"'You can easily imagine what I felt when this occurred. Although the search which I immediately ordered, and which was carried out with great energy and circumspection, had no result, I was firmly convinced that Berger had not attempted his life. He had too often spoken most impressively against this way "of tying the Gordian knot still more firmly," as he called it. A letter written by him, which I received shortly afterwards, and which bore the post-mark of a small northern town, proved to my great joy that I had not been mistaken. In this letter the strange man asked my pardon if he should have caused me a few disagreeable days by his stealthy departure from Fichtenau; he had not known, he said, how else he could have carried out the idea which he had mentioned to me. He had joined, for the moment, a party consisting of "good people, but bad musicians," for the very purpose of carrying out that idea, and the idea itself was this: that he could not put his asceticism, the practical side of his theory of the non-existence of life, to a satisfactory test within the four walls of his room, or in solitude generally, but only in the wide world, and especially amid the lower classes of society, to which he had now descended for the purpose. He begged me, if I felt any interest in him, not to interrupt him in his experiment, and promised to inform me at the proper time of the result of his expedition, which promised to be very favorable.'" Oldenburg folded up Birkenhain's letter, after having read so far, and looked at Melitta. "How is it, Melitta?" he said; "you were several days in Fichtenau, I know; did you also hear people talk of this beautiful gypsy woman and her child, who must have been Xenobia and Czika, if I am not altogether mistaken?" "More than that," replied Melitta; "it was Xenobia and Czika, and I saw them and spoke to them." Oldenburg rested his head on his hand. "You did!" he murmured; "and you--why did you not tell me?" "Because I feared to renew your sorrow about the lost one; because--listen to me, Adalbert, I will tell you. I would have told you long ago if I had had the courage." And she told Oldenburg of her meeting with the Brown Countess in the Fichtenau forest, how she had tried to persuade the gypsy to come with her, and how she had been grieved when she found all her persuasions and her prayers unavailing; and, finally, how she had received from Xenobia the promise to bring her the child if she should ever change her mind, and how she, Melitta, was firmly convinced that this would happen sooner or later. As the young widow told him all this, the tears were running down her cheeks, and her voice trembled with deep emotion.