The Hotel de l'Europe is wide, deep, and cool; the broad staircase in the centre is ornamented with pretty flowers in pots, and running and trailing plants twining about the balusters, all the way up to the second story. Directly beneath my window is a beautiful strip of flower-garden, and the fresh air comes in at the casement laden with the odors of roses, carnation pinks, honeysuckles, and a score of other beautiful flowers, which are blooming in profusion. Beyond this little garden, say twenty or thirty feet from the hotel, runs the little River Oos, over a smooth-paved, artificial bed of stone—a swift, clear, sparkling little stream, of scarce three feet deep, and its width of not more than a score, spanned by little rustic bridges, connecting the grounds of the different hotels that are strung along its banks with the opposite shore, which is the broad, high road, along which the numerous gay equipages which frequent watering-places are continually passing.
Beyond the road, beneath shady trees, is the Trink Halle, or, as the English have dubbed the place, the pump-room, probably because there is no pump there, except the natural one of the springs, whose mineral waters are conducted into ornamental fountains, which the drinkers and bathers visit at seven A. M., to the inspiriting and lively music of an excellent band. This pump-room is a long, one-story building, two hundred and seventy feet long and thirty-six wide, the façade resting on sixteen Corinthian pillars. Beneath the façade, and upon large panels of the building behind the colonnade of pillars, are fourteen great frescoes, executed by an artist named Götzenbreger, and representing pictorially some of those wild legends and weird stories of magic and enchantment for which Germany is so noted.
Baden, be it remembered, lies at the entrance of the celebrated Black Forest, popularly inhabited by various powerful enchanters, gnomes, dwarfs, and sprites. These great pictures were all handsomely executed, but the weather, to which they are partially exposed, is rapidly fading away their rich tints. There was one, representing a beautiful, light-haired, blue-eyed German girl, with but a light drapery flowing around her shapely limbs as she walked down to a mountain stream with her arm on the neck of a snow-white stag: an entranced huntsman knelt upon the opposite bank, gazing at this lovely vision; and while he gazed, one busy gnome was twisting a tough bramble about his ankle, another huge-headed fellow was reaching out from beneath a rock, and severing his bow-string, while a third, a sturdy, belted and hooded dwarf, was robbing his quiver of its arrows: all around, the rocks looked out in curious, wild, and grotesque faces; they leered from the crags, grinned from pebbles in the water, or frowned awfully from the great crags above the hunter, who, dazzled by the enchantress, sees nothing of this frightful scene, which is like the figures of a troubled dream—thoroughly phantasmagoric and German. Another picture shows a brave knight just on the point of espousing a weird lady before an abbot, the satanic glare of whose eyes betrays his infernal origin; cock-crow has evidently prevented these nuptials, as at one side chanticleer is represented vigorously sounding his clarion, and in the foreground lies another figure of the same knight in a deep sleep. Other scenes represent encounters of shepherds with beautiful water-sprites or Undines of the mountain lakes and rivers, knights at enchanted castles, and sprites in ruined churches, each one being the pictorial representation of some well-known legend of the vicinity.
We arrived at Baden on Saturday, after dark, and I was roused Sunday morning to look out upon the scene I have described, by the music of a magnificent band, which commenced with the grand hymn of Old Hundred; then a piece from Handel; next came the grand Wedding March of Mendelssohn; and we looked from our windows to see throngs of people promenading up and down the piazza in front of the Trink Halle, to the inspiriting harmony, or coming in every direction from the different hotels and pensions, or boarding-houses, for their morning drink of spring-water. Gradually the music assumed a livelier character, till it wound up with sprightly quadrilles and a lively polka, played with a spirit that would almost have set an anchorite in a dancing fever.
A fit illustration was this of the regard for the Sabbath in this headquarters of the enemy of man, where, at noon, the great doors of the gambling-house swung open, and the rouge-et-noir and roulette tables were at once thronged with players, without intermission, till midnight.
This great gaming-house, which has been so often described, is styled the Conversation-haus, and is beautifully fitted up with drawing-rooms, lofty and elegant ball-room, with each end opening out into magnificent gardens, that are rich in parterres of flowers, shady alleys, beautiful trees, fountains, and statues. During the afternoon and evening these gardens are thronged, the magnificent band plays the choicest of music, elegantly-dressed people saunter amid the trees and flowers, or sit at little tables and sip light wines, eat ices, and chat; you hear German, French, English, and Italian amid the clatter of voices in any momentary lull of the music; you may order your ice-cream in any of these languages, and a waiter is at hand to understand and serve you; you may spend the whole day in this beautiful spot, enjoy music that you gladly pay a concert price at home to hear, without a penny expense, or even the remotest hint for remuneration from any servant, except it be for the refreshments you order—for the proprietor of the gaming establishment gladly defrays all the expenses, for the privilege he enjoys exclusively, and he pays besides the sum of sixty thousand dollars per annum; so we enjoy it somewhat freely, although we cannot help reflecting, however, that those who really bear the expense are the victims insnared in the glittering and alluring net which they themselves help to weave.
From the flutter of passing butterflies of fashion, the clatter of tongues, the moving throng, and rich strains of music, we pass through the noiselessly swinging doors that admit us to the almost hushed inner court of the votaries of chance. Here, as at Wiesbaden, the only voices above a subdued tone are those of the dealers, with their regular formula of expression, while ever and anon, following the rattle of the roulette wheel, comes the clink of the gold and silver which the presiding high priests of Mammon rake into the clutches of the bank. People of every grade, nation, and profession jostle each other at these tables. Here all meet on a common level, and rank is not recognized. The only rank here is the guinea-stamp, and that, if the possessor conduct himself in an orderly manner, insures prince and peasant an equal chance at the tables. The language used is French.
I have seen beautiful young ladies, scarce turned nineteen, seated here next their young husbands, with whom they were making their bridal tour, jostled by the elegant Parisian member of the demi-monde, whose noble "friend" hands her a thousand francs to enjoy herself with for a while; young students, trembling, eager old men; raw Americans, taking a "flyer;" and sometimes astonishing the group by the magnitude of their bets; old women, Russian counts, who commence by getting several notes changed into a big pile of gold, which steadily diminishes beneath the assaults they make on the bank, with as little effect as raw infantry charging against a fortified breastwork; nay, I even saw the sallow countenance of a Turk, looking on from beneath his fez cap, while its owner fumbled uneasily at his girdle till he had detached his purse, and gratified his curiosity by losing a few gold pieces; professional gamblers, sharpers, women of uncertain character; old, young, and middle-aged, all sacrificing at the same shrine.
"But some win?"
Yes, and the very ones whose success is least expected. Old habitués will study the combination of figures for weeks, and keep a record of the numbers, and the order in which they turn up, and then, having, by mathematical certainty, made sure of lucky numbers, stake—and lose. The croupiers go on regularly, mechanically, and, unmoved by success or loss, or whatever takes place about them, they rake in heavy stakes, and pay out huge losses, without moving a muscle of their countenances, or betraying the least emotion, raking in a huge stake while I was watching the game that made even the old habitués glare at the player, without even so much as a glance at him, and paying out a big loss with only the simple dialogue,—