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 black cloud before me. I imagined myself at last seriously ill, and then spent the larger part of the day lying on my bed in a drowsy condition. It may have been on my tenth day in Dornachbruck when, one morning, I heard a remarkably loud voice downstairs calling my name. “That must be old Strodtmann,” I exclaimed, and jumped from my bed. Indeed it was he, my Schleswig-Holstein friend. He had come from Bonn, to bring me a letter from my parents and dozens of them from my university friends. Also a purse bursting with gold, and whatever else I stood in need of. My escape from Rastatt had created in Bonn a most joyful sensation, which in the letters brought by Strodtmann found lively expression, and of which Strodtmann could not tell me enough. My melancholy was gone at once. Suddenly I felt perfectly well, and after having celebrated our reunion with the best dinner that the inn in Dornachbruck could furnish, we resolved to set out on the next day for Zürich, where Strodtmann promised to remain with me for a while.

Thus we marched forth, student-fashion, frequently stopping by the way, and then resuming our journey with constantly increasing gayety. On the River Aar, in view of the ruins of Hapsburg, not far from the spot where centuries ago the Emperor Albrecht had been killed by his nephew, Johann von Schwaben, we lay down in the grass, lost ourselves in historic contemplations and poetic outbursts, and fell asleep. It was evening when a Swiss policeman woke us. We found good quarters in an inn near by, and the next day secured seats on top of the mail coach for Zürich. When we arrived at Zürich, whom should I see? There, at the halting-place of the mail, stood my friends: Anneke, Techow, Schimmelpfennig and Beust, the very friends that I had been pursuing on my journey hither and thither—there they stood,