The horses started; the light wagon rattled over the rough road across the court-yard. In an instant the chÂteau, with its still brilliantly lighted windows, the dark barns and stables, and the little cottages all lay behind them, and they were far off between waving grain-fields and mist-covered meadows. The short summer night was already waning. In the East a faint streak of light announced the new day; the early dawn covered the whole landscape as with a thin veil. From the North, however, came sheet lightning, and rent from time to time the thick fog. All was silent yet in the fields; even the lark, the herald of day, was still asleep. Oswald was leaning back in his corner and looked dreamily into the twilight; only at times, when the smoke from the baron's cigar floated by him, he looked at the latter, who seemed to be lost in thought as he sat there, with his hat pushed back a little, the collar of his coat drawn up, and his long legs stretched out to their full length. They might have been sitting thus for a quarter of an hour, when the baron suddenly said:

"You don't smoke?"

"No."

"May I offer you a cigar?"

"Thanks! I never smoke."

"That is strange."

"Why so?"

"Because I cannot understand it, how a man can endure this nineteenth century of ours without smoking tobacco or opium, without eating hasheesh, or trying in some other way to deaden the desperate disgust with which this age fills our hearts. And I understand this least of all in your case."

"Why just in my case?"

"Because, if I am not totally mistaken, you are affected with the poet's deadly disease--the longing after the Blue Flower--and will die one of these days of your unsatisfied longing. You recollect the beautiful story in Novalis' works? The Blue Flower, after which the great Minnesinger was longing? The Blue Flower! Do you know what that is? That is the flower which mortal eye has never yet seen, and the fragrance of which fills the whole world. Not every creature is delicately enough made to be able to perceive the perfume; but the nightingale is intoxicated with it when it sings and sobs and sighs in the moonlight or at early daybreak; and all foolish men have been and are drunk with it when they cry in prose and in poetry to heaven, pouring out their sorrow and their grief; and all the countless millions to whom the gift was denied to utter what they suffer, and who in their speechless sorrow look up to merciless Heaven. Ah! and there is no cure for that malady! No cure but death! He who has once breathed the perfume of the Blue Flower, has no more peace and quiet in this life. As if he were an accursed murderer, as if the angel with the flaming sword were after him, he is driven on and on, although his sore feet pain him and he yearns to lay down his weary head to rest. He asks, in his torments of thirst, for a drink at this or that cottage door, but he returns the emptied cup without thanks, for there was a fly in the water, or the cup was not quite clean, or--well, well, he was not refreshed by the drink. Refreshed! Where is the eye which satisfies us so that we would never like to look into another again, more brilliant, more fiery than the first? Where is the bosom on which we have once rested, which keeps us from desiring to listen to the beating of another heart, more ardent, more burning with love? Where? I ask you where?"

The baron paused: Oswald was strangely moved. What the eccentric man by his side had been saying, more to himself than to be heard, in an almost elegiac tone, which contrasted strikingly with his ordinarily sharp, strident voice--it was his own thoughts, which he had had often and often, from early boyhood up, so that he was almost frightened by the close resemblance of his Double. He had no answer for the baron's question, which he seemed to have propounded to himself.

"I have always been thinking about the necessity," continued the baron, "which forces men first to forget their own existence more or less, before they reach the condition which we call happiness, for want of a better word, and that they are the happier, the more fully they can forget it. 'The best of life is but intoxication,' says Byron. Yes indeed! The love of Romeo and Juliet, for which we face death as readily, as we go to a feast, is also but intoxication. 'To sleep is better than to be awake,' says the wisdom of the East; but the best of all is death."

"And yet comparatively few men kill themselves," said Oswald.

"Yes, and that is remarkable enough," replied the baron; "especially in our day, when most people are not afraid any more even of Hamlet-dreams that might trouble us in our eternal sleep."

"Might not that be a proof that, after all, the much talked of unhappiness of such people is not so very great?"

"Perhaps so; but perhaps, also, it only proves that man is very reluctant to abandon his last hope. Why does the wanderer who has lost his way drag himself forward through the deep snow? Why does the poor shipwrecked mariner strain his eyes for half a century gazing over the wild waste of waters? Why does the criminal condemned for life not dash his brains out against his prison walls? Why does the poor fellow who is to be hanged on the morrow not hang himself the night before? Before their unhappiness is not so very great? Pshaw! You do not believe that. Simply because a faint glimmer of hope still shines through the hell of their suffering, like the pale streak there in the east. If that faint gleam too should fade away, then, yes, then old Mother Night would have to take back her poor lost child, the mild, good, loving Night of Death."

After a short pause, during which the baron had been puffing great clouds of smoke from his cigar, he continued in a somewhat calmer tone:--

"I am several years older than you, and Fate has allowed me to see in a short time more of life than is commonly given to man. I have that, of which Goethe's friend in gray wished him the greatest possible amount: Experience. I might have learnt, and I ought to have learnt, therefore, that there is no hope in life for me and people like me; but, although I say: I have no more hope! I still go on hoping in secret that some happiness will come, as the consumptive ever hopes to be cured. Take for instance a party like that which we have just left. I know how hollow the joys of these people are; how many care-worn faces, how many guilty blushes are hid behind the smiling company-masks; I know that this pretty girl will be, ten years hence, an unhappy wife, if she is not an idiot; that this handsome fellow, who carries his head so high, and looks as if he could perform the twelve labors of Hercules in a single day, will be a coarse country bumpkin, who ill-treats his tenants and strikes his wife; I know that, and I know more than that, and I have seen it a thousand and ten thousand times in life, and yet I am not blasÉ for all that. This treacherous Fata Morgana has yet charms for me; every budding girl-flower awakens the hope in me, I might really for once love and be loved; every fine manly fellow makes me believe once more in friendship. Would you have believed me such a fool?"

"I should not have thought you could think and feel thus."

"And you were perfectly right," said the baron. "I only think and feel so when I am dead drunk, as now.--What was that?"

A loud cry came from a little distance through the silent morning--and once more, louder, desperate, as if a woman, for it was a woman's voice, sees the murderer's knife raised in his hand. Before them lay a piece of woodland; the road went around it; the cry must have come from the other side, which was hid from them by a few detached oak-trees and thick underwood.

"Go on, Charles, faster!" cried the baron.

The coachman whipped his horses. The noble creatures, as if amazed at such undeserved treatment, rushed headlong forward, so that the two men in the carriage began to tremble. In an instant they were at the corner. As soon as they could see the other side they beheld a strange sight--A strangely dressed, dark-complexioned woman, with a piece of red stuff twisted like a turban around her bluish-black hair, ran shrieking after three horsemen, who spurred their horses to make their best speed, and instantly disappeared behind another turn in the road. As the baron's carriage came thundering up, the woman jumped aside and cried, with screaming voice, lifting her hands as if in prayer: "My child--my child! they have robbed me of my child!"

The coachman found it hard to stop the horses. Oswald, who had at once recognized the Brown Countess in the woman, had jumped down from the carriage.

"Save my child, sir, save my child!" cried the gypsy, throwing herself down before him and embracing his knees.

The baron laughed.

"A very romantic situation, doctor," he said from the wagon. "Morning dawning, woods whispering, gypsy, the king's highway--really, quite a novel! In the mean time, while you console the bereft mother I will pursue the robbers, who are probably only sheep in wolf's clothing, a couple of empty-headed gentlemen of our neighborhood, who look upon the whole as capital fun."

"The one on the gray horse was Baron Nadelitz," said the coachman, who could hardly hold his horses, turning half around.

"Drive on!" said the baron. "We'll give them a lesson."

The carriage went off thundering.

The gypsy had raised herself again. She looked after the carriage, which flew with mad speed over the rough forest road and now disappeared behind some trees. A strange smile passed over her face as she stood there, listening in breathless excitement. Then, as her ear ceased to hear the rolling of the wheels, she crossed her bare arms on her full bosom, the restless heaving of which alone spoke of the violent storm which had just shaken her whole system, and stared rigidly before her. Suddenly she raised her head and said, fixing her glittering eyes on Oswald:

"Do you know the dark man who brings me my Czika back?"

"Yes, Isabel."

"Is he your friend?"

"No."

"But he will be?"

"Perhaps."

"Is he a good man?"

"I think so."

"Do you remember the evening on the edge of the water, sir?"

"Yes, Isabel."

"Could you find the place again?"

"I believe I could. Why?"

"Will you bring the dark man to that place when the full moon stands in the heavens as it does now? Oh say yes! I beseech you by your love to the beautiful, kind lady, by the bones of your mother, say yes!"

The gypsy was kneeling once more before Oswald, and looked, with folded hands, imploringly up to him.

"Get up, Isabel," said the young man, "I will do what you wish, if I can."

The gypsy seized his hands, as he stretched them out to help her get up, and kissed them with passionate gratitude. Then she started up, hastened across the road toward the forest, and had the next moment disappeared in the dense underwood, through which she sped with the strength and the swiftness of a deer.

Before Oswald could recover from the speechless astonishment which the conduct of the Brown Countess had caused him, he heard the rolling of the carriage, which returned as swiftly as it had left. But before the wagon had reached the trees, behind which it had before disappeared, it suddenly stopped, and the baron appeared, bareheaded, and carrying little Czika on his arm.

"We have hunted, we have caught," he called out from afar. "The cowardly wolves let the fair booty go as soon as they saw us in pursuit, and escaped in haste.--There, little Ganymede, now see if your feet will carry you again."

The baron let the child glide down. "But what has become of the mother, or whoever that brown woman was?" he asked, surprised to find Oswald alone.

Oswald told him, in a few words, what had happened during his absence.

"Well, that is not so bad," said the baron; "the thing becomes more and more romantic. Full moon, edge of lake, gypsy women, cunning of Egypt, and two simple German boys, who are cheated! What are we to do with little Czika, as you call the little princess?--for I am sure she is a king's daughter, stolen from the cradle----"

"If we do not wish to leave her on the high-road, we shall have to take her with us, I suppose."

"But will the child go with us? Listen, little Czika, will you go with me?"

"Yes, sir!" said the child, who had so far shown no sign of apprehension, fear, or anxiety.

"Hm!" said the baron, "here I have an adopted child without asking for it!"

He had become very serious of a sudden. He stroked Czika's bluish-black curls and her fine brow, and looked at her steadily.

"How beautiful the child is," he murmured, "how very beautiful! And how it has grown!--Come with me, little Czika, you shall be happy at my house, very happy; I will love you more than your mother, who has left you so basely, has ever loved you."

"Mother has not left Czika," said the child, quietly looking up at the baron; "mother is where Czika is; mother is everywhere."

Turning away from the two gentlemen, she put her little hands to her mouth, and sent a cry into the silent forest exactly like the call of a hungry young falcon.

The child inclined her head on one side and listened; the baron and Oswald instinctively held their breath.

There came from the forest, but evidently from a great distance, the answer; the clear, wild cry of the old falcon when he has spied out his quarry far down below him.

"You see, sir," said the child, "mother does not leave Czika; if you wish to take Czika with you, Czika will go with you."

"Well, then, come, young falcon," said the baron, taking the child by the hand. "Come, doctor! I believe Charles has mended the strap which broke just around the corner. There he is. All right again, Charles?"

"Yes, sir."

The gentlemen got in and took the child between them.

"Go on," said the baron. "Let them trot out."

They soon came upon the wide heath which extends from Fashwitz to Grenwitz, the same heath on which Oswald had met the old woman from the village. It wanted yet half an hour to sunrise. On the eastern sky a series of purple streaks rose one above the other. The air came cool from the sea across the damp moor.

The little Czika had come up close to the baron and was fast asleep.

"How thinly the child is dressed," said the latter; "it will take cold in the fresh morning air!"

He rose, pulled off his overcoat, wrapped it around the little one, took her in his lap, and rested her head on his bosom.

"So, so!" he said, kindly! and then to Oswald, who had been silent, meditating on the enigmatical character of the man by his side:

"I look to you a little crazy, doctor, eh?"

"No," said the other, looking up, "not in the least."

"That is because you suffer of the same disease as I do; what makes others speechless with amazement appears to us perfectly natural; and what the good people and bad musicians consider a matter of course, seems to us nothing less than fabulous. You will, for instance, readily believe that I have met this same child now for the third time in my life, and that I am superstitious enough to see in this threefold meeting much more than a mere accident. Besides, like Wallenstein, I believe in no accident."

"And where and when do you think you have seen Czika?"

"The first time, four years ago, in England. I was riding with a couple of English friends in a distant part of Hyde Park. As we turned round a corner at full speed, a child was standing before us--a brown child, with big black eyes, raising its tiny hands imploringly. I scarcely noticed it, being engaged in an animated conversation. After we had gone on perhaps a hundred yards, I felt suddenly as if spirits were drawing me back. I cannot describe the sensation. I felt, however, as if my riding past the sweet, helpless creature had been a crime, which made me perfectly wretched. I turned round; I raced back to the place like a madman. The child was gone. I called after her; I searched the shrubbery all around; my friends aided me, in spite of my madness, as they called it; but all in vain.

"The next time, I saw the child in Egypt. It is now two years. We--I mean a small caravan of Nile travellers, who had met by accident,--were riding on our little donkeys through the narrow winding streets of Asqut. By the side of an open door, through which we could look into the silent shady court of a mosque, stood, in a niche in the wall, a child, older than that in Hyde Park, and younger than that here in my arms, but the same brown child, with the bluish-black curls, and the bright gazelle eyes. Again she stretched out her little hands towards the passers-by, and called the cry you hear everywhere in Egypt: Bakshish! howadjee, bakshish! I saw the child, and yet I did not see it; for I was in those desperate fits of humor which occasionally overcome me, when eyes and ears are wide open, and yet neither see nor hear. As we turned round the next corner, I felt precisely the same sensation as in Hyde Park. I left my donkey; I ran back as fast as I could.--The niche was empty. The door leading to the mosque was open, as I said. The yard had on the other side a second door, which was also open, and which led upon one of the main streets, where, at this hour,--it was towards sunset,--men, camels, and donkeys were closely crowded together. The child was gone, and I returned to my companions with a heavy heart; as usual, they had explained my sudden disappearance by assuming a fit of madness.--Do you think it possible that this child, which I first saw amid English mists, and next under the bright sky of Egypt, should cross my path a third time in a German beechwood?"

"And even if it were not the same child,--and, to tell the truth, I consider it highly improbable that it is the same,"--replied Oswald, "it would be the same to you. I believe in an eternal, ever-changing, ever-constant world-spirit. I believe that that lark which there rises from the heath, and wings its way singing to the sky, is the same lark which I followed, enchanted, as a boy, until it was lost in the blue ether even to my sharp eyes. I believe that all heroes are brethren, and that every sufferer is that neighbor whom heart and reason alike command us to love like unto ourselves.--It matters little whether this child is the same which you have twice sought in vain, it matters only that the appeals of the poor forlorn creature every time pierced through the triple brass around your bosom into your very heart.... You will pardon, I am sure, such language in a man who is so far inferior in experience and intelligence, and who draws courage to speak them only from the regard he feels for you, almost instinctively. And allow me to add one word: if you could make up your mind to love this child, it would be a gift to you more precious than Aladdin's marvellous lamp. Love is everywhere except in hell, says a deep word of one of the Minnesingers; it means, where there is no love, there is hell. Love is the fragrance of that Blue Flower, which, as you said just now, fills the whole world, and you will find the Blue Flower, which you have sought in vain all your life long, in every being which you love with all your heart." A strange melancholy smile played around the baron's lips as Oswald spoke these words.

"You cannot solve the riddle," he said sadly, in a low voice; "for this very condition, that we must love with all our heart, if we wish to get rid of the torment which makes life a hell, is the impossible thing. Which of us can love with all his heart? We are all so driven, so weary, that we have no longer the strength nor the courage which true, real love requires. I mean that love which knows neither rest nor repose till it has made its own every thought of our mind, every sentiment of our heart, and every drop of our blood. If you are still young and ingenuous enough for such a love, I congratulate you! For my part, I can only repeat: I have given it up to find the Blue Flower, that wondrous flower which blooms only for the happy one who is still able to love with all his heart.--But here we are at the gates of Grenwitz, and must break off a conversation which I trust we shall very soon continue. Farewell, and come and inquire as soon as you can after the well-being of the little creature who is your protÉgÉe almost more than mine."

The carriage rolled off. Oswald followed it long with his eyes; then he crossed the bridge, bowing his head, and went up to the chÂteau. The sun had risen, and was flooding the gray walls with rosy lights; in the dewy garden the birds were singing their carols--but Oswald saw a dark gray veil drawn over the charming morning, for in his ear sounded yet the baron's words: Which of us is still able to love with all his heart? Which of us has yet a whole heart?