Victoria Read Online Free Page B

course. Turning aside, he climbs up on the dam and opens the sluice gate. The noise gradually diminishes, the mill stops.
    “No, let it run!” Otto cried. “What are you doing that for? Let the mill run, I tell you.”
    “Was it you who started the mill?” Victoria asked.
    “Yes,” he replied, laughing. “Why did it stop? Why can’t it run?”
    “Because it’s empty,” Johannes answered breathlessly, looking at him. “Do you understand? The mill is empty.”
    “It was empty, can’t you hear?” Victoria said too.
    “How was I to know?” Otto said and laughed. “Why was it empty? I ask. Was there no grain in it?”
    “Get back on your horse!” one of his comrades cut in, to put an end to it.
    They got into their saddles. One of them apologized to Johannes before riding off.
    Victoria was the last to leave. After starting to ride away, she turned her horse and came back. “Please ask your father to excuse this,” she said.
    “It would make more sense if the cadet himself did so,” Johannes replied.
    “Well, naturally, but still. He’s so full of ideas. . . . How long it is since we saw each other, Johannes!”
    He looked up at her, wondering if he had heard correctly. Had she forgotten last Sunday, his great day!
    “I saw you Sunday on the pier,” he replied.
    “Oh yes,” she said quickly. “How lucky that you were able to help the mate with the search. You did find the girl, the two of you, right?”
    Hurt, he replied shortly, “Yes, we found the girl.”
    “Or was it,” she went on, as if something had occurred to her, “was it you alone . . . ? What’s the difference anyway. Well, I do hope you will put in a good word with your father. Good night.”
    Nodding her head and smiling, she gathered up the reins and rode off.
    When Victoria was out of sight, Johannes wandered after her into the forest, restless and angry. He found Victoria standing by a tree, quite alone. She was leaning against the tree and sobbing.
    Had she been thrown? Had she hurt herself?
    He walked up to her and asked, “Have you had an accident?”
    She took a step toward him, spread her arms and gave him a radiant look. Then she paused, let her arms fall and replied, “No, I haven’t had an accident. I dismounted and let the mare go on ahead. . . . Johannes, you mustn’t look at me like that. You were standing at the pond looking at me. What do you want?”
    “What I want? I don’t understand . . . ,” he stammered.
    “You are so broad there,” she said, suddenly putting her hand on his. “You are so broad there, at your wrist. And you are completely brown from the sun, nut-brown. . . .”
    He made a move, wanting to take her hand. But she gathered up her dress and said, “No, nothing happened to me. I just felt like going home on foot. Good night.”

III
    Johannes went back to the city. And years went by, a long, eventful time of work and dreams, lessons and versifying. He had got a good start, having succeeded in writing a poem about Esther, ‘the Jewish girl who became queen of Persia,’ a work that appeared in print and earned him some money. Another poem, “The Labyrinth of Love,” put into the mouth of Munken Vendt, gave him a name.
    What was love? A wind whispering among the roses, no, a yellow phosphorescence in the blood. Love was a hot devil’s music that set even the hearts of old men dancing. It was like the marguerite, which opens wide as night comes on, and it was like the anemone, which closes at a breath and dies at a touch.
    Such was love.
    It could ruin a man, raise him up again, and then brand him anew; it could fancy me today, you tomorrow, and someone else tomorrow night, that’s how fickle it was. But it could also hold fast like an unbreakable seal and blaze with unquenchable passion until the hour of death, because it was eternal. So, what was the nature of love?
    Ah, love is a summer night with stars in the sky and fragrance on earth. But why does it make young men follow secret