Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/201

 of cupboards along the street and forming at the corners hexagonal projections tapering down to fine points—inverted cones, scaled like pineapples and ending in a big knob beneath. Several of these houses have stucco ornaments of flower garlands, or draperies made of stone, hanging down from their windows; now and then, too, one comes upon a frieze with enormously stout angels, so thick with paint that at a casual glance one might take the whole thing for a piece of ''natura morte? [sic]'' of cabbages, apples, and big branches.

In such a corner house, where four streets met, the old couple lived on the first floor. There was an everlasting rumble of large covered country carts, goods wagons from the railway station, and all sorts of business vehicles, and it was evidently this noise of a busy traffic which pleased the old Königsberg merchant, and made him prefer this situation to a more airy but duller quarter.

The coffee-table was laid in Hertz's study, where he preferred to be. He rarely came into the drawing-room, but liked his wife to take her needlework in to him. It was a middle-sized room with old mahogany furniture, among which no comfortable chairs were to be found, but an armchair had now been moved in from the drawing-room.

Against one wall stood an ordinary writing-table with eight fragile legs, a tobacco table, and a bookcase; just opposite was a desk of the same kind as the one beside which Kant was painted (the old colour print again presided in its usual place over the writing-table). On each side of the desk hung a couple of valuable oil paintings, life-size portraits of Beethoven and Frederick the Great in their youth. Over it were placed some daguerreotype pictures, on which, however, one could never discover anything but some shining metal spots.