Lippincotts Magazine, December 1873 | Page 9

paid. I had reflected that my letter of credit from
Munroe & Co. would undoubtedly be drawn on Baden-Baden, and had
suddenly taken a resolution to try the effect of the springs on my
unfortunate stoutness.
We got down at the Gasthaus zum Hirsch, but I had already sold the
ruins of my chronometer, and was twenty-five francs the richer for the
transaction.
I cannot call Baden-Baden a city: it is a stage. It is a perpetually
set-scene for light opera. Everything seems dressed up and artificial,
and meant to be viewed, as it were, in the glare of the foot-lights. But
instead of the shepherds in white satin who ought to be the performers
in this ingenious theatre, it is the unaccustomed stranger who is forced
into the position of actor. As he toils up the steep and slovenly streets,
faced with shabby buildings that crack and blacken behind their
ill-adjusted fronts of stucco and distemper, he cheapens rapidly in his
own view: he feels painfully like the hapless supernumerary whom he
has seen mounting an obvious step-ladder behind a screen of rock-work
on his way to a wedding in the chapel or a coronation in the Capitol.
The difference is, that here the permission to play his rôle is paid for by
the performer.
But I, as I sat hugging my knee in the hotel bed-room, was possessed
by loftier feelings. If there is one faculty which I can fairly extol in
myself, it is that of displaying true sentiment in false situations. My
thoughts, with incredible agility, went back to Francine. A knock came

at the door, and my emotions received a chill: my visitor could be none
but Berkley, in whose face I should see a reminder that I owed him for
my car-fare.
In place of frigid politeness, however, the diplomatist wore all that he
knew of good-fellowship and Bohemianism. He was now clad in
tourists' plaid, and stood upon soles half an inch thick--a true
Englishman on his travels.
"Come, old boy!"--old boy, indeed!--"you must taste the pleasures of
Baden-Baden: it is but four o'clock, and we can see the Trinkhalle, the
Conversations-Haus, and plenty besides before dinner. Is there any
place in particular where you would like to go?"
[Illustration: THE WOOD-PATH.]
I looked solemnly at him. "I would fain visit the Alt-Schloss," I said.
"With all my heart!" replied Sylvester, tapping his legs and admiring
his boots. This unpromising comrade was wearing better than I
expected.
[Illustration: SCENE OF MATTHISSON'S POEM IMITATING
GRAY'S "ELEGY."]
"Shall we have a carriage?" he pursued. At this question my face
contracted as by the effect of a nervous attack. I thought of the few
pence I possessed. I assumed the determined pedestrian.
"For shame!" I cried: "it is but three miles. Where are your tourist
muscles? I should like to walk."
"Nothing simpler," said the man of facile views: "we shall do it within
the hour."
[Illustration: "WINE OR BEER!"]
I breathed again. We set off. We had before us cliffs and hills, with
small Gothic towers printed on the blue of the sky; but the

mountain-path beneath our steps was sanded, graveled, packed, rolled,
weeded, and provided with coquettish sofas at every hundred steps. I,
who happened that afternoon to feel the emotions of Manfred, would
gladly have exchanged these detestable conveniences for precipices,
storms and eagles.
"How ridiculous," I said with a little temper, "to go to a ruin by way of
the boulevards!"
"Ah," said my companion of complaisant manners, "you like Nature? It
is but the choosing."
And Berkley, perfectly acquainted with the locality, directed our steps
into a narrow path hardly traced through the woods. Here at least were
flowers and grass and sylvan shadows. No sooner did I smell the balm
of the pine trees than my heart resigned itself, with exquisite indecision,
to the thoughts of Francine Joliet and the memories of Mary Ashburton.
I glanced at Berkley: he seemed, in Scotch clothes, a little less
impenetrable than he had appeared in white cravat and dress-gloves. I
cannot restrain my confidences when a man is near me: I buttonholed
Sylvester, and I made the plunge. "I used to talk of the Alt-Schloss," I
murmured, "with one whom I have lost."
"Ah, I comprehend: with my late uncle, perhaps."
"No, sir, not with any cynic in a tub, but with a maiden in her flower. It
was one of the best points I made with Miss Ashburton."
"The Alt-Schloss is indeed a picturesque construction," said the
diplomate, by way of generally inviting my confidence.
"We were conversing about the poems of Salis and Matthisson," I
pursued. "I had in my pocket a little translation of Salis's song entitled
'The Silent Land,' and endeavored to bend the dialogue in a suitable
direction, but