He wrote a witty pamphlet that hurt where it was perilous to aim.

He laughed and crossed the border, riding into the green Ardennes one sunny evening.

He had a name of some power and sufficient wealth; he did not feel long exile.

Meanwhile he told himself he would go and look at Scheffer's Gretchen.
The King of Thule is better; but people talk most of the Gretchen.

He had never seen either.
He went in leisurely, travelling up the bright Meuse River, and across the monotony of the plains, then green with wheat a foot high, and musical with the many bells of the Easter kermesses in the quaint old-world villages.
There was something so novel, so sleepy, so harmless, so mediaeval, in the Flemish life, that it soothed him.