them; but the prickles on their leaves are very sensible obstacles. If you step on these colossal leaves, in the hope that they will bear you, they break off suddenly; and so, instead of getting out, you fall into the arms of the next plant. When, however, at last we had wound our way out of the labyrinth, we found but little to enjoy in the city; though from the neighbouring country we felt it impossible to part before sunset. Infinitely beautiful was it to observe how this countryside, of which every point had its interest, was gradually enveloped in darkness.
Below Taormina: on the seashore,
Monday, May 7, 1787.
Kniep, whom, by good luck, I brought with me hither, cannot be praised enough for relieving me of a burden which would have been intolerable to me, and which goes directly counter to my nature. He has gone to sketch in detail the objects of which he took a general survey yesterday. He will have to point his pencil many a time, and I know not when he will have finished. I shall have it in my power to see all these sights again. At first I wished to ascend the height with him; but then, again, I was tempted to remain here. I sought a corner like the bird about to build its nest. In a sorry and neglected peasant's garden I have seated myself on the trunk of an orange-tree, and lost myself in reveries. Orange-branches on which a traveller can sit, sounds rather strangely; but seems quite natural when one knows that the orange-tree, left to nature, sends out, at a little distance from the root, twigs which in time become decided branches.
And so, thinking over again the plan of the "Nausicaa," I formed the idea of a dramatic concentration of the "Odyssey." I think the scheme is not impracticable, only it will be indispensable to keep clearly in view the difference of the drama and the epopee
