One day Father Anselm called Goldmund into his pharmacy, his pretty herb pantry full of wondrous smells. Goldmund knew his way around there. The monk showed him a dried plant, ly preserved between two sheets of paper, and asked him if he ks name and could describe it accurately, the way it looked outside in the fields. Yes, Goldmund could; the plant was Johns-wort. He was asked for a precise description of its characteristics. The old man was satisfied and gave his young friend the mission of gathering a good bundle of these plants during the afternoon, in the plants favorite spots, which he indicated to Goldmund.
"In exge youll have the afternoon off from your classes, my boy. Youll have no obje to that, and you wont lose anything by it. Because knowledge of nature is a sce, too—not only your silly grammar."
Goldmund thanked him for the most wele assigo pick flowers for a couple of hours rather than sit in the classroom. To make his joy plete, he asked the stablemaster to let him take the horse Bless, and soon after lunch he led the animal from the stable. It greeted him enthusiastically; he jumped on and galloped, deeply tent, into the warm, glowing day. He rode about for an hour or more, enjoying the air and the smell of the fields, and most of all the riding itself, then he remembered his errand and searched for one of the spots the father had described to him. He found it, tethered the horse in the shade of a maple, talked to it, fed it some bread, and started looking for the plants. There were a few strips of fallow land, rown with all kinds of weeds. Small, wizened poppies with a last few fadials and many ripe seed pods stood among witherid sky-blue chicory and discolored knotweed. The heaps of stones betweewo fields were inhabited by lizards, and there, too, stood the first, yellow-flowered stalks of Johns-woldmund began to pick them. After he had gathered a sizable bunch, he sat down on a stoo rest. It was hot and he looked longingly toward the shadowy edge of the distant forest, but he didnt want to go that far from the plants and from his horse, which he could still see from where he sat. So he stayed where he was, on the warm heap of stones, keeping very still to see the lizards who had fled e out again; he s the Johns-wort, held one of its small leaves to the light to study the huiny pin pricks in it.
Strange, he thought, each of these thousand little leaves has its own miniature firmament pricked into it, like a delicate embroidery. How strange and inprehensible everything was, the lizards, the plants, eveones, everything. Father Anselm, who was so fond of him, was no longer able to pick his Johns-wort himself; his legs bothered him. Oain days he could not move at all, and his knowledge of medie could not cure him. Perhaps he would soon die, and the herbs in his pantry would tio give out their fragrance, but the old father would no longer be there. But perhaps he would go on living for a long time still, for aen or twenty years perhaps, and still have the same thin white hair and the same funny wrinkle-sheaves around the eyes; but what would have bee of him, Goldmund, iy years?
Oh, how imprehensible everything was, and actually sad, although it was also beautiful. One knew nothing. One lived and ran about the earth and rode through forests, aain things looked so challenging and promising and nostalgic: a star in the evening, a blue harebell, a reed-green pond, the eye of a person or of a cow. An