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Aussee
August 20, 1898
My dear Wilhelm
Your lines have brought back to me the pleasures of my vacation. It was really wonderful, the Engadine composed in simple lines out of few elements, a kind of post-Renaissance landscape, Maloja with Italy beyond and an Italian atmosphere which may have been merely the product of our anticipation. For us1 Leprese was a magic idyll enhanced by the reception given us there and by
the contrast produced by our walk up from Tirano. We walked along this road, which isn't exactly level, in the most ghastly dust storm, and arrived half dead. The air made me gay and bellicose as I have hardly ever been before. The soundness of my sleep was in no way affected by the five-thousand-foot increase in altitude.
The sun didn't worry us in Maloja until the last day. Then it grew hot, even for up there, and we hadn't the courage to go down to Chiavenna-i.e., to the lakes. I think this was sensible, for several days later in Innsbruck we were both overcome by a paralyzing weakness. Since then it has become even hotter, and here in our beautiful Obertressen 2 we lie about in different kinds of chairs from ten in the morning till six in the evening, without venturing a foot outside our little estate.
Little Anna 3 describes, not inappropriately, a small Roman statuette which I bought in Innsbruck, as “an old child.”
I seem to be so removed from all intellectual activities that I can hardly follow your fascinating comments on old age, and my mind is mainly occupied with annoyance that so much of the vacation has already passed. My deep regret that you two should have been tied all this time to town is mitigated by the thought that you have had your vacation and that Ida is looking forward to a beautiful compensation.
Yes, I too have glanced through Nansen, whom everyone here is raving about-Martha because Scandinavians (Grandma, our guest at the moment, still speaks Swedish) evidently revive in her a youthful ideal which she hasn't realized in life, and M