Chapter 4

Thus the Rose, amid much laughter and thanks for her story; but one of us asked, 'And what became of Balthasar the Bottomless, did he remain in his new situation long?' Frau Rosa turned round laughing and pointed to a corner of the room, and said, 'There he sits still as the bold drinker sat 200 years ago!' There he sat sobbing between every draught of Rhenish that he drank, poor shrunken pallid fellow: it was the very same man who had come up so sleepily when the big bell was rung for him a while before. All were anxious to hear the conditions which had been wrung from him by Senator Walther respecting his soul. 'Oh sir,' he replied, in a voice which sounded as if Eternal Death was accompanying him on the bassoon, 'don't require me to tell you.' 'Out with it! what did he want? Out with it!' cried all. 'My soul.' 'What for?' 'For wine.' 'Speak plainly, old fellow, what did he do with your soul?' He was silent for a long time, and at last said, 'Why should I tell this, gentlemen? It is a dreadful thing, and you don't know what it is to lose a soul as none of you ever had one.' 'All the more reason why you shouldn't be afraid of hurting our feelings,' said another. 'But there is a mortal here, I may not say it before him.' 'Go on,' said I, trembling all over, 'I'm not easily shocked; after all, I suppose it was only the Devil who came for you, and he does that every night on the stage.' 'Well then,' said the old man, 'it was the man with the tap who had begun by selling _his_ soul to the Devil, but on condition that he should redeem it if he could find a substitute. He had tried many but all had escaped him; so he made sure of me. I had grown up a wild youth with no teaching, and the wars had left me no time for thinking of my own soul, or Heaven, or Hell, and my only idea was to have a good time during my life. And my idea of a good time was plenty to drink and all day to drink it in. Walther perceived this, and says he, "To live and swill in this Vinous Paradise for two or three decades that would be a life, hey Balthasar? Wouldn't it?" "Ah!" said I, "I should think it would, but how could I attain such felicity?" "Which would you think most of, living here and drinking to your heart's content as long as you _do_ live, or of the stories about what will happen afterwards?" I swore a dreadful oath, "My bones will go where so many of my comrades' bones are lying. When a man is dead he neither feels nor thinks. I have seen that plainly enough in the case of many a poor fellow whose skull has been smashed by a bullet; and therefore I will choose to live and be merry." "Very well," said he. "Then you renounce and forswear the hereafter, do you? then I can easily manage to make you cellarmaster here; only write your name in this book, and swear a binding oath at the same time." I swore again that the Devil or whoever else liked might have all that remained of me after death. When I had said this I was aware that we were no longer two, but a third sat by me and gave me the book to sign.' 'Who was it?' cried all the company. 'It was the Devil.' Weird words: even the spirits of the Vines looked gravely into their glasses, and Bacchus and Frau Rosa were pale and silent, and we heard only the old man's teeth chattering in his skull. 'Well! I _could_ write,' he went on, 'and I wrote now just what was asked of me: and from that time my life went on in riot and merriment, and there was none so gay in Bremen as Balthasar the Bottomless. I drank up all that was oldest and most precious in the cellar. I never went to church, but when the bells rang I came down here and sat down by the best cask and let the tap run into my goblet. As I became old a creepy feeling would now and then come over me, but I drowned all thoughts of death in wine. I had no wife to lament and no children to comfort me: and so on and so on for long years till from very weakness I longed to rest in the grave. Then one day I felt as if I were awake and yet couldn't get up, my eyes wouldn't open, my fingers were stiff, my legs were like logs of wood, and I heard the people come to my bed side, and they felt me all over and said, "Old Balthasar is gone at last." This really frightened me. Dead and not asleep? Dead and still thinking? Though my heart had ceased to beat, something within me beat loudly enough.' 'Your soul, poor fellow,' they whispered. Balthasar nodded and went on. 'Then they measured my length and my breadth to make the six boards ready, and put me in with a hard cushion of shavings under my head and nailed up the coffin, and carried me out into our Lady's churchyard. I heard the bell tolling in the Cathedral, though no eye wept for me; and my soul was ever more frightened because I couldn't sleep. They had dug my grave. I can still hear the whistle of the rope which they drew up as I lay down below. Then they threw stones and earth on me, and it was silent all around me. But my soul grew more and more terrified as it drew towards evening. I knew a little prayer from old times, but my lips wouldn't move. I heard ten--eleven--strike, and at last TWELVE,--when a fearful blow resounded on my coffin'.... A blow that made the hall re-echo now burst open the door of the room, and a great white figure appeared on the threshold. By the wine and the horrors of the night, I had been so ecstasised as to be taken out of myself. I did not scream or jump up, but stared quietly at this new apparition of terror, and simply said, 'Well, I suppose this is the Devil.'

Have you realised the fearful moment in Don Giovanni, when heavy steps ring nearer and nearer, and Leporello comes back screaming and the statue of the governor stalks in to supper, as he was bidden? So this figure: gigantic, with measured echoing tread, a huge sword in hand, in full armour, but unhelmeted, it stalked into the room. It was of stone, yet the stony lips moved, and said, 'Greeting, dear vine-spirits from my beloved river: greeting to you on your birthday, fair child of my neighbour; greeting, My Lady Rose, may I take a seat in your assembly?'

All looked in amazement at the figure. But Rosa clapped her hands with joy, and cried, 'Why, it's Roland! the great stone Roland that has stood in the square at Bremen for ever so many years! This will indeed be a memorable night when you do us so much honour, sir. Put your shield and sword away, and make yourself comfortable. Will you take a seat by my side? Oh, how glad I am!'

The wooden Bacchus, who had been growing fatter and fatter all this time, cast discontented looks now at Roland and now at the Lady of his heart, who had expressed her pleasure so loudly and unrestrainedly. He murmured something about 'uninvited guests being a bore,' and stamped his legs impatiently. But my Lady appeased him with sweet looks and pressed his hand under the table. Room was made for Roland on her other side, and the latter laid down his spear and shield in a comer, and sat down rather awkwardly on a chair. But, alas! the chair was made for the cushioned forms of the burghers of Bremen town, not for a stone giant, and it at once cracked and fell in pieces under him, leaving him sprawling. 'Vile race of weaklings,' he cried, as he rose, 'that puts together such furniture as this, whereon in my time a tender lady could not have sat in safety!' But Balthasar rolled a huge cask up to the table, and persuaded the knight to try it; a couple of staves cracked, but the cask held firm. It was the same with his wine. The glass that Balthasar offered him he shivered to fragments as he grasped it. 'Well,' said the latter rather angrily, 'you might have taken off your stone gauntlets.' A silver goblet of the tumbler-shape holding about a quart escaped with a few unimportant dents, and the knight tossed off its contents.

'How do you like the liquor?' said Bacchus; 'it must be dry work up there on your pillar. I suppose you haven't tasted wine for years?'

'It is good, by my sword, very good. What growth is it?'

'Red Ingelheimer, noble sir,' said Balthasar.

The stony eyes of the knight took fire and sparkled as he heard this, a soft smile beautified his stern features, and he looked with affection into the goblet.

'Ah, dear beloved Ingelheim! how sweet it sounds! the noble castle of my knightly Kaiser. So, even in these days thy name is named! and the vines still bloom which Karl first planted by _his_ Ingelheim! Do the men who live now ever speak of Roland? or of his great master?'

'That you must ask of the mortal here,' said Jude; 'he calls himself Doctor and Master of Arts, and he must give you an account of his race.' The giant turned his eyes inquiringly on me, and I said, 'Noble Paladin, mankind has indeed grown bad and careless of all that is great and lofty: its blind gaze is fixed upon the present, and looks neither before nor after. Yet so wretched are we not yet become, as to have wholly ceased to remember the glorious figures that once trod our native land; they still cast their shadow through the ages till it touches even us. Still are there hearts that fly for refuge to the memories of the past, when the present has become too stale and mean for reflection. Still are there pulses which beat higher at the naming of mighty names, still men who wander with reverence through the ruins where sat the first German Kaiser on his throne with his Paladins and his bards around him. Karl and Oliver, Eginhard and the lovely Emma are still familiar in men's mouths. And where Karl is renowned there too is Roland unforgotten. Next to him thou stoodst in life, and next to him thou wilt stand in song and saga and history till Memory itself shall be no more. The final blast of thy warhorn still echoes in the hills of Roncesvalles, and will echo and echo on till it fades into the blare of the Latest Trumpet.' 'Not in vain, my Kaiser, not in vain have we lived! There _is_ a posterity which does honour to our name,' cried the knight. 'True,' cried Frau Rosa, 'these men would deserve to drink the water of the Rhine instead of the vine blossom of its hills if they could forget the name of the man who first planted us in the Rheingau. My dear friends and apostles, up! a health to our glorious founder and ancestor! to Kaiser Karl, to Kaiser Karl!' The glasses rang again; but Bacchus said, 'Yes, it was a beautiful and a glorious time, and I rejoice in it as I did a thousand years ago. Where now there is one long wonderful garden from the shore of the stream to the tops of the hills, where grape climbs after grape up and down the terraces, there was nothing but wild dark forest before he came. Then he looked down from the mountains from his castle at Ingelheim, and he saw how even in March the sun greeted the hills so warmly as the snow slid down them into the stream; saw how early the trees became leafy there, and how tender and fresh the young grass looked as it burst upwards from the earth in the spring. And then there awakened in him the thought of planting vines where the wood grew. And a busy life began to move in the Rheingau beside Ingelheim; the wood vanished, and the earth was cleared to receive the vine. Then Karl sent men to Hungary and Spain, to Italy and Burgundy, to Champagne and Lothringen, and had vines brought from thence, and entrusted the cuttings to dear mother earth. And my heart rejoiced that he should extend my kingdom beside the noble stream of Germany, and when the first shoots blossomed there I came with all my train, and we camped upon the hills, and we worked in the earth, and we worked in the air, and we spread out delicate nets and caught the dews of spring lest they should fall too heavily; and we rose up and caught the rays of the sunshine, and poured them round the little swelling clusters, and we dived down and brought up water from the green Rhine for the roots, and water for the leaves. And when in autumn the first tender child of the Rheingau lay in its cradle we kept a great feast, and invited all the elements to celebrate it; and each came with some costly gift for the child. Fire laid his hand upon its eyes and said, "Thou shalt bear my sign upon thee for ever--there shall be fire in thee, albeit of such purity and transparency, that thou shalt impart noble courage beyond all other juice of the grape." And Air came in her golden garment of gossamer, and laid her hand upon the child's forehead and blessed him. "Be thy colour as bright and delicate as the golden edge of morning light upon the hills, as the golden tresses of the fair women of the Rheingau." And Water ran past him, all rustling with silver, and bent towards the child, saying, "I will be ever near thy roots, that thou mayst bloom and be green and cover the banks of the Rhine." But when Earth came she kissed his mouth tenderly, and blew with her sweet breath upon him. "The perfumes of all my most delicate herbs, the honey of all my fairest flowers," she said, "have I collected as an offering for thee. The most precious spikenard or ambergris shall be coarse beside thy scent; and thy fairest daughter shall be named after the Queen of Flowers--the ROSE!" Thus spake the elements, and we rejoiced at their promised blessings, and we adorned the child with vine leaves, and sent him to the Kaiser in his castle at Ingelheim. And the Kaiser marvelled at the beauty of the child, and from that day he esteemed the vines of the Rhine among the most splendid of his treasures.'

We sat silent for a while when Bacchus had finished, until her Ladyship requested Andrew to favour us with an old melody, which he did with great ease and grace, by singing a simple old song of the fourteenth or fifteenth century. The words have escaped my memory, but the tune I remember still. This set us all off, even Frau Rosa herself, who sang a pretty little air of 1615 with a rather trembling voice, and Roland also growled out in deep bass a Frankish war hymn, of which I could distinguish little. I was obliged to bear my part, so I began bravely,

The Rhine! the Rhine! the garden of the vine! Heaven bless the noble Rhine! Along his bank the clustered grapes entwine, And patriot hearts inspire to guard the Rhine!

When they heard the words they pressed nearer, and nodded to one another, and stretched out their necks as if wishful not to lose a word. I sang louder and louder for their encouragement. It was inspiration enough to be heard by such a company. The old Rose kept time with her head, and gently hummed the chorus, and the Apostles gazed at me with surprise and joy in their eyes. When I had finished, all were loud in praise of the poor Doctor of Philosophy. 'What a song!' cried Bacchus himself, 'how my heart opens to it, dear Doctor, was it composed in that head of yours that's crowned with academic honours?' 'No, indeed, your honour, the composer has long been dead; he was called Matthew Claudius.' 'He knew a good glass of wine when he came across it, I'll go bail,' said another. 'I don't know, sir,' said I, 'though I have no doubt of it; but another great mortal has said,

Good wine is a good familiar creature, if it be well used,

and I think old Claudius had a similar idea, or he would never have written such a beautiful song, which all men still sing as they sit beneath the vine-covered arbours of the Rhine.' 'Well, Doctor,' said Bacchus, 'if they still sing songs like that they can't be quite such a miserable lot of fellows as you made out.'

'Ah, sir,' said I, 'your poetical "high soul" won't sin by allowing such a song to be poetry at all, just as your pietist finds the Lord's Prayer too simple and straightforward for him.' 'There have been fools in every age, sir,' said another, 'and every one is bound to clean the pavement opposite his own door only; but as we are upon the subject of the present times, tell us what has happened this year on the earth.'

'If I thought it would interest the ladies and gentlemen----' 'Go on,' cried Roland, 'and as far as I am concerned you may begin 500 years back, for I see nothing from my pedestal but cigar-makers, vintners, priests, and old women, and they don't make history, or didn't in my days.'

'First of all then, concerning German Literature ...'

'Stop for Heaven's sake, man! Do you think we are going to listen to trash like that?' cried Peter. 'Poetasters and public-house squabbles!'

I was startled. If these people were not interested by our magnificent literature, if Goethe had no charms for them, what was the use of speaking to them at all?

I tried again. 'It was only last autumn that the stage was----' Howls of laughter drowned my voice. 'We want facts, man, history and facts only; do you suppose we care who spins your comedies and who hisses them?'

'Ah, sir,' I replied, 'you're sadly out of fashion. So's History. We have in fact only the Diet at Frankfurt. Among our neighbours it's true there's occasionally something--for instance, the Jesuits are up again in France, and it looks uncommonly as if the Jacobins were up in Russia.' 'Stuff!' cried one, 'you mean vice versâ.' 'No, I don't.' 'Well, that's odd.' 'And is there no war?' 'Just a little firespitting going on in Greece against the Turks.' 'Ha!' cried the Paladin, smashing a few planks of the table with his stone fist, 'that is good! By my sword, that is good! I have been angry for centuries at the tameness of Christendom while Greece is in chains. You live, sir, in a fine time, and your race is nobler than I thought. I retract my previous vituperation. So the knights of France and Germany, of Spain and England have set out again as erst under Richard of the Lion-heart, to fight the infidel? The fleets of Genoa cover the Mediterranean? the Oriflamme is raised on high within sight of the towers of Stamboul, and the banner of Austria floats over the foremost ranks. Ha! in such a case I would fain bestride once more my steed; I would make Durendal, my good sword, flash the lightnings of death indeed, and would rouse with one blast of my horn every hero who sleeps within the bounds of Europe!'

'Noble knight,' I answered--and again I blushed for the age in which I lived--'times are changed. You would probably be imprisoned as a Jacobin demagogue under the present circumstances, for neither the banner of Hapsburg nor the Oriflamme, neither the Leopard of England nor the Lion of Spain are to the fore in the present conflict.'

'Who then is fighting against the Crescent, if not these?'

'Simply the Greeks themselves.'

'The Greeks?' cried another, 'is it possible? and what are the other powers about?' 'They have their ambassadors with the Porte.' 'Man, man,' said Roland, stiffer than ever with amazement, 'what are you saying? a Christian state fighting for its freedom and left to do it alone? Holy Virgin, what a world is this!' and he crushed the silver goblet as if it had been cardboard, so that the wine in it splashed up to the ceiling; then rising from the table took his sword and targe, and passed with clanking strides out of the chamber.

'Why, what a hot-headed fellow he is!' said the Rose, shaking her kerchief, which was splashed with his wine. 'Does the stony fool want to go a-campaigning again in his old age? If he were to show himself they would certainly make him a right-hand man in a company of Prussian Grenadiers, for he's tall enough.'

'Do not be hard on him, my Lady Rose,' said one of the company, 'for he has the right stuff in him, and he showed it on many a stricken field. If his Kaiser had wished it he would have fought a thousand Mussulmans single-handed.'

'Let him go,' said Bacchus; 'I'm glad he's gone; he bored me with his strong heroics: a fellow ten feet high is out of place here. He showed me no respect. We should never have been able to dance while he was here; his legs would have broken if he had tried.' 'To the dance! to the dance!' they all cried. The wine god beckoned to me. 'Do you understand music, Doctor?' 'A little.' 'Keep good time?' 'Oh yes, I keep good time.' 'Then take this little barrel and this cooper's stave, and sit down besides the Bottomless one there; he is our cellarmaster and cornet player, and you shall accompany him on the drum.' I did as I was bid, but if my drumming was rather unusual, Balthasar's cornet-playing was even more so. He held the iron spout of a large empty cask to his mouth like a clarionet. Two more sat near me with huge wine-funnels which they used as trumpets, waiting for the signal. Then began a fearful rumbling and hooting, all out of tune, to which Turkish music was nothing. Balthasar's instrument had but two notes, the key note and an horribly high falsetto. As for the trumpeters the sounds of grief and anguish which they drew from their funnels was like nothing but the wailing of a Triton on a conch.

Bacchus and his sweetheart paraded in the height of the fashion of 200 years ago. Frau Rosa held her skirt wide out with both hands, so that she looked more like a great wine cask than ever. She didn't move far from her place, but tripped a few steps up and down and back again, and kept bobbing with little curtsies. Her partner meanwhile spun round her like a top, snapping his fingers and crying Halloo!

When at last he seemed tired he beckoned to two of the others, and whispered something to them, whereon they took off Mistress Rose's apron, (which Bacchus had tied round his own neck when he began to dance.) Then the others stood all round and grasped the edge of it. Ha! thought I, now old Balthasar is going to be tossed in a blanket. I hope he won't break his head against the low roof. Then to my horror two of the biggest of them came forward and seized--me; Balthasar chuckled. Struggling was vain; they laid me on the sheet shouting with laughter. 'Only not too high, my noble patrons, or I shall break my head; remember it's not like your saintships' heads,' I cried. Up and down I went, first three, four, then five feet high. Suddenly they began to pull harder, and I flew up--up--and like a cloud the roof opened, and I flew up beyond the roof of the Council Hall, beyond even the Cathedral tower. 'Ah!' thought I, 'now it's all over with me, I shall infallibly be spiked on the weather-cock in coming down, or at least break a few arms or legs; and I know what Adelgunde thinks of a man with broken limbs. Adieu! my love! my life! Then I began to descend as swiftly through the air, through the Council Hall, through the vault, but I lighted not upon the cloth, but just upon a chair which toppled over backwards with me to the floor.

Stunned by the awful fall I lay long, but at length a headache and the coldness of the ground awoke me. Anxiously I examined my limbs, but found nothing broken. Daylight was faintly streaming in through a cellar grating; on the table a candle was flickering as it expired, and round the table in front of each chair a long-shaped bottle with a label on its neck. The company was gone! But whither and how?