It seemed as if the post-horn in the distance would fain accompany my song.  While I was singing, it came nearer and nearer among the mountains, until at last I heard it in the castle court-yard; I got down from the tree as quickly as possible, in time to meet the old woman with an opened packet coming toward me.  “Here is something too for you,” she said, and handed me a neat little note.  It was without address; I opened it hastily, and on the instant flushed as red as a peony, and my heart beat so violently that the old woman observed my agitation.  The note was from—­my Lady fair, whose handwriting I had often seen at the bailiff’s.  It was short:  “All is well once more; all obstacles are removed.  I take a private opportunity to be the first to write you the good news.  Come, hasten back.  It is so lonely here, and I can scarcely bear to live since you left us.  Aurelia.”

As I read, my eyes grew dim with rapture, alarm, and ineffable delight.  I was ashamed in presence of the old woman, who began to smirk and wink odiously, and I flew like an arrow to the loneliest nook of the garden.  There I threw myself on the grass beneath the hazel-bushes and read the note again, repeating the words by heart, and then re-reading them over and over, while the sunlight danced between the leaves upon the letters, so that they were blended and blurred before my eyes like golden and bright-green and crimson blossoms.  “Is she not married, then?” I thought; “was that young officer her brother, perhaps, or is he dead, or am I crazy, or—­but no matter!” I exclaimed at last, leaping to my feet.  “It is clear enough, she loves me! she loves me!”

When I crept out of the shrubbery the sun was near its setting.  The heavens were red, the birds were singing merrily in the woods, the valleys were full of a golden sheen, but in my heart all was a thousand times more beautiful and more glad.

I shouted to them in the castle to serve my supper out in the garden.  The old woman, the grim old man, the maids—­I made them all come and sit at table with me under the trees.  I brought out my fiddle and played, and ate and drank between-whiles.  Then they all grew merry; the old man smoothed the grim wrinkles out of his face, and emptied glass after glass, the old woman chattered away—­heaven knows about what, and the maids began to dance together on the green-sward.  At last the pale student approached inquisitively, cast a scornful glance at the party, and was about to pass on with great dignity.  But I sprang up in a twinkling, and, before he knew what I was about, seized him by his long surtout and waltzed merrily round with him.  He actually began to try to dance after the latest and most approved fashion, and footed it so nimbly that the moisture stood in beads upon his forehead, his long coat flew round like a wheel, and he looked at me so strangely withal, and his eyes rolled so, that I began to be really afraid of him, and suddenly released him.