The Pilgrims of the Rhine

The dog went up to her very humbly, and begged her to allow him to say a few words to her; but she received him so haughtily, that his spirit was up; and he walked back to the tree more than ever enraged against his rival. But what was his joy when he saw that the cat had left the door open! “Now, wretch,” thought he, “you cannot escape me!” So he walked briskly in at the back door. He was greatly surprised to find Reynard lying down in the straw, panting as if his heart would break, and rolling his eyes in the pangs of death.

“Ah, friend,” said the fox, with a faltering voice, “you are avenged, my hour is come; I am just going to give up the ghost: put your paw upon mine, and say you forgive me.”

Despite his anger, the generous dog could not set tooth on a dying foe.

“You have served me a shabby trick,” said he; “you have left me to starve in a hole, and you have evidently maligned me with my cousin: certainly I meant to be avenged on you; but if you are really dying, that alters the affair.”

“Oh, oh!” groaned the fox, very bitterly; “I am past help; the poor cat is gone for Doctor Ape, but he’ll never come in time. What a thing it is to have a bad conscience on one’s death-bed! But wait till the cat returns, and I’ll do you full justice with her before I die.”

The good-natured dog was much moved at seeing his mortal enemy in such a state, and endeavoured as well as he could to console him.

“Oh, oh!” said the fox; “I am so parched in the throat, I am burning;” and he hung his tongue out of his mouth, and rolled his eyes more fearfully than ever.

“Is there no water here?” said the dog, looking round.

“Alas, no!—yet stay! yes, now I think of it, there is some in that little hole in the wall; but how to get at it! It is so high that I can’t, in my poor weak state, climb up to it; and I dare not ask such a favour of one I have injured so much.”

“Don’t talk of it,” said the dog: “but the hole’s very small, I could not put my nose through it.”

“No; but if you just climb up on that stone, and thrust your paw into the hole, you can dip it into the water, and so cool my poor parched mouth. Oh, what a thing it is to have a bad conscience!”

The dog sprang upon the stone, and, getting on his hind legs, thrust his front paw into the hole; when suddenly Reynard pulled a string that he had concealed under the straw, and the dog found his paw caught tight to the wall in a running noose.

“Ah, rascal!” said he, turning round; but the fox leaped up gayly from the straw, and fastening the string with his teeth to a nail in the other end of the wall, walked out, crying, “Good-by, my dear friend; have a care how you believe hereafter in sudden conversions!” So he left the dog on his hind legs to take care of the house.

Reynard found the cat waiting for him where he had appointed, and they walked lovingly together till they came to the cave. It was now dark, and they saw the basket waiting below; the fox assisted the poor cat into it. “There is only room for one,” said he, “you must go first!” Up rose the basket; the fox heard a piteous mew, and no more.

“So much for the griffin’s soup!” thought he.

He waited patiently for some time, when the griffiness, waving her claw from the window, said cheerfully, “All’s right, my dear Reynard; my papa has finished his soup, and sleeps as sound as a rock! All the noise in the world would not wake him now, till he has slept off the boiled cat, which won’t be these twelve hours. Come and assist me in packing up the treasure; I should be sorry to leave a single diamond behind.”

“So should I,” quoth the fox. “Stay, I’ll come round by the lower hole: why, the door’s shut! pray, beautiful griffiness, open it to thy impatient adorer.”

“Alas, my father has hid the key! I never know where he places it. You must come up by the basket; see, I will lower it for you.”

The fox was a little loth to trust himself in the same conveyance that had taken his mistress to be boiled; but the most cautious grow rash when money’s to be gained, and avarice can trap even a fox. So he put himself as comfortably as he could into the basket, and up he went in an instant. It rested, however, just before it reached the window, and the fox felt, with a slight shudder, the claw of the griffiness stroking his back.

“Oh, what a beautiful coat!” quoth she, caressingly.

“You are too kind,” said the fox; “but you can feel it more at your leisure when I am once up. Make haste, I beseech you.”

“Oh, what a beautiful bushy tail! Never did I feel such a tail.”

“It is entirely at your service, sweet griffiness,” said the fox; “but pray let me in. Why lose an instant?”

“No, never did I feel such a tail! No wonder you are so successful with the ladies.”

“Ah, beloved griffiness, my tail is yours to eternity, but you pinch it a little too hard.”

Scarcely had he said this, when down dropped the basket, but not with the fox in it; he found himself caught by the tail, and dangling half way down the rock, by the help of the very same sort of pulley wherewith he had snared the dog. I leave you to guess his consternation; he yelped out as loud as he could,—for it hurts a fox exceedingly to be hanged by his tail with his head downwards,—when the door of the rock opened, and out stalked the griffin himself, smoking his pipe, with a vast crowd of all the fashionable beasts in the neighbourhood.

“Oho, brother,” said the bear, laughing fit to kill himself; “who ever saw a fox hanged by the tail before?”

“You’ll have need of a physician,” quoth Doctor Ape.

“A pretty match, indeed; a griffiness for such a creature as you!” said the goat, strutting by him.

The fox grinned with pain, and said nothing. But that which hurt him most was the compassion of a dull fool of a donkey, who assured him with great gravity that he saw nothing at all to laugh at in his situation!

“At all events,” said the fox, at last, “cheated, gulled, betrayed as I am, I have played the same trick to the dog. Go and laugh at him, gentlemen; he deserves it as much as I can, I assure you.”

“Pardon me,” said the griffin, taking the pipe out of his mouth; “one never laughs at the honest.”

“And see,” said the bear, “here he is.”

And indeed the dog had, after much effort, gnawed the string in two, and extricated his paw; the scent of the fox had enabled him to track his footsteps, and here he arrived, burning for vengeance and finding himself already avenged.

But his first thought was for his dear cousin. “Ah, where is she?” he cried movingly; “without doubt that villain Reynard has served her some scurvy trick.”

“I fear so indeed, my old friend,” answered the griffin; “but don’t grieve,—after all, she was nothing particular. You shall marry my daughter the griffiness, and succeed to all the treasure; ay, and all the bones that you once guarded so faithfully.”

“Talk not to me,” said the faithful dog. “I want none of your treasure; and, though I don’t mean to be rude, your griffiness may go to the devil. I will run over the world, but I will find my dear cousin.”

“See her then,” said the griffin; and the beautiful cat, more beautiful than ever, rushed out of the cavern, and threw herself into the dog’s paws.

A pleasant scene this for the fox! He had skill enough in the female heart to know that it may excuse many little infidelities, but to be boiled alive for a griffin’s soup—no, the offence was inexpiable.

“You understand me, Mr. Reynard,” said the griffin, “I have no daughter, and it was me you made love to. Knowing what sort of a creature a magpie is, I amused myself with hoaxing her,—the fashionable amusement at court, you know.”

The fox made a mighty struggle, and leaped on the ground, leaving his tail behind him. It did not grow again in a hurry.

“See,” said the griffin, as the beasts all laughed at the figure Reynard made running into the wood, “the dog beats the fox with the ladies, after all; and cunning as he is in everything else, the fox is the last creature that should ever think of making love!”

“Charming!” cried Nymphalin, clasping her hands; “it is just the sort of story I like.”

“And I suppose, sir,” said Nip, pertly, “that the dog and the cat lived very happily ever afterwards? Indeed the nuptial felicity of a dog and cat is proverbial!”

“I dare say they lived much the same as any other married couple,” answered the prince.

CHAPTER XIII. THE TOMB OF A FATHER OF MANY CHILDREN

THE feast being now ended, as well as the story, the fairies wound their way homeward by a different path, till at length a red steady light glowed through the long basaltic arches upon them, like the Demon Hunters’ fires in the Forest of Pines.

The prince sobered in his pace. “You approach,” said he, in a grave tone, “the greatest of our temples; you will witness the tomb of a mighty founder of our race!” An awe crept over the queen, in spite of herself. Tracking the fires in silence, they came to a vast space, in the midst of which was a long gray block of stone, such as the traveller finds amidst the dread silence of Egyptian Thebes.

And on this stone lay the gigantic figure of a man,—dead, but not death-like, for invisible spells had preserved the flesh and the long hair for untold ages; and beside him lay a rude instrument of music, and at his feet was a sword and a hunter’s spear; and above, the rock wound, hollowed and roofless, to the upper air, and daylight came through, sickened and pale, beneath red fires that burned everlastingly around him, on such simple altars as belong to a savage race. But the place was not solitary, for many motionless but not lifeless shapes sat on large blocks of stone beside the tomb. There was the wizard, wrapped in his long black mantle, and his face covered with his hands; there was the uncouth and deformed dwarf, gibbering to himself; there sat the household elf; there glowered from a gloomy rent in the wall, with glittering eyes and shining scale, the enormous dragon of the North. An aged crone in rags, leaning on a staff, and gazing malignantly on the visitors, with bleared but fiery eyes, stood opposite the tomb of the gigantic dead. And now the fairies themselves completed the group! But all was dumb and unutterably silent,—the silence that floats over some antique city of the desert, when, for the first time for a hundred centuries, a living foot enters its desolate remains; the silence that belongs to the dust of eld,—deep, solemn, palpable, and sinking into the heart with a leaden and death-like weight. Even the English fairy spoke not; she held her breath, and gazing on the tomb, she saw, in rude vast characters,—

THE TEUTON

“We are all that remain of his religion!” said the prince, as they turned from the dread temple.

CHAPTER XIV. THE FAIRY’S CAVE, AND THE FAIRY’S WISH

IT was evening; and the fairies were dancing beneath the twilight star

“And why art thou sad, my violet?” said the prince; “for thine eyes seek the ground!”

“Now that I have found thee,” answered the queen, “and now that I feel what happy love is to a fairy, I sigh over that love which I have lately witnessed among mortals, but the bud of whose happiness already conceals the worm. For well didst thou say, my prince, that we are linked with a mysterious affinity to mankind, and whatever is pure and gentle amongst them speaks at once to our sympathy, and commands our vigils.”

“And most of all,” said the German fairy, “are they who love under our watch; for love is the golden chain that binds all in the universe: love lights up alike the star and the glow-worm; and wherever there is love in men’s lot, lies the secret affinity with men, and with things divine.”

“But with the human race,” said Nymphalin, “there is no love that outlasts the hour, for either death ends, or custom alters. When the blossom comes to fruit, it is plucked and seen no more; and therefore, when I behold true love sentenced to an early grave, I comfort myself that I shall not at least behold the beauty dimmed, and the softness of the heart hardened into stone. Yet, my prince, while still the pulse can beat, and the warm blood flow, in that beautiful form which I have watched over of late, let me not desert her; still let my influence keep the sky fair, and the breezes pure; still let me drive the vapour from the moon, and the clouds from the faces of the stars; still let me fill her dreams with tender and brilliant images, and glass in the mirror of sleep the happiest visions of fairy-land; still let me pour over her eyes that magic, which suffers them to see no fault in one in whom she has garnered up her soul! And as death comes slowly on, still let me rob the spectre of its terror, and the grave of its sting; so that, all gently and unconscious to herself, life may glide into the Great Ocean where the shadows lie, and the spirit without guile may be severed from its mansion without pain!”

The wish of the fairy was fulfilled.

CHAPTER XV. THE BANKS OF THE RHINE.—FROM THE DRACHENFELS TO BROHL.—AN

INCIDENT THAT SUFFICES IN THIS TALE FOR AN EPOCH.

FROM the Drachenfels commences the true glory of the Rhine; and once more Gertrude’s eyes conquered the languor that crept gradually over them as she gazed on the banks around.

Fair blew the breeze, and freshly curled the waters; and Gertrude did not feel the vulture that had fixed its talons within her breast. The Rhine widens, like a broad lake, between the Drachenfels and Unkel; villages are scattered over the extended plain on the left; on the right is the Isle of Werth and the houses of Oberwinter; the hills are covered with vines; and still Gertrude turned back with a lingering gaze to the lofty crest of the Seven Hills.

On, on—and the spires of Unkel rose above a curve in the banks, and on the opposite shore stretched those wondrous basaltic columns which extend to the middle of the river, and when the Rhine runs low, you may see them like an engulfed city beneath the waves. You then view the ruins of Okkenfels, and hear the voice of the pastoral Gasbach pouring its waters into the Rhine. From amidst the clefts of the rocks the vine peeps luxuriantly forth, and gives a richness and colouring to what Nature, left to herself, intended for the stern.

“But turn your eye backward to the right,” said Trevylyan; “those banks were formerly the special haunt of the bold robbers of the Rhine, and from amidst the entangled brakes that then covered the ragged cliffs they rushed upon their prey. In the gloomy canvas of those feudal days what vigorous and mighty images were crowded! A robber’s life amidst these mountains, and beside this mountain stream, must have been the very poetry of the spot carried into action.”

They rested at Brohl, a small town between two mountains. On the summit of one you see the gray remains of Rheinech. There is something weird and preternatural about the aspect of this place; its soil betrays signs that in the former ages (from which even tradition is fast fading away) some volcano here exhausted its fires. The stratum of the earth is black and pitchy, and the springs beneath it are of a dark and graveolent water. Here the stream of the Brohlbach falls into the Rhine, and in a valley rich with oak and pine, and full of caverns, which are not without their traditionary inmates, stands the castle of Schweppenbourg, which our party failed not to visit.

Gertrude felt fatigued on their return, and Trevylyan sat by her in the little inn, while Vane went forth, with the curiosity of science, to examine the strata of the soil.

They conversed in the frankness of their plighted troth upon those topics which are only for lovers: upon the bright chapter in the history of their love; their first meeting; their first impressions; the little incidents in their present journey,—incidents noticed by themselves alone; that life within life which two persons know together,—which one knows not without the other, which ceases to both the instant they are divided.

“I know not what the love of others may be,” said Gertrude, “but ours seems different from all of which I have read. Books tell us of jealousies and misconstructions, and the necessity of an absence, the sweetness of a quarrel; but we, dearest Albert, have had no experience of these passages in love. We have never misunderstood each other; we have no reconciliation to look back to. When was there ever occasion for me to ask forgiveness from you? Our love is made up only of one memory,—unceasing kindness! A harsh word, a wronging thought, never broke in upon the happiness we have felt and feel.”

“Dearest Gertrude,” said Trevylyan, “that character of our love is caught from you; you, the soft, the gentle, have been its pervading genius; and the well has been smooth and pure, for you were the spirit that lived within its depths.”

And to such talk succeeded silence still more sweet,—the silence of the hushed and overflowing heart. The last voices of the birds, the sun slowly sinking in the west, the fragrance of descending dews, filled them with that deep and mysterious sympathy which exists between Love and Nature.

It was after such a silence—a long silence, that seemed but as a moment—that Trevylyan spoke, but Gertrude answered not; and, yearning once more for her sweet voice, he turned and saw that she had fainted away.

This was the first indication of the point to which her increasing debility had arrived. Trevylyan’s heart stood still, and then beat violently; a thousand fears crept over him; he clasped her in his arms, and bore her to the open window. The setting sun fell upon her countenance, from which the play of the young heart and warm fancy had fled, and in its deep and still repose the ravages of disease were darkly visible. What were then his emotions! His heart was like stone; but he felt a rush as of a torrent to his temples: his eyes grew dizzy,—he was stunned by the greatness of his despair. For the last week he had taken hope for his companion; Gertrude had seemed so much stronger, for her happiness had given her a false support. And though there had been moments when, watching the bright hectic come and go, and her step linger, and the breath heave short, he had felt the hope suddenly cease, yet never had he known till now that fulness of anguish, that dread certainty of the worst, which the calm, fair face before him struck into his soul; and mixed with this agony as he gazed was all the passion of the most ardent love. For there she lay in his arms, the gentle breath rising from lips where the rose yet lingered, and the long, rich hair, soft and silken as an infant’s, stealing from its confinement: everything that belonged to Gertrude’s beauty was so inexpressibly soft and pure and youthful! Scarcely seventeen, she seemed much younger than she was; her figure had sunken from its roundness, but still how light, how lovely were its wrecks! the neck whiter than snow, the fair small hand! Her weight was scarcely felt in the arms of her lover; and he—what a contrast!—was in all the pride and flower of glorious manhood! His was the lofty brow, the wreathing hair, the haughty eye, the elastic form; and upon this frail, perishable thing had he fixed all his heart, all the hopes of his youth, the pride of his manhood, his schemes, his energies, his ambition!

“Oh, Gertrude!” cried he, “is it—is it thus—is there indeed no hope?”

And Gertrude now slowly recovering, and opening her eyes upon Trevylyan’s face, the revulsion was so great, his emotions so overpowering, that, clasping her to his bosom, as if even death should not tear her away from him, he wept over her in an agony of tears; not those tears that relieve the heart, but the fiery rain of the internal storm, a sign of the fierce tumult that shook the very core of his existence, not a relief.

Awakened to herself, Gertrude, in amazement and alarm, threw her arms around his neck, and, looking wistfully into his face, implored him to speak to her.

“Was it my illness, love?” said she; and the music of her voice only conveyed to him the thought of how soon it would be dumb to him forever. “Nay,” she continued winningly, “it was but the heat of the day; I am better now,—I am well; there is no cause to be alarmed for me!” and with all the innocent fondness of extreme youth, she kissed the burning tears from his eyes.

There was a playfulness, an innocence in this poor girl, so unconscious as yet of her destiny, which rendered her fate doubly touching, and which to the stern Trevylyan, hackneyed by the world, made her irresistible charm; and now as she put aside her hair, and looked up gratefully, yet pleadingly, into his face, he could scarce refrain from pouring out to her the confession of his anguish and despair. But the necessity of self-control, the necessity of concealing from her a knowledge which might only, by impressing her imagination, expedite her doom, while it would embitter to her mind the unconscious enjoyment of the hour, nerved and manned him. He checked by those violent efforts which only men can make, the evidence of his emotions; and endeavoured, by a rapid torrent of words, to divert her attention from a weakness, the causes of which he could not explain. Fortunately Vane soon returned, and Trevylyan, consigning Gertrude to his care, hastily left the room.

Gertrude sank into a revery.

“Ah, dear father!” said she, suddenly, and after a pause, “if I indeed were worse than I have thought myself of late, if I were to die now, what would Trevylyan feel? Pray God I may live for his sake!”

“My child, do not talk thus; you are better, much better than you were. Ere the autumn ends, Trevylyan’s happiness will be your lawful care. Do not think so despondently of yourself.”

“I thought not of myself,” sighed Gertrude, “but of him!”

CHAPTER XVI. GERTRUDE.—THE EXCURSION TO HAMMERSTEIN.—THOUGHTS

THE next day they visited the environs of Brohl. Gertrude was unusually silent; for her temper, naturally sunny and enthusiastic, was accustomed to light up everything she saw. Ah, once how bounding was that step! how undulating the young graces of that form! how playfully once danced the ringlets on that laughing cheek! But she clung to Trevylyan’s proud form with a yet more endearing tenderness than was her wont, and hung yet more eagerly on his words; her hand sought his, and she often pressed it to her lips, and sighed as she did so. Something that she would not tell seemed passing within her, and sobered her playful mood. But there was this noticeable in Gertrude: whatever took away from her gayety increased her tenderness. The infirmities of her frame never touched her temper. She was kind, gentle, loving to the last.

They had crossed to the opposite banks, to visit the Castle of Hammerstein. The evening was transparently serene and clear; and the warmth of the sun yet lingered upon the air, even though the twilight had passed and the moon risen, as their boat returned by a lengthened passage to the village. Broad and straight flows the Rhine in this part of its career. On one side lay the wooded village of Namedy, the hamlet of Fornech, backed by the blue rock of Kruezborner Ley, the mountains that shield the mysterious Brohl; and on the opposite shore they saw the mighty rock of Hammerstein, with the green and livid ruins sleeping in the melancholy moonlight. Two towers rose haughtily above the more dismantled wrecks. How changed since the alternate banners of the Spaniard and the Swede waved from their ramparts, in that great war in which the gorgeous Wallenstein won his laurels! And in its mighty calm flowed on the ancestral Rhine, the vessel reflected on its smooth expanse; and above, girded by thin and shadowy clouds, the moon cast her shadows upon rocks covered with verdure, and brought into a dim light the twin spires of Andernach, tranquil in the distance.

“How beautiful is this hour!” said Gertrude, with a low voice, “surely we do not live enough in the night; one half the beauty of the world is slept away. What in the day can equal the holy calm, the loveliness, and the stillness which the moon now casts over the earth? These,” she continued, pressing Trevylyan’s hand, “are hours to remember; and you—will you ever forget them?”

Something there is in recollections of such times and scenes that seem not to belong to real life, but are rather an episode in its history; they are like some wandering into a more ideal world; they refuse to blend with our ruder associations; they live in us, apart and alone, to be treasured ever, but not lightly to be recalled. There are none living to whom we can confide them,—who can sympathize with what then we felt? It is this that makes poetry, and that page which we create as a confidant to ourselves, necessary to the thoughts that weigh upon the breast. We write, for our writing is our friend, the inanimate paper is our confessional; we pour forth on it the thoughts that we could tell to no private ear, and are relieved, are consoled. And if genius has one prerogative dearer than the rest, it is that which enables it to do honour to the dead,—to revive the beauty, the virtue that are no more; to wreathe chaplets that outlive the day around the urn which were else forgotten by the world!