The Last Leaf Part 4

"At every fall, smoothing the raven down Of darkness till it smiled";

and the golden-haired maid who shall glide in and out in silvery attire, as the attendant spirit. Come, Fastidiosus,--I shall invite too the editors of _David's Harp_,--and you shall all own the truth of Milton's own words, "that sanct.i.ty and virtue and truth herself may in this wise be elegantly dressed," when the attendant spirit recites:

"Now my task is smoothly done, I can fly or I can run Quickly to the green earth's end, Where the bowed welkin low doth bend; And from thence can soar as soon To the corners of the moon.

Mortals that would follow me, Love virtue; she alone is free, She can teach ye how to climb Higher than the sphery chime; Or if virtue feeble were, Heaven itself would stoop to her."

CHAPTER IV

THE GIANT IN THE SPIKED HELMET

In January of 1870, having decided to teach rather than preach, I embarked for Germany to enjoy a year of foreign study. Like Western professors in general (to borrow the witticism of President Eliot) I occupied not so much a chair as a sofa, and felt that I needed enlargement for the performance of my functions.

I think I saw a certain caricature first in Munich at the end of July, then in two or three Swiss cities, then in Paris at the end of August, then in Brussels and London; for it was popular, and the print-shops had it everywhere. It was a map of Europe where the different countries were represented by comical figures, each meant to hit off the peculiarities of the nation it stood for, according to popular apprehension. For Prussia there was an immense giant, one of whose knees was on the stomach of Austria represented as a lank figure utterly prostrate, while the other foot threatened to crush South-western Germany. One hand menaced France, whose outline the designer had managed to give rudely in the figure of a Zouave in a fierce att.i.tude; and the other was thrust toward Russia, a huge colossus with Calmuck dress, and features. The most conspicuous thing in the giant's dress was a helmet with a spike projecting from the top, much too large for the head of the wearer, and therefore falling over his eyes until they were almost blinded by it. The style of the helmet was that of the usual head-dress of the Prussian soldier. The caricature generally was not bad, and the hit at Prussia, half crushed and blinded under the big helmet, was particularly good. Throughout her whole history Prussia is either at war, or getting ready for war, or lying exhausted through wounds and recovering strength. In Prussia you found things of pugnacious suggestion always, and in the most incongruous connections. Study the schools, and there was something to call up the soldier. Study the church, and even there was a burly polemic quality which you can trace back from to-day to the time when the Prussian bishops were fighting knights. Study the people in their quietest moods, in their homes, among their recreations, indeed, among the graves of those they honour as the greatest heroes, and you found the same overhanging shadow of war. This predominant martial quality showed itself in ways sometimes brutal, sometimes absurd, sometimes sublime.

I visited Prussia at a time of entire peace, for at my departure I crossed the frontier (or that of the North German Confederation, the whole of which, for convenience's sake, we will call Prussia) on the very day when King William was shouldering aside so roughly at Ems Benedetti and the famous French demands. The things to which I gave attention for the most part were the things which belong to peace; yet as I arrange my recollections I find that something military runs through the whole of them. As one's letters when he has read them are filed away on the pointed wire standing on the desk, so as regards my Prussian experiences everything seems to have been filed away on the spike of a helmet.

Going out early one May morning to get my first sight of Berlin, I stood presently in a broad avenue. In the centre ran a wide promenade lined with tall, full-foliaged trees, with a crowded roadway on each side bordered by stately buildings. Close by me a colossal equestrian statue in bronze towered up till the head of the rider was on a level with the eaves of the houses. The rider was in c.o.c.ked hat, booted and spurred, the eye turned sharp to the left as if reconnoitring, the att.i.tude alert, life-like, as if he might dismount any moment if he chose. In the distance down the long perspective of trees was a lofty gate supported by columns, with a figure of Victory on the top in a chariot drawn by horses. Close at hand again, under the porch of a square strong structure, stood two straight sentinels. An officer pa.s.sed in a carriage on the farther side of the avenue. Instantly the two sentinels stepped back in concert as if the same clock-work regulated their movements, brought their s.h.i.+ning pieces with perfect precision to the "present," stood for an instant as if hewn from stone, the spiked helmets above the blond faces inclining backward at the same angle, then precisely together fell into the old position.

The street was "Unter den Linden." The tall statue was the memorial of Frederick the Great. The gate down the long vista was the Brandenburger Thor, surmounted by the charioted Victory which Napoleon carried to Paris after Jena and which came back after Waterloo. The solid building was the palace of iron-grey old King William; and when the clock-work sentinels went through their salute, I got my first sight of that famous Prussian discipline, against which before the summer was through supple France was to crush its teeth all to fragments, like a viper that has incautiously bitten at a file.

There never was a place with aspect more military than Berlin even in peaceful times. In many quarters towered great barracks for the troops. The public memorials were almost exclusively in honour of great soldiers. There were tall columns, too, to commemorate victories or the crus.h.i.+ng out of revolutionary spirit; rarely, indeed, in comparison, a statue to a man of scientific or literary or artistic eminence. Frederick sits among the tree-tops of Unter den Linden, and about his pedestal are life-size figures of the men of his age whom Prussia holds most worthy of honour. At the four corners ride the Duke of Brunswick and cunning Prince Heinrich, old Ziethen and fiery Seydlitz. Between are a score or more of soldiers of lesser note, only soldiers, spurred and sabre-girt,--except at the very back; and there, just where the tail of Frederick's horse droops over, stand--whom think you?--no others than Leasing, critic and poet, most gifted and famous; and Kant, peer of Plato and Bacon, one of the most gifted brains of all time. Just standing room for them among the hoofs and uniforms at the tail of Frederick's horse! Every third man one met in Berlin was a soldier off duty. Batteries of steel guns rolled by at any time, obedient to their bugles. Squadrons of Uhlans in uniforms of green and red, the pennons fluttering from the ends of their lances, rode up to salute the king. Each day at noon, through the roar of the streets, swelled the finest martial music; first a grand sound of trumpets, then a deafening roll from a score of brazen drums. A heavy detachment of infantry wheeled out from some barracks, ranks of strong brown-haired young men stretching from sidewalk to sidewalk, neat in every thread and accoutrement, with the German gift for music all, as the stride told with which they beat out upon the pavement the rhythm of the march, dropping sections at intervals to do the unbroken guard duty at the various posts. Frequently whole army corps gathered to manoeuvre at the vast parade-ground by the Kreuzberg in the outskirts.

On Unter den Linden is a strong square building, erected, after the model of a Roman fortress, to be the quarters of the main guard. The officers on duty at Berlin came here daily at noon to hear military music and for a half-hour's talk. They came always in full uniform, a collection of the most brilliant colours, hussars in red, blue, green, and black, the king's body-guard in white with braid of yellow and silver, in helmets that flashed as if made from burnished gold, crested with an eagle with out-spread wings. The men themselves were the handsomest one can see; figures of the finest symmetry and stature, trained by every athletic exercise, and the faces often so young and beautiful! Counts and barons were there from Pomerania and old Brandenburg, where the Prussian spirit is most intense, and no n.o.bility is n.o.bler or prouder. They were blue-eyed and fair-haired descendants perhaps of the chieftains that helped Herman overcome Varus, and whose names may be found five hundred years back among the Deutsch Ritters that conquered Northern Europe from heathendom, and thence all the way down to now, occurring in martial and princely connection. It was the acme of martial splendour.

"But how do you bear it all?" you say to your Prussian friend, with whom you stand looking on at the base of Billow's statue. "Is not this enormous preparation for bloodshed something dreadful? Then the tax on the country to support it all, the withdrawing of such a mult.i.tude from the employments of peace." Your friend, who had been a soldier himself, would answer: "We bear it because we must. It is the price of our existence, and we have got used to it; and, after all, with the hards.h.i.+p come great benefits. Every able-bodied young Prussian must serve as a soldier, be he n.o.ble or low-born, rich or poor. If he cannot read or write, he must learn. He must be punctual, neat, temperate, and so gets valuable habits. His body is trained to be strong and supple. Shoemaker and banker's son, count, tailor, and farmer march together, and community of feeling comes about. The great traditions of Prussian history are the atmosphere they breathe, and they become patriotic. The soldier must put off marrying, perhaps half forget his trade, and come into life poor; for who can save on nine cents a day, with board and clothes? But it is a wonder if he is not a healthy, well-trained, patriotic man." So talked your Prussian; and however much of a peace-man you might be, you could not help owning there was some truth in it. If you bought a suit of clothes, the tailor jumped up from his cross-legged position, prompt and full-chested, with tan on his face he got in campaigning; and it is hard to say he had lost more than he gained in his army training. If you went into a school, the teacher, with a close-clipped beard and vigorous gait, who had a scar on his face from Koniggratz, seemed none the worse for it, though he might have read a few books the less and lost his student pallor. At any rate, bad or good, so it was; and so, said the Prussian, it must be. Eternal vigilance and preparation! I went in one day to the a.r.s.enal. The flags which Prussian armies had taken from almost every nation in Europe were ranged against the walls by the hundred; shot-shattered rags of silk, white standards of Austria embroidered with gold, Bavaria's blue checker, above all the great Napoleonic symbol, the N surrounded by its wreath. This was the memorable tapestry that hung the walls, and opposite glittered the waiting barrels and bayonets till one could almost believe them conscious, and burning to do as much as the flintlocks that won the standards. There was a needle-gun there or somewhere for every able-bodied man, and somewhere else uniform and equipments. When I landed in February on the bank of the Weser, the most prominent object was the redoubt with the North German flag. When in midsummer I crossed the Bavarian frontier among a softer people, the last marked object was the old stronghold of Coburg, battered by siege after siege for a thousand years. It was the spiked helmet at the entrance and again at the exit; and from entrance to exit, few places or times were free from some martial suggestion. It was a nation that had come to power mainly through war, and been schooled into the belief that its mailed fists alone could guarantee its life.

I visited a primary school. The little boys of six came with knapsacks strapped to their backs for their books and dinners, instead of satchels. At the tap of a bell they formed themselves into column and marched like little veterans to the schoolroom door. I visited a school for boys of thirteen or fourteen. Casting my eyes into the yard, I saw the spiked helmet in the shape of the half-military manoeuvres of a cla.s.s which the teacher of gymnastics was training for the severer drill of five or six years later. I visited the "prima,"

or upper cla.s.s of a gymnasium, and here was the spiked helmet in a connection that seemed at first rather irreverent. After all, however, it was only thoroughly Prussian, and deserved to be looked upon as a comical incongruity rather than gravely blamed. A row of cheap pictures hung side by side upon the wall. First Luther, the rougher characteristics of the well-known portrait somewhat exaggerated. The shoulders were even larger than common. The bony b.u.t.tresses of the forehead over the eyes, too, as they rose above the strong lower face, were emphasised, looking truly as though, if tongue and pen failed to make a way, the shoulders could push one, and, if worse came to worst, the head would b.u.t.t one. Next to Luther was a head of Christ; then in the same line, with nothing in the position or quality of the pictures to indicate that the subjects were any less esteemed, a row of royal personages, whose military trappings were made particularly plain.

It was all characteristic enough. The Reformer's figure stood for the stalwart Protestantism of the Prussian character, still living and militant in a way hard for us to imagine; the portraits of the royal soldiers stood for its combative loyalty, ready to meet anything for king and fatherland; and the head of Christ for its zealous faith, which, however it may have cooled away among some cla.s.ses of the people, was still intense in the nation at large. I visited the best school for girls in Berlin, and it was singular to find the spiked helmet, among those retiring maidens even, and this time not hung upon the wall nor outside in the yard. The teacher of the most interesting cla.s.s I visited--a cla.s.s in German literature--was a man of forty-five, of straight, soldierly bearing, a grey, martial moustache, and energetic eye. He told me, as we walked together in the hall, waiting for the exercise to commence, that he had been a soldier, and it so happened that among the ballads in the lesson for that day was one in honour of the Prussian troops at Rossbach. Over this the old soldier broke out into an animated lecture, which grew more and more earnest as he went forward; he showed how the idea of faithfulness to duty had become obscured, but was enforced again by the philosopher Kant in his teaching, and then brought into practice by the great Frederick. The veteran plainly thought there was no duty higher than that owed to the _schwarzer Adler_, the black eagle of Prussia.

Then came an account of the French horse before Rossbach; how they rode out from Weimar, the troopers, before they went, ripping open the beds on which they had slept and scattering the feathers to the wind to plague the housewives,--a piece of ruthlessness that came home thoroughly to the young housekeepers; then how _der alte Fritz_, lying in wait behind Ja.n.u.s Hill, with General Seydlitz and Field-marshal Keith, suddenly rushed out and put them all to rout.

The soldier was in a fever of patriotism and rage against the French before his description was finished, and the faces of the girls kindled in response. "They will some time," I thought, "be lovers, wives, mothers of Prussian soldiers themselves, and this training will keep alive in the home the national fire."

Admirable schools they all were, the presence of the spiked helmet notwithstanding, and crowning them in the great Prussian educational system came the famous universities. That at Berlin counted its students by thousands, its professors by hundreds. There was no branch of human knowledge without its teacher. One could study Egyptian hieroglyphics or the a.s.syrian arrow-head inscriptions. A new pimple could hardly break out on the blotched face of the moon, without a lecture from a professor next day to explain the theory of its development. The poor earthquakes were hardly left to shake in peace an out-of-the-way strip of South American coast or Calabrian plain, but a German professor violated their privacy, undertook to see whence they came and whither they went, and even tried to predict when they would go to shaking again. The vast building of the University stood on Unter den Linden, opposite the palace of the king. Large as it was, its halls were crowded at the end of every hour by the thousand or two of young men, who presently disappeared within the lecture-rooms.

Here in past years had been Hegel and Fichte, the brothers Grimm, the brothers Humboldt, Niebuhr, and Carl Ritter. Here in my time, were Lepsius and Curtius, Virchow and Hoffman, Ranke and Mommsen,--the world's first scholars in the past and present. The student selected his lecturers, then went day by day through the semester to the plain lecture-rooms, taking notes diligently at benches which had been whittled well by his predecessors, and where he too most likely carved his own autograph and perhaps the name of the dear girl he adored,--for Yankee boys have no monopoly of the jack-knife.

Where could one find the spiked helmet in the midst of the scholastic quiet and diligence of a German university? It was visible enough in more ways than one. Here was one manifestation. Run down the long list of professors and teachers in the _Anzeiger_, and you would find somewhere in the list the _Fechtmeister_, instructor in fighting, master of the sword exercise, and he was pretty sure to be one of the busiest men in the company. To most German students, a sword, or _Schlager_, was as necessary as pipe or beer-mug; not a slender fencing-foil, with a b.u.t.ton on the point, and slight enough to snap with a vigorous thrust, but a stout blade of tempered steel, ground sharp. With these weapons the students perpetrated savageries, almost unrebuked, which struck an American with horror. Duels were of frequent occurrence, taking place sometimes at places and on days regularly set apart for the really b.l.o.o.d.y work. The fighters were partially protected by a sort of armour, and the wounds inflicted were generally more ghastly than dangerous; though a son of Bismarck was said to have been nearly killed at Bonn a few years before, and there was sometimes serious maiming. Perhaps one may say it was nothing but very rough play, but it was the play of young savages, whose sport was nothing to them without a dash of cruel rage. The practice dates from the time when the Germans wore wolf-skins, and were barbarians roaring in their woods. Perhaps the university authorities found it too inveterate a thing to be done away with; perhaps, too, they felt, thinking as it were under their spiked helmets, that after all it had a value, making the young men cool in danger and accustoming them to weapons. We, after all, cannot say too much. Often our young American students in Germany take to the _Schlager_ as gracefully and naturally as game-c.o.c.ks to spurs. The most noted duellist at one of the universities that winter was a burly young Westerner, who had things at first all his own way. A still burlier Prussian from Tubingen, however, appeared at last, and so carved our valiant borderer's face, that thereafter with its criss-cross scars it looked like a well-frequented skating-ground. Football, too, in America probably kills and maims more in a year than all the German duels.

To crown all, the schools and University at Berlin were magnificently supplemented in the great Museum, a vast collection, where one might study the rise and progress of civilisation in every race of past ages that has had a history, the present condition of perhaps every people, civilised or wild, under the sun. In one great hall you were among the satin garments and lacquered furniture of China; in another there was the seal-skin work of the Esquimaux st.i.tched with sinew. Now you sat in a Tartar tent, now among the war-clubs, the conch-sh.e.l.l trumpets, the drums covered with human skin of the Polynesians. Here it was the feathery finery of the Caribs, here the idols and trinkets of the negroes of Soudan. There too, in still other halls, was the history of our own race; the maces the Teutons and Nors.e.m.e.n fought with, the torcs of twisted gold they wore about their necks, the sacrificial knives that slew the victims on the altars of Odin; so, too, what our fathers have carved and spun, moulded, cast, and portrayed, until we took up the task of life. In another place you found the great collection made in Egypt by Lepsius. The visitor stood within the facsimile of a temple on the banks of the Nile. On the walls and lotus-shaped columns were processions of dark figures at the loom, at the work of irrigation, marching as soldiers, or mourners at funerals,--exact copies of the original delineations. There were sphinx and obelisk, coffins of kings, mummies of priest and chieftain, the fabrics they wore, the gems they cut, the scrolls they engrossed, the tomb in which they were buried. Stepping into another section, you were in a.s.syria, with the alabaster lions and plumed genii of the men of Nineveh and Babylon. The walls again were brilliant, now with the splendour of the palaces of Nebuchadnezzar; the captives building temples, the chivalry sacking cities, the princes on their thrones.

Here too was Etruria revealed in her sculpture and painted vases; and here too the whole story of Greece. Pa.s.sing through these wonderful halls, you reviewed a thousand years and more, almost from the epoch of Cadmus, through the vicissitudes of empire and servitude, until Constantinople was sacked by the Turks. The rude Pelasgic altar, the sculptured G.o.d of Praxiteles, then down through the ages of decay to the ugly painting of the Byzantine monk in the Dark Ages. So too the whole history of Rome; the long heave of the wave from Romulus until it becomes crested with the might and beauty of the Augustan age; the sad subsidence from that summit to Goth and Hun. There was architecture which the eyes of the Tarquins saw, there were statues of the great consuls of the Republic, the luxury of the later Empire. You saw it not only in models, but sometimes in actual relics. One's blood thrilled when he stood before a statue of Julius Caesar, whose sculptor, it is reasonable to believe, wrought from the life. It was broken and discoloured, as it came from the Italian ruin where it had lain since the barbarian raids. But the grace had not left the toga folded across the breast, nor was the fine Roman majesty gone from the head and face,--a head small, but high, with a full and ample brow, a nose with the true eagle curve, and thin, firm lips formed to command; a statue most subduing in its simple dignity and pathetic in its partial ruin. And all this was free to the world as the air of heaven almost. No fee for admission; the only requisitions, not to handle, orderly behaviour, and decent neatness in attire. Here I saw too, when I ascended the steps between the great bronze groups of statuary as I entered, and again the last thing as I left, the spiked helmet on the head of the stiff sentinel always posted at the door.

The German home was affectionate and genial. The American, properly introduced, was sure of a generous welcome, for it was hard to find a German who had not many relatives beyond the Atlantic. There were courteous observances which at first put one a little aback. Sneezing, for instance, was not a thing that could be done in a corner. If the family were a bit old-fas.h.i.+oned, you would be startled and abashed by hearing the "_prosits_" and "_Gesundheits_" from the company, wishes that it might be for your advantage and health sonorously given, with much friendly nodding in your direction. This is a curious survival of an old superst.i.tion that sneezing perhaps opened a pa.s.sage through which an evil spirit might enter the body.

As you rose from the table it was the old-fas.h.i.+oned way, too, to go through with a general hand-shaking, and a wish to every one that the supper might set well. The Germans are long-lived, and almost every domestic hearthstone supports the easy-chairs of grandparents.

Grandfather was often fresh and cheerful, the oracle and comforter of the children, treated with deference by those grown up, and presented to the guest as the central figure of the home. As the younger ones dropped off to bed and things grew quieter, grandfather's chair was apt to be the centre toward which all tended, and, of course, the old man talked about his youth. Here are the reminiscences I heard once at the end of a merry evening, and at other times I heard something not unlike: "Children and grandchildren and guest from over the sea, when I was a boy, Prussia was struggling with the first Napoleon; and when I was eighteen I marched myself under Blucher beyond the Rhine.

Sometimes we went on the run, sometimes we got lifts in relays of waggons, and so I have known the infantry even to make now and then fifty miles a day. Matters were pressing, you see (_sehen Sie 'mal_). At last we crossed at Coblentz, and got from there into Belgium the first days of June. We met the French at Ligny,--a close, bitter fight,--and half my battalion were left behind there where they had stood. We were a few paces off, posted in a graveyard, when the French cavalry rode over old Marshal Vorwarts, lying under his horse.

I saw the rush of the French, then the countercharge of the Prussian troopers when missed the General and drove the enemy back till they found him again; though what it all meant we never knew till it was over. Then, after mighty little rest, we marched fast and far, with cannon-thunder in our ears in a constant mutter, always growing louder, until in the afternoon we came at a quickstep through a piece of woods out upon the plain by Waterloo, where they had been fighting all day. Our feet sucked in the damp ground, the wet grain brushed our knees, as our compact column spread out into more open order and went into fire. What a smoke there was about La Haye Sainte and Hougomont, with now lines of red infantry, or a column in dark blue, or a ma.s.s of flas.h.i.+ng cuira.s.siers hidden for a moment, then reappearing! It was take and give, hot and heavy, for an hour or so about Planchenoit. A ball grazed my elbow and another went through my cap; but at sunset the French were broken, and we swept after the rout as well as we could through the litter, along the southward roads. We were at a halt for a minute, I remember, when a rider in a chapeau with a plume, and a hooked nose underneath, trotted up, wrapped in a military cloak, and somebody said it was Wellington." Grandfather was sure to be at a white heat before he had finished, and so, too, his audience. The athletic student grandson, with a deep scar across his cheek from a _Schlager_ cut, rose and paced the room. The _Fraulien_, his sister, to whom the retired grenadier has told the story of the feather-beds at Weimar, showed in her eves she remembered it all.

"Yes, friend American!" breaks in the father of the family, "and it all must be done over again. Sooner or later it must come, a great struggle with France; the Latin race or the Teutonic, which shall be supreme in Europe? We are ready now; a.r.s.enals filled, horses waiting, equipments for everybody. Son Fritz there has his uniform ready, and somewhere there is one for me. _Donnerwetter_! If they get into Prussia, they'll find a tough old _Landsturm_! Only let Vater Wilhelm turn his hand, and to-morrow close upon a million trained and well-armed troops could be stepping to the drum." It was an evening at the end of June. Napoleon was having the finis.h.i.+ng touches put to the new Opera House at Paris, thinking, so far as the world could tell, of nothing more important than how many imperial eagles it would do to put along the cornice. King William was packing for Ems, designing to be back at the peaceful unveiling of his father's statue the first week in August. Bismarck was at his Pomeranian estate, in poor health, it was said, plotting nothing but to circ.u.mvent his bodily trouble.

In less than a month full-armed Prussia was on the march. I could understand the readiness, when I thought of the spiked helmet I had seen in the Prussian home that quiet summer night.

The German _Friedhof_, or burying-ground, had never the extent or magnificence of some American cemeteries. Even near the cities it was small and quiet, showing, however, in the well-kept mounds and stones there was no want of care. Every old church, too, was floored with the memorial tablets of those buried beneath, and bare upon walls and columns monuments in the taste of the various ages that have come and gone since the church was built. Graves of famous men, here as everywhere, were places of pilgrimage, and here as everywhere to see which are the most honoured tombs, was no bad way of judging the character of the people. Among the scholars of Germany there have been no greater names than those of Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, brothers not far apart in the cradle, not far apart in death, who lived and worked together their full threescore years and ten. They were two wonderful old men, with faces--as I saw them together in a photograph shown me by Hermann Grimm, the well-known son of Wilhelm--full of intellectual strength, and yet with the sweetness and innocence of children. They lie now side by side in the Matthai Kirchhof at Berlin, in graves precisely similar, with a lovely rose-bush scattering petals impartially on the turf above both, and solid twin stones at their heads, meant to endure apparently as long as their fame. Hither come a large and various company of pilgrims,--children who love the brothers Grimm for their fairy-tales, young students who have been kindled by their example, and grey old scholars who respect their achievements as the most marvellous work of the marvellous German erudition. The little North German city, Weimar, is closely a.s.sociated with the great literary men of the last hundred years. Here several of them accomplished their best work under the patronage of an enlightened duke, and finally found their graves. An atmosphere of reverend quiet seemed to hang over it as I walked through its shaded streets,--streets where there is never bustle, and which appear to be always remembering the great men who have walked in them. In the burying-ground in the outskirts I found the mausoleum of the ruling house, a decorated hall of marble with a crypt underneath in which are the coffins. The members of the Saxe-Weimar family for many generations are here; the warlike ancestor with his armour rusting on the dusty lid, grand-duke and d.u.c.h.ess, and the child that died before it attained the coronet. But far more interesting than any of these are two large plain caskets of oak, lying side by side at the foot of the staircase by which you descend. In these are the bones of Goethe and Schiller. The heap of wreaths, some of them still fresh, which lay on the tops, the number on the coffin of Schiller being noticeably the larger, showed how green their memory had been kept in the heart of the nation. I was only one of a great mult.i.tude of pilgrims who are coming always, their chief errand being to see the graves of these famous dead within the quiet town. In the side of the Schloss Kirche, in the city of Wittenberg, is an old archway, with pillars carved as if twisted and with figures of saints overhead, the sharpness of the cutting being somewhat broken and worn away through time. It is the doorway which rang loud three hundred years ago to the sound of Luther's hammer as he nailed up his ninety-five theses. Within the church, about midway toward the altar and near the wall, the guide lifts an oaken trap-door and shows you, beneath, the slab which covers Luther's ashes. Just opposite, in a sepulchre precisely similar, lies Melancthon, and in the chancel near by, in tombs rather more stately, the electors of Saxony that befriended the reformers. A spot worthy indeed to be a place of pilgrimage! attracting not only those who bless the men, but those who curse them. Charles V. and Alva stood once on the pavement where the visitor now stands, and the Emperor commanded the stone to be removed from the grave of Luther. Did the body turn in its coffin at the violation? It might well have been so, for never was there fiercer hate. For three centuries the generations have trooped hitherward, more often drawn in reverence, but sometimes through very hatred, a mult.i.tude too mighty to be numbered. But there is a grave in Prussia, where, if I mistake not, the pilgrims are more numerous and the interest, for the average Prussian, deeper than scholar or poet or reformer call out. The garrison church at Potsdam has a plain name and is a plain edifice, when one thinks of the sepulchre it holds. Hung upon the walls are dusty trophies; there are few embellishments besides. You make your way through the aisles among the pews where the regiments sit at service, marching from their barracks close by, then through a door beneath the pulpit enter a vault lighted by tapers along the wall. Two heavy coffins stand on the stone floor,--the older one that of Frederick William I., that despot, partially insane, perhaps, who yet accomplished great things for Prussia; the other that of his famous son, Frederick the Great, whose sword cut the path by which Prussia advanced to her vast power. On the copper lid formerly lay that sword, until the great Napoleon when he stood there, feeling a twinge of jealousy perhaps over the dead leader's fame, carried it away with him. Father and son lie quietly enough now side by side, though their relations in life were stormy.

About the great soldier's sleep every hour rolls the drumbeat from the garrison close by. The tramp of the columns as they come in to wors.h.i.+p jar the warrior's ashes. The dusky standards captured in the Seven Years' War droop about him. The hundred intervening years have blackened them, already singed in the fire of Zorndorf, Leuthen, and Torgau. The moth makes still larger the rent where the volleys pa.s.sed.

The spiked helmet is even here among the tombs; and schooled as the Prussians are among the din of trumpets and smoke of wars, no other among the mighty graves in their land holds dust, in their thought, so heroic.

Seven hundred years ago Frederick's ancestor Conrad, the younger son of a family of some rank, but quite undistinguished, riding down from the little stronghold of Hohenzollern in Swabia, with nothing but a good head and arm, won favour with the Emperor Barbarossa and became at last Burggraf of Nuremberg. I saw the old castle in which this Conrad lived and his line after him for several generations. It rises among fortifications the plan for which Albert Durer drew, with narrow windows in the thick masonry of the towers, the battlements worn by the pacing to and fro of sentinels in armour, and an ancient linden in the court-yard, planted by an empress a thousand years ago it is said, with as green a canopy to throw over the tourist to-day as it threw over those old Hohenzollerns. Conrad transmitted to his descendants his good head and strong arm, until at length becoming masters of Baireuth and Ans.p.a.ch, they were Margraves and ranked among important princes. Their seat now was at Culmbach, in the great castle of the Plessenburg. I saw one May morning the grey walls of the old nest high on its cliff at the junction of the red and white Main, threatening still, for it is now a Bavarian prison. The power of the house grew slowly. In one age it got Brandenburg, in another the great districts of Ost and West Preussen; now it was possessions in Silesia, now again territory on the Rhine. Power came sometimes through imperial gift, sometimes through marriage, sometimes through purchase or diplomacy or blows. From poor soldiers of fortune to counts, from counts to princes, from princes to electors, and at last kings. Sometimes they are unscrupulous, sometimes feeble, sometimes n.o.bly heroic and faithful; more often strong than weak in brain and hand.

The Hohenzollern tortoise keeps creeping forward in its history, surpa.s.sing many a swift hare that once despised it in the race. I believe it is the oldest princely line in Europe. There is certainly none whose history on the whole is better. Margraf George of Ans.p.a.ch-Baireuth was perhaps the finest character among the Protestant princes of the Reformation, without whom the good fight could not have been fought. When Charles V. besieged Metz in the winter (which, with Lorraine, had just been torn from Germany by the French), and was compelled by the cold to withdraw, it was a Hohenzollern prince, one of the first soldiers of the time, who led the rear-guard over ground which another Hohenzollern, Prince Frederick Charles, has again made famous. Later, in Frederick the Great, the house furnished one of the firmest hands that ever held a royal sceptre. His successors have been men of power.

They are good types of their stock, and Prussia is worthy of the leaders.h.i.+p to which she is advancing. In the cathedral of Speyer stand the statues of the mighty German Kaisers, who six hundred years ago wore the purple, and, after their wild battle with the elements of disorder about them, were buried at last in its crypts. They are majestic figures for the most part, idealised by the sculptor, and yet probably not far beyond nature; for the imperial dignity was not hereditary, but given to the man chosen for it, and the choice was often a worthy one. They were leaders in character as well as station, and it is right to give their images the bearing of men strong in war and council. I felt that if the ancient dignity was to be revived in our own day, and the sceptre of Barbarossa and Rudolph of Hapsburg to be extended again over a united Germany, there had been few princes more worthy to hold it than the modern Hohenzollern.

In speaking of this great people so as to give the best idea of them in a short s.p.a.ce, I have seized on what seemed to me in those days the most salient thing, and described various phases of their life as pervaded by it. The fighting spirit was bred in their bones. They were a nation of warriors almost as much as the Spartans, and stood ready on the instant to obey the tap of the drum calling to arms. Such constant suggestions of war were painful. The spiked helmet is never an amiable head-dress; "but," said the representative Prussian, "there is no help for it. We have been a weak people wedged in between powerful unscrupulous neighbours, and have had a life-and-death struggle to wage almost constantly with one or the other of these, or all at once. And in what way is our situation different now? Is Russia less ambitious? How many swords has France beaten into ploughshares?

What pruning-hooks have been made from the spears of Austria? Let us know on what conditions we can live other than wearing our spiked helmets, and we will embrace them." It was not an easy matter to argue down your resolute Prussian when he turned to you warmly, after you had been crying peace to him.

As I pondered, I thought perhaps it is a necessity, since the world is what it is, that Europe should still be a place of discord. America, however, is practically one, not a jarring company of nations repeating the protracted agony of the Old World. We have no question of the "balance of power" coming up in every generation, settled only to be unsettled amid devastation and slaughter. We can grow forward unhindered, with hardly more than a feather's weight of energy taken for fighting from the employments of peace. America stands indeed a nation blessed of G.o.d; and there is nothing better worth her while to pray for than that a happier time may come to her giant brother over the sea; that the strength of such an arm may not always waste itself wielding the sword; that the sensibilities of such a heart may not be crushed or brutalised in carnage that forever repeats itself; that the n.o.ble head may some time exchange the spiked helmet for the olive chaplet of peace.

CHAPTER V

A STUDENT'S EXPERIENCE IN THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR

We rememberers lie under certain suspicion. "Uncle Mose," said an inquirer, his intonation betraying scepticism, "they say you remember General Was.h.i.+ngton." "Yaas, Boss," replied Uncle Mose, "I used to 'member Gen'l Was.h.i.+ngton, but sence I jined de church I done forgot."

Not having joined Uncle Mose's church, my memory has not experienced the ecclesiastical discouragement that befell him. I humbly trust, however, it needs no chastening, and aver that I do not go for my facts to my imagination. I am now in foreign parts dealing with personages of especial dignity and splendour and must establish my memory firmly in the reader's confidence.

I was a student in Germany in 1870. In the spring at Berlin, pa.s.sing by the not very conspicuous royal palace on Unter den Linden, one day I studied the front with some interest. The two sentinels stood in the door saluting with clock-work precision the officers who frequently pa.s.sed. A watchful policeman was on the corner, but there was little other sign that an important personage was within the walls. With some shock I suddenly caught sight, in a window close at hand, of a tall, robust figure with a rugged but not ungenial face surmounted by grizzled hair, in uniform with decorations hanging upon the broad breast, who, as I glanced up, saluted me with an unlooked-for nod. I knew at once it was the King of Prussia, who before the year was ended was to be crowned as Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse at Versailles. I was thoroughly scared, as I did not know that it was the habit of the King to stand in the window and good-naturedly greet the pa.s.ser-by.

That was my first sight of a real king. But there is another figure which I contemplate with more interest. The 31st of May of 1870 was a day sent from heaven, brilliant suns.h.i.+ne after a period of cloud; the spring lording it in the air, the trees and gra.s.s in their freshest luxuriance. I was at Potsdam that day; in the wide-stretching gardens that surround the New Palace. As I walked, I came to a cord drawn across the path, indicating that visitors were to go no farther. Close by stood a tall young grenadier on duty as a sentinel, but willing to chat. Looking beyond the cord into the reserved s.p.a.ce I presently saw coming up from a secluded path, a low carriage drawn by a pony led by a groom in which was seated a lady dressed in white. She was not of distinguished appearance but my grenadier told me that it was the Crown Princess of Prussia, the daughter of the Queen of England.

From the screen of the bush I watched her with natural interest. The carriage paused and a group of little boys and girls came running out from the thicket attended by a governess or two and a tutor. The little girls had their hands full of flowers, which, running forward, they threw into the carriage. The boys, too, ran up with pretty demonstrations, and a straight little fellow of ten years or so hurried to the groom and began to pat the pony's nose. These, I learned, were the princes and princesses of the royal family. The little fellow patting the pony's nose was the eldest and destined to emerge into history as Kaiser Wilhelm the Second.

And now, from a door of the palace, not far distant, came striding a notable figure, tall and stalwart, in the undress uniform of a Prussian General. Under his fatigue cap the blond hair was abundant; a wave of brown beard swept flown upon his breast. The face was full of intelligence and authority, but at that moment most kindly as his blue eyes sought the group that stood in the foreground. It was the Crown Prince of Prussia, destined at length to be the Emperor Friedrich.

The carriage pa.s.sed on, the Crown Prince walking, with his hand on the side, while the Princess held her parasol over his head, laughing at the idea evidently, that so st.u.r.dy a soldier needed that kind of a screen.

The Crown Prince Friedrich was unpopular in those days as too domestic, standing too much withdrawn from the bustling world, but there was no failure when the stress came. Only a few weeks pa.s.sed before the stout soldier, whom I had seen throwing lilies and sheltered from the sun by his wife's parasol, was at the head of a great army corps, crus.h.i.+ng the power of France at Worth and Weissembourg; but the report was that he had said, "I do not like war, and if I am ever King I shall never make war."

A few weeks after the Potsdam incident I was in the city of Vienna.

One morning, like thunder out of a clear sky, news came of the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war. I read the paper, but, not feeling that the news need interfere with my sight-seeing, went to the Hofbourg, the old palace, in the heart of the city, of the Imperial family of Austria. The building is extensive; the streets of the city at that time running under it here and there in tunnels. I visited the _Schatz_ Kammer, the treasure-room, and saw men go almost demented at the spectacle of the gold and jewels heaped up in the cases. The sight of the splendour, the heaped-up jewels, the batons, the faded, and sometimes b.l.o.o.d.y, garments, the trinkets and decorations, a.s.sociated with towering personalities of the past, attuned my spirit for some adventure above the commonplace. As I came down into the street, narrow and overhung by the confining arch, a soldier pa.s.sed me on the run into an open s.p.a.ce just beyond, where instantly a battalion hurried out to stand at present. Then in the distance I heard galloping of horses and an open carriage rapidly approached, in which were seated four figures, protected from the light rain by grey overcoats, wearing the chapeaux which have come down from Napoleonic times. The carriage pa.s.sed so near that I was obliged to press back against the wall to save my feet from the wheels, and a figure on the back seat, who, for the moment, was within arm's reach, I recognised as Francis Joseph.

He was then a man in his best years, a strong, sensible if not impressive face, and a well-knit frame. He had driven in from Schonbrunn to attend a council meeting, and the day for him was no doubt a most critical one. War had come. It was only four years after Koniggratz. His old enemy, Prussia, was about to hurl herself, with who could tell what allies, against France. What stand should Austria take? If the Kaiser was agitated, his face did not show it; it was significant of quiet, cool poise. Excitement was repressed, while good sense weighed and determined. Few sovereigns have been obliged to face so often situations of the utmost difficulty. I can believe that with similar imperturbability Francis Joseph has confronted the series of perplexities which make up the tangled story of his long career, and I count it good fortune that I witnessed, in a moment of supreme embarra.s.sment, the balance and resolution with which the good ruler went to his task. Austria, as the world knows, decided that day to be neutral in the Franco-Prussian quarrel.

The disorder in the land made me feel that I must get nearer to my base, so I hurriedly left Vienna for Munich, which I found seething with agitation, for, like Austria, Bavaria had only a few years before been Prussia's enemy, and so far as the populace was concerned all was in doubt as to what course would now be taken. The rumour was that McMahon had crossed the Rhine at Stra.s.sburg with 150,000 men, and was marching to interpose between Northern and Southern Germany.

At the Ober-Pollinger I heard in the inn, amid the stormy discussion of the crisis, something quite out of harmony with the spirit of the hour. The first performance was to be given in the Royal Opera House of a work of Richard Wagner, the _Rheingold_. Wagner in those days had not attained his great fame, and, to a man like me, who had no especial interest in music, was a name almost unknown, but I went with the crowd, thinking to help out a dreary evening rather than to enjoy a masterpiece. The house was crowded. In the centre before the stage an ample s.p.a.ce was occupied by the royal box, richly carved and draped. Presently the King entered, a slender, graceful figure in a dress suit, his dark rather melancholy face looking handsome in the gorgeous setting of the theatre. The crowded audience rose to their feet in a tumult of enthusiasm. The air resounded with "Hoch! Hoch!"

the German cheer, and handkerchiefs waved like a snow-storm. The King bowed right and left in acknowledgment of the plaudits, and the performance of the evening was kept long in waiting. The line of Bavarian kings has perhaps little t.i.tle to our respect. The Ludwig of fifty years ago was a voluptuary, vacillating, like another Louis Quinze, between debauchery and a weak pietism. He probably merited the cuts of the relentless scourge of Heine than which no instrument of chastis.e.m.e.nt was ever more unsparing, and which in his case was put to its most merciless use; but he loved art and lavished his revenues upon pictures, statues, and churches, which the world admires, imparting a benefit, though his subjects groaned. His successor, whom I saw, was a man morbid and without force, who early came to a sorrowful end. His redeeming quality was a fine aesthetic taste, which he had no doubt through heredity, together with a sad burden of disease. The world remembers kindly that he was a prodigal patron of art.

I went to Heidelberg in February, 1870, bent upon a quiet year of study in Germany and France. Fate had a different programme for me. My plans were badly interfered with but to see Europe in such a turmoil was an experience well worth having. Heidelberg that spring was very peaceful. The ice in the Neckar on which skaters were disporting on my arrival pa.s.sed out in due course of time to the Rhine, the foliage broke forth in glory on the n.o.ble hills and the nightingales came back to sing in the ivy about the storied ruins. There was no suggestion in the air of cannon thunder. At Berlin, however, as I have described, I found things wearing a warlike air. I was eager to perfect my German and sought chances to talk with all whom I met, and often had pleasant converse with the young soldiers who when off duty numerously flocked to the gardens and street corners. I recall in particular three young soldiers whose subsequent fate I should like to know. The first was a handsome young grenadier who had talked with me affably as we stood together screened by the bush in the garden of the New Palace at Potsdam watching the family of the Crown Prince, that beautiful forenoon in May.... When I told him I had myself _mitgemacht_ the Civil War in America he at once accorded me respect as a veteran.

I think he was a _Freiwilliger_, one of the cla.s.s, who, having reached a high status in the Gymnasium, enjoyed the privilege of a shorter term of service. He had the bearing of a cultivated gentleman and there was strength in his firm young face which I have no doubt made him a good soldier in the time of stress. We shook hands at last in the friendliest way and I saw him no more. A few days later the train in which I was riding stopped at Erfurt and among the groups at the station was one that interested me much. In the centre stood a st.u.r.dy young Uhlan gaudy in full dress which I fancied he had only lately a.s.sumed, his stature was increased by his lofty horse-hair plume and he wore his corselet over a uniform in which there was many a dye. A bevy of pretty girls thronged around him, freshly beautiful after the German type, blond and blue-eyed in attractive summer draperies, and I speculated pleasantly as to which among them were sisters and which sweethearts. As the train departed the young Uhlan climbed into my compartment and we sat vis-a-vis as we rode on through the country. He was a frank ingenuous boy of twenty with eyes that danced with life, and a mobile play of features. My claim that I had seen service in the tented field again served me in good stead as an introduction; it was a pa.s.sport to his confidence and I had a pleasant hour or two with him until he left me at length at his rendezvous.

Best of all I remember a third encounter. When I stepped from my car at Weimar I asked a direction from a young grenadier off duty who stood at hand on the platform. He too possessed the usual Teutonic vigour and strength. A conversation sprang up in which I explained that I was an American and desired to see as well as I could in a few hours the interesting things in that little city so quiet and renowned. I had found out by this time that my small veterans.h.i.+p was a good a.s.set and paraded it for all it was worth and as usual it told.