It was the Feast of St. Rupert[244], the Patron of Salzburg. The peasant-women were going to market, decked out in the fashion of their village: their fair hair and snowy foreheads were enclosed in a sort of helmet of gold, well suited to women of Germania. When I had passed through the town, which is clean and handsome, I saw two or three thousand foot-soldiers in a field; they were being reviewed by a general, accompanied by his staff. Those white lines cutting into the green grass, the glitter of arms at sunrise formed a stately display worthy of those peoples depicted or rather sung by Tacitus: Mars the Teuton was offering a sacrifice to Aurora. What were my gondoliers doing at that moment in Venice? They were sporting like swallows, after the night was past, in the returning dawn and preparing to skim over the surface of the water; next would come the joys of the night, loves and barcarolles. Every nation has its lot: this one enjoys strength; that one, pleasures: the Alps make the division.
From Salzburg to Linz, a fertile country-side; the horizon on the right denticulated with mountains. Forests of pines and beeches, wild and similar oases, are surrounded by a skilful and varied cultivation. Herds of all kinds of cattle, hamlets, churches, oratories, crosses furnish and enliven the landscape.
After we had passed the radius of the festival of St. Rupert (festivals do not last long with men, nor do they go far), we found all the people in the fields, busy with the autumnal sowing and the potato-harvest. Those rustic populations were better clad, more polite, and appeared happier than our own. Do not let us disturb the order, the peace, the simple virtues which they enjoy, under the pretext of substituting for them political boons which are neither conceived nor felt in the same manner by all, whereas the whole of mankind understands the joys of the home, family affection, the abundance of life, simplicity of heart and religion.
The Frenchman, who is so much in love with women, is very well able to dispense with them in a number of cares and works; the German cannot live without his mate: he employs her and takes her with him wherever he goes, to the battle-field as to the plough-field, to feasts and funerals alike.
In Germany, the very animals partake of the temperate character of their sober-minded masters. It is interesting, when travelling, to observe the physiognomy of the brute beasts. We can judge beforehand of the manners and passions of the inhabitants of a country by the gentleness or wickedness, the tameness or wildness, the cheerfulness or sadness of that living part of creation which God has subjected to our sway.
Woknabrück.
An accident to the calash obliged me to stop at Woknabrück. As I roamed about the inn, I came upon a back-door which let me out on a canal. Beyond it lay meadows striped with pieces of brown holland. A river, inflected under wooded hills, served as a belt for those meadows. Something, I know not what, reminded me of the village of Plancoët, where happiness had appeared to me in my childhood. O shades of my old kinsfolk, I did not expect to find you on these shores! You are drawing nearer to me, because I am drawing nearer to the grave, your shelter; we are going to meet again there. My kind aunt, do you still sing your ballad of the Sparrow-hawk and the Warbler[245] on the banks of Lethe? Have you met the fickle Trémigon[246] among the dead, just as Dido saw Æneas in the region of the shades?
The day was drawing to a close when I left Woknabrück; Sol transferred me to his sister's hands: a double light of undefinable hue and fluidity. Soon Luna reigned alone: she was inclined to renew our conversation of the forests of Haselbach[247]; but I was not in the mood for her. I preferred Venus, who rose at two o'clock on the morning of the 25th; she was as beautiful as amid those dawns in which I used to contemplate and invoke her on the seas of Greece.
Leaving many mysteries of woods, streams and valleys to the right and left, I passed through Lambach, Wels and Neuban, quite new little townships, with flat-roofed houses, as in Italy. In one of those houses, they were making music; there were young women at the windows: things were different in Maroboduus'[248] time.