"You err, my lady," he said, "if you believe that Rothenburg would feel any honor about having a Doppler once more among them, or would allow this honor to cost them anything. When I, as I told you, merely curious to see the old fortress, strolled through the ancient gateway nine years ago, not a person there knew me, and even when I mentioned my name, they made little fuss about it. Indeed, as I was born in Nuremberg, and no longer have the T in my name, they greatly doubted that I really belonged to them. But, as the poet says, the history of the world is the final judgment; and what the magistrate of Rothenburg neglected to do--that is, to meet me ceremoniously, surrender to me for my sole possession the houses which the great burgomaster had owned, and support me for my lifetime as a living part of the city--fate, or providence, whichever you wish, did in another way. "I came to Rothenburg merely to make a few studies and to take a look at the old-fashioned nest, and I found there my life's happiness and a warm, new nest of my own, to which I am now returning." "May I know how it happened?" "Why not, if it interests you at all. My parents sent me to the academy at Munich. They were not rich, but yet their means were sufficient to educate me suitably and to allow me to go through all the classes. I wished to become a landscape painter, and, after finishing school, to travel in Italy for several years. When I became twenty-one years of age I felt impelled, before undertaking the great art-journey, to visit my good mother at Nuremberg--father had been dead for some time. 'Hans,' said she, 'before you make your pilgrimage to Rome, you ought to take a trip to the place where the roots of our family tree stood before they were torn up and transplanted here from eastern Franconia.' She was a worthy old patrician, my good mother, and laid great stress on grand genealogical expressions. Well, there was nothing to hinder; I took my pilgrim's staff in hand and set out slowly toward the west, sketching industriously on the way; for this German landscape of ours was already far dearer to me than the unknown scenes of the south. Now, since you have looked through the portfolio, you may perhaps comprehend that the German Jerusalem impressed me strongly, and that I did not have hands and eyes enough to note all the remarkable things. But there was something in Rothenburg which won my approval even more than its dear antiquity; namely--I shall not treat you to any detailed love story--at one of the weekly balls given by the so-called 'Harmonic Society,' I became acquainted with the young daughter of a fine old citizen who had formerly been an alderman. She was full three years younger than I, and--I may surely say so--the prettiest child in the whole town. After the second waltz I knew my own mind well enough, but, unfortunately, neither hers nor her father's. And so it might have been