through the Castle, and past its servants' hall, where the fair flowers
of her young life had been crushed broad and dry, under a long dreary
pressure; and her soul expanded and breathed in the free open garden,
on whose flowery soil destiny had cast forth the first seeds of the
blossoms which today were gladdening her existence. Still Eden! Green
flower-chequered _chiaroscuro_! The moon is sleeping under ground
like a dead one; but beyond the garden the sun's red evening-clouds
have fallen down like rose-leaves; and the evening-star, the brideman
of the sun, hovers, like a glancing butterfly, above the rosy red,
and, modest as a bride, deprives no single starlet of its light.

[Illustration: BRIDAL PROCESSION _From the Painting by Ludwig Richter_]

The wandering pair arrived at the old gardener's hut, now standing
locked and dumb, with dark windows in the light garden, like a
fragment of the Past surviving in the Present. Bared twigs of trees
were folding, with clammy half-formed leaves, over the thick
intertwisted tangles of the bushes. The Spring was standing, like a
conqueror, with Winter at his feet. In the blue pond, now bloodless, a
dusky evening sky lay hollowed out, and the gushing waters were
moistening the flower-beds. The silver sparks of stars were rising on
the altar of the East, and, falling down, were extinguished in the red
sea of the West.

The wind whirred, like a night-bird, louder through the trees, and
gave tones to the acacia-grove; and the tones called to the pair who
had first become happy within it: "Enter, new mortal pair, and think
of what is past, and of my withering and your own; be holy as Eternity,
and weep not only for joy, but for gratitude also!" And the wet-eyed
bridegroom led his wet-eyed bride under the blossoms, and laid his