O, lieb, so lang du lieben kannst!
“O, love, while love is left to thee!”
It is said, too, that once on a steamer, during the Franco-Prussian war, a woman came up to him and suddenly put her arms round his neck and kissed him. “That's for Wolfgang in the field,” said she, having a son herself at the front.
And after his struggles for freedom, the persecution he endured because of his political principles and his immense influence upon the people, after his flight into England and long exile, he came back finally, honored and revered, to his native land, and spent his last years in this peaceful abode. He breathed his last, like Goethe, sitting in his chair. The Neckar still sang on, outside the vine-clad window. Within, the poet's voice was hushed forever.
[pg!225]
THREE FUNERALS.
Three funeral processions which have lately moved through Stuttgart streets have awakened, on account of peculiar associations connected with each, more attention and interest, more feeling I might perhaps say, than we selfish beings usually accord to these mournful black trains that mean other people's sorrows.
Of these three, the first was the train that bore the Herzog Eugen of Würtemberg to his last resting-place. Young, popular, after Prinz Wilhelm presumptive heir to the throne; the husband of the Princess Vera,—who is the niece and adopted daughter of the queen, and according to report a very lovable person,—he had apparently enough to make life sweet at the moment he was called from it. Recently he went to Düsseldorf to take command of a regiment there. The Princess Vera remained at the Residenz in Stuttgart, but was intending to join him immediately. A slight cold neglected,—a rich banquet followed by night-air,—and suddenly all was over. He died after an illness of a day or two, while the princess, summoned by a telegram, was on the train half-way between Stuttgart and Düsseldorf.
The air is full of fables, and the common people “make great eyes” when they speak of the poor duke, and dark hints of foul play, poison, enemies, cabals, perfidy, delight all good souls with a taste for the sensational. They, however, who have the slightest ground for knowing anything about the matter, and, indeed, all rational people, declare it was simply a cold, inflammation, congestion, such as makes havoc among frail mortal flesh, and never draws any distinction in favor of blood royal.
After the ceremonies at Düsseldorf came the solemn reception of the remains here. Early in the evening the streets were thronged with an immense but quiet, patiently waiting crowd, and, along the line where the procession was to pass, burning tar cast a fitful light over the mass of people: and the flickering flames, fanned by the night breeze, now would illumine the Residenz and Schloss Platz and the fine outline of the “Old Palace,” in the chapel of which the duke was to lie; now, subsiding, would leave the scene in half gloom. The slow, sad voice of the dirge announced the approach of the procession, the whole effect of which was intensely solemn and impressive. Outriders with flickering torches, the escort of cavalry, Uhlans of the Würtemberg regiment in which he had served, floating streamers of black and white, the hearse drawn by coal-black horses, slowly passing, with the loud ringing of all the bells, made one hold one's breath as the black figures went by in the lurid light. The inevitable hour had, indeed, awaited him, and snatched him from his worldly honors and family affection, and “der edle Ritter,” in spite of all the “boast of heraldry and pomp of power” that so lately had surrounded him, lay silent and cold, while the flames burned strong and warm and the loud bells clanged, and he rode slowly on to the chapel in the old castle, beneath which he now rests with others of his race.
This is not the first sad, stately night-procession that has occurred here. Wilhelm, father of the present king, was a strong, original nature, averse to form, and gave strict orders concerning his own burial. They were to bury him on a hill, some miles from the city, between midnight and dawn, and simply fire one gun over him, he had said. His son, however, while observing his wishes as to time and place of burial, took care that the state and dignity of the procession should befit royalty dethroned by death. At midnight the train left the palace, and, with its long line of nobles, cavaliers, and soldiers, swept slowly out of the city amid the constant ringing of bells and booming of cannon, and wound through the soft summer night along the Neckar's banks, over the bridge at Cannstadt, while great fires blazed on every hill-top, and the old king, in the majesty of death, was borne on, past the fair vineyards and soft fertile slopes of the land he had loved so well, to the Rothenberg, on the summit of which they laid him to rest and fired one gun just as the morning star dropped below the horizon.