University of Virginia Library

1. BOOK THE FIRST.

1. CHAPTER I.
THE HERO.

In John Lyly's Endymion, Sir Topas is made
to say; “Dost thou know what a Poet is? Why,
fool, a Poet is as much as one should say,—a
Poet!” And thou, reader, dost thou know what
a hero is? Why, a hero is as much as one should
say,—a hero! Some romance-writers, however,
say much more than this. Nay, the old Lombard,
Matteo Maria Bojardo, set all the church-bells
in Scandiano ringing, merely because he had
found a name for one of his heroes. Here, also,
shall church-bells be rung, but more solemnly.

The setting of a great hope is like the setting
of the sun. The brightness of our life is gone.

Shadows of evening fall around us, and the world
seems but a dim reflection,—itself a broader shadow.
We look forward into the coming, lonely
night. The soul withdraws into itself. Then stars
arise, and the night is holy.

Paul Flemming had experienced this, though
still young. The friend of his youth was dead.
The bough had broken “under the burden of the
unripe fruit.” And when, after a season, he
looked up again from the blindness of his sorrow,
all things seemed unreal. Like the man,
whose sight had been restored by miracle, he beheld
men, as trees, walking. His household gods
were broken. He had no home. His sympathies
cried aloud from his desolate soul, and there came
no answer from the busy, turbulent world around
him. He did not willingly give way to grief. He
struggled to be cheerful,—to be strong. But he
could no longer look into the familiar faces of his
friends. He could no longer live alone, where he
had lived with her. He went abroad, that the sea
might be between him and the grave. Alas! between

him and his sorrow there could be no sea,
but that of time.

He had already passed many months in lonely
wandering, and was now pursuing his way along
the Rhine, to the south of Germany. He had
journeyed the same way before, in brighter days
and a brighter season of the year, in the May of
life and in the month of May. He knew the
beauteous river all by heart;—every rock and
ruin, every echo, every legend. The ancient
castles, grim and hoar, that had taken root as it
were on the cliffs,—they were all his; for his
thoughts dwelt in them, and the wind told him
tales.

He had passed a sleepless night at Rolandseck,
and had risen before daybreak. He opened the
window of the balcony to hear the rushing of the
Rhine. It was a damp December morning; and
clouds were passing over the sky,—thin, vapory
clouds, whose snow-white skirts were “often spotted
with golden tears, which men call stars.” The
day dawned slowly; and, in the mingling of daylight

and starlight, the island and cloister of Nonnenwerth
made together but one broad, dark shadow
on the silver breast of the river. Beyond,
rose the summits of the Siebengebirg. Solemn
and dark, like a monk, stood the Drachenfels, in
his hood of mist, and rearward extended the Curtain
of Mountains, back to the Wolkenburg,—the
Castle of the Clouds.

But Flemming thought not of the scene before
him. Sorrow unspeakable was upon his spirit in
that lonely hour; and, hiding his face in his hands,
he exclaimed aloud;

“Spirit of the past! look not so mournfully at
me with thy great, tearful eyes! Touch me not
with thy cold hand! Breathe not upon me with
the icy breath of the grave! Chant no more
that dirge of sorrow, through the long and silent
watches of the night!”

Mournful voices from afar seemed to answer,
“Treuenfels!” and he remembered how others
had suffered, and his heart grew still.

Slowly the landscape brightened. Down the

rushing stream came a boat, with its white wings
spread, and darted like a swallow through the narrow
pass of God's-Help. The boatmen were
singing, but not the song of Roland the Brave,
which was heard of old by the weeping Hildegund,
as she sat within the walls of that cloister,
which now looked forth in the pale morning from
amid the leafless linden trees. The dim traditions
of those gray old times rose in the traveller's
memory; for the ruined tower of Rolandseck was
still looking down upon the Kloster Nonnenwerth,
as if the sound of the funeral bell had changed the
faithful Paladin to stone, and he were watching still
to see the form of his beloved one come forth, not
from her cloister, but from her grave. Thus the
brazen clasps of the book of legends were opened,
and, on the page illuminated by the misty rays
of the rising sun, he read again the tales of Liba,
and the mournful bride of Argenfels, and Siegfried,
the mighty slayer of the dragon. Meanwhile
the mists had risen from the Rhine, and the whole
air was filled with golden vapor, through which he
beheld the sun, hanging in heaven like a drop of
blood. Even thus shone the sun within him, amid
the wintry vapors, uprising from the valley of the
shadow of death, through which flowed the stream
of his life,—sighing, sighing!