Wilhelm would have liked to seize this
opportunity for withdrawing himself from a hospitality which weighed
heavily on him, but Paul put down his timid revolt with a high hand.
"None of that now. You are coming with us, and can see what country
life is like for a whole summer," he declared, and there the matter
rested.
The estate and its surroundings possessed no picturesque charms. The
land stretched in uniform flatness from the sluggish Suderelbe to
the equally sleepy Seeve, and the Fuchsberg at Ronneburg, with its
height of two hundred feet, was a giant of the Alps or Cordilloras,
compared to the floor-like evenness of the country round about. From
the platform of the tower which Paul had built on to his house,
giving it quite a baronial appearance, one could see for miles
across country, almost to Hamburg, the spires of which were plainly
visible on a clear day. But far and near one saw nothing but
cornfields and meadows, that had the regularity of a carpet pattern,
intersected by clay-colored dikes, straight ditches full of stagnant
brown water, here and there a busy windmill, and in the distance the
smooth-flowing watercourses which bounded the landscape. The picture
was laid on from a meager palette; a few browns and greens, slightly
relieved and enlivened by the vigorous tones of the whitewashed
walls of the laborers' cottages, some standing apart, some collected
together like a little village.
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