Villa Eden: The Country-House on the Rhine. Auerbach Berthold
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of a man who was a pattern of uprightness and worldwide views, Abraham Lincoln, seemed to penetrate everywhere, and to bring with it a great crisis in the history of humanity. Deeply interested, he looked up smiling, for he remembered that the Frenchwoman had said that an American girl could alone console the homesick child, and that she had also composed the play for the festival. Here a child plays with sacred stories, whilst all is in commotion in her Fatherland. The thoughts of the young man were again in the convent, and with the wonderful apparition.
Just as he was laying down the paper, his eye fell upon an advertisement. He knit his brows, looked around, and read again; then asking permission to keep the paper, he carried it with him to his chamber. "A handsome man," said the guests, after he had gone; "evidently a young widower, who wishes to find distraction from his grief in a Rhine-journey; he wears a weed on his hat.'"
CHAPTER II.
"UP THE RIVER."
"Name: Eric Dournay. Title: Doctor of Philosophy, late Army-Captain. Place of departure: name of a small University city. Destination: – Object of Journey: – "
Such was the entry made by the young man in the register of the inn early the next morning; and he now first noticed written above his name, "Justice Vogt, Lady, née Landen, and Daughter, from" – a small town on the Upper Rhine. That was then the mottled gentleman of yesterday with the two ladies.
Eric, for so we shall hereafter call him, carrying his small valise, went down to the steamboat-landing. The morning was fresh and bright, life and song everywhere, and only one little cloud, like a slight streak of mist resting half way up the mountainside. Eric walked with a firm and erect step, taking in full draughts of the fresh morning air. He stood at the landing, and looked into the water, from which a streak of mist rose, and became dissolved in the air. Then he gazed long at the island, where the morning bell was ringing to wake up the children, who had been transformed the previous evening into legendary beings. How would that girl with long, black hair and glittering wings open her bright eyes? As if he must drive away this image, Eric took the paper out of his pocket, and read again the advertisement. On came the puffing steam-boat pressing her bow against the stream.
Eric had not noticed that two of the convent nuns, one of whom was the pretty Frenchwoman, had been also waiting for the approaching boat. He did not see them until after they had got on board. He gave them a salutation, but received no response except a look of surprise. They took their breviary, sat down upon the deck and said their prayers. On seeing them, Eric thought he would ask who the girl was with the wings; but he came to the conclusion not to do so, for no result could come from this occurrence, and he wished to concentrate all his energies upon the project he had in view. There were but few fellow passengers, and the morning hour does not encourage sociability, as if the solitude of sleep has yet an influence over human souls.
Eric stationed himself near the helmsman, who whistled incessantly in a low tone: and lost in thought he looked at the upheaved water and the shore. Pressing together his finely cut lips, he seemed determined silently to take in the full poetic beauty of this river and landscape that has never been adequately portrayed, and often shook his head as he heard two persons here and there wasting in so-called conversation the freshness of the morning and the quiet, inspiring influence of the scenery. We shall often have occasion as we proceed, to impart information about this youth. At present we will premise that Eric, the son of respectable parents, receiving a careful education, entered the military service, and then, voluntarily resigning his commission, devoted himself to study. He had just obtained his doctor's degree, working very hard to hasten this event, for only two months had elapsed since the death of his father. On the evening of the day he had taken his degree, his mother urged him to allow himself a few days' recreation. Stroking his pale, thin face, she said, "You will regain the fresh color of life; life and work are one's duty; that was always what your father said and did."
It was to be determined when Eric returned what plan of life they would adopt. The thought, which she could not keep down, was very painful to the mother, that they could no longer continue in their former mode of life without care and responsibility, but must make provision for the future, a state of things never contemplated by her. And with pain that she sought to repress, but could not wholly conceal, calling to mind a saying of Lessing, she saw her son standing in the marketplace and asking for work. Moreover, she hoped that her son would consent finally to receive some position through patronage; at any rate he must again recover his fresh, youthful looks. Had the mother seen him now, she would have been astonished to see how quickly that had taken place; for a brightness shone in his eye, and a color in his countenance more brilliant and glowing than in his best and most tranquil days.
For the sake of giving some special object to his journey, she had commissioned him to carry her greeting to the Superior of the convent. He was now on his return, for a simple newspaper advertisement had given an unexpected direction to his journey and his purposes.
Wonderful! thought Eric to himself, placing his hand upon the breast pocket containing the newspaper, wonderful, how the calls are given which send forth here and there the adventurous Ulysses!
Meanwhile he had sufficient youthful elasticity not to neglect, for the sake of the goal, the pleasures to be enjoyed by the way. He watched with an intelligent glance the machinery of the boat, and the life on the river and on the banks. At the second landing the two nuns were to stop, and the pretty Frenchwoman gave him a backward nod, as she descended the side ladder. When in the boat she sat looking down with folded hands; and on landing, she gave no further look behind.
The passengers changed at every landing. At one village came a band of pilgrims, chiefly women with white kerchiefs on their heads; and when they disembarked, a troop of Turners came on board, in their light gray uniform, and immediately struck up a song upon the deck, whilst the pilgrims sang upon the shore. In all the cities and villages they passed bells were ringing on that bright spring day full of blossoms and sweet sounds, and Eric felt all that intoxication which the Rhine-life brings over the spirit, – that exhilaration of every faculty, which comes no one knows whence, as no one can say what gives to the wine of these mountains its flavor and its life. It is the breath of the stream; it is the fragrance of the mountains; it is the virtue of the soil; it is the sunlight that glows in man as in the wine, and excites an ethereal gladness which no one can be free from, and which no one can explain.
Eric was often spoken to, but he held himself aloof from all companionship, wishing in the movement around him to be alone with the delightful landscape. There are words which become poles of thought in the meditation of the lonely. Eric heard one fellow traveller say to another,
"I prefer to go up the river, for one can look at everything longer and more closely, and it is a triumph of the human mind that we can make headway against the current."
Against the current! That was the word which that day stuck fast to Eric out of the thousand things he thought of and looked upon. Against the stream! That was also his life-course. He had left the trodden highway, and with bold self-determination he had marked out a path of his own. It is well, for one there learns more perfectly the world about him, and, above all, learns his own strength.
"Against the current!" said he, smiling to himself. "Let us see what will come of it." It was high noon when he disembarked at a little mediæval city.
A young man standing on the shore looked sharply at him, exclaiming, "Dournay!" "Herr von Pranken!" answered Eric. They grasped each other's hands.
CHAPTER III.
DRINKING NEW WINE
"Before people have fairly done shaking hands, they say, 'Let us drink.' It must be the river there that makes you long so to quench your thirst."
So spoke Eric to the tall, fair youth of his own age, sitting opposite, who had placed his nicely gloved hand upon a brown spaniel whose head lay in his lap. The dog frequently looked up to Eric, whose deep, musical voice perhaps produced an impression upon the creature.
"Here is the list of wines. What year and what vintage do you prefer? Shall we take new wine, still lively and fermenting?" "Yes, new wine, and from the mountain here upon which the sun lies so cheerily, and where the cuckoo calls from the wood; – wine native to the soil, and blood-relation