pleased yourselves for three weeks, and now I want you to wait so
long to please me." Wilhelm felt bitterly grieved that no one
invited him to go to the fashionable watering-place, and Loulou even
did not seem particularly miserable. The fact was, that at the
bottom of her not very sentimental nature, she did not take the
leaving of the Schloss hotel as a matter of great importance, and
Ostend with its balls and concerts, its casino and lively society,
was not in the least alarming to her. She found the opportunity that
evening of consoling Wilhelm, and promised him always to think about
him, and to write to him very often, and said she could not be very
miserable about their separation, as she felt so happy at the
thought of meeting him again in Berlin. The following morning they
made a pilgrimage to the castle, the woods, the neighboring valley,
to all the places where they had been so happy during the last
fortnight. The sky was blue, the pine woods quiet, the air balmy,
and the beautiful outline of the mountains unfolded itself far away
in the depth of the horizon. Wilhelm drank in the quiet, lovely
picture, and felt that a piece of his life was woven into this
harmony of nature, and that these surroundings had become part of
his innermost "ego," and would be mingled with his dearest feelings
now and ever. His love, and these mountains and valleys, and Loulou,
the mist and perfume of the pine trees, were forever one, and the
pantheistic devotion which he felt in these changing flights of his
mind with the soul of nature grew to an almost unspeakable emotion,
as he said in a trembling voice to Loulou:

"It is all so wonderful, the mountains and the woods, and the
summer-time and our love. And in a moment it will be gone. Shall we
ever be so happy again? If we could only stay here always, the same
people in the midst of the same nature!"