But at these English _table-d'hôte_ dinners, as I look at all these laces, ribbons, jewels, pomaded locks, and silken dresses, I often think how many living women would be happy, and would make others happy, with these adornments. Strange to think how many friends and lovers--most fortunate friends and lovers--are sitting here side by side, without, perhaps, knowing it! And God knows why they never come to this knowledge, and never give each other this happiness, which they might so easily give, and which they so long for. I began to feel blue, as invariably happens after such a dinner; and, without waiting for dessert, I sallied out in the same frame of mind for a constitutional through the city. My melancholy frame of mind was not relieved, but rather confirmed by the narrow, muddy streets without lanterns, the shuttered shops, the encounters with drunken workmen, and with women hastening after water, or in bonnets, glancing around them as they turned the corners. It was perfectly dark in the streets, when I returned to the hotel without casting a glance about me, or having an idea in my head. I hoped that sleep would put an end to my melancholy. I experienced that peculiar spiritual chill and loneliness and heaviness, which, without any reason, beset those who are just arrived in any new place. Looking steadfastly down, I walked along the quay to the Schweitzerhof, when suddenly my ear was struck by the strains of a peculiar but thoroughly agreeable and sweet music. These strains had an immediately enlivening effect upon me. It was as though a bright, cheerful light had poured into my soul. I felt contented, gay. My slumbering attention was awakened again to all surrounding objects; and the beauty of the night and the lake, to which till then I had been indifferent, suddenly came over me with quickening force like a novelty. I involuntarily took in at a glance the dark sky with gray clouds flecking its deep blue, now lighted by the rising moon, the glassy dark-green lake with its surface reflecting the lighted windows, and far away the snowy mountains; and I heard the croaking of the frogs over on the Freshenburg shore, and the dewy fresh call of the quail. Directly in front of me, in the spot whence the sounds of music had first come, and which still especially attracted my attention, I saw, amid the semi-darkness on the street, a throng of people standing in a semi-circle, and in front of the crowd, at a little distance, a small man in dark clothes. Behind the throng and the man, there stood out harmoniously against the dark, ragged sky, gray and blue, the black tops of a few Lombardy poplars in some garden, and, rising majestically on high, the two stern spires that stand on the towers of the ancient cathedral.