“See,” said Vane, pointing to two peasants who were conversing near them on the matters of their little trade, utterly unconscious of the associations of the spot, “see, after all that is said and done about human greatness, it is always the greatness of the few. Ages pass, and leave the poor herd, the mass of men, eternally the same,—hewers of wood and drawers of water. The pomp of princes has its ebb and flow, but the peasant sells his fruit as gayly to the stranger on the ruins as to the emperor in the palace.”
“Will it be always so?” said the student.
“Let us hope not, for the sake of permanence in glory,” said Trevylyan. “Had a people built yonder palace, its splendour would never have passed away.”
Vane shrugged his shoulders, and Du——-e took snuff.
But all the impressions produced by the castle at a distance are as nothing when you stand within its vast area and behold the architecture of all ages blended into one mighty ruin! The rich hues of the masonry, the sweeping facades—every description of building which man ever framed for war or for luxury—is here; all having only the common character,—RUIN. The feudal rampart, the yawning fosse, the rude tower, the splendid arch, the strength of a fortress, the magnificence of a palace,—all united, strike upon the soul like the history of a fallen empire in all its epochs.
“There is one singular habitant of these ruins,” said the student,—“a solitary painter, who has dwelt here some twenty years, companioned only by his Art. No other apartment but that which he tenants is occupied by a human being.”
“What a poetical existence!” cried Gertrude, enchanted with a solitude so full of associations.
“Perhaps so,” said the cruel Vane, ever anxious to dispel an illusion, “but more probably custom has deadened to him all that overpowers ourselves with awe; and he may tread among these ruins rather seeking to pick up some rude morsel of antiquity, than feeding his imagination with the dim traditions that invest them with so august a poetry.”
“Monsieur’s conjecture has something of the truth in it,” said the German; “but then the painter is a Frenchman.”
There is a sense of fatality in the singular mournfulness and majesty which belong to the ruins of Heidelberg, contrasting the vastness of the strength with the utterness of the ruin. It has been twice struck with lightning, and is the wreck of the elements, not of man; during the great siege it sustained, the lightning is supposed to have struck the powder magazine by accident.