Ch. 14 - Sala - Page 2

had been watered; a broken pan, which had certainly served by
way of watering-pot, lay there still. The sticks signified roses and
geraniums.

It had been a delightful garden--alas, yes! We great, grown-up men--we
play just so: we make ourselves a garden with what we call love's
roses and friendship's geraniums; we water them with our tears and
with our heart's blood; and yet they are, and remain, dry sticks
without root. It was a gloomy thought; I felt it, and in order to get
the dry sticks in my thoughts to blossom, I went out. I wandered in
the fibres and in the long threads--that is to say, in the small
lanes--and in the great street; and here was more life than I dared to
expect. I met a herd of cattle returning or going--which I know
not--for they were without a herdsman. The shop-boy still stood behind
the counter, leaned over it and greeted me; the stranger took his hat
off again--that was my day's employment in Sala.

Pardon me, thou silent town, which Gustavus Adolphus built, where his
young heart felt the first emotions of love, and where the silver lies
in the deep shafts--that is to say, outside the town, "in a flat, and
not very pleasant district."

I knew no one in the town; I had no one to be my guide, so I
accompanied the cows, and came to the churchyard. The cows went past,
but I stepped over the stile, and stood amongst the graves, where the
grass grew high, and almost all the tombstones lay with worn-out
inscriptions. On a few only the date of the year was legible.
"Anno"--yes, what then? And who rested here? Everything on the stone
was erased--blotted out like the earthly life of those mortals that
here were earth in earth. What life's dream have ye dead played here
in silent Sala?

The setting sun shone over the graves; not a leaf moved on the trees;
all was still--still as death--in the city of the silver-mines, of
which this traveller's reminiscence is but a frame around the shop-boy
who leaned over the counter.