and all to no purpose. But, after a great deal of perplexity, they
espied, in front of the portal, two venerable trees, which nobody could
remember to have seen there the day before. Yet there they stood, with
their roots fastened deep into the soil, and a huge breadth of foliage
overshadowing the whole front of the edifice. One was an oak, and the
other a linden-tree. Their boughs it was strange and beautiful to see--
were intertwined together, and embraced one another, so that each tree
seemed to live in the other tree's bosom, much more than in its own.

While the guests were marvelling how these trees, that must have
required at least a century to grow, could have come to be so tall and
venerable in a single night, a breeze sprang up, and set their
intermingled boughs astir. And then there was a deep, broad murmur in
the air, as if the two mysterious trees were speaking.

"I am old Philemon!" murmured the oak.

"I am old Baucis!" murmured the linden-tree.

But, as the breeze grew stronger, the trees both spoke at once,--"
Philemon! Baucis! Baucis! Philemon!"--as if one were both and both
were one, and talking together in the depths of their mutual heart. It
was plain enough to perceive that the good old couple had renewed their
age, and were now to spend a quiet and delightful hundred years or so,
Philemon as an oak, and Baucis as a linden-tree. And oh, what a
hospitable shade did they fling around them! Whenever a wayfarer paused
beneath it, he heard a pleasant whisper of the leaves above his head,
and wondered how the sound should so much resemble words like these:--

"Welcome, welcome, dear traveller, welcome!"