Thereupon the Herculean Doctor refreshed himself with a second glass of grog, sprang boldly over several tables that stood in his way, and had soon plunged into the salt waves, which he clove with a powerful arm, while Reising dejectedly bore the costs of the entertainment with the seven possible brides, and, left alone in his glory, played a by no means triumphant part. CHAPTER V. THE AMBER MERCHANT. Blanden had taken up his pilgrim's staff, when the sun was already bending to its decline, and the heat of the day was over; but his own feelings were quite fresh as dawn. Those dreams of first love, which breathed such a wondrous softness over life, had been revived in him once more; he buried himself completely in those reveries. His thoughts went back to the time when, as a scholar in the upper school, he had been in love with the daughter of a Burgomaster in some country town. He reverted to the emotions which he then felt, as the rattling post-chaise approached the little town at an early morning hour, first rolling over the pavement between the barns of the suburb, then through the empty, sleeping streets, by the lifeless houses, part closed shutters, until he reached the market-place, where stood the house belonging to the town's functionary, which, with its faded pink colouring, blushed more joyously in the morning sunlight. There, too, an invisible hand pushed the curtain aside, and a little visible, curly head, around one unfinished side of which curl-papers still rustled, looked out, smiling so pleasantly, and nodded its greeting--and the postillion blew a stirring tune, as he stopped before the Black Eagle of the Post-house. How happy, how blissful was the schoolboy's heart! That moment in which the angel's head nodded to him out of its concealment, caused him greater ecstacies than any happiness of a later extravagant love, and never had the heart's throbs of expectant longing been more vivid than in the post-chaise at that time! Now it seemed to him as if he were capable of similar emotions, as if, after internal regeneration, the youth's singleness of heart were returning again for a short period. The longing for his campanula lent wings to his steps, he saw her picture vividly before him; the flying shadows of the clouds did not bear it away with them; the Samland "Palven"[1] which extended on the left side of the road, that dead heath with its solitary bushes, that chilling sterility and barrenness of nature did not subdue his spirits, and the resounding thunder of the surf, sometimes near, sometimes more distant, stirred the wanderer's heart and steps to move at a merry pace.