When it did reach Possenhofen and stop, and
the Nurnberg stove was lifted out once more, August could see
through the fretwork of the brass door, as the stove stood upright
facing the lake, that this Wurm-See was a calm and noble piece of
water, of great width, with low wooded banks and distant
mountains, a peaceful, serene place, full of rest.
It was now near ten o'clock. The sun had come forth; there was a
clear gray sky hereabouts; the snow was not falling, though it lay
white and smooth everywhere, down to the edge of the water, which
before long would itself be ice.
Before he had time to get more than a glimpse of the green gliding
surface, the stove was again lifted up and placed on a large boat
that was in waiting--one of those very long and huge boats which
the women in these parts use as laundries, and the men as timber
rafts. The stove, with much labor and much expenditure of time and
care, was hoisted into this, and August would have grown sick and
giddy with the heaving and falling if his big brothers had not
long used him to such tossing about, so that he was as much at
ease head, as feet, downward. The stove once in it safely with its
guardians, the big boat moved across the lake to Leoni. How a
little hamlet on a Bavarian lake got that Tuscan-sounding name I
cannot tell; but Leoni it is.
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