He cast down his eyes, and took off with his stick a piece of the thick crust of moss at his feet. "What good does it do," he said, "to lift the veil which so many years have spread over the past? You see what is below--decay and destruction." "And yet," he said, after a pause, "it is but right you should learn that also. Hear, then:" "It is now thirty years. I was then at your age, but without having made your experiences; clinging to life in full, unbroken strength, and thinking it as sweet and precious as a love of my heart. If ever man was enthusiastic about liberty and beauty--about all those fail fancies with which we try to beautify our miserable existence here, and to hide its wretched hollowness--if ever man was raving about those bloodless images which we call ideals--I was that man. In my madness I fancied that eternal bliss might be won even here below wherever men were living in a free country. I believed in my native land, and sealed my faith with my blood on the battle-fields of Leipzig and Waterloo. I returned full of burning zeal to complete the great work. But before I could undertake to heal the wounds which my country had received during the war, I had to think of healing my own wounds. They sent me, when I recovered, to Fichtenau. "In those days Fichtenau was not what it is now. There was no Kurhaus then, and no asylum for the insane; nevertheless the town was always full of visitors, for the poetic halo with which the great men of Weimar had surrounded these valleys attracted the crowd. I kept aloof, and lived only for my health and my studies. "I boarded in the house of an old schoolmaster with whom I had become acquainted, and whose friendship I cultivated because he possessed quite a large library, and books were not so easily accessible then, especially in this remote part of the world. But the old gentleman possessed yet another treasure, besides his library--a most beautiful daughter. The daughter soon became more interesting to me than the library. You asked me if I had ever loved with all my heart. If you had known Leonora, and seen how high and how powerfully my heart then beat, you would not have asked me that question. "It was a summer day--a marvellously beautiful summer day. We had gone out into the woods after dinner--a mixed company--young and old. We lay down on the swelling moss in the shade of the pine-trees. How my eye dwelt upon her graceful form as she did the honors of the company with merry modesty; how my ear drank in the tones of her silvery, sweet voice! It was the old song of the sirens, which was heard thousands and thousands of years ago, and which will yet be heard thousands and thousands of years hence--till the time is fulfilled.