Meanwhile, the students and I had combined our resources.  The captain laughed and shook his head when the cornetist counted out our passage-money to him in coppers, for which we had diligently searched every corner of our pockets.  I shouted aloud when I once more saw the Danube before me; we hurried aboard, the captain gave the signal, and away we glided in the brilliant morning sunshine past the meadows and the mountains.

The birds in the woods were singing, and the morning bells echoed afar from the villages on each side of us, while overhead the larks’ clear notes were now and then heard.  On the boat a canary-bird in its cage trilled and twittered back so that it was a delight to listen to it.

It belonged to a pretty young girl who was on the boat with us.  She kept the cage close beside her, and under the other arm she had a small bundle of linen; she sat by herself, quite still, looking in great content, now at her new traveling-shoes, which peeped out from beneath her petticoats, and now down at the water, while the morning sun shone on her white forehead, above which the hair was neatly parted.  I noticed that the students would have liked to engage her in polite discourse, for they kept passing to and fro before her, and the cornetist, whenever he did so, cleared his throat, and settled, first his cravat, and then his three-cornered hat.  But their courage failed them, and moreover the girl cast down her eyes as soon as they, approached her.

They seemed, besides, to stand in special awe of the elderly gentleman in the gray overcoat, who was now sitting on the other side of the boat, and whom they took for a divine.  He held an open breviary, in which he was reading, looking up from it frequently to admire the lovely scenery, while the gilt edges of the book and the gay pictures of saints laid between its leaves shone brilliantly in the sun light.  He was perfectly well aware, too, of what was going on around him, and soon recognized the birds by their feathers, for before long he addressed one of the students in Latin, whereupon all three approached him, took off their hats, and made answer also in Latin.

Meanwhile, I had seated myself at the prow of the boat, where, highly delighted, I dangled my legs above the water, gazing, while the boat glided onward and the waves below me leaped and foamed, constantly into the blue distance, watching towers and castles one after another emerge from the dim depths of green, grow and grow upon the sight, and finally recede and vanish behind us.  “If I had but wings at this moment!” I thought; and at last in my impatience I drew forth my dear violin and played all my oldest pieces, which I had learned at home and at the castle of the Lady fair.

All at once some one behind me tapped me on the shoulder.  It was the reverend gentleman, who had laid aside his book, and had been listening to me for a while.  “Aha,” he said laughing, “aha, my young ludi magister is forgetting to eat and drink!” Whereupon he bade me put away my fiddle and take a bit of luncheon with him, and he then led me to a pleasant little arbor which the boatmen had erected in the centre of the boat out of young birches and firs.  He had a table placed beneath it, and I and the students, and even the young girl, were invited to sit down around it upon the casks and packages.