But he took stock of his
impressions with his wife, and they seemed to him so few, after all, that
he could not resist a painful sense of isolation in the midst of the
environment.
They made a Sunday excursion to the Zoological Gardens in the
Thiergarten, with a large crowd of the lower classes, but though they had
a great deal of trouble in getting there by the various kinds of
horsecars and electric cars, they did not feel that they had got near to
the popular life. They endeavored for some sense of Berlin society by
driving home in a drosky, and on the way they passed rows of beautiful
houses, in French and Italian taste, fronting the deep, damp green park
from the Thiergartenstrasse, in which they were confident cultivated and
delightful people lived; but they remained to the last with nothing but
their unsupported conjecture.
LXV.
Their excursion to Potsdam was the cream of their sojourn in Berlin. They
chose for it the first fair morning, and they ran out over the flat sandy
plains surrounding the capital, and among the low hills surrounding
Potsdam before it actually began to rain.
They wished immediately to see Sans Souci for the great Frederick's sake,
and they drove through a lively shower to the palace, where they waited
with a horde of twenty-five other tourists in a gusty colonnade before
they were led through Voltaire's room and Frederick's death chamber.
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