And while she goes slowly through the door, holding her boy, she feels her husband’s eyes still resting on her, and a great peace comes over her, the assurance that now many things would be right again.
MARGRET’S PILGRIMAGE
BY CLARA VIEBIG
Clara Viebig, foremost of the young women writers of modern Germany, was born in the early seventies, in the Eifel country of Prussia. Her first book, “Daughters of the Rhineland,” appeared in 1896, with a leaning toward the new “woman movement.” But her first great success was the novel, “Children of the Eifel,” which introduced a new subject as well as a new writer. It is the picture of a “stirring prophet of doom in the midst of the smiling Rhineland.” In dealing with nature, Clara Viebig is masculine, yet when she deals with the brutalities of nature, she is all womanly, without flinching. The expectation raised by these stories was justified in her next book, “Our Daily Bread,” showing such keenness of observation, strength of portraiture, loving insight, and startling directness that it is considered by many the best that newer German literature has produced.
MARGRET’S PILGRIMAGE
BY CLARA VIEBIG
Translated by Grace Isabel Colbron.
Copyright, 1907, by P. F. Collier & Son.
It was already autumn on the heights of the Eifel. The cold winds blew in from the north, snorting in malicious haste. They colored the thin grass yellow, and tousled the gnarled firs and the trembling birches. Down in the sunny Moselle Valley the roses still bloomed in the gardens, in their glory of white, red, and yellow petals. Heavily laden fruit trees nodded over the crystal clear stream, the rich blood swelled the grape, and walnut and chestnut trees burst open the green coverings of their fruit and shook the shining brown heart of it down upon the earth. But up on the heights the nights smelt of winter already. The sloes hung blue and tart on the blackthorn, cold frost silvered the grass and the moss, and heavy mists filled the ravines. It was inhospitably cold and unfriendly. The Eifel with its treeless heights, its purple moors, and its dark tarns made itself ready to receive its stern master, the Winter.