Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/62

 where the men have such a constant fight with the currents that until they land in the evening they have no time to snatch a meal. In return I had, as well as I could, to give her a description of the big ships, of the busy traffic in the sea-ports, or the peaceful life of the fishing villages on the coast. Then the quarries, which on both sides were reflected in the river, and sent their blocks down stream in shiploads, made us talk about what the sandstone town of Dresden owed to this little stone region. It struck me that the cut stone used in its beautiful edifices seemed to impart to them some characteristics of their own rock life, so that the rococo town suited the sandstone land, in the same way as the Greek architecture goes with the noble gable-shaped marble mountains, and Egypt's colossal temples with the vast plains and heavily-terraced rocks. Such reflections were of course new to her, for her knowledge of architecture was rather primitive, while I have always been specially attracted by this art, to which, probably, I should have devoted myself, if circumstances had permitted.