“Lisbeth!  Lisbeth!” cried a sharp voice from the shore, “Lisbeth!  Where are you taking the gentleman?”

This recalled the poor girl to her senses; and she saw how fast they were floating down stream.  For in telling the story she had forgotten every thing else, and the swift current had swept them down to the tall walnut trees of Kamp.  They landed in front of the Capucin Monastery.  Lisbeth led the way through the little village, and turning to the right pointed up the romantic, lonely valley which leads to the Liebenstein, and even offered to go up.  But Flemming patted her cheek and shook his head.  He went up the valley alone.

CHAPTER V. JEAN PAUL, THE ONLY-ONE.

The man in the play, who wished for `some forty pounds of lovely beef, placed in a Mediterranean sea of brewis,’ might have seen his ample desires almost realized at the table d’hote of the Rheinischen Hof, in Mayence, where Flemming dined that day.  At the head of the table sat a gentleman, with a smooth, broad forehead, and large, intelligent eyes.  He was from Baireuth in Franconia; and talked about poetry and Jean Paul, to a pale, romantic-looking lady on his right.  There was music all dinner-time, at the other end of the hall; a harp and a horn and a voice; so that a great part of the fat gentleman’s conversation with the pale lady was lost to Flemming, who sat opposite to her, and could look right into her large, melancholy eyes.  But what heheard, so much interested him,—­indeed, the very name of the beloved Jean Paul would have been enough for this,—­that he ventured to join in the conversation, and asked the German if he had known the poet personally.

“Yes; I knew him well,” replied the stranger.  “I am a native of Baireuth, where he passed the best years of his life.  In my mind the man and the author are closely united.  I never read a page of his writings without hearing his voice, and seeing his form before me.  There he sits, with his majestic, mountainous forehead, his mild blue eyes, and finely cut nose and mouth; his massive frame clad loosely and carelessly in an old green frock, from the pockets of which the corners of books project, and perhaps the end of a loaf of bread, and the nose of a bottle;—­a straw hat, lined with green, lying near him; a huge walking-stick in his hand, and at his feet a white poodle, with pink eyes and a string round his neck.  You would sooner have taken him for a master-carpenter than for a poet.  Is he a favorite author of yours?”

Flemming answered in the affirmative.

“But a foreigner must find it exceedingly difficult to understand him,” said the gentleman.  “It is by no means an easy task for us Germans.”

“I have always observed,” replied Flemming, “that the true understanding and appreciation of a poet depend more upon individual, than upon national character.  If there be a sympathy between the minds of writer and reader, the bounds and barriers of a foreign tongue are soon overleaped.  If you once understand an author’s character, the comprehension of his writings becomes easy.”