I travelled with Mr. Clark from Venice to Milan, where we made a short visit. I remember an old soldier who spoke six languages, who was cicerone of the roof of the Cathedral, and whom I found still on the roof twenty years later, and still speaking the same six tongues. I admired the building as a beautiful fancy, exquisitely decorated, but did not think much of it as a specimen of Gothic architecture. It is the best test of æsthetic culture and knowledge in the world. When you hear anybody praise it as the most exquisite or perfect Gothic cathedral in existence, you may expect to hear the critic admire the designs of Chippendale furniture or the decoration of St. Peter’s.
So we passed through beautiful Lombardy and came to Domo d’Ossola, where a strange German-Italian patois was spoken. It was in the middle of April, and we were warned that it would be very dangerous to cross the Simplon, but we went on all night in a carriage on sleigh-runners, through intervals of snowstorm. Now and then we came to rushing mountain-torrents bursting over the road; far away, ever and anon, we heard the roar of a lauwine or avalanche; sometimes I looked out, and could see straight down below me a thousand feet into an abyss or on a headlong stream. We entered the great tunnel directly from another, for the snow lay twenty feet deep on the road, and a passage had been dug under it for several hundred feet, and so two tunnels were connected. Just in the worst of the road beyond, and in the bitterest cold, we met a sleigh, in which were an English
gentleman and a very beautiful young lady, apparently his daughter, going to Italy. “I saw her but an instant, yet methinks I see her now”—a sweet picture in a strange scene. Poets used to “me-think” and “me-seem” more in those days, but we endured it. Then in the morning we saw Brieg, far down below us in the valley in green leaves and sunshine, and when we got there then I realised that we were in a new land.
We had a great giant of a German conductor, who seemed to regard Clark and me as under his special care. Once when we had wandered afar to look at something, and it was time for the stage or Eilwagen to depart, he hunted us up, scolded us “like a Dutch uncle” in German, and drove us along before him like two bad boys to the diligence, “pawing up” first one and then the other, after which, shoving us in, he banged and locked the door with a grunt of satisfaction, even as the Giant Blunderbore locked the children in the coffer after slamming down the lid. Across the scenes and shades of forty years, that picture of the old conductor driving us like two unruly urchins back to school rises, never to be forgotten.
We went by mountains and lakes and Gothic towns, rocks, forests, old chateaux, and rivers—the road was wild in those days—till we came to Geneva. Thence Clark went his way to Paris, and I remained alone for a week. I had, it is true, a letter of introduction to a very eminent Presbyterian Swiss clergyman, so I sent it in with my card. His wife came out on the balcony, looked coolly down at me, and concluding, I suppose from my appearance, that I was one of the ungodly, went in and sent out word that her husband was out, and would be gone for an indefinite period, and that she was engaged. The commissionaire who was with me—poor devil!—was dreadfully mortified; but I was not very much astonished, and, indeed, I was treated in much the same manner, or worse, by a colleague of this pious man in Paris, or rather by his wife.
I believe that what kept me a week in Geneva was the white wine and trout. At the end of the time I set out to the north, and on the way met with some literary or professional German, who commended to me the “Pfisterer-Zunft” or Bakers’ Guild as a cheap and excellent hostelry. And it was curious enough, in all conscience. During the Middle Ages, and down to a very recent period, the Zünfte or trade-guilds in the Swiss cities carried it with a high hand. Even the gentlemen could only obtain rights as citizens by enrolling themselves as the trade of aristocrats. I had heard of the boy who thought he would like to be bound apprentice to the king; in Berne he might have been entered for a lower branch of the business. These guilds had their own local taverns, inns, or Herbergs, where travelling colleagues of the calling might lodge at moderate rates, but nobody else. However, as time rolled by, these Zünfte or guild-lodgings were opened to strangers. One of the last which did so was that of the Pfister or bakers (Latin, pistor), and this had only been done a few weeks ere I went there. As a literary man whom I met on the ramparts said to me, “That place is still strong in the Middle Age.” It was a quaint old building, and to get to my room I had to cross the great guild-hall of the Ancient and Honourable Society of Bakers. There were the portraits of all the Grand Masters of the Order from the fourteenth or fifteenth century on the walls, and the concentrated antique tobacco-smoke of as many ages in the air, which, to a Princeton graduate, was no more than the scent of a rose to a bee.
I could speak a little German—not much—but the degree to which I felt, sympathised with, and understood everything Deutsch, passeth all words and all mortal belief. Sit verbo venia! But I do not believe that any human being ever crossed the frontier who had thought himself down, or rather raised himself up, into Teutonism as I had on so slight a knowledge of the language, even as a spider throweth up an invisible thread on high, and then travels on it. Which
thing was perceived marvellously soon, and not without some amazement, by the Germans, who have all at least this one point in common with Savages, New Jerseymen, Red Indians, Negroes, Gypsies, and witches, that they by mystic sympathy know those who like them, and take to them accordingly, guided by some altogether inexplicable clue or Hexengarn, even as deep calleth unto deep and star answereth star without a voice. Whence it was soon observed at Heidelberg by an American student that “Leland would abuse the Dutch all day long if he saw fit, but never allowed anybody else to do so.” The which thing, as I think, argues the very ne plus ultra of sympathy.
I found my way to Strasburg, where I went to the tip-top outside of the cathedral, and took the railway train for Heidelberg. And here I had an adventure, which, though trifling to the last degree, was to me such a great and new experience that I will describe it, let the reader think what he will. I went naturally enough first-class, so uncommon a thing then in Germany that people were wont to say that only princes, Englishmen, and asses did so. There entered the same carriage a very lady-like and pretty woman. The guard, seeing this, concluded that—whatever he concluded, he carefully drew down all the curtains, looking at me with a cheerful, genial air of intense mystery, as if to say, “I twig; it’s all right; I’ll keep your secret.”
It is a positive fact that all this puzzled me amazingly. There were many things in which I, the friend and pupil of Navone, was as yet as innocent as a babe unborn. The lady seemed to be amused—as well she might. Sancta simplicitas! I asked her why the conductor had drawn the curtains. She laughed, and explained that he possibly thought we were a bridal pair or lovers. Common sense and ordinary politeness naturally inspired the reply that I wished we were, which declaration was so amiably received that I suggested the immediate institution of such an arrangement. Which was so far favourably received that it was sealed with