Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/195



we came out of the house on the next afternoon, Minna took my arm and turned me round quickly.

"Do you know where we are going to-day? To-day we are going to Zwinger. I want to take advantage of all you have told me about architecture, and especially about the Rococo style. Now we must repeat it in Reality's great picture-book."

And we went to Zwinger both then and on many other lovely afternoons—to Zwinger, this Palace Court of pavilions and galleries, which is an epopee in stone from a time when fondness of life and its pleasures excluded all poems except of the material order, in which one could move and enjoy, drink, dance, fence, love, ride roundabouts, and bathe in the basins of fountains under the open sky. This masterpiece of a luxurious and fantastic style, which an insipid after-taste of the Empire has taught an unproductive generation to look down upon with pseudo-classic contempt, but which now everywhere is again recognised with honour and glory. Zwinger, which seemed to be built by Saxonian gnomes, led by a faun who was in love with a muse.…

On other days we visited our godly hostess from Rathen, "the mother Elbe," in her town residence, where she is lodged between both parts of the town in a grand dwelling, which is parted into two banqueting halls by the rows of columns of three bridges. On the famous Brühl-Terrace we intoxicated ourselves at the sunset hour with the 187