2012年6月25日星期一
It seems to me one only has to look
"Oh, but I should like to see it!" said Adelaida; "and I don't know WHEN we shall ever go abroad. I've been two years looking out for a good subject for a picture. I've done all I know. 'The North and South I know by heart,' as our poet observes. Do help me to a subject, prince."
"Oh, but I know nothing about painting. It seems to me one only has to look, and paint what one sees."
"But I don't know HOW to see!"
"Nonsense, what rubbish you talk!" the mother struck in. "Not know how to see! Open your eyes and look! If you can't see here, you won't see abroad either. Tell us what you saw yourself, prince!"
"Yes, that's better," said Adelaida; "the prince learned to see abroad."
"Oh, I hardly know! You see, I only went to restore my health. I don't know whether I learned to see, exactly. I was very happy, however, nearly all the time."
"Happy! you can be happy?" cried Aglaya. "Then how can you say you did not learn to see? I should think you could teach us to see!"
"Oh! DO teach us," laughed Adelaida.
"Oh! I can't do that," said the prince, laughing too. "I lived almost all the while in one little Swiss village; what can I teach you? At first I was only just not absolutely dull; then my health began to improve--then every day became dearer and more precious to me, and the longer I stayed, the dearer became the time to me; so much so that I could not help observing it; but why this was so, it would be difficult to say."
"So that you didn't care to go away anywhere else?"
"Well, at first I did; I was restless; I didn't know however I should manage to support life--you know there are such moments, especially in solitude. There was a waterfall near us, such a lovely thin streak of water, like a thread but white and moving. It fell from a great height, but it looked quite low, and it was half a mile away, though it did not seem fifty paces. I loved to listen to it at night, but it was then that I became so restless.
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