A fine icy
rain which penetrated to our bones began to fall as soon as we
started. Muffled up in the wet frozen covers, we reached the bank of
a large canal. A man came out of a cottage, led the horse on to a
barge, and landed us safe and sound on the opposite bank. The carriage
turned down a wide street, and we found ourselves on the bed of the
ancient Sea of Haarlem. Our horse trotted along where the fish once
swam through the water; our coachman smoked where at one time the
smoke of naval battles had rolled; we saw glimpses of canals, of
villages, of cultivated fields, of a new world of which only thirty
years ago there had not been a trace. After we had driven about a mile
the rain stopped, and it began to snow as I had never seen it snow
before: it was a real whirlwind of heavy, thick snow, which the strong
wind blew into our faces. We unfolded the waterproof covering, opened
our umbrellas, tucked ourselves in, and bundled ourselves up, but the
wind broke through all our defences and the snow sifted over us,
enveloping us in white and covering our heads and feet with ice. After
a long turn we left the lake; the snow ceased, we arrived at another
village of toy houses, where we left our carriage and proceeded on
foot. We went on and on, seeing bridges, windmills, closed cottages,
lonely streets, wide meadows, but no human beings. We crossed another
branch of the Rhine, and arrived at another village barricaded and
silent; we continued on our way, occasionally seeing some face looking
at us from behind the windows. We then left the village and found
ourselves opposite the dunes. The sky looked threatening, and I became
alarmed.

"Where are we going?" I demanded of my friend.

"Where fortune takes us," he replied.

We proceeded through the dunes, along narrow, winding, sandy roads,
seeing no sign of habitation anywhere; we went up hill and down dale;
the wind drove the sand into our faces; at every step our feet sank in
it, and the country grew more and more desolate, gloomy, and foreboding.

"But who is your relative?" I said to my companion. "Where does he
live? what is his business? There is some witchcraft about this; he
cannot be a man like other men: tell me where you are leading me."

My friend did not answer: he stopped and stared in front of him. I
stared too, and far away saw something that looked like a house, alone
in the midst of the desert, almost hidden by a rise in the ground. We
hastened on; the