Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/319

 deeply and at the same time—strange to say—vexed me. I wished, or anyhow I thought I did so, that one of these overhanging rocks would fall down and crush me. At about four o'clock I at last reached the Bastei, stepped out on the plateau and saw the awful devastation under my feet.

Of Erbgericht's Terrace there were only the tops of the maples over the water, looking like big shrubs on the edge of the stream, which had almost entirely swallowed up its rival the "Rosengarten." Between them the river had flooded the Rathen valley, which usually discharged its modest brook into it. The three little houses, which behind some twigs of the "Rosengarten" were squeezed in between the immovable rock and the tearing stream, presented a miserable appearance. The first one was half under water; the quarry owner's house, which lay a little higher and besides had a base of about six feet, had still its entrance door free, but only for one who did not mind a bath; the water foamed against the hidden stone steps as against a reef. The little summer-house, where we had sat so often, had been torn away. The third house was even more under water. Thanks to my good travelling-glass I saw all this quite distinctly. On the flat opposite bank, round which the river curved, there was nothing to remark, except that it had receded and that the grass grew out into the water without any decided border line.

A sad sight, so much the more as it had nothing wild in it. Seen from this dominating point the unnaturally broad river seemed, I won't say not to rush, but not even to hasten; one only perceived the enormous irresistible moving mass. Calm and peaceful it had in those days glided by our idyll, as the moving life, occupied with its own concerns, streams past the happy existences that desire nothing from it; it had broken into this idyll,