Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/66

 fire-clay stove that occupied, I should think, an eighth part of the room.

Near this latter Minna soon seated herself, with her back turned towards the window so that she could not see the lightning, which constantly lit up the reddish brown bend of the river. When the blinding reflection came into the room, or the thunder roared so furiously that the house shook and the window-panes rattled, she gave a start, and sometimes even a little scream, though she evidently tried her utmost to control herself. Mrs. Hertz got up from the sofa and calmed her with motherly kindness, and Minna smiled as courageously as she could, though with the fear of the next shock always written on her pale face. Old Hertz looked sympathetically up from his newspaper, which the constant flashes nearly prevented him from reading.

As for myself, I sat near the little window, down which the rain was washing like a shower-bath. My thoughts were constantly occupied by what I had read in The Poesy-Book. I did not know the extract, but the style reminded me of Goethe. When recently I read his autobiography and, in the lovely episode with Gretchen, suddenly came across these well-known words, what a storm of feelings overwhelmed my soul! In Wahrheit und Dichtung I did not get further, but tried to calm my painfully sweet emotion by writing down these memories, which can only lay claim to the first word of this famous title.

The question as to the authorship did not trouble me much in those days, but the application of it distressed me considerably. I had noticed that Minna, in our conversations, sometimes betrayed artistic knowledge which she could not have gained in school or college, nor by herself. Besides, I knew quite well from whom I suspected that she had