The cool breeze of morning aroused me at last from my dreamings.  I was startled as I looked about me.  The music and dancing had long since ceased, and everything around the castle and on the lawn, and the marble steps and columns, all looked quiet, cool, and solemn; the fountain alone plashed on before the entrance.  Here and there in the boughs near me the birds were awaking, shaking their bright feathers, and as they stretched their little wings, peering curiously and amazed at their strange fellow-sleeper.  The joyous rays of morning flashed across my breast and over the garden.

I stood erect in my tree, and for the first time for a long while looked far abroad over the country, to where the ships glided down the Danube among the vineyards, and the high-roads, still deserted, stretched like bridges across the gleaming landscape and far over the distant hills and valleys.

I cannot tell how it was, but all at once my former love of travel took possession of me, all the old melancholy, and delight, and ardent expectation.  And at the same moment I thought of the Lady fair over in the castle sleeping among flowers, beneath silken coverlets, with an angel surely keeping watch beside her bed in the silence of the dawn.  “No!” I cried aloud.  “I must go away from here, far, far away—­as far as the sky stretches its blue arch!”

As I uttered the words I tossed my basket high into the air, so that it was beautiful to see how the flowers fell among the branches and lay in gay colors on the green sod below.  Then I got down as quickly as possible, and went through the quiet garden to my dwelling.  I paused many times at spots where I had seen her pass, or where I had lain in the shade and thought of her.

In and about my cottage all was just as I had left it the day before.  The garden was torn up and laid waste, the big account-book lay open on the table in my room, my fiddle, which I had almost clean forgotten, hung dusty on the wall; a ray of morning light glittered upon the strings.  It struck a chord in my heart.  “Yes,” I said, “come here, thou faithful instrument!  Our kingdom is not of this world!”

So I took the fiddle from the wall, and leaving behind me the account-book, dressing-gown, slippers, pipes, and parasol, I walked out of my cottage, as poor as when I entered it, and down along the gleaming high-road.

I looked back often and often; I felt very strange, sad, and yet merry, like a bird escaping from his cage.  And when I had walked some distance I took out my fiddle and sang—­

  “I wander on, in God confiding,
    For all are His, wood, field, and fell;
  O’er earth and skies He still presiding,
    For me will order all things well.”

The castle, the garden, and the spires of Vienna vanished behind me in the morning mists; far above me countless larks exulted in the air; thus, past gay villages and hamlets and over green hills, I wandered on toward Italy.