The baron was silent, and puffed the smoke of his cigar in mighty clouds high into the air. "You see," he began again, after a long pause, "I am pious enough, or superstitious enough, if you prefer it, to believe that this wicked deed of mine has brought upon me a curse which no repentance can remove. That curse is fulfilled in my aimless life. From that day it has been my fate to sow love and to reap indifference. And now you will also understand what Czika is to me--an angel in the highest sense of the word, a sweet messenger from on high, who sings Peace! Peace! to my sick heart. The child's face, you know, has been for years before my mind's eye, and I have told you how I thought twice to be near the realization of my dreams. Here is the red rose Xenobia once more, but in the morning dew of sweetest innocence. The red rose has no doubt long since faded and withered amid the storms of life, and even if I had kept it at that time--what would the world, the cold, impudent, slandering world have said of the romantic love of a baron and a zingarella! I was too young then, and could not have defended my poor wife against the world: now I am a man, and have to protect a child only, a foundling. I shall give the gypsy whatever she may ask, and my warmest, sincerest thanks into the bargain. I hope she has not forgotten the appointment--stop, Charles!--We must get out here and walk through the woods. I know the way from of old. This is the hour appointed by the Brown Countess. We are just in time." "Had we not better leave the child here," said Oswald. "Why?" inquired the baron, who had left the carriage. "The child is so very much attached to the woman, who, after all, may be her mother. Perhaps when she sees her again her old love of the forest life may awake, and we shall at the very least have a painful scene." Oswald spoke in a low voice, for Czika was moving in his arms. "Czika wants to go too," she said suddenly. "Czika wants to go into the woods and see the moon and the stars dance in the branches. Czika knows every tree and every bush." She was standing on the damp wood-soil and clapped her hands with delight, and danced and laughed and said: "Come! come! You, master, and you man with the blue eyes! Czika will show you a beautiful place; Czika knows every tree and every bush along the whole road." She slipped ahead on a narrow path, which left the road where the carriage was standing, to enter the forest sideways, and then she ran on, gliding through the bushes like a wild cat. The two men had much trouble to follow. Czika was not to be persuaded to moderate her zeal. Her only answer to all the Not so fast! of the two men was the clear merry cry of the young falcon, which she uttered again and again, louder and shriller each time. Suddenly an answer came through the forest, the same proud cry which Oldenburg and Oswald remembered so well from that morning when the gypsy woman answered the child's cry from a great distance.