The fatal night came.
“Should you hear noises in my chamber to-night, do not disturb me,” he said, on parting from his companions to go to his room.
Near midnight a tempest arose,—a wild, strange tempest. The winds were like demons. It thundered and the air was full of tongues of lightning.
At midnight there was heard a fearful shriek in Faust’s chamber.
The next morning the room was found bespattered with blood, and the body of Faust was missing. The broken remains of the alchemist were discovered at last in a back yard on a heap of earth.
This was the village story. It grew as such a dark myth would grow in the superstitious times in which it started. Goethe created the character of Marguerite and added it to the fable. The transformation of Faust from extreme old age to youth was also added. The opera makers have greatly enlarged even the narrative of Goethe; in the latest evolution, Mephistopheles is summoned into the courts of heaven and sent forth to tempt Faust, and Faust is shown visions of the Greek vale of Tempe and Helen of Troy.
Faust has come to be a synonym of the great problem of Good and Evil; the contest between virtue and vice, temptation and ruin, temptation and moral triumph. It is not a good story in any of its evolutions, but it is one that to know is almost essential to intelligence.
“Returning to Coblentz, we passed our sixth night on the Rhine. We there hired a boatman to take us to Bonn. Between Coblentz and Andernach we passed what are termed the Rhine Plains. These are some ten miles long, and are semicircled by volcanic mountains, whose fires have long been dead.
“We now approached the Seven Mountains, among which is the Drachenfels, famous in fable and song. These are called: Lohrberg, 1,355 feet; Neiderstromberg, 1,066 feet; Oelberg, 1,429 feet; Wolkenberg, 1,001 feet; Drachenfels, 1,056 feet; Petenberg, 1,030 feet; Lowenberg, 1,414 feet.
“The Drachenfels is made picturesque by an ancient ruin, and it is these ancient ruins, and associations of old history, that make the Rhine the most interesting river in the world. Apart from its castles and traditions, it is not more beautiful than the Hudson, the Upper Ohio, or the Mississippi between St. Paul and Winona. But the Rhine displays the ruined arts of two thousand years.