With a tremendous stroke, so that the bolts and hinges seemed broken into splinters, methought the door flew open, and I heard the voice of the spectre absolutely scream with laughter. I could not bear this any longer. "Ho--ho--ho! _Brüd-er-lein!_" cried I. "Here am I--Here am I!--Come on--come on quickly, if thou would'st fight with me--Now the owl holds his wedding-feast, and we shall mount to the roof, and contend with each other. There the weather-cock sings aloud, and he who knocks the other down, is king, and may drink blood!" "How now?" cried the physician, starting up, and seizing me by the arm. "What the devil is all that? You are ill, Mr Leonard, dangerously ill. Away--away with you to bed!" I continued, however, staring at the open door, momentarily expecting that it would open, and that my horrible _double_ would enter _in propria persona_. Nothing appeared, however, and I soon recovered from the delirium and horror which had seized upon me. The physician insisted that I was much worse than I supposed myself to be, and attributed all the mental derangement and wildness that I had betrayed, to the effects of my long imprisonment, and the agitation which, on account of my trial, I must have undergone. I submissively used whatever sedative remedies he prescribed; but what most of all contributed to my recovery was, that the horrible knocking was not heard any more, and that the intolerable _double_ seemed to have forsaken me altogether. CHAPTER VI. The delightful season of spring had now once more returned. Every morning the birds serenaded me at the window of my lodgings, which were in a garden-house, near a street called the Parterre, not far from the river. Doubtless, the year is never so delightful and interesting as when all things are yet undeveloped, and in their prime; when the gardener is yet going about, with his hatchet, and bill-hook, and large sheers, lopping the branches, though the flourishing boughs are already redolent of green buds, that give out their fresh odours in the warm sun. One says to himself--Let the gardener, or pruner, do his worst--let him remove every unprofitable branch, so that the daylight may fall into the most secret recesses, where the loves of a former year have been celebrated and are gone by, yet the trees will, ere long, be in their full luxuriance--all that he has lopped away will soon be more than amply replaced. It is the season of hope and bright anticipations. Every new flower that rises from the teeming earth, and every bright green leaf that breaks forth along the southern slope of the forest, calls forth responsive feelings of buoyancy and delight in the soul. Thus it happened, that one morning the vernal sun darted his unclouded golden gleams into my chamber. Sweet odours of flowers streamed through the open window, for the wind was in the south-west. The birds, as usual, cheered me with their songs.