Below it is a bas-relief, representing the poet's funeral. He is carried to his grave by ladies, whose praise he sang, and thereby won the name of Frauenlob.

»This, then,« said Flemming, »is the grave, not of Praise-God Bare-bones, but of Praise-the-Ladies Meissen, who wrote songs ›somewhat of lust, and somewhat of love.‹ But where sleeps the dust of his rival and foe, sweet Master Bartholomew Rainbow?«

He meant this for an aside; but the turkey-cock picked it up, and answered: –

»I do not know. He did not belong to this parish.«

I will not prolong this journey, for I am weary and way-worn, and would fain be at Heidelberg with my readers and my hero. It was already night when he reached the Manheim gate, and drove down the long Hauptstrasse so slowly, that it seemed to him endless. The shops were lighted on each side of the street, and he saw faces at the windows here and there, and figures passing in the lamplight, visible for a moment, and then swallowed up in the darkness. The thoughts that filled his mind were strange, as are always the thoughts of a traveller who enters for the first time a strange city. This little world had been going on for centuries before he came, and would go on for centuries after he was gone. Of all the thousands who inhabited it, he knew nothing; and what knew they, or thought, of the stranger, who, in that close post-chaise, weary with travel, and chilled by the evening wind, was slowly rumbling over the paved street? Truly, this world can go on without us, if we would but think so. If it had been a hearse instead of a post-chaise, it would have been all the same to the people of Heidelberg, though by no means the same to Paul Flemming.

But at the farther end of the city, near the Castle and the Carls-Thor, one warm heart was waiting to receive him; and this was the German heart of his friend, the Baron of Hohenfels, with whom he was to pass the winter in Heidelberg. No sooner had the carriage stopped at the iron-grated gate, and the postilion blown his horn, to announce the arrival of a traveller, than the Baron was seen among the servants at the door; and, a few moments afterwards, the two long-absent friends were in each other's arms, and Flemming received a kiss upon each cheek, and another on the mouth, as a pledge and seal of the German's friendship. They held each other long by the hand, and looked into each other's face, and saw themselves in each other's eyes, both literally and figuratively; literally, inasmuch as the images were there, and figuratively, inasmuch as each was imagining what the other thought of him, after the lapse of some years. In friendly hopes and questionings and answers, the evening glided away at the supper-table, where many more things were discussed than the roasted hare and the Johannisberger; and they sat late into the night, conversing of the thoughts and feelings and delights which fill the hearts of young men who have already enjoyed and suffered, and hoped and been disappointed.

 

 

Chapter VI

Heidelberg and the Baron

High and hoar on the forehead of the Jettenbühl stands the Castle of Heidelberg. Behind it rise the oak-crested hills of the Geissberg and the Kaiserstuhl; and in front, from the wide terrace of masonry, you can almost throw a stone upon the roofs of the town, so close do they lie beneath. Above this terrace rises the broad front of the chapel of Saint Udalrich. On the left stands the slender octagon tower of the horologe; and on the right, a huge round tower, battered and shattered by the mace of war, shores up with its broad shoulders the beautiful palace and garden-terrace of Elizabeth, wife of the Count Palatine Frederick. In the rear are older palaces and towers, forming a vast, irregular quadrangle; – Rodolph's ancient castle, with its Gothic gloriette and fantastic gables; the Giant's Tower, guarding the drawbridge over the moat; the Rent Tower, with the linden-trees growing on its summit; and the magnificent Rittersaal of Otho-Henry, Count Palatine of the Rhine and Grand Seneschal of the Holy Roman Empire. From the gardens behind the castle, you pass under the archway of the Giant's Tower into the great courtyard. The diverse architecture of different ages strikes the eye, and curious sculptures. In niches on the wall of Saint Udalrich's chapel stand rows of knights in armor, broken and dismembered; and on the front of Otho's Rittersaal, the heroes of Jewish history and classic fable. You enter the open and desolate chambers of the ruin, and on every side are medallions and family arms; the Globe of the Empire and the Golden Fleece, or the Eagle of the Cæsars, resting on the escutcheons of Bavaria and the Palatinate. Over the windows and doorways and chimney-pieces are sculptures and mouldings of exquisite workmanship; and the eye is bewildered by the profusion of caryatides, and arabesques, and rosettes, and fan-like flutings, and garlands of fruits and flowers and acorns, and bullocks' heads with draperies of foliage, and muzzles of lions, holding rings in their teeth. The cunning hand of Art was busy for six centuries in raising and adorning these walls; the mailed hands of Time and War have defaced and overthrown them in less than two. Next to the Alhambra of Granada, the Castle of Heidelberg is the most magnificent ruin of the Middle Ages.

In the valley below flows the rushing stream of the Neckar. Close from its margin, on the opposite side, rises the Mountain of All-Saints, crowned with the ruins of a convent, and up the valley stretches the mountain-curtain of the Odenwald. So close and many are the hills which eastward shut the valley in, that the river seems a lake. But westward it opens upon the broad plain of the Rhine, like the mouth of a trumpet, and like the blast of a trumpet is at times the wintry wind through this narrow mountain-pass. The blue Alsatian hills rise beyond, and on a platform or strip of level land, between the Neckar and the mountains, right under the castle, stands the town of Heidelberg; as the old song says, »a pleasant town, when it has done raining.«

Something of this did Paul Flemming behold, when he rose the next morning and looked from his window. It was a warm, vapory morning, and a struggle was going on between the mist and the rising sun. The sun had taken the hill-tops, but the mist still kept possession of the valley and the town. The steeple of the great church rose through a dense mass of snow-white clouds, and on the hills the dim vapors were rolling across the windows of the ruined castle, like the fiery smoke of a fierce conflagration.