The reason why, in spite of the great beauty of the view from Tausens, to which Castle Reifenstein adds its charm, so few travellers in comparison visit the village, is partly that such comfort can hardly be expected here as is to be found in the more frequented parts of the Tyrol, and partly that the passage of the Tausenser Aar valley is rather tedious, and tourists prefer to reach the chief points of interest among the mountains by railway. All the more welcome are the few who visit Tausens, all the more cordially are they received by mine host the postmaster.
It was always a holiday for Hansel, as he was called by his friends in spite or his dignified position as postmaster, when a traveller came to Tausens; not because he reckoned upon the gain it would bring him,--he cared little for that, for the couple or so of guilders were of but small account to him. His inn was frequented sufficiently without the tourists; its comfortable room was never empty of guests, for the peasants from all the three valleys came by choice to the Post at Tausens, where the best wine was to be had for miles around. Their marriages and their burials were celebrated at the Post. To the Post came every evening, in winter as in summer, the gentlemen of the place,--the district judge, his associate, the collector, and the forester. These constant guests were far more profitable to the postmaster than any traveller could be, and besides he possessed many an acre of meadow and pasture-land, a good strip of forest, and some beautiful alms.[[1]] He was accounted a wealthy man in all the country round, but his pride was hurt that so few strangers came to Tausens, while in the Zillerthal and in the Pusterthal the inns were filled to overflowing with tourists during the months of July and August. This vexed the worthy Hansel; he had so often heard the judge and the other gentlemen in his best parlour say that the natural beauty of Tausens made it well worthy to attract strangers, and hence the small number of tourists that came his way seemed to him like an unmerited neglect of his native place. The idea that he could conduce to render the village more attractive never occurred to him. He would have indignantly rejected any suggestion that he should modify or change the ancient customs of his inn for any stranger in the world.
He was standing at his inn-door on a certain beautiful day in July very much out of sorts. The day before he had been in Niederdorf, where he had found the inns so crowded that not another traveller could be received there, and a very grand gentleman had been forced to sleep in a hayloft, because there was no bed to be had. And he had heard that the inns at Sandro, Schleuderbach, and Cortina were just as full, not to mention Brunneck, where for a week every little farm-house had been filled with tourists.
The whole valley of the Puster was filled with visitors, and not a single one, not even a Bergfax, had come to Tausens! Thoroughly vexed. Hansel blew the smoke from his pipe in short angry puffs; he swept the landscape far and wide with his glance, but it was deserted everywhere, not a traveller was to be seen.
He turned away in disgust, and was about to enter the house, when suddenly the frown cleared away from his brow. He had accidentally overlooked the Schwarzenbach valley, thence, where he had least expected them, were coming the desired guests; his sharp eye recognized them in the distance. From his point of view he could see but a short stretch of the valley-road which followed the many windings of the rushing, gurgling Schwarzenbach, but walking along this very stretch he discovered three city-clad gentlemen, followed by two peasants. The gentlemen carried long alpenstocks, and were walking briskly down the valley towards the village,--the peasants were loaded with portmanteaus and plaids.
From the point which the travellers had reached they had a glorious view of the valley of the Tausenser Aar and of the village. They paused, and one produced a glass and looked through it. For a while they stood drinking in the beauty around them, and then they strode onwards, vanishing in the Lerchenwald, through which the road ran.
But Hansel had seen enough; he rubbed his hands gleefully, and called loudly into the house, "Nannerl! Nannerl!"
The inn-maid, a fresh, buxom lass, came running at his call. From the tone of his voice she judged that strangers were to be received, and she gave her smooth hair a stroke and twitched down her blue apron as she ran. When however she found no one but Hansel himself, she said, peevishly, "Here I am. What are you shouting for? There's no one here!"
"But they're coming,--three Bergfaxes on the way from Schwarzenbach,--they'll be here in a quarter of an hour!"
And true enough, they did come in a quarter of an hour, the three Bergfaxes,--three broad-shouldered young men, whose city clothes, terribly dusty although it was, showed that they were gentlemen of good position.