Alone, among all the neighbouring peaks which with their coverings of black firs or fertile meadows formed a garment for the earth, the Venusberg was bare and like a woman’s swelling breast. Sometimes the rosy dawn cast purple flesh-like tints upon it. It palpitated; truly at certain hours of the evening it seemed to live, and then it appeared as if Thuringia, like a divinity reclining in a green and black tunic, allowed the blood of her desires to mount to the summit of her bare breast.
Throughout the long evenings of each day I watched the transfiguration of the hill of Venus. I gazed at it from afar. I did not approach it. It pleased me not to believe in its natural existence, for exquisite is the pleasure of simplifying realities into the pure aspect of their symbols, and remaining at such a distance that the eye is not forced to see things as they are. I was afraid that once for all the illusion would vanish never to return on the day when I set my foot upon the mountain itself.
Yet one morning I started. At first I followed the Gotha Road, which is intersected by bridges and streams overgrown with verdure; then a path through the fields. I had not lifted my eyes from the meadows when three hours later I reached the end of it. Then I looked before me.
Seen from near at hand, Mount Horsel was bare and reddish, without earth, verdure, or water upon it; it appeared to be burned up by an internal fire as if the legendary curse continued to arrest at its base all the fresh vegetation which gave life to the other mountains. The path I followed was made of stones and dead lichen, and was sometimes quite indistinct amid a stony desert, while at other times it was narrowly enclosed between high and rusty rocks. It ascended to the summit, where a little grey house had been built with thick walls to stand against the violence of the wind.
I entered the house and discovered that I could lunch there. Lunch upon the Venusberg! That would be the last step to my disenchantment. I accepted the idea, to my shame, willingly enough, for in spite of everything I was hungry.
The two daughters of the inn-keeper, who was absent, served me upon a little table a Wiener Schnitzl, which was perhaps more Saxon than Austrian, and a bottle of Niersteiner. This was reality indeed. The clean, light dining-room, the white curtains at the windows, the freshly-cleaned floor, a light bedroom visible through an open door, all succeeded in convincing me that I was not lunching with magicians, as for a moment, alas! I had hoped. The two young girls were two good spirits who would take no part in the damnation of the country.
It is true that at the conclusion of the meal the elder discreetly retired and the younger one gave me a smile of invitation which proved her natural goodness; but at German inns the servants hardly fix any precise limits to the kindness they bestow upon young travellers, and that fact does not generally mean that they have made a compact with a goddess of darkness.
We talked. She was obliging enough to understand my German, though I spoke it something like a negro from the Cameroons. I asked her for some topographical information of the country. She gave it to me with a very good grace.
“Don’t forget,” she said, “to visit the grotto.”