Would not anyone have thought that we were still in our cheerful little house on the Königstrasse and that I was only just coming down to breakfast, and that I was to be married to Gräuben that day?
Alas! if the tempest had but sent the raft a little more east, we should have passed under Germany, under my beloved town of Hamburg, under the very street where dwelt all that I loved most in the world. Then only forty leagues would have separated us! But they were forty leagues perpendicular of solid granite wall, and in reality we were a thousand leagues asunder!
All these painful reflections rapidly crossed my mind before I could answer my uncle’s question.
“Well, now,” he repeated, “won’t you tell me how you have slept?”
“Oh, very well,” I said. “I am only a little knocked up, but I shall soon be better.”
“Oh,” says my uncle, “that’s nothing to signify. You are only a little bit tired.”
“But you, uncle, you seem in very good spirits this morning.”
“Delighted, my boy, delighted. We have got there.”
“To our journey’s end?”
“No; but we have got to the end of that endless sea. Now we shall go by land, and really begin to go down! down! down!”
“But, my dear uncle, do let me ask you one question.”
“Of course, Axel.”
“How about returning?”