CHAPTER VIII. Tacitus Again CHAPTER IX. Ilse CHAPTER X. The Wooing. CHAPTER XI. Spitehahn CHAPTER XII. The Departure from the Estate CHAPTER XIII. The First Greetings of the City CHAPTER XIV. A Day of Visits CHAPTER XV. Among the Learned CHAPTER XVI. The Professors' Ball CHAPTER XVII. The Deception of Mr. Hummel CHAPTER XVIII. Cloudlets CHAPTER XIX. The Illness CHAPTER XX. A Court Matter _CHAPTER I._ A DISCOVERY. It is late evening in the forest-park of our town. Softly the foliage murmurs in the warm summer air and the chirping of the crickets in the distant meadows is heard far in among the trees. Through the tree-tops a pale light falls down upon the forest-path and upon the dark undergrowth of bush and shrubbery. The moon sprinkles the pathway with shimmering spots, and kindles strange lights in the mass of leaves and branches. Here, the blue streaks of light pour down from the tree-trunks like streams of burning spirits; there, in the hollow, the broad fern-branches gleam from out the darkness in colors of emerald gold, and over the pathway the withered boughs tower like huge whitened antlers. But between and beneath, impenetrable, Stygian gloom. Round-faced moon in heaven, thine attempts to light this wood of ours are feeble, sickly, and capricious. Pray keep thy scanty light upon the highway leading to the city; throw thy faded beams not so crookedly before us, for at the left the ground slopes precipitately into morass and water.