of the short and lofty letters, the unangenehme Elisabeth!
"Die war doch immer verdreht," I could imagine them hastily muttering
to each other, before advancing wreathed in welcoming smiles.
It gave me a great shock, this narrow escape, and I got
on to my feet quickly, and burying the remains of my lunch
under the gigantic molehill on which I had been sitting,
asked myself nervously what I proposed to do next.
Should I walk back to the village, go to the Gasthof, write a letter
craving permission to call on my cousins, and wait there till
an answer came? It would be a discreet and sober course to pursue;
the next best thing to having written before leaving home.
But the Gasthof of a north German village is a dreadful place,
and the remembrance of one in which I had taken refuge
once from a thunderstorm was still so vivid that nature
itself cried out against this plan. The mist, if anything,
was growing denser. I knew every path and gate in the place.
What if I gave up all hope of seeing the house,
and went through the little door in the wall at the bottom
of the garden, and confined myself for this once to that?
In such weather I would be able to wander round as I pleased,
without the least risk of being seen by or meeting any cousins,
and it was after all the garden that lay nearest my heart.
What a delight it would be to creep into it unobserved,
and revisit all the corners I so well remembered,
and slip out again and get away safely without any need
of explanations, assurances, protestations, displays of affection,
without any need, in a word, of that exhausting form
of conversation, so dear to relations, known as Redensarten!
The mist tempted me. I think if it had been a fine
day I would have gone soberly to the Gasthof and written