Still, almost overcome with sleep, he descended the hill, and came upon a beaten path, which led him down from the mountains on to the open country. All was strange to him; he at first thought that he should find his native home, but he saw before him quite a different region, and at length conjectured that he must be on the southern side of the mountains, which in the spring he had trodden from the north. Towards noon he stood over a village from whose cottages a peaceful smoke was ascending; children clad in festal dress were playing on the green, and from the little church came the sound of the organ and the chant of the congregation. All seized him with a sweet, indescribable melancholy; all so stirred his heart, that he was forced to weep. The narrow gardens, the little cottages with their smoking chimneys, the neatly parted cornfields, reminded him of the wants of poor human nature, of its dependence on the friendly earth, in whose beneficence it is obliged to trust; while the singing and the tones of the organ filled his heart with a devoutness he had never felt before. His feelings and wishes of the previous night appeared to him reckless and wicked; he wished again, in a childlike, dependent, and humble spirit, to unite himself to men as his brethren, and to withdraw from his ungodly purposes and opinions. The plain, with its little river that wound itself in manifold turnings about the gardens and meadows, seemed charming and alluring to him; he thought with fear on his abode in the solitary mountains amid the desolate rocks; he longed that he might dwell in this peaceful village; and with these feelings he entered the crowded church.