Part 17

As the hour of ten draws near, we return through the vaulted passage from the Great Balcony and enter the grass-grown central courtyard. Outside the façades were grim and bleak and built to meet an enemy’s blows, but toward the courtyard the castle turned faces of ornament and beauty. One feels at once the force of the saying that this is not the ruin of a castle, but of an epoch. It slowly flowered through the five hundred years that Heidelberg was the capital of the Palatinate, and all the development of those intervening times is expressed in its varying architecture. Pomp and circumstance are written big across it, for its masters and builders were counts and princes, kings and emperors. One feels the love and pride they took in these deserted palaces, now masterless. In the pale moonlight whole rows of effigies of the illustrious dead stand boldly forth in niches of the hollow, staring walls, and medallion heads peer curiously out of pediment recesses, and history and allegory find expression in lifelike statue and carven bust. Delicate arabesques and fanciful conceits wreathe themselves in stones of portal and cornice, and the armorial chequers of Bavaria and the Lion of the Palatinate oppose the lordly Eagle of the Empire. Time has modulated the discordant keys of architecture of divergent periods into a common and mellow harmony, so that the first rude stones laid by old Rudolph seem a consistent part of an assemblage that includes that finest example of Renaissance architecture in all Germany—Otto-Heinrich’s wonderful ruddy palace set with its yellow statues. One thinks of Prague and the battle of the White Hill as he sees the ill-starred Frederick’s massive contribution, and wonders why this beautiful realm could not have enticed him from playing that tragic rôle of “Winter King.” Frederick’s palace looms impressively by night; in its varied architecture and majestic effigies of the House of Wittelsbach one feels the propriety of having here a comprehensive levy upon the building-knowledge of all previous time as an adequate and appropriate expression of the catholic culture of the lords of the Palatinate.

And, indeed, one reflects, there was need for both strength and beauty to a fortress that was to play so momentous a rôle in the fierce dissensions of its time. In that dungeon a pope once lay a prisoner; in this chamber Huss found refuge; in yonder chapel Luther has preached, and all the foremost spiritual lords of the hour. This courtyard has echoed with shouts for the Emperor Sigismund when he tarried here _en route_ to play that perfidious part at the Council of Constance, and has rocked with wild applause as “Wicked Fritz,” returning in triumph from the battlefield of Seckenheim, marched in his captive princes. These staring walls have blazed with royal fêtes—in the hush and desolation of to-night one feels a deep sadness in contrasting the ominous silence that pervades them now with the splendor and uproar that vitalized them when a princess was wedded in this crumbling chapel; when Emperor Maximilian came up from his coronation at Frankfort; when the foremost figure of his era, Emperor Charles V, and his sallow little son who was later Phillip II, feasted and reveled here for days at a time.

We look up at the Gothic balconies, and it seems as though we could almost see some early lord of this stronghold peering down through painted windows at the athletic sports of his hardy sons; and a certain unreality takes phantom form and substance, and the sentinel figures descend solemnly from their niches as a train of valorous knights and pages issues from Otto-Heinrich’s broad portal with music and laughter; there is the scrape and tread of mailed feet and the shouts of a gallant company as fair-haired women in shimmering silks and high-peaked headdresses award prizes of the tourney to kneeling men in glittering armor; and the trumpets sound and the torches flare and the noble retinue sweeps into the great banquet hall, while the “merry councilor” who brings up the rear makes us a profound and mocking bow as the door is closed—and we are alone with the statues in the moonlight.

The empty, silent courtyard is spectral and sad; it is an hour for reverie, for apprehension. The pale silver of the moon whitens into phantom-life two sides and a corner; the rest is a deep, hushed shadow. A cushion of ivy stirs in the faint night air; a bat flashes over a shattered cornice; a stone detaches itself exhaustedly and falls with a tinkle of sand, waking a protest of little echoes.

One steals away silently, resigning ward of all this senile decay to faithful Perkeo, who, in wooden effigy, still companions his huge empty tuns in the darkness of the cellars—the little, red-haired, faithful jester who alone remains constant to his master, of all the army of attendants that thronged these palaces for half a thousand years.

We pass the old stone-canopied well whose columns once were Charlemagne’s, pass the ponderous clock tower and the moat bridge, and enter the fragrant gardens as the valley bells sound ten and the purple mists are rising from the Neckar.

It is impossible to escape a feeling of profound melancholy. Where now are the powerful princes whose rusted swords may not strike back were I to raise a hand of destruction against the halls they reared and loved and guarded with such might? “The fate of every man,” said the Koran, “have We bound about his neck.”

It is depressing to think that such glory, power, and beauty as once were here should have flourished so wonderfully and come to so little. Was all this magnificence created merely for destruction? Could nothing less suffice grim Time to build him an eyrie for bats and swallows? Was Von Matthisson right in the judgment he expressed in the sad and sympathetic “Elegie” he penned in these ruins, and must we conclude with him that temporal glory is but ashes and that the darkness of the grave adorns impartially the proud brow of the world ruler and the trembling head that shakes above the pilgrim’s staff?

“Hoheit, Ehre, Macht und Ruhm sind eitel! Eines weltgebieters stolze Scheitel Und ein zitternd Haupt am Pilgerstab Deckt mit einer Dunkelheit das Grab!”

INTERLAKEN

10 P.M. TO 11 P.M.

THE top of the evening at brisk and bracing Interlaken is certainly ten o’clock. Vigorous, vitalizing air breathes down on the lush meadows from towering Alpine snowfields, and languor and ennui fall away from her dispirited summer idlers and a refreshing life interest reasserts itself. It is then one may see the deep, flowered lawns that front the great hotels of the broad Höheweg pleasantly thronged with animated guests, modishly and immaculately groomed; and each little street and quiet lane has its quota of vivacious strollers who prefer the keen night air and the inspiring mountain-prospect to the conventional attractions of the brilliant Kursaal or the round of mild social diversions that is in progress in the hotel apartments. Then, too, there is a certain subdued note of expectancy in the air, for this is the little village’s fête hour; and almost as the valley clocks are striking the hour the celebration is heralded with a burst of rockets from the open field of the Höhenmatte, in the centre of the town, and there is a general rush of chattering guests to see the display and to exhibit prodigious approval. All are aware of the fact that this is merely an expression, in terms of Swiss thrift, of the appreciation the seventy-five hundred villagers feel for the lucrative presence of thousands of guests, and yet it admirably serves as a mid-break in the evening’s diversions. There is little enough to the celebration, to be sure, excepting the exaggerated importance such an event always assumes to isolated summer people, but you would think it was a pyrotechnic marvel, to judge by the enthusiasm.

To see Interlaken then is to behold her at her gayest. Bridge-parties forsake their cards, late diners their ices, and billiardists their cues. Each little balcony on the hotel fronts is promptly crowded, orchestras strike up lively Strauss waltzes, troops of delighted guests hurry across the Höheweg and pour into the meadow, until one might fairly conclude there was a carnival on, from the overflow of laughter and merrymaking. It is always a great moment at the Kursaal. There the excitement seekers have been wandering from parlors to lounging-rooms and ending up in the cheery gaming-hall, where a toy train on a long green table darts around a little track, laden with the francs and merry hopes of modest challengers of fortune, and comes to an exciting and leisurely stop before some station with the name of a European capital. Just then, like as not, as the _croupier_ begins raking in the scattered piles of silver and the losers are being gleefully accosted by their friends, somebody suddenly shouts “Fireworks!” and forthwith all run hurrahing into the gardens and cry out like summer children in vast delight over the rockets that go hurtling skyward from the Höhenmatte. It is all quite of the nature of a very elegant international fête to which the Old World and the New have accredited their most _recherché_ representatives.

There is seldom a lack of keen activity at Interlaken, but at this hour it is most abounding; nor will the new arrival fail to note the contrast between the sharp alertness of this company and the lethargic listlessness that depresses, for instance, the bored idlers who bask in the dusty olive gardens of the Riviera. In the intermittent glow of the fireworks, cottages and distant hotels spring out of the surrounding darkness. The top of a hillside sanatorium appears of a sudden white against the dark pines, the packsaddle roof of the church tower discovers itself, a turret shows with the red field and white Greek cross of the Swiss flag lazily unfolding above it, and one looks anxiously for just one glimpse of the old cloister’s round towers and cone-shaped roofs that reminded Longfellow of “tall tapers with extinguishers.” Music drifts down from remote cafés and pavilions nestling in wooded nooks. The air is heady and buoyant with the scent of pine and fir. Life seems at high tide; and then just as suddenly it is all over, and the gay company resumes its interrupted activities with infinite laughter and handclapping.

There is a positive spell to all this Alpine comedy. No new arrival will feel inclined to return at once to hotel conventionalities, with a soft purple mist shrouding the Lauterbrunnen Valley, and the distant Jungfrau lying pallid and wan in the moonlight. He will gaze about him in wonder at the snow-crowned peaks that hem in the little Bödeli plain where Interlaken snuggles, and will feel how wonderful it is that the boisterous Lütschine and its fellow torrents could ever have filled in this alluvial barrier between the deep lakes that fought them inch by inch. He will think of the enchanted regions of the Bernese Oberland that lie just before him, and of the contrasting beauty of the inland seas that stretch away on either hand: Lake Brienz, mysterious and austere, scowling at its precipitous mountain shores, roaring welcomes to its thundering waterfalls, and begrudging standing-room for the tiniest of hamlets; Lake Thun, “the Riviera of Switzerland,” with lovely vistas of green meadows, châteaux-dotted hillsides and distant snowy summits, all breathing such mildness and serenity as befitted the former abode of the holy hermit of St. Beatenberg. And doubtless he will seek out some tree-embowered path that winds along the Aare, and there indulge in contemplative thought of this glittering blue link between the lakes. Nor could he do better, for this arrogant stream is an illustrious instance of a reformed rake. Of evil repute for riotous cascade and brawling torrent all the way up to its home by the Grimsel Pass, it responds to the touch of civilization at Interlaken and meekly accepts the bondage of steam for the remainder of its career. What a gratifying example of reform it presents as it proceeds demurely along from this scene of moral crisis, laving thankful little towns, reporting conscientiously to the proper authorities at Bern, and, after an exhibition review-sweep around the capital, flowing sweetly on to Waldshut and modestly laying down its burden on the broad bosom of the Rhine. The stranger will perceive that virtue has its rewards, with rivers as with humans, when he takes note of the extravagant petting and eulogy that has followed the repentance of the Aare at Interlaken, its adornment with promenades, gardens, and artistic bridges, and the choice of much excellent society, particularly at night, on the part of ruminating savants and romantic lovers of all ages.

Strolling along the river paths carpeted with sweet-scented pine needles, the delighted new arrival has only to lift his eyes to discover how picturesquely the little city lies in its bed of lush and fertile meadows. It will seem to him like a great stage set for a mammoth spectacle. For background there is the black and flinty Harder, set with the grim rock face of the scowling Hardermannli, rugged in boulders and sheer cliffs and hiding its base in treacherous, grassy slopes; the Aare skirts it fearfully, and the pretty little cottages of Unterseen shrink close to Lake Thun on its farther side. Prostrate Interlaken lies supine before it, gazing appealingly through its innumerable windows across the open Höhenmatte, over the beeches and firs of the protruding shoulder of the Rugen, and on up the dodging, narrow Lütschine Valley to the remote and sympathetic Jungfrau. The scene is ready for the curtain when you have dotted the mountain slopes with châlets.

Or perhaps, if the stranger is fanciful, he will conceive the Alpine ravens thinking it some enormous eagle swooping toward the Lauterbrunnen Valley, with clustered houses for an attenuated body and two lakes for powerful blue wings beating out and back. Or, again, he may be reminded by this group of huge hotels of some fleet of old-time ships-of-the-line that started down the valley to bombard the Jungfrau. Early in the action formation was lost and the great hulks drifted about in hopeless confusion. Several, apparently, went promptly aground on the banks of the Aare right under the precipices of the Harder; all of the big ones foundered in a row along the Höheweg; a number became desperately entangled in the square before the Spielmatten Island; some trailed southward in what we call Jungfraustrasse, and others in Alpenstrasse; here and there one lies at anchor along the farther meadows, waiting for signals from the flagship on the Höheweg; and at least one, in the guise of an ugly white church, was caught in some violent cross-current and tossed up high and dry on the brow of the fir-smothered Gsteig.

The evening guest who does not fancy reveries along a mountain stream, nor yet the quiet pacing of the neat lanes that are so characteristic of this immaculate republic of “spotless towns,” whose very flag appropriately suggests the Red Cross Society’s familiar emblem of sanitation, will find it amusing to loiter among the little shops of the village and see the curious wooden trifles of Brienz, the delicately tinted majolica ware of Thun, exquisite ivory carvings, and rare _bijouterie_ of filigree silver wrought with infinite patience and skill. Tiring of these, he may ramble under the fine old walnut-trees of the Höheweg and congratulate himself that he is not under the horse-chestnuts of Lucerne to look out on inferior mountain prospects and breathe a less intoxicating air.

The most approved form of evening entertainment is a round of calls among friends scattered over the broad lawns of the hotels, when one may divert himself with summer orchestras or itinerant bands of Italian singers in crimson sashes, or revel in a rare profusion of beautiful flowers; and, from time to time, look gladly up at a crisp sky splendid with great luminous stars whose tremulous ardor, in Walter Pater’s famous phrase, “burns like a gem.” It is a capital place to gather impressions of what life at Interlaken means and what goes forward each day among its votaries. It is perfectly plain that this must be a great place; everybody is so bubblingly cheerful and so devoutly grateful for being just here and no possible spot else. You will hear them insisting that Interlaken, being halfway between, is an admirable combination of the complacent “prettiness” of Geneva and the austere solemnity of the vaunted Engadine Valley. Or there will be fragments of conversation reaching you about tennis matches on the Höhenmatte, lake bathing in Brienz, motor-bus runs from the golf links of Bönigen, where the residents plant a fruit tree whenever a baby is born, or of desperate scrambles up the zigzag trails of the Harder beloved of Weber, Mendelssohn, and Wagner, with rapturous accounts of the inspiring view from the _Kulm_. Some, you will gather, have passed the day uneventfully among the park walks of the Rugen, gazing down on Lake Brienz from the Trinkhalle Café, or on Lake Thun from the Scheffel Pavilion, or on both from farther up on the belvedere of the Heimwehfluh. Others again, it seems, have actually crossed the mild Wagner Ravine and ascended the lofty Abendberg of the Grosser Rugen; and for this pitiful adventure you hear them pose as veteran mountain conquerors who will carry their alpenstocks home with them and forever after speak familiarly of edelweiss and the flora of the summits. There even appear to have been romantic souls, familiar with Madame de Staël’s accounts of St. Berchtold festivals, who have spent the hours in dreams of Byron’s “Manfred” down by the old round tower of the dilapidated wreckage of Unspunnen Castle—in truth, the most abject of ruins, and quite as forlorn as Mariana’s Moated Grange. Not a few will have the courage to confess that they have done nothing more heroic than stroll by the shaded Goldei promenades along the Aare until they came to Unterseen, where they deliberately sat down and gazed to satiety at the curious toy houses with the long carved balconies and amazing roofs that project beyond all belief.

Thus, by merely catching flying ends of talk, a stranger may imbibe the proper amount of enthusiasm and gather some rambling notion of the fine things Interlaken has in store for him.

But the real evening-heroes must be looked for at the Kursaal. That is where you hear the great champion talkers of the world! What was the amiable Tartarin to such as these? Or Baron Munchausen? Or Sir John Mandeville? On such deaf ears fell the warning ignored of “Excelsior”:—

“Beware the pine-tree’s withered branch! Beware the awful avalanche!”

Behold them at their ease in wicker chairs in the lounging-room, stretching the weary limbs that have borne them in safety through a hundred Alpine perils. For all who will listen, what tales may be heard of desperate daring amid the imminent deadly breach of crevasse and avalanche! Under the vivid hand of the actual participant one fairly sees the progress of the proud mountain-queller—follows with bated breath the slow and tedious early stages, the hazardous upward advance, the surmounting of final barriers by dint of ice-axe and life-rope, and so enters into the joy of the ultimate conquest of the wild, bleak, wind-swept summit. Who would have the hardihood in such a presence to speak a word of such contemptible contrivances as mountain tramways and funicular railroads! It is enough that the uninitiated should realize in the shuddering depths of his soul that there still remains _terra incognita_ to the listless, the fat, and the asthmatic. Later on, of course, we come to view these hardy characters in a somewhat truer perspective; but that will be after we have talked with their guides, or ourselves turned heroes and bluffed at like hazards.

All the same, there is no denying the satisfaction a newcomer has, in the beginning, in attending the impressive conversation of these desperate and intrepid Kursaal adventurers. He certainly feels that he has at last reached a region of hardy men and genuine mountain hand-to-hand struggles. He hears, with popping eyes, of the lofty little hamlet of Mürren, away up in cloudland, whose tiny cottages stagger under broad, stone-freighted roofs and where vast, sublime Titans scowl awfully from inaccessible heights. They tell him it is a region of eternal dazzling whiteness, with patches of black here and there that are really forests half buried in snow, and where the air is stifling with the constant odor of ice and frost. A truly shuddering place, they say, where men cannot hear themselves talk for the incessant thundering of plunging avalanches, and where the herdsman seldom ventures and the sunrise is never heralded by the alphorn of the hardy _Senn_. Later on, to be sure, we journey luxuriously to this same Mürren in a comfortable mountain railway and with considerably less of peril than attends going to office by elevator in a sky-scraper at home; and we find it a green and peaceful retreat, well supplied with hotels and gratefully affected by delicate old ladies with weak lungs. Just the same, we would not have missed the thrills of that first Kursaal account. Alas for all disillusionment, anyway! Most of the beautiful white, velvety edelweiss these rocking-chair climbers produce from their pockets in proof of their presence in frightful and remote ravines has really been bought for a franc on the Höheweg, and the chamois they stalked in summit passes generally dwindle down to the little ivory ones you find in the shops of Jungfraustrasse.

The truth of the Kursaal, when you get it, is stranger than its fiction; as when the talk turns to the progress of the construction work on the Jungfrau Railway, that imperishable monument to the genius and patience of the late Adolf Guyer-Zeller, of Zurich. It is then you hear of the loftiest tunnels in the world, eight and ten miles long, through icy mountain shoulders ten thousand feet above the sea; of gradients of one in four; of squirrel locomotives so ingeniously contrived that if the electric power were suddenly to fail they could generate enough by their own weight to clap on brakes and come down in safety; of searchlights in the stations on the peaks so strong that a man can read by them away over at Thun; of powerful telescopes, free to patrons, through which you may observe the occupations of the crowds on the Rigi and Mount Pilatus at remote Lucerne; of roomy and luxurious stations blasted out of the depths of the mountains, whose floors are parquetry and whose light and heat are electricity, with twenty-foot windows piercing the rock and appearing, even from across the neighboring abyss, like tiny pin-pricks in the perpendicular cliff; of the highest post-office on earth, from whose windows you look out on twenty glaciers. Of the truth of all this you are to learn later on when you make the unforgettable run to Eismeer—“sea of ice”—the farthest point so far attained in the steady progress of this marvelous railway toward the summit of the Jungfrau, now only a mile or two beyond, and which had been the despair of mountain climbers of all time until the Meyer brothers conquered it, one hundred years ago.