  And what can a lively girl do with a dreamer?  Our cousin in Cologne is said to have a couple of pretty daughters.  And now, good-by.  I will deliver your letter today.”  With that his brother had left him.

“Yes,” said Apollonius to himself as he looked after him.  “He is right.  Not because of my cousin’s daughters, or any other girl, no matter how pretty she might be.  If I had been different perhaps I need not have had to go away now.  Was it I for whom she laid the flower there at the Whitsuntide shooting?  Did she want to meet me then, and before then?  Who knows how hard it has become for her!  And having done all that in vain must she not have felt ashamed?  Oh, she is right not to want to have anything more to do with me.  I must learn to be different.”

And this resolution had been no bloomless bud.  His cousin’s house in Cologne did not encourage dreaming of any kind.  Apollonius found an entirely different family life there from that in his own home.  His old cousin was as full of life as the youngest member of the family.  Loneliness was impossible.  A lively sense of the ridiculous [Illustration:  Jacob’s Journey.  Schnorr Von Carolsfeld] [Blank Page] prevented the growth of any kind of peculiarity.  Every one had to be on his guard; no one could let himself go.