In appearance
something between a circus-chariot and a bath-chair, drawn by a
couple of powerful-looking horses; and in this, after a spirited
skirmish between our driver and a mob of twenty or so tourists, who
pretended to mistake the affair for an omnibus, and who would have
clambered into it and swamped it, we drove away.
Higher and higher we climbed, and grander and grander towered the
frowning moon-bathed mountains round us, and chillier and chillier
grew the air. For most of the way we crawled along, the horses
tugging us from side to side of the steep road; but, wherever our
coachman could vary the monotony of the pace by a stretch-gallop -
as, for instance, down the precipitous descents that occasionally
followed upon some extra long and toilsome ascent - he thoughtfully
did so. At such times the drive became really quite exciting, and
all our weariness was forgotten.
The steeper the descent, the faster, of course, we could go. The
rougher the road, the more anxious the horses seemed to be to get
over it quickly. During the gallop, B. and I enjoyed, in a
condensed form, all the advantages usually derived from crossing the
Channel on a stormy day, riding on a switchback railway, and being
tossed in a blanket - a hard, nobbly blanket, full of nasty corners
and sharp edges. I should never have thought that so many different
sensations could have been obtained from one machine!
About half-way up we passed Ettal, at the entrance to the Valley of
the Ammer. The great white temple, standing, surrounded by its
little village, high up amid the mountain solitudes, is a famous
place of pilgrimage among devout Catholics. Many hundreds of years
ago, one of the early Bavarian kings built here a monastery as a
shrine for a miraculous image of the Virgin that had been sent down
to him from Heaven to help him when, in a foreign land, he had stood
sore in need, encompassed by his enemies. Maybe the stout arms and
hearts of his Bavarian friends were of some service in the crisis
also; but the living helpers were forgotten. The old church and
monastery, which latter was a sort of ancient Chelsea Hospital for
decayed knights, was destroyed one terrible night some hundred and
fifty years ago by a flash of lightning; but the wonder-working
image was rescued unhurt, and may still be seen and worshipped
beneath the dome of the present much less imposing church which has
been reared upon the ruins of its ancestor.
The monastery, which was also rebuilt at the same time, now serves
the more useful purpose of a brewery.
From Ettal the road is comparatively level, and, jolting swiftly
over it, we soon reached Ober-Ammergau. Lights were passing to and
fro behind the many windows of the square stone houses, and dark,
strange-looking figures were moving about the streets, busy with
preparations for the great business that would commence with the
dawn.
We rattled noisily through the village, our driver roaring out "Good
Night!" to everyone he passed in a voice sufficient to wake up
everybody who might be sleeping within a mile, charged light-
heartedly round half-a-dozen corners, trotted down the centre path
of somebody's front garden, squeezed our way through a gate, and
drew up at an open door, through which the streaming light poured
out upon two tall, comely lasses, our host's daughters, who were
standing waiting for us in the porch. They led us into a large,
comfortably furnished room, where a tempting supper of hot veal-
chops (they seem to live on veal in Germany) and white wine was
standing ready. Under ordinary circumstances I should have been
afraid that such a supper would cause me to be more eager for change
and movement during the ensuing six hours than for sleep; but I felt
that to-night it would take a dozen half-baked firebricks to keep me
awake five seconds after I had got my head on the pillow - or what
they call a pillow in Germany; and so, without hesitation, I made a
very satisfactory meal.
After supper our host escorted us to our bedroom, an airy apartment
adorned with various highly-coloured wood-carvings of a pious but
somewhat ghastly character, calculated, I should say, to exercise a
disturbing influence upon the night's rest of a nervous or sensitive
person.
"Mind that we are called at proper time in the morning," said B. to
the man. "We don't want to wake up at four o'clock in the afternoon
and find that we have missed the play, after coming all this way to
see it."
"Oh! that will be all right," answered the old fellow. "You won't
get much chance of oversleeping yourself. We shall all be up and
about, and the whole village stirring, before five; and besides, the
band will be playing at six just beneath the window here, and the
cannon on the Kofel goes off at - "
"Look here," I interrupted, "that won't do for me, you know. Don't
you think that I am going to be woke up by mere riots outside the
window, and brass-band contests, and earthquakes, and explosions,
and those sort of things, because it can't be done that way.
Somebody's got to come into this room and haul me out of bed, and
sit down on the bed and see that I don't get into it again, and that
I don't go to sleep on the floor. That will be the way to get me up
to-morrow morning. Don't let's have any nonsense about stirring
villages and guns and German bands. I know what all that will end
in, my going back to England without seeing the show.
