“You are right! Holy cuckoo, forgive me!”
“Now, you know, holiness is not the right term for him. I have heard many things to his prejudice ... he is said to have no family sentiment....”
“Oh, there, he does not need Philistine virtues. He is a kind of forest magician and consequently superior to civil morals.”
“Just as a poet laureate is superior to provincial rulers?”
Thus laughing and jesting, they walked for a while side by side; but once their eyes met, and a sudden earnestness spread over their features; on their silent lips trembled something akin to pain; they had simultaneously discovered that between them hovered something like the spirit of consecration, awe-inspiring, something like an emanation from the mystical source of being:—Love!—something under whose breath jests and laughter seem as inappropriate as under the breath of that other solemn mystery—Death. What they had seen in each other’s eyes permeated them with a thrill of devotion, and they walked for a long distance in silence; yet by their arms they still exchanged the pressure significant of affection.
Only when their path turned into a frequented place in Lucerne was this magic mood dispelled. They came to an aeroplane-hangar.
Franka paused:—
“Chlodwig, grant me one wish—let us take a little air-trip together. I have never been in an aeroplane and I should like to make my first ascent with you; and to-day especially ... this very moment.... I feel a great thirst for the heights, don’t you?”
“I? No. My most burning thirst you have—I mean the cuckoo has—quenched! But if it would give you a pleasure—I am ready for it. Let us fly!”
He made the arrangements with one of the pilots, and a few moments later the machine was speeding up with its passengers into the air. Franka at that moment experienced a powerful shock rather psychical then physical. Set free from the ground, hovering free, with reasonable velocity their aeroplane swept up at a height of about ten metres. It was a quite peculiar new sensation. Suddenly, however, the machine began to mount and mount; not perpendicularly, but still preserving its forward motion, until it had reached a height of some hundred metres. Franka could not repress a cry. She had the impression that the aeroplane remained still while everything else was sinking down. Into what depths fell the earth! Ever wider became the view of the country gliding away beneath them, and ever tinier little points—now trees, houses, like toys; men, like ants—juggled together on it.