Say it's flat. (If possible, find out
if it IS flat.) "The rat tower on the Rhine," near Bingen.
Describe the place and tell the whole story. Don't spin it out too
long, because everybody knows it. "The Brothers of Bornhofen,"
story connected with the twin castles of Sterrenberg and
Liebenstein, Conrad and Heinrich - brothers - both love Hildegarde.
She was very beautiful. Heinrich generously refuses to marry the
beautiful Hildegarde, and goes away to the Crusades, leaving her to
his brother Conrad. Conrad considers over the matter for a year or
two, and then HE decides that he won't marry her either, but will
leave her for his brother Heinrich, and HE goes off to the Crusades,
from whence he returns, a few years later on, with a Grecian bride.
The beautiful H., muddled up between the pair of them, and the
victim of too much generosity, gets sulky (don't blame her), and
shuts herself up in a lonely part of the castle, and won't see
anybody for years. Chivalrous Heinrich returns, and is wild that
his brother C. has not married the beautiful H. It does not occur
to him to marry the girl even then. The feverish yearning displayed
by each of these two brothers, that the other one should marry the
beloved Hildegarde, is very touching. Heinrich draws his sword, and
throws himself upon his brother C. to kill him. The beautiful
Hildegarde, however, throws herself between them and reconciliates
them, and then, convinced that neither of them means business, and
naturally disgusted with the whole affair, retires into a nunnery.
Conrad's Grecian bride subsequently throws herself away on another
man, upon which Conrad throws himself on his brother H.'s breast,
and they swear eternal friendship. (Make it pathetic. Pretend you
have sat amid the ruins in the moonlight, and give the scene - with
ghosts.) "Rolandseck," near Bonn. Tell the story of Roland and
Hildegunde (see Baedeker, p. 66). Don't make it too long, because
it is so much like the other. Describe the funeral? The "Watch
Tower on the Rhine" below Audernach. Query, isn't there a song
about this? If so, put it in. Coblentz and Ehrenbreitstein. Great
fortresses. Call them "the Frowning Sentinels of the State." Make
reflections on the German army, also on war generally. Chat about
Frederick the Great. (Read Carlyle's history of him, and pick out
the interesting bits.) The Drachenfels. Quote Byron. Moralise
about ruined castles generally, and describe the middle ages, with
your views and opinions on same."
There is much more of it, but that is sufficient to let you see the
scheme I had in my head. I have not carried out my scheme, because,
when I came to reflect upon the matter, it seemed to me that the
idea would develop into something that would be more in the nature
of a history of Europe than a chapter in a tourist's diary, and I
determined not to waste my time upon it, until there arose a greater
public demand for a new History of Europe than there appears to
exist at present.
"Besides," I argued to myself, "such a work would be just the very
thing with which to beguile the tedium of a long imprisonment. At
some future time I may be glad of a labour of this magnitude to
occupy a period of involuntary inaction."
"This is the sort of thing," I said to myself, "to save up for
Holloway or Pentonville."
It would have been a very enjoyable ride altogether, that evening's
spin along the banks of the Rhine, if I had not been haunted at the
time by the idea that I should have to write an account of it next
day in my diary. As it was, I enjoyed it as a man enjoys a dinner
when he has got to make a speech after it, or as a critic enjoys a
play.
We passed such odd little villages every here and there. Little
places so crowded up between the railway and the river that there
was no room in them for any streets. All the houses were jumbled up
together just anyhow, and how any man who lived in the middle could
get home without climbing over half the other houses in the place I
could not make out. They were the sort of villages where a man's
mother-in-law, coming to pay him a visit, might wander around all
day, hearing him, and even now and then seeing him, yet never being
able to get at him in consequence of not knowing the way in.
A drunken man, living in one of these villages, could never hope to
get home. He would have to sit down outside, and wait till his head
was clear.
We witnessed the opening scenes of a very amusing little comedy at
one of the towns where the train drew up. The chief characters were
played by an active young goat, a small boy, an elderly man and a
woman, parents of the small boy and owners of the goat, and a dog.
First we heard a yell, and then, from out a cottage opposite the
station, bounded an innocent and happy goat, and gambolled around.
A long rope, one end of which was fastened to his neck, trailed
behind him. After the goat (in the double sense of the phrase) came
a child. The child tried to catch the goat by means of the rope,
caught itself in the rope instead, and went down with a bump and a
screech. Whereupon a stout woman, the boy's mother apparently, ran
out from the cottage, and also made for the goat. The goat flew
down the road, and the woman flew after it. At the first corner,
the woman trod on the rope, and then SHE went down with a bump and a
screech. Then the goat turned and ran up the street, and, as it
passed the cottage, the father ran out and tried to stop it.
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