The nosegays I always placed, in the mean time, as soon as the sun went down, on the stone table in the dim arbor. But that was just it. That was all over now, since that evening; no one troubled himself about them. As often as I, early in the morning, looked after them, the flowers still lay there just as they did the day before, and looked at me in real sorrow with their wilted hanging heads, and the dew-drops standing on them as if they wept. That grieved me very much. I bound no more nosegays. In my garden the weeds might now flourish as they would, and the flowers I let stand and grow until the wind blew away the leaves. My heart was just as waste and wild and disordered.... In these critical times it came to pass that once when I was lying in the window at home and looking gloomily out into the empty air, the lady's-maid from the castle came tripping along the road. When she saw me, she turned quickly toward me and stood still at the window. "His Lordship returned yesterday from his journey," said she briskly. "Is it so?" I replied in astonishment, for for several weeks past I had not concerned myself about anything, and did not even know that his Lordship was away. "Then his daughter, the gracious young lady, has also had, I am sure, a very pleasant time." The lady's-maid looked at me oddly from top to toe, so that I really was forced to consider whether I had not said something stupid. "You don't know anything at all," she finally said, and turned up her little nose. "Now," she continued, "there is going to be a dance and masquerade this evening at the castle in his Lordship's honor. My mistress is also to go in mask, as a flower-girl--do you quite understand?--as a flower-girl. Now my mistress has noticed that you have particularly beautiful flowers in your garden." "That is strange," thought I to myself, "since there are now scarcely any more flowers to be seen on account of the weeds." But she continued: "As my mistress needs beautiful flowers for her costume, but quite fresh ones that have just come out of the flower-bed, you are to bring her some, and wait with them this evening, when it has grown dark, under the great pear-tree in the castle garden. She will come and get the flowers." I was quite dumbfounded by this news, and in my rapture ran from the window out to the lady's-maid. "Pah! the nasty dressing-gown!" she cried out when she saw me all at once out-of-doors in my costume. That vexed me. I did not wish to be behind her in gallantry, and made a few pretty motions to catch her and kiss her. But unfortunately the dressing-gown, which was much too long for me, got tangled up at the same time under my feet and I fell my whole length on the ground. When I pulled myself together again the lady's-maid was far away, and I heard her still laughing in the distance; so that she had to hold her sides.