But Martin has been at the University of Erfurt nearly two years, and Fritz has now left us to study there with him; and we shall have no more music, and the children no more stories until no one knows when.
These are the people I know. I have nothing else to say except about the things I possess, and the place we live in.
The things are easily described. I have a silver reliquary, with a lock of the hair of St. Elizabeth in it. That is my greatest treasure. I have a black rosary with a large iron cross which Aunt Agnes gave me. I have a missal, and part of a volume of the Nibelungen Lied; and besides my every-day dress, a black taffetas jacket and a crimson stuff petticoat, and two gold ear-rings, and a silver chain for holidays, which Aunt Ursula gave me. Fritz and I between us have also a copy of some old Latin hymns, with woodcuts, printed at Nürnberg. And in the garden I have two rose bushes; and I have a wooden crucifix carved in Rome out of wood which came from Bethlehem, and in a leather purse one gulden my godmother gave me at my christening; and that is all.
The place we live in is Eisenach, and I think it a beautiful place. But never having seen any other town, perhaps I cannot very well judge. There are nine monasteries and nunneries here, many of them founded by St. Elizabeth. And there are I do not know how many priests. In the churches are some beautiful pictures of the sufferings and glory of the saints; and painted windows, and on the altars gorgeous gold and silver plate, and a great many wonderful relics which we go to adore on the great saint's days.
The town is in a valley, and high above the houses rises the hill on which stands the Wartburg, the castle where St. Elizabeth lived. I went inside it once with our father to take some books to the Elector. The rooms were beautifully furnished with carpets and velvet-covered chairs. A lady dressed in silk and jewels, like St. Elizabeth in the pictures, gave me sweetmeats. But the castle seemed to me dark and gloomy. I wondered which was the room in which the proud mother of the Landgrave lived, who was so discourteous to St. Elizabeth when she came a young maiden from her royal home far away in Hungary; and which was the cold wall against which she pressed her burning brow, when she rushed through the castle in despair on hearing suddenly of the death of her husband.
I was glad to escape into the free forest again, for all around the castle, and over all the hills, as far as we can see around Eisenach, it is forest. The tall dark pine woods clothe the hills; but in the valleys the meadows are very green beside the streams. It is better in the valleys among the wild flowers than in that stern old castle, and I did not wonder so much after being there that St. Elizabeth built herself a hut in a lowly valley among the woods, and preferred to live and die there.
It is beautiful in summer in the meadows, at the edge of the pine woods, when the sun brings out the delicious aromatic perfume of the pines, and the birds sing, and the rooks caw. I like it better than the incense in St. George's Church, and almost better than the singing of the choir, and certainly better than the sermons which are so often about the dreadful fires and the judgment-day, or the confessional where they give us such hard penances. The lambs, and the birds, and even the insects, seem so happy, each with its own little bleat, or warble, or coo, or buzz of content.
It almost seems then as if Mary, the dear Mother of God, were governing the world instead of Christ, the Judge, or the Almighty with the thunders. Every creature seems so blithe and so tenderly cared for I cannot help feeling better there than at church. But that is because I have so little religion.