Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/311

 kerchief; she leaned back and looked down sideways. She really appeared as if she was tired, not with an acute but with a chronic fatigue. Her face, of which I had by this time obtained a better view, was almost unchanged, only the cheeks were a little less full. I had remarked that she spoke surprisingly pure Danish, the foreign accent was very slight.

The conversation round her now grew very lively. It centred on aestheticism, if one could call it so. Names such as Ibsen, Zola, Dostoevsky, Wagner, Berlioz, Millais, Bastien-Lepage, even such scientific ones as Darwin and Mill, almost buzzed round one's head. In spite of this medley I was not so very much surprised, as during my short stay I had become acquainted with the general tone. At first it had certainly made a great impression upon me. Good gracious! what must not those people have read and heard, such an education and insight, and so many interests! But soon I grew more critical; I perceived that those who talked most were least interested, and that many who "aestheticised" most loudly did not go even so deeply as I myself, who in these years had been too occupied with business to be "up-to-date," and who, through residence in England, had been reading the works of very different authors from those who were fashionable in Denmark. I even had a suspicion that the good Stephensen himself was no adept in literature, though he grew more and more talkative; very likely he wished to sparkle before the blonde, who really seemed to be on the point of fainting with admiration. The gentleman who had wanted to order the Rhenish wine for Minna, a big man with a glorious fair beard, excited him to a constantly growing exaggerated radicalism, and altogether seemed to fool the whole company.