Barbara Blomberg | Page 7

The young green foliage,
refreshed by the rain, glittered as richly and magnificently as emerald
and chrysoprase, and the primroses and other early spring flowers,
which had just grown up along the roadside and in the meadows, shone
in brighter colours than in the full light of noon. The big fresh drops on
the leaves and blossoms sparkled and glittered in the last rays of the
sun.

Now Ratisbon also appeared.
The city, with its throng of steeples, was surrounded by a damp vapour
which the reflection of the sun coloured with a faint, scarcely
perceptible roseate hue. The notes of bells from the twin towers of the
cathedral and the convent of Nieder Munster, from St. Emmeram on the
right, and the church of the Dominicans on the left, echoed softly in
this hour when Nature and human activity were at rest--often dying
away in the distance--to greet the returning citizen.
Obeying an involuntary impulse, Wolf Hartschwert raised his hat.
Within the shelter of the walls of this venerable city he had played as a
boy, completed his school and student days, and early felt the first
quickened throbbing of the heart. Here he had first been permitted to
test what knowledge he had won in the schools of poetry and music.
He had remained in Ratisbon until his twenty-first year, then he had
ventured out into the world, and, after an absence of five years, he was
returning home again.
But was the stately city before him really his home?
When he had just gazed down upon it from the height, this question had
occupied his thoughtful mind.
He had not been born on the shore of this river, but of the Main. All
who had been dearest to him in Ratisbon--the good people who had
reared him from his fourth year as their own child, the woman who
gave him birth, and the many others to whom he was indebted for
kindnesses--were no longer there.
But why had he not thought first of the mother, who is usually the
centre of the circle of love, and whose figure precedes every other, now
that he was approaching the place where she rested beneath the turf?
He asked himself the question with a faint feeling of self-reproach, but
he did not confess the true reason.
When the summons to Ratisbon had reached him in Brussels, he had

been joyously ready to obey it--nay, he had felt it a great happiness to
see again the beloved place for which he had never ceased to long. And
yet, the nearer he approached it, the more anxiously his heart throbbed.
When, soon after noonday, the rain drenched him, he had experienced
no discomfort, because such exquisite sunny visions of the future had
hovered before him; but as the sky cleared they had shrivelled and
doubt of the result of the decision which he was riding to meet had cast
everything else into the shade.
Now the whole city appeared before him, and, as he looked at the
cathedral, whose machicolated tower permitted the rosy hue of the sky
to shine through, his heart rose again, and he gazed with grateful
delight at the verdant spring attire of his home and the magnificence
with which she greeted him; her returning son.
"Isn't it beautiful here?" he asked, suddenly breaking the silence as he
turned to Massi, the violinist, who rode at his side, and then was
secretly grateful to him when, after a curt "Very pleasant," he disturbed
him with no further speech.
It was so delightful to listen to the notes of the bells, so familiar to him,
whose pure tones had accompanied with their charming melody all his
wanderings in childhood and youth. At the same time, the mood in
which the best musical ideas came to him suddenly overpowered him.
A new air, well worth remembering, pressed itself on him unbidden,
and his excited imagination showed him in its train himself, and by his
side, first, a romping, merry child, and then a girlish figure in the first
budding charm of youth. He thought he heard her sing, and old,
unforgotten notes of songs swiftly crowded out his own musical
creations.
Every tone from the fresh red lips of the lovely fair-haired girl
awakened a new memory. The past lived again, and, without his
volition, transformed the image of the child of whom he had thought
whenever he recalled his youthful days in Ratisbon into that of a lovely
bride, with the myrtle wreath on her waving hair, while beside her he
beheld himself with the wedding bouquet on his slashed velvet holiday

doublet.
He involuntarily seized the saddlebag which contained the handsomest
gift he had bought in Brussels for the person who had drawn him back
to Ratisbon with a stronger power