On the other side, that is to say, to the right, the brook and the slope continue—the latter, as I have already indicated, in diverse configuration. At first, covered with fir-trees, it displays a dusky and sunless visage. Later it transforms itself to a sand-pit which warmly refracts the beams of the sun; still later it converts itself into a gravel-pit, and then to a cataract of bricks—just as though a house had been demolished higher up and the débris hurled down the slope. This has imposed temporary difficulties upon the course of the brook. But the brook rises equal to the occasion; its waters mount a trifle and spread themselves out, stained red by the dust of the broken brick and also discolouring the grass along the bank. After this they flow the dearer and the more gaily on their way with glistenings here and there upon the surface. I have a great love for brooks, as I have for all bodies of water—from the ocean to the smallest, scum-covered puddle. When I happen to be in the mountains during the summer and chance to hear the secret splashing and gossip of such a streamlet, then I must follow the liquid call, even though it be distant, and I cannot rest until I have found its hiding-place. Then, face to face, I make acquaintance with the talkative child of the crags and the heights. Beautiful are the proud torrential brooks which come down in crystalline thunder between pines and steep terraces of stone, form green, ice-cold pools in rocky baths and basins, and then go plunging to the next step in a dissolution of snowy foam. But I am also fond of looking upon the brooks of the flatland, whether they be shallow, so as scarcely to cover the polished, silvery, and slippery pebbles of their beds, or as deep as little rivers which—protected on both banks by low, overhanging willows—go shouldering themselves forward with a vigorous thrust, flowing more swiftly in the middle than at the sides.