“I woke up when the daylight shone in my face.  In front of me there was a rock.  I climbed up on it, hoping to find a way out of the wilderness, and perhaps to see some houses or people.  But when I reached the top, everything, as far as my eye could see, was like night about me—­all overcast with a gloomy mist.  The day was dark and dismal, and not a tree, not a meadow, not even a thicket could my eye discern, with the exception of a few bushes which, in solitary sadness, had shot up through the crevices in the rocks.  It is impossible to describe the longing I felt merely to see a human being, even had it been the most strange-looking person before whom I should inevitably have taken fright.  At the same time I was ravenously hungry.  I sat down and resolved to die.  But after a while the desire to live came off victorious; I got up quickly and walked on all day long, occasionally crying out.  At last I was scarcely conscious of what I was doing; I was tired and exhausted, had hardly any desire to live, and yet was afraid to die.

“Toward evening the region around me began to assume a somewhat more friendly aspect.  My thoughts and wishes took new life, and the desire to live awakened in all my veins.  I now thought I heard the swishing of a mill in the distance; I redoubled my steps, and how relieved, how joyous I felt when at last I actually reached the end of the dreary rocks!  Woods and meadows and, far ahead, pleasant mountains lay before me again.  I felt as if I had stepped out of hell into paradise; the solitude and my helplessness did not seem to me at all terrible now.

“Instead of the hoped-for mill, I came upon a water-fall, which, to be sure, considerably diminished my joy.  I dished up some water from the river with my hand and drank.  Suddenly I thought I heard a low cough a short distance away.  Never have I experienced so pleasant a surprise as at that moment; I went nearer and saw, on the edge of the forest, an old woman, apparently resting.  She was dressed almost entirely in black; a black hood covered her head and a large part of her face.  In her hand she held a walking-stick.

“I approached her and asked for help; she had me sit down beside her and gave me bread and some wine.  While I was eating she sang a hymn in a shrill voice, and when she had finished she said that I might follow her.

“I was delighted with this proposal, strange as the voice and the personality of the old woman seemed to me.  She walked rather fast with her cane, and at every step she distorted her face, which at first made me laugh.  The wild rocks steadily receded behind us—­we crossed a pleasant meadow, and then passed through a fairly long forest.  When we emerged from this, the sun was just setting, and I shall never forget the view and the feelings of that evening.  Everything was fused in the most delicate red and gold; the tree-tops stood forth in the red glow of evening, the charming light was spread out over the fields, the forest and the leaves of the trees were motionless, the clear sky looked like an open paradise, and the evening bells of the villages rang out with a strange mournfulness across the lea.  My young soul now got its first presentment of the world and its events.  I forgot myself and my guide; my spirit and my eyes were wandering among golden clouds.