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Aussee, August 20, 1898
Dear Wilhelm,
Your lines revived the pleasures of our trip. It really was glorious — the Engadine composed in simple lines out of a few elements, a kind of post-Renaissance landscape, and Maloja, with Italy beyond, with an Italian air about it (probably merely imposed on it by our expectations). Leprese was for us enchantingly idyllic, also because of the way we were received there and the contrast with the journey up from Tirano. We had to travel that road, which is not exactly level, in a horrible dust storm and arrived up there half-dead. The air made me feel giddy and eager to quarrel, as I have seldom been before. The 1,600 meters did not affect the soundness of my sleep.
Until the last day in Maloja the sun did not trouble us. Then, however, it became hot, even at that altitude, and we didn't have the strength to go to Chiavenna, that is, down to the lakes. I believe that was sensible, because a few days later, in Innsbruck, both of us were in a state of almost paralyzing weakness. Since then it has become increasingly hotter and here, in our beautiful Obertressen, we lie about on all sorts of deck chairs from ten in the morning to six in the evening, without venturing a step beyond the boundaries of our small domain. In Innsbruck I bought a small Roman statuette, which Annerl not inappropriately called “an old child.”
Apparently, remote from all intellectual pursuits and hardly able,