“All night long I cried bitterly—­I felt so entirely forsaken, and I pitied myself so that I wanted to die.  I dreaded the break of day, and did not know what to do.  I longed for any possible kind of ability, and could not understand at all why I was more stupid than the other children of my acquaintance.  I was on the verge of despair.

“When the day dawned, I got up, and, scarcely realizing what I was doing, opened the door of our little cabin.  I found myself in the open field, soon afterward in a forest, into which the daylight had hardly yet shone.  I ran on without looking back; I did not get tired, for I thought all the time that my father would surely overtake me and treat me even more cruelly on account of my running away.

“When I emerged from the forest again the sun was already fairly high, and I saw, lying ahead of me, something dark, over which a thick mist was resting.  One moment I was obliged to scramble over hills, the next to follow a winding path between rocks.  I now guessed that I must be in the neighboring mountains, and I began to feel afraid of the solitude.  For, living in the plain, I had never seen any mountains, and the mere word mountains, whenever I heard them talked about, had an exceedingly terrible sound to my childish ear.  I hadn’t the heart to turn back—­it was indeed precisely my fear which drove me onwards.  I often looked around me in terror when the wind rustled through the leaves above me, or when a distant sound of chopping rang out through the quiet morning.  Finally, when I began to meet colliers and miners and heard a strange pronunciation, I nearly fainted with fright.

“You must forgive my prolixity.  As often as I tell this story I involuntarily become garrulous, and Eckbert, the only person to whom I have told it, has spoiled me by his attention.

“I passed through several villages and begged, for I now felt hungry and thirsty.  I helped myself along very well with the answers I gave to questions asked me.  I had wandered along in this way for about four days, when I came to a small foot-path which led me farther from the highway.  The rocks around me now assumed a different, far stranger shape.  They were cliffs, and were piled up on one another in such a way that they looked as if the first gust of wind would hurl them all together into a heap.  I did not know whether to go on or not.  I had always slept over night either in out-of-the-way shepherds’ huts, or else in the open woods, for it was just then the most beautiful season of the year.  Here I came across no human habitations whatever, nor could I expect to meet with any in this wilderness.  The rocks became more and more terrible—­I often had to pass close by dizzy precipices, and finally even the path under my feet came to an end.  I was absolutely wretched; I wept and screamed, and my voice echoed horribly in the rocky glens.  And now night set in; I sought out a mossy spot to lie down on, but I could not sleep.  All night long I heard the most peculiar noises; first I thought it was wild beasts, then the wind moaning through the rocks, then again strange birds.  I prayed, and not until toward morning did I fall asleep.