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.