Thence, through a clearing
of the forest or cleft in the rocky barrier, they caught sudden
glimpses of the Rhine framed in stone or festooned with vigorous
vegetation. The valleys, the forest paths, the trees exhaled that
autumnal odor which induced to reverie; the wooded summits were
beginning to gild and to take on the warm brown tones significant of
age; the leaves were falling, but the skies were still azure and the
dry roads lay like yellow lines along the landscape, just then
illuminated by the oblique rays of the setting sun. At a mile and a
half from Andernach the two friends walked their horses in silence, as
if no war were devastating this beautiful land, while they followed a
path made for the goats across the lofty walls of bluish granite
between which foams the Rhine. Presently they descended by one of the
declivities of the gorge, at the foot of which is placed the little
town, seated coquettishly on the banks of the river and offering a
convenient port to mariners.
"Germany is a beautiful country!" cried one of the two young men, who
was named Prosper Magnan, at the moment when he caught sight of the
painted houses of Andernach, pressed together like eggs in a basket,
and separated only by trees, gardens, and flowers. Then he admired for
a moment the pointed roofs with their projecting eaves, the wooden
staircases, the galleries of a thousand peaceful dwellings, and the
vessels swaying to the waves in the port.
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