CHAPTER VII.
Departure from Carlsbad—Dreifaltigkeits-Kirche—Engelhaus—The Castle—A Melancholy Village—Up to the Ruins—An Imperial Visit—Bohemian Scenery—On to Buchau—The Inn—A Crowd of Guests—Roast Goose—Inspiriting Music—Prompt Waiters—The Mysterious Passport—The Military Adviser—How he Solved the Mystery—A Baron in Spite of Himself—The Baron's Footbath—Lighting the Baron to Bed.
Some years ago Carlsbad was scarcely accessible by vehicles coming from the interior, so abrupt was the declivity of its western hill. Now the difficulty is overcome by the zigzags of an excellent road, such as Austrian engineers know well how to construct. The shortest way out of the town for one on foot is up a street painfully steep, which brings you at once to an elevation, whence there is a view of the hills and hollows at the head of the valley. The zigzags are long, and there are no cut-offs, whereby you lose sight but slowly of the Valley of Springs.
Once past the brow and a view opens over a hilly landscape in the opposite direction, repeating the characteristics of Bohemian scenery—large unfenced fields, with clumps of firs and patches of forest on the highest swells, and the road, in long undulations, running between rows of birch and mountain-ash. There is a monotony about it, varied only by the difference of crops, the rise and fall of the ground, or rags of mist which, after a shower, hang about the dark sides of distant hills. By-and-by the ruined castle of Engelhaus, crowning a conical hill, peers up on the left, higher and higher as you advance, till at length it stands out a huge mass, looking grimly down on a village beneath.
But now a low building on the right attracts your attention. It is a small, low, triangular church—Dreifaltigkeits-Kirche—in a narrow graveyard, where the few mounds and the low wooden crosses that mark them are scarcely to be seen for tall grass and weeds. The interior, so far as I could see through a chink in the rusty, unpainted door, contains nothing remarkable except a rude altar, and a small gallery in each angle. A chapel and arcades are built against two sides of the enclosing wall, and four life-size figures of apostolic aspect sit, recline, and kneel in front of a half-length figure, bearing a crucifix, placed in a recess. They seemed fit guardians of a place which wears an appearance of neglect.
A little farther and there is a byeway, leading across the fields to Engelhaus, about a quarter-mile distant, and a very Irish-looking village it is; squalid and filthy, built in what, to a stranger, appears a total disregard of the fitness of things. Here and there the noise of a loom—a noise which denotes a poverty-stricken existence—sounded from some of the cottages, and the aspect of the villagers is quite in keeping with their environment. And yet a wandering musician, who carried a trestle to rest his organ on, was trying to coax a few Kreutzers out of their pockets by airs most unmelodious; as if the worst kind of music were good enough for folk so deficient in a sense of propriety. The inside of the houses is no better than the outside. Seeing a pale, damp-browed weaver at a window, I stopped to put a question. He opened the casement, and out rushed a stream of air so hot, stifling, and malodorous as fully accounted for his abject looks, and made me content with the briefest answer.
A steep path, completed in one place by a wooden stair, leads you up and along the precipitous side of the hill to the principal entrance of the castle, an old weatherbeaten arch bestriding the whole of the narrow way. Here a few tall trees form the commencement of an avenue, which the young trees planted farther on will one day complete, and increase the charm of the ancient remains. The path skirting the bold crags passes an old tower, and enters a court which, since the visit of the Emperor and Empress in 1854, is called the Kaiserplatz. Three young trees, supported by stakes painted black and yellow, and blue and white, are growing up into memorials of the incident, and dwarf-firs, set in the turfy slope, form the initials F i E—Francis Joseph, Elizabeth. A small pool in one corner reflects the dilapidated walls; the mountain-ash, trailing grasses, and harebells grow from the crevices, trembling in the breeze; and the place, cool, green, and sequestered, is one where you would like to sit musing on a summer afternoon.
The steep and uneven ground adds much to the picturesque effect of the ruin. You make your way from court to court by sudden abrupt ascents and descents, protected in places by a fence—now under a broken arch, now creeping into a vault, now traversing a roofless hall, climbing the fragment of a stair, or pacing round the base of the mighty keep. Loose stones lie about, bits of walls peer through the soil, or, concealed beneath, form grassy hummocks, showing how great have been the ravages of time and other foes. Here and there stands a portion of wall on the very brink of the precipice, and a railing stretched from one to the other enables you to contemplate the prospect in safety. The appearance of the country is such that the hill appears to be in the centre of a great, slightly-hollowed basin, which has a dark and distant rim. The basin is everywhere heaving with undulations, patched and striped with firs and the lines of trees along the highways, while a few ponds gleam in some of the deepest hollows. A few widely scattered cottages, or the white walls of a farmstead, dot the green surface of the fields; and such is the general character of the scenery all the way from the Erzgebirge to Prague—indeed, all the central region of Bohemia. One league, with small differences, is but a repetition of the other.
I prowled so long about the ruins, enjoying the lusty breeze that shook the branches merrily and roared through the crevices, that long shadows crept over the landscape, raising the highest points into bold relief, and veiling the remoter scenes before I descended. The sun, fallen below the Saxon mountains, lit up an immense crescent of angry clouds with a lurid glare, from which the twilight caught a touch of awfulness. The ponds shone with unearthly lustre for a few moments, and then lay cold and gray, and there seemed something spectral in the thin lines of firs as they rose against the glare.
I returned to the road, and found the last two or three miles solitary enough, for not a soul did I meet, and the way lay through a forest where the only light was a faint streak overhead. It was near ten o'clock when I came to Buchau—a village of low houses built round a great square—in which stood some twenty or thirty laden wagons. The appearance of things at The Sun was not encouraging: a dozen wagoners in blue gaberdines lay stretched on straw in the sitting-room, leaving but a small corner of the floor vacant, where sat the host, who made many apologies for having to turn me away. I walked across the square, and tried Der Herrnhaus, and on opening the door met with a rare surprise. The large room was crowded with some threescore guests, including a few soldiers, seated at narrow tables along the sides and across the middle, every man with his tankard of beer before him. In one corner a party of gipsies played wild and lively music, making the room echo again with the sounds of flageolet, violin, and bass, and electrifying the company with their wizard harmonies. Some, unable to contain themselves, chanted a few bars of the inspiriting measure; others beat time with hands or feet, and joined in a whoop at the emphatic passages; and all the while a gruff outpouring of talk struggled with the bass for the mastery. There was a clatter of knives and forks, a rattling of pewter-lids by impatient tipplers, and hasty cries for pieces of bread. And over all hung a cloud of smoke, rolling broader and deeper as the puffs and swirls went up from fifty pipes.