Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/193

magnificent lime trees of which cast their shadow far away over the stubble fields in front of us. To the left, strongly lit by the sun, lay the heights on the opposite side of the Elbe, with its wood-covered banks and hollows surmounting the villages, which, with the help of the villas, form an almost continuous border of gardens and houses. The steep slopes are intersected by the terraces and walls of the vineyards, and here and there high-roofed country houses, encircled by Italian poplars, are interspersed, while on the heights above are dotted the little cottages of the vineyard workmen, looking like small watch towers. All these details continually repeated themselves, dwindling and becoming less clear and closer to one another, until they melted into an almost indefinite tone of colour at the point where the brow of the hills sloped down towards the plain. This latter stretched far away in a blue mist, and in the dim distance appeared more hazy mountain shapes floating like a sediment of the blue in the atmosphere, rather than a rising of the earth. But as the shadows on the fields grew longer the contours came out more solidly, and among them we recognised distinctly the familiar profile of Lilienstein. While on the right Loschwitzer bank the window-panes flickered like the beginning of an illumination, and we could distinguish the stone-quarries of Lilienstein as a lighter line below. It was queer to think that in this mountain-picture, which was so diminutive that it could be painted on the nail of the little finger, we could with a needle point out the place which had held so much of our happiness. Silently we pressed one another's hands, and our eyes filled with tears as we gazed towards it. It seemed to both of us that the idyll had grown to the place as a delicate flower which will not bear transplanting, and that we had left it there, and only