And fiercer now the fight began,
And harder fell each blow;
But still the monarch’s order ran:
“My son is as another man,
Press, press upon the foe!”
Oh, many fell at Doffingen
Before the day was done;
But victory blessed the Suabian men,
And happy bugles played again,
At setting of the sun.
CHAPTER V.
THE SECOND MEETING OF THE CLUB.
Constance.—The Story of Huss.—Bismarck and the German Government.—The Story of the Heart of Stone.—Poem.—Seven Nights on the Rhine: Night First.
THE second meeting of the Club was opened by Mr. Beal with an account of Constance, and of the great Council that convened there in 1414.
“Via Mala! So the old Romans called the road near the source of the Rhine. It passed over and through dark and awful chasms, that the river, as it came down from the Alps, had been tunnelling for thousands of years.
“The Rhine is the gift of the Alps, as Egypt is the gift of the Nile. From its source amid the peaks of the clouds to its first great reservoir, the Lake of Constance, it passes through one of the wildest and most picturesque regions in the world. It is not strange that the Romans should have called their old Swiss road Via Mala.