LETTER XI.
Gratz—Vienna.
We had followed stream after stream through a succession of delicious valleys for a hundred miles. Descending from a slight eminence, we came upon the broad and rapid Muhr, and soon after caught sight of a distant citadel upon a rock. As we approached, it struck me as one of the most singular freaks of nature I had ever seen. A pyramid, perhaps three hundred feet in height, and precipitous on every side, rose abruptly in the midst of a broad and level plain, and around it in a girdle of architecture, lay the capital of Styria. The fortress on the summit hung like an eagle’s nest over the town, and from its towers, a pistol-shot would reach the outermost point of the wall.
Wearied with travelling near three hundred miles without sleep, I dropped upon a bed at the hotel, with an order to be called in two hours. It was noon, and we were to remain at Gratz till the next morning. My friend, the Hungarian, had promised, as he threw himself on the opposite bed, to wake and accompany me in a walk through the town, but the shake of a stout German chambermaid at the appointed time had no effect upon him, and I descended to my dinner alone. I had lost my interpreter. The carte was in German, of which I did not know even the letters. After appealing in vain in French and Italian to the persons eating near me, I fixed my finger at hazard upon a word, and the waiter disappeared. The result was a huge dish of cabbage cooked in some filthy oil and graced with a piece of beef. I was hesitating whether to dine on bread or make another attempt, when a gentlemanly man of some fifty years came in and took the vacant seat at my table. He addressed me immediately in French, and smiling at my difficulties, undertook to order a dinner for me something less national. We improved our acquaintance with a bottle of Johannesburgh, and after dinner he kindly offered to accompany me in my walk through the city.
Gratz is about the size of Boston, a plain German city, with little or no pretensions to style. The military band was playing a difficult waltz very beautifully in the public square, but no one was listening except a group of young men dressed in the worst taste of dandyism. We mounted by a zigzag path to the fortress. On a shelf of the precipice, half way up, hangs a small casino, used as a beer-shop. The view from the summit was a feast to the eye. The wide and lengthening valley of the Muhr lay asleep beneath its loads of grain, its villas and farm-houses, the picture of “waste and mellow fruitfulness,” the rise to the mountains around the head of the valley was clustered with princely dwellings, thick forests with glades between them, and churches with white slender spires shooting from the bosom of elms, and right at our feet, circling around the precipitous rock for protection, lay the city enfolded in its rampart, and sending up to our ears the sound of every wheel that rolled through her streets. Among the striking buildings below, my friend pointed out to me a palace which he said had been lately purchased by Joseph Bonaparte, who was coming here to reside. The people were beginning to turn out for their evening walk upon the ramparts which are planted with trees and laid out for a promenade, and we descended to mingle in the crowd.
My old friend had a great many acquaintances. He presented me to several of the best dressed people we met, all of whom invited me to supper. I had been in Italy almost a year and a half, and such a thing had never happened to me. We walked about until six, and as I preferred going to the play, which opened at that early hour, we took tickets for “Der Schlimme Leisel,” and were seated presently in one of the simplest and prettiest theatres I have ever seen.
“Der Schlimme Leisel” was an old maid who kept house for an old bachelor brother, proposing, at the time the play opens, to marry. Her dislike to the match, from the dread of losing her authority over his household, formed the humour of the piece, and was admirably represented. After various unsuccessful attempts to prevent the nuptials, the lady is brought to the house, and the old maid enters in a towering passion, throws down her keys, and flirts out of the room with a threat that she “will go to America!” Fortunately she is not driven to that extremity. The lady has been already married secretly to a poorer lover, and the old bachelor, after the first shock of the discovery, settles a fortune on them, and returns to his celibacy and his old maid sister, to the satisfaction of all parties. Certainly the German is the most unmusical language of Babel. If my good old friend had not translated it for me word for word, I should scarce have believed the play to be more than a gibbering pantomime. I shall think differently when I have learned it, no doubt, but a strange language strikes upon one’s ear so oddly! I was quite too tired when the play was over (which, by the way, was at the sober hour of nine,) to accept any of the kind invitations of which my companion reminded me. We supped tête-à-tête, instead, at the hotel. I was delighted with my new acquaintance. He was an old citizen of the world. He had left Gratz at twenty, and after thirty years wandering from one part of the globe to the other, had returned to end his days in his birthplace. His relations were all dead, and speaking all the languages of Europe, he preferred living at a hotel for the society of strangers. With a great deal of wisdom he had preserved his good humour toward the world; and I think I have rarely seen a kinder, and never a happier man. I parted from him with regret, and the next morning at daylight, had resumed my seat at the eil-wagon.
Imagine the Hudson, at the highlands, reduced to a sparkling little river a bowshot across, and a rich valley thridded by a road accompanying the remaining space between the mountains, and you have the scenery for the first thirty miles beyond Gratz. There is one more difference. On the edge of one of the most towering precipices, clear up against the clouds, hang the ruins of a noble castle. The rents in the wall, and the embrasures in the projecting turrets, seem set into the sky. Trees and vines grow within and about it, and the lacings of the twisted roots seem all that keep it together. It is a perfect “castle in the air.”
A long day’s journey and another long night (during which we passed Neustadt, on the confines of Hungary) brought us within sight of Baden, but an hour or two from Vienna. It was just sunrise, and market-carts and pedestrians and suburban vehicles of all descriptions notified us of our approach to a great capital. A few miles farther we were stopped in the midst of an extensive plain by a crowd of carriages. A criminal was about being guillotined. What was that to one who saw Vienna for the first time? A few steps farther the postillion was suddenly stopped. A gentleman alighted from a carriage in which were two ladies, and opened the door of the diligence. It was the bride of the soldier-apothecary come to meet him with her mother and brother. He was buried in dust, just waked out of sleep, a three days’ beard upon his face, and, at the best, not a very lover-like person. He ran to the carriage door, jumped in, and there was an immediate cry for water. The bride had fainted! We left her in his arms and drove on. The courier had no bowels for love.
There is a small Gothic pillar before us, on the rise of a slight elevation. Thence we shall see Vienna. “Stop, thou tasteless postillion!” Was ever such a scene revealed to mortal sight! It is like Paris from the Barrière de l’Etoile—it seems to cover the world. Oh, beautiful Vienna! What is that broad water on which the rising sun glances so brightly? The Danube! What is that unparalleled Gothic structure piercing the sky? What columns are these? What spires? Beautiful, beautiful city!
Vienna.—It must be a fine city that impresses one with its splendour before breakfast, after driving all night in a mail-coach. It was six o’clock in the morning when I left the post-office, in Vienna, to walk to a hotel. The shops were still shut, the milkwomen were beating at the gates, and the short, quick ring upon the church bells summoned all early risers to mass. A sudden turn brought me upon a square. In its centre stood the most beautiful fabric that has ever yet filled my eye. It looked like the structure of a giant, encrusted with fairies—a majestically proportioned mass, and a spire tapering to the clouds, but a surface so curiously beautiful, so traced and fretted, so full of exquisite ornament, that it seemed rather some curious cabinet gem, seen through a magnifier, than a building in the open air. In these foreign countries, the labourer goes in with his load to pray, and I did not hesitate to enter the splendid Church of St. Etienne, though a man followed me with a portmanteau on his back. What a wilderness of arches! Pulpits, chapels, altars, ciboriums, confessionals, choirs, all in the exquisite slenderness of Gothic tracery, and all of one venerable and time-worn dye, as if the incense of a myriad censers had steeped them in their spicy odours. The mass was chanting, and hundreds were on their knees about me, and not one without some trace that he had come in on his way to his daily toil. It was the hour of the poor man’s prayer. The rich were asleep in their beds. The glorious roof over their heads, the costly and elaborated pillars against which they pressed their foreheads, the music and the priestly service, were, for that hour, theirs alone.
I seldom have felt the spirit of a place of worship so strong upon me.
The foundations of St. Etienne were laid seven hundred years ago. It has twice been partly burnt, and has been embellished in succession by nearly all the emperors of Germany. Among its many costly tombs, the most interesting is that of the hero Eugene of Savoy, erected by his niece, the Princess Therese, of Liechtenstein. There is also a vault in which it is said, in compliance with an old custom, the entrails of all the emperors are deposited.
Having marked thus much upon my tablets, I remembered the patient porter of my baggage, who had taken the opportunity to drop on his knees while I was gazing about, and having achieved his matins, was now waiting submissively till I was ready to proceed. A turn or two brought us to the hotel, where a bath and a breakfast soon restored me, and in an hour I was again on the way with a valet de place, to visit the tomb of the son of Napoleon.
He lies in the deep vaults of the capuchin convent, with eighty-four of the imperial family of Austria beside him. A monk answered our pull at the cloister-bell, and the valet translated my request into German. He opened the gate with a guttural “Yaw!” and lighting a wax candle at a lamp burning before the image of the Virgin, unlocked a massive brazen door at the end of the corridor, and led the way into the vault. The capuchin was as pale as marble, quite bald, though young, and with features which expressed, I thought, the subdued fierceness of a devil. He impatiently waved away the officious interpreter after a moment or two, and asked me if I understood Latin. Nothing could have been more striking than the whole scene. The immense bronze sarcophagi lay in long aisles behind railings and gates of iron, and as the long-robed monk strode on with his lamp through the darkness, pronouncing the name and title of each as he unlocked the door and struck it with his heavy key, he seemed to me, with his solemn pronunciation, like some mysterious being calling forth the imperial tenants to judgment. He appeared to have something of scorn in his manner as he looked on the splendid workmanship of the vast coffin, and pronounced the sounding titles of the ashes within. At that of the celebrated Empress Maria Theresa alone, he stopped to make a comment. It was a simple tribute to her virtues, and he uttered it slowly, as if he were merely musing to himself. He passed on to her husband, Francis the First, and then proceeded uninterruptedly till he came to a new copper coffin. It lay in a niche, beneath a tall, dim window, and the monk, merely pointing to the inscription, set down his lamp, and began to pace up and down the damp floor, with his head on his breast, as if it was a matter of course that here I was to be left awhile to my thoughts.
It was certainly the spot, if there is one in the world, to feel emotion. In the narrow enclosure on which my finger rested, lay the last hopes of Napoleon. The heart of the master-spirit of the world was bound up in these ashes. He was beautiful, accomplished, generous, brave. He was loved with a sort of idolatry by the nation with which he had passed his childhood. He had won all hearts. His death seemed impossible. There was a universal prayer that he might live, his inheritance of glory was so incalculable.
I read his epitaph. It was that of a private individual. It gave his name, and his father’s and mother’s; and then enumerated his virtues, with a commonplace regret for his early death. The monk took up his lamp and reascended to the cloister in silence. He shut the convent-door behind me, and the busy street seemed to me profane. How short a time does the most moving event interrupt the common current of life.