One Year Abroad

by Blanche Willis Howard

In the vestibule is an inscription in gold letters on blue, which says something like this:—

“Welcome, wanderer,—welcome, fair and gracious women!

Leave all care behind!

Yield your souls to the sweet influences of poetry.”

Isn't that a pretty greeting? It's all very well, however, to have such things written on your walls, and then to go about the world scowling at people; but it doesn't look consistent. From the vestibule you pass into a long hall, where are two rows of columns, old suits of armor standing like men on guard on both sides, shields, spears, halberds, and cross-bows on the walls, and a little chapel at the end.

The frescos throughout the castle are very interesting. From the billiard-room, with a pretty balcony, you go into the Schwanrittersaal, where the pictures on the walls represent the legend of the Knight of the Swan, and remind you of the opera of “Lohengrin.” The painted glass of the doors opening from this room upon a balcony is of the seventeenth century.

There is an Oriental room, with reminiscences of King Max's Eastern travels. Here you see Smyrna, Troja, the Dardanelles, Constantinople, in fresco; rich presents from the Sultan, a table-cover embroidered by the wives of the Sultan, jewelled fans, etc.

There is an Autharis room, with frescos by Schwind, telling the story of the wooing of the Princess Theudelinda by the Lombard king, Autharis. Do you feel perfectly familiar with the history of Autharis and Theudelinda? Because, if you do not, I don't really know of any one just at this moment who feels competent to give you the slightest information upon the subject.

There is a room of the knights, the frescos illustrating mediæval chivalry,—a Charlemagne room. There are, in fact, more rooms than you care to read about or I care to describe, and many rich objects to see. In the queen's apartments was a casket of gold studded with turquoises and rubies; elegant toilet-tables rosy with silk linings, soft with falling lace; and there is one dear little balcony-room, cosy and full of familiar pictures,—Raphael's cherubs, a little painting of Edelweiss and Alpine roses; and actually two real spinning-wheels: one is the queen's, and the other belonged to a young court lady whose recent death was a deep grief to the queen, it is said.

But the most striking, and in the end fascinating, thing in the castle is the number of swans you see. It would be difficult to convey any idea of the swan-atmosphere of this place. Swans support baskets for flowers and vases. There are swans in china, in marble, in alabaster, in gold and silver, on the tables, on the mantels and brackets, painted, embroidered on cushions and footstools,—everywhere you find them. A half-dozen of different sizes stand together on a small table, some of them large, some as tiny as the toy swan a child sails in his glass preserve-dish for a pond. There is a swan-fountain in the garden; a great swan on the stove in a reception-room.

King Louis can bathe every day in a gold bath-tub if he wishes. Our eyes have seen it, though the guide said he had never shown it before. I have no means of knowing whether the man told the truth. There is another and yet more enticing bath-room hewn out of the solid rock. We entered it from the garden. From without, its walls look like dark thick glass, through which one sees absolutely nothing. From within, the effect is enchanting. You see the highest tower of the castle on one side rising directly above you, the lovely garden with its choice flowers and superb trees, the grand mountains beyond,—and all bathed in a deep rosy light from the hue of the glass. It is an enchanted grotto, and very Arabian Nights-ish. A marble nymph stands on each side of the bath, which is cut in the centre of the stone floor, and one of them turns on a pivot, disclosing a concealed niche, into which you step and slowly swing round until you are in a subterranean passage, from which a mysterious stairway leads to the dressing-room above.

We went everywhere, even into the king's little study, up in the tower, where we were explicitly told not to go. It was a simply furnished room, with an ordinary writing-table, upon which papers and writing-materials were strewn about, and important-looking envelopes directed to the king. And it commanded a lovely view of mountains, broad plains, and four lakes, the Alpsee, Schwansee, Hopfensee, and Bannwaldsee.