Page:Selected letters of Mendelssohn 1894.djvu/88

74 much as that I couldn't stop there. For the first time since leaving Vevey I was out of humour for half an hour, and had to sing Beethoven, E flat major,

three or four times, before I came right again.

It was here that I first found out what damage the storm had done, and may do yet, for it is still pouring steadily.

9.30 in the evening.—The bridge at Zweilütchinen has been swept away. The coach-drivers for Brienz and Grindelwald refuse to go for fear of getting a rock or two on their head. Here the water is a foot and a half under the bridge on the Aar, and the gloominess of the sky is beyond description. Still I can wait to see it out here, for one wants nothing from circumstances to call back old memories. They have even put me in a room where there is a piano. It dates from 1794, and its tone is rather like the little old Silbermann in my study, so, at the first note I felt friendly towards it, and while playing I can think of you. It has lived through a great deal this piano, and doubtless never had an idea that I, who was only born in 1809, would come to compose on it. I am twenty-two years old, and the piano is already thirty-seven, and good for a while yet. There are going to be some new songs, my sisters! You don’t know as yet my great “Travellers’ Song” in E major. It is wonderfully sentimental. Now I am