When Sali and Vreni noticed these many couples out for a holiday stroll, they laughed to themselves, and rejoiced that they, too, were such a happy pair; they lost themselves on side paths that led away from every noise, and there they felt protected by the green solitude. They remained where they liked, went on or rested again for a spell, and in unison with the sky overhead which was cloudless, no carking care came to disturb their serenity. This state of perfect, unalloyed bliss lasted for them for hours, and they for the time forgot wholly whence they came and whither they were going, and behaved with such a degree of decorum that Vreni's little posy actually remained as fresh and intact as it had been early in the morning, and her plain Sunday dress showed neither crease nor stain. As to Sali, he behaved all this time not like a youthful rustic of less than twenty, nor like the son of a broken-down tavern keeper, but rather like a youth a couple of years younger and quite innocent, withal of the best education. It was almost comical to observe his conduct towards his merry Vreni, looking at her with a touching mixture of tenderness, respect and care. For these two lovers, so unsophisticated and so entirely without guile, somehow understood how to run in the course of this one day of perfect joy vouchsafed them through all the gamut of love, and to make up not alone for the earlier and more poetic stages of it but also to taste its bitter and ultimate end with its passionate sacrifice of life itself.
Thus they thoroughly tired themselves running about part of the day, and hunger had come a second time that day when, from the crest of a shady mountain, they at last perceived, far down at their feet, a village of some size lying there in the glow of the westering sun. Rapidly they made the descent, and entered the village just as decorously as they had done the other earlier in the day. Nobody was about that knew them even by sight, for Vreni particularly had scarcely at all mingled with people during the last few years, nor had she been off on visits to other villages. Therefore they presented entirely the appearance of a decent young couple out on an errand of importance.