"True, I already see," said Botho, "no happiness is complete. But then comes winter, and then you can sleep like the seven sleepers." "Yes, if it does not happen to be New Year's or Twelfth Night or Carnival. And these holidays come oftener than the calendar shows. You ought to see the life here when they arrive in sleighs or on skates from all the ten villages, and gather in the great hall that I have built on. Then we don't see one citified face among them, and the Berliners leave us in peace, but the farm hands and chambermaids have their day. Then we see otter skin caps and corduroy jackets with silver buttons, and all kinds of soldiers who are on leave are there also: Schwedter Dragoons and Fuerstenwald Uhlans, or perhaps Potsdam Hussars. And everyone is jealous and quarrelsome, and one cannot tell which they like best, dancing or fighting, and on the slightest pretext the villages are arrayed against each other in battle. And so with noise and turbulent sports they pass the whole long night and whole mountains of pancakes disappear, and only at dawn do they leave for home over the frozen river or over the snow." "Now I see plainly," said Botho, "that you have not very much solitude or deathly stillness. But it is fortunate that I knew nothing about all this, or else I should not have wished to come and should have missed a real pleasure. And I should have been really sorry not to have seen such a beautiful spot.... But as you said before; what is life without sleep? and I feel that you are right. I am tired, although it is still early; I think it must be the effect of the air and the water. And then I must go and see ... Your good wife has taken so much trouble ... Good night, I have talked quite enough." And thereupon he rose and went into the house, which had now grown very quiet. Lena had lain down on the bed with her feet on a chair at the bedside and had drunk a cup of the tea that the hostess had brought her. The rest and the warmth did her good, the little attack passed off, and some little time ago she could have gone down to the veranda to join in the conversation of Botho and the landlord. But she was not in a talkative mood, and so she only got up to look around the room, in which she had thus far taken no interest.