“She's a very bad child. She needs a whipping,” chuckles our saucy neighbor.
America's banner trails in the dust, and Helvetia triumphs over all foes. In silence and chagrin America's feeble champion retires to the window, watches the birds picking up bread-crumbs on the balcony, and meditates a grand revenge when her German vocabulary shall be equal to her zeal. Helvetia's son being, in this instance, a very clever, merry boy, soon laughingly sues for reconciliation, on the ground that, “after all, sister republics must not quarrel,” and the two, in noble alliance, advance with renewed vigor, and speedily sweep from the face of the earth all tyrannous monarchical governments.
Is it not, by the way, thoroughly German, that down in its last corner the Heidelberg daily paper prints each day, “Remember the poor little birds”? And indeed they are remembered well; and there are few casements here that do not open every morning, that the birdies' bread may be thrown upon the snow.
And is there nothing else here in winter beside the innocent pastimes mentioned? There are wonderful views to be gained by those who have the courage to climb the winding silvery paths that lead up the Gaisberg and Heiligenberg. And then there is—majesty comes last!—the castle.
Ah! here lies the magic of the place. This is why people love Heidelberg. It is because that wonderful old ruin is everywhere present, whatever one does, wherever one goes, binding one's heart to itself. You cannot forget that it stands there on the hill, sad and stately and superb. Lower your curtains, turn your back to the window, read the last novel if you will, still you will see it. I defy you to lose your consciousness of it. It will always haunt you, until it draws you out of the house—out into the air—through the rambling streets—up the hill past the queer little houses—to the spot where it stands, and then it will not let you go. It holds you there in a strange enchantment. You wander through chapel and banquet-hall, through prison-vault and pages' chamber, from terrace to tower, where you go as near the edge as you dare,—nearer than you dare, in fact,—and look down upon the trees growing in the moat. Because you never, in all your life, saw anything like a “ruin,” and because there is but one Heidelberg Castle in the world, you take delight in simply wandering up and down long dark stairways, with no definite end in view. You may be hungry and cold, but you never know it. You are unconscious of time, and after hours of dream-life you only turn from gazing when somebody forcibly drags you away because the man is about to close the gates.
I cannot discourse with ease upon quadrangles and façades. I am doubtful about finials, and my ideas are in confusion as to which buttresses fly and which hang; but it is a blessed fact that one need not be very learned to care for lovely things, and while I live I shall never forget how the castle looked the first time I approached it.
Some people say it is loveliest seen at sunset from the “Philosopher's Walk,” on Heiligenberg across the Neckar, and some say it is like fairy-land when it is illuminated (which happens once or twice in a summer,—the last time, before the students go away in August, and leave the old town in peace and quiet), and when one softly glides in a little boat from far up the Neckar, down, down, in the moonlight, until suddenly the castle, blazing with lights, is before you.
But though I should see it a thousand times with summer bloom around, with the charm of fair skies and sunshine, soft green hills and flowing water, or in the moonlight, with happy voices everywhere, and strains of music sounding sweet and clear in the evening air, I can never be sorry that, first of all, it rose in its beauty, before my eyes, out of a sea of new-fallen snow.
O, the silence and the whiteness of that day!
We entered the grounds and passed through broad walks, among shadowy trees whose every twig was snow-covered, and by the snow-crowned Princess Elizabeth Arch. On we went in silence,—only once did any sound break the stillness, when a little laughing child, in a sleigh drawn by a large black dog, aided by a good-natured half-breathless servant, dashed by and disappeared among the trees. Soon we stood on the terrace overlooking the city and the Neckar.