Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/283

 and it therefore appeared to me without charm and painfully strange; all that I saw displeased me, just in the same way as it would have done to walk about in Berlin or Copenhagen in this state of mind.

On a theatre placard stood "Kätchen vom Heilbronn." We were to have seen it together this evening!

I soon went back to my house, the lodging-like discomfort of which abolished the idea of "surroundings," and isolated me, as it were, in an empty room. There I lay on my bed—the sofa was too much of a wreck—and kept reviewing these numerous, closely united remembrances, like a dying Alexander who is bidding good-bye to his soldiers; they haunted me on my afternoon walk like a hearse, new crowds joining on at each new street, road, and pathway, and when I at last went to sleep, it was in the shadow of the banners borne by the death-watch.

While I was dressing on the following morning, I felt slack and disheartened at the prospect of the amount of worries that I had conjured up and could not drive away.

I now only wished to get free of the spell.

"Could one but kill time during these dreadful days of waiting." I thought, "or escape from oneself and all one's thoughts."

I recalled the one day of waiting in Rathen, and how then a fat novel had kept me company. At once I hurried to a library and asked for The Three Musketeers, which I thought would be suitable. While the librarian was looking for it, I opened a thick book lying on the desk. I got a sort of stab when my eye fell on the name "Minna." "Minna's matchless beauty and elevated mind conquered all his hesitations"—I still remember every word of the sentence. I turned the pages over, opening here and there—almost everywhere, "Minna"! She was sailing