The Pilgrims of the Rhine

At Cologne our travellers rested for some days. They were in the city to which the camp of Marcus Agrippa had given birth; that spot had resounded with the armed tread of the legions of Trajan. In that city, Vitellius, Sylvanus, were proclaimed emperors. By that church did the latter receive his death.

As they passed round the door they saw some peasants loitering on the sacred ground; and when they noted the delicate cheek of Gertrude they uttered their salutations with more than common respect. Where they then were the building swept round in a circular form; and at its base it is supposed by tradition to retain something of the ancient Roman masonry. Just before them rose the spire of a plain and unadorned church, singularly contrasting the pomp of the old with the simplicity of the innovating creed.

The church of St. Maria occupies the site of the Roman Capitol, and the place retains the Roman name; and still something in the aspect of the people betrays the hereditary blood.

Gertrude, whose nature was strongly impressed with the venerating character, was fond of visiting the old Gothic churches, which, with so eloquent a moral, unite the living with the dead.

“Pause for a moment,” said Trevylyan, before they entered the church of St. Maria. “What recollections crowd upon us! On the site of the Roman Capitol a Christian church and a convent are erected! By whom? The mother of Charles Martel,—the Conqueror of the Saracen, the arch-hero of Christendom itself! And to these scenes and calm retreats, to the cloisters of the convent once belonging to this church, fled the bruised spirit of a royal sufferer,-the victim of Richelieu,—the unfortunate and ambitious Mary de Medicis. Alas! the cell and the convent are but a vain emblem of that desire to fly to God which belongs to Distress; the solitude soothes, but the monotony recalls, regret. And for my own part in my frequent tours through Catholic countries, I never saw the still walls in which monastic vanity hoped to shut out the world, but a melancholy came over me! What hearts at war with themselves! what unceasing regrets! what pinings after the past! what long and beautiful years devoted to a moral grave, by a momentary rashness, an impulse, a disappointment! But in these churches the lesson is more impressive and less sad. The weary heart has ceased to ache; the burning pulses are still; the troubled spirit has flown to the only rest which is not a deceit. Power and love, hope and fear, avarice, ambition,—they are quenched at last! Death is the only monastery, the tomb is the only cell.”

“Your passion is ever for active life,” said Gertrude. “You allow no charm to solitude, and contemplation to you seems torture. If any great sorrow ever come upon you, you will never retire to seclusion as its balm. You will plunge into the world, and lose your individual existence in the universal rush of life.”

“Ah, talk not of sorrow!” said Trevylyan, wildly. “Let us enter the church.”

They went afterwards to the celebrated cathedral, which is considered one of the noblest of the architectural triumphs of Germany; but it is yet more worthy of notice from the Pilgrim of Romance than the searcher after antiquity, for here, behind the grand altar, is the Tomb of the Three Kings of Cologne,—the three worshippers whom tradition humbled to our Saviour. Legend is rife with a thousand tales of the relics of this tomb. The Three Kings of Cologne are the tutelary names of that golden superstition which has often more votaries than the religion itself from which it springs and to Gertrude the simple story of Lucille sufficed to make her for the moment credulous of the sanctity of the spot. Behind the tomb three Gothic windows cast their “dim, religious light” over the tessellated pavement and along the Ionic pillars. They found some of the more credulous believers in the authenticity of the relics kneeling before the tomb, and they arrested their steps, fearful to disturb the superstition which is never without something of sanctity when contented with prayer and forgetful of persecution. The bones of the Magi are still supposed to consecrate the tomb, and on the higher part of the monument the artist has delineated their adoration to the infant Saviour.

That evening came on with a still and tranquil beauty, and as the sun hastened to its close they launched their boat for an hour or two’s excursion upon the Rhine. Gertrude was in that happy mood when the quiet of nature is enjoyed like a bath for the soul, and the presence of him she so idolized deepened that stillness into a more delicious and subduing calm. Little did she dream as the boat glided over the water, and the towers of Cologne rose in the blue air of evening, how few were those hours that divided her from the tomb! But, in looking back to the life of one we have loved, how dear is the thought that the latter days were the days of light, that the cloud never chilled the beauty of the setting sun, and that if the years of existence were brief, all that existence has most tender, most sacred, was crowded into that space! Nothing dark, then, or bitter, rests with our remembrance of the lost: we are the mourners, but pity is not for the mourned,—our grief is purely selfish; when we turn to its object, the hues of happiness are round it, and that very love which is the parent of our woe was the consolation, the triumph, of the departed!

The majestic Rhine was calm as a lake; the splashing of the oar only broke the stillness, and after a long pause in their conversation, Gertrude, putting her hand on Trevylyan’s arm, reminded him of a promised story: for he too had moods of abstraction, from which, in her turn, she loved to lure him; and his voice to her had become a sort of want.

“Let it be,” said she, “a tale suited to the hour; no fierce tradition,—nay, no grotesque fable, but of the tenderer dye of superstition. Let it be of love, of woman’s love,—of the love that defies the grave: for surely even after death it lives; and heaven would scarcely be heaven if memory were banished from its blessings.”

“I recollect,” said Trevylyan, after a slight pause, “a short German legend, the simplicity of which touched me much when I heard it; but,” added he, with a slight smile, “so much more faithful appears in the legend the love of the woman than that of the man, that I at least ought scarcely to recite it.”

“Nay,” said Gertrude, tenderly, “the fault of the inconstant only heightens our gratitude to the faithful.”

CHAPTER VIII. THE SOUL IN PURGATORY; OR LOVE STRONGER THAN DEATH

THE angels strung their harps in heaven, and their music went up like a stream of odours to the pavilions of the Most High; but the harp of Seralim was sweeter than that of his fellows, and the Voice of the Invisible One (for the angels themselves know not the glories of Jehovah—only far in the depths of heaven they see one Unsleeping Eye watching forever over Creation) was heard saying,—

“Ask a gift for the love that burns in thy song, and it shall be given thee.” And Seralim answered,—

“There is in that place which men call Purgatory, and which is the escape from hell, but the painful porch of heaven, many souls that adore Thee, and yet are punished justly for their sins; grant me the boon to visit them at times, and solace their suffering by the hymns of the harp that is consecrated to Thee!”

And the Voice answered,—

“Thy prayer is heard, O gentlest of the angels! and it seems good to Him who chastises but from love. Go! Thou hast thy will.”

Then the angel sang the praises of God; and when the song was done he rose from his azure throne at the right hand of Gabriel, and, spreading his rainbow wings, he flew to that melancholy orb which, nearest to earth, echoes with the shrieks of souls that by torture become pure. There the unhappy ones see from afar the bright courts they are hereafter to obtain, and the shapes of glorious beings, who, fresh from these Fountains of Immortality, walk amidst the gardens of Paradise, and feel that their happiness hath no morrow; and this thought consoles amidst their torments, and makes the true difference between Purgatory and Hell.

Then the angel folded his wings, and entering the crystal gates, sat down upon a blasted rock and struck his divine lyre, and a peace fell over the wretched; the demon ceased to torture and the victim to wail. As sleep to the mourners of earth was the song of the angel to the souls of the purifying star: one only voice amidst the general stillness seemed not lulled by the angel; it was the voice of a woman, and it continued to cry out with a sharp cry,—

“Oh, Adenheim, Adenheim! mourn not for the lost!”

The angel struck chord after chord, till his most skilful melodies were exhausted; but still the solitary voice, unheeding—unconscious of—the sweetest harp of the angel choir, cried out,—

“Oh, Adenheim, Adenheim! mourn not for the lost!”

Then Seralim’s interest was aroused, and approaching the spot whence the voice came, he saw the spirit of a young and beautiful girl chained to a rock, and the demons lying idly by. And Seralim said to the demons, “Doth the song lull ye thus to rest?”

And they answered, “Her care for another is bitterer than all our torments; therefore are we idle.”

Then the angel approached the spirit, and said in a voice which stilled her cry—for in what state do we outlive sympathy?—“Wherefore, O daughter of earth, wherefore wailest thou with the same plaintive wail; and why doth the harp that soothes the most guilty of thy companions fail in its melody with thee?”

“O radiant stranger,” answered the poor spirit, “thou speakest to one who on earth loved God’s creature more than God; therefore is she thus justly sentenced. But I know that my poor Adenheim mourns ceaselessly for me, and the thought of his sorrow is more intolerable to me than all that the demons can inflict.”

“And how knowest thou that he laments thee?” asked the angel.

“Because I know with what agony I should have mourned for him,” replied the spirit, simply.

The divine nature of the angel was touched; for love is the nature of the sons of heaven. “And how,” said he, “can I minister to thy sorrow?”

A transport seemed to agitate the spirit, and she lifted up her mistlike and impalpable arms, and cried,—

“Give me—oh, give me to return to earth, but for one little hour, that I may visit my Adenheim; and that, concealing from him my present sufferings, I may comfort him in his own.”

“Alas!” said the angel, turning away his eyes,—for angels may not weep in the sight of others,—“I could, indeed, grant thee this boon, but thou knowest not the penalty. For the souls in Purgatory may return to Earth, but heavy is the sentence that awaits their return. In a word, for one hour on earth thou must add a thousand years to the torture of thy confinement here!”

“Is that all?” cried the spirit. “Willingly then will I brave the doom. Ah, surely they love not in heaven, or thou wouldst know, O Celestial Visitant; that one hour of consolation to the one we love is worth a thousand ages of torture to ourselves! Let me comfort and convince my Adenheim; no matter what becomes of me.”

Then the angel looked on high, and he saw in far distant regions, which in that orb none else could discern, the rays that parted from the all-guarding Eye; and heard the VOICE of the Eternal One bidding him act as his pity whispered. He looked on the spirit, and her shadowy arms stretched pleadingly towards him; he uttered the word that loosens the bars of the gate of Purgatory; and lo, the spirit had re-entered the human world.

It was night in the halls of the lord of Adenheim, and he sat at the head of his glittering board. Loud and long was the laugh, and merry the jest that echoed round; and the laugh and the jest of the lord of Adenheim were louder and merrier than all. And by his right side sat a beautiful lady; and ever and anon he turned from others to whisper soft vows in her ear.

“And oh,” said the bright dame of Falkenberg, “thy words what ladye can believe? Didst thou not utter the same oaths, and promise the same love, to Ida, the fair daughter of Loden, and now but three little months have closed upon her grave?”

“By my halidom,” quoth the young lord of Adenheim, “thou dost thy beauty marvellous injustice. Ida! Nay, thou mockest me; I love the daughter of Loden! Why, how then should I be worthy thee? A few gay words, a few passing smiles,—behold all the love Adenheim ever bore to Ida. Was it my fault if the poor fool misconstrued such common courtesy? Nay, dearest lady, this heart is virgin to thee.”

“And what!” said the lady of Falkenberg, as she suffered the arm of Adenheim to encircle her slender waist, “didst thou not grieve for her loss?”

“Why, verily, yes, for the first week; but in thy bright eyes I found ready consolation.”

At this moment, the lord of Adenheim thought he heard a deep sigh behind him; he turned, but saw nothing, save a slight mist that gradually faded away, and vanished in the distance. Where was the necessity for Ida to reveal herself?

.......

“And thou didst not, then, do thine errand to thy lover?” said Seralim, as the spirit of the wronged Ida returned to Purgatory.

“Bid the demons recommence their torture,” was poor Ida’s answer.

“And was it for this that thou added a thousand years to thy doom?”

“Alas!” answered Ida, “after the single hour I have endured on Earth, there seems to be but little terrible in a thousand fresh years of Purgatory!”7

“What! is the story ended?” asked Gertrude.

“Yes.”

“Nay, surely the thousand years were not added to poor Ida’s doom; and Seralim bore her back with him to Heaven?”

“The legend saith no more. The writer was contented to show us the perpetuity of woman’s love—”

“And its reward,” added Vane.

“It was not I who drew that last conclusion, Albert,” whispered Gertrude.

CHAPTER IX. THE SCENERY OF THE RHINE ANALOGOUS TO THE GERMAN LITERARY

GENIUS.—THE DRACHENFELS.

ON leaving Cologne, the stream winds round among banks that do not yet fulfil the promise of the Rhine; but they increase in interest as you leave Surdt and Godorf. The peculiar character of the river does not, however, really appear, until by degrees the Seven Mountains, and “THE CASTLED CRAG OF DRACHENFELS” above them all, break upon the eye. Around Nieder Cassel and Rheidt the vines lie thick and clustering; and, by the shore, you see from place to place the islands stretching their green length along, and breaking the exulting tide. Village rises upon village, and viewed from the distance as you sail, the pastoral errors that enamoured us of the village life crowd thick and fast upon us. So still do these hamlets seem, so sheltered from the passions of the world,—as if the passions were not like winds, only felt where they breathe, and invisible save by their effects! Leaping into the broad bosom of the Rhine come many a stream and rivulet upon either side. Spire upon spire rises and sinks as you sail on. Mountain and city, the solitary island, the castled steep, like the dreams of ambition, suddenly appear, proudly swell, and dimly fade away.

“You begin now,” said Trevylyan, “to understand the character of the German literature. The Rhine is an emblem of its luxuriance, its fertility, its romance. The best commentary to the German genius is a visit to the German scenery. The mighty gloom of the Hartz, the feudal towers that look over vines and deep valleys on the legendary Rhine; the gigantic remains of antique power, profusely scattered over plain, mount, and forest; the thousand mixed recollections that hallow the ground; the stately Roman, the stalwart Goth, the chivalry of the feudal age, and the dim brotherhood of the ideal world, have here alike their record and their remembrance. And over such scenes wanders the young German student. Instead of the pomp and luxury of the English traveller, the thousand devices to cheat the way, he has but his volume in his hand, his knapsack at his back. From such scenes he draws and hives all that various store which after years ripen to invention. Hence the florid mixture of the German muse,—the classic, the romantic, the contemplative, the philosophic, and the superstitious; each the result of actual meditation over different scenes; each the produce of separate but confused recollections. As the Rhine flows, so flows the national genius, by mountain and valley, the wildest solitude, the sudden spires of ancient cities, the mouldered castle, the stately monastery, the humble cot,—grandeur and homeliness, history and superstition, truth and fable, succeeding one another so as to blend into a whole.

“But,” added Trevylyan, a moment afterwards, “the Ideal is passing slowly away from the German mind; a spirit for the more active and the more material literature is springing up amongst them. The revolution of mind gathers on, preceding stormy events; and the memories that led their grandsires to contemplate will urge the youth of the next generation to dare and to act.”8

Thus conversing, they continued their voyage, with a fair wave and beneath a lucid sky.

The vessel now glided beside the Seven Mountains and the Drachenfels.

The sun, slowly setting, cast his yellow beams over the smooth waters. At the foot of the mountains lay a village deeply sequestered in shade; and above, the Ruin of the Drachenfels caught the richest beams of the sun. Yet thus alone, though lofty, the ray cheered not the gloom that hung over the giant rock: it stood on high, like some great name on which the light of glory may shine, but which is associated with a certain melancholy, from the solitude to which its very height above the level of the herd condemned its owner!

CHAPTER X. THE LEGEND OF ROLAND.—THE ADVENTURES OF NYMPHALIN ON THE

ISLAND OF NONNEWERTH.—HER SONG.—THE DECAY OF THE FAIRY-FAITH IN ENGLAND.

ON the shore opposite the Drachenfels stand the Ruins of Rolandseck,—they are the shattered crown of a lofty and perpendicular mountain, consecrated to the memory of the brave Roland; below, the trees of an island to which the lady of Roland retired, rise thick and verdant from the smooth tide.

Nothing can exceed the eloquent and wild grandeur of the whole scene. That spot is the pride and beauty of the Rhine.

The legend that consecrates the tower and the island is briefly told; it belongs to a class so common to the Romaunts of Germany. Roland goes to the wars. A false report of his death reaches his betrothed. She retires to the convent in the isle of Nonnewerth, and takes the irrevocable veil. Roland returns home, flushed with glory and hope, to find that the very fidelity of his affianced had placed an eternal barrier between them. He built the castle that bears his name, and which overlooks the monastery, and dwelt there till his death,—happy in the power at least to gaze, even to the last, upon those walls which held the treasure he had lost.

The willows droop in mournful luxuriance along the island, and harmonize with the memory that, through the desert of a thousand years, love still keeps green and fresh. Nor hath it permitted even those additions of fiction which, like mosses, gather by time over the truth that they adorn, yet adorning conceal, to mar the simple tenderness of the legend.

All was still in the island of Nonnewerth; the lights shone through the trees from the house that contained our travellers. On one smooth spot where the islet shelves into the Rhine met the wandering fairies.

“Oh, Pipalee! how beautiful!” cried Nymphalin, as she stood enraptured by the wave, a star-beam shining on her, with her yellow hair “dancing its ringlets in the whistling wind.” “For the first time since our departure I do not miss the green fields of England.”

“Hist!” said Pipalee, under her breath; “I hear fairy steps,—they must be the steps of strangers.”

“Let us retreat into this thicket of weeds,” said Nymphalin, somewhat alarmed; “the good lord treasurer is already asleep there.” They whisked into what to them was a forest, for the reeds were two feet high, and there sure enough they found the lord treasurer stretched beneath a bulrush, with his pipe beside him, for since he had been in Germany he had taken to smoking; and indeed wild thyme, properly dried, makes very good tobacco for a fairy. They also found Nip and Trip sitting very close together, Nip playing with her hair, which was exceedingly beautiful.

“What do you do here?” said Pipalee, shortly; for she was rather an old maid, and did not like fairies to be too close to each other.

“Watching my lord’s slumber,” said Nip.

“Pshaw!” said Pipalee.

“Nay,” quoth Trip, blushing like a sea-shell; “there is no harm in that, I’m sure.”

“Hush!” said the queen, peeping through the reeds.

And now forth from the green bosom of the earth came a tiny train; slowly, two by two, hand in hand, they swept from a small aperture, shadowed with fragrant herbs, and formed themselves into a ring: then came other fairies, laden with dainties, and presently two beautiful white mushrooms sprang up, on which the viands were placed, and lo, there was a banquet! Oh, how merry they were! what gentle peals of laughter, loud as a virgin’s sigh! what jests! what songs! Happy race! if mortals could see you as often as I do, in the soft nights of summer, they would never be at a loss for entertainment. But as our English fairies looked on, they saw that these foreign elves were of a different race from themselves: they were taller and less handsome, their hair was darker, they wore mustaches, and had something of a fiercer air. Poor Nymphalin was a little frightened; but presently soft music was heard floating along, something like the sound we suddenly hear of a still night when a light breeze steals through rushes, or wakes a ripple in some shallow brook dancing over pebbles. And lo, from the aperture of the earth came forth a fay, superbly dressed, and of a noble presence. The queen started back, Pipalee rubbed her eyes, Trip looked over Pipalee’s shoulder, and Nip, pinching her arm, cried out amazed, “By the last new star, that is Prince von Fayzenheim!”

Poor Nymphalin gazed again, and her little heart beat under her bee’s-wing bodice as if it would break. The prince had a melancholy air, and he sat apart from the banquet, gazing abstractedly on the Rhine.

“Ah!” whispered Nymphalin to herself, “does he think of me?”

Presently the prince drew forth a little flute hollowed from a small reed, and began to play a mournful air. Nymphalin listened with delight; it was one he had learned in her dominions.

When the air was over, the prince rose, and approaching the banqueters, despatched them on different errands; one to visit the dwarf of the Drachenfels, another to look after the grave of Musaeus, and a whole detachment to puzzle the students of Heidelberg. A few launched themselves upon willow leaves on the Rhine to cruise about in the starlight, and an other band set out a hunting after the gray-legged moth. The prince was left alone; and now Nymphalin, seeing the coast clear, wrapped herself up in a cloak made out of a withered leaf; and only letting her eyes glow out from the hood, she glided from the reeds, and the prince turning round, saw a dark fairy figure by his side. He drew back, a little startled, and placed his hand on his sword, when Nymphalin circling round him, sang the following words:—

THE FAIRY’S REPROACH     I. By the glow-worm’s lamp in the dewy brake;       By the gossamer’s airy net;     By the shifting skin of the faithless snake,       Oh, teach me to forget:             For none, ah none     Can teach so well that human spell             As thou, false one!     II. By the fairy dance on the greensward smooth;       By the winds of the gentle west;     By the loving stars, when their soft looks soothe       The waves on their mother’s breast,             Teach me thy lore!         By which, like withered flowers,         The leaves of buried Hours           Blossom no more!     III. By the tent in the violet’s bell;       By the may on the scented bough;     By the lone green isle where my sisters dwell;       And thine own forgotten vow,             Teach me to live,           Nor feed on thoughts that pine           For love so false as thine!           Teach me thy lore,           And one thou lov’st no more             Will bless thee and forgive!

“Surely,” said Fayzenheim, faltering, “surely I know that voice!”