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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wine-ghosts of Bremen, by Wilhelm Hauff
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Wine-ghosts of Bremen
+
+Author: Wilhelm Hauff
+
+Illustrator: Frank M. Gregory
+
+Release Date: April 19, 2010 [EBook #32064]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WINE-GHOSTS OF BREMEN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Bowen from page scans provided by Google Books
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+Source: Google Books
+http://books.google.com/books?id=k6YoAAAAYAAJ
+
+
+
+
+
+                       THE WINE-GHOSTS OF BREMEN
+
+
+
+
+
+
+_This edition of "The Wine-Ghosts of Bremen" was printed entirely from
+type, distributed immediately after printing, and is limited to Five
+Hundred Copies, of which this is No._ 485.
+
+            Theo. L. DeVinne & Co.
+
+
+
+[Illustration: 'IT WAS THE DEVIL']
+
+
+
+                                  THE
+                         WINE-GHOSTS OF BREMEN
+
+
+                                   BY
+                             WILHELM HAUFF
+
+
+                    ILLUSTRATED BY FRANK M. GREGORY
+
+
+
+
+                          NEW-YORK AND LONDON
+                            WHITE AND ALLEN
+                              MDCCCLXXXIX
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                           Copyright 1889, by
+                            WHITE AND ALLEN.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                  THE
+                         WINE-GHOSTS OF BREMEN
+
+                     TRANSLATED PROM THE GERMAN OF
+                               W. HAUFF
+
+
+                                   BY
+                               E. SADLER
+                                  AND
+                           C. R. L. FLETCHER
+                    LATE FELLOW OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE
+
+
+
+
+                         LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+                                                             PAGE.
+
+    1. 'IT WAS THE DEVIL'                          _Frontispiece._
+
+    2. THE CELLAR OF BACCHUS                                     8
+
+    3. THE GENTLEMEN OF THE RHINE                               24
+
+    4. 'TO THE DANCE! TO THE DANCE!'                            60
+
+
+
+
+                                PREFACE.
+
+
+When Mr. Carlyle endeavoured to introduce Jean Paul Richter to the
+English public, it seems to us that he was more than usually
+unsuccessful. The literary publics of the England and the Germany of
+those days were very different, and perhaps the errors of taste, which
+each professed to find in the other, were not in truth wholly upon the
+side of John Bull. We feel, (with much deprecation of our own impudence
+in challenging such a comparison,) in a somewhat similar position, and
+dread in our more diffident moments a far colder reception and far
+greater depth of oblivion for our present attempt to render into
+English a good German story about STRONG DRINK. German humour is often
+more rollicking than that of our own countrymen; it is also
+occasionally more subtle. But it has always been a matter of some
+wonder to us that Hauff's acknowledged masterpiece should be unknown to
+English readers, and we have therefore made the following attempt;
+praying the courteous reader only that he will not throw the story down
+in disgust till he gets to the best part: of the location of which we
+allow him to be the best judge.
+
+Wilhelm Hauff was born on the 29th November, 1802, at Stuttgart, where
+his father held various high posts, with various high-sounding double
+and treble official names, under the paternal government of the Elector
+Frederick, the first of his name and house who attained 'serenity.' It
+was this same ruler who three years later, after refusing a passage to
+Napoleon's troops for some time with great show of patriotism, allowed
+himself to be 'convinced,' as soon as the Emperor himself appeared and
+offered him a considerable extension of territory and a Royal Crown;
+and who confessed with some _naivete_ 'that since Frederick the Great
+he had never met any one so good at talking a man over as Napoleon;
+that the latter had in fact the same "tournure de l'esprit" as
+Frederick.' But His Serene Highness was, in common with many of his
+contemporaries, in the habit of allowing himself to be talked over by
+any one with a good strong army at his back. 'C'etait leur nature de
+complaire aux plus forts.' Therefore he now openly joined, in 1805, as
+he had practically done in '95 and '99, the row of princely traitors to
+the cause of Germany, and began to dance with his fellows on the
+fast-closing grave of the Holy Roman Empire. It must however be
+remembered that his country was one of the few German principalities
+that still possessed an active 'Landstaende' or system of Estates: this
+was indeed of the most rudimentary order, and consisted chiefly of
+representatives of the nobles, craft gilds, and ecclesiastical
+corporations; but it is worthy of note that, as in the Tyrol, there was
+a Peasants' Estate in Wuerttemberg, and that these Estates did possess,
+though they rarely made good, the right of voting or withholding
+supplies from His Serenity. On the occasion referred to, when he
+expressed some doubts as to whether his Estates would agree to the
+proposed treaty, Napoleon, who had methods of his own for dealing with
+refractory representatives, answered that 'he would settle all that.'
+The Elector then got his crown from Napoleon; but in November, 1813, a
+very similar scene was enacted at Stuttgart, (with Alexander in place
+of Napoleon,) when the confederation of the Rhine was dissolved, and
+Bavaria had already made her peace with the allies by the treaty of
+Ried. Then the magnanimous King Frederick threw in his lot with the
+winning side again, in return for that fatal guarantee of absolute
+sovereignty and territorial indemnification for his losses, (for he was
+obliged to disgorge some of the spoils of his neighbours,) which proved
+such an obstacle in the way of the long-deferred restoration of
+Germany.
+
+Growing up under influences like these, it is wonderful that young
+Hauff and his brother Hermann (his senior by two years) should ever
+have discovered that they were Germans at all; but they lost their
+father in 1809 and do not afterwards appear to have had any political
+connection with the government: and by 1815, when Wilhelm was only
+thirteen, the worst was over and the people of Stuttgart were left face
+to face with their amiable monarch; who surprised them and all the
+world by granting them of his own grace and favour an absolutely free
+constitution. This, however, on the principle of 'Timeo Danaos et dona
+ferentes,' was too much for the Wuerttembergers, who profoundly
+mistrusted him: but before the matter could be settled King Frederick
+died, and King Wilhelm I, the husband of a Russian princess, and a
+brave soldier and able diplomatist, who had stood up for the rights of
+Germany in the deferred Elsass question, gave to his people, after much
+preparation, a very respectably constitutional form of government
+with two chambers, which included a representation both of clergy and
+old-imperial nobility, backed up by a strong Executive. This was in
+1822, and the remaining five years of W. Hauff's life were passed in a
+happy country that had no history. It is usual of course to account for
+the excessively fertile development of literary culture in Germany at
+this time by the fact that the system of repression was so strong and
+effective as to drive all the moderate minds away from politics; but
+this will hardly hold good in Wuerttemberg. Yet the educated classes
+there seem to have been completely indifferent to such politics as
+there were. But there were very few.
+
+Those who want to discover the conditions under which Hauff's earlier
+life passed should read (1) Goethe's Autobiography in Wahrheit and
+Dichtung, and (2) Histoire d'un Conscrit; and, by mixing the two well
+together, may arrive at some sort of idea what life was like in a small
+German state, on which were grafted the new horrors of a military
+despotism. It is not a pleasant picture, but if it bred a good many
+souls as dead to patriotism as Goethe's and Heine's, it also bred not a
+few Muellers and Uhlands and Arndts; and it bred Wilhelm Hauff. That
+Hauff, in his later years at least (if a man can be said to have
+later years who died at twenty-five), had caught much of the spirit
+of the heroes of the War of Liberation, is best seen from the few
+soul-stirring lyrics which he has left, especially the two odes which
+he wrote in 1823-4 on the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo; even
+more perhaps it is seen in his admiration for W. Mueller, and in the
+affecting story that when on his deathbed he heard the news of the
+battle of Navarino, he cried, 'What news! I must go hence and tell it
+to Mueller,' who preceded him to the grave by a few weeks.
+
+Hauff and his brother were voracious readers. Their maternal
+grandfather, 'a learned jurist,' (one trembles to think what a learned
+German jurist must have been like in the first decade of this century,)
+had a good library, consisting chiefly of old Law and History books,
+but including also a considerable number of romances; 'Smollett,
+Fielding, and Goldsmith were there,' says his biographer, Gustav
+Schwab, in the life which he prefixed to the 1837 (first collected)
+edition of Hauff's works. Schwab relates, not without humour, how the
+boys would play at fortress building and sieges with some of the more
+ponderous of the volumes, and the delight which they took in battering
+down a breastwork composed of the 'Acta Pacis Westphalicae,' perhaps at
+the very time at which the Congress of Vienna was engaged upon the same
+job. But in the way of reading, they battened chiefly upon the old
+German historical romances, Hardleder's 'Ursache des Deutschen Krieges'
+especially, and it was from works like these that Wilhelm caught that
+old-imperial swing and flow of ideas which carries us so powerfully
+through Lichtenstein and the 'Phantasien.' The plan of turning a boy
+loose in a library is sometimes justified by results, although not
+always in the way expected. But although Wilhelm got a certain amount
+of classics drilled into him at the cloister school of Blaubeuern,
+and afterwards studied 'Philology, Philosophy, and Theology,' from
+1820-1824, at the University of Tuebingen, 'more,' says Schwab, 'to
+please his mother than from any leaning of his own to those subjects,'
+he never could write Greek or Latin verses like his brother, or pass
+for anything but an essentially poor scholar. But several other people
+who have afforded some pleasure to the world at large have been
+essentially poor scholars.
+
+This deficiency did not affect him much; his mother, though apparently
+not wealthy, had good interest, and procured for him, when he left the
+University, the position of private tutor in the family of 'the at that
+time War's-council's-President, later War's-minister von Huegel' at
+Stuttgart, where he remained two years, with apparently abundant
+leisure for exercising his talent for writing poetical romances and
+fairy tales, of which during the last two years of his life he poured
+forth an incessant stream. It is worth while noting that in one of
+these--the first part of the 'Memoirs of Satan' (not the completed
+edition of these memoirs as they now stand)--is a passage in which the
+author falls foul of the great Autocrat of German Literature apropos of
+some lines in Faust; which was a more daring thing for a young fellow
+of four-and-twenty to do than it is possible for a man living in a free
+country to imagine. The rash youth afterwards repented, and expunged
+the obnoxious passage when he finished the memoirs of his black
+Majesty.
+
+Perhaps it would have been as well if there had been no expunging, at
+least we may dare to say so on this side of the water, where less and
+less divinity hedges the person of the great man-god of letters every
+day. Hauff, however, had a tender heart, and did not like to see what a
+big hole he had made by casting a stone at the man-god; and with the
+modesty of twenty-four he begged pardon. History does not say whether
+the man-god took any notice of him.
+
+It is not, however, with the Memoirs of Satan, or with any but one of
+Hauff's works that we are now concerned. The 'Man in the Moon' was a
+scathing satire upon a school of story-book makers, popular at the
+time, and headed by one H. von Clauren, whose works we have not
+perused. 'Lichtenstein,' which has been dramatised, is not inferior to
+an inferior Waverley novel. These and many more are well known to
+English readers, but the 'Phantasien im Bremer Rathskeller' has never
+been translated, no doubt because of its dreadfully Rabelaisian
+morality in the matter of strong drink. What can you think of a man
+who dedicates his book to the 'lovers of wine,' and takes for his motto
+the passage from Othello which appears at the head of the story? We do
+not intend to defend him; we ourselves are by no means the pair of
+ultra-Pickwickian topers, that a cursory perusal of the motto and
+dedication would lead the reader to believe: and we are quite aware
+that there _are_ to be no more cakes and ale in this world; we are a
+little sorry for it, that is all. As for Hauff we will let him speak
+for himself; we have no reason whatever to believe that he had more
+than a poetical and literary affection for the juice of the grape.
+
+Hauff had grown tired of being a private tutor in 1826, and spent the
+profits of Lichtenstein in a journey to the North of Germany and to
+Paris in the latter half of that year. It was upon that occasion that
+he visited Bremen, although not upon the errand imagined in the text.
+On his return to the South in 1827 he became Editor of the 'Morning
+News for the Educated Classes,' to which his brother, who succeeded him
+in the editorship, was already a contributor. This paper survived till
+1865, when it expired a few months after the death of Hermann Hauff,
+whom from all we know of him we imagine to have been a much more
+business-like editor than Wilhelm. Contemporarily with this responsible
+post Wilhelm took to himself a wife, one of his own cousins, who bore
+him a daughter but a few days before his death. He died of fever on the
+18th November, 1827. Prefixed to the edition of 1853 is a very pretty
+little poem of L. Uhland's on the occasion, and also a funeral oration
+by Mr. Court Chaplain Grueneisen, who was his cousin, both of which were
+recited over his grave in true German fashion. If we could believe all
+that this worthy priest said--and we have not a scrap of evidence to
+the contrary--Wilhelm Hauff's life must indeed have been a bright and
+happy one; 'Wonnezeit voll holder Traeume,' as he himself called the
+season of youth. Apparently he made no enemies, and he made every one
+whom he chose his friend; his tender affection for his mother seems to
+have been the mainspring of his existence; to his bride he had been
+long attached in a half playful spirit, that wanted only the shadow of
+a difficulty to withdraw their love into those regions of romance in
+which his mind delighted to dwell. It was about a month before his
+death that he produced, as a reminiscence of his northern journey, the
+following story, entitled--
+
+                      'THE WINE-GHOSTS OF BREMEN.'
+
+
+
+
+NOTE (_written before the late incorporation of the Hanse towns with
+the Empire_).
+
+It may seem a little superfluous here to attempt to describe the
+Rathskeller at Bremen, for it is well known to many travellers. But
+from the method by which travellers are usually conducted through the
+vaults, in which Hauff spent his grandfather's _Schalttag_ in that
+bygone October, little acquaintance with the object of his story is to
+be derived. The Rathhaus at Bremen, then, is by far the most
+conspicuous object in the town. It contains some of the most beautiful
+of the German efforts, both in stone and wood carving, of the fifteenth
+and sixteenth centuries. Whether there is any connection between the
+fact that the fifteenth century preferred stone, the sixteenth wood,
+and the other fact that the former of these centuries was to the Hanse
+towns the epoch of glory, the latter the epoch of decay, we must leave
+for Mr. Ruskin to decide. Anyhow, the men who embellished that Rathhaus
+inside were as little conscious of the decay of their city as those who
+built it and decorated it outside. So far as Germany is concerned, even
+in the best examples of Luebeck, Augsburg, or Nuremberg, the force of
+Art could no further go. But descend the steps on the left of the
+building, and you will find a very different state of things. The
+cellar is built as a cellar should be, strictly with a view to the
+practical--that is, to the comfort of its inhabitants, the mighty
+spirits imprisoned in the mighty casks. For the comfort of those who
+came to commune with those mighty spirits, a broad oak settle with
+strong arms would and did suffice; and the steps were made strictly
+with a view to be _easy of ascent_. Since Hauff's time, and partly in
+consequence of his story, the internal arrangements appear to have been
+much altered. Some of the cellar chambers have been painted in the true
+modern German style, about which we should prefer not to say too much.
+Some of the mural paintings profess to be representations of scenes in
+the story. There is no longer a passage straight through from the
+Apostle cellar to the boudoir of Frau Rosa herself, and of the other
+vaults the cellar of Bacchus is alone unaltered. Bacchus, indeed, is
+the hero of the place. No better description could possibly be given of
+him than that which Hauff gives, and therefore we will not attempt to
+amplify it. But the same Bacchus does not actually 'in the wood,' so to
+speak, sit there. He was taken down ten years ago, and a new one put up
+in his place--why, I failed to discover. His cask is, however, like all
+the other casks except Frau Rosa (who has disappeared altogether), the
+old one, a veritable Thirty Years War cask, beautifully carved with
+fantastic figures in relief. In the Apostle cellar all the wine is
+Hochheimer or Ruedesheimer, and the names are still graven on each cask,
+and 'Herr Judas, 1729,' is said to contain the best wine. But from a
+somewhat limited experience it is difficult cordially to endorse the
+reported opinion of the late King Ludwig of Bavaria, that the finest
+Rhine wines would keep for ever. Let the man who wishes to know what
+wine _can be_, by all means go daily for a few weeks to the Rathskeller
+in Bremen. Let him pay due homage to the worthies of old time there by
+tasting them, one glass of each per diem; but let him not fail to wash
+them down speedily with a bottle of twenty-year old Niersteiner or
+Ruedesheimer. If you ask, thirsty reader, why these things are to be
+found at their best in Bremen, we can only say that North Germany is a
+right conservative country; and because the Burgomasters of Bremen
+thought it their duty in the seventeenth century to lay down cask upon
+cask of the best vintages, their successors think it is their duty
+likewise; which is a very practical and righteous feeling. Bacchus,
+however, and the two mighty casks which guard his right hand and his
+left (like those trusty comrades who stand up in the halls of the
+Colleges of our Universities on each side of the drinker, when the
+loving cup is passed round, to prevent his being stabbed in the back),
+are now empty. The right hand cask was broken open and drained by the
+French soldiers in 1806, after the defeat of Prussia at Auerstaedt; a
+loss which one can well imagine that the Town Council of Bremen bore
+less philosophically than many another act of power of those merciless
+freebooters. Bacchus himself, who dates from 1624, has been empty for
+100 years. But what has become of the Rose herself? There are many old
+casks in the cellar called after her, but none that I could identify
+with the heroine of the story. She is still painted on the ceiling--a
+sufficiently ugly specimen (of the variety known as 'La France,' she
+appears to be)--very fat and round, with very dirty green foliage, and
+round her the following inscription:--
+
+'Cur Rosa Flos Veneris Bacchi depingitur antro,
+  Causa quod absque mero frigiat ipsa Venus.'
+
+Other bad hexameters follow in other parts of the vault known as the
+Rose cellar; as for instance:
+
+'Haec Rosa Luminibus Veneres Nectarque Palato
+ Objicit, exhalans pocula grata cadis:
+Vina vetusta tenet, grandaevi munera Bacchi;
+ Sint procul hinc juvenes; vos decet iste senes.'
+
+They are in fact the sort of verses that the traditional Eton boy, who
+wrote verses for the whole of his Dame's house, could turn out at the
+rate of a couplet a minute, adding a few false quantities and concords
+by desire of the accomplice for whom they were written, 'because if you
+don't, you know, my tutor will never believe they're my own
+composition.' Finally, over the entrance door, on the other side of
+which is a medallion of Hauff, erected in 1876, comes the following:--
+
+  'Was Magen, Leib und Herz, Saft, Kraft, und Geist kann geben,
+   Betruebte troesten mag, halbtodte kann beleben,
+   Theilt diese Rose mit, sie hat von hundert Jahren
+   Den Preis ein edles Oel mit Sorgfalt zu bewahren.'
+
+More could be quoted, but this breathes the spirit of the eighteenth
+century quite sufficiently for our purpose.
+
+As for Roland, he is still in the marketplace, a wonderful
+fourteenth-century stone figure, nearly twenty feet high, not standing
+on a pillar, but simply on a pedestal about two feet from the ground.
+He would certainly find it remarkably difficult to sit down, even on a
+cask, for he has iron spikes to his knees, which would make him
+extremely uncomfortable if he bent them. He did not bow his head to me
+as I went away as he did to Hauff, which I felt deeply. It is generally
+believed that he only bows his head to those departing visitors who
+have had enough Nierstein to appreciate the compliment.
+
+                                                  C. R. L. F.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            THE WINE-GHOSTS
+                               OF BREMEN.
+
+'Come, come, good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well
+used.'--_Othello_, ii. 3.
+
+'There's nothing to be done with the fellow,' I heard them say, as they
+stumped down the stairs; 'nine o'clock and he is going to doze away his
+evening like a dormouse. He wouldn't have been like that four years
+ago.' They were not far wrong from their point of view, good fellows;
+for this evening there was to be a most brilliant musical tea and
+muffin fight with dancing and recitation, and these gentlemen had come
+to invite me (who was a stranger to the High Life of Bremen) to go with
+them. But I did not feel up to it. Some one, whom I had come to Bremen
+on purpose to visit, was not to be there, and what's the use of going
+anywhere where Some one isn't? Besides, I knew I should have to sing if
+I went, and I didn't choose to sing if she wasn't to be there to hear
+me. I should only spoil all their fun by looking sulky. I preferred to
+let them curse me for a dull dog for a few minutes on the steps, rather
+than let them bore themselves from nine to one in talking to my body
+only, while my soul would be whole streets off wandering about in the
+neighbourhood of the Frauenkirche.
+
+It wasn't sleepiness though. I am not a habitual dormouse, and don't
+like being called one. No, I meant to be thoroughly awake that night,
+and one of my friends--it was you, Hermann--said as much when he got
+outside. 'He didn't look sleepy,' I heard him say, 'with those bright
+eyes of his. But he looked like a man who had been drinking either too
+much or too little, which probably means that he is going to make a
+night of it with the bottle, and alone.'
+
+Prophetic soul! Did you know that my eyes were sparkling yet
+proleptically with the thought of old Rhenish? You didn't know that I
+had a permit from their High Mightinesses to greet my Lady Rose and the
+Twelve Apostles. And you certainly didn't know that it was my
+'Retreat.'[1]
+
+In my opinion the habit which I inherit from my grandfather of blazing,
+so to speak, the tree of life here and there with a notch, and spending
+a quiet day of meditation over each notch, is not a bad one. To keep
+the ordinary festivals of the Church only is hardly sufficient; one
+becomes commonplace, and one's thoughts are too apt to become
+commonplace on such days. But let the soul that keeps an anniversary of
+its own making keep it alone; look inwards for a few hours in the year
+instead of always outwards; sit down at the long table d'hote of
+memory, people it with the shadows of the past, and then set to and
+make out the bill conscientiously. Such days as these my grandfather
+always kept, and called his 'retreats.' He didn't prepare a banquet for
+his friends, or pass the time in festivity at all; he simply sat down
+and feasted his own soul and talked to her in that inner chamber which
+she had occupied for five-and-seventy years. Even now I can trace, long
+as it is since the dear old man was laid in the churchyard, the marked
+passages in his Elzevir Horace which he always read on such days; and
+as I read, I can see his large blue eyes wandering thoughtfully over
+the yellow leaves of memory's book. He takes up his pen. Slowly and
+hesitatingly he draws the black cross beneath the name of some dear
+departed friend. 'The master is keeping his Retreat,' whispered the
+servants to us, as we grandchildren were running gaily and noisily up
+the stairs; and we repeated the words to each other, and imagined that
+he was making himself Christmas presents, and wondered how he managed
+to light up his own Christmas tree. And we were not far wrong. They
+were the tapers of affection that he was kindling upon the tree of
+Unforgetfulness, each taper the symbol of happy hours of a long life.
+And when his hours of solitude were passed, and we were admitted in the
+evening, he sat still and quiet in his chair as if he rejoiced like a
+child in the Heaven-sent Christmas gifts of the past.
+
+
+[Footnote 1: Schalttag, lit. 'intercalary day'--used of the 29th of
+February in leap years--impossible to translate except by a
+circumbendibus. Hence we have borrowed from ecclesiastical phraseology
+a word which, to a certain extent, possesses the same meaning in
+English. So far as we are aware Hauff is peculiar in using Schalttag in
+this sense.]
+
+
+And it was on his Retreat day that he was borne by loving hands to his
+last resting-place. For the first time for many years, (for he had been
+confined to his room,) it was 'out into the air,' but it was also 'into
+his grave.' And again, 'I could not choose but weep they should lay him
+in the mould.' I had often walked with him along the same road; but
+when they turned off across the black bridge and laid him deep in
+the earth, I knew that he was keeping his real Retreat. I was a little
+boy, and I wondered as they threw a lot of stones and turf on him
+whether he would ever come up again. He did not. But his image remained
+in my memory, and when I grew up my favourite pieces in the long
+picture-gallery of Reflection were his Retreats.
+
+And isn't to-day mine? The First of September? And am I to go and drink
+weak tea and listen to bad music to-day? No! I have a better
+prescription in my pocket, directed to the best apothecary in the
+world--somewhat under the world in fact he dwells. Down therefore to
+him, and _Fiat, sum., haust. ad lib._
+
+It was striking ten o'clock when I descended the broad steps that lead
+to the noble vault, which with all its contents is the ancient and
+perpetual inheritance of their High Mightinesses the Corporation of
+Bremen. There was every probability of my having my drink to myself, as
+there was a fearful storm raging outside and no one about in the
+streets. The cellarman stared at me as I presented a slip of paper,
+signed and sealed by a town-councillor:--
+
+'Admit the Bearer to Drink. Sep. 1st.'
+
+'So late and _To-night_?' says he. 'It is never late before twelve and
+never too early after that for good wine,' says I. He looked at the
+signature and seal, and not without hesitation led the way through the
+vaults. What a noble sight was there! His lantern shone over long rows
+of casks, and threw strange forms and shadows on the arches of the
+cellar; and the pillars seemed to float in the background like busy
+coopers plying their staves. My companion wanted to open for me one of
+those smaller rooms where six or eight friends at the most can pack in
+with comfortable space to let the bottle circulate: and a very proper
+thing it is, when your companions are the right sort, to sit close
+together; but when I am to be alone I love free space, where my
+thoughts and my body can find room to expand. So I chose an old vaulted
+hall, the largest we passed into, for my solitary banquet-room. 'You
+expect company?' said the attendant. 'No.' Some have who do not
+expect,' said he, with an uneasy glance at the shadow on the wall.
+'What do you mean?'
+
+'Nothing. It's the first of September.... By-the-bye, there was Mr.
+Councillor Pumpernickel here a while agone, and he bade me get out some
+samples for you--samples of my Lady Rose and of the Twelve Apostle
+casks'; and he began to take down some pretty little bottles with
+long strips of paper on their necks. 'You don't mean to tell me I am
+not to be allowed to drink out of the casks themselves.' 'Your honour
+couldn't possibly be allowed that privilege except in the presence of a
+town-councillor. Let me fill your honour's glass from this bottle.'
+'Not a drop here then,' said I; 'if I mayn't drink from the cask head I
+will drink at the cask side at least. Come, old fellow, pick up your
+samples, and give me the light.' He still kept fidgeting about, and
+shoving the bottles into and out of his pockets, which irritated me
+much, as I was longing to be off to the Apostle cellar; and at length I
+spoke quite sharply, 'Come now, march.' This gave him courage
+apparently, and he answered with some firmness, 'It won't do, sir,
+really it won't--not to-night.' Thinking he was merely angling to raise
+his price, I pressed a substantial douceur into his hand, and took him
+by the arm to lead him along. 'No, no, it wasn't that I meant,' said
+he, trying to reject the proffered coin; 'but no one shall take me into
+the Apostle cellar on the night of the first of September, not for love
+or money!'
+
+[Illustration: THE CELLAR OF BACCHUS]
+
+'Stuff and nonsense! What do you mean?' 'I mean that it's an uncanny
+thing to go in there on Frau Rosa's own birthday.' I laughed till the
+vault rang. 'I've heard of a good many ghosts before now, but never
+heard of a wine-ghost: fancy an old man like you believing such tales:
+but I tell you, friend, I am serious. I have permission from their High
+Mightinesses to drink in the cellar tonight, time and place at my own
+discretion; and in their name I order you to lead me to the cellar of
+Bacchus.' This finished him. Unwillingly, but without answering, he
+took the taper and beckoned me to follow. We went first back through the
+great vault, then through a number of smaller ones, till our path came
+to an end in a narrow passage. Our steps echoed weirdly in the hollow way,
+and our very breath as it struck on the walls sounded like distant
+whisperings. At last we stood before a door, the keys rattled, with a
+groan the hinge opened, and the light of the candles streamed into the
+vault. Opposite me sat friend Bacchus on a mighty cask of wine: not
+slender and delicate like a Grecian youth had the cunning old wood carvers
+of Bremen made him; no, nor a drunken old sot with goggle eyes and hanging
+tongue, as vulgar mythology now and then blasphemously represents him
+(scandalous anthropomorphism I call it!). Because some of his priests,
+grown grey in his service, have gone about like that; because their bodies
+may have swelled full of good humour, and their noses been coloured by the
+burning reflection of the dark red flood; because their eyes may have
+become fixed through being constantly turned upwards in silent
+rapture,--are we to ascribe to the god the qualities of his servants?
+The men of Bremen thought differently. How cheerily and gaily the old
+boy rides on his cask: the round blooming face, the little bright eyes
+that looked down so wisely and yet so mockingly, the wide laughing
+mouth that has been the grave of so many a cask, the whole body
+overflowing with comfortable good living. It was his arms and legs,
+however, that specially delighted me. I almost expected to see him snap
+his chubby fingers, and hear his voice sing out a gay hurrah! Why, he
+looked as if at any moment he might jump off his seat and trundle his
+cask round the cellar, till the Rose and the Apostles joined in the
+merry dance, and chased each other round whooping. 'Merciful powers,'
+cried the cellarmaster, clinging tightly to me, 'I saw his eye roll and
+his feet move!' 'Peace, you old fool!' said I, feeling however rather
+queer, and looking anxiously at the wine god; 'it's only the dancing
+reflection of your taper. Well, we'll go on to the Apostle cellar, the
+samples will taste better there.' But as I followed the old man out of
+Bacchus' private room, I looked round, and the figure certainly seemed
+to nod his little head, and stretch out his legs, and give a shake as
+if from an inward giggle. One ascends from Bacchus to a smaller vault,
+the subterranean celestial firmament I called it, the seat of
+blessedness, where dwell the twelve mighty casks, each called after an
+apostle. What funeral vault of a royal race can compare with such a
+catacomb as this? Pile coffin on coffin, trim the everlasting lamps
+that burn before the ashes of the mighty dead, let black-on-white
+marble speak in epigrammatic phrase the virtues of the departed: take
+your garrulous cicerone with his crape-trimmed hat and cloak, listen to
+his praises of Prince This, who fell at the battle of That, and of
+Princess Tother on whose tomb the virgin myrtle is intertwined with the
+half-opened rosebud; see and drink in all the associations of such a
+place; but will it move you like this? Here sleeps, and has slept for a
+century, the noblest race of all. Dark-brown their coffins, and all
+unadorned--no tinsel, no lying epitaphs, simply their names inscribed
+on each in large plain letters, as I could see when the old fellow
+placed the taper on them. ANDREW, JOHN, JUDAS, PETER, and here on the
+right PAUL, on the left JAMES, good James. Paul is Nierstein of 1718,
+and James Ruedesheim, ye gods! Ruedesheim of 1726!
+
+Ask not of their virtues; no one has any right to ask: like dark-red
+gold their blood sparkles in my glass; when it was first ripened on the
+hills of St. John it was pale and blonde, but a century has coloured
+it. What a bouquet! quite beyond the power of words to express. Take
+all the scents from all the flowers and trees, and all the spices of
+Araby and Ind, fill the cool cellar with ambergris, and let the amber
+itself be dissolved into fumes--and the result will be but poor and
+scentless compared to the liquid sunshine of Bingen and Laubenheim, of
+Nierenstein and Johannisberg. 'Why do you shake your head?' said I to
+my companion at last; 'you've no reason to be ashamed of these old
+fellows here. Come, fill your glass and here's good luck to the whole
+Twelve of them!'
+
+'Heaven forbid that I should do anything of the kind,' he replied; 'it's
+an uncanny toast and an uncanny night for it. Taste them, sir, and
+let's pass on, I shiver in their presence.' 'Good-night, then,
+gentlemen--remember that I am everywhere and for ever at your service,
+most noble Lords of the Rhine.' 'Surely,' said the old fellow, 'those
+few drops haven't made you so drunk that you would raise the whole crew
+of sprites already? If you talk like that again I shall be off, though
+I should get the sack for it: I tell you that on this night the spirits
+imprisoned in these casks rise and hold infernal carnival here in this
+very spot, aye, and other spirits besides! I wouldn't be here after
+twelve o'clock for worlds.' 'Well, I'll be quiet, you old driveller, if
+you'll only take me on to my Lady Rose's apartment itself.' At last we
+reached it, the little garden of the queen of flowers. There she lay in
+all her majestic girth, the biggest cask I ever saw in my life, and
+every glass worth a golden guinea. Frau Rosa was born in 1615. Ah,
+where are the hands that planted her parent vine? where are the eyes
+that watched the ripening clusters? where the sun-browned feet that
+hurried to the festival when she was pressed in the sunny Rheingau, and
+streamed a pale gold rivulet into the vat? Like the waves of the stream
+that lapped the base of her cradle, they are gone no one knows whither.
+And where are their High-Mightinesses of the Hansa, who ruled when the
+Hansa was a League indeed, those worthy senators of Bremen who brought
+the blushing maiden to this cool grot for the edification of their
+grandchildren? Gone too--with two centuries over their heads, and we
+can only pour wine on their tombs.
+
+Good luck to you, departed High-Mightinesses, and good luck to your
+living representatives, who have so courteously extended such
+hospitality to a Southerner! 'And goodnight to you, my Lady Rose,'
+added the old servant more kindly. 'Come along, sir, we can get out
+this way without going back, mind you don't stumble over the casks.'
+'My good man, you don't imagine I'm going away, do you?' I replied. 'I
+have only just begun my night. Bring me some of that special '22, two
+or three bottles, into that big room behind there. I saw that wine
+growing green and saw it pressed, and now I'm going to prove to my
+palate that we can still grow something worth drinking.' The old boy
+expostulated, entreated, threatened, swore nothing should induce him to
+stay;--who wanted him to stay? Swore he daredn't leave me here;--did he
+think I was going to carry off Frau Rosa in my arms? Finally he agreed
+to let me remain if he might padlock me into the big room, and come at
+six o'clock tomorrow to wake me and receive his reward. Then, with a
+heavy heart, he put three bottles of the '22 on the table, wiped the
+glass, poured me out a little, and wished me good-night, double-locking
+and padlocking the door behind me, more apparently out of tender
+anxiety for me than out of fear for his cellar. The clock struck
+half-past eleven as I heard him say a prayer and hurry away. When he
+shut the outer door of the vaults at the top of the stairs, there was
+an echo like the thunder of cannons through the halls and passages.
+
+So now I was alone keeping Retreat with my soul down in the bosom of
+the earth. Slumber above me and slumber around me, for the spirits of
+the dead are asleep by my side. I wonder if they dream of their brief
+childhood on the distant mountains, and the nightly lullabys sung to
+them by old Father Rhine; or the kisses of their tender mother the sun
+when they first opened their eyes in the bright spring air, of their
+first leafy garments which reflected themselves in their old Father's
+eyes.
+
+Ah! my soul, I too have rosy days of youth to look back upon, spent
+upon the soft vine-clad hills and by the blue rivers of my native
+Swabia; ah the days and the day dreams of glory! What games, what
+picture-books, what mother-love, what gigantic Easter eggs, what armies
+of tin and paper! And then, my soul, think of the first little trousers
+and collars in which your mortal covering, so proud of its size, was
+dressed; think how your father gave you rides on his knee, and your
+grandfather lent you his long bamboo cane with a golden head to use as
+a hobby horse.
+
+Another glass! And then look on a few years. Do you remember the sad
+morning when you were taken to see all the mournful solemnities of
+grandfather's funeral? Ah! what would you not have given to get him
+back. Peace, 'tis but for awhile that he slumbers. And then the
+delightful hours in the old library filled with folios that were
+evidently bound in leather for no other purpose than that of forming
+huts to protect you and your imaginary sheep and cattle from the
+imaginary rain. How roughly you treated the Higher Literature of your
+native land. Why, I remember throwing a quarto Lessing at my brother's
+head, for which he beat me unmercifully with 'Sophy's Journey from
+Memel to Saxony.' Rise too, ye walls of the old castle, with your
+half-ruined passage, your cellar, your gate, your courtyard, all of
+which served only as a playground for a squad of boys; soldiers and
+robbers, nomads and caravans we were. I didn't much care whether I
+represented Platoff or a Cossack trooper, Napoleon or Napoleon's
+charger. Scattered all over the world, in every rank of life, and the
+sport of every kind of fortune is now the little knot of boys who were
+the companions of my childhood; and you and I, my dear soul, being
+alone too erratic to turn soldier, chamberlain, artisan, or parson,
+have become that remarkable thing called Doctor of Philosophy, having
+had just sufficient brains between us to write a dissertation. Brains
+enough to find our way into the Bremen cellars, however.
+
+Another glass! Sure there's an affinity between wine and the tongue. It
+goes quite straight till it comes to the throat; here, however, is set
+up a finger-post, directing 'To the Stomach' and 'To the Head.' The
+latter is the path of the nobler particles of the grape-juice; the pure
+spirits that inhabit it will ever soar, and sensible, peaceful people
+they are for the most part, if there are not too many of them there
+together; but you know the best philosophers will quarrel when half a
+dozen of them of different intellectual complexions are closely packed
+in a small room.
+
+How fair is that fourth period of life, (which we begin with the fourth
+glass.) Fourteen years old, my soul; but the boyish games are left
+behind, and you are steeped to the lips in reading--especially Goethe
+and Schiller, over whom you pore without understanding much. You think,
+however, you understand it all, and you have already kissed Elvira
+behind the cupboard door, and broken Emma's heart. Perjured villain!
+she may be another Charlotte, and she may possibly even have read some
+of Clauren, and be deeply in love with thee (and him). Let the scene
+change. I blow a greeting to that dear Alpine valley [Blaubeuern] where
+I spent so many years at school; the cloister roof, the walks over the
+brasses of dead abbots, the church with the wonderful high altar, the
+images dipped in the bright gold of sunrise. Thanks be to the strong
+Alpine air that I was ever full fledged and can fly as well as most
+people.
+
+Another glass! Another period. That is a better glass than the last, I
+think--there's an aroma about it that the other lacked. And what a
+period that was! My college days! High, noble, savage, inharmonious,
+rough, fair; all opposites and contrasts that ever existed, blended
+then. No outsider can ever know the delights, and an outsider can
+hardly choose but laugh at the follies. Mixed with all the dross we
+bring up from thence there are generally some particles of fine gold.
+The music of our life would be strange indeed to one who had not sung
+and laughed with us. I know well what my granddad felt when he crossed
+the name of some fellow-collegian in his Book of Memory. God bless them
+all!
+
+Another glass, by the immortal gods, and another bottle this time! From
+Friendship to Love. The most wonderful thing of this period (period
+six, please observe, my soul) was that its grades fitted themselves
+into and took their colour from my reading. Especially my affections
+got coloured from Wilhelm Meister; that is to say, I hardly knew
+whether it was Emmeline or the gentle Camilla, or even Ottilie. Didn't
+all three peep out from behind jalousies in bewitching nightcaps to
+hear the mournful squeaks which my numbed fingers elicited from the
+guitar? And when all three proved but heartless coquettes, I swore I
+would never marry till I was forty. Yet the little god slides from the
+eyes of the loved one into the heart of the victim. For am I not a
+victim? Is not she the coldest listener of all when I sing? did she
+ever vouchsafe me a single glance of encouragement? As I am not a
+general officer, I can't get mentioned in a despatch as having eight
+bullets in my breast and 'lying in a precarious condition,' even if we
+were not at peace. If I was only a drummer I could go and make a
+disgusting noise under her window till she was obliged to look out to
+tell me to go away, and I would then descend from fortissimo to piano
+and adagio, for I suppose one could do adagio even upon a drum. But the
+only fame she is likely to hear of me is that some one will tell her
+to-morrow that I boozed in the Town Cellar from midnight to six a. m.
+
+Now is no one awake but the highest and the lowest in the town,--the
+watchman on the top of the cathedral tower, and I deep down in the
+bowels of the earth. If I were the watchman I would be singing to a
+certainty, so I don't see why I should not wake the echoes down here.
+_She_ won't hear either of us, so here goes.
+
+      When at the lonely midnight hour
+      I pace my rounds upon the tower,
+      I muse upon my love afar,
+      Whose troth is fixed as morning star.
+
+      When to the flag at honour's call
+      I flew, her kiss was worth it all;
+      She decked my hat with ribbands blue,
+      Then pressed me to her heart anew.
+
+      And still her love's as warm as then,
+      It gives my hand the strength of ten;
+      It lends my heart a firmer beat,
+      To think in absence on my Sweet.
+
+      E'en now within her room she kneels
+      And wings to Heaven her dear appeals,
+      All lonely by the pale lamp's ray,
+      For one she loves that's far away.
+
+      But if my danger haunt thy breast,
+      Yet dry thy tears, and be at rest;
+      I stand in God's own armour clad,
+      He loves an honest soldier lad.
+
+      The clocks ring out, the round is near.
+      My hour of rest will soon be here;
+      Sleep rock thy brain, and set it free
+      To dream, and only dream of me.
+
+Midnight! and is she dreaming of me? It always seems to me as if at
+this mysterious hour the earth gave a little tremble, and the dead who
+sleep in her bosom turned in their heavy slumber as if to mutter a
+prayer of _Domine quousque_? That distant bell is borne to me very
+differently from the 'twelve great shocks of shameless noon.' Hark! did
+not a door shut in one of the further vaults? Strange, if I didn't
+_know_ that I was perfectly alone here I should believe that I heard
+footsteps. Yes, there are footsteps, and now they are at my door too.
+Never mind, the door's well locked; no mortal can disturb me. _No
+mortal_; yet the door flies open!...
+
+Two men stood there, making fantastic compliment of yielding the _pas_
+to each other. One was tall and haggard, with a long black wig, a dark
+red coat made by some old French tailor, and covered with gold tassels
+and gilt buttons. His immensely long thin legs were clad in tight
+trousers of black velvet, with gold knee-buckles; he had stuck his
+sword with its porcelain handle through his breeches pocket; when he
+bowed he flourished a three-cornered hat, and the curls of his peruke
+rustled down his shoulders like a waterfall. He had a pale face, sunken
+eyes, and a fiery red nose. The little fellow to whom he wished to
+yield precedence was quite different. His hair was plastered down with
+white of egg and then twisted into two long rolls like pistol holsters
+at the sides--and a plait about a yard long hung down his back. He wore
+a little steel-grey coat faced with red, and, beneath that, great
+riding boots, and a richly embroidered waistcoat which covered his
+plump figure to the knee, and a huge sword was fastened to his side.
+There was something good-tempered in his face, especially the eyes. He
+too performed wondrous evolutions with a huge beaver hat. I recovered a
+little from my terror while their courtesy proceeded to the verge of
+absurdity: at last they settled it by opening the other half of the
+door and marching in arm-in-arm. They hung their hats on the wall,
+unfastened their swords, and sat down silently without noticing me: I
+think I disliked their silence even more than anything else. Before
+however I had mustered courage to break it, more steps were heard, and
+four other gentlemen entered, dressed in somewhat similar fashion: one
+of them for the chase apparently. 'Greeting, gentlemen of the Rhine!
+it's long since we met,' said the pale-faced man with the red nose.
+'Greeting, greeting, Mr. James, Mr. Matthew, greeting Mr. Judas. But
+what's this? where are the glasses and the pipes, where's the tobacco?
+Has that old fool not waked out of his sinful snoring yet? I suppose he
+is still in Our Lady's churchyard; but stay, I'll ring him up'--and he
+seized a great bell that stood on the table and rang it till the halls
+re-echoed. The three new comers took their seats at the table, and sat
+silent after the first greeting, especially one whom they called
+Andrew, who sat between the huntsman and the red-nosed man; he was
+evidently a person nice of his manners and appearance, his features
+were still youthful, and a gentle smile played upon his lips. There
+were varieties in the dress and expression of all, but not such as to
+have particularly fastened themselves upon my remembrance. As it
+usually is with old drinkers, conversation flagged for want of liquor;
+until, in answer to the summons of the bell, a new figure appeared at
+the door--a piteous-looking old man with trembling legs and grey hair,
+with a sort of death's-head face. With much exertion he dragged forward
+a great basket, and greeted the guests humbly.
+
+'Hurrah,' they cried, 'here's Balthasar, slip along old fellow, on with
+your glasses and pipes; what a time you have been!'
+
+[Illustration: THE GENTLEMEN OF THE RHINE]
+
+The old man gave a rude yawn, and declared that he had almost overslept
+the first of September: 'I sleep so sound, d'ye see, since they've new
+paved the churchyard, that I'm getting to hear rather badly. But here's
+only six of you yet, and where's my Lady Rose?' 'Just you put on the
+bottles, old chap, and then you may go across and rattle your dry bones
+against their casks, and tell them it's time to get up,' cried one of
+them; but the words were hardly spoken when a great noise and laughter was
+heard. 'Rosa, Rose, Lady Rose, hurrah, hurrah for Bacchus, hurrah for
+Rosa!' The ghostly companions within shouted with delight to the same
+effect, and clinked their glasses to the health of the Rose. Balthasar
+threw his cap up to the ceiling in his joy. In they came: Bacchus, my old
+friend who had bestrid the cask, had got down off it--not a rag of clothing
+on him--yet in he came, leading his blushing Rose, an ancient matron of
+stately mien and considerable stoutness of figure: splendidly dressed, too,
+she was like a true old Rhineland lady. Time might have written a few
+wrinkles on her brow and mouth, the fresh colour of youth might be a trifle
+wanting on her cheeks, but two hundred years had but added dignity to her
+contour. What though her eyebrows had grown grey, and there were--hush, yes
+there were really--a few ugly grey hairs on her chin, her locks above were
+nut-brown, with but very slight tinge of silver here and there. Her head
+was covered with a black velvet cap, fitting close to her temples: her
+jacket was of the finest cloth, and the red velvet bodice that peeped from
+beneath it was laced with silver hooks and chains. Necklace, a string of
+garnets and gold coins. Her skirt was of thickly pleated brown cloth,
+and she wore a sort of toy white apron, with a huge leather pocket at
+one side and a bunch of huge keys at the other. In short, she was the
+very picture of a worthy matron of Mainz or Coblentz, of the years
+immediately preceding the Thirty Years War. Six jolly companions
+followed her, dressed in the same fashion as my friends who were
+already seated, and all with their wigs somewhat awry. How politely
+Bacchus led his lady-love to the table! how politely she bowed to the
+company as she sat down! As for her fat little sweetheart, Balthasar
+had to put a great pillow under him, or he would not have been able to
+get his nose above the table. When all were seated I realised that they
+were indeed the spirits of those mighty Rhinewines that I had tasted an
+hour before; the twelve Apostle-casks, Bacchus and the old Rose.
+
+'Well, well, it's a long while since 1700, Mistress Rose,' said one of
+them, 'but we seem to be all in pretty good condition, and I vow you
+are as young and handsome as ever. Here's good luck and long life to
+your sweetheart and yourself, my dear.' 'Rosa, Frau Rosa, the Rose,
+long life and health to her!' shouted all, and Bacchus tossed off two
+quarts at a gulp, which had the visible effect of making him look more
+like an inflated bladder than ever.
+
+'Thank you, most honoured apostles and cousins,' said she, bowing
+graciously; 'but when you refer to my sweetheart I don't know whom you
+mean; you confuse a modest maiden.' The modest maiden sought refuge in
+a mighty draught of wine. 'Sweetheart,' said Bacchus, looking tenderly
+at her and pressing her hand, 'be not coy, sweetheart; you know well
+whose heart has been yours any time these 200 vintages; and I don't
+mind proving it to you by this chaste salute'--and he bent forward to
+kiss her. 'If all these young people were not here,' she murmured--but
+amid shouts of laughter from the young people she allowed him to take
+his due by force and with interest. Then he tossed off a bowl or two
+and began to sing in a rich mellow voice:
+
+      There's not a palace in the land
+      So fair as this of Bremen,
+      Its spacious floors, its halls so grand
+      A king would feel no shame in:
+      And sure 'tis decked with everything
+      To take the fancy of a king;
+      But the thing that best would win it
+      Is the Lady fair within it.
+
+      Her eyes like sparkling Rhenish shine,
+      Her cheeks are bright as roses,
+      Her heavy draperies rich and fine
+      Are decked with fragrant posies:
+      Of heart-of-oak her farthingale,
+      Her girdle of the birchwood pale,
+      And her bodice trim she faces
+      With iron clasps and laces.
+
+      But ah, her bedroom too is barred
+      With locks and bolts of iron,
+      She slumbers soft nor dreams how hard
+      The threshold 'tis to lie on.
+      I knock in vain from twelve to four,
+      Arise, my love, and ope the door
+      That bars thy chamber cosy,
+      Come forth, my lovely Rosie!
+
+      So pass I every midnight hour
+      Before her lonely dwelling,
+      Once, only once, and never more,
+      The fairy lass was willing.
+      And since I drew that honeyed kiss
+      My heart's been drunken all with bliss--
+      Ah, just once more, my treasure,
+      Fill me a brimming measure!
+
+'That's enough of such indelicate allusions, now, Mr. Bacchus,' says
+she; 'you know very well that their High Mightinesses keep me strictly
+locked up, and don't allow me to admit anyone at all.' 'Not even me,
+dear Rosie,' said he; 'ah, I think they would wink at it if you let me
+in now and then for a taste at your lips.' 'You're a rogue,' she
+answered, 'and little better than a Turk. I should like to know how
+many sweethearts you want. I know of your goings on with those
+frivolous French girls, Miss Champagne, (who has no more colour in her
+face than a dried pea,) and Fraeulein von Bordeaux, the sickly minx. Ah,
+you have not the true Rhinelander's heart, nor understand the
+Rhinelander's love.' 'Pooh, my dear,' says he, 'I have visited these
+ladies occasionally, and amused myself with their wit, but nothing
+else; rest assured, my dearest, my heart is thine alone.' 'And then I
+fancy,' she went on, 'that I have heard some stories from Spain. Of
+poor Lady Xeres I will say nothing, (that's too well-known a story for
+you to deny); but how about the Senorina Dentilla di Rosa, Senorina San
+Lucar, and Senora Ximenes--a married lady too?' 'You carry your
+jealousy too far,' said he, with some asperity. 'I don't see why one
+should give up one's old connexions. As for the Senora Ximenes, I
+merely visit her out of kindness to you as being your relation.' 'Our
+relation?' muttered Rosa and the others, 'how's that?' 'Don't you
+know,' he continued, 'that she is originally from the Rhine? The most
+excellent hidalgo, Don Ximenes, took her from thence to his home in
+Spain when she was a very tender maid, and there she settled, and
+naturally took his family name. But she preserves with the Spanish
+sweetness much of the true German character, especially in colour and
+scent.' 'Long life to her, then,' cried they all, 'if she really is
+Rosie's cousin.' Rosa did not seem quite satisfied with her
+sweetheart's cunning mode of extricating himself from the scrape, so
+she changed the subject by turning round to the others and rallying
+them each in turn on the way in which the years had treated or spared
+them. One looked pale, she said, another was but half awake, a third
+had grown fat, almost too lazy to drink, a fourth was as ready for a
+joke as ever, and so on--'but hallo, why there are thirteen of you.
+Who's that in the strange clothing over there? who brought him in?'
+
+_Was I frightened or not?_ None of them looked pleased at my presence:
+but I said, 'I present my compliments to this worthy assemblage; I am
+really nothing but a man, who has taken a degree of Ph.D., and at
+present my residence is at the Frankfurt hotel in this city.'
+
+'But, oh man who hast taken a degree, how camest thou here, man?'
+'Apostle,' I answered--it was Peter whose eyes flashed fire on me as he
+spoke--'I'll trouble you not to call me man till we're better
+acquainted. And as for this society into which you say I have come, you
+are quite in error; it came to me, not I to it, for I had been sitting
+in this very room nearly an hour past' (I don't know whence I got the
+courage to say this--probably from the 'Special '22'). 'But what were
+you doing in the cellar at this time of night, sir?' said Bacchus
+rather more gently; 'you ought to be asleep.' 'Your Honour,' says I, 'I
+had excellent reasons for being here. I am a particular friend of the
+noble drink that is stored here, and, by favour of the not less noble
+Senate, I received permission to pay you all a visit--time and place
+not specified.'
+
+'So you like to drink Rhine wine,' said Bacchus; 'that's a good liking
+to have in these days, when most men have grown so cold towards the
+golden spring,' 'Yes,' growled out the man in the red coat, 'no one
+will drink us now except here and there a travelling doctor, like this
+fellow, or a schoolmaster out for a holiday; and most of them water it
+first.' 'I beg most respectfully to contradict you, Mr. Jude,' said I.
+'I have already tried you all round, and had but recently sat down to a
+few modest bottles of a more contemporaneous vintage, and that I have
+paid for myself.' 'Don't get hot, doctor,' said my Lady Rose, 'he
+didn't mean to hurt your feelings; he only reflected upon the low
+manners and bad taste of the present day.' 'Bad taste, low manners, I
+should think so,' said another. 'The generation that concocts a
+detestable mixture of brandy and half a dozen kinds of syrups, and
+calls it Chateau Margaux or Sillery, must indeed feel itself unworthy
+of a noble drink. And then people wonder why they get red rings round
+their mouths and a splitting headache the next day. Cochineal and
+brandy, nothing else!'
+
+'What a life it was too when we were young, even as late as '26; yes,
+even as late as '50. Every evening, were it bright sunshiny spring, or
+deep wintry snow, the little rooms here were alive with joyous guests.
+The Senators of Bremen sat with majestic wigs on their heads, their
+weapons at their sides, and their glasses before them. That's what I
+call honour and dignity. Here, here, not _upon_ the earth was their
+council chamber; here the true hall of the senate; here was settled
+over the cool wine the affairs of the nation and of most other nations
+besides. If they didn't agree they never quarrelled, but just drank
+each other's healths till they did; and if they ever failed it was
+because they didn't go on drinking long enough--but this rarely
+happened. Equal friends of the noble wine, how could they but be
+friends of each other? And on the next day their word pledged overnight
+was held sacred, and the resolves taken overnight were executed coolly
+enough in the morning.'
+
+'Ah, the good old times,' said another Apostle, 'and it is still, you
+know, a custom that every Councillor keeps a little wine-book or
+drinking account, reckoned up and discharged at the end of the year.
+When a man sat here every night of his life, he didn't care to be
+always putting his hands in his pockets, so it was worked on the tally
+system, and I hear there are still a few brave old fellows left who use
+the same plan.'
+
+'Yes, yes, children,' said the old Rose, 'it was another world a couple
+of centuries, or even one, or even half a century ago. They used to
+bring their wives and daughters into the cellar with them, and the fair
+Bremen maids, who were famed far and wide for bright eyes and rosy
+cheeks and voluptuous lips, drank nothing but good Rhine wine. Now
+forsooth, they must have tea and stuff like that, wretched foreign
+stuff, which girls in my time would only take if they had a little
+cough or sore throat, as a drug. And will you believe me, people
+actually put sweet Spanish stuff into true Rhine wines because they say
+we are sour.'
+
+The Apostles roared with laughter at this last idea, and I couldn't
+help joining. As for Bacchus, he had to be patted on the back by
+Balthasar to recover him. 'Yes, the g-g-g-good old times,' sputtered he
+as he got breath again, 'every burgher drank his honest half gallon and
+went home as sober as a judge: now a glass upsets them, they're so out
+of practice.'
+
+'There was a fine story to that effect a couple of centuries ago,' said
+my Lady, and smiled to herself at the recollection of it. 'Please tell
+it us, Frau Rose. Yes! the story! the story!' they all began to cry.
+She emptied her bowl to clear her voice, and began.
+
+'You must know that in 1620 or 30 there was a great rumpus in Germany
+about a very small matter--the Form of Religion. Each side wanted its
+own form shoved down the throat of the other, and instead of sitting
+down to talk it over sensibly over a pipe of wine, they proceeded to
+knock each other on the head. Albrecht von Wallenstein, the Kaiser's
+field-marshal in particular, made sad havoc of the Protestant
+countries, until the King of Sweden, called Gustavus Adolphus, took
+pity on them, and crossed the Baltic with a large army, and went at it
+hammer and tongs in defence of the Protestant religion. Well, they
+fought a lot of battles, and chased each other about from the Rhine to
+the Danube, and from the Danube to the Rhine with mighty little result.
+At that time Bremen and the other Hanse towns were neutral, and did not
+wish to quarrel with either party; but as Gustavus wanted a passage
+through their territories, he determined to send an embassy to them. It
+was well known, however, that everything like state business in Bremen
+was transacted in this cellar, and that the Bremeners were good hands
+at stowing away liquor: so the king was in some perplexity lest his
+ambassadors should be drunk under the table, and then made to sign an
+unfavourable treaty. Now, there was by chance in the Swedish camp a
+captain of the Yellow Regiment who was a notable drinker. Two or three
+quarts for breakfast were a trifle to him, and in the evening he would
+half empty a four-gallon cask and sleep well after it. The chancellor
+Oxenstiern brought this man to the king's notice. Captain Tosspot he
+was called. The king was much pleased when he observed his nose, which
+was of the right copper hue, and asked him how much he _could_ drink if
+it was a case of life and death. "O king," he answered,
+
+"I am but a poor captain, and wine is very dear. I never tried
+seriously. I can't afford to exceed my seven quarts a day; but if your
+majesty would stand treat I would undertake to finish twelve at least.
+But my squire who is called Balthasar the Bottomless, is a much harder
+drinker than I am." Balthasar was called, a thin, ashy-pale little
+fellow with lank straight hair, and the king sent them into a tent by
+themselves, with some fine old casks of Hochheimer and Nierstein, and
+told them to get drunk. They began at 11 a.m., and by 4 p.m. they had
+finished eight gallons of Hochheimer and twelve of Nierstein. When the
+king went to see them they were quite sober, but Captain Tosspot said
+he thought he should soon have to loosen his sword-belt, and Balthasar
+had undone three buttons of his collar. Then said the king, "What
+better ambassadors can I find to talk the fair city of Bremen into its
+senses?" So Tosspot was made ambassador and Balthasar the Bottomless
+his secretary, and they were properly rigged out, and their
+instructions were made out; and the first of these was that they were
+to drink nothing but water on the way to Bremen, that the battle in the
+cellar might be more glorious afterwards; another was that Tosspot was
+to rub his nose with a white ointment, that no one might see what a
+practised mouth he was. They arrived safely at Bremen, but both of them
+naturally quite ill through drinking water: the Senators of Bremen
+thought they would have an easy victory over two such milksops, and so
+the burgomaster said he would look after the ambassador, and Dr.
+Redpepper should settle the secretary. So in the evening they were
+solemnly led into the cellar with a lot of senators who were invited to
+assist in the negotiations. They sat down in this room and had a little
+spiced meat and ham and red herrings; but when Mr. Ambassador Tosspot
+wanted to begin the negotiation in an honourable manner, and Mr.
+Secretary Balthasar took parchment and ink-horn from his pocket, "Not
+so, noble gentlemen," said the burgomaster; "it is not the custom in
+Bremen that we should settle weighty matters with a dry throat, we will
+first drink to one another, as our ancestors in like cases have always
+done." "I am but a poor drinker," said the captain, "but if it so
+pleases your High-Mightiness I will take a drop." So they began to
+drink and treat at the same time; and to encourage their guests, the
+senators and the doctor and the burgomaster went a little further than
+usual with the Ruedesheimer. At each new bottle the strangers excused
+themselves, assuring the burgomaster that it was beginning to get into
+their heads; which of course delighted him immensely: and at last said
+the burgomaster, "now for bishnesh." But as the "bishnesh" went on, the
+burgomaster went to sleep while he was defining the word neutrality,
+and Doctor Redpepper lay already under the table: then the other
+senators came and went on with the negotiations and the drinking; but
+the captain, who kept five men running backwards and forwards filling
+his glass for him, drank them all under the table.
+
+'All--but one. Mr. Senator Walther was a man of whom ugly tales would
+infallibly have been told, if he had not been Mr. Senator. He was a man
+who had raised himself from a humble position in his craft-guild to be
+an alderman, and then to his present place. He was a very tall bony
+man. He alone now held out with the two guests, and put away twice as
+much as both of them. Moreover, he seemed as sensible as ever, whereas
+Tosspot was beginning to feel as if a wheel were going round in his
+head. But the curious thing was this, that when Walther drank a glass
+Balthasar fancied that he saw a thin blue mist rise and exude from his
+black hair. These two, however, drank bravely on till Tosspot dropped
+peacefully to sleep with his head pillowed against the burgomaster's
+arm.
+
+'Then said the Senator to the Secretary, "My dear fellow, you drink
+wonderfully well, but I fancy you are more familiar with the bridle
+than the pen." Balthasar attempted some bluster about his Majesty's
+Embassy, but the other replied with a terrible laugh, "Ho, ho? and do
+secretaries in your country always wear such clothes and carry such
+pens?" Then the groom looked at his dress and saw with alarm that he
+had on his ordinary stable coat and had a curry comb in his hand. Bluer
+than ever looked the mist about Walther's head as he tossed off another
+quart. "Heaven forbid, sir," said poor Balthasar, "that I should drink
+with you any longer. I see you are a magician."
+
+"True," said the man, "but we needn't go into that, most honourable
+horse-combing secretary; the point of the thing as far as you are
+concerned is, that it is no use your trying to drink me under the
+table, for I have a little tap screwed into my brain through which the
+fumes of the wine can evaporate." It was indeed true, and he inclined
+his head towards Balthasar to show him the process. The groom clapped
+his hands with delight: "That's a most excellent device, sir; couldn't
+you screw such a thing as that into my head? I will give you everything
+I possess for such an article." "No, that can't be done," said the
+other thoughtfully; "you are not learned either in magic or anything
+else; but as I have taken a great liking to you I will serve you with
+all my power. Listen: The post of cellarmaster is vacant here at
+present. Leave, oh Bottomless one, the Swedish service, where there is
+more water than wine, and come into the service of the most noble the
+Council of this City. Even if we do lose a few dozen casks of wine per
+annum, which you drink in secret, that won't matter, we have been long
+looking out for a fit person for the place. I will make you
+cellarmaster to-morrow if you like: whereas if you don't like, all the
+town shall know to-morrow that the Swede has sent us a groom as a
+secretary." This proposal tasted to Balthasar like a draught of good
+wine, he cast a glance into the immeasurable realm of drink that was
+already prospectively his, and accepted the offer at once. After this
+there remained several little points to be settled; as for instance,
+what was to be done with Balthasar's soul when he ceased to be
+cellarmaster in the course of nature: all these were satisfactorily
+determined, and Captain Tosspot went back to the Swedish camp without
+his secretary, without his treaty, and with a bad headache. And when
+the Imperialists afterwards came to Bremen and occupied it, the
+burgomaster was right glad that he had not allied himself too closely
+with Gustavus.'
+
+Thus the Rose, amid much laughter and thanks for her story; but one of
+us asked, 'And what became of Balthasar the Bottomless, did he remain
+in his new situation long?' Frau Rosa turned round laughing and pointed
+to a corner of the room, and said, 'There he sits still as the bold
+drinker sat 200 years ago!' There he sat sobbing between every draught
+of Rhenish that he drank, poor shrunken pallid fellow: it was the very
+same man who had come up so sleepily when the big bell was rung for him
+a while before. All were anxious to hear the conditions which had been
+wrung from him by Senator Walther respecting his soul. 'Oh sir,' he
+replied, in a voice which sounded as if Eternal Death was accompanying
+him on the bassoon, 'don't require me to tell you.' 'Out with it! what
+did he want? Out with it!' cried all. 'My soul.' 'What for?' 'For
+wine.' 'Speak plainly, old fellow, what did he do with your soul?' He
+was silent for a long time, and at last said, 'Why should I tell this,
+gentlemen? It is a dreadful thing, and you don't know what it is to
+lose a soul as none of you ever had one.' 'All the more reason why you
+shouldn't be afraid of hurting our feelings,' said another. 'But there
+is a mortal here, I may not say it before him.' 'Go on,' said I,
+trembling all over, 'I'm not easily shocked; after all, I suppose it
+was only the Devil who came for you, and he does that every night on
+the stage.' 'Well then,' said the old man, 'it was the man with the tap
+who had begun by selling _his_ soul to the Devil, but on condition that
+he should redeem it if he could find a substitute. He had tried many
+but all had escaped him; so he made sure of me. I had grown up a wild
+youth with no teaching, and the wars had left me no time for thinking
+of my own soul, or Heaven, or Hell, and my only idea was to have a good
+time during my life. And my idea of a good time was plenty to drink and
+all day to drink it in. Walther perceived this, and says he, "To live
+and swill in this Vinous Paradise for two or three decades that would
+be a life, hey Balthasar? Wouldn't it?" "Ah!" said I, "I should think
+it would, but how could I attain such felicity?" "Which would you think
+most of, living here and drinking to your heart's content as long as
+you _do_ live, or of the stories about what will happen afterwards?" I
+swore a dreadful oath, "My bones will go where so many of my comrades'
+bones are lying. When a man is dead he neither feels nor thinks. I have
+seen that plainly enough in the case of many a poor fellow whose skull
+has been smashed by a bullet; and therefore I will choose to live and
+be merry." "Very well," said he. "Then you renounce and forswear the
+hereafter, do you? then I can easily manage to make you cellarmaster
+here; only write your name in this book, and swear a binding oath at
+the same time." I swore again that the Devil or whoever else liked
+might have all that remained of me after death. When I had said this I
+was aware that we were no longer two, but a third sat by me and gave me
+the book to sign.' 'Who was it?' cried all the company. 'It was the
+Devil.' Weird words: even the spirits of the Vines looked gravely into
+their glasses, and Bacchus and Frau Rosa were pale and silent, and we
+heard only the old man's teeth chattering in his skull. 'Well! I
+_could_ write,' he went on, 'and I wrote now just what was asked of me:
+and from that time my life went on in riot and merriment, and there was
+none so gay in Bremen as Balthasar the Bottomless. I drank up all that
+was oldest and most precious in the cellar. I never went to church, but
+when the bells rang I came down here and sat down by the best cask and
+let the tap run into my goblet. As I became old a creepy feeling would
+now and then come over me, but I drowned all thoughts of death in wine.
+I had no wife to lament and no children to comfort me: and so on and so
+on for long years till from very weakness I longed to rest in the
+grave. Then one day I felt as if I were awake and yet couldn't get up,
+my eyes wouldn't open, my fingers were stiff, my legs were like logs of
+wood, and I heard the people come to my bed side, and they felt me all
+over and said, "Old Balthasar is gone at last." This really frightened
+me. Dead and not asleep? Dead and still thinking? Though my heart had
+ceased to beat, something within me beat loudly enough.' 'Your soul,
+poor fellow,' they whispered. Balthasar nodded and went on. 'Then they
+measured my length and my breadth to make the six boards ready, and put
+me in with a hard cushion of shavings under my head and nailed up the
+coffin, and carried me out into our Lady's churchyard. I heard the bell
+tolling in the Cathedral, though no eye wept for me; and my soul was
+ever more frightened because I couldn't sleep. They had dug my grave. I
+can still hear the whistle of the rope which they drew up as I lay down
+below. Then they threw stones and earth on me, and it was silent all
+around me. But my soul grew more and more terrified as it drew towards
+evening. I knew a little prayer from old times, but my lips wouldn't
+move. I heard ten--eleven--strike, and at last TWELVE,--when a fearful
+blow resounded on my coffin'.... A blow that made the hall re-echo now
+burst open the door of the room, and a great white figure appeared on
+the threshold. By the wine and the horrors of the night, I had been so
+ecstasised as to be taken out of myself. I did not scream or jump up,
+but stared quietly at this new apparition of terror, and simply said,
+'Well, I suppose this is the Devil.'
+
+Have you realised the fearful moment in Don Giovanni, when heavy steps
+ring nearer and nearer, and Leporello comes back screaming and the
+statue of the governor stalks in to supper, as he was bidden? So this
+figure: gigantic, with measured echoing tread, a huge sword in hand, in
+full armour, but unhelmeted, it stalked into the room. It was of stone,
+yet the stony lips moved, and said, 'Greeting, dear vine-spirits from
+my beloved river: greeting to you on your birthday, fair child of my
+neighbour; greeting, My Lady Rose, may I take a seat in your assembly?'
+
+All looked in amazement at the figure. But Rosa clapped her hands with
+joy, and cried, 'Why, it's Roland! the great stone Roland that has
+stood in the square at Bremen for ever so many years! This will indeed
+be a memorable night when you do us so much honour, sir. Put your
+shield and sword away, and make yourself comfortable. Will you take a
+seat by my side? Oh, how glad I am!'
+
+The wooden Bacchus, who had been growing fatter and fatter all this
+time, cast discontented looks now at Roland and now at the Lady of his
+heart, who had expressed her pleasure so loudly and unrestrainedly. He
+murmured something about 'uninvited guests being a bore,' and stamped
+his legs impatiently. But my Lady appeased him with sweet looks and
+pressed his hand under the table. Room was made for Roland on her other
+side, and the latter laid down his spear and shield in a comer, and sat
+down rather awkwardly on a chair. But, alas! the chair was made for the
+cushioned forms of the burghers of Bremen town, not for a stone giant,
+and it at once cracked and fell in pieces under him, leaving him
+sprawling. 'Vile race of weaklings,' he cried, as he rose, 'that puts
+together such furniture as this, whereon in my time a tender lady could
+not have sat in safety!' But Balthasar rolled a huge cask up to the
+table, and persuaded the knight to try it; a couple of staves cracked,
+but the cask held firm. It was the same with his wine. The glass that
+Balthasar offered him he shivered to fragments as he grasped it.
+'Well,' said the latter rather angrily, 'you might have taken off your
+stone gauntlets.' A silver goblet of the tumbler-shape holding about a
+quart escaped with a few unimportant dents, and the knight tossed off
+its contents.
+
+'How do you like the liquor?' said Bacchus; 'it must be dry work up
+there on your pillar. I suppose you haven't tasted wine for years?'
+
+'It is good, by my sword, very good. What growth is it?'
+
+'Red Ingelheimer, noble sir,' said Balthasar.
+
+The stony eyes of the knight took fire and sparkled as he heard this, a
+soft smile beautified his stern features, and he looked with affection
+into the goblet.
+
+'Ah, dear beloved Ingelheim! how sweet it sounds! the noble castle of
+my knightly Kaiser. So, even in these days thy name is named! and the
+vines still bloom which Karl first planted by _his_ Ingelheim! Do the
+men who live now ever speak of Roland? or of his great master?'
+
+'That you must ask of the mortal here,' said Jude; 'he calls himself
+Doctor and Master of Arts, and he must give you an account of his
+race.' The giant turned his eyes inquiringly on me, and I said, 'Noble
+Paladin, mankind has indeed grown bad and careless of all that is great
+and lofty: its blind gaze is fixed upon the present, and looks neither
+before nor after. Yet so wretched are we not yet become, as to have
+wholly ceased to remember the glorious figures that once trod our
+native land; they still cast their shadow through the ages till it
+touches even us. Still are there hearts that fly for refuge to the
+memories of the past, when the present has become too stale and mean
+for reflection. Still are there pulses which beat higher at the naming
+of mighty names, still men who wander with reverence through the ruins
+where sat the first German Kaiser on his throne with his Paladins and
+his bards around him. Karl and Oliver, Eginhard and the lovely Emma are
+still familiar in men's mouths. And where Karl is renowned there too is
+Roland unforgotten. Next to him thou stoodst in life, and next to him
+thou wilt stand in song and saga and history till Memory itself shall
+be no more. The final blast of thy warhorn still echoes in the hills of
+Roncesvalles, and will echo and echo on till it fades into the blare of
+the Latest Trumpet.' 'Not in vain, my Kaiser, not in vain have we
+lived! There _is_ a posterity which does honour to our name,' cried the
+knight. 'True,' cried Frau Rosa, 'these men would deserve to drink the
+water of the Rhine instead of the vine blossom of its hills if they
+could forget the name of the man who first planted us in the Rheingau.
+My dear friends and apostles, up! a health to our glorious founder and
+ancestor! to Kaiser Karl, to Kaiser Karl!' The glasses rang again; but
+Bacchus said, 'Yes, it was a beautiful and a glorious time, and I
+rejoice in it as I did a thousand years ago. Where now there is one
+long wonderful garden from the shore of the stream to the tops of the
+hills, where grape climbs after grape up and down the terraces, there
+was nothing but wild dark forest before he came. Then he looked down
+from the mountains from his castle at Ingelheim, and he saw how even in
+March the sun greeted the hills so warmly as the snow slid down them
+into the stream; saw how early the trees became leafy there, and how
+tender and fresh the young grass looked as it burst upwards from the
+earth in the spring. And then there awakened in him the thought of
+planting vines where the wood grew. And a busy life began to move in
+the Rheingau beside Ingelheim; the wood vanished, and the earth was
+cleared to receive the vine. Then Karl sent men to Hungary and Spain,
+to Italy and Burgundy, to Champagne and Lothringen, and had vines
+brought from thence, and entrusted the cuttings to dear mother earth.
+And my heart rejoiced that he should extend my kingdom beside the noble
+stream of Germany, and when the first shoots blossomed there I came
+with all my train, and we camped upon the hills, and we worked in the
+earth, and we worked in the air, and we spread out delicate nets and
+caught the dews of spring lest they should fall too heavily; and we
+rose up and caught the rays of the sunshine, and poured them round the
+little swelling clusters, and we dived down and brought up water from
+the green Rhine for the roots, and water for the leaves. And when in
+autumn the first tender child of the Rheingau lay in its cradle we kept
+a great feast, and invited all the elements to celebrate it; and each
+came with some costly gift for the child. Fire laid his hand upon its
+eyes and said, "Thou shalt bear my sign upon thee for ever--there shall
+be fire in thee, albeit of such purity and transparency, that thou
+shalt impart noble courage beyond all other juice of the grape." And
+Air came in her golden garment of gossamer, and laid her hand upon the
+child's forehead and blessed him. "Be thy colour as bright and delicate
+as the golden edge of morning light upon the hills, as the golden
+tresses of the fair women of the Rheingau." And Water ran past him, all
+rustling with silver, and bent towards the child, saying, "I will be
+ever near thy roots, that thou mayst bloom and be green and cover the
+banks of the Rhine." But when Earth came she kissed his mouth tenderly,
+and blew with her sweet breath upon him. "The perfumes of all my most
+delicate herbs, the honey of all my fairest flowers," she said, "have I
+collected as an offering for thee. The most precious spikenard or
+ambergris shall be coarse beside thy scent; and thy fairest daughter
+shall be named after the Queen of Flowers--the ROSE!" Thus spake the
+elements, and we rejoiced at their promised blessings, and we adorned
+the child with vine leaves, and sent him to the Kaiser in his castle at
+Ingelheim. And the Kaiser marvelled at the beauty of the child, and
+from that day he esteemed the vines of the Rhine among the most
+splendid of his treasures.'
+
+We sat silent for a while when Bacchus had finished, until her Ladyship
+requested Andrew to favour us with an old melody, which he did with
+great ease and grace, by singing a simple old song of the fourteenth or
+fifteenth century. The words have escaped my memory, but the tune I
+remember still. This set us all off, even Frau Rosa herself, who sang a
+pretty little air of 1615 with a rather trembling voice, and Roland
+also growled out in deep bass a Frankish war hymn, of which I could
+distinguish little. I was obliged to bear my part, so I began bravely,
+
+      The Rhine! the Rhine! the garden of the vine!
+        Heaven bless the noble Rhine!
+      Along his bank the clustered grapes entwine,
+      And patriot hearts inspire to guard the Rhine!
+
+When they heard the words they pressed nearer, and nodded to one
+another, and stretched out their necks as if wishful not to lose a
+word. I sang louder and louder for their encouragement. It was
+inspiration enough to be heard by such a company. The old Rose kept
+time with her head, and gently hummed the chorus, and the Apostles
+gazed at me with surprise and joy in their eyes. When I had finished,
+all were loud in praise of the poor Doctor of Philosophy. 'What a
+song!' cried Bacchus himself, 'how my heart opens to it, dear Doctor,
+was it composed in that head of yours that's crowned with academic
+honours?' 'No, indeed, your honour, the composer has long been dead; he
+was called Matthew Claudius.' 'He knew a good glass of wine when he
+came across it, I'll go bail,' said another. 'I don't know, sir,' said
+I, 'though I have no doubt of it; but another great mortal has said,
+
+  Good wine is a good familiar creature, if it be well used,
+
+and I think old Claudius had a similar idea, or he would never have
+written such a beautiful song, which all men still sing as they sit
+beneath the vine-covered arbours of the Rhine.' 'Well, Doctor,' said
+Bacchus, 'if they still sing songs like that they can't be quite such a
+miserable lot of fellows as you made out.'
+
+'Ah, sir,' said I, 'your poetical "high soul" won't sin by allowing
+such a song to be poetry at all, just as your pietist finds the Lord's
+Prayer too simple and straightforward for him.' 'There have been fools
+in every age, sir,' said another, 'and every one is bound to clean the
+pavement opposite his own door only; but as we are upon the subject of
+the present times, tell us what has happened this year on the earth.'
+
+'If I thought it would interest the ladies and gentlemen----' 'Go on,'
+cried Roland, 'and as far as I am concerned you may begin 500 years
+back, for I see nothing from my pedestal but cigar-makers, vintners,
+priests, and old women, and they don't make history, or didn't in my
+days.'
+
+'First of all then, concerning German Literature ...'
+
+'Stop for Heaven's sake, man! Do you think we are going to listen to
+trash like that?' cried Peter. 'Poetasters and public-house squabbles!'
+
+I was startled. If these people were not interested by our magnificent
+literature, if Goethe had no charms for them, what was the use of
+speaking to them at all?
+
+I tried again. 'It was only last autumn that the stage was----' Howls
+of laughter drowned my voice. 'We want facts, man, history and facts
+only; do you suppose we care who spins your comedies and who hisses
+them?'
+
+'Ah, sir,' I replied, 'you're sadly out of fashion. So's History. We
+have in fact only the Diet at Frankfurt. Among our neighbours it's true
+there's occasionally something--for instance, the Jesuits are up again
+in France, and it looks uncommonly as if the Jacobins were up in
+Russia.' 'Stuff!' cried one, 'you mean vice versa.' 'No, I don't.'
+'Well, that's odd.' 'And is there no war?' 'Just a little firespitting
+going on in Greece against the Turks.' 'Ha!' cried the Paladin,
+smashing a few planks of the table with his stone fist, 'that is good!
+By my sword, that is good! I have been angry for centuries at the
+tameness of Christendom while Greece is in chains. You live, sir, in a
+fine time, and your race is nobler than I thought. I retract my
+previous vituperation. So the knights of France and Germany, of Spain
+and England have set out again as erst under Richard of the Lion-heart,
+to fight the infidel? The fleets of Genoa cover the Mediterranean? the
+Oriflamme is raised on high within sight of the towers of Stamboul, and
+the banner of Austria floats over the foremost ranks. Ha! in such a
+case I would fain bestride once more my steed; I would make Durendal,
+my good sword, flash the lightnings of death indeed, and would rouse
+with one blast of my horn every hero who sleeps within the bounds of
+Europe!'
+
+'Noble knight,' I answered--and again I blushed for the age in which I
+lived--'times are changed. You would probably be imprisoned as a
+Jacobin demagogue under the present circumstances, for neither the
+banner of Hapsburg nor the Oriflamme, neither the Leopard of England
+nor the Lion of Spain are to the fore in the present conflict.'
+
+'Who then is fighting against the Crescent, if not these?'
+
+'Simply the Greeks themselves.'
+
+'The Greeks?' cried another, 'is it possible? and what are the other
+powers about?' 'They have their ambassadors with the Porte.' 'Man,
+man,' said Roland, stiffer than ever with amazement, 'what are you
+saying? a Christian state fighting for its freedom and left to do it
+alone? Holy Virgin, what a world is this!' and he crushed the silver
+goblet as if it had been cardboard, so that the wine in it splashed up
+to the ceiling; then rising from the table took his sword and targe,
+and passed with clanking strides out of the chamber.
+
+'Why, what a hot-headed fellow he is!' said the Rose, shaking her
+kerchief, which was splashed with his wine. 'Does the stony fool want
+to go a-campaigning again in his old age? If he were to show himself
+they would certainly make him a right-hand man in a company of Prussian
+Grenadiers, for he's tall enough.'
+
+'Do not be hard on him, my Lady Rose,' said one of the company, 'for he
+has the right stuff in him, and he showed it on many a stricken field.
+If his Kaiser had wished it he would have fought a thousand Mussulmans
+single-handed.'
+
+'Let him go,' said Bacchus; 'I'm glad he's gone; he bored me with his
+strong heroics: a fellow ten feet high is out of place here. He showed
+me no respect. We should never have been able to dance while he was
+here; his legs would have broken if he had tried.' 'To the dance! to
+the dance!' they all cried. The wine god beckoned to me. 'Do you
+understand music, Doctor?' 'A little.' 'Keep good time?' 'Oh yes, I
+keep good time.' 'Then take this little barrel and this cooper's stave,
+and sit down besides the Bottomless one there; he is our cellarmaster
+and cornet player, and you shall accompany him on the drum.' I did
+as I was bid, but if my drumming was rather unusual, Balthasar's
+cornet-playing was even more so. He held the iron spout of a large
+empty cask to his mouth like a clarionet. Two more sat near me with
+huge wine-funnels which they used as trumpets, waiting for the signal.
+Then began a fearful rumbling and hooting, all out of tune, to which
+Turkish music was nothing. Balthasar's instrument had but two notes,
+the key note and an horribly high falsetto. As for the trumpeters the
+sounds of grief and anguish which they drew from their funnels was like
+nothing but the wailing of a Triton on a conch.
+
+Bacchus and his sweetheart paraded in the height of the fashion of 200
+years ago. Frau Rosa held her skirt wide out with both hands, so that
+she looked more like a great wine cask than ever. She didn't move far
+from her place, but tripped a few steps up and down and back again, and
+kept bobbing with little curtsies. Her partner meanwhile spun round her
+like a top, snapping his fingers and crying Halloo!
+
+[Illustration: 'TO THE DANCE! TO THE DANCE!']
+
+When at last he seemed tired he beckoned to two of the others, and
+whispered something to them, whereon they took off Mistress Rose's
+apron, (which Bacchus had tied round his own neck when he began to
+dance.) Then the others stood all round and grasped the edge of it. Ha!
+thought I, now old Balthasar is going to be tossed in a blanket. I hope
+he won't break his head against the low roof. Then to my horror two of
+the biggest of them came forward and seized--me; Balthasar chuckled.
+Struggling was vain; they laid me on the sheet shouting with laughter.
+'Only not too high, my noble patrons, or I shall break my head;
+remember it's not like your saintships' heads,' I cried. Up and down I
+went, first three, four, then five feet high. Suddenly they began to
+pull harder, and I flew up--up--and like a cloud the roof opened, and I
+flew up beyond the roof of the Council Hall, beyond even the Cathedral
+tower. 'Ah!' thought I, 'now it's all over with me, I shall infallibly
+be spiked on the weather-cock in coming down, or at least break a few
+arms or legs; and I know what Adelgunde thinks of a man with broken
+limbs. Adieu! my love! my life! Then I began to descend as swiftly
+through the air, through the Council Hall, through the vault, but I
+lighted not upon the cloth, but just upon a chair which toppled over
+backwards with me to the floor.
+
+Stunned by the awful fall I lay long, but at length a headache and the
+coldness of the ground awoke me. Anxiously I examined my limbs, but
+found nothing broken. Daylight was faintly streaming in through a
+cellar grating; on the table a candle was flickering as it expired, and
+round the table in front of each chair a long-shaped bottle with a
+label on its neck. The company was gone! But whither and how?
+
+Thoughtfully I walked round the long table. The sample bottles stood
+where each one had sat. Frau Rosa's at the head of the board. Surely it
+couldn't have been a dream? No, one does not dream so vividly--besides,
+my headache from that bump! But I had little time left for reflections.
+I heard keys rattling at the door--it opened slowly, and my old friend
+of the evening before came in wishing me good morning. 'It has just
+struck six, sir,' said he, 'and I have come as you desired to let you
+out. Well, how did you sleep?' 'As well as one can upon a chair--pretty
+fairly, thank you.' 'Sir,' cried he, anxiously examining me, 'something
+strange happened to you last night--you look disturbed and pale, and
+your voice trembles.' 'Nonsense,' said I, 'what could have happened to
+me? I am only sleepy.' 'I am not so blind as you think,' said he, 'and,
+besides, the night watchman came to me early this morning and told me
+that as he passed by the cellar between twelve and one last night he
+heard all kinds of riot and revelry within there.' 'Pure imagination,'
+said I, 'I'm given to talking loud, and even to singing, in my sleep
+sometimes.'
+
+'Never again,' said he, 'do I leave a gentleman alone in the cellar at
+night. The Lord knows what awful things he has not heard and seen. I
+wish you a most respectful good morning, sir.'
+
+     'But the thing that best would win it
+      Is the Lady Fair within it.'
+
+Remembering these words of the joyous Bacchus as being particularly
+applied to Bremen and to my own case, I hurried, after I had slept a
+few hours, to bid good morning to the lovely Adelgunde. But she
+received me with more than wonted coldness, and when I whispered some
+affectionate words to her she fairly laughed aloud, and turning her
+back said, 'Go, and have your sleep well out, sir, first.' A friend,
+who was sitting at the piano in another corner of the room, followed me
+as I turned away, and taking my hand said, 'Dear Brother, it is all
+over with your love for her--put all thoughts of it out of your head.'
+'I could see as much,' I answered; and then, _sotto voce_, 'The Devil
+take every pretty pair of eyes and every rosy mouth in the world!' 'But
+tell me,' says my friend, 'is it true that you stayed the whole night
+drinking in the wine cellar?' 'Well, yes! but whose business is that?'
+'Heaven knows how she heard it, for she has been crying all the
+morning, and vows you are a mere vulgar sot, and she will have no more
+to do with you.' 'Well,' said I, steeling myself, 'good then; that
+proves she can never have loved me. Give her my kind regards;
+farewell.'
+
+I ran home quickly and resolved to quit Bremen at once. As I left the
+market-place that evening I gave old Roland's statue a friendly wave of
+the hand, and to the horror of my postillion, he nodded a parting
+greeting at me with his stone head. I threw a kiss to the old Council
+Hall and its happy cellars, and curling up in the comer of my chaise
+allowed the fancies of the night to pass once more before my eyes.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Wine-ghosts of Bremen, by Wilhelm Hauff
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