“A terrible sensation has been created by the attack on the Emperor, and still more by the first false report of his death. Men and women were alike in tears, and the national disgrace is intensely felt. I hope, if the Emperor is better, that I may see the Crown Princess again at Berlin.
“I spent four hours at Heidelberg, and revisited all our old haunts, the gardens most lovely in their luxuriance of green. Thence I had intended to go to Weimar to visit the Grand Duchess, but at Eisenach received a telegram from her lady-in-waiting, the Countess Kalkreuth, to put off my visit, as they were gone off to Berlin, the Empress Augusta being sister of the Duke of Weimar. A wet morning at the Wartburg and an afternoon at Erfurth brought me to Jena. There my cousin Alexander Paul met me at the station, a pleasant, fat, frank Prussian officer, with a face very like that of the first Napoleon.[285]
“There is much charm in this old town of Jena and its simple population, increased by the five hundred students of the university. The houses of Schiller, Alex. v. Humboldt, &c., have inscriptions in honour of those who lived there: the streets wind picturesquely around the old Schloss and its gardens, and the trumpet still sounds every quarter of an hour from the tall grey tower of the noble old church. From my own window in Alexander’s house in the Cahl’sche Allée, I see on one side a robber castle, on the other a wonderful old church of the time of the ‘Heilige Bonifacius.’
“On Thursday afternoon we went to Dornberg, where three castles crown the cliff above the village with a narrow terrace running in front of them along the edge of the precipice. One castle is occasionally inhabited by the Grand Duke; another, very old and picturesque, was given by Carl August to Goethe, and having been inhabited by him in the last years of his life, still contains much furniture of his time: the third was the palace of—the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood.
“Yesterday we went a fatiguing excursion to Schwartzberg, the palace of the Prince of Rudolstadt, by which we saw the finest parts of Thuringia. A railway took us to Schwarza, where, in a ball on the top of the church steeple, is a dart thrown by a Cossack as the Russian army passed through Germany. Thence we took an omnibus to the little Chrysopraz Hotel at Blankenberg, where, after beer and brown bread and butter under the trees, we walked up the Schwarzthal to Oppelei, where a Swiss cottage has been built by the Prince to indemnify a forester, whose daughter he had made his mistress! Hence, by a steep path, we ascended the Treppstein, whence there is a lovely view over the hollow in the forest-clad mountains, in the midst of which the great castle of the Prince of Rudolstadt rises above the little town. The Prince is not unpopular, though his life has an Eastern license. On the day when he succeeded to his tiny sovereignty he happened to be at Berlin. ‘Bonjour, souverain,’ said the Emperor when he met him, and, when he took off his hat—‘Pray put on your crown.’
“We dined at the charming little inn, where thousands of wild stags often assemble under the windows in the evenings, when the place is comparatively empty, but take flight into the woods before the summer guests. In returning, we were much amused with the old ‘Herr Apotheke’ of Rudolstadt, who had come out with a tin case to gather simples, and who insisted upon stopping to drink a tankard of beer wherever one was to be had.
“To-day we have been in a different direction, by rail to Roda, a charming little Thuringian town, and thence by carriage to the Fröhliche Wiederkunft, the old moated castle built by Friedrich Johann, father of Friedrich der Weise, on the spot where he met his family on his return from a long captivity abroad. The old Princess Therèse of Saxe-Altenbourg now lives there, she and her sisters—the Queen of Hanover, the Grand Duchess of Oldenbourg, and the Grand Duchess Constantine of Russia—having been daughters of the old Duke Josef, by whom the castle was restored. The news of the King of Hanover’s death had just arrived. ‘How many tears,’ said the old man who showed the castle, ‘did the old Duke my master shed in that chair over the King’s misfortunes.’ The story of the founder is most quaintly told in paintings on panels round one of the rooms, and there are pictures and memorials of Luther and of Friedrich Johann and his wife Sibylla over and over again.”
“June 23.—A vision of many great towns is all that I carry away from the varied journey which has brought me to Hildesheim—the old cities of Wittenberg and Eisleben, with their glorious works of Lucas Cranach and varied memorials of Luther and Melancthon: Magdeburg, great and noisy, with its dull, restored cathedral: Halberstadt, also restored, but glorious in spite of its injuries, and with intensely picturesque streets of old houses: the romantic beauty of imperial Goslar: stately Quedlinburg, where German princesses constantly reigned as abbesses: beautiful Thale, at the entrance of the Harz, with its exquisite combination of wood and rock and water: Brunswick and its many market-places, full of old houses: dull Hanover, with the great deserted gardens of Herrenhausen.
“Aunt Marcia (Frau Paul von Benningsen[286]) and my cousins Jane and Clementine met me here at the station.”
“Berlin, June 27.—My visit at Hildesheim had much of quiet interest. The town is wonderfully picturesque, and I was glad to make acquaintance with my cousins, who are perfectly grandes dames and highly educated young ladies, though they cook and do almost all the housework themselves. I drew in the early mornings, and went to dinner each day with them at 12.30.