Oswald had always lived in the city. His manners, his views, his attachments were all those of a city man. Thus it happened that when he saw himself suddenly, and as if by magic, transferred to the country, he was charmed and almost intoxicated with the unspeakable beauty of the first bright summer days at a beautiful country place. He enjoyed it more than most men. Everything was so new and yet so strangely familiar to him, as when we find ourselves in a country which we fancy we have seen before in a dream. Was the dark blue vault, which rose higher and higher every day, the same sky which hung so sadly and mournfully over the ocean of houses in the great city? Were these sparkling lights the same lonely stars to which he had now and then glanced up as he came from the opera or from a party? Could a summer morning really be so rich in splendor, a summer evening really so soft and almost lascivious? Had he never heard birds sing, that he must now listen forever to their simple piping? Had he never seen flowers, that he must stand and gaze at their bright colors and strange forms without ever being tired? He felt like a person who comes back to life again after a severe illness. The recent past lay behind him, covered with a thick veil; but days long since gone by, memories drowned in an ocean of oblivion, rose once more before his mind's eye like a dazzling, deceiving Fata Morgana. "Why, there is larkspur!" he cried out one of those days, full of happy surprise, as he saw the flower blooming brightly on many a bed of the garden in which he was walking up and down. "To be sure," replied Bruno, who accompanied him; "have you never seen it before?"