At the first sound the girl ran off like a deer and vanished in the darkness.  The man picked himself up and began to rave against the inn with such volubility that it was a wonder to hear him.  “What!” he yelled, “I drunk?  I not pay the chalk-marks on your smoky door?  Rub them out! rub them out!  Did I not shave you yesterday over a ladle, and cut you just under the nose so that you bit the ladle in two?  Shaving takes off one mark; ladle, another mark; court-plaster on your nose, another.  How many more of your dirty marks do you want to have paid?  But all right—­all right.  I’ll let the whole village, the whole world go unshaved.  Wear your beards, for all I care, till they are so long that at the judgment-day the Almighty will not know whether you are Jews or Christians.  Yes, hang yourselves with your beards, shaggy bears that you are!” Here he burst into tears and, in a maudlin, falsetto voice, sobbed out, “Am I to drink water like a wretched fish?  Is that loving your neighbor?  Am I not a man and a skilled surgeon?  Ah, I am beside myself today; my heart is full of pity, and of love for my fellow-creatures.”  And then, finding that all was quiet in the house, he began to walk away.  When he saw me, he came plunging toward me with outstretched arms.  I thought the fellow was about to embrace me, and sprang aside, letting him stumble on in the darkness, where I heard him discoursing to himself for some time.

All sorts of fancies filled my brain.  The girl who had given me the rose was young, pretty, and rich.  I could make my fortune before one could turn round.  And sheep and pigs, turkeys, and fat geese stuffed with apples—­verily, I seemed to see the Porter strutting up to me:  “Seize your luck, Receiver, seize your luck!  ’Marry young, you’re never wrong;’ take home your bride, live in the country, and live well.”  Plunged in these philosophical reflections, I sat me down on a stone, for, since I had no money, I did not venture to knock at the inn.  The moon shone brilliantly, the forests on the mountain-side murmured in the still night; now and then a dog barked in the village which lay farther down the valley, buried, as it were, beneath foliage and moonlight.  I gazed up at the heavens, where a few clouds were sailing slowly and now and then a falling star shot down from the zenith.  Thus this same moon, thought I, is shining down upon my father’s mill and upon his Grace’s castle.  Everything there is quiet by this time, the Lady fair is asleep, and the fountains and leaves in the garden are whispering just as they used to whisper, all the same whether I am there, or here, or dead.  And the world seemed to me so terribly big, and I so utterly alone in it, that I could have wept from the very depths of my heart.