destroying and washing it away; but passionless it had exercised its work of destruction, and indifferently it rushed by—like life—like fate!
A cold wind blew, it had clouded over, now it even began to snow a little. A miserable, depressing outlook, but I would not have exchanged it for a glance over a smiling landscape, through which streamed the broad thoroughfare of a frequented river. In this way I could bear to see Rathen again. I was also content to have never been on these heights with Minna.
A prosaic circumstance prevented me, however, from giving myself up too much to this elegiac mood; I was almost ill with hunger. When I had satisfied my appetite, I thought it was too late to go down to Rathen, and I postponed it to the next day. I went down towards the Elbe by a forest path, which branches off from the descent to Rathen, but is indicated as a "forbidden path." The rough forester came into my head, and I wished I could meet him. This footpath would take me to the one that Minna and I had trodden on the way home from the stone-quarry. But the penetrating wind, which splashed the ever-increasing fall of thawing snow into my face, the farther I came down, soon made me return. Up on the height it surely was easy enough to find shelter, but it was disagreeable everywhere, and I myself was less melancholy than annoyed: this whole expedition seemed to me to be a folly. As soon as the colourless sun had set I retired to my room, where there was a horrible draught, and at last went to sleep lulled by the monotonous cradle song of soughing pines.
I woke up to find a real spring morning. The view was not changed, but I was told that the river had begun to fall. When I was on the point of leaving, a lonely
