The Tanners

This day was followed by a splendid evening. All the world was strolling along the lake’s lovely shore beneath broad, large-leaved trees. Walking here among all these many lighthearted, quietly conversing people, one felt transported to a fairy tale. The city was ablaze with the setting sun’s flames; later it smoldered, black and dark, in the glowing ashes of the sun that had set. There’s something delightful and enchanting about a summer sun. The lake glittered in the dark, and all the lights shimmered in the depths of the still water. The bridges were looking splendid, and when you walked over them you could see small dark boats shooting past in the water below; in these rowboats sat girls in light-colored dresses, and often when one of the larger flat-bottomed boats slowly, ceremoniously floated past, you could hear the warm crepuscular sounds of an accordion. The notes vanished in the black and then sonorously reemerged, clear and warm, heartbreakingly dark. How far it carried, the sound of this simple instrument played by some boatman! The sound seemed to be making the night even larger and deeper. From the far distant shoreline the lights of rural settlements shimmered, their reddish glint like gemstones in the dark heavy raiment of a queen. The entire earth was fragrant, lying there as still as a sleeping girl. The huge shadowy dome of the night sky arched above all eyes, all the mountains and lights. A sense of spacelessness hovered about the lake, and the sky now had something enclosing, encompassing, overarching about it. Whole groups of people were collecting. The young folk appeared to be waxing rhapsodic, and upon all the benches silent, still people sat pressed close together. There was no lack of flighty, pridefully coquettish women, nor of men who had eyes for these women alone, who kept walking behind them, constantly hesitating before rushing forward again until at last they found their pluck or the words to address these ladies. Many were given a proper dressing-down, as the expression goes.