The general determination at Baden when the terrible decree which put an end to its career of wealth and wickedness came upon it like a thunder-bolt was of the kind expressed by the more forcible than elegant phrase, "Never say die!" The little town was determined to have a struggle for its existence. It still had its mineral waters, so highly valued by the Romans. The Romans, it may be remarked en passant, seem to have discovered and profited by every mineral spring in Europe. Hardly one of the more important springs can be named which cannot be shown, either by direct historic testimony or by the still existing remains of baths and the like, to have been known to the universal conquerors. Well, Baden still had its waters, good for all the ills to which flesh is heir—capiti fluit utilis, utilis alveo. It still had its magnificent forests—pine and oak and beech in most lovely juxtaposition and contrast. It had the interesting and charmingly picturesque ruins of its ancient castle on the forest-covered hill above the town, perched on one mighty mass of porphyry, and surrounded by other ranges of the same rock, thrown into such fantastic forms that they seem to assume the appearance of rival castellated ruins built on Nature's own colossal plan, and such a world of strange forms of turrets and spires and isolated towers and huge donjons that the Devil has "pulpits" and "bridges" and "chambers" there, as is well known to all tourists to be his wont in similar places. It had its other mediæval baronial residences situated in the depths of the forest at pleasant distances for either driving or walking. It had its delicious parks and gardens, beginning from the very door of the "Conversations-Haus," with brilliantly-lighted avenues, gay with shops and gas-lamps, and gradually wandering away into umbrageous solitudes and hillside paths lit by the moon alone—so gradually that she who had accepted an arm for a stroll amid the crowd in the bright foreground of the scene found herself enjoying solitude à deux before she had time to become alarmed or think what mamma would say. Then it had still the gorgeous halls, the ball-rooms, the concert-rooms, the promenading-rooms, with their gilding and velvet and satin furniture, which had been created by a wave of the wand of the great enchanter who presided at the green table. Why should not all these good things be turned to the service of virtue instead of vice? Why should not respectability and morality inherit the legacy of departed wickedness? Why should not good and virtuous German Fraüleins, with their pale blue eyes and pale blond hair, do their innocent flirting amid the bowers where the Parisian demi-monde had outraged the chaste wood-nymphs by its uncongenial presence? The loathsome patchouli savor of the denizens of the Boulevard would hardly resist the purifying breezes of one Black Forest winter. The notice to quit served on Mammon would be equally efficacious as regarded the whole of his crew. The whole valley would be swept clean of them, and sweetened and restored to the lovers of Nature in her most delicious aspect. Baden, emerging from the cold plunge-bath of its first dismay, determined that it should be so. The hotel-keepers, the lodging-house-keepers, the livery-stable-keepers, the purveyors of all kinds, screwed their courage to the sticking-place and determined to go in for virtue, early hours and moderate prices. Well, yes! moderate prices! This was the severest cut of all. But there was no help for it. Virtue does prefer moderate prices. There could be no more of that reckless scattering of gold, no more of that sublime indifference to the figure at the foot of the bill, which characterized their former customers. What mattered a napoleon or so more or less in their daily expense to him or her whose every evening around the green table left them some thousands of francs richer or poorer than the morning had found them? There can be no doubt, I fear, that Baden would have much preferred a continuance in its old ways. But the choice was not permitted to it. It is therefore making a virtue of necessity, and striving to live under the new régime as best it may. And I am disposed to think that better days may yet be in store for it. At present, the preponderating majority of the visitors are Germans. There are naturally no French, who heretofore formed the majority of the summer population. There are hardly any Americans, and very few English. Those of the class which used to find Baden delightful find it, or conceive that they would find it, so no more. And English and Americans of a different sort seem to have hardly yet become aware that they would find there a very different state of things from that which they have been accustomed to associate in idea with the name of the place. It must be supposed, however, that they will shortly do so. The natural advantages and beauties of the place are so great, the accommodation is so good, and even in some respects the inheritance of the good things the gamblers have left behind them so valuable, that it is hardly likely that the place will remain neglected. Where else are such public rooms and gardens to be found? The charge made at present for the enjoyment of all this is about six or eight cents a day. Such a payment could never have originally provided all that is placed at the disposal of the visitor. He used in the old times to enjoy it all absolutely gratuitously, unless he paid for it by his losses at the tables. Play provided it all. But it is to be feared that the very modest payment named above will be found insufficient even to keep up the establishment which Mammon has bequeathed to Virtue. The ormolu and the carved cornices, and the fresco-painted walls and the embroidered satin couches and divans, and the miles upon miles of garden-walks, have not indeed disappeared, as, according to all the orthodox legends, such Devil's gifts should do, but they will wear out; and I do not think that any eight cents a day will suffice to renew them. But in the mean time you may avail yourself of them. You may lounge on the brocade-covered divans which used to be but couches of thorns to so many of their occupants, undisturbed by any more palpitating excitement than that produced by the perusal of the daily paper. The lofty ceilings echo no more the hateful warning croak of the croupier, "Faites votre jeu, messieurs. Le jeu est fait!" which used to be ceaseless in them from midday till midnight. There are no more studies to be made on the men and women around you of all the expressions which eager avarice, torturing suspense and leaden despair can impart to the human countenance. The utmost you can hope to read on one of those placidly stolid German burgher faces is the outward and visible sign of the inward oppression caused by too copious a repast at the one-o'clock table d'hôte. It is the less disagreeable and less unhealthy subject of contemplation of the two. But the truth remains that virtuous Baden does look somewhat dowdy.
Just seventy-three years ago a change as great as that which has transformed Baden happened to an establishment which represented the old-world social system of Europe as completely and strikingly as Baden the "watering-place"—that is the modern phrase—did the Europe of the latter half of the nineteenth century. In another green valley of this region, as beautiful as, or even more beautiful than, that of Baden, there existed a gathering-place of the sort produced by the exigencies of a different stage of social progress—the convent of Allerheiligen, or, as we should say, All Saints or Allhallows. It is within the limits of an easy day's excursion from Baden, and no visitor who loves "the merry green wood" should omit to give a day to Allerheiligen, for he will scarcely find in his wanderings, let them be as extensive as they may, a more perfect specimen of the loveliest forest scenery. It is an old remark, that the ancient ecclesiastics who selected the sites of the monastic establishments that were multiplied so excessively in every country in Europe showed very excellent judgment and much practical skill in the choice of them. And almost every visit made to the spot where one of these cloister homes existed confirms the truth of the observation, more especially as regards the communities belonging to the great Benedictine family. The often-quoted line about seeking "to merit heaven by making earth a hell," however well it may be applied to the practices of some of the more ascetic orders, especially the mendicants, cannot with any reason be considered applicable to the disciples of St. Benedict. In point of fact, at the time when the great and wealthy convents of this order were founded it was rather outside the convent-wall that men were making the world a hell upon earth. And for those who could school themselves to consider celibacy no unendurable evil it would be difficult to imagine a more favorable contrast than that offered by "the world" in the Middle Ages and the retreat of the cloister. A site well selected with reference to all the requirements of climate, wood and water, and with an appreciative eye to the beauties of Nature, in some sequestered but favored spot as much shut in from war and its troubles as mountains, streams and forests could shut it in; a building often palatial in magnificence, always comfortable, with all the best appliances for study which the age could afford; with beautiful churches for the practice of a faith entirely and joyfully believed in; with noble halls for temperate but not ascetic meals, connected by stairs by no means unused with excellent and extensive cellars; with lovely cloisters for meditative pacing, and well-trimmed gardens for pleasant occupation and delight,—what can be imagined more calculated to ensure all the happiness which this earth was in those days capable of affording?
Such a retreat was the convent of Allerheiligen. It was founded for Premonstratensian monks at the close of the twelfth century by Uta, duchess of Schawenburg, who concludes the deed of foundation, which still exists, with these words: "And if anybody shall do anything in any respect contrary to these statutes, he will for ever be subject to the vengeance of God and of all saints." Poor Duchess Uta! Could her spirit walk in this valley, as lovely now as when she gave it to her monks, and look upon the ruins of the pile she raised, she would think that the vengeance of God and all saints had been incurred to a considerable extent by somebody. The waterfalls—seven of them in succession—made by the little stream that waters the valley immediately after it has passed through the isolated bit of flat meadow-land on which the convent was built, continue to sing their unceasing song as melodiously as when the duchess Uta visited the spot and marked it out for the "Gottes Haus" she was minded to plant there. Her husband, the duke Welf, who had married her when she was a well-dowered widow, had been a very bad husband, which naturally tended to lead his neglected lady wife's mind in the direction of founding religious houses. He was duke of Altorf and Spoleto, the one possession lying on the shores of the Lake of Lucerne, and the other among the ilex-woods that overlook the valley of the Tiber—a strange conjunction of titles, which is in itself illustrative of the shape European history took in that day, and of the preponderating part which Germany played in Italy and among the rulers of its soil. Being thus duke of Spoleto, Welf resided much in Italy, but does not seem to have found it necessary to take his German wife with him to those milder skies and easier social moralities. Uta stayed at home amid the dark-green valleys of her native Black Forest, and planned cloister-building. Before the chart, however, which was to give birth to Allerheiligen was signed, Duke Welf came home, and having had, it would seem, his fling to a very considerable extent, had reached by a natural process that time of life and that frame of mind which inclined him to join in his long-neglected wife's pietistic schemes. So they planned and drew up the statutes together, and the convent was founded and built, a son of Uta by her first husband being, as is recorded, the first prior.
RUINS OF THE ABBEY OF ALLERHEILIGEN.
It was not long before the young community became rich. Such was the ordinary, the almost invariable, course of matters. Property was held on very unstable conditions even by the great and powerful. The most secure of all tenures was that by which the Church held what was once her own. And in a state of things when men were persuaded both that it was very doubtful whether they would be able to keep possession of their property, especially whether they would be able to secure such possessions to those who were to come after them, and that the surest way to escape that retribution in the next world which they fully believed to have been incurred by their deeds in this world was to give what they possessed to some monastic institution, it is not difficult to understand how and why monasteries grew rich. And it is equally intelligible that the result should have followed which did, as we know, follow almost invariably. As the monasteries became rich the monks became corrupt—first comfortable, then luxurious, then licentious. The Benedictines escaped this doom more frequently than the other orders. Even after their great convents had become wealthy and powerful landlords they were often very good landlords, and the condition of their lands and of their tenants and vassals contrasted favorably with that of the lands and dependants of their lay neighbors. The superiority of the Benedictines in this respect was doubtless due to their studious and literary habits and proclivities. It is constantly urged that the cause of learning and of literature owes a great debt of gratitude to the monks, but it should be said that this debt is due almost exclusively to the sons of St. Benedict.
But something more than this may be said for the community founded by Duchess Uta, the beautiful ruins of whose dwelling now complete the picturesque charm of this most exquisite valley. By a rare exception history has in truth nothing to say against them. Their record is quite clear. All remaining testimony declares that from their first establishment to the day of their dissolution the Allerheiligen monks lived studious and blameless lives. Possibly, the profound seclusion of their valley, literally shut in from the outer world by vast masses of thick roadless forests, may have contributed to this result, though similar circumstances do not in all cases seem to have ensured a similar consequence. Good fortune probably did much in the matter. A happy succession of three or four good and able abbots would give the place a good name and beget a good tradition in the community; and this in such cases is half the battle. "Such and such goings-on may do elsewhere, but they won't suit Allerheiligen"—such a sentiment, once made common, would do much for the continuance of a good and healthy tradition.
Accordingly, it was long before the sentence of dissolution went forth against the monastery of Allerheiligen—that sentence which was to produce a change in the place and all around it as momentous as that other sentence which some seventy years later went forth against Baden-Baden. It was not till 1802 that the monastery of Allerheiligen was dissolved; and its extinction was due then not to any reason or pretext drawn from the conduct of the inmates, but to the religious dissensions and political quarrels of princes and governments. But the doom was all the more irrevocably certain. In all the countries in which monasteries have been abolished and Church property confiscated tales eagerly spread, and by no means wholly disbelieved even by the spoilers themselves, are current of the "judgments" and retribution which have sooner or later fallen on those who have been enriched by the secularization of Church property or who have taken part in the acts by which the Church has been dispossessed. But rarely has what the world now calls "chance" brought about what the Church would call so startlingly striking a manifestation of the wrath of Heaven against the despoilers of "God's house." St. Norbert was the original founder of the Premonstratensian rule. And it was precisely on St. Norbert's Day next after the dissolution of the monastery of Allerheiligen that a tremendous and—the local chroniclers say—unprecedented storm of thunder, lightning and hail broke over the woodland valley and the devoted fabric in such sort that the lightning, more than once striking the buildings, set them on fire and reduced the vast pile to the few picturesque ruins which now delight the tourist and the landscape painter. Could the purpose and intent of the supernal Powers have been more strongly emphasized or more clearly marked? Truly, the scattered monks may have been excused for recalling with awe, not unmingled with a sense of triumph, the prophetic denunciation of their foundress Uta, which has been cited above, against whoso should undo the pious deed she was doing. For more than six hundred years her work had prospered and her will had been respected, and now after all those centuries the warning curse was still potent. Neither thunder nor lightning, nor the anger of St. Norbert, however, availed to rebuild the monastery or recall the monks. Their kingdom and the glory thereof has passed to another, even to Herr Mittenmeyer, Wirth und Gastgeber, who has built a commodious hostelry close by the ruins, which are mainly those of the church, and on the site of the monastic buildings, and who distributes a hospitality as universal, if not quite so disinterested, as that practised by his cowled predecessors. There, for the sum of six marks—about a dollar and a half—per diem you may find a well-furnished cell and a fairly well-supplied refectory, and may amuse yourself with pacing in the walks where St. Norbert's monks paced, looking on the scenes of beauty on which they gazed, and casting your mind for the nonce into the mould of the minds of those who so looked and mused. You may do so, indeed, thanks to Herr Mittenmeyer, with greater comfort, materially speaking, than the old inmates of the valley could have done. For the most charming and delicious walks have been made through the woods on either side of the narrow valley, and skilfully planned so as to show you all the very remarkable beauties of it. These, in truth, are of no ordinary kind. The hillsides which enclose the valley are exceedingly steep, almost precipitous indeed in some places, though not sufficiently so to prevent them from being clothed with magnificent forests. Down this narrow valley a little stream runs, and about a quarter of a mile from the spot on which the convent stood, and the ruins stand, makes a series of cascades of every variety of form and position that can be conceived. All these falls, together with the crystalline pools in huge caldrons worn by the waters out of the rocks at their feet, were no doubt well known to the vassal fishermen who brought their tribute of trout to the convent larder. But the majority of the holy men themselves, I fancy, lived and died without seeing some of the falls, for they would be by no means easily accessible without the assistance of the paths which by dint of long flights of steps, constructed of stones evidently brought from the ruins of the abbey, carry the visitor to every spot of vantage-ground most favorable for commanding a view of them. If, however, you have the advantage over the monks in this respect, your retreat will be less adapted to the purposes of retirement in another point of view. Ten or a dozen carriages a day filled with German tourists, all in high spirits and all very thirsty ("Thanks be!" says Herr Mittenmeyer), are not appropriate aids to the indulgence of contemplation. Scott advised his readers if they "would view fair Melrose aright, to visit it by the pale moonlight." And to those who would view Allerheiligen aright I would add the recommendation that the moon should be an October moon. The usual holiday-making months in Germany are by that time over. The professors have gone back to their chairs in the different universities; the privat-docents have reopened their courses; the substantial burghers have returned to their shops; and the raths of all sorts and degrees have ensconced themselves once more behind their official desks, and have ceased to "babble of green fields" any more till this time twelvemonth. The tourists will have gone, and the autumnal colors will have come into the woods. There is much beech mixed with the pine in these forests, and the beech in October is as gorgeous a master of color as Rubens or Veronese. Herr Mittenmeyer's mind, too, will have entered into a more placid and even-tempered phase. A stout, thickset man is Herr Mittenmeyer, with broad, rubicund face and short bull neck, of the type that suggests the possibility of an analogous shortness of temper under the pressure of being called in six different directions at once. Altogether, it is better in October. The song of the waterfall will not then be the only one making the woods melodious. There will be a fitful soughing of the wind in the forest. There will be a carpeting of dry, pale-brown oak-leaves on all the paths which "will make your steps vocal." Again and again, when slowly and musingly climbing the steep homeward path up the valley in the dark hour, when the sun has set and before the moon has yet risen, you will fancy that you hear the tread among the leaves of a sandalled foot behind you. But it is well that the path leads you, for there is no more any vesper-bell flinging its sweet and welcome notes far and wide over hill and vale to guide the returning wanderer through the forest.