As I was sauntering on, not knowing—­what with delight, moonlight, and fragrance—­which way to turn, I heard a guitar touched in the depths of a garden.  “Great heavens!” I thought, “the crazy student with his long surtout has been secretly following me all this time.”  But in a moment a lady in the garden began to sing deliciously.  I stood spellbound; it was the voice of the Lady fair! and the selfsame Italian song which she often used to sing at her open window!

Then the dear old time recurred so vividly to my mind that I could have wept bitterly; I saw the quiet garden before the castle in the early dawn, and thought how happy I had been among the shrubbery before that stupid fly flew up my nose.  I could restrain myself no longer, but clambered over the gilded ornaments surmounting the grated gate-way and leaped down into the garden whence the song proceeded.  As I did so I perceived a slender white figure standing in the distance behind a poplar-tree, looking at me in amazement; but in an instant it had turned and fled through the dim garden toward the house so quickly that in the moonlight it seemed to glide.  “It was she, herself!” I exclaimed, and my heart throbbed with delight; I recognized her on the instant by her pretty little fleet feet.  It was unfortunate that in clambering over the gate I had slightly twisted my ankle, and had to limp along for a minute or two before I could run after her toward the house.  In the meanwhile the doors and windows had been closed.  I knocked modestly, listened, and then knocked again.  I seemed to hear low laughter and whispering within the house, and once I was almost sure that a pair of bright eyes peeped between the jalousies in the moonlight.  But finally all was silent.

“She does not know that it is I,” I thought; I took out my fiddle, and promenaded to and fro on the path before the house and sang the song of the Lady fair and played over all my songs that I had been wont to play on lovely summer nights in the castle garden, or on the bench before the toll-house so that the sound should reach the castle windows.  But it was all of no use; no one stirred in the entire house.  Then I put away my fiddle sadly, and seated myself upon the door-step, for I was very weary with my long march.  The night was warm; the flower-beds before the house sent forth a delicious fragrance, and a fountain somewhere in the depths of the garden plashed continuously.  I thought dreamily of azure flowers, of dim, green, lovely, lonely spots where brooks were rippling and gay birds singing, until at last I fell sound asleep.

When I awoke the fresh air of morning was playing over me; the birds were already awake and twittering in the trees around, as if they were making game of me.  I started up and looked about; the fountain in the garden was still playing, but nothing was to be heard within the house.  I peeped through the green blinds into one of the rooms, where I could see a sofa and a large round table covered with gray linen.  The chairs were all standing against the wall in perfect order; the blinds were down at all the windows, as if the house had been uninhabited for example, with many a loving thought of my fair, distant home.