We look up at the Gothic balconies, and it seems as though we could almost see some early lord of this stronghold peering down through painted windows at the athletic sports of his hardy sons; and a certain unreality takes phantom form and substance, and the sentinel figures descend solemnly from their niches as a train of valorous knights and pages issues from Otto-Heinrich’s broad portal with music and laughter; there is the scrape and tread of mailed feet and the shouts of a gallant company as fair-haired women in shimmering silks and high-peaked headdresses award prizes of the tourney to kneeling men in glittering armor; and the trumpets sound and the torches flare and the noble retinue sweeps into the great banquet hall, while the “merry councilor” who brings up the rear makes us a profound and mocking bow as the door is closed—and we are alone with the statues in the moonlight.
The empty, silent courtyard is spectral and sad; it is an hour for reverie, for apprehension. The pale silver of the moon whitens into phantom-life two sides and a corner; the rest is a deep, hushed shadow. A cushion of ivy stirs in the faint night air; a bat flashes over a shattered cornice; a stone detaches itself exhaustedly and falls with a tinkle of sand, waking a protest of little echoes.
One steals away silently, resigning ward of all this senile decay to faithful Perkeo, who, in wooden effigy, still companions his huge empty tuns in the darkness of the cellars—the little, red-haired, faithful jester who alone remains constant to his master, of all the army of attendants that thronged these palaces for half a thousand years.
We pass the old stone-canopied well whose columns once were Charlemagne’s, pass the ponderous clock tower and the moat bridge, and enter the fragrant gardens as the valley bells sound ten and the purple mists are rising from the Neckar.
It is impossible to escape a feeling of profound melancholy. Where now are the powerful princes whose rusted swords may not strike back were I to raise a hand of destruction against the halls they reared and loved and guarded with such might? “The fate of every man,” said the Koran, “have We bound about his neck.”
It is depressing to think that such glory, power, and beauty as once were here should have flourished so wonderfully and come to so little. Was all this magnificence created merely for destruction? Could nothing less suffice grim Time to build him an eyrie for bats and swallows? Was Von Matthisson right in the judgment he expressed in the sad and sympathetic “Elegie” he penned in these ruins, and must we conclude with him that temporal glory is but ashes and that the darkness of the grave adorns impartially the proud brow of the world ruler and the trembling head that shakes above the pilgrim’s staff?
“Hoheit, Ehre, Macht und Ruhm sind eitel!
Eines weltgebieters stolze Scheitel
Und ein zitternd Haupt am Pilgerstab
Deckt mit einer Dunkelheit das Grab!”