University of Virginia Library

BOOK THE SECOND.

1. BOOK THE SECOND.

1. CHAPTER I.
SPRING.

It was a sweet carol, which the Rhodian children
sang of old in Spring, bearing in their hands,
from door to door, a swallow, as herald of the
season;

A pretty carol, too, is that, which the Hungarian
boys, on the islands of the Danube, sing to the
returning stork in Spring;

But what child has a heart to sing in this capricious
clime of ours, where Spring comes sailing in
from the sea, with wet and heavy cloud-sails, and
the misty pennon of the East-wind nailed to the
mast! Yet even here, and in the stormy month
of March even, there are bright, warm mornings,
when we open our windows to inhale the balmy
air. The pigeons fly to and fro, and we hear the
whirring sound of wings. Old flies crawl out of
the cracks, to sun themselves; and think it is summer.
They die in their conceit; and so do our
hearts within us, when the cold sea-breath comes
from the eastern sea; and again,

The red-flowering maple is first in blossom, its
beautiful purple flowers unfolding a fortnight before
the leaves. The moose-wood follows, with
rose-colored buds and leaves; and the dog-wood,
robed in the white of its own pure blossoms. Then

comes the sudden rain-storm; and the birds fly to
and fro, and shriek. Where do they hide themselves
in such storms? at what firesides dry their
feathery cloaks? At the fireside of the great,
hospitable sun, to-morrow, not before;—they
must sit in wet garments until then.

In all climates Spring is beautiful. In the South
it is intoxicating, and sets a poet beside himself.
The birds begin to sing;—they utter a few rapturous
notes, and then wait for an answer in the silent
woods. Those green-coated musicians, the frogs,
make holiday in the neighbouring marshes. They,
too, belong to the orchestra of Nature; whose vast
theatre is again opened, though the doors have been
so long bolted with icicles, and the scenery hung
with snow and frost, like cobwebs. This is the
prelude, which announces the rising of the broad
green curtain. Already the grass shoots forth.
The waters leap with thrilling pulse through the
veins of the earth; the sap through the veins of the
plants and trees; and the blood through the veins
of man. What a thrill of delight in spring-time!

What a joy in being and moving! Men are at
work in gardens; and in the air there is an odor of
the fresh earth. The leaf-buds begin to swell
and blush. The white blossoms of the cherry
hang upon the boughs like snow-flakes; and
ere long our next-door neighbours will be completely
hidden from us by the dense green foliage.
The May-flowers open their soft blue eyes. Children
are let loose in the fields and gardens. They
hold butter-cups under each others' chins, to see
if they love butter. And the little girls adorn
themselves with chains and curls of dandelions;
pull out the yellow leaves to see if the schoolboy
loves them, and blow the down from the leafless
stalk, to find out if their mothers want them at
home.

And at night so cloudless and so still! Not a
voice of living thing,—not a whisper of leaf or
waving bough,—not a breath of wind,—not a
sound upon the earth nor in the air! And overhead
bends the blue sky, dewy and soft, and radiant
with innumerable stars, like the inverted bell

of some blue flower, sprinkled with golden dust,
and breathing fragrance. Or if the heavens are
overcast, it is no wild storm of wind and rain; but
clouds that melt and fall in showers. One does
not wish to sleep; but lies awake to hear the
pleasant sound of the dropping rain.

It was thus the Spring began in Heidelberg.

2. CHAPTER II.
A COLLOQUY.

“And what think you of Tiedge's Urania,” said
the Baron smiling, as Paul Flemming closed the
book, and laid it upon the table.

“I think,” said Flemming, “that it is very
much like Jean Paul's grandfather,—in the highest
degree poor and pious.”

“Bravo!” exclaimed the Baron. “That is
the best criticism I have heard upon the book.
For my part, I dislike the thing as much as Goethe
did. It was once very popular, and lay about in
every parlour and bed-room. This annoyed the
old gentleman exceedingly; and I do not wonder
at it. He complains, that at one time nothing was
sung or said but this Urania. He believed in
Immortality; but wished to cherish his belief in

quietness. He once told a friend of his, that he
had, however, learned one thing from all this talk
about Tiedge and his Urania; which was, that the
saints, as well as the nobility, constitute an aristocracy.
He said he found stupid women, who were
proud because they believed in Immortality with
Tiedge, and had to submit himself to not a few
mysterious catechizings and tea-table lectures on
this point; and that he cut them short by saying,
that he had no objection whatever to enter into
another state of existence hereafter, but prayed
only that he might be spared the honor of meeting
any of those there, who had believed in it here;
for, if he did, the saints would flock around him
on all sides, exclaiming, Were we not in the
right? Did we not tell you so? Has it not all
turned out just as we said? And, with such a
conceited clatter in his ears, he thought that, before
the end of six months, he might die of ennui in
Heaven itself.”

“How shocked the good old ladies must have
been,” said Flemming.

“No doubt, their nerves suffered a little; but
the young ladies loved him all the better for being
witty and wicked; and thought if they could only
marry him, how they would reform him.”

“Bettina Brentano, for instance.”

“O no! That happened long afterwards.
Goethe was then a silver-haired old man of sixty.
She had never seen him, and knew him only by
his writings; a romantic girl of seventeen.”

“And yet much in love with the Sexagenarian.
And surely a more wild, fantastic, and, excuse me,
German passion never sprang up in woman's
breast. She was a flower, that worshipped the
sun.”

“She afterwards married Achim von Arnim,
and is now a widow. And not the least singular
part of the affair, is, that, having grown older, and
I hope colder, she should herself publish the letters
which passed between her and Goethe.”

“Particularly the letter in which she describes
her first visit to Weimar, and her interview with
the hitherto invisible divinity of her dreams. The

old gentleman took her upon his knees, and she
fell asleep with her head upon his shoulder. It
reminds me of Titania and Nick Bottom, begging
your pardon, always, for comparing your All-sided-One
to Nick Bottom. Oberon must have
touched her eyes with the juice of Love-in-idleness.
However, this book of Goethe's Correspondence
with a Child is a very singular and valuable
revelation of the feelings, which he excited
in female hearts. You say she afterwards married
Achim von Arnim?”

“Yes; and he and her brother, Clemens Brentano,
published that wondrous book, the Boy's
Wonder-Horn.”

“The Boy's Wonder-Horn!” said Flemming,
after a short pause, for the name seemed to have
thrown him into a reverie;—“I know the book
almost by heart. Of all your German books it is
the one which produces upon my imagination the
most wild and magic influence. I have a passion
for ballads!”

“And who has not?” said the Baron with a

smile. “They are the gypsy-children of song,
born under green hedgerows, in the leafy lanes
and by-paths of literature,—in the genial summer-time.”

“Why do you say summer-time and not summer?”
inquired Flemming. “The expression reminds
me of your old Minnesingers;—of Heinrich
von Ofterdingen, and Walter von der Vogelweide,
and Count Kraft von Toggenburg, and
your own ancestor, I dare say, Burkhart von
Hohenfels. They were always singing of the
gentle summer-time. They seem to have lived
poetry, as well as sung it; like the birds who
make their marriage beds in the voluptuous trees.”

“Is that from Shakspere?”

“No; from Lope de Vega.”

“You are deeply read in the lore of antiquity,
and the Aubades and Watch-Songs of the old
Minnesingers. What do you think of the shoe-maker
poets that came after them,—with their
guilds and singing-schools? It makes me laugh
to think how the great German Helicon, shrunk to

a rivulet, goes bubbling and gurgling over the pebbly
names of Zwinger, Wurgendrussel, Buchenlin,
Hellfire, Old Stoll, Young Stoll, Strong Bopp,
Dang Brotscheim, Batt Spiegel, Peter Pfort, and
Martin Gumpel. And then the Corporation of
the Twelve Wise Masters, with their stumpfereime
and klingende-reime, and their Hans Tindeisen's
rosemary-weise; and Joseph Schmierer's
flowery-paradise-weise, and Frauenlob's yellow-weise,
and blue-weise, and frog-weise, and looking-glass-weise!”

“O, I entreat you,” exclaimed Flemming,
laughing, “do not call those men poets! You
transport me to quaint old Nuremberg, and I see
Hans Sachs making shoes, and Hans Folz shaving
the burgomaster.”

“By the way,” interrupted the Baron, “did
you ever read Hoffmann's beautiful story of Master
Martin, the Cooper of Nuremberg? I will
read it to you this very night. It is the most
delightful picture of that age, which you can conceive.
But look! the sun has already set behind

the Alsatian hills. Let us go up to the castle
and look for the ghost in Prince Ruprecht's tower.
O, what a glorious sunset!”

Flemming looked at the evening sky, and a
shade of sadness stole over his countenance. He
told not to his friend the sorrow, with which his
heart was heavy; but kept it for himself alone.
He knew that the time, which comes to all
men,—the time to suffer and be silent,—had
come to him likewise; and he spake no word.
O well has it been said, that there is no grief like
the grief which does not speak.

3. CHAPTER III.
OWL-TOWERS.

“There sits the old Frau Himmelhahn, perched
up in her owl-tower,” said the Baron to Flemming,
as they passed along the Hauptstrasse.
“She looks down through her round-eyed spectacles
from her nest up there, and watches every
one that goes by. I wonder what mischief she is
hatching now? Do you know she has nearly
ruined your character in town? She says you have
a rakish look, because you carry a cane, and your
hair curls. Your gloves, also, are a shade too
light for a strictly virtuous man.”

“It is very kind in her to take such good care
of my character, particularly as I am a stranger in
town. She is doubtless learned in the Clothes-Philosophy.”

“And ignorant of every thing else. She asked
a friend of mine the other day, whether Christ
was a Catholic or a Protestant.”

“That is really too absurd!”

“Not too absurd to be true. And, ignorant as
she is, she contrives to do a good deal of mischief
in the course of the year. Why, the ladies already
call you Wilhelm Meister.”

“They are at liberty to call me what they
please. But you, who know me better, know that
I am something more than they would imply by
the name.”

“She says, moreover, that the American ladies
sit with their feet out of the window, and have no
pocket-handkerchiefs.”

“Excellent!”

They crossed the market-place and went up
beneath the grand terrace into the court-yard of
the castle.

“Let us go up and sit under the great linden-trees,
that grow on the summit of the Rent Tower,”
said Flemming. “From that point as from a

watch-tower we can look down into the garden,
and see the crowd below us.”

“And amuse ourselves, as old Frau Himmelhahn
does, at her window in the Hauptstrasse,”
added the Baron.

The keeper's daughter unlocked for them the
door of the tower, and, climbing the steep stair-case,
they seated themselves on a wooden bench
under the linden-trees.

“How beautifully these trees overgrow the old
tower! And see what a solid mass of masonry
lies in the great fosse down there, toppled from its
base by the explosion of a mine! It is like a
rusty helmet cleft in twain, but still crested with
towering plumes!”

“And what a motley crowd in the garden!
Philisters and Sons of the Muses! And there
goes the venerable Thibaut, taking his evening
stroll. Do you see him there, with his silver
hair flowing over his shoulders, and that friendly
face, which has for so many years pored over the
Pandects. I assure you, he inspires me with awe.

And yet he is a merry old man, and loves his
joke, particularly at the expense of Moses and
other ancient lawgivers.”

Here their attention was diverted by a wild-looking
person, who passed with long strides under
the archway in the fosse, right beneath them,
and disappeared among the bushes. He was
ill-dressed,—his hair flying in the wind,—his
movements hurried and nervous, and the expression
of his broad countenance wild, strange, and
earnest.

“Who can that be!” asked Flemming. “He
strides away indignantly, like one of Ossian's
ghosts?”

“A great philosopher, whose name I have forgotten.
Truly a strange owl!”

“He looks like a lion with a hat on.”

“He is a mystic, who reads Schubert's History
of the Soul, and lives, for the most part, in the
clouds of the Middle Ages. To him the spirit-world
is still open. He believes in the transmigration
of souls; and I dare say is now following

the spirit of some departed friend, who has
taken the form of yonder pigeon.”

“What a strange hallucination! He lives, I
suppose, in the land of cloud-shadows. And, as
St. Thomas Aquinas was said to be lifted up from
the ground by the fervor of his prayers, so, no
doubt, is he by the fervor of his visions.”

“He certainly appears to neglect all sublunary
things; and, to judge from certain appearances,
since you seem fond of holy similitudes, one would
say, that, like St. Serapion the Sindonite, he had
but one shirt. Yet what cares he? he lives in
that poetic dream-land of his thoughts, and clothes
his dream-children in poetry.”

“He is a poet, then, as well as a philosopher?”

“Yes; but a poet who never writes a line.
There is nothing in nature to which his imagination
does not give a poetic hue. But the power
to make others see these objects in the same
poetic light, is wanting. Still he is a man of fine
powers and feelings; for, next to being a great

poet, is the power of understanding one,—of
finding one's-self in him, as we Germans say.”

Three figures, dressed in black, now came from
one of the green alleys, and stopped on the brink
of a little fountain, that was playing among the gay
flowers in the garden. The eldest of the three
was a lady in that season of life, when the early
autumn gives to the summer leaves a warmer
glow, yet fades them not. Though the mother of
many children, she was still beautiful;—resembling
those trees, which blossom in October, when
the leaves are changing, and whose fruit and blossom
are on the branch at once. At her side was
a girl of some sixteen years, who seemed to lean
upon her arm for support. Her figure was slight;
her countenance beautiful, though deadly white;
and her meek eyes like the flower of the night-shade,
pale and blue, but sending forth golden
rays. They were attended by a tall youth of
foreign aspect, who seemed a young Antinous,
with a mustache and a nose à la Kosciusko. In
other respects a perfect hero of romance.

“Unless mine eyes deceive me,” said the Baron,
“there is the Frau von Ilmenau, with her
pale daughter Emma, and that eternal Polish
Count. He is always hovering about them, playing
the unhappy exile, merely to excite that poor
girl's sympathies; and as wretched as genius and
wantonness can make him.”

“Why, he is already married, you know,” replied
Flemming. “And his wife is young and
beautiful.”

“That does not prevent him from being in love
with some one else. That question was decided
in the Courts of Love in the Middle Ages. Accordingly
he has sent his fair wife to Warsaw.
But how pale the poor child looks.”

“She has just recovered from severe illness.
In the winter, you know, it was thought she would
not live from hour to hour.”

“And she has hardly recovered from that disease,
before she seems threatened with a worse
one; namely, a hopeless passion. However, people
do not die of love now-a-days.”

“Seldom, perhaps,” said Flemming. “And
yet it is folly to pretend that one ever wholly recovers
from a disappointed passion. Such wounds
always leave a scar. There are faces I can never
look upon without emotion. There are names I
can never hear spoken without almost starting!”

“But whom have we here?”

“That is the French poet Quinet, with his
sweet German wife; one of the most interesting
women I ever knew. He is the author of a very
wild Mystery, or dramatic prose-poem, in which
the Ocean, Mont-Blanc, and the Cathedral of
Strassburg have parts to play; and the saints on
the stained windows of the minster speak, and
the statues and dead kings enact the Dance of
Death. It is entitled Ahasuerus, or the Wandering
Jew.”

“Or, as the Danes would translate it, the Shoemaker
of Jerusalem. That would be a still more
fantastic title for his fantastic book. You know I
am no great admirer of the modern French school
of writers. The tales of Paul de Kock, who is,

I believe, the most popular of all, seem to me like
obscene stories told at dinner-tables, after the ladies
have retired. It has been well said of him,
that he is not only populaire but populacier; and
equally well said of George Sand and Victor Hugo,
that their works stand like fortifications, well
built and well supplied with warlike munitions; but
ineffectual against the Grand Army of God,
which marches onward, as if nothing had happened.
In surveying a national literature, the point
you must start from, is national character. That
lets you into many a secret; as, for example, Paul
de Kock's popularity. The most prominent trait in
the French character, is love of amusement, and
excitement; and—”

“I should say, rather, the fear of ennui,” interrupted
Flemming. “One of their own writers has
said with a great deal of truth, that the gentry of
France rush into Paris to escape from ennui, as, in
the noble days of chivalry, the defenceless inhabitants
of the champaign fled into the castles, at the

approach of some plundering knight, or lawless
Baron; forsaking the inspired twilight of their native
groves, for the luxurious shades of the royal
gardens. What do you think of that?”

The Baron replied with a smile;

“There is only one Paris; and out of Paris
there is no salvation for decent people.”

Thus conversing of many things, sat the two
friends under the linden-trees on the Rent Tower,
till gradually the crowd disappeared from the garden,
and the objects around them grew indistinct,
in the fading twilight. Between them and the
amber-colored western sky, the dense foliage of
the trees looked heavy and hard, as if cast in
bronze; and already the evening stars hung like
silver lamps in the towering branches of that Tree
of Life, brought more than two centuries ago
from its primeval Paradise in America, to beautify
the gardens of the Palatinate.

“I take a mournful pleasure in gazing at that
tree,” said Flemming, as they rose to depart. “It
stands there so straight and tall, with iron bands

around its noble trunk and limbs, in silent majesty,
or whispering only in its native tongue, and freighting
the homeward wind with sighs! It reminds
me of some captive monarch of a savage tribe,
brought over the vast ocean for a show, and
chained in the public market-place of the city,
disdainfully silent, or breathing only in melancholy
accents a prayer for his native forest, a longing to
be free.”

“Magnificent!” cried the Baron. “I always
experience something of the same feeling when I
walk through a conservatory. The luxuriant plants
of the tropics,—those illustrious exotics, with their
gorgeous, flamingo-colored blossoms, and great,
flapping leaves, like elephant's ears,—have a singular
working upon my imagination; and remind
me of a menagerie and wild-beasts kept in cages.
But your illustration is finer;—indeed, a grand
figure. Put it down for an epic poem.”

4. CHAPTER IV.
A BEER-SCANDAL.

On their way homeward, Flemming and the
Baron passed through a narrow lane, in which was
a well-known Studenten-Kneipe. At the door
stood a young man, whom the Baron at once recognised
as his friend Von Kleist. He was a student;
and universally acknowledged, among his
young acquaintance, as a “devilish handsome fellow”;
notwithstanding a tremendous scar on his
cheek, and a cream-colored mustache, as soft as
the silk of Indian corn. In short he was a renowner,
and a duellist.

“What are you doing here, Von Kleist?”

“Ah, my dear Baron! Is it you? Come in;
come in. You shall see some sport. A Fox-Commerce
is on foot, and a regular Beer-Scandal.”

“Shall we go in, Flemming?”

“Certainly. I should like to see how these
things are managed in Heidelberg. You are a
Baron, and I am a stranger. It is of no consequence
what you and I do, as the king's fool Angeli
said to the poet Bautru, urging him to put on
his hat at the royal dinner-table.”

William Lilly, the Astrologer, says, in his Autobiography,
that, when he was committed to the
guard-room in White Hall, he thought himself in
hell; for “some were sleeping, others swearing,
others smoking tobacco; and in the chimney of
the room there were two bushels of broken tobacco-pipes,
and almost half a load of ashes.” What
he would have thought if he had peeped into this
Heidelberg Studenten-Kneipe, I know not. He
certainly would not have thought himself in heaven;
unless it were a Scandinavian heaven. The
windows were open; and yet so dense was the atmosphere
with the smoke of tobacco, and the
fumes of beer, that the tallow candles burnt but
dimly. A crowd of students were sitting at three
long tables, in the large hall; a medley of fellows,

known at German Universities under the cant
names of Old-Ones, Mossy-Heads, Princes of
Twilight, and Pomatum-Stallions. They were
smoking, drinking, singing, screaming, and discussing
the great Laws of the Broad-Stone and the
Gutter. They had a great deal to say, likewise,
about Besens, and Zobels, and Poussades; and, if
they had been charged for the noise they made, as
travellers used to be, in the old Dutch taverns,
they would have had a longer bill to pay for that,
than for their beer.

In a large arm-chair, upon the middle table,
sat one of those distinguished individuals, known
among German students as a Senior, or Leader of
a Landsmannschaft. He was booted and spurred,
and wore a very small crimson cap, and a very
tight blue jacket, and very long hair, and a very
dirty shirt. He was President of the night; and,
as Flemming entered the hall with the Baron and
his friend, striking upon the table with a mighty
broadsword, he cried in a loud voice;

“Silentium!”

At the same moment a door at the end of the
hall was thrown open, and a procession of newcomers,
or Nasty-Foxes, as they are called in the
college dialect, entered two by two, looking wild,
and green, and foolish. As they came forward,
they were obliged to pass under a pair of naked
swords, held cross-wise by two Old-Ones, who,
with pieces of burnt cork, made an enormous
pair of mustaches, on the smooth, rosy cheeks
of each, as he passed beneath this arch of triumph.
While the procession was entering the
hall, the President lifted up his voice again, and
began to sing the well-known Fox-song, in the
chorus of which all present joined lustily.

At length the song was finished. Meanwhile
large tufts and strips of paper had been twisted
into the hair of the Branders, as those are called
who have been already one semestre at the University,
and then at a given signal were set on fire,

and the Branders rode round the table on sticks,
amid roars of laughter. When this ceremony was
completed, the President rose from his chair, and
in a solemn voice pronounced a long discourse, in
which old college jokes were mingled with much
parental advice to young men on entering life, and
the whole was profusely garnished with select
passages from the Old Testament. Then they all
seated themselves at the table and the heavy beer-drinking
set in, as among the Gods and Heroes of
the old Northern mythology.

“Brander! Brander!” screamed a youth,
whose face was hot and flushed with supper and
with beer; “Brander, I say? Thou art a Doctor!
No,—a Pope;—thou art a Pope, by—”

These words were addressed to a pale, quiet-looking
person, who sat opposite, and was busy
in making a wretched, shaved poodle sit on his
hind legs in a chair, by his master's side, and hold
a short clay pipe in his mouth,—a performance
to which the poodle seemed no wise inclined.

“Thou art challenged!” replied the pale Student,

turning from his dog, who dropped the pipe
from his mouth and leaped under the table.

Seconds were chosen on the spot; and the arms
ordered; namely, six mighty goblets, or Bassgläser,
filled to the brim with foaming beer. Three were
placed before each duellist.

“Take your weapons!” cried one of the seconds,
and each of the combatants seized a goblet
in his hand.

“Strike!”

And the glasses rang, with a salutation like the
crossing of swords.

“Set to!”

Each set the goblet to his lips.

“Out!”

And each poured the contents down his throat,
as if he were pouring them through a tunnel into
a beer-barrel. The other two glasses followed in
quick succession, hardly a long breath drawn between.
The pale Student was victorious. He
was first to drain the third goblet. He held it for
a moment inverted, to let the last drops fall out,

and then placing it quietly on the table, looked his
antagonist in the face, and said;

“Hit!”

Then, with the greatest coolness, he looked under
the table and whistled for his dog. His antagonist
stopped midway in his third glass. Every
vein in his forehead seemed bursting; his eyes
were wild and bloodshot, his hand gradually loosened
its hold upon the table, and he sank and
rolled together like a sheet of lead. He was
drunk.

At this moment a majestic figure came stalking
down the table, ghost-like, through the dim, smoky
atmosphere. His coat was off, his neck bare, his
hair wild, his eyes wide open, and looking right
before him, as if he saw some beckoning hand in
the air, that others could not see. His left hand
was upon his hip, and in his right he held a drawn
sword extended, and pointing downward. Regardless
of every one, erect, and with a martial stride
he marched directly along the centre of the table,
crushing glasses and overthrowing bottles at every

step. The students shrunk back at his approach;
till at length one more drunk, or more courageous,
than the rest, dashed a glass full of beer into his
face. A general tumult ensued, and the student
with the sword leaped to the floor. It was Von
Kleist. He was renowning it. In the midst of the
uproar could be distinguished the offensive words;

“Arrogant! Absurd! Impertinent! Dummer
Junge!”

Von Kleist went home that night with no less
than six duels on his hands. He fought them all
out in as many days; and came off with only a
gash through his upper lip and another through his
right eyelid from a dexterous Suabian Schlaeger.

5. CHAPTER V.
THE WHITE LADY'S SLIPPER AND THE PASSION-FLOWER.

That night Emma of Ilmenau went to her
chamber with a heavy heart, and her dusky eyes
were troubled with tears. She was one of those
gentle beings, who seem created only to love and
to be loved. A shade of melancholy softened her
character. She shunned the glare of daylight
and of society, and wished to be alone. Like the
evening primrose, her heart opened only after sunset;
but bloomed through the dark night with sweet
fragrance. Her mother, on the contrary, flaunted
in the garish light of society. There was no sympathy
between them. Their souls never approached,
never understood each other, and words were
often spoken which wounded deeply. And therefore

Emma of Ilmenau went to her chamber that
night with tears in her eyes.

She was followed by her French chamber-maid,
Madeleine, a native of Strassburg, who had grown
old in the family. In her youth, she had been
poor,—and virtuous because she had never been
tempted; and, now that she had grown old, and
seen no immediate reward for her virtue, as is
usual with weak minds, she despaired of Providence,
and regretted she had never been tempted.
Whilst this unfortunate personage was lighting the
wax tapers on the toilet, and drawing the bed-curtains,
and tattling about the room, Emma threw
herself into an arm-chair, and, crossing her hands
in her lap, and letting her head fall upon her
bosom, seemed lost in a dream.

“Why have these gentle feelings been given
me!” said she in her heart. “Why have I been
born with all these warm affections,—these ardent
longings after what is good, if they lead only to
sorrow and disappointment? I would love some
one;—love him once and forever;—devote myself

to him alone,—live for him,—die for him,—
exist alone in him! But alas! in all this wide
world there is none to love me, as I would be
loved,—none whom I may love, as I am capable
of loving. How empty, how desolate, seems
the world about me! Why has Heaven given me
these affections, only to fall and fade!”

Alas! poor child! thou too must learn like others,
that the sublime mystery of Providence goes
on in silence, and gives no explanation of itself,—
no answer to our impatient questionings!

“Bless me, child, what ails you?” exclaimed
Madeleine, perceiving that Emma paid no attention
to her idle gossip. “When I was of your
age—”

“Do not talk to me now, good Madeleine.
Leave me, I wish to be alone?”

“Well, here is something,” continued the maid,
taking a billet from her bosom, “which I hope will
enliven you. When I was of your age—”

“Hush! hush!” said Emma, taking the billet

from the hard hand of Madeleine. “Once more
I beg you, leave me! I wish to be alone!”

Madeleine took the lamp and retired slowly,
wishing her young mistress many good nights and
rosy dreams. Emma broke the seal of the note.
As she read, her face became deadly pale, and
then, as quick as thought, a crimson blush gleamed
on her cheek, and her hands trembled. Tenderness,
pity, love, offended pride, the weakness
and dignity of woman, were all mingled in her
look, changing and passing over her fine countenance
like cloud-shadows. She sunk back in
her chair, covering her face with her hands, as if
she would hide it from herself and Heaven.

“He loves me!” said she to herself; “loves
me; and is married to another, whom he loves
not! and dares to tell me this! O, never,—
never,—never! And yet he is so friendless and
alone in this unsympathizing world,—and an exile,
and homeless! I can but pity him;—yet I hate
him, and will see him no more!”

This short reverie of love and hate was broken

by the sound of a clear, mellow voice, which, in
the universal stillness of the hour, seemed almost
like the voice of a spirit. It was a voice, without
the accompaniment of any instrument, singing
those sweet lines of Goethe;

Emma knew the voice and started. She rushed
to the window to close it. It was a beautiful
night, and the stars were shining peacefully over
the mountain of All-Saints. The sound of the
Neckar was soft and low, and nightingales were
singing among the brown shadows of the woods.
The large red moon shone, like a ruby, in the
horizon's ample ring; and golden threads of
light seemed braided together with the rippling
current of the river. Tall and spectral stood the
white statues on the bridge. The outline of the

hills, the castle, the arches of the bridge, and the
spires and roofs of the town were as strongly
marked as if cut out of pasteboard. Amid this
fairy scene, a little boat was floating silently down
the stream. Emma closed the window hastily,
and drew the curtains close.

“I hate him; and yet I will pray for him,”
said she, as she laid her weary head upon that pillow,
from which, but a few months before, she
thought she should never raise it again. “O,
that I had died then! I dare not love him, but I
will pray for him!”

Sweet child! If the face of the deceiver comes
so often between thee and Heaven, I tremble for
thy fate! The plant that sprang from Helen's
tears destroyed serpents;—would that from thine
might spring up heart's-ease;—some plant, at
least, to destroy the serpents in thy bosom. Believe
me, upon the margin of celestial streams
alone, those simples grow, which cure the heartache!

And this the silent stars beheld, looking down

from heaven, and told it not again. This, likewise,
the Frau Himmelhahn beheld, looking from
her chamber-window, and was not so discreet as
the silent stars.

6. CHAPTER VI.
GLIMPSES INTO CLOUD-LAND.

“There are many things, which, having no
corporeal evidence, can be perceived and comprehended
only by the discursive energies of reason.
Hence the ambiguous nature of matter can
be comprehended only by adulterated opinion.
Matter is the principle of all bodies, and is stamped
with the impression of forms. Fire, air, and
water derive their origin and principle from the
scalene triangle. But the earth was created from
right-angled triangles, of which two of the sides
are equal. The sphere and the pyramid contain
in themselves the figure of fire; but the octaedron
was destined to be the figure of air, and
the icosaedron of water. The right-angled isosceles
triangle produces from itself a square, and

the square generates from itself the cube, which
is the figure peculiar to earth. But the figure
of a beautiful and perfect sphere was imparted
to the most beautiful and perfect world, that
it might be indigent of nothing, but contain all
things, embracing and comprehending them in
itself, and thus might be excellent and admirable,
similar to and in concord with itself, ever moving
musically and melodiously. If I use a novel language,
excuse me. As Apuleius says, pardon
must be granted to novelty of words, when it
serves to illustrate the obscurity of things.”

These words came from the lips of the lion-like
philosopher, who has been noticed before in these
pages. He was sitting with Flemming, smoking a
long pipe. As the Baron said, he was indeed a
strange owl; for the owl is a grave bird; a monk,
who chants midnight mass in the great temple of
Nature;—an anchorite,—a pillar saint,—the
very Simeon Stylites of his neighbourhood. Such,
likewise, was the philosophical Professor. Solitary,

but with a mighty current, flowed the river
of his life, like the Nile, without a tributary
stream, and making fertile only a single strip in
the vast desert. His temperament had been in
youth a joyous one; and now, amid all his sorrows
and privations, for he had many, he looked upon
the world as a glad, bright, glorious world. On
the many joys of life he gazed still with the eyes
of childhood, from the far-gone Past upward,
trusting, hoping;—and upon its sorrows with the
eyes of age, from the distant Future, downward,
triumphant, not despairing. He loved solitude,
and silence, and candle-light, and the deep midnight.
“For,” said he, “if the morning hours
are the wings of the day, I only fold them about
me to sleep more sweetly; knowing that, at its
other extremity, the day, like the fowls of the
air, has an epicurean morsel,—a parson's nose;
and on this oily midnight my spirit revels and is
glad.”

Such was the Professor, who had been talking
in a half-intelligible strain for two hours or more.

The Baron had fallen fast asleep in his chair; but
Flemming sat listening with excited imagination,
and the Professor continued in the following words,
which, to the best of his listener's memory, seemed
gleaned here and there from Fichte's Destiny
of Man, and Shubert's History of the Soul.

“Life is one, and universal; its forms many
and individual. Throughout this beautiful and
wonderful creation there is never-ceasing motion,
without rest by night or day, ever weaving to and
fro. Swifter than a weaver's shuttle it flies from
Birth to Death, from Death to Birth; from the
beginning seeks the end, and finds it not, for the
seeming end is only a dim beginning of a new
out-going and endeavour after the end. As the
ice upon the mountain, when the warm breath
of the summer sun breathes upon it, melts,
and divides into drops, each of which reflects an
image of the sun; so life, in the smile of God's
love, divides itself into separate forms, each bearing
in it and reflecting an image of God's love.
Of all these forms the highest and most perfect in

its god-likeness is the human soul. The vast
cathedral of Nature is full of holy scriptures, and
shapes of deep, mysterious meaning; but all is
solitary and silent there; no bending knee, no uplifted
eye, no lip adoring, praying. Into this vast
cathedral comes the human soul, seeking its Creator;
and the universal silence is changed to
sound, and the sound is harmonious, and has a
meaning, and is comprehended and felt. It was
an ancient saying of the Persians, that the waters
rush from the mountains and hurry forth into all
the lands to find the Lord of the Earth; and the
flame of the Fire, when it awakes, gazes no more
upon the ground, but mounts heavenward to seek
the Lord of Heaven; and here and there the
Earth has built the great watch-towers of the
mountains, and they lift their heads far up into
the sky, and gaze ever upward and around, to see
if the Judge of the World comes not! Thus in
Nature herself, without man, there lies a waiting,
and hoping, a looking and yearning, after an unknown
somewhat. Yes; when, above there,
where the mountain lifts its head over all others,
that it may be alone with the clouds and storms of
heaven, the lonely eagle looks forth into the gray
dawn, to see if the day comes not! when, by the
mountain torrent, the brooding raven listens to
hear if the chamois is returning from his nightly
pasture in the valley; and when the soon uprising
sun calls out the spicy odors of the thousand
flowers, the Alpine flowers, with heaven's deep
blue and the blush of sunset on their leaves;—
then there awakes in Nature, and the soul of man
can see and comprehend it, an expectation and a
longing for a future revelation of God's majesty.
It awakens, also, when in the fulness of life, field
and forest rest at noon, and through the stillness is
heard only the song of the grasshopper and the
hum of the bee; and when at evening the singing
lark, up from the sweet-smelling vineyards rises,
or in the later hours of night Orion puts on his
shining armour, to walk forth in the fields of heaven.
But in the soul of man alone is this longing
changed to certainty and fulfilled. For lo! the
light of the sun and the stars shines through the
air, and is nowhere visible and seen; the planets
hasten with more than the speed of the storm
through infinite space, and their footsteps are not
heard, but where the sunlight strikes the firm
surface of the planets, where the stormwind
smites the wall of the mountain cliff, there is the
one seen and the other heard. Thus is the glory
of God made visible, and may be seen, where in
the soul of man it meets its likeness changeless
and firm-standing. Thus, then, stands Man;—a
mountain on the boundary between two worlds;—
its foot in one, its summit far-rising into the other.
From this summit the manifold landscape of life
is visible, the way of the Past and Perishable,
which we have left behind us; and, as we evermore
ascend, bright glimpses of the daybreak of
Eternity beyond us!”

Flemming would fain have interrupted this discourse
at times, to answer and inquire, but the
Professor went on, warming and glowing more and

more. At length, there was a short pause, and
Flemming said;

“All these indefinite longings,—these yearnings
after an unknown somewhat, I have felt and
still feel within me; but not yet their fulfilment.”

“That is because you have not faith;” answered
the Professor. “The Present is an age
of doubt and disbelief, and darkness; out of which
shall arise a clear and bright Hereafter. In the
second part of Goethe's Faust, there is a grand
and striking scene, where in the classical Walpurgis
Night, on the Pharsalian Plains, the mocking
Mephistopheles sits down between the solemn antique
Sphinxes, and boldly questions them, and
reads their riddles. The red light of innumerable
watch-fires glares all round about, and shines upon
the terrible face of the arch-scoffer; while on either
side, severe, majestic, solemnly serene, we
behold the gigantic forms of the children of Chimæra,
half buried in the earth, their mild eyes
gazing fixedly, as if they heard through the midnight,
the swift-rushing wings of the Stymphalides,

striving to outstrip the speed of Alcides' arrows!
Angry griffins are near them; and not far are Sirens,
singing their wondrous songs from the rocking
branches of the willow trees! Even thus does
a scoffing and unbelieving Present sit down, between
an unknown Future and a too believing
Past, and question and challenge the gigantic
forms of faith, half buried in the sands of Time,
and gazing forward steadfastly into the night,
whilst sounds of anger and voices of delight alternate
vex and soothe the ear of man!—But the
time will come, when the soul of man shall return
again childlike and trustful to its faith in God; and
look God in the face and die; for it is an old saying,
full of deep, mysterious meaning, that he
must die, who hath looked upon a God. And this
is the fate of the soul, that it should die continually.
No sooner here on earth does it awake to its
peculiar being, than it struggles to behold and comprehend
the Spirit of Life. In the first dim twilight
of its existence, it beholds this spirit, is pervaded
by its energies,—is quick and creative like
the spirit itself, and yet slumbers away into death
after having seen it. But the image it has seen,
remains, in the eternal procreation, as a homogeneal
existence, is again renewed, and the seeming
death, from moment to moment, becomes the
source of kind after kind of existences in ever-ascending
series. The soul aspires ever onward
to love and to behold. It sees the image more
perfect in the brightening twilight of the dawn, in
the ever higher-rising sun. It sleeps again, dying
in the clearer vision; but the image seen remains
as a permanent kind; and the slumberer awakes
anew and ever higher after its own image, till at
length, in the full blaze of noonday, a being comes
forth, which, like the eagle, can behold the sun
and die not. Then both live on, even when this
bodily element, the mist and vapor through which
the young eagle gazed, dissolves and falls to
earth.”

“I am not sure that I understand you,” said
Flemming; “but if I do, you mean to say, that,
as the body continually changes and takes unto itself

new properties, and is not the same to-day as
yesterday, so likewise the soul lays aside its idiosyncrasies,
and is changed by acquiring new powers,
and thus may be said to die. And hence,
properly speaking, the soul lives always in the
Present, and has, and can have, no Future; for
the Future becomes the Present, and the soul that
then lives in me is a higher and more perfect
soul; and so onward forevermore.”

“I mean what I say,” continued the Professor;
“and can find no more appropriate language to
express my meaning than that which I have used.
But as I said before, pardon must be granted to
the novelty of words, when it serves to illustrate
the obscurity of things. And I think you will see
clearly from what I have said, that this earthly life,
when seen hereafter from heaven, will seem like
an hour passed long ago, and dimly remembered;
—that long, laborious, full of joys and sorrows as
it is, it will then have dwindled down to a mere
point, hardly visible to the far-reaching ken of the
disembodied spirit. But the spirit itself soars onward.

And thus death is neither an end nor a beginning.
It is a transition not from one existence
to another, but from one state of existence to another.
No link is broken in the chain of being;
any more than in passing from infancy to manhood,
from manhood to old age. There are seasons of
reverie and deep abstraction, which seem to me
analogous to death. The soul gradually loses its
consciousness of what is passing around it; and
takes no longer cognizance of objects which are
near. It seems for the moment to have dissolved
its connexion with the body. It has passed as it
were into another state of being. It lives in another
world. It has flown over lands and seas;
and holds communion with those it loves, in distant
regions of the earth, and the more distant heaven.
It sees familiar faces, and hears beloved voices,
which to the bodily senses are no longer visible
and audible. And this likewise is death; save
that when we die, the soul returns no more to the
dwelling it has left.”

“You seem to take it for granted,” interrupted

Flemming, “that, in our reveries, the soul really
goes out of the body into distant places, instead of
summoning up their semblance within itself by the
power of memory and imagination!”

“Something I must take for granted,” replied
the Professor. “We will not discuss that point
now. I speak not without forethought. Just observe
what a glorious thing human life is, when
seen in this light; and how glorious man's destiny.
I am; thou art; he is! seems but a school-boy's
conjugation. But therein lies a great mystery.
These words are significant of much. We behold
all round about us one vast union, in which no man
can labor for himself without laboring at the same
time for all others; a glimpse of truth, which by
the universal harmony of things becomes an inward
benediction, and lifts the soul mightily upward.
Still more so, when a man regards himself as a
necessary member of this union. The feeling of
our dignity and our power grows strong, when we
say to ourselves; My being is not objectless and in
vain; I am a necessary link in the great chain,

which, from the full development of consciousness
in the first man, reaches forward into eternity.
All the great, and wise, and good among mankind,
all the benefactors of the human race, whose
names I read in the world's history, and the still
greater number of those, whose good deeds have
outlived their names,—all those have labored for
me. I have entered into their harvest. I walk
the green earth, which they inhabited. I tread in
their footsteps, from which blessings grow. I can
undertake the sublime task, which they once undertook,
the task of making our common brotherhood
wiser and happier. I can build forward,
where they were forced to leave off; and bring
nearer to perfection the great edifice which they
left uncompleted. And at length I, too, must leave
it, and go hence. O, this is the sublimest thought
of all! I can never finish the noble task;
therefore, so sure as this task is my destiny, I can
never cease to work, and consequently never cease
to be. What men call death cannot break off this
task, which is never-ending; consequently no period
is set to my being, and I am eternal. I lift
my head boldly to the threatening mountain peaks,
and to the roaring cataract, and to the storm-clouds
swimming in the fire-sea overhead and say; I am
eternal, and defy your power! Break, break over
me! and thou Earth, and thou Heaven, mingle in
the wild tumult! and ye Elements foam and rage,
and destroy this atom of dust,—this body, which
I call mine! My will alone, with its fixed purpose,
shall hover brave and triumphant over the ruins of
the universe; for I have comprehended my destiny;
and it is more durable than ye! It is eternal;
and I, who recognise it, I likewise am eternal!
Tell me, my friend, have you no faith in
this?”

“I have;” answered Flemming, and there was
another pause. He then said;

“I have listened to you patiently and without
interruption. Now listen to me. You complain
of the skepticism of the age. This is one form
in which the philosophic spirit of the age presents
itself. Let me tell you, that another form, which

it assumes, is that of poetic reverie. Plato of old
had dreams like these; and the Mystics of the
Middle Ages; and still their disciples walk in the
cloud-land and dream-land of this poetic philosophy.
Pleasant and cool upon their souls lie the
shadows of the trees under which Plato taught.
From their whispering leaves comes wafted across
the noise of populous centuries a solemn and mysterious
sound, which to them is the voice of the
Soul of the World. All nature has become spiritualized
and transfigured; and, wrapt in beautiful,
vague dreams of the real and the ideal, they live in
this green world, like the little child in the German
tale, who sits by the margin of a woodland
lake, and hears the blue heaven and the branches
overhead dispute with their reflection in the water,
which is the reality and which the image. I willingly
confess, that such day-dreams as these appeal
strongly to my imagination. Visitants and attendants
are they of those lofty souls, which, soaring
ever higher and higher, build themselves nests under
the very eaves of the stars, forgetful that they
cannot live on air, but must descend to earth for
food. Yet I recognise them as day-dreams only;
as shadows, not substantial things. What I mainly
dislike in the New Philosophy, is the cool impertinence
with which an old idea, folded in a new
garment, looks you in the face and pretends not to
know you, though you have been familiar friends
from childhood. I remember an English author
who, in speaking of your German Philosophies, says
very wisely; `Often a proposition of inscrutable
and dread aspect, when resolutely grappled with,
and torn from its shady den, and its bristling entrenchments
of uncouth terminology,—and dragged
forth into the open light of day, to be seen
by the natural eye and tried by merely human
understanding, proves to be a very harmless truth,
familiar to us from old, sometimes so familiar as to
be a truism. Too frequently the anxious novice
is reminded of Dryden in the Battle of the Books;
there is a helmet of rusty iron, dark, grim, gigantic;
and within it, at the farthest corner, is a head
no bigger than a walnut.'—Can you believe, that
these words ever came from the lips of Carlyle!
He has himself taken up the uncouth terminology
of late; and many pure, simple minds are much
offended at it. They seem to take it as a personal
insult. They are angry; and deny the just meed
of praise. It is, however, hardly worth while to
lose our presence of mind. Let us rather profit
as we may, even from this spectacle, and recognise
the monarch in his masquerade. For, hooded and
wrapped about with that strange and antique garb,
there walks a kingly, a most royal soul, even as
the Emperor Charles walked amid solemn cloisters
under a monk's cowl;—a monarch still in soul.
Such things are not new in the history of the
world. Ever and anon they sweep over the
earth, and blow themselves out soon, and then
there is quiet for a season, and the atmosphere of
Truth seems more serene. Why would you
preach to the wind? Why reason with thunder-showers?
Better sit quiet, and see them pass over
like a pageant, cloudy, superb, and vast.”

The Professor smiled self-complacently, but said
not a word. Flemming continued;

“I will add no more than this;—there are
many speculations in Literature, Philosophy, and
Religion, which, though pleasant to walk in, and
lying under the shadow of great names, yet
lead to no important result. They resemble rather
those roads in the western forests of my native
land, which, though broad and pleasant at first,
and lying beneath the shadow of great branches,
finally dwindle to a squirrel track, and run up a
tree!”

The Professor hardly knew whether he should
laugh or be offended at this sally; and, laying his
hand upon Flemming's arm, he said seriously;

“Believe me, my young friend, the time will
come, when you will think more wisely on these
things. And with you, I trust, that time will soon
come; since it moves more speedily with some
than with others. For what is Time? The shadow
on the dial,—the striking of the clock,—the
running of the sand,—day and night,—summer

and winter,—months, years, centuries!
These are but arbitrary and outward signs,—the
measure of Time, not Time itself! Time is the
Life of the Soul. If not this, then tell me what
it is?”

The high and animated tone of voice in which
the Professor uttered these words aroused the
Baron from his sleep; and, not distinctly comprehending
what was said, but thinking the Professor
asked what time it was, he innocently exclaimed;

“I should think it must be near midnight!”

This somewhat disconcerted the Professor, who
took his leave soon afterward. When he was gone
the Baron said;

“Excuse me for treating your guest so cavalierly.
His transcendentalism annoyed me not a
little; and I took refuge in sleep. One would
think, to judge by the language of this sect, that
they alone saw any beauty in Nature; and, when I
hear one of them discourse, I am instantly reminded
of Goethe's Baccalaureus, when he exclaims;
`The world was not before I created it; I

brought the sun up out of the sea; with me began
the changeful course of the moon; the day decked
itself on my account; the earth grew green and blossomed
to meet me; at my nod in that first night,
the pomp of all the stars developed itself; who
but I set you free from all the bonds of Philisterlike,
contracting thoughts? I, however, emancipated
as my mind assures me I am, gladly pursue
my inward light, advance boldly in a transport
peculiarly my own, the bright before me, and the
dark behind!'—Do you not see a resemblance?
O, they might be modest enough to confess, that
one straggling ray of light may, by some accident,
reach the blind eyes of even us poor, benighted
heathens?”

“Alas! how little veneration we have!” said
Flemming. “I could not help closing the discussion
with a jest. An ill-timed levity often takes
me by surprise. On all such occasions I think of
a scene at the University, where, in the midst of a
grave discussion on the possibility of Absolute
Motion, a scholar said he had seen a rock split

open, from which sprang a toad, who could not be
supposed to have any knowledge of the external
world, and consequently his motion must have
been absolute. The learned Professor, who presided
on that occasion, was hardly more startled
and astonished, than was our learned Professor, five
minutes ago. But come; wind up your watch,
and let us go to bed.”

“By the way,” said the Baron, “did you mind
what a curious head he has. There are two
crowns upon it.”

“That is a sign,” replied Flemming, “that he
will eat his bread in two kingdoms.”

“I think the poor man would be very thankful,”
said the Baron with a smile, “if he were always
sure of eating it in one. He is what the Transcendentalists
call a god-intoxicated man; and I
advise him, as Sauteul advised Bossuet, to go to
Patmos and write a new Apocalypse.”

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.

8. CHAPTER VIII.
OLD HUMBUG.

What most interested our travellers in the ancient
city of Frankfort, was neither the opera nor
the Ariadne of Dannecker, but the house in which
Goethe was born, and the scenes he frequented in
his childhood, and remembered in his old age.
Such for example are the walks around the city,
outside the moat; the bridge over the Maine, with
the golden cock on the cross, which the poet beheld
and marvelled at when a boy; the cloister of
the Barefooted Friars, through which he stole with
mysterious awe to sit by the oilcloth-covered table
of old Rector Albrecht; and the garden in which
his grandfather walked up and down among fruit-trees
and rose-bushes, in long morning gown,
black velvet cap, and the antique leather gloves,

which he annually received as Mayor on Pipers-Doomsday,
representing a kind of middle personage
between Alcinous and Laertes. Thus, O Genius!
are thy foot-prints hallowed; and the star
shines forever over the place of thy nativity.

“Your English critics may rail as they list,”
said the Baron, while he and Flemming were returning
from a stroll in the leafy gardens, outside the
moat; “but, after all, Goethe was a magnificent
old fellow. Only think of his life; his youth of
passion, alternately aspiring and desponding, stormy,
impetuous, headlong;—his romantic manhood,
in which passion assumes the form of
strength; assiduous, careful, toiling, without haste,
without rest; and his sublime old age,—the age
of serene and classic repose, where he stands like
Atlas, as Claudian has painted him in the Battle
of the Giants, holding the world aloft upon his
head, the ocean-streams hard frozen in his hoary
locks.”

“A good illustration of what the world calls his
indifferentism.”

“And do you know I rather like this indifferentism?
Did you never have the misfortune to live
in a community, where a difficulty in the parish
seemed to announce the end of the world? or to
know one of the benefactors of the human race,
in the very `storm and pressure period' of his
indiscreet enthusiasm? If you have, I think you
will see something beautiful in the calm and dignified
attitude which the old philosopher assumes.”

“It is a pity, that his admirers had not a little
of this philosophic coolness. It amuses me to read
the various epithets, which they apply to him;
The Dear, dear Man! The Life-enjoying Man!
The All-sided One! The Representative of Poetry
upon earth! The Many-sided Master-Mind of
Germany! His enemies rush into the other extreme,
and hurl at him the fierce names of Old
Humbug! and Old Heathen! which hit like pistol-bullets.”

“I confess, he was no saint.”

“No; his philosophy is the old ethnic philosophy.
You will find it all in a convenient and

concentrated, portable form in Horace's beautiful
Ode to Thaliarcus. What I most object to in the
old gentleman is his sensuality.”

“O nonsense. Nothing can be purer than the
Iphigenia; it is as cold and passionless as a marble
statue.”

“Very true; but you cannot say the same
of some of the Roman Elegies and of that
monstrous book the Elective Affinities.”

“Ah, my friend, Goethe is an artist; and
looks upon all things as objects of art merely.
Why should he not be allowed to copy in words
what painters and sculptors copy in colors and in
marble?”

“The artist shows his character in the choice of
his subject. Goethe never sculptured an Apollo,
nor painted a Madonna. He gives us only sinful
Magdalens and rampant Fauns. He does not so
much idealize as realize.”

“He only copies nature.”

“So did the artists, who made the bronze

lamps of Pompeii. Would you hang one of
those in your hall? To say that a man is an
artist and copies nature is not enough. There are
two great schools of art; the imitative and the
imaginative. The latter is the most noble, and
most enduring; and Goethe belonged rather to the
former. Have you read Menzel's attack upon
him?”

“It is truly ferocious. The Suabian hews into
him lustily. I hope you do not side with him.”

“By no means. He goes too far. He blames
the poet for not being a politician. He might as
well blame him for not being a missionary to the
Sandwich Islands.”

“And what do you think of Eckermann?”

“I think he is a toady; a kind of German
Boswell. Goethe knew he was drawing his portrait,
and attitudinized accordingly. He works
very hard to make a Saint Peter out of an old Jupiter,
as the Catholics did at Rome.”

“Well; call him Old Humbug, or Old Heathen,

or what you please; I maintain, that, with
all his errors and short-comings, he was a glorious
specimen of a man.”

“He certainly was. Did it ever occur to you
that he was in some points like Ben Franklin? a
kind of rhymed Ben Franklin? The practical tendency
of his mind was the same; his love of science
was the same; his benignant, philosophic spirit
was the same; and a vast number of his little
poetic maxims and sooth-sayings seem nothing
more than the worldly wisdom of Poor Richard,
versified.”

“What most offends me is, that now every
German jackass must have a kick at the dead
lion.”

“And every one who passes through Weimar
must throw a book upon his grave, as travellers
did of old a stone upon the grave of Manfredi, at
Benevento. But, of all that has been said or
sung, what most pleases me is Heine's Apologetic,
if I may so call it; in which he says, that the
minor poets, who flourished under the imperial

reign of Goethe `resemble a young forest, where
the trees first show their own magnitude after
the oak of a hundred years, whose branches
had towered above and overshadowed them, has
fallen. There was not wanting an opposition,
that strove against Goethe, this majestic tree.
Men of the most warring opinions united themselves
for the contest. The adherents of the old
faith, the orthodox, were vexed, that, in the trunk
of the vast tree, no niche with its holy image was
to be found; nay, that even the naked Dryads of
paganism were permitted to play their witchery
there; and gladly, with consecrated axe, would
they have imitated the holy Boniface, and levelled
the enchanted oak to the ground. The followers
of the new faith, the apostles of liberalism, were
vexed on the other hand, that the tree could not
serve as the Tree of Liberty, or, at any rate, as a
barricade. In fact the tree was too high; no one
could plant the red cap upon its summit, or dance
the Carmagnole beneath its branches. The multitude,
however, venerated this tree for the very
reason, that it reared itself with such independent
grandeur, and so graciously filled the world with
its odor, while its branches, streaming magnificently
toward heaven, made it appear, as if the stars
were only the golden fruit of its wondrous limbs.'
Don't you think that beautiful?”

“Yes, very beautiful. And I am glad to see,
that you can find something to admire in my favorite
author, notwithstanding his frailties; or, to
use an old German saying, that you can drive
the hens out of the garden without trampling
down the beds.”

“Here is the old gentleman himself!” exclaimed
Flemming.

“Where!” cried the Baron, as if for the moment
he expected to see the living figure of the
poet walking before them.

“Here at the window,—that full-length cast.
Excellent, is it not! He is dressed, as usual, in
his long yellow nankeen surtout, with a white cravat
crossed in front. What a magnificent head!
and what a posture! He stands like a tower of

strength. And, by Heavens! he was nearly
eighty years old, when that was made.”

“How do you know?”

“You can see by the date on the pedestal.”

“You are right. And yet how erect he stands,
with his square shoulders braced back, and his
hands behind him. He looks as if he were standing
before the fire. I feel tempted to put a live
coal into his hand, it lies so invitingly half-open.
Gleim's description of him, soon after he went to
Weimar, is very different from this. Do you
recollect it?”

“No, I do not.”

“It is a story, which good old father Gleim
used to tell with great delight. He was one
evening reading the Göttingen Musen-Almanach
in a select society at Weimar, when a young man
came in, dressed in a short, green shooting-jacket,
booted and spurred, and having a pair of brilliant,
black, Italian eyes. He in turn offered to read;
but finding probably the poetry of the Musen-Almanach
of that year rather too insipid for him,

he soon began to improvise the wildest and most
fantastic poems imaginable, and in all possible forms
and measures, all the while pretending to read from
the book. `That is either Goethe or the Devil,'
said good old father Gleim to Wieland, who sat
near him. To which the `Great I of Osmannstadt'
replied; `It is both, for he has the Devil in
him to-night; and at such times he is like a wanton
colt, that flings out before and behind, and you
will do well not to go too near him!' ”

“Very good!”

“And now that noble figure is but mould. Only
a few months ago, those majestic eyes looked
for the last time on the light of a pleasant spring
morning. Calm, like a god, the old man sat; and
with a smile seemed to bid farewell to the light of
day, on which he had gazed for more than eighty
years. Books were near him, and the pen which
had just dropped, as it were from his dying fingers.
`Open the shutters, and let in more light!' were
the last words that came from those lips. Slowly
stretching forth his hand, he seemed to write in

the air; and, as it sank down again and was motionless,
the spirit of the old man departed.”

“And yet the world goes on. It is strange how
soon, when a great man dies, his place is filled;
and so completely, that he seems no longer wanted.
But let us step in here. I wish to buy that cast;
and send it home to a friend.”

9. CHAPTER IX.
THE DAYLIGHT OF THE DWARFS, AND THE
FALLING STAR.

After lingering a day or two in Frankfort, the
two friends struck across through Hochheim to the
Rhine, and then up among the hills of the Rheingau
to Schlangenbad, where they tarried only to
bathe, and to dine; and then pursued their way
to Langenschwalbach. The town lies in a valley,
with gently-sloping hills around it, and long
avenues of poplars leading forth into the fields.
One interminable street cuts the town in twain,
and there are old houses with curious faces carved
upon their fronts, and dates of the olden time.

Our travellers soon sallied forth from their hotel,
impatient to drink the strength-giving waters

of the fountains. They continued their walk far
up the valley under the poplars. The new grain
was waving in the fields; the birds singing in the
trees and in the air; and every thing seemed
glad, save a poor old man, who came tottering
out of the woods, with a heavy bundle of sticks
on his shoulders.

Returning upon their steps, they passed down
the valley and through the long street to the
tumble-down old Lutheran church. A flight of
stone steps leads from the street to the green terrace
or platform on which the church stands, and
which, in ancient times, was the churchyard, or as
the Germans more devoutly say, God's-acre; where
generations are scattered like seeds, and that which
is sown in corruption shall be raised hereafter in
incorruption. On the steps stood an old man,—
a very old man,—holding a little girl by the
hand. He took off his greasy cap as they passed,
and wished them good day. His teeth were
gone; he could hardly articulate a syllable. The
Baron asked him how old the church was. He

gave no answer; but when the question was repeated,
came close up to them, and taking off his
cap again, turned his ear attentively, and said;

“I am hard of hearing.”

“Poor old man,” said Flemming; “He is as
much a ruin as the church we are entering. It
will not be long before he, too, shall be sown as
seed in this God's-acre!”

The little girl ran into a house close at hand,
and brought out the great key. The church door
swung open, and, descending a few steps, they
passed through a low-roofed passage into the
church. All was in ruin. The gravestones in
the pavement were started from their places;
the vaults beneath yawned; the roof above was
falling piecemeal; there were rents in the old
tower; and mysterious passages, and side doors
with crazy flights of wooden steps, leading down
into the churchyard. Amid all this ruin, one
thing only stood erect; it was a statue of a knight
in armour, standing in a niche under the pulpit.

“Who is this?” said Flemming to the old sexton;

“who is this, that stands here so solemnly in
marble, and seems to be keeping guard over the
dead men below?”

“I do not know,” replied the old man; “but I
have heard my grandfather say it was the statue
of a great warrior!”

“There is history for you!” exclaimed the
Baron. “There is fame! To have a statue of
marble, and yet have your name forgotten by the
sexton of your parish, who can remember only,
that he once heard his grandfather say, that you
were a great warrior!”

Flemming made no reply, for he was thinking
of the days, when from that old pulpit, some bold
reformer thundered down the first tidings of a new
doctrine, and the roof echoed with the grand old
hymns of Martin Luther.

When he communicated his thoughts to the
Baron, the only answer he received was;

“After all, what is the use of so much preaching?
Do you think the fishes, that heard the sermon
of St. Anthony, were any better than those

who did not? I commend to your favorable
notice the fish-sermon of this saint, as recorded
by Abraham à Santa Clara. You will find it in
your favorite Wonder-Horn.”

Thus passed the day at Langenschwalbach; and
the evening at the Allée-Saal was quite solitary;
for as yet no company had arrived to fill its chambers,
or sit under the trees before the door. The
next morning even Flemming and the Baron were
gone; for the German's heart was beating with
strong desire to embrace his sister; and the heart
of his friend cared little whither he went, sobeit
he were not too much alone.

After a few hours' drive, they were looking
down from the summit of a hill right upon the
house-tops of Ems. There it lay, deep sunk in
the hollow beneath them, as if some inhabitant
of Sirius, like him spoken of in Voltaire's tale
of Micromegas, held it in the hollow of his
hand. High and peaked rise the hills, that throw
their shadows into this romantic valley, and at
their base winds the river Lahn. Our travellers

drove through the one long street, composed entirely
of hotels and lodging-houses. Sick people looked
out of the windows, as they passed. Others were
walking leisurely up and down, beneath the few
decapitated trees, which represent a public promenade;
and a boy, with a blue frock and crimson
cap, was driving three donkeys down the street.
In short, they were in a fashionable watering-place;
as yet sprinkled only by a few pattering
drops of the summer rain of strangers, which generally
follows the first hot days.

On alighting at the London Hotel, the Baron
found—not his sister, but only a letter from her,
saying she had changed her mind and gone to the
Baths of Franconia. This was a disappointment,
which the Baron pocketed with the letter, and said
not a word more about either. It was his way;
his life-philosophy in small things and great. In
the evening, they went to an æsthetic tea, at the
house of the Frau Kranich, the wife of a rich
banker of Frankfort.

“I must tell you about this Frau Kranich,”

said the Baron to Flemming, on the way. “She
is a woman of talent and beauty, and just in the
prime of life. But, unfortunately, very ambitious.
Her mania is, to make a figure in the fashionable
world; and to this end she married a rich banker
of Frankfort, old enough to be her father, not to
say her grandfather, hoping, doubtless, that he
would soon die; for, if ever a woman wished to be
a widow, she is that woman. But the old fellow
is tough and won't die. Moreover, he is deaf, and
crabbed, and penurious, and half the time bed-ridden.
The wife is a model of virtue, notwithstanding
her weakness. She nurses the old gentleman
as if he were a child. And, to crown all, he
hates society, and will not hear of his wife's receiving
or going into company.”

“How, then, can she give soirées?” asked
Flemming.

“I was just going to tell you,” continued the
Baron. “The gay lady has no taste for long evenings
with the old gentleman in the back chamber;—for
being thus chained like a criminal under

Mezentius, face to face with a dead body. So
she puts him to bed first, and—”

“Gives him opium.”

“Yes, I dare say; and then gives herself a
soirée, without his knowing any thing about it.
This course of deception is truly hateful in itself,
and must be particularly so to her, for she is not
a low, or an immoral woman; but one of those
who, not having strength enough to complete the
sacrifice they have had strength enough to commence,
are betrayed into a life of duplicity and
falsehood.”

They had now reached the house, and were
ushered into a room gaily lighted and filled with
guests. The hostess came forward to receive them,
dressed in white, and sailing down the room like a
swan. When the customary salutations had passed
and Flemming had been duly presented, the
Baron said, not without a certain degree of malice;

“And, my dear Frau Kranich, how is your good
husband to night?”

This question was about as discreet as a cannon-ball.

But the lady replied in the simplicity
of her heart, and not in the least disconcerted;

“The same as ever, my dear Baron. It is astonishing
how he holds out. But let us not talk of
these things now. I must introduce your friend to
his countryman, the Grand Duke of Mississippi;
alike remarkable for his wealth, his modesty, and
the extreme simplicity of his manners. He drives
only six horses. Besides, he is known as a man of
learning and piety;—has his private chapel, and
private clergyman, who always preaches against
the vanity of worldly riches. He has also a private
secretary, whose sole duty is to smoke to him, that
he may enjoy the aroma of Spanish cigars, without
the trouble of smoking.”

“Decidedly a man of genius!”

Here Flemming was introduced to his illustrious
countryman; a person who seemed to consist chiefly
of linen, such a display did he make of collar,
bosom, and wristbands.

“Pray, Mr. Flemming, what do you think of
that Rembrandt?” said he, pointing to a picture on

the wall. “Exquisite picture! The grandeur of
sentiment and splendor of chiaroscuro are of the
first order. Just observe the liquidity of the water,
and the silveryness of the clouds! Great
power! There is a bravura of handling in that
picture, Sir, which requires the eye of the connoisseur
to appreciate.”

“Yes, a most undoubted—copy!”

And here their conversation ended; for at that
moment the little Moldavian Prince Jerkin made
his way through the crowd, with his snuff-box as
usual in his hand, and hurried up to Flemming
whom he had known in Heidelberg. He was
eager to let every one know that he spoke English,
and in his haste began by making a mistake.

“Good bye! Good bye! Mr. Flemming!”
said he, instead of good evening. “I am ravished
to see you in Ems. Nice place;—all that there
is of most nice. I drink my water and am good!
Do you not think the Frau Kranich has a very
beautiful leather?”

He meant skin. Flemming laughed outright;

but it was not perceived by the Prince, because at
that moment he was pushed aside, in the rush of a
gallopade, and Flemming beheld his face no more.
At the same moment the Baron introduced a
friend of his, who also spoke English and said;

“You will sup with me to-night. I have some
Rhine-wine, which will be a seduction to you.”

Soon after, the Baron stood with an impassioned,
romantic lady leaning on his arm, examining a
copy of Raphael's Fornarina.

“Ach! I wish I had been the Fornarina,”
sighed the impassioned, romantic lady.

“Then, my dear Madam,” replied the Baron,
“I wish I had been Raphael.”

And so likewise said to himself a very tall man
with fiery red hair, and fancy whiskers, who was
waltzing round and round in one spot, and in a
most extraordinary waistcoat; thus representing a
fiery, floating-light, to warn men of the hidden
rocks, on which the breath of vanity drives them
shipwreck. At length, his partner, tired of spinning,

sank upon a sofa, like a child's top, when it
reels and falls.

“You do not like the waltz?” said an elderly
French gentleman, remarking the expression of
Flemming's countenance.

“O yes; among the figurantes of the Opera.
But I confess, it sometimes makes me shudder to
see a young rake clasp his arms round the waist of
a pure and innocent girl. What would you say,
were you to see him sitting on a sofa with his arms
round your wife?”

“Mere prejudice of education,” replied the
French gentleman. “I know that situation. I
have read all about it in the Bibliothèque de Romans
Choisis!”

And merrily went the dance; and bright eyes
and flushed cheeks were not wanting among the
dancers;

and the Strauss-walzes sounded pleasantly in the
ears of Flemming, who, though he never danced,
yet, like Henry of Ofterdingen, in the Romance of
Novalis, thought to music. The wheeling waltz
set the wheels of his fancy going. And thus the
moments glided on, and the footsteps of Time
were not heard amid the sound of music and
voices.

But suddenly this scene of gayety was interrupted.
The door opened wide; and the short
figure of a gray-haired old man presented itself,
with a flushed countenance and wild eyes. He
was but half-dressed, and in his hand held a silver
candlestick without a light. A sheet was wound
round his head, like a turban; and he tottered
forward with a vacant, bewildered look, exclaiming;

“I am Mahomet, the king of the Jews!”

At the same moment he fell in a swoon; and
was borne out of the room by the servants. Flemming
looked at the lady of the festival, and she
was deadly pale. For a moment all was confusion;
and the dance and the music stopped. The

impression produced on the company was at once
ludicrous and awful. They tried in vain to rally.
The whole society was like a dead body, from
which the spirit has departed. Ere long the guests
had all dispersed, and left the lady of the mansion
to her mournful, expiring lamps, and still more
mournful reflections.

“Truly,” said Flemming, to the Baron, as they
wended their way homeward, “this seems not
like reality; but like one of the sharp contrasts
we find in novels. Who shall say, after this, that
there is not more romance in real life, than we find
written in books!”

“Not more romance,” said the Baron, “but a
different romance.”

A still more tragic scene had been that evening
enacted in Heidelberg. Just as the sun set,
two female figures walked along the romantic
woodland path-way, leading to the Angel's Meadow,
a little green opening on the brow of one of
the high hills, which see themselves in the Neckar
and hear the solemn bells of Kloster-Neuburg.

The evening shadows were falling broad and long;
and the cuckoo began to sing.

“Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” said the eldest of the
two figures, repeating an old German popular
rhyme,

It was the voice of an evil spirit, that spoke in
the person of Madeleine; and the pale and shrinking
figure, that walked by her side, and listened
to those words, was Emma of Ilmenau. A young
man joined them, where the path turns into the
thick woodlands; and they disappeared among the
shadowy branches. It was the Polish Count.

The forget-me-nots looked up to heaven with
their meek blue eyes, from their home in the
Angel's Meadow. Calmly stood the mountain of
All-Saints, in its majestic, holy stillness;—the
river flowed so far below, that the murmur of its

waters was not heard;—there was not a sigh of
the evening wind among the leaves,—not a sound
upon the earth nor in the air;—and yet that
night there fell a star from heaven!

10. CHAPTER X.
THE PARTING.

It was now that season of the year, which an
old English writer calls the amiable month of
June, and at that hour of the day, when, face to
face, the rising moon beholds the setting sun. As
yet the stars were few in heaven. But, after
the heat of the day, the coolness and the twilight
descended like a benediction upon the earth, by all
those gentle sounds attended, which are the meek
companions of the night.

Flemming and the Baron had passed the afternoon
at the Castle. They had rambled once
more together, and for the last time, over the
magnificent ruin. On the morrow they were to
part, perhaps forever. The Baron was going to
Berlin, to join his sister; and Flemming, driven

forward by the restless spirit within him, longed
once more for a change of scene, and was going to
the Tyrol and Switzerland. Alas! he never said
to the passing hour; “Stay, for thou art fair!”
but reached forward into the dark future, with
unsatisfied longings and aimless desires, that were
never still.

As the day was closing, they sat down on the
terrace of Elisabeth's Garden. The sun had
set beyond the blue Alsatian hills; and on the valley
of the Rhine fell the purple mist, like the mantle
of the departing prophet from his fiery chariot.
Over the castle walls, and the trees of the garden,
rose the large moon; and between the contending
daylight and moonlight there were as yet no
shadows. But at length the shadows came; transparent
and faint outlines, that deepened into form.
In the valley below only the river gleamed, like
steel; and here and there the lamps were lighted
in the town. Solemnly stood the leafy lindentrees
in the garden near them, their trunks in
darkness and their summits bronzed with moonlight;

and in his niche in the great round tower,
overhung with ivy, like a majestic phantom, stood
the gray statue of Louis, with his venerable beard,
and shirt of mail, and flowing mantle; and the
mild, majestic countenance looked forth into the
silent night, as the countenance of a seer, who
reads the stars. At intervals the wind of the
summer night passed through the ruined castle
and the trees, and they sent forth a sound as if
nature were sighing in her dreams; and for a moment
overhead the broad leaves gently clashed together,
like brazen cymbals, with a tinkling sound;
and then all was still, save the sweet, passionate
song of nightingales, that nowhere upon earth
sing more sweetly than in the gardens of Heidelberg
Castle.

The hour, the scene, and the near-approaching
separation of the two young friends, had filled their
hearts with a pleasant, though at the same time
not painless excitement. They had been conversing
about the magnificent old ruin, and the
ages in which it had been built, and the vicissitudes

of time and war, that had battered down its
walls, and left it “tenantless, save to the crannying
wind.”

“How sorrowful and sublime is the face of that
statue yonder,” said Flemming. “It reminds me
of the old Danish hero Beowulf; for careful, sorrowing,
he seeth in his son's bower the wine-hall
deserted, the resort of the wind, noiseless;
the knight sleepeth; the warrior lieth in darkness;
there is no noise of the harp, no joy in the
dwellings, as there was before.”

“Even as you say,” replied the Baron; “but
it often astonishes me, that, coming from that fresh
green world of yours beyond the sea, you should
feel so much interest in these old things; nay, at
times, seem so to have drunk in their spirit, as
really to live in the times of old. For my part, I
do not see what charm there is in the pale and
wrinkled countenance of the Past, so to entice the
soul of a young man. It seems to me like falling
in love with one's grandmother. Give me the
Present;—warm, glowing, palpitating with life.

She is my mistress; and the Future stands waiting
like my wife that is to be, for whom, to tell the
truth, I care very little just now. Indeed, my
friend, I wish you would take more heed of this
philosophy of mine; and not waste the golden
hours of youth in vain regrets for the past, and
indefinite, dim longings for the future. Youth
comes but once in a lifetime.”

“Therefore,” said Flemming; “let us so enjoy
it as to be still young when we are old. For my
part, I grow happier as I grow older. When I
compare my sensations and enjoyments now, with
what they were ten years ago, the comparison is
vastly in favor of the present. Much of the fever
and fretfulness of life is over. The world and I
look each other more calmly in the face. My
mind is more self-possessed. It has done me good
to be somewhat parched by the heat and drenched
by the rain of life.”

“Now you speak like an old philosopher,” answered
the Baron, laughing. “But you deceive
yourself. I never knew a more restless, feverish

spirit than yours. Do not think you have gained
the mastery yet. You are only riding at anchor
here in an eddy of the stream; you will soon be
swept away again in the mighty current and whirl
of accident. Do not trust this momentary calm.
I know you better than you know yourself.
There is something Faust-like in you; you would
fain grasp the highest and the deepest; and `reel
from desire to enjoyment, and in enjoyment languish
for desire.' When a momentary change of
feeling comes over you, you think the change permanent,
and thus live in constant self-deception.”

“I confess,” said Flemming, “there may be
some truth in what you say. There are times
when my soul is restless; and a voice sounds
within me, like the trump of the archangel, and
thoughts that were buried, long ago, come out of
their graves. At such times my favorite occupations
and pursuits no longer charm me. The
quiet face of Nature seems to mock me.”

“There certainly are seasons,” replied the
Baron, “when Nature seems not to sympathize

with her beloved children. She sits there so
eternally calm and self-possessed, so very motherly
and serene, and cares so little whether the
heart of her child breaks or not, that at times I
almost lose my patience. About that, too, she
cares so little, that, out of sheer obstinacy, I become
good-humored again, and then she smiles.”

“I think we must confess, however,” continued
Flemming, “that all this springs from our own imperfection,
not from hers. How beautiful is this
green world, which we inhabit! See yonder, how
the moonlight mingles with the mist! What a
glorious night is this! Truly every man has a
Paradise around him until he sins, and the angel of
an accusing conscience drives him from his Eden.
And even then there are holy hours, when this
angel sleeps, and man comes back, and, with the
innocent eyes of a child, looks into his lost Paradise
again,—into the broad gates and rural solitudes
of Nature. I feel this often. We have
much to enjoy in the quiet and retirement of our

own thoughts. Boisterous mirth and loud laughter
are not my mood. I love that tranquillity of
soul, in which we feel the blessing of existence,
and which in itself is a prayer and a thanksgiving.
I find, however, that, as I grow older, I love the
country less, and the city more.”

“Yes,” interrupted the Baron; “and presently
you will love the city less and the country more.
Say at once, that you have an undefined longing for
both; and prefer town or country, according to
the mood you are in. I think a man must be of a
very quiet and happy nature, who can long endure
the country; and, moreover, very well contented
with his own insignificant person, very
self-complacent, to be continually occupied with
himself and his own thoughts. To say the least,
a city life makes one more tolerant and liberal in
his judgment of others. One is not eternally
wrapped up in self-contemplation; which, after all,
is only a more holy kind of vanity.”

In conversation like this, the hours glided away;
till at length, from the Giant's Tower, the Castle

clock struck twelve, with a sound that seemed to
come from the Middle Ages. Like watchmen
from their belfries the city clocks answered it, one
by one. Then distant and muffled sounds were
heard. Inarticulate words seemed to blot the foggy
air, as if written on wet paper. These were
the bells of Handschuhsheimer, and of other villages
on the broad plain of the Rhine, and among
the hills of the Odenwald; mysterious sounds, that
seemed not of this world.

Beneath them, in the shadow of the hills, lay
the valley, like a fathomless, black gulf; and above
were the cloistered stars, that, nun-like, walk the
holy aisles of heaven. The city was asleep in the
valley below; all asleep and silent, save the clocks,
that had just struck twelve, and the veering, golden
weathercocks, that were swimming in the moonshine,
like golden fishes, in a glass vase. And
again the wind of the summer night passed through
the old Castle, and the trees, and the nightingales
recorded under the dark, shadowy leaves, and the
heart of Flemming was full.

When he had retired to his chamber, a feeling
of utter loneliness came over him. The night
before one begins a journey is always a dismal
night; for, as Byron says,

And how much more so when the place and people
are pleasant; as was the case with those, that
Flemming was now leaving. No wonder he was
sad and sleepless. Thoughts came and went, and
bright and gloomy fancies, and dreams and visions,
and sweet faces looked under his closed eyelids,
and vanished away, and came again, and again departed.
He heard the clock strike from hour to
hour, and said, “Another hour is gone.” At length
the birds began to sing; and ever and anon the
cock crew. He arose, and looked forth into the
gray dawn; and before him lay the city he was so
soon to leave, all white and ghastly, like a city
that had arisen from its grave.

“All things must change,” said he to the Baron,
as he embraced him, and held him by the hand.

“Friends must be torn asunder, and swept along
in the current of events, to see each other seldom,
and perchance no more. For ever and ever in the
eddies of time and accident we whirl away. Besides
which, some of us have a perpetual motion in
our wooden heads, as Wodenblock had in his
wooden leg; and like him we travel on, without
rest or sleep, and have hardly time to take a friend
by the hand in passing; and at length are seen
hurrying through some distant land, worn to a
skeleton, and all unknown.”