Part 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE SOLITUDE.

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

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

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

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

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