The walls of the old city have been leveled into broad promenades, shaded with nut-trees, encircling the town as with a girdle of green. Beyond, a new city has sprung up, spreading like a mushroom; but within the girdle the streets are narrow and crooked, and the houses gabled; leaning to one another as if seeking support for their ancient foundations, with only a line of sky in between.
At the corner of the promenade, just where the old city and the new city meet, is a tumble-down mill. It is called the Nonnen-Mühle, and it has been there ever since Ehrestadt first came into existence, as is evident from the bulging of the walls, and the wood of the casements, rotten and worm-eaten. The river winds underneath it, and the great spoked wheel turns slowly, tossing the water into a cloud of yellow foam, flinging the spray afar into the dark, flowing stream, catching it again; playing with it, half sportive, half fierce, like some monster alive.
As the wheel turns, the sound of its teeth grinding is steady and rhythmical, like a theme in the bass; and the river splashes the accompaniment, gurgling and sighing in a minor key, as if in complaint.
It was Johannestag.[1]
The citizens of Ehrestadt were walking on the promenade, dressed in their best; the men strutting, the women hanging on their arms, the children toddling behind. In the square a band was playing; the nut trees were in full leaf, and the air was warm and sweet with the scent of the rose buds. The wheel of the mill had stopped.
Just under the peak of the roof was a small window gabled, with a broad sill, and casements that opened outwards, overlooking the promenade. The sill was scarlet with geraniums, and the window itself was grown partly over and half smothered in a veiling of ivy. Behind the window was a garret, small like a cell; the roof sloping to the eaves.
There was nothing in the garret excepting a pallet-bed in the corner, under the eaves, and in the opposite corner a box on which stood a pitcher and basin; the basin was cracked; the pitcher was without a handle. On the wall hung a few articles of clothing on pegs; and the slope of the roof was grey and misty with cob-webs. Otherwise the garret was bare.
Sitting by the window with her elbows on the sill, framed by the ivy and the geraniums, was a girl. Her head was propped in her hands, and her hair glittered gold in the warm sun-light against the green and the scarlet. She was gazing eagerly over the throngs on the promenade, and her blue eyes were alert as if searching for some one.
She was young and slim, and her gown was shabby, turned back at the throat as if she suffered from the heat; and her hair was cropped, lying in little tendrils of gold on her neck, curling thickly about her ears and her brow. Her cheeks were quite pale, and there was a pinched look about the lips, dark shadows under the eyes. She gazed steadily.
"If I could only see him," she murmured to herself, half aloud, "just once—if I could see him!" Her lip trembled a little and she caught it between her teeth: "It is seventeen weeks—a hundred and nineteen days—since we parted," she said, "At daybreak on Thursday it will be a third of a year—a third of a year!"