Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/316



Dresden I went at once to "Seilergasse." Mrs. Jagemann had long since moved away, and the people in the house did not know where she lived. I looked sorrowfully at the summer-house in the little garden, where everything was unchanged, and I went to "zur Katze" in order to ask whether the widow Jagemann still came there. Here they knew more; Minna's mother had been dead for two years.

I walked round the town, it was to me an indispensable enjoyment to look up our precious spots; not all were untouched by time. On the terrace they had pulled down the dear little Café Torniamenti with its naïve columns, where I had got the idea to go to Rathen, and where we had met Stephensen; the streets, through which we had wandered the last time we walked together, did not exist any longer, and one could hardly find traces of them in the new quarter of pretentious buildings. In Grosser Garten and the Park the buds of the bushes began distinctly to show green—we were at the end of March—and everything looked different; but on the black stems I still read the same names on the labels, which in those days we had studied together, one having a very exotic name, which most likely was easy enough in the mouth of a Maori or Tahitian, but the pronunciation of which had caused Minna to make the most comical grimaces. I remained standing there for a very long time, staring at these dry branches, and 308