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One Year Abroad

by Blanche Willis Howard · English · Gutenberg #35680 · 381,446 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: One Year Abroad

Author: Blanche Willis Howard


        
Release date: March 25, 2011 [eBook #35680]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35680

Credits: Produced by Katherine Ward and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


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                            ONE YEAR ABROAD




                                   BY
                      THE AUTHOR OF "ONE SUMMER."


                         "O rare, rare Earth!"



        "Iron is essentially the same everywhere and always, but
        the sulphate of iron is never the same as the carbonate
        of iron. Truth is invariable, but the Smithate of truth
        must always differ from the Brownate of
        truth."--_Autocrat of the Breakfast Table._


                                BOSTON:
                      JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,
            Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co.
                                 1878.




                           _Copyright, 1877.
                        By JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO.
          University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co., Cambridge.
                                   _





CONTENTS.


  - HAMBURG AT A FIRST GLANCE. .....................................   1

  - HEIDELBERG IN WINTER. ..........................................  12

  - A FLYING SHEET FROM PARIS. .....................................  24

  - BADEN-BADEN. ...................................................  32

  - RAMBLES ABOUT STUTTGART ........................................  44

  - THE SOLITUDE. ..................................................  55

  - A DAY IN THE BLACK FOREST. .....................................  63

  - THE LENNINGER THAL. ............................................  69

  - FRANCISKA VON HOHENHEIM. .......................................  77

  - "NUREMBERG THE ANCIENT." .......................................  85

  - SOME WUeRTEMBERG TOWNS. ........................................  91

  - IN A GARDEN. ...................................................  95

  - LINDAU AND BREGENZ. ............................................ 100

  - THE VORARLBERG. ................................................ 106

  - IN THE TYROL. .................................................. 115

  - INNSBRUCK. ..................................................... 121

  - OHENSCHWANGAU AND NEU SCHWANSTEIN. ............................. 127

  - LIFE IN SCHATTWALD. ............................................ 137

  - UP THE AIRY MOUNTAIN. .......................................... 145

  - THE ENGADINE. .................................................. 154

  - RAGATZ. ........................................................ 161

  - A FLYING TRIP TO THE RHINE FALLS. .............................. 168

  - DOWN FROM THE HIGH ALPS. ....................................... 175

  - BY THE LAKE OF LUCERNE. ........................................ 182

  - UP AND ON AND DOWN THE RIGI. ................................... 187

  - A KAISER FEST. ................................................. 194

  - THE CANNSTADT VOLKSFEST. ....................................... 203

  - IN A VINEYARD. ................................................. 211

  - AMONG FREILIGRATH'S BOOKS. ..................................... 218

  - THREE FUNERALS. ................................................ 225

  - SOME CHRISTMAS PICTURES. ....................................... 232

  - HAMBURG AGAIN. ................................................. 239





BY THE SAME AUTHOR.


ONE SUMMER.

"Little Classic" style. $1.25.

"A very charming story is 'One Summer.' Even the word 'charming' hardly
expresses with sufficient emphasis the pleasure we have taken in reading
it; it is simply delightful, unique in method and manner, and with a
peculiarly piquant flavor of humorous observation."--_Appleton's
Journal._

JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO.,
_Publishers, Boston_.




HAMBURG AT A FIRST GLANCE.


There is a wild, fantastic poem, thronged with more phantoms, goblins,
and horrors than are the legends of the Blockberg. It narrates in
singularly vivid style the deeds of a frightful fiend, and is, believe
me, a truly remarkable work. I beg you will not scorn it because it
exists only in the brain which it entered one stormy night at sea. There
it reigned, triumphant, through long sleepless hours; but for certain
reasons--which are, by the way, perfectly satisfactory to my own
mind--it will never be committed to paper. Its title is "The
Screw,"--the screw of an ocean steamer.

Christmas is the best wishing-time in the year. One can wish and wish at
Christmas, and what harm does it do? So I will wish my poem all written
in stately, melodious measure, yet with thoughts that would make your
cheek pale, and your very soul shudder; and then--since wishing is so
easy--I will wish that I were an intimate friend of Gustave Dore, to
whom I would take my masterpiece to be illustrated; and I would beg him
to allow his genius for drawing awful things full sway, and I would
implore him not to withhold one magic touch that might suggest another
horror, so that extending from the central object--the terrible
Screw--there should be demons reaching for their prey, howling and
laughing in fiendish glee. Then I would say, "More, more, my good M.
Dore!--more hideous faces, more leering phantoms, more writhing legs and
arms, please!" For perhaps Dore never crossed the ocean in bad weather;
perhaps he never occupied a state-room directly over the Screw; perhaps
he never experienced the sensation of lying there in sleepless,
helpless, hopeless agony, clinging frantically to the side of his berth,
hearing the clank of chains, the creaking of timbers, the rattling of
the shrouds, the waves sweeping the deck over his head,--most of all,
the Evil Screw beneath, rampant and threatening. It may be Dore does not
know how it feels when that Screw rises up in wrath, takes the steamer
in his teeth and shakes it, then plunges deep, deep in the waves; while
all the demons, great and small, stretching their uncanny arms towards
the state-rooms, shriek, "We'll get them! We'll have them!" and the
winds and waves in hoarse chorus respond, "They'll have them--have
them--have them!" and again uprises the Screw and shakes himself and the
trembling steamer. So through the night, and many nights, alas!

And yet, O Screw! thing of evil, thing of might, I humbly thank you that
you ceased at last your terrible thumps, your jarrings and wicked
whirls,--and silenced your chorus of attendant demons, with their
turnings and twistings and mad laughter; I thank you that you _did not_
get us! Truly, I believed you would. I thank you that you did not choose
to keep us miserable souls wandering forevermore through the shoreless
deep, or to sink us, as the phantom-ship sinks in "Der Fliegender
Hollaender," amid sulphurous fumes and discordant sounds, down to that
lurid abyss from which you came.

Do you all at home know this legend of the Flying Dutchman? At least, do
you know it as Wagner gives it to the world, in words as lovely as its
melodies? The music is worth hearing, and the story well worth a little
thought. But perhaps you know it already? Because, if you do, of course
I shall not tell it, and in that case we need not sail off in strange
crafts for the wild Norway coast, but will only steam safely up the Elbe
to Hamburg.

There are travellers from the Western World who, after months of
sight-seeing, return home weary and disappointed because they have never
once been able to "realize that they were in Europe." Not realize! Not
know! Not feel with every fibre that one has come from the New to the
Old! Why, the very lights of Hamburg gleaming through the rain and
darkness, as we cold and wet voyagers at last drew near our haven, even
while they gave us friendly greeting, told us unmistakably that their
welcome was shining out from a strange land, from homes unlike the homes
we had left behind.

Dear people who never "realize" that it is "Europe," who never feel what
you expected to feel, may one less experienced in travel than yourselves
venture to tell you that it is that fatal thing, the guide-book, that
weighs you down? Not total abstinence in this respect, but moderation,
would I preach. Too much guide-book makes you know far too well what to
do, where to go, how long to stay. It leaves nothing to imagination, to
enthusiasm, to the whim of the moment. Dear guide-book people, _don't_
know so much, don't calculate so much, don't measure and weigh and test
everything! Don't speak so much to what you see, and then what you see
will speak more to you. Even here in old Hamburg, the haughty free city
of commerce, the rich city boasting of her noble port filled with ships
from every land,--proud of her wealth, her strength, her merchants, and
her warehouses,--looking well after her ducats, caring much for her
dinner, plainly telling you she is of a prosaic nature, leaving tales of
love and chivalry to the more romantic South,--even here the air is full
of subtle intangible influences, that will move you deeply if you will
but receive them. A city a thousand years old must have something to say
of far-off times and of the living present, if one has ears to hear.

Stand on the heights by the river and look down on all the noble ships
at anchor there. The old windmill turns lazily before you. The flag on a
building near by moves softly in the breeze. The tender, hazy,
late-autumn day, kind to all things, beautifies even bare trees and
withered grass. A large-eyed boy, his school-books under his arm, stares
curiously at you, then longingly looks at the water and the great ships.
The picture has its meaning, which you may breathe in, drink in if you
will, but you will never find it if you are comparing your "Appleton"
with your "Baedecker," or estimating the number of square feet in the
grass-plot where you stand, or looking hard at the ugly "Sailors'
Asylum" because you may be so directed, and refusing to see my pretty
boy with the wistful eyes because he's not mentioned in the guide-book.

Everywhere are little stories, pictures, glimpses of other people's
lives, waiting for you. The flower-girl at the street-corner holds out a
bunch of violets as you pass. Pale, thinly clad, she stands there
shivering in the cold November wind. On you go. The shops are large and
brilliant, the people seem for a time like those in any large city. You
think you might as well be in New York, when suddenly you see, walking
tranquilly along, a peasant-woman in the costume of her
district,--short, bright gown, bodice square and high, with full white
sleeves and a red kerchief round her shoulders, and on her head the most
curious object, a thing that looks like a skullcap, with a flaring black
bow, as large as your two hands, at the back, from which hangs her hair
in two long braids. Sometimes there is also a hat which resembles a
shallow, inverted flat basket. Why it stays in place instead of wabbling
about as it might reasonably be expected to do, and whether there is any
hidden connection between it and that extraordinary black bow, are
mysteries to me, though I peered under the edge of the basket hat of one
Vierlaenderin with great pertinacity.

The Hamburg maid-servants also wear a prescribed costume. A casement
high above you swings open and discloses a little figure standing in the
narrow window. A blond head, with a white bit of a cap on it, leans out.
You catch a glimpse of a great white apron, and of a neat, sensible,
dark cotton gown, made with a short puffed sleeve which leaves the arm
bare and free for work. You wonder _why_ the girl looks so long up and
down the busy street, and what she hopes to see. To be sure, it may be
only Bridget looking for Patrick, or, worse, Bridget thinking of nothing
in particular; simply idling away her time, instead of sweeping the
garret. But if her name is perhaps Hannchen, and she looks from a
window, narrow and high, and the morning sunshine touches her yellow
braids, and she stands so still, far above the hurrying feet on the
pavement, how can one help finding her more interesting, as a bit of
human nature to study and enjoy, than a beflounced and beribboned
Bridget at home? And when, in her simple dress, well suited to her
degree, she runs about the streets on her mistress's errands, carrying
many a parcel in her strong round arms, she is a pleasant thing to see,
and, because she does not ape the fine lady, loses nothing when by
chance she walks by the side of one in silk attire.

Ah! if one has ever groaned in spirit to see the tawny daughters of the
Penobscot Indians, those dusky maidens who might, in reason, be expected
to bring into a prosaic town some wildwood grace, some suggestion of the
"curling smoke of wigwams," of "the dew and damp of meadows," selling
their baskets from door to door in gowns actually cut after a recent
Godey fashion-plate, much looped as to overskirt, much ruffled and
puffed and shirred,--then indeed must one rejoice in the dress of the
Hamburg maids, and in these sturdy country-women trudging along in their
picturesque but substantial costume, to sell their fruit and vegetables
in the city markets.

In the olden time the good wives of Hamburg no doubt wore such gowns.
One sees now in the street called Grosse Bleichen great buildings, banks
and shops, and all the evidences of busy modern life; but one shuts the
eyes and sees instead groups of women in blue and red, coming out from
the city walls to lay on the green grass the linen they have spun, that
it may whiten in the sunshine. They spun, and wove, and bleached. They
lived and died. The growing city built new walls, and took within its
limits those green banks once beyond its gates. The women knew not what
was to be, when their spinning was all done. Nor did the maids, whose
busy feet trod the path by the river-side, dream that the Jungfernstieg,
or Maiden's Path, would be the name, hundreds of years after, of the
most-frequented promenade of the gay world of a great city.

Those women with the spinning-wheels, silent now so long, the young
maids with their waterjars, chatting together in the early morning by
the river, still speak to us, if we but listen. Though the voices of the
city are so loud, we can hear quite well what they tell us; but indeed,
indeed, dear friends, it is not written in the guide-book.

                                  ----

Stories everywhere, did I not say? Why, I even found one imbedded
in--candy!

Listen, children, while I tell you about marzipan. The grown people need
not hear, if they do not wish.

Marzipan (or St. Mark's bread--_marzi panis_) is the name of a dainty
which is made into bonbons of every shape and size and color imaginable;
all, however, having the same flavor, tasting of sugar and vanilla and
rose-water and almonds, and I know not what beside. There are tiny
potatoes, dark and gray, with marvellous "eyes," that would delight your
souls; there are grapes, and nuts, and large, red apples, all made from
the delectable marzipan. And most particularly there are little round
loaves, an inch long, perhaps, which are the original celebrated
marzipan, pure and simple, the other form being modern innovations. And
why Mark's bread? Because, my dears, there was once a famine in Luebeck,
and tradition saith that the loaf which each poor woman took from the
baker to her starving bairns grew each day smaller and smaller, until
finally it was such a poor wee thing it was no more than an inch long;
and on St. Mark's Day was the famine commemorated, while the shape and
size of the pitiful loaves are preserved in this sweetmeat, peculiar, I
believe, to North Germany. Hamburg children--bless them!--will tell you
the tale of famine, and swallow the tiny loaves as merrily as though
there was never a hungry child in the world.

Hamburg children! Indeed, I have reason to bless them. Shall I not
always be grateful to the fate that showed to eyes weary with gazing
upon wet decks, dense fog, and the listless faces of fellow-voyagers, a
bright and beautiful vision? Most travellers in Hamburg visit first the
Zooelogical Gardens, and then immediately after--is it to observe the
contrast or the similarity between the lower animals and noble man?--the
Exchange or Boerse, where they look down from a gallery upon hundreds,
thousands of busy men, whose voices rise in one incessant, strange,
indescribable noise--hum--roar--call it what you will. Neither of these
spectacles, happily, was thrust at once before me. Did I not interpret
as a happy omen that _my_ first "sight" was twenty little German
children dancing?

Can I ever forget those delicious shy looks at the queer stranger who
has suddenly loomed up in the midst of their festivities? And the
carefully prepared speech of the small daughter of the house who with
blushes and falterings, much laughter, many promptings, and several
false starts, finally chirps like a bird, trying to speak English, "I am
va-ry happy to zee you," and for the feat receives the felicitations of
her friends, and retires in triumph to her bonbons.

Sweetest of all was the gracious yet timid way in which each child, in
making her early adieus, gave her hand to the stranger also, as an
imperative courtesy.

Each little maid draws up her dainty dancing-boots heel to heel, extends
for an instant her small gloved hand, speaks no word except with the shy
sweet eyes, gravely inclines her head, and is gone, giving place to the
next, who goes through the same solemn form.

Dear little children at home, you are as dear and sweet as these small
German girls--dearer and sweeter, shall I not say?--but would you,
_could_ you, prompted only by your own good manners, march up to a
corner where sits a great, big, entirely grown-up person from over the
sea, and stand before her, demure and quaint and stately, and make your
stiff and pretty little bows? Would you now, you tiniest ones? Really?

Yet, do you know, if you would, of your own free will, without mamma
visible in the background exhorting and encouraging, you would do a
graceful thing, a courteous and a kindly thing, in thus including the
dread stranger within your charmed circle, and in welcoming her from
your child-heart and with your child-hands. You would be telling her,
all so silently, that though her home is far away, she has her place
among you; that kindness and warmth and free-hearted hospitality one
finds the wide world over. And your pretty heads, bending seriously
before her, and your demure, absurd, sweet, pursed-up baby-mouths might
conjure up visions of curly gold locks, and soft dimpled faces far off
in her home country, and she would--why, children, children, I cannot
say what she would do! I cannot tell all that she would think and feel.
But this I know well, she would love you and your dear little,
frightened, welcoming hands, and she would say, with her whole heart, as
I say now,--

"Merry, merry Christmas, and 'God bless us every one!'"




HEIDELBERG IN WINTER.


"If you come to Heidelberg you will never want to go away," says Mr.
Warner in his "Saunterings." It was in summer that he said it. He had
wandered everywhere over the lovely hills. He knew this quaintest of
quaint towns by heart. He had studied the beautiful ruin in the sunshine
and by moonlight, and had listened amid the fragrance and warmth of a
midsummer night to the music of the band in the castle grounds, and to
the nightingales. I, who have only seen Heidelberg in the depth of
winter, with gray skies above and snow below, echo his words again and
again.

"Don't go to Heidelberg in winter. Don't think of it. It's so stupid.
There is nothing there now, positively nothing. O, don't!" declared the
friends in council at Hamburg. When one's friends shriek in a vehement
chorus, and "O, don't!" at one, it is usually wise to listen with
scrupulous attention to everything which they say, and then to do
precisely what seems good in one's own eyes. I listened, I came
immediately to Heidelberg in winter, and now I "never want to go away."

And why? Indeed, it is not easy to say where the fascination of the
place lies. Everybody knows how Heidelberg looks. We all have it in our
photograph albums,--long, narrow, irregular, outstretched between the
hills and the Neckar. And all our lives we have seen the castle
imprinted upon paper-knives and upon china cups that say Friendship's
Offering, in gilt letters, on the other side. But in some way the queer
houses,--some of solid stone, yellow and gray, some so high, with
pointed roofs, some so small, with the oddest little casements and heavy
iron-barred shutters, and the inevitable bird-cage and pot of flowers in
the window, quite like the pictures,--in some way these old houses seem
different from the photographs. And when one passes up through steep,
narrow, paved alleys lined with them, and sees bareheaded fat babies
rolling about on the rough pavement, and the mothers quite unconcerned
standing in the doorways, and small boys running and sliding on their
feet, as our boys do, laughing hilariously and jeering, as our boys also
do,--why will they?--when the smallest falls heavily and goes limping
and screaming to his home,--one is filled with amazement at the
half-strange, half-familiar aspect of things, and wonders if it be
really one's own self walking about among the picture houses. And as to
the castle, I never want to see it again on a paper-weight or a
card-receiver.

There's nothing here in winter, they say. I suppose there is not much
that every one would care for. It is the quietest, sleepiest place in
the world. It pretends to have twenty thousand inhabitants, but,
privately, I don't believe it, for it is impossible to imagine where all
the people keep themselves, one meets so few.

No, there's not much here, perhaps; but certainly whatever there is has
an irresistible charm for one who is neither too elegant nor too wise to
saunter about the streets, gazing at everything with delicious
curiosity. Blessed are they who can enjoy small things.

A solemn-looking professor passes; then a Russian lady wrapped in fur
from her head to her feet. Some dark-eyed laborers stand near by talking
in their soft, sweet Italian. The shops on the Haupstrasse are
brilliantly tempting with their Christmas display. Poor little girls
with shawls over their heads press their cold noses against the broad
window-panes, and eagerly "choose" what they would like. One stands with
them listening in sympathy, and in the same harmless fashion chooses
carved ivory and frosted silver of rare and exquisite design for a score
of friends.

Dear little boy at home,--yes, it is you whom I mean!--what would you
say to an imposing phalanx of toy soldiers, headed by the emperor, the
crown prince, Bismarck, and Von Moltke all riding abreast in gorgeous
uniforms? That is what I "choose" for you, my dear. And did you know, by
the way, that here in Germany Santa Claus doesn't come down the chimneys
and fill the children's stockings, and bring the Christmas-tree, but
that it is the Christ-child who comes instead, riding upon a tiny
donkey, and the children put wisps of hay at their doors, that the
donkey may not get hungry while the Christ-child makes his visits.

Many women walk through the streets carrying great baskets on their
heads. This custom seems to some travellers an evil. The women look too
much, they say, like beasts of burden. But if a washerwoman has a great
basket of clothes to carry home, and prefers to balance it upon her head
instead of taking it in her hands, why may she not, provided she knows
how? And it is by no means an easy thing to do, as you would be willing
to admit if you had walked, or tried to walk, about your room with your
unabridged dictionary borne aloft in a similar manner. These women wear
little flat cushions, upon which the baskets rest. Those women I have
seen looked well and strong and cheerful, and walked with a firm, free
step, swinging their arms with great abandon. Three such women on a
street-corner engaged in a morning chat were an interesting spectacle.
One carried cabbages of various hues, heaped up artistically in the form
of a pyramid. The huge circumference of their baskets kept them at a
somewhat ceremonious distance from one another, but they exchanged the
compliments of the season in the most kindly and intimate way, and their
freedom of gesticulation and beautiful unconcern as to the mountains on
their heads were really edifying.

I have not as yet been grieved and exasperated by the sight of a woman
harnessed to a cart. One, apparently very heavily laden, I did see drawn
by a man and two stalwart sons, while the wife and mother walked behind,
pushing. As she was necessarily out of sight of her liege lord, the
amount of work she might do depended entirely upon her own volition, and
she could push or only pretend to push, as she pleased; or even, if the
wicked idea should occur to her, going up a steep hill she might quietly
_pull_ instead of push, and so ascend with ease. The whole arrangement
struck me as in every respect a truly admirable and most uncommon
division of family labor.

We meet of course everywhere groups of students with their dainty little
canes, their caps of blue or red or gold or white, and their altogether
jaunty aspect. The white-capped young men are of noble birth. Some of
them wear, in addition to their white caps, ornaments of white
court-plaster upon their cheeks and noses, as memorials of recent strife
with some plebeian foe. To republican eyes they are no better looking
than their fellows, and it may be said that few of these scholastic
young gentlemen, titled or otherwise, who in knots of three or five or
more, accompanied by great dogs, often blockade the extremely narrow
pavement, manifest their pleasing alacrity in gallantly scattering, and
in giving _place aux dames_ as might be desired.

It has been snowing persistently of late. More snow has fallen than
Heidelberg has seen in many years, and the students have indulged in
unlimited sleighing. The Heidelberg sleigh is an indescribable object.
Its profile, if one may so speak, looks like a huge, red, decapitated
swan. It has two seats, and is dragged by two ponderous horses with
measured tread and slow, while the driver clings in a marvellous way to
the back of the equipage, incessantly brandishing an enormously long
whip. Sometimes a long line of these sleighs is seen, in each of which
are four students starting out for a pleasure-trip. The young men fold
their arms and lean back in an impressive manner. Their coquettish caps
are even more expressive than usual. The curious thing is, that, apart
from the evidence of our senses, they seem to be dashing along with the
utmost rapidity. There is something in the intrepid bearing of the
students, in the vociferations and loud whip-crackings of the driver,
that suggests dangerous speed. On the contrary the elephantine steeds
jog stolidly on, quite unmoved by the constant din; the students
continue to wear their adventurous, peril-seeking air, and the undaunted
man behind valiantly cracks his whip.

The contrast between the rate at which they go and the rate at which
they seem to imagine that they are going is most comical. The heart is
moved with pity for the benighted young men who do not know what
sleighing is, and one would like to send home for a few superior
American sleighs as rewards of merit for good boys at the university.

The thing with the least warmth and Christian kindness about it in
Heidelberg is the stove. There may be stoves here that have some
conscientious appreciation of the grave responsibilities devolving upon
them in bitter cold weather, but such have not come within the range of
my observation.

My idea of a Heidelberg stove is a brown, terra-cotta, lukewarm piece of
furniture, upon which one leans,--literally with _nonchalance_,--while
listening to attacks upon American customs and manners from
representatives of the Swiss and German nations. The tall white
porcelain stoves which somebody calls "family monuments," are at least
agreeable to the eye. But _these_ are neither ornamental nor wholly
ugly, neither tall nor short, white nor black, hot nor cold. They have
neither virtues nor vices. We feel only scorn for the hopeless
incapacity of a stove that cannot at any period of its career burn our
fingers. It is, as a stove, a total failure, and it makes but an
indifferently good elbow-rest.

However deficient in blind adoration for our fatherland we may have been
at home, it only needs a few weeks' absence from it, during which time
we hear it constantly ridiculed and traduced, to make us fairly bristle
with patriotism.

It is marvellous how like boastful children sensible people will
sometimes talk when a chance remark has transformed a playful, friendly
comparison of the customs of different nations into a war of words.
Often one is reminded of the story of the two small boys, each of whom
was striving manfully to sustain the honor of his family.

"We've got a sewing-machine."

"We've got a pianner."

"My mother's got a plaid shawl."

"My sister's got a new bonnet."

"We've got lightning-rods on our house."

"We've got a _mortgage_ on ours!"

For instance:--

"You have in America no really old stories and traditions?" said a
German lady to an American.

"We are too young for such things. But what does it matter? We enjoy
yours," was the civil response.

"But," the German continued, in a tone of commiseration, "no
fairy-stories like ours of the Black Forest, no legends like ours of the
Blockberg! Isn't everything very new and prosaic?"

This superiority is not to be endured. The American feels that her
country's honor is impeached.

"We have no such legends," she begins slowly, when a blessed inspiration
comes to her relief, and she goes on with dignity,--"we have no such
legends, to be sure; but then, you know, we have--_the Indians_."

"Ah, yes; that is true," said the German, respectfully, knowing as much
of the Indians as of the inhabitants of some remote planet, while the
American, trusting the vague, mysterious term will induce a change of
subject, yet not knowing what may come, rapidly revolves in her mind
every item of Indian lore she has ever known, from Pocahontas to
Young-Man-Afraid-of-his-Horses, determined, should she be called upon to
tell a wild Indian tale, to do it in a manner that will not disgrace the
stars and stripes.

But I grieve to say that America is not always victorious. Our
table-talk, upon whatever subject it may begin, invariably ends in a
controversy, more or less earnest, about the merits of the several
nations represented.

A Swiss student with strong French sympathies charges valiantly at three
Germans, and having routed their entire army, heaped all manner of abuse
upon Kaiser Wilhelm, reduced the crown prince to beggary, and beheaded
Bismarck, suddenly turns, elated with his victory, and hurls his
missiles at the American eagle.

O, how we suffer for our country!

Some sarcasm from our student neighbor calls forth from us,--

"America is the hope of the ages."

We think this sounds well. We remember we heard a Fourth-of-July orator
say it. Then it is not too long for us to attempt, with our small
command of the German tongue.

"A forlorn hope that has not long to live," quickly retorts our
adversary.

He continues, contemptuously,--

"America is too raw."

"America _is_ young. She's a child compared with your old nations, but a
promising, glorious child. Her faults are only the faults of youth," we
respond with some difficulty as to our pronouns and adjectives.

"She's a very bad child. She needs a whipping," chuckles our saucy
neighbor.

America's banner trails in the dust, and Helvetia triumphs over all
foes. In silence and chagrin America's feeble champion retires to the
window, watches the birds picking up bread-crumbs on the balcony, and
meditates a grand revenge when her German vocabulary shall be equal to
her zeal. Helvetia's son being, in this instance, a very clever, merry
boy, soon laughingly sues for reconciliation, on the ground that, "after
all, sister republics must not quarrel," and the two, in noble alliance,
advance with renewed vigor, and speedily sweep from the face of the
earth all tyrannous monarchical governments.

Is it not, by the way, thoroughly German, that down in its last corner
the Heidelberg daily paper prints each day, "Remember the poor little
birds"? And indeed they are remembered well; and there are few casements
here that do not open every morning, that the birdies' bread may be
thrown upon the snow.

And is there nothing else here in winter beside the innocent pastimes
mentioned? There are wonderful views to be gained by those who have the
courage to climb the winding silvery paths that lead up the Gaisberg and
Heiligenberg. And then there is--majesty comes last!--the castle.

Ah! here lies the magic of the place. This is why people love
Heidelberg. It is because that wonderful old ruin is everywhere present,
whatever one does, wherever one goes, binding one's heart to itself. You
cannot forget that it stands there on the hill, sad and stately and
superb. Lower your curtains, turn your back to the window, read the last
novel if you will, still you will see it. I defy you to lose your
consciousness of it. It will always haunt you, until it draws you out of
the house--out into the air--through the rambling streets--up the hill
past the queer little houses--to the spot where it stands, and then it
will not let you go. It holds you there in a strange enchantment. You
wander through chapel and banquet-hall, through prison-vault and pages'
chamber, from terrace to tower, where you go as near the edge as you
dare,--_nearer_ than you dare, in fact,--and look down upon the trees
growing in the moat. Because you never, in all your life, saw anything
like a "ruin," and because there is but one Heidelberg Castle in the
world, you take delight in simply wandering up and down long dark
stairways, with no definite end in view. You may be hungry and cold, but
you never know it. You are unconscious of time, and after hours of
dream-life you only turn from gazing when somebody forcibly drags you
away because the man is about to close the gates.

I cannot discourse with ease upon quadrangles and facades. I am doubtful
about finials, and my ideas are in confusion as to which buttresses fly
and which hang; but it is a blessed fact that one need not be very
learned to care for lovely things, and while I live I shall never forget
how the castle looked the first time I approached it.

Some people say it is loveliest seen at sunset from the "Philosopher's
Walk," on Heiligenberg across the Neckar, and some say it is like
fairy-land when it is illuminated (which happens once or twice in a
summer,--the last time, before the students go away in August, and leave
the old town in peace and quiet), and when one softly glides in a little
boat from far up the Neckar, down, down, in the moonlight, until
suddenly the castle, blazing with lights, is before you.

But though I should see it a thousand times with summer bloom around,
with the charm of fair skies and sunshine, soft green hills and flowing
water, or in the moonlight, with happy voices everywhere, and strains of
music sounding sweet and clear in the evening air, I can never be sorry
that, first of all, it rose in its beauty, before my eyes, out of a sea
of new-fallen snow.

O, the silence and the whiteness of that day!

We entered the grounds and passed through broad walks, among shadowy
trees whose every twig was snow-covered, and by the snow-crowned
Princess Elizabeth Arch. On we went in silence,--only once did any sound
break the stillness, when a little laughing child, in a sleigh drawn by
a large black dog, aided by a good-natured half-breathless servant,
dashed by and disappeared among the trees. Soon we stood on the terrace
overlooking the city and the Neckar.

On one side was the castle, the dark mass standing out boldly against
the whiteness,--on the other, far below, the city, its steep, high roofs
snow-white, its three church-spires rising towards cold, gray skies;
beyond, the frozen Neckar, then Heiligenberg, its white vineyards
contrasting with the dusky fir-forests, and, far away as one could see,
the great plain of the Rhine, with the line of the Haardt Mountains
barely perceptible in the distance and the dim light. All was so white
and still! Only the brave ivy, glossy and green and fresh on the old
walls and amid this frozen nature, spoke of life and hope. All else told
of sadness, and of peace it may be, but of the peace that follows
renunciation.

But to stand on the height--to look so far--to be in that white, holy
stillness! It was wonderful. It was too beautiful for words.




A FLYING SHEET FROM PARIS.


Is it in "The Parisians" that the soldier carries a bouquet on his
musket, and it is said that Paris, though starving, must have flowers?
These sweet spring days, when vast crowds of people are wandering about
amusing themselves, and children are making daisy chains in the parks,
and men pass along the streets with great branches of lilac blossoms or
masses of rosebuds, which are sold at every corner, and skies are blue,
and the lovely sunshine everywhere is falling upon happy-looking faces,
you feel like blessing not only the spring-time, but beautiful Paris and
the temperament of the French. "St. Denis caught a sunbeam flying, and
he tied it with a bright knot of ribbons, and he flashed it on the earth
as the people of France; only, alas, he made two mistakes,--he gave it
no ballast, and he dyed the ribbons blood-red." You think of the want of
ballast and the blood-red tinge when you look at the ruined Tuileries,
and see every now and then other traces of the Commune. In our
dining-room is a great mirror with a hole in its centre and long seams
running to its corners. Madame keeps it as a memento of those terrible
times, and of her anxiety and terror when balls were coming in her doors
and windows, and she would not on any account have it removed. But,
after all, it is the flying sunbeams of the present that most impress
you. They are more vivid, being actually before your eyes, than scenes
of riot and madness, which you can only imagine. The life about you is
altogether so fascinating, so cheering. You catch the spirit that seems
to animate the people. Where all is so sunny and gay why should you
grieve? Have you little troubles? Leave them behind and go out into the
sweet sunshine, and they will grow so insignificant you will be ashamed
to remember how you were brooding over them; and then, if they are
really great, they will pass; everything passes. Only take to-day to
your heart the loveliness that is waiting for you, for indeed there is
something in it that makes you not only happy for the time, but brave
and hopeful for the future. All of which is the little sermon that Paris
preaches to us all day long. Perhaps we didn't come to Paris for sermons
especially, but after all it is often the unexpected ones that are the
best.

How shall I tell what we have seen and heard here? One day we visited
the Pantheon, and, having seen what there was to see below, we went up
to the dome, which affords a magnificent view of all Paris and the
surrounding country. A party of school-girls ascended the long, narrow,
winding flights at the same time, and they were entirely absorbed in
counting the stairs. The one in advance clearly proclaimed the number;
the others verified her account. The interest was intense. Occasionally
we would come to a platform where at first it would seem that there was
nothing more to conquer. Breathless, panting, flushed, the young girls
would look searchingly around, then, with a shriek of delight, would
plunge into a dark corner and open a door, from which another
crazy-looking stairway led up to other heights. Their chaperon, who
looked as if she might be the principal of a school, gave up in despair
before we were half-way up, and, seating herself to await their return,
cast amused, kindly glances after the retreating forms of the undaunted
girls. I take pleasure in stating the important and interesting fact
that the number of steps from the ground to the "Lanterne" above the
dome of the Pantheon is five hundred and twenty, and you can't possibly
go higher unless you should choose to ascend a rope which is used when
on grand occasions they illuminate the dome and burn a brilliant light
on the very tiptop. So said a little abbe who looked like a mere boy,
and who courteously told us many interesting things as we stood there, a
group of strangers scanning one another with mild curiosity,--two
well-bred Belgian boys with the abbe, some ultra-fashionable dames, a
party of Englishmen of course, and ourselves. The school-girls
fortunately went down without seeing the rope. Had they observed it, and
known that it was possible by any means whatever to go higher than they
had gone, they would have been miserable, unless indeed their aspiring
spirit had led them in some way to ascend it.

With the paintings and sculpture at the Louvre and the Luxembourg we
have spent several happy days, only wishing the days might be months.
Don't expect me to tell you what delighted us most, or how great
pictures seemed which we had before seen only in engravings or
photographs. They burst gloriously all at once upon our ignorant eyes,
and we wanted to sit days and days before one picture that held us
entranced, and yet our time was so limited we had to pass on and on
regretfully. Of course some one was there to whisper in our ears, "O,
this is nothing! You must go to Italy." Certainly we must go to Italy,
but the thought of the beauty awaiting there could not detract from that
which was around us. Before some of the paintings we felt like standing
afar off and worshipping. There were Madonnas with insipid faces which
we did not appreciate. There were other pictures which we coldly
admired; they were wonderful, but we did not want to own them,--did not
love them. Among those which we longed to seize and carry away is the
"Cupid and Psyche" of Gerard, in which Psyche receiving the first kiss
of love is an exquisitely innocent, fair-haired little maiden, not so
very unlike the friend to whom we would like to send it.

There are always curious people in the galleries. Sit down and rest a
minute and something funny is sure to happen.

"See this chaw-ming thing of Murillo," says a florid youth of nineteen
or twenty, with very tight gloves, an elaborate necktie, and, alas! an
unquestionably American air, as he marshals a timid-looking group,--his
mother and sisters, perhaps. "Quite well done, now, isn't it?" And on he
went. If he knew a Perugino from a Vandyck his countenance did him great
injustice. Then another party comes along,--conscientious, ponderous,
English,--and halts with precision. One of them reads, in a loud voice,
from a book--"Titian--Portrait--462"--and they stare blankly at the
picture before them, which happens to be not a Titian at all, but a
"Meadow Scene, with Cows," by Cuyp, or a great battle-piece of Salvator
Rosa. When they discover their mistake and recover from their
astonishment, they pass on in search of the missing Titian. We smiled at
this, but, as the pictures are not hung according to the order given in
catalogues, we knew very well that it was our good fortune, and not our
merit or our wisdom, that kept us from similar mistakes. What might we
not have done had we not been so beautifully guarded against all
blundering by our escort, a French gentleman of rare culture,--both an
amateur painter and sculptor,--and an intimate friend of some of the
most distinguished French artists! With him for a companion we felt
superior to all catalogues and treatises upon art. We have had the
pleasure, too, of visiting his private museum and studio, where are
strange relics collected in a life of unusual travel and adventure. He
is a retired colonel of the French army, and when in service has lived
in Egypt, Turkey, Persia, Greece, and now his little room, which we
climbed six flights of stairs to reach, is crowded with mementos of his
wanderings. I despair of conveying any idea of what he has hung upon his
walls. It would almost be easier to tell what he has not. Persian
pictures, stone emblems, fans, rosaries, swords, mosaics, pistols, queer
chains and pipes, as well as some very valuable paintings,--a Vandyck,
an Andrea del Sarto, a number of the modern French school, presented to
him by the artists. Was it not a privilege to have such a guide when we
visited the Paris lions? He took us to the Musee de Cluny, among other
exceedingly interesting places, where we saw hosts of
antiquities,--beautifully carved mantels, magnificent fireplaces, "big
enough to roast a whole ox" (and they really use them, winters, too--the
noble great logs were all ready to be lighted), rare old windows of
stained glass, rich robes of high church dignitaries, porcelain,
jewelled crowns of Gothic kings, old lace and tapestries, and carved
wood that it did one's heart good to see. Girls with tied-back dresses,
and hats fairly crushed by the weight of the masses of flowers with
which French milliners persist in loading us this spring, did look so
painfully modern in those mediaeval rooms! We began to feel as if we
were walking about in one of the Waverley novels, and fully expected to
meet Ivanhoe clad in complete armor on the stone staircase that leads
down from the chapel.

There were many things over which we found it impossible to be
enthusiastic,--the jawbone of Moliere, for example, in a glass case. It
probably looks like less distinguished jawbones, but if his whole
skeleton had been there I fear we should have been no more impressed.
Chessmen of rock crystal and gold we coveted, and we liked the room in
which are the great, ponderous, gilded state coaches of some century
long ago, with their whips, harnesses, and comical postilion boots.
There is a little sleigh or sledge there, said to have been Marie
Antoinette's,--a small gold dragon, whose wing flies open to admit the
one person whom the tiny equipage can seat. It looked as if it must have
been pushed by some one behind. Fancy a gold dragon with fiery-red eyes
and a wide-open red mouth coming towards you over the snow!

This whole building is full of interest from its age and historical
associations. It was built in the fifteenth century, has been in the
hands of comedians, of a sisterhood; Marat held his horrible meetings
here; Mary of England lived here after the death of her husband, Louis
XII., and you can still see the chamber of the "White Queen," with its
ivory cabinets, vases, and queer old musical instruments. Visitors are
requested not to touch anything, but we couldn't resist the temptation
of striking just one chord on a spinet. Such a cracked voice the poor
thing had! It sounded so dead and ghostlike and dreary, we hurried away
as fast as we could. Don't be alarmed, and think I am going to write up
all the history of the place. I haven't the least idea of doing such a
thing; only this I can tell you,--the Hotel de Cluny affords an
excellent opportunity to test your knowledge of history; and if you ever
stand where we did, and send your thoughts wandering among past ages,
may your dates be more satisfactory than were ours!

The ruins of an old Roman palace, of which only a portion of the baths
remain, adjoin the museum. There is a great room, sixty feet long, all
of stone, and very high, which was used for the cold baths. The other
baths are all gone, but if you imagine hot and warm and tepid ones as
large as the cold, it certainly gives you a profound admiration for the
magnitude of the ancient bath system. If Julian the Apostate, who built
the palace, they say, could see us as we go peering curiously about,
asking what this and that mean, and the names of stone things that were
probably as common in his day as sewing-machines are now, wouldn't he
laugh? We looked over the shoulder of a painter who was making a
delightful little picture of a part of the ruins, the stone pavement and
staircase, then a beautiful arch through which we could look into the
open air, and see the warm sunshine, the great lilac-bushes, and a tall
old ivy-covered wall beyond. The contrast between the cold gray interior
and the bright outer world was very effective.

Strange old place where Caesars have lived, and through which early
kings of France and fierce Normans have swept, plundering and ruining,
and where, to-day, by the fragments of the massive ivy-covered walls and
under the trees in the pleasant park, happy little children play, and
nurses chatter, and life is strong, and fresh and warm, even while we
are thinking of the dead past!




BADEN-BADEN.


Baden is a little paradise. It seems like a garden with the freshness of
May on every flower and leaf. The long lines of chestnut-trees are rich
with bright, pink blossoms,--solid pink, not pink-and-white like ours at
home. You walk beneath them through shady avenues, where the young grass
is like velvet, and every imaginable shade of refreshing green lies
before your eyes. There is the tender May-leaf green of the shrubs,
another of the soft lawns, that of the different trees, of the more
distant hill-slopes, and, beyond all, the deepest intensified green of
the Black Forest rising nobly everywhere around. A hideous little
bright-green cottage, prominent on one of the hills, irritates us
considerably, not harmonizing with its deep background of pines, and we
long at first to ruthlessly erase it from the picture; but finally
remembering the ugly little thing is actually somebody's home, our
better nature triumphs, and we feel we can allow it to remain, and can
only hope the dwellers within think it prettier than we do.

There are already many visitors here, though it is as yet too early and
cool for the great throng of strangers to be expected, and the vast
numbers of people come no more who used to frequent the place before the
gaming was abolished by the emperor a few years ago, through Bismarck's
especial exertions, it is said; from which it is to be inferred that
Baden's pure loveliness is less attractive to the world at large than
the fascination of the gaming-tables. We hear everywhere around regrets
for the lost charm, for the gayety, excitement, brilliancy; and it is
impossible to avoid wishing, not certainly that play were not abolished,
but at least that we could have come when it was at its height to see
for ourselves the strange phases of humanity that were here exhibited,
and just how naughty it all was. Now the waiters shake their heads
mournfully, as if a glory and a grace were departed, and say, "No, it
isn't what it used to be,--nothing like it!" and there seems to be a
"banquet-hall-deserted" atmosphere pervading the rooms in the
Conversation House. To be sure there is music there evenings, and a
fashionable assembly walking about; and there is music, too, in the
kiosk, and a goodly number of gay people chatting, eating, and drinking
at the little tables in the open air; and people gather in the early
mornings to drink the waters, as they always have done, but, after all,
the tribute of a memory and a regret seems to be universally paid to the
vanquished god of play, who is helping poor mortals cheat somewhere
else.

The Empress of Germany is here, and, after long-continued effort, we
have seen her. How madly we have striven to accomplish this feat; how we
have questioned servants and shopkeepers; how we have haunted the
Lichtenthal Allee, that long, lovely, shady walk where her Majesty is
said to promenade regularly every day; how often we have had our
garments, but not our ardor, dampened for her sake; how she would never
come; and how finally, in desperation, we seated ourselves at a table
under a tree near her hotel, devoured eagerly with our eyes all its
windows, saw imperial dogs and imperial handmaidens in the garden, and
couriers galloping away with despatches, saw the coachmen and footmen
and retainers, but for a long time no empress,--all this shall never be
revealed, because self-respect imposes strict silence in regard to such
conduct.

We must have looked somewhat like a picture in an old Harper's Magazine
where two hungry newsboys stand by the area railing as dinner is served,
and when the different dishes are carried past the windows one regales
himself with the savory scents, while the other says something to this
effect: "I don't mind the meats, but just tell me when the pudding comes
and I'll take a sniff."

"Augusta, please, dear Augusta, come out!" entreated we; but she came
not. When a carriage rolled round to the door, we were in ecstasies of
expectation, convinced she was going out to drive, but instead came a
gentleman, servants, and travelling-bags.

"Why, it's Weimar,--_our_ Weimar!" said we with pride and ownership,
because you see the Prince of Weimar lives in Stuttgart, and so do we.
And as he drives off, out on the balcony among the plants comes her
imperial Majesty and waves her handkerchief to her brother in farewell.
She wore a black dress, a white head-dress or breakfast-cap, looked like
her photographs, and must once have been beautiful. She is an intensely
proud woman, it is said, and a rigid upholder of etiquette, and tales
are told of slight differences between her and the crown princess on
this account.

Baden is one of the enticing places of the earth,--is so lovely that
whenever, however, wherever you may look, you always spy some fresh
beauty, and the Black Forest legends are hanging all about it, investing
it with an endless charm. You can see in the frescoed panels on the
front of the new _Trinkhalle_ a picture illustrating some old story of a
place near by, and then for your next day's amusement can go to the
identical spot where the ghost or demon or goblin used to be.

To Yburg, whose young knight met the beautiful, unearthly maiden by the
old heathen temple in the full moonshine, as he was returning from the
castle of his lady-love to his own, and who transferred his
affections--as adroitly as our young knights do the same thing
nowadays--from her to the misty figure, and met the latter, night after
night, was watched by his faithful servant, and was found dead on the
ground one bright morning.

Or to Lauf, where the ghost-wedding was, or almost was, but not quite,
because the knight who was to be married to the very attractive ghost of
a young woman grew so frightened when he saw all the glassy eyes of the
ghostly witnesses staring at him that he couldn't say yes when the
sepulchral voice of the ghost of a bishop asked him if he would have
this woman to his wedded wife; and all the ghosts were deeply offended
and made a great uproar, and the knight fell down as if dead, and he too
was found lying on the ground in the morning; but him, I believe, they
were able to revive.

And you can go to the Convent of Lichtenthal, from which the nuns, upon
the approach of the enemy, in 1689 fled in terror, leaving their keys in
the keeping of the Virgin Mary, who came down from her picture and stood
in the doorway, so that the French soldiers shrank back aghast, and all
was left unharmed.

We went there, and saw a number of Marys in blue and red gowns, but
could not quite tell which was the one who came down from her frame to
guard the convent.

In the chapel eight or ten children mumbled their prayers in unison,
while we stood far behind, examining the old stained-glass windows, with
the peculiar blue tint in them that cannot now be reproduced, and the
queer old stone knights in effigy; and I don't imagine the Lord heard
the children any the less because they were very absurd, and bobbed
about in every direction, and constantly turned one laughing face
quickly round to look at us, then back again, then another and another,
while all the time the praying went mechanically on. There was a little
girl, nine years old perhaps, who came to meet us by the old well here,
and stood smiling at us with great, brown, expressive eyes. Her face was
so brilliant and sweet we were charmed with her; but when we spoke she
upturned that rare little face of hers and answered not a word. I took
her hand in mine, but before she gave it she kissed it, and to each of
the party, who afterwards took her hand, she gave the same graceful
greeting. Not an airy kiss thrown at one, after the fashion of children
in general, but a quiet little one deposited upon her hand before it was
honored by the touch of the stranger. The pretty action, together with
the exquisite face, calm and clear as a cherub, and ideally childlike,
made a deep impression on us; and in some way, what we afterwards
learned--that she was completely deaf and dumb--did not occur to us. We
thought that she would not speak, not that she could not.

On a height overlooking the town stands a memorial chapel, built in
antique style, of alternate strata of red and white sandstone, by which
a very lively effect is produced. It has a gilded dome and a portico
supported by four Ionic pillars. In the interior are frescos of the
twelve apostles; and upon the high gold partition or screen, which
separates the choir from the body of the chapel, are painted scenes from
the New Testament. The floor is of marble in two colors.

We visited it fortunately during service, and saw for the first time the
Greek ritual. The singing was fine, the boys' voices sweet and clear,
but many of the forms unintelligible to a stranger. For instance, we
could only imagine what was meant when one priest in scarlet and gold
would go behind a golden door and lock it, and another one would stand
before it intoning the strangest words in the strangest sing-song, until
at last they would open the door and let him in. The service in the
Greek churches is either in the Greek or old Sclavonic language. Here we
inferred that we were listening to the old Sclavonic, as the chapel
belongs to a Roumanian prince; but only this can we say
positively,--that two words (_Alleluia_ and _Amen_) were absolutely all
that we understood.

The robes were rich; incense was burned; there were a few worshippers,
all standing, the Greek Church allowing no seats; but in some places
crutches are used to lean upon when the service is long, as on great
festal days. There are no sermons except on special occasions, the
ordinary ritual consisting of chants between the deacons and chorister
boys, readings from certain portions of the Scripture, prayers, legends,
the creed, etc. They all turn towards the east during prayer, and
instrumental music is forbidden.

In this little chapel the morning service which we witnessed was brief,
and, of its kind, simple. We noticed particularly among the worshippers
one old gentleman who seemed to be very devout. He crossed himself
frequently,--by the way, not as Roman Catholics do,--and at certain
times knelt, and even actually prostrated himself, upon the marble
pavement. He was a fine old man, and looked like a Russian. He was
earnest and attentive, but he made us all exceedingly nervous, for his
boots were stiff and his limbs far from supple, and when he went down we
feared he never would be able to come up again without assistance; and
we were incessantly and painfully on the alert, prepared to help him
recover his equilibrium should he entirely lose it, which often seemed
more than probable. This was a Roumanian prince, Stourdza,--who lives
winters in Paris and summers in Baden,--and who erected the chapel in
memory of his son, who died at seventeen in Paris from excessive study.
A statue of the boy, bearing the name of the sculptor, Rinaldo Rinaldi,
Roma, 1866,--life-size, on a high pedestal,--is on one side of the
interior. He sits by a table covered with books,--Bossuet, Greek, and
Latin,--while an angel standing beside him rests one hand on his
shoulder, and with the other beckons him away from his work. His Virgil
lies open to the lines,--

    "Si qua fata aspera rumpas
    Tu Marcellus eris."

If the boy was in reality so beautiful as the marble and as the portrait
of him which hangs at the left of the entrance, he must have looked as
lofty and tender and pure as an archangel.

Opposite him are the statues of the father and mother, who are yet
living, and between them a symbolical figure,--Faith, I presume. A
curtain conceals this group, beneath which the parents will one day lie.

Paintings of them also hang by the entrance, with a portrait of the boy
and one of the sister, "_Chere consolation de ses parents_," as she is
called. The faces are all fine, but that of the young student the
noblest, and the statue of the lovely boy called away from his books
seemed a happy way of telling his brief story. In the vaults below where
he lies are always fresh flowers, and a light continually burning.

It is impossible to enumerate all the sights in and about Baden. If it
is any satisfaction to you, you can look at the villas of the great as
much as you please; but to know that Queen Victoria lived here, and
Clara Schumann there, and yonder is the Turgenieff Villa, with extensive
grounds, does not seem productive of any especial enjoyment. It is much
more exhilarating to leave the haunts of men and walk off briskly
through the woods to some golden milestone of the past,--the old Jaeger
Haus, for instance, whose windows look upon a wide, rich prospect, and
where the holy Hubartus, the patron of the chase, is painted on the
ceiling, with the stag bearing the crucifix upon his antlers; and within
whose octagonal walls there must have been much revelry by night in the
good old times.

To the old castle where the Markgrafen of Hohenbaden--the border
lords--used to live we went one day, and anything funnier than that
particular combination of the romantic and ridiculous never was known.
Riding "in the boyhood of the year" through lovely woods, by mosses
mixed with violet, hearing the song of birds, breathing the purest,
balmiest air, who could help wondering if Launcelot and Guinevere
themselves found lovelier forest deeps; and who could help feeling very
sentimental indeed, and quoting all available poetry, and imagining long
trains of stately knights riding over the same path, and so on _ad
infinitum_! While indulging these romantic fancies we discovered that
our donkey also was often lost in similar reveries, from which he was
recalled by the donkey-boy, who by a sudden blow would cause him to
madly plunge, then to stop short and exhibit all the peculiarly pleasing
donkey tricks which we had read about, but never before experienced. And
to ride a very small and wicked donkey and to read about it are two
altogether different things, let me assure you.

Three donkeys galloping like mad up a mountain, three persons bouncing,
jolting, shrieking with laughter, a jolly boy running behind with a long
stick,--such was the experience that effectually dispelled our fine
fancies.

The view at the castle is far extended and beautiful; you see something
of the Rhine in the distance, the little Oosbach, and the peaceful
valley between. Baden scenery, from whatever point you look at it, has
the same friendly, serene aspect,--little villages dotted here and there
on the soft hill-slopes, and in the background the bold, beautiful line
of the pine-covered mountains. The castle must have been once a fine,
grand place. Those clever old feudal fellows knew well where to build
their nests, and like eagles chose bold, wild heights for their rocky
eyries. "Heir liegen sie die stolzen Fuerstentruemer," quoted a German,
wandering about the ruins.

Up to the Yburg Castle we went also; and the "up" should be italicized,
for the mountain seemed as high and steep as the Hill of Science, and we
felt that the summit of one was as unattainable as that of the other.
But the woods were beautiful, and their whisperings and murmurings and
words were not in a strange language, for the tall dark pines sang the
selfsame song that they sing in the dear old New England woods, the
wildflowers and birds were a constant delight, the air fresh and cool,
and at last we reached the top, and found another castle and another
view.

Here there was little castle and much view. Really a magnificent
prospect, but so fierce and chilling a wind that we could with
difficulty remain long enough on the old turrets to fix the landscape in
our memory, and we were glad to seek shelter in the little house, where
a man and his wife live all the year round; and frightfully cold and
lonely must it be there in winter, when even in May our teeth were
chattering gayly.

The visitors' book there was rather amusing.

One American girl writes, with her name and the date,--

    "No moon to-night, which is of course
    The driver's fault, not ours."

"Mr. H. C."--Black, we will call him--"walked up from Baden the 10th of
August, 1875"; and half the people who go to Yburg walk. As _we_ had
walked and never dreamed of being elated by our prowess, Mr. Black's
manner of chronicling his feat seemed comical.

You look down from the mountain into the Affenthaler Valley, where the
wine of that name "grows." It is a good, light wine, and healthful, but
a young person--we decided she must be a countrywoman, because she
expresses her opinion so freely--writes in regard to it,--

"Affenthaler. The drink sold under that honorable name at this
restaurant is the beastliest and most poisonous of drinks, not
absolutely undrinkable or immediately destructive of life. Traveller,
take care. Avoid the abominable stuff. _Beware!_"

Immediately following, in German, with the gentleman's name and address,
is,--

"I have drunk of the Affenthaler which this unknown English person
condemns, and pronounce it a good and excellent wine."

That Yburg by moonlight might be conducive to softness can easily be
imagined. Here is a sweet couplet:--

    "Let our eyes meet, and you will see
    That I love you and you love me."

But best of all in its simplicity and strength was "Agnes Mary Taylor,
widow," written clearly in ink, and some wag had underscored in pencil
the last expressive word.

Does the lady go over the hill and dale signing her name always in this
way? On the Yburg mountain-top it had the effect of a great and
memorable saying, like "Veni, vidi, vici," or "Apres nous le deluge."
Agnes Mary Taylor, _widow_. Could anything be more terse, more
deliciously suggestive?




RAMBLES ABOUT STUTTGART


This letter is going to be about nothing in particular. I make this
statement with an amiable desire to please, for so much advice in regard
to subjects comes to me, and so many subjects previously chosen have
failed to produce, among intimate friends, the pleasurable emotions
which I had ingenuously designed, there remains to me now merely the
modest hope that a rambling letter about things in general may be read
with patience by at least one charitable soul. Bless our intimate
friends! What would we do without them? But aren't they perplexing
creatures, take them all in all! "Don't write any more about
peasant-girls and common things," says one. "Tell us about the grand
people,--how they look, what they wear, and more about the king."
Anxious to comply with the request, I try to recollect how the Countess
von Poppendoppenheimer's spring suit was made in order to send home a
fine Jenkinsy letter about it, when another friend writes, "The simplest
things are always best,--the flower-girl at the corner, the ways of the
peasants, ordinary, every-day matters." Have patience, friends. You
shall both be heard. The Countess von Poppendoppenheimer's gown has
meagre, uncomfortable sleeves, is boned down and tied back like yours
and mine, after this present wretched fashion which some deluded writer
says "recalls the grace and easy symmetry of ancient Greece"; but if he
should try to climb a mountain in the overskirt of the period he would
express himself differently.

As to the king, one sees him every day in the streets, where he
courteously responds to the greetings of the people. He must be weary
enough of incessantly taking off his hat. The younger brother of Queen
Olga and of the Emperor of Russia, the Grand Duke Michael, came here the
other day. Seeing a long line of empty carriages and the royal coachmen
in the scarlet and gold liveries that betoken a particular
occasion,--blue being the every-day color,--we followed the illustrious
vehicles, curious to know what was going to happen, and saw a
gentlemanly-looking blond man, in a travelling suit, welcomed at the
station by different members of the court; while all those pleasing
objects, the scarlet and gold men, took off their hats. For the sake of
the friend who delights in glimpses of "high life," I regret that I have
not the honor to know what was said on this occasion, our party having
been at a little distance, and behind a rope with the rest of the
masses.

But really the common people are better studies. You can stop peasants
in the street and ask them questions, and you can't kings, you know.
Peasants just now can be seen to great advantage at the spring fair,
which with its numberless booths and tables extends through several
squares, and to a stranger is an interesting and curious sight. This
portion of the city, where the marketplace, the Schiller Platz, and the
Stiftskirche are, has an old, quaint effect, the Stiftskirche and the
old palace being among the few important buildings older than the
present century, while the rest of Stuttgart is fresh and modern. From
the high tower of this old church one has the best possible view of
Stuttgart, and can see how snugly the city lies in a sort of
amphitheatre, while the picturesque hills covered with woods and
vineyards surround it on every side. One sees the avenues of
chestnut-trees, the Koenigsbau, a fine, striking building with an Ionic
colonnade, the old palace and the new one, and the Anlagen stretching
away green and lovely towards Cannstadt. On this tower a choral is
played with wind instruments at morn and sunset, and sometimes a pious
old man passing stops to listen and takes off his hat as he waits.

In the little octagonal house up there lives a prosperous family, a man,
his wife, and ten children. The woman, a fresh, buxom, brown-eyed
goodwife, told us she descended to the lower world hardly once in three
or four weeks, but the children didn't mind the distance at all, and
often ran up and down twelve or fifteen times a day. How terrific must
be the shoe-bill of this family! Ten pairs of feet continuously running
up and down nearly two hundred and sixty stone steps! She was kind
enough to show us all her _penates_,--even her husband asleep,--and
everything was homelike and cheery up there, boxes of green things
growing in the sunshine, clothes hanging out to dry, canary-birds
singing.

There is a small silver bell--perhaps a foot and a half in diameter at
the mouth--at one side of the tower, and it is rung every night at nine
o'clock and twelve, and has been since 1348. It has a history so long
and so full of mediaeval horrors, like many other old stories in which
Wuertemberg is rich, that it would be hardly fitting to relate it _in
toto_, but the main incidents are interesting and can be briefly given.

On the Bopsa Hill where now we walk in the lovely woods, and from which
the Bopsa Spring flows, bringing Stuttgart its most drinkable water,
stood, once upon a time,--in the fourteenth century, to be exact,--a
certain Schloss Weissenburg, about which many strange things are told.
The Weissenburgs conducted themselves at times in a manner which would
appear somewhat erratic to our modern ideas.

At the baptism of an infant daughter, Papa von Weissenburg was killed by
the falling of some huge stag-antlers upon his head. We are glad to read
about the baptism, for later there doesn't seem to have been a strong
religious element in the family. Shortly afterwards Rudolph, the eldest
son, was stabbed by a friend through jealousy because young Von
Weissenburg had won the affections of the fair dame of whom both youths
were enamored. Then followed strife between the surviving brother and
the monks of St. Leonhard, who would not allow the murdered man to be
buried in holy ground, the poor boy having had no time to gasp out his
confession and partake of the sacrament, and they even refused to bury
him at all. Hans von Weissenburg swore terrible oaths by his doublet and
his beard, and cursed the monks till the air was blue, and came with his
friends and followers and buried his brother twelve feet deep directly
in front of St. Leonhard's Chapel (there is a St. Leonhard's Church here
now on the site of the old chapel), and forbade the monks to move or
insult the body. Later, when they wished to use the land for a
churchyard, they were in a great dilemma. Rudolph's bones they dared not
move and would not bless; at last, what did they do but consecrate the
earth only five feet deep, so the blessing would not reach Rudolph, who
lay seven feet deeper still,--and they also insulted the grave by
building over it. Hans, on this account, slew a monk, and was in turn
killed because he had murdered a holy man, and that was the end of
_him_.

There remained in the castle on the hill Mamma von Weissenburg, or
rather Von Somebodyelse, now, for she had wept her woman's tears and
married again. When the infant daughter, Ulrike Margarethe, whose
baptism has been mentioned, had grown to be a beautiful young woman, the
mother suddenly disappeared and never was seen again. The daughter
publicly mourned, ordered a beacon-light to be kept continually burning
at the castle, gathered together all her silver chains and ornaments,
and had them melted into a bell, which was hung on the castle tower, and
which she herself always rang at nine in the evening and at midnight,
for the sorrowing Ulrike said her beloved mother might be wandering in
the dense woods, and hearing the bell might be guided by it to her home.

Ulrike was a pious person. She said her prayers regularly, went about
doing good among poor sick people, never failed to ring the bell twice
every night, and was always mourning for her mother. When at last she
died, she gave orders that the bell should always be rung, as in her
lifetime, from the castle; and in case the latter should be disturbed,
or unsafe, the bell was to be transferred to the highest tower in
Stuttgart. So Ulrike the Good bequeathed large sums of silver to pay for
the fulfilment of her wishes, and died. Accordingly the little bell was
brought, in time of public disturbance, to the small tower on the
Stiftskirche in 1377, the higher one not then existing, and in 1531 was
moved to its present position.

The next important item in the bell-story is that in 1598 the Princess
Sybilla, daughter of Duke Friedrich I. of Suabia, was lost in the woods,
and, hearing the bell ring at nine, followed the sound to the
Stiftskirche, and in her gratitude she also endowed the bell largely,
declaring it must ring at the appointed hours through all coming time.

So the little bell pealed out for many years,--just as it does this
day,--until one night, two days after Easter, 1707, and three centuries
and a half after the death of the exemplary Ulrike, it happened, in the
course of human events, that the man whose office it was to ring the
midnight bell was sleepy and five minutes late. Suddenly a woman's
figure draped in black, with jet-black hair and face as white as paper,
appeared before him, and asked him why he did not do his duty. He rang
his bell, then conversed with the ghost, who was Ulrike von Weissenburg,
and obtained from her valuable information. She must ever watch the
bell, she said, and see that it was rung at the exact hours; and she it
was who carried the light that confused travellers and led them to
destruction near the ruins of Weissenburg Castle; and she was altogether
a most unpleasant ghost, who could never rest while one stone of the
castle remained upon another.

This was her condemnation for her evil deeds. She had murdered her
mother, for certain ugly reasons which in the old chronicle are
explicitly set forth, and she had stabbed her two young sons of whose
existence the world had never known; and her career was altogether as
wicked as wicked could be; but this Ulrike, like many another clever
sinner, never lost her saintly aspect before the world.

They granted her rest at last by pulling down the remaining stones of
the castle, and giving them to the wine-growers near by for foundations
for the vineyards; so now no ghost appears to rebuke the bellringer when
too much beer prolongs his sleep. Bones were found beneath the castle
where Ulrike said she had hidden the bodies of her mother and children,
thus clearly proving, of course, the truth of the tale. It is the most
natural thing in the world to believe in ghosts when you read old
Suabian stories. The Von Weissenburgs seem to have been, for the age in
which they lived, a very quiet, orderly, high-toned family.

Now how do I know but that somebody will at once write, "I don't like
stories about silver bells," which will be very mortifying indeed, as it
is evident I consider this a good story, or I should not take the
trouble to relate it.

O, come over, friends, and write the letters yourselves, and then you
will see how it is! Worst of all is it when we write of what strikes us
as comic precisely as we mention a comic thing at home, or of mighty
potentates, giving information obtained exclusively from German friends,
and other German friends are then displeased. But is it worth while to
resent the utterance of opinions that do not claim to be the infallible
truth of ages, but only the hasty record of fleeting impressions? Peace,
good people; let us have no savage criticism or shedding of blood,
though we do chatter lightly of _majestaete_, saying merely what his
subjects have told us.

We are all apt to be too sensitive about our own lands and their
customs. Yet have _we_ not learned to smile quietly when we are told
that American _gentlemen_ sit in drawing-rooms, in the presence of
ladies, with their feet on the mantels; that American wives have their
husbands "under the _pantoffel_" (would that more of them had); that
America has no schools, no colleges, no manners; that American girls
are, in general, examples of total depravity; that pickpockets and
murderers go unmolested about our streets, seeking whom they may devour;
that we have no law, no order, no morality, no art, no poetry, no past,
no anything desirable? What can one do but smile? Smile, then, in turn,
you loyal ones, when I have the bad taste to call ugly what you are
willing to swear is beautiful as a dream. Thoughts are free, and so are
pens; and both must run on as they will.

Let me, therefore, hurt no one's feelings if I say that Stuttgart in
winter, with little sunshine, a dreary climate, and a peculiar,
disagreeable, deep mud in the streets, does not at first impress a
stranger as an especially attractive place. But now, with its long lines
of noble chestnut-trees in full blossom; with the pretty Schloss Platz
and the Anlagen, where fountains are playing and great blue masses of
forget-me-nots and purple pansies and many choice flowers delight your
eyes; with the shady walks in the park, where you meet a dreamer with
his book, or a group of young men on horseback, or pretty children by
the lake feeding the swans and ducks; with the lovely air of spring,
full of music, full of fragrance; and, best of all, with the beauty of
the surrounding country,--he would indeed be critical who would not find
in Stuttgart a fascinating spot.

There is music everywhere, there are flowers everywhere. Your landlady
hangs a wreath of laurel and ivy upon your door to welcome you home from
a little journey, and brings you back, when she goes to market, great
bunches of sweetness,--rosebuds and lilies of the valley. You climb the
hills and come home laden with forget-me-nots,--big beauties, such as we
never see at home,--violets, and anemones. It has been a cold spring
here until now, but the flowers have been brave enough to appear as
usual, and, wandering about among the distracting things with hands and
baskets as full as they will hold, a picture of days long ago darts
suddenly before me,--two school-girls, their Virgils under their arms,
rubber boots on their feet, stumbling through bleak, wet Maine
pasture-lands, bearing spring in their hearts, but searching for it in
vain in the outer world around them. The other girl will rejoice to know
that here I have found spring in its true presence.

And then there is May wine! Do you know what it is, and how to make it?
You must walk several miles by a winding path along the bank of the
Neckar. You must see the crucifixes by the wayside, and the three great
blocks of stone,--two upright and one placed across them,--making a kind
of high table, for the convenience of the peasant-women, who can stand
here, remove from their heads their heavy baskets, rest, and replace
them without assistance. You must peep into the tiniest of chapels,
resplendent with banners of red and gold and a profusion of fresh
flowers, all ready for the morning, which will be a high feast-day. You
must pass through a village where women and children are grouped round
the largest, oldest well you ever saw, with a great crossbeam and an
immense bucket swinging high in the air. And at last you must sit in a
garden on a height overlooking the Neckar. There must be a charming
village opposite, with an old, old church, and pretty trees about you
partly concealing the ruins of some old knight's abode. Don't you like
ruins? But just enough modestly in the background aren't so very bad.
You hear the sound of a mill behind you, and the falling of water, and,
in the branches above your head, the joyful song of a Schwarz Kopf. And
then somebody pours a flask of white wine into a great bowl, to which he
adds bunches of Waldmeister,--a fragrant wildwood flower,--and drowns
the flowers in the wine until all their sweetness and strength are
absorbed by it, and afterwards adds sugar and soda-water and quartered
oranges,--and the decoction is ladled out and offered to the friends
assembled, while there is a golden sunset behind the hills across the
Neckar. And you walk back in the twilight through the village that is so
small and sleepy it is preparing already to put itself to bed. And the
peasants you meet say, "Gruess Gott!" "Gruess Gott!" say you, which
isn't in the least to be translated literally, and only means "Good
day," though the pretty, old-fashioned greeting always seems like a
benediction. You hear the vesper-bells and the organ-tones pealing out
from the chapel; you see some real gypsies with tawny babies over their
shoulders (poor things! they will steal so that they are allowed to
remain in a village but one day at a time, and then must move on). You
feel very bookish, everything is so new, so old, so charming,--and that
is "Mai Wein."

How it would taste at dinner with roast-beef and other prosaic
surroundings,--how it actually did taste, I haven't the faintest idea.




THE SOLITUDE.


What the Germans call an _Ausflug_, or excursion, deserves to be
translated literally, for it is often a veritable _flight out_ of the
region of work and care into a tranquil, restful atmosphere. The ease
with which middle-aged, heavy-looking men here put on their wings, so to
speak, and soar away from toil and traffic, at the close of a long, hard
day, is always marvellous, however often we observe it. It seems a
natural and an inevitable thing for them to start off with a chosen few,
wander through lovely woods, climb a pretty hill, watch the changing
lights at sunset over a broad valley, then return home, talking of poets
and painters, of life problems, of whatever lies nearest the heart.
Their ledgers and stupid accounts and schemes and the state of the
markets do not fetter them as they do our business men. Such enjoyment
is so simple, childlike, and rational, that the old question how men
accustomed to wear the harness of commercial life will ever learn to
bear the bliss of heaven, in its conventional acceptation, seems half
solved. The Germans, at least, would be blessed in any heaven where fair
skies and hills and forests and streams would lie before their gaze.
However inadequate their other qualifications for Elysium may be, they
excel us by far in this respect. Even the coarser, lower men who gather
in gardens to drink unlimited beer are yet not quite unmindful of the
beauty of the trees whose young foliage shades them, and look out,
oftener than we would be apt to give them credit for, upon the vine-clad
hills beyond the city. A friend, a prominent banker, who is almost
invariably in his garden or some other restful spot in the free air at
evening, now goes out to Cannstadt, two miles from here, mornings at
seven, because "one must be out as much as possible in this exquisite
weather." If bankers and lawyers and our busiest of business men at home
would only begin and end days after this fashion, their hearts and heads
would be fresh and strong far longer for it, that is, if they could find
rest and enjoyment so, and that is the question,--could they? And why is
it, if they cannot? I leave the answer to wiser heads, who will probably
reply as usual, that our whole mode of life is different, which is quite
true; but why _need_ it be, in this respect, so very different? Here is
a valuable hint to some enormously wealthy person, childless and without
relatives, of course, and about to make his will, who at this moment is
considering the comparative merits of different benevolent schemes, and
is wavering between endowing a college and founding a hospital. Do
neither, dear sir. Take my advice, because I'm far away, and don't know
you, and am perfectly disinterested, and, moreover, the advice is sound
and good: Make gardens and parks everywhere, in as many towns as
possible. Not great, stately parks that will directly be fashionable,
but little parks that will be loved; and winding ways must lead to them
through woodlands, and seats and tables must be placed in alluring
spots, and all the paths must be so seductive they will win the most
inflexible, absorbed, care-worn man of business to tread them. Do this,
have your will printed in every newspaper in the land, and many will
rise up and call you blessed. And if you are not so very rich, make just
one small park, with pretty walks leading to it and out of it, and say
publicly why you do it,--that people may have more open air and rest;
and if they only have these, Nature will do what remains to be done, and
win their hearts and teach them to love her better than now. Of course
it is a well-worn theme, but no one can live in this German land without
longing to borrow some of its capacity for taking its ease and infuse it
into the veins of nervous, hurrying, restless America.

A pleasant _Ausflug_ from Stuttgart is to the Solitude, a palace built
more than a hundred years ago by Carl Eugen, a duke of Wuertemberg,
whose early life was more brilliant than exemplary. Many roads lead to
it, if not all, as to Rome. In the fall we went through a little
village,--throbbing with the excitement of the vintage-time, resplendent
with yellow corn hanging from its small casements,--and by pretty
wood-roads, where the golden-brown and russet leaves gleamed softly, and
the hills in the distance looked hazy, and all was quietly lovely,
though the golden glories and flaming scarlet of our woods were not
there; and where now softly budding trees, spring air and spring sounds,
anemones and crocuses, and forget-me-nots and Maigloeckchen, tempt one
to long days of aimless, happy wandering. On one road, the new one by a
waterfall, is the Burgher Allee, where once the burghers came out to
welcome a prince or a duke returning from a wedding or a war, and stood
man by man where now a line of pines, planted or set out in remembrance,
commemorates the event. If exception is taken to the uncertain style of
this narration, may I add that positiveness is not desirable in a story
for the truth of which there are no vouchers? The idea of a prince
welcomed home from the wars is to me more impressive; but choice in such
matters is quite free.

You can go to the Solitude, if you please, through the Royal Game Park,
a pretty, quiet spot, where a broad carriage-road winds along among
noble oaks and beeches, and through the trees peep the great, soft eyes
of animals who are neither tame nor wild, and who seem to know that they
belong to royalty and may stare at passers-by with impunity. A superb
stag stood near the drive, gave us a lordly glance, turned slowly, and
walked with majestic composure away. We did not interest him, but it did
not occur to him to hurry in the least on our account. We felt that we
were inferior beings, and were mortified that we had no antlers, that we
might hold up our heads before him. Two little lakes, the Baerensee and
Pfaffensee,--the latter thick with great reeds and rushes, and haunted
by a peculiar stillness,--invite you to lie on the soft turf, see
visions, and dream dreams. A small hunting-pavilion stands on terraces
by the Baerensee, with guardian bears in stone before it, and antlers
and other trophies of the chase ornamenting it within and without. It
was erected in 1782, at the time of a famous hunt in honor of the Grand
Duke Paul of Russia, afterwards emperor, who married Sophie of
Wuertemberg, niece of Carl Eugen. From all hunting-districts of the land
a noble army of stags was driven towards these woods, encircled night
and day by peasants to prevent the animals from breaking through. The
stags were driven up a steep ascent, then forced to plunge into the
Baerensee, where they could be shot with ease by the assembled hunters
in the pavilion. Seeing the pretty creatures now fearlessly wandering in
the sweet stillness of the park, and picturing in contrast that scene of
destruction and butchery, it seems a pity that the grand gentlemen of
old had to take their pleasure like brutes and pagans.

The Solitude is not far from here. Built first for a hunting-lodge
between 1763 and 1767, it was gradually improved, enlarged, and
beautified, grew into a pleasure palace, had its time of brilliant life
and of decay; and now, renovated by the king's command, is a place where
people go for the walk and the view, and where in summer a few visitors
live quietly in pure air, and drink milk, it being a _Cur-Anstalt_. The
adjacent buildings were used as a hospital during the late war. The
Solitude is not in itself an interesting structure; it is in rococo
style, having a large oval hall with a high dome, adjoining pavilions,
and it looks white and gold, and bare and cold, and disappointing to
most people. There is nothing especial to see,--a little fresco, a
little old china, some immensely rich tapestry, white satin embroidered
with gold, adorning one of those pompous, impossible beds, in which it
seems as if nobody could ever have slept. But there is enough to feel,
as there must always be in places where the damp atmosphere is laden
with secrets a century old, and the walls whisper strange things. There
are narrow, triangular cabinets and boudoirs with nothing at all in
them, which, however, make you feel that you will presently stumble upon
something amazing. All of Bluebeard's wives hanging in a row would
hardly surprise one here. The place is full, in spite of its emptiness.
It seems scarcely fitting that the many mirrors should reflect a little
band of tourists in travelling suits and with umbrellas, instead of
stately dames and cavaliers affecting French manners and French morals,
and gleaming in satin and jewels beneath the glass chandeliers. There is
a walk, always cool even in the hottest summer days, where in a double
alley of superb pines the company used to seek shade and rest, and the
fair ladies paced slowly up and down in their long trains, and fluttered
their fans and heard airy nothings whispered in their ears. Wooded
slopes rise high around, and this walk, deep down in a narrow valley,
being quite invisible from the ordinary paths, is called the Underground
Way. The breath of the old days is here especially subtle and
suggestive.

The map of the place, as it was, tells of orangeries, pleasure
pavilions, rose and laurel gardens, labyrinths, artificial lakes and
islands, and many things of whose magnificence few traces remain. The
common-looking buildings, formerly dwellings of the cavaliers in
attendance, stand in a row; there are a few small houses with queer
roofs; the Schloss itself stands on its height in the centre of an open
space, fine old woods around, and an unusually extended view, from its
cupola, of a broad, peaceful plain, a village or two, the Suabian Alb to
the south; a straight, white-looking road intersects the meadows and
woods, and leads to Ludwigsburg. This road was made by Carl Eugen, to
avoid passing through Stuttgart, his choleric highness having had a
grudge against the city at that time,--and indeed it has a spiteful air,
with its utter disregard of hills and valleys, going straight as an
arrow flies, never turning out for obstructions any more than the
haughty duke would have turned aside for a subject. Fabulous stories are
told of the speed with which his horse's hoofs used to clatter over this
turnpike, and the incredibly short time in which, by frequently changing
horses, he would arrive at his destination.

The romantic story of Francisca von Hohenheim and many interesting facts
in Schiller's early life, during his attendance at the Carlsschule, a
famous military academy, instituted by, and under the patronage of, Carl
Eugen, are inevitably interwoven in any history of the Solitude; but
both need more time than can be given at the close of so hasty a sketch.
And indeed, from almost any point that might be taken here, threads wind
off into a mass of stories and traditions far too wide-reaching to be
more than hinted at when one is only making a little _Ausflug_ and
carelessly following one's will on a fair April day.




A DAY IN THE BLACK FOREST.


    "Zu Hirsau in den Truemmern
    Da wiegt ein Ulmenbaum
    Frischgruenend seine Krone
    Hoch ueberm Giebelsaum."

      --_Uhland._


One of the loveliest spots in all Wuertemberg is Hirsau. It lies deep
down in a valley on the Nagold, over which is a pretty stone bridge.
High around rise the noble pines of the Black Forest, whose impenetrable
gloom contrasts with the tender green of spring meadows basking in the
sunshine, and makes, with the fringe of elms and birches and willows
along the banks of the stream, a most magical effect of light and shade.

Blessings on the one of us who first said, "Let us see the old cloister
at Hirsau!" An ideal spring day, a particularly well-chosen few, a trip
by rail to Alt-Hengstett, then a long, lovely tramp over the moss carpet
of the Black Forest, inhaling the sweet breath of the pines, finding
each moment a more exquisite flower, catching bewitching glimpses
between the trees of silver streams hurrying along far down below
us,--this is what it was like; but the softness, the sweetness, the
exhilaration of it all is not easy to indicate. The name itself, "Black
Forest," sounds immensely gloomy and mysterious. Goblins and witches and
shrieks and moans and pitfalls and all uncanny weird things haunted the
Black Forest of which we used to read years ago. And what does it mean
to us now? Magnificent old woods, paths that beckon and smile, softly
whispering, swaying tree-tops, turf like velvet, sunlight playing
fitfully among the stately pines, seeking entrance where it may, and air
that must bring eternal youth in its caresses. It means forgetfulness of
trammels and all sordid, petty things, and being in tune with the
harmonies of nature. It means freedom and peace; a "temple," indeed,
with the pines continually breathing their sweet incense and singing
their sacred chants. There were in our party a professor or two, more
than one poet,--indeed, it is said every other man in Suabia is a
poet,--and a world-renowned art scholar and critic. They shook the dust
of every-day life from their feet, and were happy as boys; one of them
lay among the daisies, smiling like a child with the pure delight of
living in such air and amid such peaceful beauty.

At the little _Gasthaus_ in Hirsau, with the sign of the swan, we
refreshed ourselves after our tramp. It is remarkable that poets, like
clergymen, must also eat. After a few merry, graceful toasts and cooling
draughts of the pleasant _Landwein_, we went to the cloister ruins. The
work of excavation is still going on, much that we saw being but
recently brought to the light. There were a few massive old walls at
wide distances apart; the pavement of the aisles quite grass-grown
between the low, broad, gray stones; fair fields of tall grass bright
with daisies and buttercups, and starry white flowers,--a fascinating
mass of variegated brightness, catching the sunshine and swaying in the
breeze; a row of fine old Gothic windows; a tower in the Romanisch style
of the twelfth century, which we, I believe, call Norman; a deep cellar
where the monks of old stored their wines. Up a flight of stairs is a
great bare room, where against the walls stand heavy wooden cases with
carved borders, and in the ceiling is the same quaint carving slightly
raised on a darker ground.

The whole effect of the ruins conveys the idea of immense size. The
church was, indeed, the largest in Germany except the cathedral at Ulm.
It is here an unusually lovely, peaceful scene. The cloister ruins would
be, anywhere, picturesque and interesting in themselves; lying as they
do above the village, framed by the beautiful Schwarzwald, they form a
picture not easily forgotten. No far-extending view, nothing grand or
imposing, only the exquisite, peaceful picture shut in by the dark-green
hills; quaint homes nestling among rosy apple-blossoms; the great gray
stone Bruennen, where for years and years maidens have come to fill
their buckets and chat in the twilight after the day's work is done; the
Nagold, silver in the sunlight; the cloister, with its old-time
traditions,--all so very, very far from the madding crowd.

And the sweet legend of the origin of the cloister should be sung or
spoken as one sees the picture: How there was, in the year 645, a rich,
pious widow, a relative of the knight of Calb, named Helizena, who was
childless, and who had but one wish, namely, to devote herself to the
service of God. She constantly prayed that God would open to her a way
acceptable in his sight. Once in a dream she saw in the clouds a church,
and below in a lovely valley three beautiful fir-trees growing from one
stem; and from the clouds issued a voice telling her that her prayer was
heard, and that wherever she should find the plain with the three
fir-trees she was to erect a church, the counterpart of that which she
saw in the clouds. Awaking, the good Helizena, with holy joy and deep
humility, took a maid and two pages and ascended a mountain from whose
summit she could see all the surrounding country, and presently espied
the quiet plain and the three firs of her dream. Hurrying to the spot,
weeping for joy, she laid her silken raiment and jewels at the foot of
the tree, to signify that from that moment she consecrated herself and
all she possessed to the work. In three years the beautiful cloud-church
stood in stone in the fair valley, and afterwards, in 838, a cloister
was erected with the aid of Count Erlafried of Calb. Under Abbot
Wilhelm, in 1080, it was at the height of its prosperity, and was the
model of peace and goodly living among all the other Benedictine
monasteries. The abbot gathered so many monks about him that the
cloister at last grew too narrow, and he resolved to build a more
spacious one. This was indeed a labor of love, and the work was done
entirely by his own people, his monks and laity. Noble lords and ladies
helped to bring wood and stone and prepared mortar in friendly
intercourse with peasants, their wives and daughters,--such zeal and
Christian love did the abbot instil into the hearts of his flock. It is
the ruins of this cloister which we see to day.

An old German chronicle represents the place as little less than an
earthly paradise:--

    "There was here a band of two hundred and sixty, full of love
    for God and one another. No discussion could be found there, no
    discontented faces. Everything was in common. No one had the
    smallest thing for himself; indeed, no one called anything his
    own. Each went about his work in sweet content; of disobedience
    no one even knew. Not only was there no rebuke and angry word,
    but also no idle, frivolous, mirth-provoking talk. Among this
    great mass of men within the cloister walls could be heard only
    the voices of the singers and of them who knelt in prayer, and
    the sounds that came from the busy workrooms."

These monks used to write much about music and poetry, and many learned,
strong men were gathered there. The cloister was full of pictures, and
the _Kreuzgang_ had forty richly painted windows, with biblical scenes.
A story is told of an old monk, Adelhard, who was twenty-three years
blind, and received in his latter days the gift of second-sight. He
foretold the day and hour of his death three years before it occurred,
and also the destruction of the monastery.

As Koerner's poem says:--

    "In the cells and apartments sit fifty brothers writing many
    books, spiritual, secular, in many languages,--sermons,
    histories, songs, all painted in rich colors.

    "In the last cell towards the north sits a white-haired old man,
    leans his brow upon his hand, and writes, 'The enemy's hordes
    will break in, in seven years, and the cloister walls will be in
    flames.'"

Whether the old gray monk was ever there or not, at least we know that
the French, in 1692, destroyed the beautiful cloister, and its paintings
and carvings and works of art were all lost, except some of the stained
glass, a few of its painted windows being at Monrepos, near Ludwigsburg.

The famous Hirsau elm, about which half the German poets have sung, is
the most significant, touching, poetical thing imaginable. You feel its
whole life-story in an instant, as if you had watched its growth through
the long years; how the young thing found itself, it knew not why,
springing up in the damp cloister earth, surrounded by four tall, cold,
gray walls, above which indeed was a glimpse of heaven; how it shot up
and up, ever higher and higher, with the craving of all living things
for sunlight and free air, never putting forth leaf or twig until it had
attained its hope and could rest. Within the high walls is only the
strong, tall, bare trunk, and far above, free and triumphant, the noble
crown of foliage.

Brave, beautiful elm, that dared to grow, imprisoned in cruel stone;
that did not faint and die before it reached the longed-for warmth and
light and sweetness!




THE LENNINGER THAL.


Pilgrims were we recently, making a day's journey, not to gaze upon
bones, rusty relics, and mouldy garments, but to see something fresh,
fair, and altogether adorable,--the cherry-trees of the Lenninger Thal
in full blossom. From Stuttgart we went by rail to Kirchheim unter Teck,
a railway terminus, where we were shown the palace occupied by Franciska
von Hohenheim after the death of Herzog Carl, and a Denkmal erected to
Conrad Widerhold, that brave and very obstinate German hero who held the
famous Hohentwiel fortress against the enemy, when even his own duke,
Eberhard III., had ordered him to surrender it. Widerhold and his wife
stand side by side, and you must look twice before you can tell which is
the warrior. Kirchheim lies prettily in the Lauter Thal among the
mountains. From there in an open carriage we drove on into the charming
Lenninger Valley, one of the most beautiful in the Alb, with the whole
landscape smiling benignly beneath a wonderful sky, and air deliciously
pure and soft; past little brooks where the young, tender willows were
beginning to leave out, through the little village of Dettingen, on and
on over the broad _chaussee_, until we were fairly among the
cherry-orchards. Bordering the road, running far back on the
hill-slopes, shadowy, feathery, exquisite, the snowy blossoms lay before
our eyes, with the range of the Suabian Alb beyond, and many a peak and
ruin old in story. This was the fresh morning of a perfect spring day,
where the peace and loveliness of the scene--the fields of pure
whiteness reaching out on both sides of us, with now and then a dash of
pink from the rosy apple-blossoms--made us feel that a special blessing
had fallen upon us as devotees at the shrine of Ceres. At evening,
returning by another route, with the varying lights and golden bars and
heavy, piled-up purple cloud-masses in the western sky, it was lovely
with yet another loveliness. The same mountains showed us other outlines
and assumed new expressions, and bold, proud Teck rose from the foam of
blossoms at its feet, like a stern rock towering above surging waters.

One of our experiences that day was becoming acquainted with Owen. Owen
is not a man, as you may imagine, but only a very little village with
crooked streets and queer old women, and that curious aspect to all its
belongings which never grows less curious to some of us, though we ought
to have become unmindful of it long ago. Owen is picturesque and dirty.
"Ours at home aren't half so dirty or half so nice," we endeavor to
explain to our German friends.

At the inn where we drew up we were received by an admiring group of
children,--three yellow heads rising above three great armfuls of wood,
of the weight of which the little things seemed utterly unconscious in
the excitement of seeing us. They stood, one above the other, on the
dilapidated, crazy stone steps, while a bushy dog, whose hair looked as
yellow and sun-faded as the children's, also made "great eyes" at us
from the lowest stone. Out came mine host, and cleared away children and
dog and woodpiles in a twinkling. This flattering reception occurred at
the Krone. A large gilt crown adorned with what small boys at home call
"chiney alleys" makes a fine appearance above these same tumble-down
steps; and directly beside them is a great barn-door, so near that you
might easily mistake one entrance for the other and wander in among the
beasties; and benign Mistress Cow was serenely chewing her cud in her
boudoir under the front stairs, we observed as we entered the house.

Let no one faint when I say we ate our dinner here. Indeed, we have
eaten in much worse places, and the dinner was far better than we
thought could be evolved from a house with so many idiosyncrasies, so
very prominent barn-door qualities, such mooings and lowings in
undreamed-of corners and at unexpected moments. However, we experienced
an immense lightening of the spirits when trout were served, for it
seemed as if we knew what this dish at least was made of. They were
pretty silvery things with red spots, and had just been gleaming in the
brook near by, beneath elms and birches and baby willows, and now they
were butchered to make our holiday.

The little restored Gothic church at Owen is more than a thousand years
old, and its walled Kirchhof recalls the times when the villagers with
their wives and children sought refuge here from the descent of robber
knights. The dukes of Teck are buried within the church, and their arms
and those of other old families, with quaint inscriptions about noble
and virtuous dames, are interesting to decipher. The prettiest thing in
the church was a spray of ivy which had crept through a hole in the high
small-paned window, completely ivy-covered without, and came seeking
something within the still stone walls, reaching out with all its
tendrils, and seemed like the little, adventurous bird that flutters in
through a church window on a hot summer afternoon, and makes a sleepy
congregation open its heavy eyes.

The altar-pictures are edifying works of art. Behind the little group in
the "Descent from the Cross" rise a range of hills that look
astonishingly like the Suabian Alb, with a genuine old German fortress
perching on a prominent peak. Saint Lucia is also an agreeable object of
contemplation, with a sword piercing her throat up to the hilt, the
blade coming through finely on the other side, while her mildly folded
hands, smirking of superior virtue and perfect complacency, make her as
winning as a saint of her kind can be.

Beyond Owen is the Wielandstein, or a Wielandstein I should perhaps say,
for Wielandsteins are as common in Germany as lovers' leaps in America;
and the story is always how the cruel king murdered the wife and
children of Wieland the smith and took him captive, granting him his
life merely because of his skill in fashioning wonderful things from
metals, but imprisoning him and maiming his feet that he might never
escape. Wieland lived some time at court, and grew in favor with the
king on account of his deft hands and clever designs. At length the
king's young sons were missing and could not be found, though they were
searched for many days, and the king was anxious and sorrowful. Then
Wieland presented him with two beautiful golden cups, at the sight of
which the king was so pleased that he gave a feast; and as he was
drinking from the golden bowls and feasting with his nobles, Wieland
flew away by means of two great golden wings he had for a long time been
secretly fashioning, and, poising himself in mid-air, cried to the
horrified king that he was drinking from the skulls of his sons, whom
he, Wieland, had murdered out of revenge. The people shot many arrows
after him, but he soared away unharmed, his golden wings gleaming in the
sunlight until he disappeared behind the hills.

The ruin of the old Teck castle is in this neighborhood, and the
_Sybillen Loch_, a grotto where a celebrated witch used to dwell, who
differed from her species in general, inasmuch as she was a _good_
witch. The old chronicles say she was an exemplary person, always
delighting in good deeds. Her sons, however, were bad, quarrelled, stole
from the world and one another, and even, upon one occasion, from her,
and then ran away. Sybilla in her fiery chariot went in pursuit, and to
this day a fair, bright stripe over orchard, field, and vineyard, always
fresher and greener than the surrounding country, marks her course. How
a fiery chariot could produce this beautifying effect is not to be
questioned by an humble individual whose home is in a land where ruined
castles and legend upon legend _do not_ rise from every hill-top.
Another story is that the fertile stripe was made by Sybilla's
chariot-wheels, as she left forever the family to which she had always
belonged. The last duke of Teck lay after a battle resting under a tree,
and saw her passing with averted face, his arms lying at her feet, while
she extended a stranger's in her hands, which signified ruin to his
house; and the prophecy was fulfilled, for the duke outlived his twelve
sons, and his arms and title were adopted by the counts of Wuertemberg,
who then became dukes of Wuertemberg and Teck. All these interesting
things are visible to the naked eye. The fresh green stripe is
unmistakable; and the point in the air where Wieland hovered on his
golden wings above the cliff can easily be discerned with a very little
imagination.

A visit to a typical Suabian pastor, in another little village on this
road, was a pleasant episode. A hale, handsome old gentleman of seventy,
with a small black cap on his silvery locks and an inveterate habit of
quoting Greek, looking at us with a simple, childlike air, as if we too
were learned. His house has stone floors, low square rooms, severely
simple in their appointments. The arms of a bishop of some remote
century are on the inner wall by the front entrance, and a little
farther on is an aperture, through which the cow of the olden time was
wont to placidly gaze out upon hurrying retainers. The cow of that
period seems to have had comfortable apartments in the middle of the
house. The Suabian cow of the present time earns her hay by the sweat of
her brow, toiling in the fields.

The good old pastor has a love amounting to adoration for his garden,
every inch of which he has worked over and beautified, till it seems to
be the expression of all the poetry and romance which the outward
conditions of his frugal, rigid life repress. Full of nooks and arbors,
comfortable low chairs and benches, where the blue forget-me-nots look
as if they bloom indeed for happy lovers; trees whose great drooping
branches close around retreats which can only be designed for tender
_tete-a-tetes_; irregular little paths, wandering up and down and about,
always ending in something delightful, always beckoning, inviting,
smiling, amid flowers and foliage so fresh and luxuriant, you feel that
every petal and leaf is known and loved by the white-haired old man. His
favorite seat is at the end of a narrow, winding way at the foot of a
magnificent elm. There he sits and looks, over the brook that sings to
his sweet roses and pansies, upon broad meadow-lands and fields of grain
extending to the Suabian hills, with their wealth of beauty and meaning
and tradition. He sleeps and rests and thinks there after dinner, he
tells us, and perhaps that is all; but I believe, when the old man is
gone, a volume of manuscript poems will be discovered hidden away among
his sermons and Greek tomes,--a volume of love poems, sonnets, dreamings
of all that his life crowds out into his garden, and that only in his
garden he has been able to express,--all the unspoken sweetness, all the
unsung songs.




FRANCISKA VON HOHENHEIM.


Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombastus is a personage whom
we know, it must be confessed, more through the medium of Robert
Browning than through our own historical researches; and we were
therefore filled with wonder to learn that, in addition to the modest
cognomen above, _de Hohenheim_ also belonged to his name. This same
Hohenheim we have recently visited. Paracelsus never lived there, to be
sure, and was born far away in Switzerland. Browning puts him in
Wuerzburg, in Alsatia, in Constantinople; and a solid German authority
declares he lived in Esslingen, where his laboratory is still exhibited,
and in proof mentions that in this neighborhood was, not many years ago,
a Weingaertner whose name was Bombastes von Hohenheim, a descendant of
Paracelsus. However, he lived nowhere, everywhere, and anywhere, I
presume, as best suited such a conjurer, alchemist, philosopher, and
adventurer, and went wandering about from land to land, remaining in one
place so long as the people would have faith in his learning, his
incantations and magic arts; but what concerns us now is simply that he
was connected with the Hohenheim family, who, in the old days, occupied
the estate which still bears its name.

To Hohenheim is a pleasant walk or drive, as you please, from Stuttgart.
A castle, adjacent buildings, lawns, and fruit-trees are what there is
to see at the first glance,--at the second, many practical things in the
museum connected with the Agricultural College, which is what Hohenheim
at present is; models, and collections of stones and birds and beasts,
bones and skeletons, and other uncanny objects, pretty woods, grain,
seeds, etc. Students from the ends of the earth come here, and from all
ranks,--sons of rich peasants and also young men of family. An Hungarian
count is here at present, and youths from Wallachia, Russia, Sweden,
America, Australia, Spain, Italy, and Greece,--China too, for all I know
to the contrary,--with of course many Germans, learning practical and
theoretical farming. We sat under the pear-trees which were showering
white blossoms around us, ate our supper to fortify us for our homeward
walk, watched the sheep come home and the students walking in from the
fields with their oxen-carts. They wore blue blouses and high boots, and
cracked their long whips with a jaunty air, more like Plunket in
"Martha" than veritable farmers. From the balcony opening from the
largest _salon_ we looked upon pretty woods, and the whole chain of the
Suabian Alb, with Lichtenstein, Achalm, and other points of interest to
be studied through a telescope.

This is, then, what Hohenheim now is,--a place where you go and look
about a little, walk through large empty halls and long corridors
affording glimpses of the simple quarters of the students, see a
pleasant landscape, and, in short, enjoy an hour of unquestionably
temperate pleasure. What it was as the seat of the Hohenheim family,
which is mentioned as early as the year 1100, we do not know; but under
Duke Carl Eugen of Wuertemberg, in the last century, it was a sort of
Versailles, if all accounts be true: magnificent parks and gardens,
Roman ruins near Gothic towers and chapels, Egyptian pyramids and Swiss
chalets, catacombs, artificial waterfalls, baths, hothouses, grottos
with Corinthian pillars, a Flora temple with lovely arabesques on its
silver walls, and the palace itself, rising proud and stately at the end
of the park, furnished with every luxury, and filled with rare vases and
pictures. Four colossal statues stand now in one of the halls, arrayed
in garments which, in that freer time, they certainly could not boast.
The raiment is of cloth, dipped, stiffened so that it resembles marble,
unless you examine it too closely. No doubt it is more agreeable that
those huge figures are somewhat clothed upon, but it does seem too
absurd to think of ordering a new coat for "Apollo" when his old one
gets shabby. Making minute investigations, we discovered he had already
had several, wearing the last one outside of the others, as if to
protect himself from the inclemency of the weather.

All the old magnificence was lavished by Herzog Carl upon Franciska von
Hohenheim,--his "Franzel," as he called her in the soft Suabisch,--whose
most romantic story is, _par excellence_, the thing of interest here,
and the Suabians must love it, they tell it so very often.

From many narratives I gather the life-story of a woman who, in spite of
the stain upon her name, is deeply revered in Wuertemberg for her
strong, sweet influence upon its wild duke, for her wisdom and
gentleness, and the good that through her came upon the realm.

She was a daughter of the Freiherr von Bernardin, a noble of ancient
family and limited income. Franciska lived far removed from the gayety
of courts, of which she and her sisters in their castle near Aalen
rarely heard. When she was scarcely sixteen her father gave her hand to
a Freiherr von Leutrum, a fussy, stuffy old man, who wrapped himself in
furs even in summer, and was so conspicuously ugly the boys in the
street would mock at him when he stood at his window. His great head, on
a broad, humped back, scarcely reached the sill.

In addition, a small intellect, hot temper, and suspicious nature made
him yet more of a monster; but Franciska was poor, and it appears it was
considered then, as it would be now, a good match, as Von Leutrum was of
an old family and rich. Whether the historians paint him blacker than he
deserves in order to make Franciska white in contrast, is not easy to
say. It certainly has that effect occasionally, however. Beauty, then,
married the Beast. In 1770 Herzog Carl Eugen came to Pforzheim, where
the nobles of the neighborhood, among them Baron von Leutrum, with his
young wife, assembled to form his court.

Franciska was no famous beauty. She had, however, a tall, graceful
figure, rich blond hair, and was very winning with her fresh, joyful
ways, and a certain indescribable sweetness and gentleness of manner.
The duke, from the first, singled her out by marked attention, which
undoubtedly flattered her, coming from so famous, clever, and
fascinating a man; and it is also probable that she made no especial
effort to repulse the homage in which she could see no harm. He was then
forty-two,--a man of stately beauty, one of the most renowned European
princes of that time, with a strong and highly cultivated intellect, and
of most winning manners where he cared to please. It also appears he
could be a bear, a savage, and a tyrant when he willed.

It was, then, scarcely surprising that a girl married at sixteen to a
fossil like Leutrum, who neglected and abused her, should be bewildered
by the distinguished attention offered by her prince. Meanwhile Leutrum
waxed more and more jealous, until one day in a rage, on account of
remarks of the courtiers, he struck his wife in the face.

The duke, furious at this, insisted upon taking Franciska under his
protection. But she, though agonized with fear and abhorrence of her
husband, yet knowing too well her feeling for the duke, chose to leave
the court at once and return with Leutrum to their castle.

Carl Eugen, never scrupulous as to means when he had anything to gain,
caused a wheel of Leutrum's coach to be put into a state of precarious
weakness, so that, going through some woods not far from Pforzheim, the
carriage broke down, when the duke appeared, rode off with the
trembling, miserable, happy Franciska, leaving Von Leutrum alone with
his broken carriage and his rage.

The duke had been married for political reasons at eighteen to a
princess of Bavaria, with whom he had lived but a year or two, their
natures being strongly incompatible. He, however, a Roman Catholic,
could not free himself from his first marriage until the death of his
wife released him in 1784, when he married Franciska.

The remarkable thing in her history is, that the voice of no
contemporary is raised against her. Noble ladies of unblemished name
visited her as "Graefin von Hohenheim," and all testimony unites in
praising her wisdom, sweetness, and grace, and her almost miraculous
influence for good upon the duke.

"He found in her womanly grace and devoted love, the deepest
appreciation of the beautiful and good, exquisite taste and tact, a
strong, warm interest in his career and calling, wise counsel given in
her soft, womanly words, and a heart for his people.

"In love and sorrow, in matters earnest and light, in his difficult
affairs of state, in enjoyment of the beautiful in art and nature, she
was ever by his side, filled with perfect appreciation of all that moved
him."

She taught him gradually his duty towards his folk, which the wild,
haughty duke had sadly ignored, and she, herself, was always loved and
revered by them.

She was graceful and sparkling in society, not wearing her sorrows upon
her sleeve, but in her private life and letters are marks of lifelong
grief.

"If I could tell you my whole story," she writes to a friend in 1783,
"if you could know the solemnity and repentance with which I look back
upon it, you would withhold from me neither your pity nor your
prayers.... Had I had in my sixteenth year, when, utterly inexperienced,
I entered society with not the slightest knowledge of the world, left
entirely to myself, surrounded by scenes whose meaning I could not
grasp,--had I then had one true friend to warn me, to advise me; had his
reason, his heart, his pureness of deed, inspired my respect and trust,
indeed--indeed--I might have been a better woman."

Later, after a delightful evening at the Princess of Dessau's, where
Lavater also was, she wrote:--

"I was inexpressibly moved by your assurance that you thought of me in
this circle. Could I have felt worthier of such society, the pleasure
would undoubtedly have been more unalloyed. But, as it was--Still I must
not complain."

Such, briefly, is her story. She lived with the duke at the Solitude as
well as here, and Hohenheim he made for her as beautiful as a fairy
palace. He troubled neither her nor himself with scruples. His
conscience was, indeed, not tender, and his life with her was
unquestionably so innocent and idyllic in comparison with his mad past,
that, to him at least, it no doubt seemed blameless. He loved her
faithfully till his death, wrote to her when absent for a day or two as
his good angel, with utter reverence as well as tenderest love. The
proud respected her; the poorest and humblest came to her with their
wants and sorrows.

She died in 1811 in her small, quiet court at Kirchheim unter Teck,
where she had resided after the death of the duke; but her story and the
remembrance of her eventful life will always haunt quiet Hohenheim, and
invest it with a romance it cannot otherwise claim for itself.




"NUREMBERG THE ANCIENT."


The breeze of morning stole in and kissed our cheeks and whispered, "You
have a day and a half to spend in dear, delicious old Nuremberg,--be up
and doing!" Only a day and a half, and yet how infinitely better than no
day at all there! We came, we saw, and were conquered, even by the huge
knockers with bronze wreaths of Cupids and dragons' heads, the ornate,
intricate locks, the massive doors, before we were within the portals of
those proud patrician palaces with their stately inner courts and
galleries, their frescos, painted windows and faded tapestries,
time-stained grandeur, and all their relics of mediaeval magnificence.

O, we stretched our day and a half well, and filled it full of
treasures, and our hearts with lovely thoughts and pictures of the
unique old town, its high quaint gables, stone balconies, beautiful
fountains, double line of walls, and seventy sentinel towers; its castle
and wide moat, where now great trees grow and prim little gardens; its
arched bridges and streams, with shadows of the drooping foliage on the
banks; its oriel windows; its narrow, shady ways and odd corners; its
memories of Albrecht Duerer and Hans Sachs, of Kaiser and knight and
Meistersinger,--its Nurembergishness!

The St. Lorenz Church was our first halting-place. The whole world knows
that its portal and painted windows are beautiful, and that it retains
all the rich old objects of the Roman ritual; that being the condition
under which Nuremberg pranced over in a twinkling to Protestantism, and
people were ordered by the municipal authorities to believe to-day what
they had disbelieved yesterday; and most of the world, perhaps, has seen
the tabernacle for the vessels of the sacrament, but they who have not
can never know from words how it rests on the bowed forms of its
sculptor, Adam Kraft, and his two pupils and assistants, and rises like
frozen spray sixty-four feet in the choir, with the warm light from the
painted windows coloring its exquisite traceries and carvings. It looks
like a holy thought or a hymn of praise caught in stone, aspiring
heavenwards.

We saw there heavy gold chalices from old, old times, and some Gobelin
tapestry only recently discovered hidden away; one scene represented the
weighing of the soul of St. Lawrence to see if it were too light for
heaven. The saint's soul had a shape, in fact was an infant's body, and
the Devil was crouching near by, and St. Lawrence, full-grown, stood
waiting, anxious to know his fate.

Then came a few hours in the German Museum, where, as usual in such
places, the weary lagged behind, the elegant looked _blase_, the
contrary-minded saw the wrong thing first, the energetic pushed
valiantly on, striving to see all and remember all, from earliest forms
of sculpture down through the ages,--all the gold and silver and
carvings and costumes, the immense square green stoves, with the warm,
cosy seat for the old grandmother in the corner; to glance at rare old
lace without neglecting the ancient caps and combs and gewgaws; to look
long at a few of the pictures,--the great one of Duerer's, "Otto at the
Grave of Charlemagne," is here, you know,--and so our straggling party
wandered on through corridor and chamber and staircase, past knights in
effigy, some of whom looked like such jolly old souls, with gallons of
wine beneath their breastplates, past a memorial tablet to a baby prince
who died dim ages ago, to whom a small death-angel is offering an apple;
and then, after seeing the bear, who guards a glass case of precious
things in gold and silver, lowered down to his domain every night, and
after sprinkling beer on his nose to see if he were of German parentage,
we gathered ourselves together and wondered if we quite liked museums.
You see so much more than you can comprehend; you see so much more than
you want to see; you feel so astoundingly ignorant; you have information
thrust upon you so ruthlessly. One wilful maiden says, "I'll go and live
on a desert island, provided no one will show me an object of interest."
Then in the shady cloisters we drank foaming beer with our German
friends, and gathered strength for our next onslaught; and I beg no one
to be captious about the length and out-of-breath character of this
paragraph, for it is quite in keeping with our Nuremberg visit, with
worlds to see in a little day and a half.

There was the old Rath Haus with the Duerer frescos and the Duerer house
and pictures, which everybody mentions; and the rude, dark little den of
a kitchen, which nobody to my knowledge has ever deigned to mention,
where Mrs. Xantippe Duerer used to rattle her sauce-pans and scold her
_Mann_. There was the Fraumkirche and St. Sebald, rich in painted
windows and sculpture. In one room, so rich and dark with its oak
wainscoting and Gobelin tapestry, we involuntarily searched behind the
arras for Polonius, and then stared silently and felt quite flippant
before the antique candelabra and Persian rugs and hopelessly
indescribable ever-to-be-coveted furniture within those memory-laden
walls. An antique, impressive writing-table was a model of rich, quaint
beauty. Poems and romances would feel proud and pleased to simply write
themselves under its aegis, and what a delicious aroma of the past would
cling to them!

We visited the castle, of course, and streams of information about the
Hohenzollerns were poured upon us. We were wicked enough to enjoy
ourselves particularly among the instruments of torture,--exhibited by
the jolliest, fattest, most _debonair_ Mrs. Jarley in the world. She
regaled us with awful tales, that sounded worse than the "Book of
Martyrs," and we were not disgusted, neither did we faint or scream.
There was a lamentable want of feeling, and a marked inclination to
laugh prevailed in our party. Indeed, we saw some sweet things there,--a
hideous dragon's head, worn by women who beat their husbands; a kind of
yoke in which two quarrelsome women were harnessed; a huge collar, with
a bell attached, for gossips; and an openwork iron mask, with a great
protruding, rattling tongue, for inveterate slanderers. We made liberal
proposals to our jolly show-woman for a few of these articles, thinking
we might be able to send them where they were needed, and strongly
inclined to favor their readoption. An iron nose a foot long was worn by
thieves, and the article stolen hung on the end of it.

It is grievous to think there will come a time when people who visit
Nuremberg will see no walls and towers and moats. They are pulling down
the walls at present, for they are as inconvenient as they are
picturesque. Heavy teams and people on foot seeking egress and ingress
at one time through the narrow passages in the massive structure, the
city cramped, its growth retarded, dangerous accidents, as well as the
most reasonable grounds in a commercial point of view, lead the wise to
destroy something selfish tourists would fain preserve intact. But "if I
were king of France, or, still better, pope of Rome," or emperor of
Germany, I'd let the commerce go elsewhere where there is room for it,
and guard old Nuremberg jealously as a precious, beautiful memorial and
heirloom from ancestors who have slept for centuries.

The Johannes Cemetery here is the only lovely one I have yet seen in
Germany. It is not beautiful in itself, as our cemeteries are; but the
solemnity, the dignity of death is here, and no gaudy colors and tinsel
wreaths jar upon your mood and pain you. Only great flat, gray stones,
tablets with the arms in bronze of the old Nuremberg patricians, tell us
wanderers who lies beneath. It was like a solemn poem to be there
deciphering the proud armorial bearings on the great blocks placed there
centuries ago, and the sweet-brier blooming all around with such an
unconscious air on its pale pink blossoms, like fair young faces. One of
Columbus's crew lies there. So many old names and dates!

We plucked a few leaves from Duerer's grave:--

    "_Emigravit_ is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies,
    Dead he is not, but departed, for the artist never dies;
    Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair,
    That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed
    its air."




SOME WUeRTEMBERG TOWNS.


The gardener gave it to the milkmaid and the milkmaid gave it to the
errand-boy, the errand-boy gave it to the cook, who gave it to the
head-waiter, who sold it to the individual who presented it to me. "It"
was a bunch of great, sweet, half-blown June roses, that hung glowing on
their stalks in their native garden at dawn, and before noon had
experienced this life of change and adventure. It all happened in
Wasseralfingen, a little town, where nothing else so momentous occurred
during our brief visit, because it was Sunday, but where usually the
celebrated iron-works make an immense disturbance, and interest visitors
of a practical turn of mind. Our German friends bewailed the absence of
the noise of the machinery on our account; believing that every American
is born with a passionate devotion to mechanics, which increases through
life, to the exclusion of a love of the beautiful. Recently, after
relating a romantic story about a place on the Rhine, a German gentleman
concluded his tale of love and chivalry by telling us that the Princess
Somebody had established a girls' school there,--"which will interest
you as Americans more than the story," he added, with perfect honesty
and naivete.

"And why?" we meekly ask.

"Because Americans are practical and like useful things," he responds
cheerfully, with as thorough a conviction as if he had said that two and
two made four.

We made no useless effort to induce him to believe that the thought of
sixty or eighty bread-and-butter misses does not enhance for us the
charm of a tradition-haunted spot, nor did we struggle to impress our
friends' minds in Wasseralfingen that its Sabbath stillness was more
agreeable to us than the stir and rush of the works. There are some
fixed ideas in the mind of the average German which a potent hand ought
to seize and shake out. "Why don't you write letters to Germans about
America, instead of to Americans about Germany?" suggests a clever
German friend. "They seem to be more needed." It might really be worth
while if Teutonic tenacity of opinion were not too huge a thing for a
feeble weapon to slay.

To return to our Wasseralfingen,--most curious name!--it was pretty
enough to look upon, as indeed most places in Wuertemberg are. It has
its nicely-laid-out little park or _Anlagen_, with a statue in the
middle of it; and this is what small manufacturing towns at home are not
apt to waste much time upon, unfortunately for their children and their
children's children. An inn nestled among the trees, with irregular
wings and low, broad roofs, and a very broad landlord, who looked like a
beer-mug, gave us comfortable shelter for a night, and supper and
breakfast in its garden,--supper with lights and pipes and beer-bottles,
and cheerful conversation all around.

A short trip by rail brought us to Heidenheim, past fields of waving
grain and pretty hills, shadows of great trees falling on velvety
meadows, oats rising and falling like billows in the morning breeze, and
scarlet seas of poppies. Never anywhere have I seen such a glory of
poppies! Miles of them on both sides of the road, gleaming and glowing
as the sunlight kissed them.

And then Heidenheim, a pretty town given to manufactures, to factories
and mills, with the ruins of its castle Hellenstein on the height, and
its memories reaching far back to Roman times. Here lived knights who
were princes of profligacy, and gloried in their extravagance; who shod
their steeds with silver and gold, and flung jewels away like water. One
of them longed to have his whole estate transformed into a strawberry,
that he could swallow it all in one instant. Of course this family came
to a bad end. It spent all its money, and its castles got out of repair;
the last of its armor was sold for old iron, and the last of the race
died a pauper.

The ruins retain traces of Roman architecture in the earliest walls,
with various additions in later times, and are not especially
interesting upon close acquaintance. The old well sunk deep in the
foundation of natural rock, where you pay ten cents and see a woman drop
a stone three hundred and eighty-five feet, and wait breathlessly until
you hear the dull plash deep down in the darkness, is their most
exciting feature. The woman offered to give us some water, but it
requires a whole hour to get it up, and we felt suspicious of what might
be lying in those uncanny depths.

On the shady side of the castle, with broad reaches of fertile field and
belts of wood lying before our contented gaze, we listened to
Volkslieder, so old and sweet they carried our hearts back into dim
ages, and we strongly felt the tie that binds us to the race where such
strains have their birth. Suddenly, as our singers ceased, a group of
village children sitting on a block of stone at a short distance took up
the refrain,--an irregular row of flaxen heads against the light, their
forms prominent against the deep, peaceful background, singing away with
such zest we could only be silent and listen. Song after song, in praise
of their loved land, they sang; all sweet, whether the smallest ones
could always keep in tune or not. They told how Eberhard im Bart could
lay his head on the knee of his poorest peasant and sleep in peace till
morning broke, and many another sweet, old story; and, keeping time with
their heads and making daisy-chains with their hands, they shouted,--

    "Beautiful Suabia is our _Heimath Land_!"

Truly you can forgive the Germans for a multitude of sins when you hear
how and what their common people sing.




IN A GARDEN.


A Garden by the water's edge,--a garden where clematis and woodbine and
grape-vines run all over their trellises and up the graceful young
locust-trees and down over the stone-wall to meet the water plashing
pleasantly below, and reach out everywhere that vine-audacity can
suggest in an utter abandonment of luxuriance!--a garden where superb
blood-red roses are weighed down by a sense of their own sweetness, and
pure white ones look tall and stately and cool and abstracted by their
side. At the right a point of land extends into the lake, so thickly
covered with trees that from here it looks like a little forest, and the
houses are almost concealed in the fresh green; and the trees look
taller than anything except a funny old building that was once a
cloister, and is now the royal castle, and has two queer, tall towers
that rise far above the tree-tops at the extremity of the point. At the
left, faint and shadowy in the distance, rise the Alps, and the
mountains of Tyrol. There are bath-houses along the shore. Small boys
who think they "would be mermen bold" are prancing about gayly in the
water. On a rocky beach, peasant-women in bright-colored dresses are
standing by tubs, dipping garments in the lake and wringing them dry.
Some of them are kneeling. The sun is warm, and beats down on their
uncovered heads, and the work is hard, and I don't suppose they have any
idea they are making a picture of themselves, on the rocky shore with
the background of trees. But everybody is a picture this morning. There
is a young man standing in a row-boat, which an old fisherman lazily
propels here and there before my eyes. The youth is really statuesque,
balancing himself easily in the dancing boat, strong, supple, graceful,
his arm extending the long fishing-rod. A rosebud of a girl in a white
morning-suit and jaunty sailor-hat leans over the railing of a pavilion
built out into the lake from the garden, and also patiently holds a
fishing-rod, looking like a "London Society" illustration, as she gazes
intently with drooping eyelashes into the water.

There are people reading, sketching, studying their Baedeckers, drinking
their coffee or beer, in comfortable nooks through the pretty garden.
All is quiet and restful, with only the rippling of the water and the
shouts of the merry mermen to break the stillness. Now doesn't it seem
as if one ought to write an exceptionally pleasant letter from so
pleasant a spot? But, alas! there is not much to say about it when once
you have tried to tell how it looks,--that it is a calm, peaceful,
pretty place, where you could stay a whole summer and lose all feverish
desires to explore and climb and see sights. To sit here in the garden,
leaning on the wall among the vines, is happiness enough. In the morning
early, the lake smiles at you and talks to you, and you see far away
great masses of rose-color and pearl-gray, with snowy summits gleaming
in the sunshine, and your eyes are blessed with their first view of the
Alps. The outline of the opposite shore is misty and many-colored, and
has also its noble heights. At sunset, too, is the garden a dreamy,
blissful spot, as the little boats float about in the golden lights, and
the water and the mountains assume all possible lovely hues, then sink
away in a deep violet, and the stars come out and German love-songs go
up to meet them.

Yes, it is a satisfying spot. If there's a serpent here, he keeps
himself wonderfully well concealed. We haven't caught a glimpse of him,
and we are wise enough not to search for him. It's an admirable place to
be lazy, but it isn't very good for letters. Things hinder so, you know.
You listen to the water, and your pencil forgets to go. You get lost in
contemplation of the flapping of the ducks' feet, and make profound
studies of their mechanism, and enviously wish you had something of the
sort at your command, so that you could sail about in the cool, clear
water as unconcerned as they, and with no more effort. Funniest of ducks
that they are!--so pampered by the attention and bread-crumbs of summer
guests that their complacency exceeds even ordinary duck
self-satisfaction, and they act as if they thought they were all swans.

It occurs to me somebody may feel a faint curiosity to know where it all
is. On the Lake of Constance, or the Bodensee, which, if you want useful
information, is forty-two miles long, eight miles wide, is fed
principally by the Rhine, and whose banks belong to five different
States,--Bavaria, Wuertemberg, Baden, Switzerland, and Austria; a sheet
of water whose shores are green and thickly wooded, where gay little
steamers run, constantly displaying the flags of their several
countries, between the principal places on the lake, and wherever you go
you have beautiful mountain scenery. You see the Alps, the mountains of
Bavaria, the Baden hills, the Tyrol, and you don't always know which is
which; but they pile themselves up grandly among the clouds, one range
behind the other, in a way that to the unaccustomed vision does not
exactly admit of labelling, and you don't care what their names are. You
are content to feel their beauty, to wonder and be silent.

This particular place on the lake is Friedrichshafen. It is really a new
place and a commercial place,--and these adjectives are certainly not
attractive,--but then the newness is not conspicuous, and the commerce,
so far as we summer birds of passage are concerned, almost invisible.

The king and queen of Wuertemberg come here every summer, and are here
at present. The Emperor of Germany and the Grand Duke of Baden are on
the Island of Mainau.

It may be a busy place, but it does not seem so. Content and rest
pervade the atmosphere. Serenity is written on every face. It may be
many people would weary of its roses and the ripple of the water; of its
gardens, that look as if they were growing directly out of the lake; of
the blue, hazy, changing mountains far away; of its perfect quiet: but
there are others who would love it well, and who would not tire of it in
many a long summer day.




LINDAU AND BREGENZ.


Auf wiederschen, and not Lebewohl, we said to pleasant Friedrichshafen,
as the little steamer left those kindly green shores and we sailed away,
not for a year and a day, like the owl and the pussy cat in the
beautiful pea-green boat, but for an hour or so only. There were many
curious people to watch on board, but the most monopolizing sight was
two Catholic priests devouring a chicken, or rather devouring
_chickens_. They had, on the seat between them, a basket large enough
for a flock of Huehnchen--boiled, dissected, and only too tempting to
the priestly appetite--to repose in. And they had the lake as a
receptacle for the bones. What more could they desire? If we could have
suggested anything it would have been--napkins, because it was requiring
too much work of their fingers to use them as knives and forks, and then
to wipe their mouths on them. The zeal with which the holy men tore the
tender meat from the bones and showered the remnants in the water, and
particularly the endurance they exhibited, made us hope they evinced as
much fervor and devotion in caring for their human flocks.

To Lindau then we came, having, as we approached, charming mountain
scenery. The town is on an island, connected with the mainland by an
embankment and railway bridge. It is a little place, but very striking
as you look at it from the water, having a lofty monument (a statue in
bronze of Maximilian II.), a picturesque old Roman tower, and, at the
entrance of the harbor, a fine lighthouse, and a great marble lion on a
high pedestal, guarding the little haven and his Bavarian land. We
remained part of a day here, having before our eyes a beautiful
picture,--the mountains of Switzerland directly across the lake, narrow
at this point, with the lighthouse and the proud, ever-watchful Bavarian
lion rising, bold and sentinel-like, in the foreground. You look between
these two over the placid water to the heights beyond.

From Lindau we sailed to Bregenz, where the lake and mountains have
quite another expression. It would be difficult to say which is the most
attractive place on the Bodensee. You feel "How happy could I be with
either, were t'other dear charmer away," and it is of course a question
of individual taste. One person prefers the mountains near, another
watches them lovingly from a distance. One likes to live on low land by
the water's edge, and look up to the mountain-tops; another perches
himself high, and finds his happiness in looking down upon the lake and
off to other heights. But the shores are lovely everywhere, much
frequented yet quiet, crowded with villas, private cottages, hotels, yet
secluded and restful if one chooses.

Bregenz is a quiet place, a real country-place, with mountain views and
mountain excursions without end. The common people have intelligent,
happy faces, pleasant, cheerful ways, quickness of repartee, and
civility. The women give you a smiling "Gruess Gott." The commonest man
takes off his hat as you pass, and if you go by a group of rollicking
school-boys every hat comes off courteously.

Gebhardsberg is the first place to which people usually go from Bregenz.
We went, as in duty bound. It is a mountain--a castle--a pilgrimage
church--a view; and to say that one commands a view of the entire lake,
the valley of the Bregenzer Ach and the Rhine, the Alps, the snow
mountains of Appenzel and Glarus, with mountains covered with pine
forests in the foreground, conveys a very faint idea of the beauty
before our eyes. In the visitors' book in the tower were some German
rhymes, which, roughly translated, go somewhat in this way:--

    "Charming prospect, best of wine,
    Be joyful, then, O heart of mine;
    Farewell, thou lovely Gebhard's hill,
    Thou Bodensee, so fair, so still."

And more still about wine, for this is not the land of the Woman's
Crusade, it appears:--

    "It makes you glad to drink good wine,
    And praying makes life more divine.
    If you would be both good and gay,
    Pray well and drink well every day."

Some one remarks,--

    "What below was far from clear,
    Is no less dark when we stand here."

And a very enthusiastic person writes,--

    "Here flies from us sorrow, here vanishes pain,
    Here bloom in our hearts joy and freshness again.
    Who can assure us, and how can we know,
    That heaven is fairer than this scene below?"

In pages of such doggerel one finds comical enough things; but exported,
they may lose their native flavor, so I will not give too many of them.

By making rather a long excursion from here you can visit the birthplace
of Angelica Kauffman. We didn't go, but we felt very proud to think we
could if we wished, having lately read "Miss Angel."

There is a place in this neighborhood the name of which I refuse to
divulge, because, if I should tell it and disclose its attractions, the
next steamer from America would certainly bring over too many people to
occupy it, and so ruin it. I shall keep it for myself. But I will
describe it, and awaken as much longing and unrest and dissatisfaction
with American prices as I can. It isn't exactly a village, but it is
near a village. It has shady lanes that wind about between hedges;
houses that are placed as if with the express purpose of talking with
one another,--only three or four houses, with superb old trees hanging
over them. There is the nicest, brightest of _Fraus_,--who owns this bit
of land, the houses and the hedges and trees close by the water's edge,
a boat, a bath-house, and a great dog,--a happy, prosperous widow, with
a daughter to help in household matters, and to go briskly to market to
the neighboring town. So happy is she, one thinks involuntarily her
_Mann_ was perhaps aggressive, and that to be free from his presence may
be to her a blessing from Heaven. She lives in a house where the ceiling
is so low one must stoop going through the doors. The windows and doors
are all open. The tables and chairs are scoured snowy white. She brings
you milk in tall glasses,--it is cream, pure and simple. And then she
takes you into the house close by, with great airy chambers, and broad
low casements, under which the water ripples softly, and she tells you,
without apparently knowing herself, one of the wonders of the age,--that
she will rent her four rooms in this detached house for forty guldens a
month, and serve four persons from her own dwelling with fruit, meat,
cream, the best the land affords; and forty guldens are about twenty
dollars, gold. (This must not mislead the unwary. There are places
enough here where you can spend quite as much as you do at home.) We did
not quite faint, but we were very deeply moved. We did not even tell the
good woman that her terms were not exorbitant, crafty, worldly creatures
that we were. Here was one spot unspoiled by the madding crowd. We were
not the ones to bring pomps, and vanities, and high prices to it. So we
choked down our amazement, and hypocritically remarked it was all very
pleasant, and we thought perhaps we might return. Return! Of course we
shall return! When all things else fail, and ducats are painfully few,
then will we flee to this friendly abode, and live in a big room on the
lovely lake, so near, indeed, that we can almost fish from our windows;
have a boat to row, a bath-house at our service; quarts, gallons of
cream; and the Swiss mountains before our eyes morning, noon, and night;
and all for five dollars a month. I am telling the truth, but I do not
expect to be believed. I am tempted to write its name,--its pretty,
friendly, suggestive little name,--but I will not. It ends in LE, it
sounds like a caress, so much will I say; perhaps so much is indiscreet.
Don't waste your time looking for it. You will never find it. We only
happened to drift there. It really is not worth your while to search for
it. It is quite secluded, quite out of the way, a sleepy-hollow that I
am sure _you_ would find dull.

There are many green, sweet nooks, many pretty villages, many cleanly
little cottages, many smiling, broad-browed, clear-eyed women, on the
shores of the Lake of Constance; but our woman, our cottage, our cream,
our mountains, our _treasure_, you will never, never find.




THE VORARLBERG.


I feel a deep and ever-increasing sympathy with explorers of strange
lands whose narratives a harsh world pronounces exaggerations. What if
they do say that the unknown animal which darts across their path has
five heads and seventeen legs? There is a glamour over everything in an
utterly new place,--the very atmosphere is deceptive. After a while,
things assume their natural proportions, but at first it seems as if one
really did see with one's own eyes all these redundant members. Even
here in the beaten track of travel, writing as honestly as possible from
my own point of view, I feel like begging my friends to put no faith in
anything I say. The mountains in themselves are intoxicating enough to
turn one's head; but then of course much depends upon the kind of head
one possesses. Recently, at sunset by a lake, we were looking over the
water at a mountain view,--soft, wooded slopes near us, huge rocky
masses beyond, height upon height rising in hazy blue, the snowy summits
just touched by the Alpine glow,--when some strangers approached. Berlin
has the honor of being their dwelling-place, we ascertained afterwards.

"_Lieber Mann_," said the lady, "just look at all that snow!"

"Snow!" replied the _lieber Mann_, "snow in summer! But that is
impossible!"

"I think it must be snow," said the wife, doubtfully. Then, "But only
see the beautiful mountains."

"Hm, hm," remarks the _lieber Mann_, regarding them superciliously
through his eye-glass; "I can't say that they are particularly
well-formed!" Here, at least, is a head that is secure; no jocund day on
the misty mountain-tops, no broad, magnificent ranges at high noon, and
no twilight with "mountains in shadow, forests asleep," have power to
move that astute _Kopf_ a fraction of an inch. "They have better
mountains in Berlin," remarked a German friend in an undertone.

Bludenz is a little town in the Vorarlberg, which means, you know,--or
you don't know,--the country lying before the Adler or Arlberg, and the
Arlberg is the watershed between the Rhine and Danube, and the boundary
between the Vorarlberg and the Tyrol. This sounds guide-bookish,--and
very naturally, as I have copied it word for word from Baedecker,--but
one must say something of praiseworthy solidity once in a while. Bludenz
is a railway terminus, which fact may not interest the world at large,
but it did us hugely. We rejoiced in the thought of the great
post-wagon, the cracking of whips and blowing of horns, and long,
delightful, breezy rides over the hills and far away. Our
after-experience of this lively whip-cracking and horn-blowing has led
us to the conclusion that it is decidedly at its best in the opera,
where the Postilion of Lonjoumeau sings his pretty song and cracks his
whip for a gay refrain; and that it is all very well, when you yourself
are going off early in the morning amid the prodigious noise and the
excitement of stowing away passengers and packages, while a crowd of
village loafers stand gazing and gaping at you,--in short, when you are
"in it," you know; but when it is only other people who are going, only
they for whom all the noise is made and you are roused from your gentle
slumbers at half past four perhaps, you do not regard the postilion and
his accomplishments with unqualified admiration.

You wish you had gone to the "Eagle," or the "Ox," or the "Lamb," or the
"Swan," or the "Lion," or to any other beast or bird, rather than to the
"Post," where the "Post" omnibus and its relations make your mornings
miserable. These are always the names of the inns in these little towns.
There is usually a "Crown" too, and often an "Iron Cross." But people
with nerves mustn't go to the "Post." Our party left its nerves in the
city before starting off on a rough tour, yet even we have suffered at
various inns which bear the names of "Post," but which should properly
be called "Pandemonium."

Our first postilion wore the regulation long-boots, a postilion hat, and
silver pansies in his ears. He cracked his whip nobly,--as well as we
have heard Sontheim in the theatre at Stuttgart, and that is no faint
praise. He was the jolliest of men, on the best of terms with all the
dwellers among the mountains. He stopped at every inn and house where a
glass of wine was to be had, and I think I may say invariably drank it.
All the goodwives joked with him and smiled at him; all the men had a
friendly word for him, and all the peasant-girls who had lovers in
distant villages were continually stopping our great ark to send
packages, letters, or messages to the absent swain. He seemed to be for
the whole region a friend, patron, and adviser, a tutelary deity in
fact, and grand receptacle for confidences. He had a shrewd, kind face,
large clear eyes, and had driven among these mountains twenty-six years.
It really did not seem a bad way of spending one's days, always going
over the mountain-passes, knowing everybody and loved by everybody in
the country round. I admired him extremely, and felt very much elated at
the honor of sitting up on the box with so important a personage.

He told us a story of an Englishman who was inquiring how much it would
cost to be driven to a certain point.

The driver replied so many gulden.

"Impossible," said the Englishman; "Baedecker says half as many."

"I'll tell you what," answered the postilion; "let Baedecker take you,
then."

Having laughed at the poor stranger, it is only fair that we now laugh
at the natives.

"I spiks English," an innkeeper said to me. "Ein joli hearse," he
remarked further, to my great bewilderment, until it gradually dawned
upon me that this was English for "a pretty horse." There is a house in
this region whose proprietor wished to receive English lodgers, and
signified his desire to the world by hanging out this sign: "English
boards here."

After all, there are no more ludicrous verbal blunders in the world than
we English-speaking people continually make during our first year's
struggles with this mighty German tongue; and nowhere do a foreigner's
queer idioms and laughable choice of words meet with more kindness,
charity, courtesy, and helpfulness than in Germany. It is astonishing
how kind the Germans in general are in this respect. It is all very well
to say politeness demands such kindness; but where things sound so
irresistibly droll, I think sometimes we might shriek with laughter
where the Germans kindly correct, and do not even smile.

But we are neglecting Bludenz, for which little town we mean to say a
friendly word. It is usually considered only a stepping-stone to
something higher and better, but we liked it. The mountains rise on both
sides of the village and its one long road, where we walked at sunset,
crossing the bridge which spans the foaming, tumbling, rushing Ill.
Beyond the ravine of the Brandnerthal, the Scesaplana, the highest
mountain of the Raeticon range, rises from fields of snow. We strolled
along, breathing the sweet, pure air, meeting groups of peasant-girls,
all of whom carried their shoes in their hands. It was a fete day, and
they had been to vespers, putting their shoes on at the church door and
removing them when they came out. This most practical and admirable
method of saving shoe-leather, I venture to recommend to the fathers of
large families. It must be superior to "copper-toes." When we came back
to take our supper in a garden, somebody was playing Strauss waltzes,
with a touch so loving, spirited, and magnetic, it seemed as if the
mountains themselves must whirl off presently in response. In this land
a garden where people drink beer and wine, eat, smoke, rest, think,
enjoy, all in the open air, is sometimes made up of most delightful
surroundings; but on the other hand it sometimes means two emaciated,
dyspeptic trees, a gravel floor, and half a dozen wooden tables with
wretchedly uncomfortable chairs. But if it is an enclosure in the open
air with one table large enough to hold a beer-mug, it is still a
garden.

Our Bludenz garden was pleasant enough, however, and we sat there till
the mountains sank deeper and deeper into the gloom; and the _Maedchen_
who waited upon us told us about her native village, where her brother
was schoolmaster; our landlady came, too, and talked with us, quietly,
and somewhat with the manner of a hostess entertaining guests. It was
all very pretty and simple and kindly, and seemed the most natural thing
in the world, as it happened. The people here had intelligent faces,
clear eyes like children, and pleasant, courteous ways. The trouble
about all these little places is, we don't like to leave them. It seems
as if the new place could not be so pretty, the new people so kindly and
simple and honest, and we go about weakly, leaving fragments of our
hearts everywhere.

Then the mountain tramps we had, climbing high for a view, and then
glorying in it! A little maid was once our guide, who chattered to us
prettily all the way, and told us the chief events of her life,--how her
father and mother were dead, and her uncle beat her, and made her work
too hard; how there was a great, great, great bird who sat up on the
barren cliffs so high that never a _Jaeger_ could climb near enough to
shoot him; how he had eyes as big as a cow's, and when he sat on the
right cliff the weather was always fair, but when he sat on the left
there was storm among the mountains. This must be true, for we saw the
cliffs. Then she solemnly assured us, if we would go early to the chapel
in a neighboring village the following morning, we could get absolution
for all our sins, because, as it appeared, the priest there was going
far away, as missionary to America, and in farewell was washing the
souls of his flock with extra thoroughness. We told the child it was
very fortunate the good priest was going to America. From what we had
heard of that ungodly land, we thought it must be in sad need of
missionary work.

The scenery from Bludenz to Landeck is a series of picturesque, varied
views. The road ascends with many windings to the pass of the Arlberg,
when you are at last in the Tyrol; and the green, richly wooded
mountains, the jagged, rocky ones, the lofty peaks where the snow
gleams, together with the pure, invigorating air, and the swing of our
mountain chariot with its five horses,--which, if not very rapid, were
at least strong and fresh,--made altogether a thoroughly enjoyable
experience.

On the Arlberg we gathered our first Alpine roses. They are not so very
pretty, except as they grow often in masses so luxuriant as to give a
rosy effect to a broad slope. That is, they are pretty, but their
graceful cups droop so quickly when you take them from their native air
and native heights, that they are disappointing.

At St. Christoph, which is almost at the top of the Arlberg, we stopped
long enough to refresh ourselves with a glass of _Tiroler_ wine, and
were taken into a little chapel behind the inn to see a wooden statue of
St. Christopher, who seems to be held in peculiar veneration in this
region, being painted or carved in many churches and even on the walls
of houses. This was a great creature of eight or nine feet, standing in
the corner of the chapel, with glaring, beady eyes, glossy black painted
hair, and a huge staff, to represent the pine-tree of the sweet old
legend, in his hand; while on his shoulder was perched the child Jesus,
with a face like a small doll. He was as funny and grotesque a saint as
the world can boast, yet our hearts went strongly out to him when we
learned what a very little peasant-boy it was who had made him with his
pocket-knife out of a block of wood, and particularly when we observed
his saintship's legs, never too symmetrical, but now hacked and chipped
into utter deformity, and were told the reason. Every child in this
neighborhood who must leave his mountain home takes a bit of St.
Christopher with him as a talisman against homesickness. Poor little
souls! Imagine them coming to say, "Lebewohl zu dem heiligen Christoph,"
and tearfully hacking away in the region of his patellas and tibias and
fibulas, because long ago they have removed the exterior of his stalwart
members, and he will soon be dangerously undermined. His shoulders are
sufficiently developed to bear considerable cutting down without
perceptibly diminishing them; but I presume the little ones attack the
region which they can most conveniently reach.

Lovely air and lovely hills! No wonder the children fear Heimweh will
come to their hearts when they can no longer see the little village
houses all huddled together round the church with the tall spire, while
the green hills rise on every side, and the morning mists roll from
them, and the evening glow warms and glorifies their cold, white
summits, and the impetuous mountain torrent goes foaming by.

We felt premonitory symptoms of homesickness ourselves for those fair
and noble heights, and we wanted very much to beg for a bit of St.
Christopher's knee-pan. But they would not have given us an atom of the
dear old, hideous, overgrown giant-saint, worthless heretics that we
are.




IN THE TYROL.


They said Landeck would not please us, but it did. They said it was not
pretty, but it was. They said we would not stay there, but that is all
they knew about it or us. In itself, so far as its houses are concerned,
it is not attractive, it is true; but it lies in a very picturesque way
on both banks of the Inn, which rushes and roars constantly at this
point, and the hills around are bold and beautiful. It has its ancient
castle, on the heights directly above the town; but the castle now is a
failure, whatever proud tales its walls might tell us could they
speak,--a failure even as a "ruin," I mean. It is not very high, but the
path is steep; and when you get to the top you wish you had remained
below, for there is nothing to reward you. The view is no finer than you
can have from almost any point here; and the castle is simply nothing to
see, being only a few gray walls without form or comeliness, in the
shade of which, the day we visited it, sat a few poor old women, who now
occupy it, with snails and bats and wind and storm, rent free.

To Zams, the next village, you walk along the river road past fields of
grain, where cornflowers and poppies are gayly growing, and the water
hurrying from the mountains sings its loud, bold song, and everywhere
around are the varied hues and heights of the Tyrolean Alps. At Zams
there is a beautiful waterfall, which you must seek if you would see,
for it hides itself from the world. Over a bridge, along the river road,
then through lanes where there were more of the pretty cornflowers and
gay poppies, past a group of cottages, a mill, a noisy brook, a mass of
rugged cliffs, we strolled, the voice of the falling water calling us
ever nearer and nearer, until suddenly at the last it was before us. The
rocks conceal it on every side up to the last moment when you are
directly at the foot of it,--one of the fine dramatic effects in which
Mother Nature likes sometimes to indulge.

It falls with great force a hundred and fifty feet, perhaps,--this is a
wild feminine guess, yet somewhere near the truth, I hope,--in a narrow,
immensely swift stream, which, as it issues from the rock, runs a little
diagonally. It has forced a passage through the rock, and when we saw it
was sweeping through this aperture; but in stormy weather it hurls
itself over the summit of the ledge, increasing its height many feet,
and is magnificent in its fury. An experienced mountain-climber told us
that there are a succession of these falls, of which this is the seventh
and last, and the only one that can be seen without painful and
dangerous climbing, they are so singularly concealed. The stream springs
from the glaciers far away, and leaps from rock to rock in wild, unseen
beauty. It seemed to speak to us of the lonely, frozen heights and
solitude of its birthplace.

From Landeck to Innsbruck the scenery, taken all in all, though
pleasing, is less bold and more monotonous than are many other parts of
the Tyrol. There are many historical points of interest here, and
reminders of the bravery of the mountaineers in different wars. You see
where they stood high on their native hills hurling down trunks of trees
and huge masses of rock on the invading Bavarians; and what this work of
destruction failed to do, the sure aim of the Tyrolese riflemen
effectually accomplished.

In one village they exhibit the room where Frederic Augustus, king of
Saxony, died suddenly from the kick of a horse. Having no inordinate
interest in his deceased majesty, we were quite content to gaze placidly
at the outside of the house from the post-wagon, as we informed the man
who tried to induce us to march in, pay our fees, and so increase the
revenues of the inn. He was deeply disgusted, and evidently considered
us persons of inferior taste.

You are shown, off at the right of the road on a wooded height, the
ruins of Schloss Petersburg, the birthplace of Margaret, daughter of the
count of the Tyrol through whom Tyrol came into the possession of the
emperors of Austria.

We have seen so many little villages more or less alike, all having
saints painted on their houses in brilliant hues, and mottoes over their
doorways,--some religious, some quite secular and merry, and all, too,
having names of one syllable, composed chiefly of consonants, such as
Imst, Silz, Zams, Mils, Telfs, Zirl,--we cannot hope to remember them
with that clearness which characterizes the well-regulated mind on its
travels. (No one in our party _has_ a well-regulated mind.) But we have
a way among ourselves of designating places, which is quite satisfactory
and intelligible to us. For instance, we say, "That was where we drank
the cream"; "That was where the innkeeper was a barrel, with head and
feet protruding"; "That was where that interesting body, the fire
department, were feasting at long tables and singing Tyrolean songs";
"The village where we met the procession, old men and maidens, young men
and children, singing, chanting, telling their beads, bearing candles,
and, most of all, staring at the strangers."--And what were the
strangers doing? Staring at the people, to be sure. We always stare. We
are here for that purpose.--"The village where the girl put a flower in
her sweetheart's hat." And how pretty it was! The post-wagon had hardly
stopped before a good-looking youth dashed down from its top, and at the
same instant a rosy waiter-girl dashed out from the inn, bearing a tall
mug of foaming beer. She had eyes but for him. He had eyes but for
her--and the beer. Entranced they met! They stood a little apart from us
by a garden, and beamed and smiled at each other and whispered their
secrets, and didn't care a straw whether we stupid "other people" saw
them or not. They had but a few moments of bliss, for the boy had to go
on with the post; but while he was drinking the very last of that
reviving fluid, she took his hat from his head, and, stooping to the
flowers beside her, chose a great flaming carnation pink, which she
fastened in his hat-band. He looked pleased, which of course made her
look pleased; but what a wise little village-Hebe it was to give him the
beer first! What would he have cared for the flower when his throat was
dusty and thirsty! It is such a pity some women always persist in
offering their flowers and graces too soon,--forgetting the nature of
the creature they adore.

In an inn at one village was a table which we coveted strongly. It was,
they said, a hundred and fifty years old, octagonal, four or five feet
in diameter, made of inlaid woods in the natural colors, now darkened
with age. Broad, solid, firm, it looked as if it might last a hundred
and fifty years longer and then retain its vigor of constitution. It had
a wise, knowing air, as of having seen a great deal of the world; and
the landlord told us tales of drinking and fighting and scenes of rough
soldier-life, which were enough to make it tremble for its existence.
Bavarian soldiers once, when they were occupying the village, used it
rather roughly, and left as many sword-cuts and dents in it as they
could make in its brave, firm wood. Its centre was a slate or
blackboard, on which beer accounts are conveniently reckoned.

Just beyond Zirl, the Martinswand rises sixteen hundred feet
perpendicularly above the road. It has its story, to which everybody who
comes here must listen.

The Emperor Maximilian, in 1493, was chasing a chamois above the
Martinswand, and, having lost his way, made a misstep, fell down to the
edge of a precipice, and hung there, unable to recover his footing. The
priest of Zirl came with some of his people, and, it being impossible to
reach him, stood at the bottom of the cliff, elevated the host, granting
him absolution; and then, in horror, awaited the end. But "an angel in
the garb of a chamois-hunter" appeared at this crisis, and bore the
exhausted monarch to a place of safety. The perilous spot, nine hundred
feet above the river, is now marked by a cross, and the paten used by
the priest is a blessed relic in a church.

The story seems to be quite generally believed in this neighborhood. We
sceptical strangers do not find it so enormous a morsel to swallow as is
sometimes presented to us. I presume if any of us were dangling between
heaven and earth, with the immediate prospect of falling nine hundred
feet, we would be very apt to call whatever should rescue us an "angel."




INNSBRUCK.


Innsbruck impressed us, at first, as being far too citified for us to
delight in. Entering its streets about sunset, the time when we have of
late been accustomed to see the cows come home in great herds from the
mountain pastures, we, our bags and shawl-straps, were deposited upon
the sidewalk; for when the post stops, you stop without ceremony, and
are never taken to the particular hotel where you wish to go. We stared
blankly at the broad streets and ruefully at one another. Our eyes,
instead of seeing lowing herds, fell upon gallant young officers in
brilliant uniforms. We became painfully aware of certain defects in our
personal appearance, of which we had been beautifully unconscious in the
rural mountain districts. We observed for the first time that there were
chasms in our gloves, indented peaks in our hats, alluvial deposits on
our gowns; while our boots suggested dangerous ravines, bridged across
by one button, instead of boasting that goodly, decorous row without
which no civilized woman can be truly respectable. We revenged ourselves
by calling Innsbruck "tame," and declaring that we would at once flee to
our mountain. But it is surprising how quickly we have become accustomed
to the luxuries of life in an excellent hotel, how bravely we bear the
infliction of well-cooked dinners, with what fortitude we recline in
luxurious chairs, and allow well-trained servants to wait upon us.
Already we have remained longer than we intended, there is so much here
that interests us; but soon we start off again to commune with Nature
and get sunburned.

Then, the truth is, Innsbruck, which looked so enormous, so grand, to
our eyes, used as they were to Tyrolean villages,--we know now how the
typical country cousin feels when he comes "to town" for the first
time,--is only a little place most charmingly situated on the Inn, in a
great broad valley, with mountains ten thousand feet high on one side,
and on the other heights that look almost as bold. It has, including its
large garrison, eighteen or twenty thousand inhabitants, and with its
pleasant atmosphere, extended views, charming mountain excursions,
peasants in a variety of costumes, soldiers in a variety of uniforms,
excellent music, and many things of historical interest to see, is a
very enjoyable place.

The Museum is thoroughly interesting; a visit to Schloss Amras, where
Archduke Ferdinand II. and his wife Philippina Welser used to live, is
an inevitable but agreeable excursion; you are shown buildings erected
by celebrated personages,--among them a "golden roof" over a balcony of
a palace which Count Frederic of the Tyrol built to prove that he did
not deserve the nickname, "with the empty pockets." But the chief thing
to see, the glory of Innsbruck, is the Maximilian monument in the
Franciscan church. Maximilian, in bronze, kneels on a marble pedestal in
the centre of the nave, and eight-and-twenty great bronze figures of
kings and queens and heroes surround him. Some are stately and grand;
some--dare I say?--are comical. The feet of these mailed heroes are so
broad and big and their ankles so attenuated, you are reminded of the
marine armor worn by divers; and the waists of the women, in the heavy
folds of ancient times, are so enormously dumpy and their heads so
curious, you smile in their august faces, though the whole effect of all
these dark, still figures in the dim church is imposing in the extreme.

They are all celebrated people, whose histories we know; or, if we do
not, we ought to. There is Clovis of France, who looks very important
indeed, and Philip of Spain. There is Johanna, Philip's queen;
Cunigunde, sister of Maximilian; Eleanora of Portugal, his mother; and
there are many more "dear, dead women," with stately, beautiful names,
and they themselves, no doubt, were stately and beautiful too, but they
are not handed down to posterity in a very flattering guise. There is
Godfrey de Bouillon, "king of Jerusalem," with a crown of thorns on his
head. But the two that are really lovely to see are Theodoric, king of
the Ostrogoths, and Arthur of England. Susceptible, romantic girls of
eighteen should not be allowed to gaze too long at these ideal young
men. It will make them discontented with the realities of life, and they
will spend their days dreaming of knightly figures in bronze.

Theodoric is considered the finest as a work of art. So says all
established authority; but to me Arthur is hardly less interesting.
Perhaps, in some absurd way, it gratified us of Anglo-Saxon blood to
see, in the midst of these Rudolphs and Sigismunds, these counts of
Hapsburg and dukes of Burgundy, a hero who seemed to belong to us; but,
whatever was the cause, the blameless king won our loving admiration.

Theodoric is the more graceful. He stands in an easy, leaning attitude.
He is lost in thought. He is in full armor, but he may be dreaming of
something far removed from war. Arthur is firm and proud and strong,
looking every inch a king and a true knight. Both are knightly. Both are
kingly. Their figures are slight and strong, and they stand like _young_
heroes amid these mighty old potentates, some of whom look as if gout
might have been a greater source of trouble to them than their enemies.

If your affections are divided, as were ours, between the two, the best
thing to do, perhaps, is to repair immediately to the store where the
wood-carving and Tyrol souvenirs make you feel quite miserable,--you
want so much more than you can possibly have,--and carefully select a
Theodoric and an Arthur from the many representations of them, in wood
of different colors and in various sizes, that you will there see. If
you march off with them, you will feel sublime enough not to be beguiled
into yielding to the temptation of the paper-knives and boxes and
innumerable fascinating knick-knacks made by the Tyrolean wood-carvers.
But do have them well packed, for it is very sad to see Arthur without
his visor and Theodoric with several fractured fingers.

On the sarcophagus, below the kneeling Maximilian, are marble reliefs
representing the chief events in the emperor's life. Thorwaldsen
pronounced the first nineteen the most perfect work of its kind in the
world. These are by Colin, and the others,--there are twenty-four in
all,--by Bernhard and Albert Abel, are less remarkable in their
perspective, and far less clear. Colin's are very interesting to study
carefully. In battle scenes, in grand wedding feasts, with hundreds of
spectators, in triumphant entries into conquered cities, every face,
every weapon, every feature, and all the most minute details are
executed with wonderful clearness.

Three or four of the oldest women in the world were saying their prayers
in the church as we wandered about, or sat quietly looking at these men
and woman of the past, while queer snatches of history, poetry, and
romance came and went confusedly in our minds.

You see here, too, a little "Silver Chapel," so called from a silver
statue of the Virgin over the altar. The tomb of the Archduke Ferdinand
II., by Colin, is here, and that of Philippina Welser; and near the
entrance, in the main church, is a fine statue, in Tyrolese marble, of
Andreas Hofer, and memorial tablets in honor of all the Tyrolese who
have died for their country since 1796.

We have been refreshing our memories in regard to Andreas Hofer, and are
extremely interested in his career; but, having just suffered a grievous
disappointment with which he is connected, we are going to try to banish
every thought of him from our minds. A play representing his whole life
was to have been enacted to-day in a neighboring village; but to-day it
rains, and as the village histrionic talent was going to display itself
in the open air, "Andreas Hofer" is postponed till to-morrow, when,
unfortunately, we shall be riding over hill and dale in a post-wagon. We
have tried to prevail upon the post-wagon powers to allow us to wait a
day, but they are obdurate. We can wait if we care to pay our passage
twice, not otherwise. This cross may be well for a party that usually
sails along on the full tide of prosperity, having always the rooms it
wants, front seats in post-wagons, the good-will of drivers and guides,
and that hasn't lost or broken anything since it started.

It is possible that we are too successful and need this discipline. But
only think what we lose!--a village drama in the open air, given by
village amateurs in the _patois_ of the district. According to the
announcement, the tailor--the Herr Schneider--was to be
director-in-chief; and the audience would audibly express its praise and
blame, while the actors would have the liberty of retiring. This, added
to heroics in dialect, certainly promised an entertaining scene. The
costumes, too, were to be like those worn in Andreas Hofer's time, and
the tailor's daughter was to be leading lady. Was, do I say? Is--is yet
to be, but not for us, alas!




OHENSCHWANGAU AND NEU SCHWANSTEIN.


It pains me to think that the king of Bavaria, or any other fine-looking
young gentleman, would deliberately scowl at an inoffensive party of
ladies who were, one and all, only too pleased to have the opportunity
of gazing smilingly at him. But the truth is, he did. The way it
happened is this. We and the king of Bavaria are at present travelling
in the North Tyrol. But he cannot have wanted so much as we to go to the
South Tyrol, which is bolder and grander, or he would have gone there,
not being bound by petty considerations of convenience and expense like
ordinary tourists. At a little inn, "Auf der Ferne," between Innsbruck
and Reutte, in a place called Fernstein, by a lake named Fernsee (and
also "The Three Lakes," because the land juts out on one side in two
long points, making three pretty coves where the tranquil water meets
the soft green shores), the post-wagon halted, that our postilion might
drink his glass of native wine. There were numerous servants in
blue-and-silver livery at the door, and we were told King Louis was
driving in the neighborhood, and that we would certainly meet him. While
we were waiting, the people regaled us with tales of the young king's
eccentricities. Some of his extravagant fancies remind one of the
Arabian Nights, or old fairy-tales, more than of anything in these
latter days. He usually travels by night, for instance, and sleeps, the
little that he ever sleeps, mornings. He drives fast through the
darkness, servants with torches galloping in advance, stopping here and
there only long enough for a change of horses, his own horses and
servants being in readiness for him at the different inns along the
route. Often his carriage dashes up to this inn, "Auf der Ferne," at
twelve o'clock at night, and then this deliciously eccentric being is
rowed across the little Fernsee to a tiny island, where he partakes, by
the romantic gleam of torches, of a feast prepared by French cooks.
Rowed back to the shore, he starts again with fresh horses and goes
swiftly on, through the night, to some other inn, where the noise of his
arrival awakens all the sleepers.

We heard him later ourselves at two in the morning at an inn on the road
where we were staying, and in fact were told by the landlord that he was
expected; were shown the sacred apartment set apart for his majesty, who
now and then sits an hour in it at some unearthly time of night, and we
were advised to peep through our curtains at him, his suite, and his
horses, torches, etc.; but such was the sleepiness created by a ride of
sixteen hours in mountain air, that, though we were dimly conscious
something of interest was happening, I do not think we would have been
able to stir, to see even Solomon in all his glory. This was the true
reason, but the one that we pretended actuated us is quite different. We
remark with dignity that no young woman of proper spirit will condescend
to peep through a curtain at a man who has scowled at her, king or no
king.

But I must tell you how, when, and where the royal scowl took place. We
had left the little inn by the lake, and were riding along in an
expectant mood, when there came a great clatter of hoofs, and two
blue-and-silver men dashed by followed by an open carriage, where King
Louis sat alone. A kind fate ordained that the road should be narrow at
this point, with a steep bank on one side, over which it would not be
pleasant to be precipitated; so the royal coachman, as well as our
driver, moderated the speed of his horses, and we therefore had an
admirable opportunity to see this "_idealisch_" young man--as the
Germans call him--distinctly. The ceremonies performed were few. Our
postilion took off his hat; so did the king. Then it seemed good in his
sight to deliberately throw back his head, look full in our amiable,
smiling, interested countenances, and indulge in a haughty and an
unmistakable scowl. He must have slept even less than usual that
morning. We were not accustomed to have young men scowl at us, and
really felt quite hurt. If he had looked grand and unseeing, had gazed
off abstractedly upon the mountain-tops, we would have been delighted
with him. As it is, we cannot honestly say that we consider his manner
to strangers ingratiating. Still, as the melancholy fact is that he
hates women, his scowl probably meant no especial aversion to our humble
selves, but was merely the expression of the immense scorn and disgust
he feels towards the sex at large.

In revenge, I hasten to say that, though he certainly has a
distinguished air, and a fine head, and the great eyes that look so
dreamy and poetical in the photographs of him at eighteen or twenty, he
is not nearly so handsome as those early pictures. Perhaps he can look
dreamy still; but of this he granted us no opportunity to judge, and he
has grown stout, and has lost the delicate refinement of his youth.

This road to Reutte is one of the finest of the mountain-passes between
the Tyrol and Bavaria. The deep, wooded ravines, lovely, dark-green
lakes, and noble heights make the landscape very beautiful and
inspiring. Near Lennos, you see on the east great bald limestone
precipices, the snowy Zugspitze, 9,761 feet high, the Schneefernerkopf,
9,462 feet, and other peaks of 8,000 feet and more; while you spy
picturesque ruins, old hunting-seats, and fortresses here and there high
on the proud cliffs.

Reutte has large, broad, pretty houses. It is said laughingly that there
is not a house in the place which a king or some other exalted being has
not selected to die in, or in some way to make memorable.

From this place we have pursued still farther our studies of royalty,
having met with so much encouragement at the outset. We have visited the
Schloss Hohenschwangau, where the king of Bavaria and his mother, the
queen, spend some time every summer; and also Schloss Schwanstein, which
is yet building, but where the young king often stays, unfinished as it
is.

The way to Hohenschwangau leads through a charming park. The castle was
once a Roman fort, they say, then a baronial estate, then almost
destroyed by the Tyrolese, then bought by King Max of Bavaria, who had
it remodelled and ornamented with fine frescos by Munich artists.

In the vestibule is an inscription in gold letters on blue, which says
something like this:--

    "Welcome, wanderer,--welcome, fair and gracious women!
    Leave all care behind!
    Yield your souls to the sweet influences of poetry."

Isn't that a pretty greeting? It's all very well, however, to have such
things written on your walls, and then to go about the world scowling at
people; but it doesn't look consistent. From the vestibule you pass into
a long hall, where are two rows of columns, old suits of armor standing
like men on guard on both sides, shields, spears, halberds, and
cross-bows on the walls, and a little chapel at the end.

The frescos throughout the castle are very interesting. From the
billiard-room, with a pretty balcony, you go into the Schwanrittersaal,
where the pictures on the walls represent the legend of the Knight of
the Swan, and remind you of the opera of "Lohengrin." The painted glass
of the doors opening from this room upon a balcony is of the seventeenth
century.

There is an Oriental room, with reminiscences of King Max's Eastern
travels. Here you see Smyrna, Troja, the Dardanelles, Constantinople, in
fresco; rich presents from the Sultan, a table-cover embroidered by the
wives of the Sultan, jewelled fans, etc.

There is an Autharis room, with frescos by Schwind, telling the story of
the wooing of the Princess Theudelinda by the Lombard king, Autharis. Do
you feel perfectly familiar with the history of Autharis and
Theudelinda? Because, if you do not, I don't really know of any one just
at this moment who feels competent to give you the slightest information
upon the subject.

There is a room of the knights, the frescos illustrating mediaeval
chivalry,--a Charlemagne room. There are, in fact, more rooms than you
care to read about or I care to describe, and many rich objects to see.
In the queen's apartments was a casket of gold studded with turquoises
and rubies; elegant toilet-tables rosy with silk linings, soft with
falling lace; and there is one dear little balcony-room, cosy and full
of familiar pictures,--Raphael's cherubs, a little painting of Edelweiss
and Alpine roses; and actually two real spinning-wheels: one is the
queen's, and the other belonged to a young court lady whose recent death
was a deep grief to the queen, it is said.

But the most striking, and in the end fascinating, thing in the castle
is the number of swans you see. It would be difficult to convey any idea
of the swan-atmosphere of this place. Swans support baskets for flowers
and vases. There are swans in china, in marble, in alabaster, in gold
and silver, on the tables, on the mantels and brackets, painted,
embroidered on cushions and footstools,--everywhere you find them. A
half-dozen of different sizes stand together on a small table, some of
them large, some as tiny as the toy swan a child sails in his glass
preserve-dish for a pond. There is a swan-fountain in the garden; a
great swan on the stove in a reception-room.

King Louis can bathe every day in a gold bath-tub if he wishes. Our eyes
have seen it, though the guide said he had never shown it before. I have
no means of knowing whether the man told the truth. There is another and
yet more enticing bath-room hewn out of the solid rock. We entered it
from the garden. From without, its walls look like dark thick glass,
through which one sees absolutely nothing. From within, the effect is
enchanting. You see the highest tower of the castle on one side rising
directly above you, the lovely garden with its choice flowers and superb
trees, the grand mountains beyond,--and all bathed in a deep rosy light
from the hue of the glass. It is an enchanted grotto, and very Arabian
Nights-ish. A marble nymph stands on each side of the bath, which is cut
in the centre of the stone floor, and one of them turns on a pivot,
disclosing a concealed niche, into which you step and slowly swing round
until you are in a subterranean passage, from which a mysterious
stairway leads to the dressing-room above.

We went everywhere, even into the king's little study, up in the tower,
where we were explicitly told not to go. It was a simply furnished room,
with an ordinary writing-table, upon which papers and writing-materials
were strewn about, and important-looking envelopes directed to the king.
And it commanded a lovely view of mountains, broad plains, and four
lakes, the Alpsee, Schwansee, Hopfensee, and Bannwaldsee.

Our little tour of inspection was just in time, for at twelve that
night, the castle servants told us, the king would come dashing up to
his own door, after which there can be of course no admittance to
visitors.

Hohenschwangau is most beautifully situated, but the Neu Schwanstein is
still more striking. It is founded upon a rock. You climb to reach it,
and you can climb far higher on the mountains that tower behind it. It
stands directly by a deep ravine, and the view from it is magnificent.
The young king here by his own hearthstone has wild and abrupt mountain
scenery,--a rocky gorge, crossed by a delicate wire bridge, an impetuous
waterfall; and looking far, far off from the battlements he sees
villages, many lakes, dense woods, winding streams, Hohenschwangau
looking proudly towards its royal neighbor, and the glorious mountains
circling and guarding the valley. Living here, one would feel like a god
on high Olympus looking down upon humanity toiling on the plains below.

The king likes this place, and it is said wishes to remain here when the
queen, his mother, comes to Hohenschwangau. But this is an unwarrantable
intrusion upon their little family differences, which they should enjoy
unmolested, like you and me. Schwanstein in its exterior form and
character resembles a mediaeval castle, and the appointments in the
servants' wing, the only part of the interior as yet finished, are
strictly in keeping. There are solid oaken benches and tables, carved
cases and chests, oaken bedsteads as simply made as possible, and
windows with tiny oval or diamond panes.

The room occupied temporarily by the king is very small and simple,--has
a plain oak bedstead and dressing-table. Across the bed were thrown
blankets, on which were blue swans and blue lions, and in the
dining-room adjoining the carpet was blue, with golden Bavarian lions,
and the all-pervading swans. This was a pretty room, the frescos
illustrating the story of a life in mediaeval times,--the life of a
warrior from the moment when he starts forth from his father's door, a
fair-haired boy, to seek his fortunes in the great world. Mountain
scenery, village life, his first service to a knight, battle, gallant
deeds, receiving knighthood, betrayal, imprisonment, escape,
victory,--all the eventful story until he sits with men old like
himself, and over their wine they tell of the doughty deeds of the past;
and then, older still, and frail and feeble and alone, he leans upon his
staff as he rests under a tree where careless children play around him.

A charming road, through the woods belonging to the Schwanstein park,
leads to the castle, past the lovely Alpsee, which looks deep and calm,
and lies lovingly nestled among the beautiful woods that surround it and
that rise high above it, as if striving to conceal its loveliness from
profane eyes.

We saw forty of the royal horses--pretty creatures they were too--each
with the name painted over the stall. We were reading them aloud, they
were so odd and fanciful, when, as one of us said Fenella, the little
horse that claimed that name turned her pretty head and tried to come to
us. However gently we would call her, she always heard and looked at us.
Encouraged by this gracious condescension on the part of a royal animal,
we ventured to make friends with her; and if ever a horse smiled with
good-will and delight it was Fenella when we gave her sugar.

His majesty's carriages were also shown to us, and received our
approval. They are plain and elegant, but do not differ from high-toned
equipages in general. A narrow little phaeton, low, and large enough to
hold but one person, we were told was a favorite of the king. In it,
with a man at each side of the horse's head leading him, and bearing a
torch, the king amuses himself by ascending dangerous mountain-roads at
night. They say it is astonishing where he will go in this manner. Fancy
meeting that scowling but interesting young man, his torches and his
funny little vehicle, on a lonely peak at midnight!




LIFE IN SCHATTWALD.


We have been in the Tyrol many days, in villages among the mountains,
living in simplicity, content, and charity to all mankind. We have
believed that our condition was as thoroughly rural as anything that
could possibly be attained by people who only want to be rural
temporarily as an experiment. But our present experience so far
transcends all that we have known in the past, that the other villages
seem like bustling, important towns, unpleasantly copying city ways,
compared with this funny little quiet Schattwald.

We came here from Reutte in an open carriage, passed through a
wonderfully beautiful ravine, saw the lovely dark-green lakes that
delight the soul in this 

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