Therefore Whenever One Of These Exhibitions
Is To Take Place, The News Goes About In The Papers And
Heidelberg Is Sure To Be Full Of People On That Night.
I And My Agent Had One Of These Opportunities, And Improved It.
About half past seven on the appointed evening we
crossed the lower bridge, with some American students,
in a pouring rain, and started up the road which borders
the Neunheim side of the river.
This roadway was densely
packed with carriages and foot-passengers; the former
of all ages, and the latter of all ages and both sexes.
This black and solid mass was struggling painfully onward,
through the slop, the darkness, and the deluge.
We waded along for three-quarters of a mile, and finally
took up a position in an unsheltered beer-garden directly
opposite the Castle. We could not SEE the Castle - or
anything else, for that matter - but we could dimly
discern the outlines of the mountain over the way,
through the pervading blackness, and knew whereabouts
the Castle was located. We stood on one of the hundred
benches in the garden, under our umbrellas; the other
ninety-nine were occupied by standing men and women,
and they also had umbrellas. All the region round about,
and up and down the river-road, was a dense wilderness of
humanity hidden under an unbroken pavement of carriage tops
and umbrellas. Thus we stood during two drenching hours.
No rain fell on my head, but the converging whalebone
points of a dozen neighboring umbrellas poured little
cooling steams of water down my neck, and sometimes into
my ears, and thus kept me from getting hot and impatient.
I had the rheumatism, too, and had heard that this was
good for it. Afterward, however, I was led to believe
that the water treatment is NOT good for rheumatism.
There were even little girls in that dreadful place.
A men held one in his arms, just in front of me, for as much
as an hour, with umbrella-drippings soaking into her clothing
all the time.
In the circumstances, two hours was a good while for us
to have to wait, but when the illumination did at last come,
we felt repaid. It came unexpectedly, of course - things
always do, that have been long looked and longed for.
With a perfectly breath-taking suddenness several mast
sheaves of varicolored rockets were vomited skyward out
of the black throats of the Castle towers, accompanied by
a thundering crash of sound, and instantly every detail of
the prodigious ruin stood revealed against the mountainside
and glowing with an almost intolerable splendor of fire
and color. For some little time the whole building was
a blinding crimson mass, the towers continued to spout
thick columns of rockets aloft, and overhead the sky
was radiant with arrowy bolts which clove their way to
the zenith, paused, curved gracefully downward, then burst
into brilliant fountain-sprays of richly colored sparks.
The red fires died slowly down, within the Castle,
and presently the shell grew nearly black outside;
the angry glare that shone out through the broken arches
and innumerable sashless windows, now, reproduced the
aspect which the Castle must have borne in the old time
when the French spoilers saw the monster bonfire which
they had made there fading and spoiling toward extinction.
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