An odd time I had in this castle.  First, as soon as I found myself in the cool, spacious vestibule, some one tapped me on the shoulder with a stick.  I turned quickly about, and there stood a tall gentleman in state apparel, with a broad bandolier of silk and gold crossing his breast from his shoulder to his hip, a staff in his hand, gilded at the top, and an extraordinarily large Roman nose; he strutted up to me, swelling like a ruled-up turkey-cock, and asked me what I wanted there.  I was taken entirely aback, and in my confusion was unable to utter a word.  Several servants passed, going up and down the staircase; they said nothing, but eyed me superciliously.  Then a lady’s-maid appeared; she came up to me, declared that I was a charming young fellow, and that her mistress had sent to ask me if I did not want a place as gardener’s boy.  I put my hand in my pocket—­the few coins I had possessed were gone.  They must have been jerked out by my shuffling on the foot-board behind the carriage.  I had nothing to depend upon save my skill with the fiddle, for which the gentleman with the staff, as he informed me in passing, would not give a farthing.  Therefore, in my distress, I said “yes” to the maid, keeping my eyes fixed the while upon the portentous figure pacing the hall to and fro like the pendulum of a clock in a church-tower, appearing from the background with imposing majesty and with unfailing regularity.  At last a gardener came, muttering something about boors and vagabonds, and led me off to the garden, preaching me a long sermon on the way about my being diligent and industrious and never loitering about the world any more, and how, if I would give up all my idle and foolish ways, I might come to some good in the end.  There was a great deal of exhortation in this strain, very good and useful, but I have since forgotten it nearly all.  In fact, I really hardly know how it all came about; I went on saying “yes” to everything, and I felt like a bird with its wings clipped.  But, thank God, in the end I was earning my living!

I found life delightful in that garden.  I had a hot dinner every day and plenty of it, and more money than I needed for my glass of wine, only, unfortunately, I had quite a deal to do.  The pavilions, and arbors, and long green walks delighted me, if I could only have sauntered about and talked pleasantly like the gentlemen and ladies who came there every day.  Whenever the gardener was away and I was alone, I took out my short tobacco-pipe, sat down, and thought of all the beautiful, polite things with which I could have entertained that lovely young lady who had brought me to the castle, had I been a cavalier walking beside her.  Or on sultry afternoons I lay on my back on the grass, when all was so quiet that you could hear the bees humming, and I gazed up at the clouds sailing away toward my native village, and around me at the waving grass and flowers, and thought of the lovely lady; and it sometimes chanced that I really saw her in the distance walking in the garden, with her guitar or a book, tall and beautiful as an angel, and I was only half conscious whether I were awake or dreaming.