"Oh, how beautiful!" She said it with deep feeling. The melancholy of the landscape flattered her mood. There was no gaudy tone there that disturbed her, no medley of colours. Even the sun, which sets there in greater beauty than anywhere else--blushing so deeply that the whole sky blushes with it, that the winding Venn rivulet hedged in by cushions of moss, that every pool, every peat-hole full of water reflects its beams ruddy-gold, and the sad Venn itself wears a mantle of glowing splendour--even this sun brought no glaringly bright light with it. It displayed its mighty disc in a grand dignified manner, a serious victor after a serious struggle. Kate looked into this marvellous sun with large eyes bathed in tears, until the last beam, the last rosy streak in the grey mass of clouds had vanished. Now it had gone--the heavens were dead--but in the morning it would be there again, an eternal, imperishable, never-conquered hope. Then should not, ought not the human heart to beat again too, revived anew, always full of hope? Clouds of mist sped across the moor, veiled, indescribable, vague shapes. There was a whispering before the coming of the wind, a lisping through the heather and the cotton-grass--it seemed to Kate as though the Venn had something to tell her. What was it saying? Ah, it must be for some reason that she had come there, that she felt she was being held fast as though by a strong and still kind hand. She walked on with quicker, more elastic steps, as though she were searching for something. Her husband was delighted that his wife was so pleased with the neighbourhood. True, the landscape had no special attraction for him--was it not very desolate, monotonous and unfertile there? But the characteristic scenery was certainly harmonious, very harmonious--well, if she found pleasure in it, it was better than a paradise to him. They often drove up to Baraque Michel, that lonely inn on the borders between Belgium and Prussia, in which the douaniers drank their drams of gin when on the look-out for smugglers, and where the peat-cutters dry their smocks that the mist has wetted and their saturated boots at the fire that is always burning on the hearth.