Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/16

 sombre alders. How idyllic and how very German it all was! I felt so indescribably happy at the prospect of being able to live for a whole month surrounded by this loveliness, that unconsciously I began to sing—

With the same lack of consciousness I stopped again so that I might take deep breaths of this fresh and fragrant air—"Swiss air"—as the woman had called it, and then I laughed when I thought of "them wonderful shady promenades," for from the spot on which I was standing, I could only see scattered fruit trees on the high-lying fields, and close to the incline a couple of birch trees, the long trailing branches of which caused the leaves to quiver and glitter in the sunshine.

After taking a small meal at the "Erbgericht " on the terrace overlooking the Elbe, I sought the waiter and discovered him talking to my acquaintance, the schoolmaster. The latter was smoking a pipe ornamented with big tassels and a couple of burrs of a deer's horn, evidently his pride, and of which no student need have been ashamed. The tobacco smelt very good and it was, as he afterwards told me, the real old Alstädter; and he drank Münchener-beer, altogether sure signs of a man with refined tastes and habits. He at once greeted me and congratulated me on having found a lodging. I couldn't, he said, have chosen a better spot in the whole of Saxon-Switzerland; there were plenty of unexplored nooks, and I had only to apply to him for advice. He then asked me to what country I belonged, and when he heard that I was a Dane, he remarked that he also had been in Denmark in 1864, evidently without intending to make himself disagreeable, but only with the object of finding a common subject of interest, in