As a chief misery I had no person of my own condition in life with whom I could exchange a word. A few inquiries developed that the Graf von Blankenburg and his children were visiting some noble kinsmen beyond Halberstadt. There was no other man entitled to coat-armor in the region, nor even any half-learned monk who could fence with me in bad Latin. Heavy rains delayed the coming of my principal baggage from Augsburg, and kept me far from my dear books. Father Joseph, the castle chaplain, was too deaf and doddering to do more than shuffle through his chapel masses,--which I honored by my absence. Even the great boar whereof Adolf promised the hunting, disappeared when we sent out the beaters, and we returned from the chase with two miserable hares, scarce worth the pursuing. To add to my unhappiness Andrea poured out his complaints day and night, consigning Regenstein, Harzland, Germany, and all dwellers therein to instant and eternal perdition, quarrelling with all the maids and varlets in the castle, and making it not the least of their offences that they did not understand his anathemas vociferated in fiercest and most idiomatic Tuscan. And then came a day after the storms; a day of calm green and golden beauty the like whereof I thought I had never met on sea or land. A warm sweet air seemed to come sweeping down from the mountains; an air of growing leaves and bursting flowers; an air of talking oaks and great pines sighing like the waves of a wide green ocean. All the Harzland was pushing back the mists, and calling “come out hither!” And as if in answer to the call I felt my spirits rising, my feet stirring almost perforce under me. Many, many times since I have heard that call--the call of the summer forest of the North,--a call no lush and luxuriant Southland wood can find voice to utter! a call of cool streams leaping over cool rocks, while the great sun warms the fragrant ferns above them. And as often as that call comes, a dozen times during springtime and summer, I am become like the bird who has wintered afar in the tropics, but at the bidding of the season must away. So succumbing to the gentle magic of the hour, I found myself alone, happily alone, and happy to be lost in the greenwood, wandering over the hills by Schloss Regenstein.