Death In Venice Gustave Aschenbach - or von Aschenbach, as he had been known officially since his fiftieth birthday-had set out alone from his house in Prince Regent Street, Munich, for an extended walk. It was a spring afternoon in that year of grace 19-, when Europe sat upon the anxious seat beneath a menace that hung over its head for months. Aschenbach had sought the open soon after tea. He was overwrought by a morning of hard, nervetaxing work, work which had not ceased to exact his uttermost in the way of sustained concentration, conscientiousness, and tact; and after the noon meal found himself powerless to check the onward sweep of the productive mechanism within him, that motus animi continuus in which, according to Cicero, eloquence resides. He had sought but not found relaxation in sleep-though the wear and tear upon his system had come to make a daily nap more and more imperative-and now undertook a walk, in the hope that air and exercise might send him back refreshed to a good evening's work.