on the bridge amusing themselves all the night through by watching the rising of the water, and the parapet was now quite black with the crowd. But this bridge itself, which usually was lifted so proudly on its high pillars over the river, now only showed the arches spanning the muddy mass that dashed along, not like water but like a torrent of lava, whirling and grinding, covered with overturned yawls, beams and timber, barrels and bushes, which tossed, went under and came up again. I made my way to the bridge. The whole quay had disappeared and also the little stretch of meadow in front of Neustadt; over there the gardens were under water, and on this side waves foamed and whirled up against the terrace wall.
"Oh, our poor little Rathen," I thought, "what does it look like there? I wonder if the dear house, where we have experienced so much together, is flooded, perhaps even washed away."
I could not resist my desire to know what had happened, and a few hours later the train brought me to Pirna; in Saxonian Switzerland itself there was not any possibility of crossing the Elbe. When I had passed over the bridge, I turned and glanced at the town: I had not seen it since that day on the outer journey to Rathen, when it had shown itself in the frame of the cabin window, shining and wet from the summer rain, with a promising light over the gables of Sonnenstein. Now the town and the sombre fortress inhabited by the feeble-minded, lay in sunlight, but it was a cold, cheerless light that contained no suggestion of Spring.
I walked over Dorf-and Stadt-Wehlen and up through the famous Zscherre-Grund, which is passed by all tourists, but was now deserted. The intimate Saxonian mountain landscapes, with their baroc and steep shapes, moved me
