Page:German Classics of The 19h and 20th C. Vol.19.djvu/314

 "horse" in the middle of it, looked respectfully up the pillars of Our Lady's, stood long before Thorwaldsen's noble and lovely sculpture, climbed the Round Tower, visited castles, and spent two lively evenings in the Tivoli. But all this was not really what he saw.

On the houses, which frequently had the very look of the old houses of his native city with their curved and pierced gables, he would see names that were familiar to him from olden times, which seemed to him to signify some thing tender and precious, and at the same time included something like reproach, lament, and longing for things lost. And everywhere, while breathing in retarded, meditative draughts the moist sea-air, he saw eyes as blue, hair as blond, faces of just the same type and formation as those he had seen in the strangely grievous and regretful dreams of the night spent in his native city. It not seldom happened on the open street that a glance, a ringing word, a peal of laughter would strike his very marrow &hellip;

He could not long endure the gay city. An unrest, sweet and foolish, half recollection and half expectation, stirred him, together with the desire to lie quietly somewhere along the shore and not have to play the eagerly observing tourist. So he took ship again and sailed on a gloomy day (the sea was black) northward up the coast of Seeland to Elsinore. From there he continued his journey without delay by carriage along the high road for three quarters of an hour, always a little above the sea, until he stopped at his final and real goal, the little white summer hotel with green blinds which stood in the midst of a settlement of low cottages, and whose wooden-roofed tower looked out on the strand and toward the Swedish coast. Here he got out, took possession of the sunny room that had been kept ready for him, filled book-shelf and wardrobe with the effects he had brought with him, and prepared to live here a while.