On an afternoon of great heat I rode out for a gaze at the lake-palace, that I chose to fancy might be the last, foreseeing the possibility of one of my fits of movement coming on me before sunset.  My very pulses throbbed ‘away!’ Transferring the sense of overwhelming heat to my moral condition, I thought it the despair of silliness to stay baking in that stagnant place, where the sky did nothing but shine, gave nothing forth.  The sky was bronze, a vast furnace dome.  The folds of light and shadow everywhere were satin-rich; shadows perforce of blackness had light in them, and the light a sword-like sharpness over their edges.  It was inanimate radiance.  The laurels sparkled as with frost-points; the denser foliage dropped burning brown:  a sickly saint’s-ring was round the heads of the pines.  That afternoon the bee hummed of thunder, and refreshed the ear.

I pitied the horse I rode, and the dog at his heels, but for me the intensity was inspiriting.  Nothing lay in the light, I had the land to myself.  ‘What hurts me?’ I thought.  My physical pride was up, and I looked on the cattle in black corners of the fields, and here and there a man tumbled anyhow, a wreck of limbs, out of the insupportable glare, with an even glance.  Not an eye was lifted on me.

I saw nothing that moved until a boat shot out of the bight of sultry lake-water, lying close below the dark promontory where I had drawn rein.  The rower was old Schwartz Warhead.  How my gorge rose at the impartial brute!  He was rowing the princess and a young man in uniform across the lake.

That they should cross from unsheltered paths to close covert was reasonable conduct at a time when the vertical rays of the sun were fiery arrow-heads.  As soon as they were swallowed in the gloom I sprang in my saddle with torture, transfixed by one of the coarsest shafts of hideous jealousy.  Off I flew, tearing through dry underwood, and round the bend of the lake, determined to confront her, wave the man aside, and have my last word with the false woman.  Of the real Ottilia I had lost conception.  Blood was inflamed, brain bare of vision:  ’He takes her hand, she jumps from the boat; he keeps her hand, she feigns to withdraw it, all woman to him in her eyes:  they pass out of sight.’  A groan burst from me.  I strained my crazy imagination to catch a view of them under cover of the wood and torture myself trebly, but it was now blank, shut fast.  Sitting bolt upright, panting on horseback in the yellow green of one of the open woodways, I saw the young officer raise a branch of chestnut and come out.  He walked moodily up to within a yard of my horse, looked up at me, and with an angry stare that grew to be one of astonishment, said, ’Ah?  I think I have had the pleasure—­somewhere? in Wurtemberg, if I recollect.’

It was Prince Otto.  I dismounted.  He stood alone.  The spontaneous question on my lips would have been ‘Where is she?’ but I was unable to speak a word.