"A mad farce, this life of ours!" he growled under his mustache. "The only thing still wanting is that my old lion-hunter should come riding past his father-in-law, smoking a cigar and gazing complacently at the white-haired old boy, who would be powdered still whiter by the dust kicked up by his nag's hoofs; and that then he should stop here in the park gate, and make inquiries of Zenz in regard to the health of our patient, playfully pinching the child's cheek just as he would any other pretty servant girl's, or giving her a _pourboire_ if she held his horse for him for ten minutes. And then his niece, our proud little highness! What big eyes she would make if I should tell her that the little red-haired waiter-girl was her own, though not exactly her legitimate, cousin!" CHAPTER IV. Week after week had passed away. The autumn was approaching; the rose-bushes on the little lawn shed their last buds, and at evening a stealthy white mist crept over the lake, and for a whole week the opposite shore and the distant mountains beyond disappeared completely behind a dull, gray rain that spread a curtain over lake and land. When at last it was drawn away the same landscape was indeed there, but in different colors; much yellow was scattered among the tall beech woods; the waves of the lake, usually of a transparent green, were changed to a dull gray, and on the summits of the Zugspitz and the Karwendelgebirge could be seen the melancholy white of the first snow. Even Rossel, who usually regarded the surrounding landscape with great indifference, and who declared the symbolical relations of Nature to our moods to be a sentimental prejudice, expressed himself to Kohle with great displeasure concerning the raw air and the disgusting, clinging fog, which, as he asserted, had come so early this year out of pure malevolence, knowing that they were obliged to stay out here on account of their sick friend. Then, too, the stoves, which had not been used for many years, refused to draw; and they were soon forced to give up heating the dining-room. Nevertheless Kohle, whose inner fire was still unquenched, would not allow himself to be deterred from working away at his Venus allegory; though Rossel had now lost all interest in it, and even accompanied the progress of the work with open sneers at the idea of their attempting to naturalize the naked beauty under such a foggy sky.