And now the souls of Leonore and the monk haunt the scene of their midnight crime. You will find the story in the Frenchman's book, worked up with a kind of red-morocco and burnt-cork sublimity, and great melodramatic clanking of chains, and hooting of owls, and other fallow deer!«

»After breakfast,« said Flemming, »we will go up to the castle. I must get acquainted with this mirror of owls, this modern Till Eulenspiegel. See what a glorious morning we have! It is truly a wondrous winter! what summer sunshine! what soft Venetian fogs! How the wanton, treacherous air coquets with the old graybeard trees! Such weather makes the grass and our beards grow apace! But we have an old saying in English, that winter never rots in the sky. So he will come down at last in his old-fashioned mealy coat. We shall have snow in spring; and the blossoms will be all snow-flakes. And afterwards a summer, which will be no summer, but, as Jean Paul says, only a winter painted green. Is it not so?«

»Unless I am much deceived in the climate of Heidelberg,« replied the Baron, »we shall not have to wait long for snow. We have sudden changes here, and I should not marvel much if it snowed before night.«

»The greater reason for making good use of the morning sunshine, then. Let us hasten to the castle, after which my heart yearns.«

 

 

Chapter VII

Lives of Scholars

The forebodings of the Baron proved true. In the afternoon the weather changed. The western wind began to blow, and drew a cloud-veil over the face of Heaven, as a breath does over the human face in a mirror. Soon the snow began to fall. Athwart the distant landscape it swept like a white mist. The storm-wind came from the Alsatian hills, and struck the dense clouds aslant through the air. And ever faster fell the snow, a roaring torrent from those mountainous clouds. The setting sun glared wildly from the summit of the hills, and sank like a burning ship at sea, wrecked in the tempest. Thus the evening set in; and winter stood at the gate wagging his white and shaggy beard, like an old harper chanting an old rhyme: »How cold it is! how cold it is!«

»I like such a storm as this,« said Flemming, who stood at the window, looking out into the tempest and the gathering darkness. »The silent falling of snow is to me one of the most solemn things in nature. The fall of autumnal leaves does not so much affect me. But the driving storm is grand. It startles me; it awakens me. It is wild and woful, like my own soul. I cannot help thinking of the sea; how the waves run and toss their arms about, – and the wind plays on those great sonorous harps, the shrouds and masts of ships. Winter is here in earnest! How the old churl whistles and threshes the snow! Sleet and rain are falling too. Already the trees are bearded with icicles, and the two broad branches of yonder pine look like the white mustache of some old German baron.«

»And to-morrow it will look more wintry still,« said his friend. »We shall wake up and find that the frost-spirit has been at work all night building Gothic cathedrals on our windows, just as the Devil built the Cathedral of Cologne. So draw the curtains, and come, sit here by the warm fire.«

»And now,« said Flemming, having done as his friend desired, »tell me something of Heidelberg and its University. I suppose we shall lead about as solitary and studious a life here as we did of yore in little Göttingen, with nothing to amuse us, save our own day-dreams.«

»Pretty much so,« replied the Baron; »which cannot fail to please you, since you are in pursuit of tranquillity. As to the University, it is, as you know, one of the oldest in Germany.