Twenty years ago, then, I was living in the little German town of S----, on the left bank of the Rhine. I sought solitude. I had been wounded to the heart by a young widow whose acquaintance I had made at a watering-place. She was extremely pretty and vivacious, flirted with everybody--alas! with me also, poor rustic! At first she had lifted me to the skies, but soon plunged me in despair when she sacrificed me to a rosy-cheeked lieutenant from Bavaria. Seriously speaking, the wound in my heart was not very deep; but I considered it my duty to give myself for a time to melancholy and retirement--what pleasure youth finds in these!--and accordingly settled myself in S----.
This little town had attracted me by its position at the foot of high hills, by its old walls and towers, its hundred-year-old diadems, its steep bridges over the clear little brook which flowed into the Rhine, but above all by its good wine. And after sunset--it was in June--the loveliest of fair-haired Rhineland girls sauntered through the narrow streets and cried, "Good evening!" in their sweet tones to the stranger whom they met, some of them even lingering still when the moon rose behind the peaked roofs of the old houses, and the little stones of the pavement showed distinctly in her steady light. Then I delighted in strolling about the old town. The moon seemed to look down benignly from a cloudless sky, and the town received this glance and lay peacefully there wrapped in sleep and veiled in moonbeams--the light that at once soothes and vaguely stirs the soul. The weathercock upon the high, sharp spire gleamed in dull gold; long gleams of gold quivered on the dark surface of the stream; some dim lights--O thrifty German folk!--burned here and there in the small windows under the slated roofs; the vines stretched out mysterious fingers from the walls; something stirred perhaps in the shadow of the fountain in the little three-cornered market-place; suddenly the sleepy cry of the watchman sounded; then a good-natured dog growled in an undertone; and the air kissed the brow so softly, and the lindens smelled so sweet, that the breast involuntarily heaved quicker, and the word "Gretchen" rose to the lips, half a cry, half question.