Absorbed in these thoughts, I had walked a long distance, and was already considering whether I should not let the "Ancestress" go, and find some pretext for taking my departure that very evening, when I saw Frau Luise herself, with her little boy, approaching me by the shady path that led through a wood. The child was frisking merrily around his mother, but she walked slowly with bowed head, and seemed to answer his questions very absently. She had put on a small hat that had slipped back from her head, and a blue sunshade rested carelessly on her left shoulder. She came slowly forward without looking up, until the child noticed me, and with a sudden exclamation ran to her and seized her hand; then, with a friendly nod, she paused. At first we talked of indifferent matters, the weather, the pretty location of the city, and the superior fertility of the soil to that of her native region. This brought us to the persons we had both known there, and about whom she had been kept informed by Uncle Joachim. I learned that my former pupil had been placed in the cadet barracks, and that his sister was betrothed to Cousin Kasimir. Mademoiselle Suzon had quitted the castle a few weeks after my departure, to return no more. She passed quickly over this point, but a contemptuous curl of her lower lip betrayed that she had been informed of the whole affair. A young English lady had now taken the Frenchwoman's place; she did not know whether she could play chess, but she seemed to fill her predecessor's position satisfactorily in every other respect. Sometimes the new pastor--the old one had gently fallen asleep in death--came to the castle in the evening and held devotional exercises for an hour. Everything else remained unchanged. The veteran peacock had spread his tail for the last time the previous winter, and she was keeping some of his feathers as a relic. Then for a time we relapsed into silence. The dear child walked gravely along between us, holding a hand of each. When we came out of the wood, we saw a meadow thickly besprinkled with autumn flowers. "Run, Joachimchen, and pick a beautiful bouquet for Uncle Johannes," said the mother. The child obeyed, climbing merrily over the little slope by the road.