After casting a farewell glance round apartments to which I felt myself most unaccountably attached, descending the long staircase of the New Bad-Haus, I walked across the shrubbery to my carriage, around which had assembled a few people, who, I was very much surprised to find, were witnessing my departure with regret!
Luy, who had followed my (I mean Katherinchen’s) footsteps so many a weary hour, strange as it may sound (and so contrary to what the ass must have felt), was evidently sorry I was going. The old “Bad” man’s countenance looked as serious and as wrinkled on the subject as the throat of his toad—his wan, sallow-faced Jezebel of a wife stood before the carriage steps waving her lean hand in sorrow, and the young maid of the Bad-Haus, who had made my bed, merely because I had troubled her for a longer period than any other visiter, actually began to shed some tears. The whole group begged permission to kiss my hand; and there was so much kind feeling evinced, that I felt quite relieved when I found that the postilion and his horses had spoiled the picture, in short, that we were trotting and trumpeting along the broad road which leads to Wiesbaden.
As I had determined on visiting the Duke of Nassau’s hunting-seat “Die Platte” in my way to Wiesbaden, after proceeding about four miles, I left the carriage in the high road, and walking through the woods towards my object, I passed several very large plantations of fir-trees which had been so unusually thick that they were completely impervious, even to a wild boar; for, not only were the trees themselves merely a few inches asunder, but their branches, which feathered to the ground, interlaced one with another until they formed altogether an impenetrable jungle. Through this mass of vegetation, narrow paths about three feet broad were cut in various directions to enable the deer to traverse the country.
In passing through the beech forest, I observed that the roads or cuts were often as much as forty or fifty feet in breadth, and every here and there the boughs and foliage were artificially entwined in a very ingenious manner, leaving small loop-holes through which the Duke, his visiters, or his huntsmen, might shoot at the game as they wildly darted by. A single one of these verdant batteries might possibly be observed and avoided by the cautious, deep-searching eye of the deer, but they exist all over the woods in such numbers, that the animals, accustomed to them from their birth, can fear nothing from them, until the fatal moment arrives, when their experience, so dearly bought, arrives too late.
After advancing for about an hour through these green streets, I came suddenly upon the Duke’s hunting-seat, the Platte, a plain white stone, cubic building, which, as if disdaining gardens, flowerbeds, or any artificial embellishment, stands alone, on a prominent edge of the Taunus hills, looking down upon Wiesbaden, Mainz, Frankfort, and over the immense flat, continental-looking country which I have already described. Its situation is very striking, and though of course it is dreadfully exposed to the winter’s blast, yet, as a sporting residence, during the summer or autumn months, nothing I think can surpass the beauty and unrestrained magnificence of its view.
Before the entrance door, in attitudes of great freedom, there are two immense bronze statues of stags, most beautifully executed, and on entering the apartments, which are lofty and grand, every article of furniture, as well as every ornament, is ingeniously composed of pieces, larger or smaller, of buck-horn. Immense antlers, one above another, are ranged in the hall, as well as on the walls of the great staircase; and certainly when a sportsman comes to the Platte on a visit to the Duke of Nassau, everything his eyes can rest on, not only reminds him of his favourite pursuit, but seems also to promise him as much of it as the keenest hunter can desire: in short, without the slightest pretension, the Platte is nobly adapted to its purpose, and with great liberality it is open at almost all times to the inspection of “gentlemen sportsmen” and travellers from all quarters of the globe. About twelve hundred feet beneath it, in a comparatively flat country, bounded on two sides by the Rhine and the Main, lies Wiesbaden, the capital of the duchy of Nassau, the present seat of its government, and the spot by far the most numerously attended as a watering-place.
Looking down upon it from the Platte, this town or city is apparently about three-quarters of an English mile square, one quarter of this area being covered with a rubbishy old, the remainder with a staring formal new town, composed of streets of white stone houses, running at right angles to each other. As I first approached it, it appeared to me to be as hot, as formal, and as uninteresting a place as I ever beheld: however, as soon as I entered it, I very soon found out that its inhabitants and indeed its visiters entertain a very different opinion of the place, they pronouncing it to be one of the most fashionable, and consequently most agreeable, watering-places in all Germany.
In searching for a lodging, I at once went to most of the principal hotels, several of which I found to be grievously afflicted with smells, which (though I most politely bowed to every person I met in the passage) it did not at all suit me to encounter. At one place, as an excuse for not taking the unsavoury suite of apartments which were offered to me, I ventured quietly to remark, that they were very much dearer than those I had just left. The master at once admitted the fact, but craning himself up into the proudest attitude his large stomach would admit of, he observed—“Mais—Monsieur! savez-vous que vous aurez à Wiesbaden plus d'amusement dans une heure, que vous n'auriez à Schlangenbad dans un an?...”
In the horrid atmosphere in which I stood, I had no inclination to argue on happiness or any subject; so hastening into the open air, I continued my search, until finding, the landlord at the Englischen Hof civil, and exceedingly anxious to humour all my old-fashioned English whims and oddities, I accepted the rooms he offered me, and thus for a few days dropped my anchor in the capital of the duchy of Nassau.
About twelve thousand strangers are supposed annually to visit this gay watering-place, and consequently, to pen up all this fashionable flock within the limits of so small a town, requires no little ramming, cramming, and good arrangement. The dinner hour, or time of the tables-d'hôte, as at Langen Schwalbach, Schlangenbad, and indeed all other places in Germany, was one o'clock, and the crowds of hungry people who at that hour, following their appetites, were in different directions seen slowly but resolutely advancing to their food, was very remarkable. Voluntarily enlisting into one of these marching regiments, I allowed myself to be carried along with it, I knew not where, until I found myself, with an empty stomach and a napkin on my knees, quietly seated at one of three immense long tables, in a room with above 250 people, all secretly as hungry as myself.