University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.
MILL-WHEELS AND OTHER WHEELS.

A few days after this the Baron received letters
from his sister, telling him, that her physicians had
prescribed a few weeks at the Baths of Ems, and
urging him to meet her there before the fashionable
season.

“Come,” said he to Flemming; “make this
short journey with me. We will pass a few pleasant
days at Ems, and visit the other watering-places
of Nassau. It will drive away the melancholy
day-dreams that haunt you. Perhaps some
future bride is even now waiting for you, with dim
presentiments and undefined longings, at the Serpent's
Bath.”

“Or some widow of Ems, with a cork-leg!”
said Flemming, smiling; and then added, in a tone

of voice half jest, half earnest, “Certainly; let
us go in pursuit of her;—

They started in the afternoon for Frankfort,
pursuing their way slowly along the lovely
Bergstrasse, famed throughout Germany for its
beauty. They passed the ruined house where
Martin Luther lay concealed after the Diet of
Worms, and through the village of Handschuhsheimer,
as old as the days of King Pepin the Short,
—a hamlet, lying under the hills, half-buried in
blossoms and green leaves. Close on the right
rose the mountains of the mysterious Odenwald;
and on the left lay the Neckar, like a steel bow in
the meadow. Farther westward, a thin, smoky
vapor betrayed the course of the Rhine; beyond
which, like a troubled sea, ran the blue, billowy

Alsatian hills. Song of birds, and sound of evening
bells, and fragrance of sweet blossoms filled
the air; and silent and slow sank the broad red
sun, half-hidden amid folding clouds.

“We shall not pass the night at Weinheim,”
said the Baron to the postilion, who had dismounted
to walk up the hill, leading to the town.
“You may drive to the mill in the Valley of
Birkenau.”

The postilion seized one of his fat horses by
the tail, and swung himself up to his seat again.
They rattled through the paved streets of Weinheim,
and took no heed of the host of the Golden
Eagle, who stood so invitingly at the door of his
own inn; and the ruins of Burg Windeck, above
there, on its mountain throne, frowned at them for
hurrying by, without staying to do him homage.

“The old ruin looks well from the valley,”
said the Baron; “but let us beware of climbing
that steep hill. Most travellers are like children;
they must needs touch whatever they behold.
They climb up to every old broken tooth of a

castle, which they find on their way;—get a
toilsome ascent and hot sunshine for their pains,
and come down wearied and disappointed. I trust
we are wiser.”

They crossed the bridge, and turned up the
stream, passing under an arch of stone, which
serves as a gateway to this enchanted Valley of
Birkenau. A cool and lovely valley! shut in by
high hills;—shaded by alder-trees and tall poplars,
under which rushes the Wechsnitz, a noisy
mountain brook, that ever and anon puts its
broad shoulder to the wheel of a mill, and
shows that it can labor as well as laugh. At one
of these mills they stopped for the night.

A mill forms as characteristic a feature in the
romantic German landscape, as in the romantic
German tale. It is not only a mill, but likewise
an ale-house and rural inn; so that the associations
it suggests are not of labor only, but also
of pleasure. It stands in the narrow defile, with
its picturesque, thatched roof; thither throng the

peasants, of a holiday; and there are rustic dances
under the trees.

In the twilight of the fast-approaching summer
night, the Baron and Flemming walked
forth along the borders of the stream. As they
heard it, rushing and gushing among the stones and
tangled roots, and the great wheel turning in the
current, with its never-ceasing plash! plash! it
brought to their minds that exquisite, simple song
of Goethe, the Youth and the Mill-brook. It was
for the moment a nymph, which sang to them in
the voice of the waters.

“I am persuaded,” said Flemming, “that, in
order fully to understand and fell the popular
poetry of Germany, one must be familiar with the
German landscape. Many sweet little poems are
the outbreaks of momentary feelings;—words, to
which the song of birds, the rustling of leaves, and
the gurgle of cool waters form the appropriate
music. Or perhaps I should say they are words,
which man has composed to the music of nature.
Can you not, even now, hear this brooklet telling

you how it is on its way to the mill, where at day-break
the miller's daughter opens her window, and
comes down to bathe her face in its stream, and
her bosom is so full and white, that it kindles the
glow of love in the cool waters!”

“A most delightful ballad, truly,” said the
Baron. “But like many others of our little songs,
it requires a poet to fell and understand it. Sing
them in the valley and woodland shadows, and
under the leafy roofs of garden walks, and at night,
and alone, as they were written. Sing them not in
the loud world,—for the loud world laughs such
things to scorn. It is Mueller who says, in that
little song, where the maiden bids the moon good
evening;

He has written a great many pretty songs, in
which the momentary, indefinite longings and impulses
of the soul of man find an expression. He
calls them the songs of a Wandering Horn-player.
There is one among them much to our present
purpose. He expresses in it, the feeling of unrest
and desire of motion, which the sight and sound of
running waters often produce in us. It is entitled,
`Whither?' and is worth repeating to you.

“There you have the poetic reverie,” said
Flemming, “and the dull prose commentary and
explanation in matter of fact. The song is pretty;
and was probably suggested by some such
scene as this, which we are now beholding.
Doubtless all your old national traditions sprang
up in the popular mind as this song in the
poet's.”

“Your opinion is certainly correct,” answered
the Baron; “and yet all this play of poetic fancy
does not prevent me from feeling the chill night
air, and the pangs of hunger. Let us go back to
the mill, and see what our landlady has for supper.

Did you observe what a loud, sharp voice
she has?”

“People always have, who live in mills, and
near water-falls.”

On the following morning they emerged unwillingly
from the green, dark valley, and journeyed
along the level highway to Frankfort, where in
the evening they heard the glorious Don Giovanni
of Mozart. Of all operas this was Flemming's
favorite. What rapturous flights of sound! what
thrilling, pathetic chimes! what wild, joyous revelry
of passion! what a delirium of sense!—what
an expression of agony and woe! all the feelings of
suffering and rejoicing humanity sympathized with
and finding a voice in those tones. Flemming and
the Baron listened with ever-increasing delight.

“How wonderful this is!” exclaimed Flemming,
transported by his feelings. “How the
chorus swells and dies, like the wind of summer!
How those passages of mysterious import seem
to wave to and fro, like the swaying branches
of trees; from which anon some solitary sweet

voice darts off like a bird, and floats away and
revels in the bright, warm sunshine! And then
mark! how, amid the chorus of a hundred voices
and a hundred instruments,—of flutes, and drums,
and trumpets,—this universal shout and whirl-wind
of the vexed air, you can so clearly distinguish
the melancholy vibration of a single string,
touched by the finger,—a mournful, sobbing
sound! Ah, this is indeed human life! where in
the rushing, noisy crowd, and amid sounds of
gladness, and a thousand mingling emotions, distinctly
audible to the ear of thought, are the
pulsations of some melancholy string of the heart,
touched by an invisible hand.”

Then came, in the midst of these excited feelings,
the ballet; drawing its magic net about
the soul. And soon, from the tangled yet harmonious
mazes of the dance, came forth a sylph-like
form, her scarf floating behind her, as if
she were fanning the air with gauze-like wings.
Noiseless as a feather or a snow-flake falls, did
her feet touch the earth. She seemed to float

in the air, and the floor to bend and wave under
her, as a branch, when a bird alights upon
it, and takes wing again. Loud and rapturous
applause followed each wonderful step, each voluptuous
movement; and, with a flushed cheek
and burning eye, and bosom panting to be free,
stood the gracefully majestic figure for a moment
still, and then the winged feet of the swift dancing-girls
glanced round her, and she was lost again in
the throng.

“How truly exquisite this is!” exclaimed the
Baron, after joining loudly in the applause.
“What a noble figure! What grace! what attitudes!
How much soul in every motion! how
much expression in every gesture! I assure you,
it produces upon me the same effect as a beautiful
poem. It is a poem. Every step is a word; and
the whole together a poem!”

The Baron and Flemming were delighted with
the scene; and at the same time exceedingly
amused with the countenance of an old prude in
the next box, who seemed to look upon the whole

magic show, with such feelings as Michal, Saul's
daughter, experienced, when she looked from her
window and saw King David dancing and leaping
with his scanty garments.

“After all,” said Flemming, “the old French
priest was not so far out of the way, when he said,
in his coarse dialect, that the dance is the Devil's
procession; and paint and ornaments, the whetting
of the devil's sword; and the ring that is made
in dancing, the devil's grindstone, whereon he
sharpens his sword; and finally, that a ballet is
the pomp and mass of the Devil, and whosoever
entereth therein, entereth into his pomp and mass;
for the woman who singeth is the prioress of the
Devil, and they that answer are clerks, and they
that look on are parishioners, and the cymbals and
flutes are the bells, and the musicians that play
are the ministers, of the Devil.”

“No doubt this good lady near us, thinks so
likewise,” answered the Baron laughing; “but she
likes it, for all that.”

When the play was over the Baron begged
Flemming to sit still, till the crowd had gone.

“I have a strange fancy,” said he, “whenever
I come to the theatre, to see the end of all things.
When the crowd is gone, and the curtain raised
again to air the house, and the lamps are all out,
save here and there one behind the scenes, the
contrast with what has gone before is most impressive.
Every thing wears a dream-like aspect.
The empty boxes and stalls,—the silence,—the
smoky twilight, and the magic scene dismantled,
produce in me a strange, mysterious feeling. It
is like a dim reflection of a theatre in water, or in
a dusty mirror; and reminds me of some of Hoffmann's
wild Tales. It is a practical moral lesson,
—a commentary on the play, and makes the show
complete.”

It was truly as he said; only tenfold more desolate,
solemn, and impressive; and produced upon
the mind the effect we experience, when slumber
is suddenly broken, and dreams and realities mingle,

and we know not yet whether we sleep or
wake. As they at length passed out through the
dimly-lighted passage, they heard a vulgar-looking
fellow, with a sensual face and shaggy whiskers,
say to some persons who were standing near
him, and seemed to be hangers-on of the play-house;

“I shall run her six nights at Munich, and then
take her on to Vienna.”

Flemming thought he was speaking of some favorite
horse. He was speaking of his beautiful
wife, the ballet-dancer.