One evening all the castle inmates were away hunting; the sun was just setting, flooding the landscape with flame and color, the Danube wound toward the horizon like a band of gold and fire, and the vine-dressers on all the hills throughout the country were glad and gay.  I was sitting with the Porter on the bench before my cottage, enjoying the mild air and the gradual fading to twilight of the brilliant day.  Suddenly the horns of the returning hunting-party sounded on the air; the notes were tossed from hill to hill by the echoes.  My soul delighted in it all, and I sprang up and exclaimed, in an intoxication of joy, “That is what I ought to follow in life, the huntsman’s noble calling!” But the Porter quietly knocked the ashes out of his pipe and said, “You only think so; I’ve tried it.  You hardly earn the shoes you wear out, and you’re never without a cough or a cold from perpetually getting your feet wet.”  I cannot tell how it was, but upon hearing him speak thus, I was seized with such a fit of foolish rage that I fairly trembled.  On a sudden the entire fellow, with his bedizened coat, his big feet, his snuff, his big nose, and everything about him, became odious to me.  Quite beside myself, I seized him by the breast of his coat and said, “Home with you, Porter, on the instant, or I’ll send you there in a way you won’t like!” At these words the Porter was more than ever convinced that I was crazy.  He gazed at me with evident fear, extricated himself from my grasp, and went without a word, looking reproachfully back at me, and striding toward the castle, where he reported me as stark, staring mad.

But after all I burst into a hearty laugh, glad in fact to be rid of the pompous fellow, for it was just the hour when I was wont to carry my nosegay to the arbor.  I clambered over the wall, and was just about to place the flowers on the marble table, when I heard the sound of a horse’s hoofs at some distance.  There was no time for escape; my Lady fair was riding slowly along the avenue in a green hunting-habit, apparently lost in thought.  All that I had read in an old book of my father’s about the beautiful Magelona came into my head—­how she used to appear among the tall forest-trees, when horns were echoing and evening shadows were flitting through the glades.  I could not stir from the spot.  She started when she perceived me and paused involuntarily.  I was as if intoxicated with intense joy, dread, and the throbbing of my heart, and when I saw that she actually wore at her breast the flowers I had left yesterday, I could no longer keep silent, but said in a rapture, “Fairest Lady fair, accept these flowers too, and all the flowers in my garden, and everything I have!  Ah, if I could only brave some danger for you!” At first she had looked at me so gravely, almost angrily, that I shivered, but then she cast down her eyes, and did not lift them while I was speaking.  At that moment voices and the tramp of horses were heard in the distance.  She snatched the flowers from my hand, and without saying a word, swiftly vanished at the end of the avenue.