Emeralds of time

[Van Canna]

I stopped at a hotel by the railway-station.

I commence my walk, which is long
and excessively hot. Then I get into batteaux, and the gentlemen row the
ladies, which is by no means a cool operation.

After that, more walking;
so that I am excessively inflamed, even to fever heat. A number of persons surround the hotel windows, and doubtless form
a high idea of the company to whom they are obliged to look up at an
awful distance.

Ah, did they but know how trivial the conversation, how
very trivial the characters, their respect would soon be changed to an
emotion extremely different.

A narrow bright red carpet was unrolled
and stretched from the top of the marble steps to the curbstone, along
the center of the black carpet.

In a short time the shrill piping of a coming train was heard, and
immediately groups of people began to gather in the street.

Two or three
open carriages arrived, and deposited some maids of honor and some male
officials at the hotel.

The weather was growing pretty warm, - very warm,
in fact. So I left the valley and took quarters at the chateau, on
the hill, above the Castle.

The city lies at the mouth of a narrow gorge- a gorge the shape of a
shepherd's crook; if one looks up it he perceives that it is about
straight, for a mile and a half, then makes a sharp curve to the right
and disappears.

This gorge- along whose bottom pours the swift Neckar- is
confined between (or cloven through) a couple of long, steep ridges, a
thousand feet high and densely wooded clear to their summits, with the
exception of one section which has been shaved and put under cultivation.

These ridges are chopped off at the mouth of the gorge and form two bold
and conspicuous headlands, with the city nestling between them; from
their bases spreads away the vast dim expanse of the valley, and
into this expanse the Neckar goes wandering in shining curves and is
presently lost to view.

Now if one turns and looks up the gorge once more, he will see the
chateau on the right perched on a precipice overlooking the Neckar-
a precipice which is so sumptuously cushioned and draped with foliage
that no glimpse of the rock appears.

The building seems very airily
situated. It has the appearance of being on a shelf half-way up the
wooded mountainside; and as it is remote and isolated, and very white, it
makes a strong mark against the lofty leafy rampart at its back.

This hotel had a feature which was a decided novelty, and one which might
be adopted with advantage by any house which is perched in a commanding
situation.


This feature may be described as a series of glass-enclosed
parlors CLINGING TO THE OUTSIDE OF THE HOUSE, one against each and every
bed-chamber and drawing-room. They are like long, narrow, high-ceiled
bird-cages hung against the building.

My room was a corner room, and had
two of these things, a north one and a west one.


From the north cage one looks up the Neckar gorge; from the west one he
looks down it. This last affords the most extensive view, and it is one
of the loveliest that can be imagined, too.

Out of a billowy upheaval of
vivid green foliage, a rifle-shot removed, rises the huge ruin of
the Castle, with empty window arches,
ivy-mailed battlements, moldering towers- the Lear of inanimate nature-
deserted, discrowned, beaten by the storms, but royal still, and
beautiful.


It is a fine sight to see the evening sunlight suddenly strike
the leafy declivity at the Castle's base and dash up it and drench it as
with a luminous spray, while the adjacent groves are in deep shadow.

Behind the Castle swells a great dome-shaped hill, forest-clad, and
beyond that a nobler and loftier one.

The Castle looks down upon the
compact brown-roofed town; and from the town two picturesque old bridges
span the river.

Now the view broadens; through the gateway of the
sentinel headlands you gaze out over the wide plain, which
stretches away, softly and richly tinted, grows gradually and dreamily
indistinct, and finally melts imperceptibly into the remote horizon.


The first night I was there, I went to bed and to sleep early; but I
awoke at the end of two or three hours, and lay a comfortable while
listening to the soothing patter of the rain against the balcony windows.


I took it to be rain, but it turned out to be only the murmur of the
restless Neckar, tumbling over her dikes and dams far below, in the
gorge.

I got up and went into the west balcony and saw a wonderful sight.


Away down on the level under the black mass of the Castle, the town lay,
stretched along the river, its intricate cobweb of streets jeweled with
twinkling lights; there were rows of lights on the bridges; these flung
lances of light upon the water, in the black shadows of the arches; and
away at the extremity of all this fairy spectacle blinked and glowed a
massed multitude of gas-jets which seemed to cover acres of ground;

it
was as if all the diamonds in the world had been spread out there.

I did
not know before, that a half-mile of sextuple railway-tracks could be
made such an adornment.

**




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Van Canna