The Term at the Polytechnic had been rather tiring. Dresden had begun to grow unbearably hot, and, to make matters worse, I was living at the time in one of the smaller streets of the "old city," which was not exactly airy, though clean and well-kept. I often felt a home-sick longing for the Danish "Sund." The evenings by the Elbe, though beautiful, brought hardly any refreshing coolness, and the thermometer still showed some eighty-eight degrees, even as late as between nine and ten p.m., when I dragged myself, gasping for a breath of air, up the steps of old Brühl's famous terrace. In a way it was consoling, as it proved that I had an undoubted right to feel hot, and that it was an excusable luxury to take an ice-cream outside the Café Torniamenti, while I sat between the columns and listened to snatches of the concert in the "Wienergarten," on the opposite side of the river.
It was on such an evening that I made the bold decision to go into the country during the approaching summer holidays. To myself, at any rate, this decision appeared rather daring, as I was both obliged and accustomed to live very economically. The thought occurred to me that I would go to Saxon-Switzerland, and the last morsel of ice-cream had not melted in my mouth when I had decided upon the little hamlet of Rathen. Dear, tiny nook that it was, it had left upon me the impression of a rarely tender idyll, though, like most travellers, I had only seen it in passing, and then in the twilight, when coming down from the Bastei.
Towards noon, a few days later, I alighted at the little railway station, and walked past the fruit gardens down to the ferry. In this part the Elbe goes winding round cultivated land, which gradually rises into undulating country, dark with pine woods and overhung by rocks, while gently sloping down towards the river. Here lies Upper-Rathen with its substantial, if somewhat scattered farms, and a thin network of fruit trees spreads over the cornfields and green meadows. The opposite side is one long chain of mountains with but a single break in the middle, a small valley disclosing the unimportant village of Lower-Rathen, of which scarcely anything is to be seen but the two inns—the bare new one, and the overgrown old one—lying one on each side of the brook which runs sparkling into the river as it glides swiftly by. To the left of this valley rise the bluish-grey towering rocks of the Bastei, covered down towards the base with woods of pine and beech; these are succeeded by shining sandstone quarries, the most beautiful in the whole country, a series of lofty, yellow walls, some of which rise to a height of several hundred feet. In contrast to these, the quarries on the farther side of the village lie along the base of the hills like one unbroken wall of rock, above which rolls a sea of forests with Lilienstein floating therein—a gigantic man-of-war.
The ferry boat went slantingly, just like a dog, across the current that propelled it forward. It was fixed to a chain, with a barrel midway as float, the farther end of the chain being anchored far up the stream, and in order to obtain the desired motion and direction the ferryman only needed once or twice to tighten the connection chain which ran through a pulley in the little mast. The downward force of the current, acting on the broadside of the boat, did all the work.
Notwithstanding this, the man constantly wiped the perspiration with his shirt sleeve from his face, which was so sunburnt that he seemed to me to be more like a Red Indian than the Sioux-Indians themselves, whom I had seen the evening before in the Zoological Gardens. But here, in the middle of his domain, one could not wonder at his appearance, as the glittering water around seemed rather to shed heat than coolness, and the whole curved bank of the river with its rocky walls opened to the south like a concave mirror, whose point of focus lay in front of Rathen. The ferryman and I agreed that I had not chosen a cool spot. But it was not far to the shaded, well-wooded glens; besides which I do not easily change my mind when it is once made up. Perchance, on this occasion, the finger of destiny also played a part. The event proved of sufficient importance for Fate to have intervened. At any rate, if I afterwards regretted that I did not allow myself to be frightened away, it was not on account of the heat. And have I ever regretted it? Even to this very day—it is now five years ago—I am unable to answer this question.
Some author or other—I should even say, were I asked, a very famous one—has said, that in hours of sorrow nothing is so sad as the remembrance of happy days. Of course I have not the courage to dispute the truth of his words, especially as they have been so often repeated that they are almost proverbial, otherwise I should have thought that, in such hours, it would be still sadder if one had no happy moments upon which to look back. And in this frame of mind I will recall, as well as I can, the days of Rathen and those which followed.
To find a lodging was the first difficulty that presented itself. The two inns had only the most inferior rooms left, and these at rather high terms. I was driven from pillar to post, and had many times to cross the little brook and ascend the tiny wooden steps, from the shoemaker's on the one side to the baker's on the other, back again to the watchman, and then again over to the grocer's; but either the lodging was let or else two rooms went together, and to pay for two rooms was more than I could afford. In the end the school-house, which lay far back on the outskirts of the pine woods, remained as my last hope.
As it was not school time, I knocked boldly at the door of the master's private apartments. A small boy answered the knock. He did not know, he said, whether the master was at home, and having vanished for a moment he suddenly flew past me up the stairs, to appear almost instantaneously with a pair of boots in his hand; then again he darted away, to return triumphantly with a coat. Soon afterwards the schoolmaster appeared, equipped in this outfit, with a half-sleepy and half-comical smile on his open, good-natured face. Quite right, he had two rooms to let, but they were only let together and at the rent of two guineas a month. I apologised for having given him useless trouble, and he consoled me with the hope that I might get a single room in the new Pension-Villa next door.
The villa, which I now approached, looked very smart; the green shutters were thrown back from the windows, creepers covered the walls, and the verandah was well shaded by foliage. It stood on high ground, and the garden, which I had already entered, consisted of a series of terraces connected by gravelled pathways between flowering shrubs. But notwithstanding that the very attractions of the place made it somewhat alarming to a poor, Polytechnic student, I still determined to accept the smallest of the attics, regardless of cost, if this palace would take me in at all; for I was heartily disgusted with running about, as I had been doing, and knocking at all doors.
Then, however, a party of ladies and gentlemen appeared on the verandah, and the house looked to me less and less like a Pension. Indeed, I felt relieved when a maid, who, at a turn of the path, nearly ran into me, rescued me from my dilemma, though in a very superior and mocking way, by saying—
"No, indeed, we do not let rooms here, the house you are seeking can be seen at the very top of the hill."
So far it had been hidden by the house before me, and I was by no means enchanted when I caught sight of it, for it stood out with a certain bold nakedness against the blue sky, and, as a matter of fact, with hardly so much as a bush to shelter it. Altogether it looked so brand new that I felt convinced that it could never have been inhabited.
I had again to pass down the valley, to cross over the stream, and crawl about a hundred and fifty feet up an arrangement of paths and stone steps to the edge of the hill. The house did not look more habitable on a nearer view; heaps of gravel, pieces of stone and planks were scattered about, and most of the windows had still to be finished. On entering I encountered a horrible draught, the door banged to, and from the basement I heard a coarse woman's voice hurling forth the many-worded curses and oaths used in vulgar German. A man was hearthstoning the steps, evidently for the first time. A young girl, who was scrubbing the floor in a passage, turned her head at my entrance and showed a pretty pale face with a red spot on one cheek, as if she had just received a smart slap. On my asking for the landlord or landlady, she ran quickly away and disappeared into the basement, leaving the marks of her bare feet upon the sawdust which covered the floor. Soon afterwards she returned, and was followed by a portly-looking woman, whose wide mouth had evidently been the outlet for the oaths I had heard, and whose clumsy palms, which she was wiping in her apron, had, I suspected, been in all too close contact with the girl's cheek. Her turned-up skirt showed her bare bow-legs and flat, sprawling feet.
"You want a room, sir?" she said. "Well, you're just in time, if it has to be a single one. Get along with your scrubbing, you young drab, you, it isn't you who has to show the gentleman about, is it? It's on the second floor, please."
We came into a rather spacious room, light and airy enough, for as yet no glass had been placed in the windows. Even the frames were not painted; and the walls, though covered with grey paper, still showed patches of damp, and, in spite of the airiness, I thought the place smelt more than a little fusty.
But before I could make any remark about this she began to praise the perfection of the room, speaking of the satisfaction of former lodgers, notwithstanding that both of us knew perfectly well the house had never been inhabited. I asked for the terms, which were ten shillings more than I had intended to give. She protested that it was a bargain, and that her house was both better and less expensive than any one else's. There was none of the mist from the river with which the people down by the Elbe were troubled, and one also avoided the closeness of the valley. At such a height I should breathe pure Swiss air and have the best view in the village; lastly, there were the shady promenades belonging to the house, where the lodgers might walk when they did not care to go farther. She always returned to "them shady promenades," and in so doing spread out her dirty arms to indicate their extent, always repeating the words "da'rim und dort'nim" (over here and over there).
In the end we split the difference, and she promised that everything should be quite ready in a week, when my holidays began. I gave her half a crown as deposit, and, very happy to have settled matters, I left her.
As I walked away from the house I was bound to admit that the woman's praise of the view was correct. On the right one saw a richly wooded stretch of valley surrounded by mountains; straight ahead lay a by-path leading from the town to the cosy saw-mill, at the entrance to the "Blackbirds' Glen," which, with its green fir trees and grey rocks, soon hid the clear water. To the left, the bend of the Elbe valley opened out under the sun-scorched stone quarries, which cast their reflection over the river, where several rafts and a couple of boats were slowly gliding down with the current. Below lay all the cottages, either built entirely of wood or at least timber-framed, with thatched roofs, and for the most part overgrown with vines. Luckily there was only one other villa to be seen besides the two already mentioned, and it was modestly hidden away. The blue smoke rose from all the chimneys in curling wreaths, forming a thin veil right across the valley, through which glittered the brook between silvery willow trees and sombre alders. How idyllic and how very German it all was! I felt so indescribably happy at the prospect of being able to live for a whole month surrounded by this loveliness, that unconsciously I began to sing—
"Guten Morgen, schöne Müllerin."
With the same lack of consciousness I stopped again so that I might take deep breaths of this fresh and fragrant air—"Swiss air"—as the woman had called it, and then I laughed when I thought of "them wonderful shady promenades," for from the spot on which I was standing, I could only see scattered fruit trees on the high-lying fields, and close to the incline a couple of birch trees, the long trailing branches of which caused the leaves to quiver and glitter in the sunshine.
After taking a small meal at the "Erbgericht " on the terrace overlooking the Elbe, I sought the waiter and discovered him talking to my acquaintance, the schoolmaster. The latter was smoking a pipe ornamented with big tassels and a couple of burrs of a deer's horn, evidently his pride, and of which no student need have been ashamed. The tobacco smelt very good and it was, as he afterwards told me, the real old Alstädter; and he drank Münchener-beer, altogether sure signs of a man with refined tastes and habits. He at once greeted me and congratulated me on having found a lodging. I couldn't, he said, have chosen a better spot in the whole of Saxon-Switzerland; there were plenty of unexplored nooks, and I had only to apply to him for advice. He then asked me to what country I belonged, and when he heard that I was a Dane, he remarked that he also had been in Denmark in 1864, evidently without intending to make himself disagreeable, but only with the object of finding a common subject of interest, in which he succeeded, as I was well acquainted with the surroundings of Kolding, where for a long time he had been quartered. He now became quite excited, questioning me as to whether I remembered this farm and that house, this forest and those hills, and with the mouth-piece of his pipe he pointed out on the coloured table-cloth the position of the different places. He was most anxious to know whether the stout Ole Larsen was still in possession of the farm with the outbuildings of stone and the green fence, or whether his son Hans had succeeded to the property—for he and the son had been together in the hospital at Flensburg.
He then talked of the battle in which he had been wounded.
I cannot say that this conversation was either pleasant or unpleasant, but there was something both attractive and straightforward in the way the German spoke of bygone days. It was agreeable to feel how little personal animosity such a war had left, though all the same I had a feeling that everything was not as it ought to be.
I therefore took advantage of a short pause to ask who owned the smart villa, into the grounds of which I had wandered.
"It belongs to the Kammerherr von Zedlitz. He lives here every summer, when he is not with the King at Pillnitz. A distinguished family who live in a rather secluded manner, but who give a considerable amount to the school fund. But, my word, they have a governess, well, you will see for yourself, she is a pretty girl. Slightly related to me—not that I know much about her. In fact she is very retiring, and I only wish she was less so."
Just then the whistle from the river steamer sounded, and, having said good-bye to the schoolmaster, I hurried down to the bridge.