The Wine-ghosts of Bremen

by Wilhelm Hauff

Ask not of their virtues; no one has any right to ask: like dark-red gold their blood sparkles in my glass; when it was first ripened on the hills of St. John it was pale and blonde, but a century has coloured it. What a bouquet! quite beyond the power of words to express. Take all the scents from all the flowers and trees, and all the spices of Araby and Ind, fill the cool cellar with ambergris, and let the amber itself be dissolved into fumes--and the result will be but poor and scentless compared to the liquid sunshine of Bingen and Laubenheim, of Nierenstein and Johannisberg. 'Why do you shake your head?' said I to my companion at last; 'you've no reason to be ashamed of these old fellows here. Come, fill your glass and here's good luck to the whole Twelve of them!'

'Heaven forbid that I should do anything of the kind,' he replied; 'it's an uncanny toast and an uncanny night for it. Taste them, sir, and let's pass on, I shiver in their presence.' 'Good-night, then, gentlemen--remember that I am everywhere and for ever at your service, most noble Lords of the Rhine.' 'Surely,' said the old fellow, 'those few drops haven't made you so drunk that you would raise the whole crew of sprites already? If you talk like that again I shall be off, though I should get the sack for it: I tell you that on this night the spirits imprisoned in these casks rise and hold infernal carnival here in this very spot, aye, and other spirits besides! I wouldn't be here after twelve o'clock for worlds.' 'Well, I'll be quiet, you old driveller, if you'll only take me on to my Lady Rose's apartment itself.' At last we reached it, the little garden of the queen of flowers. There she lay in all her majestic girth, the biggest cask I ever saw in my life, and every glass worth a golden guinea. Frau Rosa was born in 1615. Ah, where are the hands that planted her parent vine? where are the eyes that watched the ripening clusters? where the sun-browned feet that hurried to the festival when she was pressed in the sunny Rheingau, and streamed a pale gold rivulet into the vat? Like the waves of the stream that lapped the base of her cradle, they are gone no one knows whither. And where are their High-Mightinesses of the Hansa, who ruled when the Hansa was a League indeed, those worthy senators of Bremen who brought the blushing maiden to this cool grot for the edification of their grandchildren? Gone too--with two centuries over their heads, and we can only pour wine on their tombs.

Good luck to you, departed High-Mightinesses, and good luck to your living representatives, who have so courteously extended such hospitality to a Southerner! 'And goodnight to you, my Lady Rose,' added the old servant more kindly. 'Come along, sir, we can get out this way without going back, mind you don't stumble over the casks.' 'My good man, you don't imagine I'm going away, do you?' I replied. 'I have only just begun my night. Bring me some of that special '22, two or three bottles, into that big room behind there. I saw that wine growing green and saw it pressed, and now I'm going to prove to my palate that we can still grow something worth drinking.' The old boy expostulated, entreated, threatened, swore nothing should induce him to stay;--who wanted him to stay? Swore he daredn't leave me here;--did he think I was going to carry off Frau Rosa in my arms? Finally he agreed to let me remain if he might padlock me into the big room, and come at six o'clock tomorrow to wake me and receive his reward. Then, with a heavy heart, he put three bottles of the '22 on the table, wiped the glass, poured me out a little, and wished me good-night, double-locking and padlocking the door behind me, more apparently out of tender anxiety for me than out of fear for his cellar. The clock struck half-past eleven as I heard him say a prayer and hurry away. When he shut the outer door of the vaults at the top of the stairs, there was an echo like the thunder of cannons through the halls and passages.

So now I was alone keeping Retreat with my soul down in the bosom of the earth. Slumber above me and slumber around me, for the spirits of the dead are asleep by my side. I wonder if they dream of their brief childhood on the distant mountains, and the nightly lullabys sung to them by old Father Rhine; or the kisses of their tender mother the sun when they first opened their eyes in the bright spring air, of their first leafy garments which reflected themselves in their old Father's eyes.

Ah! my soul, I too have rosy days of youth to look back upon, spent upon the soft vine-clad hills and by the blue rivers of my native Swabia; ah the days and the day dreams of glory! What games, what picture-books, what mother-love, what gigantic Easter eggs, what armies of tin and paper! And then, my soul, think of the first little trousers and collars in which your mortal covering, so proud of its size, was dressed; think how your father gave you rides on his knee, and your grandfather lent you his long bamboo cane with a golden head to use as a hobby horse.

Another glass! And then look on a few years. Do you remember the sad morning when you were taken to see all the mournful solemnities of grandfather's funeral? Ah! what would you not have given to get him back. Peace, 'tis but for awhile that he slumbers. And then the delightful hours in the old library filled with folios that were evidently bound in leather for no other purpose than that of forming huts to protect you and your imaginary sheep and cattle from the imaginary rain. How roughly you treated the Higher Literature of your native land. Why, I remember throwing a quarto Lessing at my brother's head, for which he beat me unmercifully with 'Sophy's Journey from Memel to Saxony.' Rise too, ye walls of the old castle, with your half-ruined passage, your cellar, your gate, your courtyard, all of which served only as a playground for a squad of boys; soldiers and robbers, nomads and caravans we were. I didn't much care whether I represented Platoff or a Cossack trooper, Napoleon or Napoleon's charger. Scattered all over the world, in every rank of life, and the sport of every kind of fortune is now the little knot of boys who were the companions of my childhood; and you and I, my dear soul, being alone too erratic to turn soldier, chamberlain, artisan, or parson, have become that remarkable thing called Doctor of Philosophy, having had just sufficient brains between us to write a dissertation. Brains enough to find our way into the Bremen cellars, however.

Another glass! Sure there's an affinity between wine and the tongue. It goes quite straight till it comes to the throat; here, however, is set up a finger-post, directing 'To the Stomach' and 'To the Head.' The latter is the path of the nobler particles of the grape-juice; the pure spirits that inhabit it will ever soar, and sensible, peaceful people they are for the most part, if there are not too many of them there together; but you know the best philosophers will quarrel when half a dozen of them of different intellectual complexions are closely packed in a small room.

How fair is that fourth period of life, (which we begin with the fourth glass.) Fourteen years old, my soul; but the boyish games are left behind, and you are steeped to the lips in reading--especially Goethe and Schiller, over whom you pore without understanding much. You think, however, you understand it all, and you have already kissed Elvira behind the cupboard door, and broken Emma's heart. Perjured villain! she may be another Charlotte, and she may possibly even have read some of Clauren, and be deeply in love with thee (and him). Let the scene change. I blow a greeting to that dear Alpine valley [Blaubeuern] where I spent so many years at school; the cloister roof, the walks over the brasses of dead abbots, the church with the wonderful high altar, the images dipped in the bright gold of sunrise. Thanks be to the strong Alpine air that I was ever full fledged and can fly as well as most people.

Another glass! Another period. That is a better glass than the last, I think--there's an aroma about it that the other lacked. And what a period that was! My college days! High, noble, savage, inharmonious, rough, fair; all opposites and contrasts that ever existed, blended then. No outsider can ever know the delights, and an outsider can hardly choose but laugh at the follies. Mixed with all the dross we bring up from thence there are generally some particles of fine gold. The music of our life would be strange indeed to one who had not sung and laughed with us. I know well what my granddad felt when he crossed the name of some fellow-collegian in his Book of Memory. God bless them all!

Another glass, by the immortal gods, and another bottle this time! From Friendship to Love. The most wonderful thing of this period (period six, please observe, my soul) was that its grades fitted themselves into and took their colour from my reading. Especially my affections got coloured from Wilhelm Meister; that is to say, I hardly knew whether it was Emmeline or the gentle Camilla, or even Ottilie. Didn't all three peep out from behind jalousies in bewitching nightcaps to hear the mournful squeaks which my numbed fingers elicited from the guitar? And when all three proved but heartless coquettes, I swore I would never marry till I was forty. Yet the little god slides from the eyes of the loved one into the heart of the victim. For am I not a victim? Is not she the coldest listener of all when I sing? did she ever vouchsafe me a single glance of encouragement? As I am not a general officer, I can't get mentioned in a despatch as having eight bullets in my breast and 'lying in a precarious condition,' even if we were not at peace. If I was only a drummer I could go and make a disgusting noise under her window till she was obliged to look out to tell me to go away, and I would then descend from fortissimo to piano and adagio, for I suppose one could do adagio even upon a drum. But the only fame she is likely to hear of me is that some one will tell her to-morrow that I boozed in the Town Cellar from midnight to six a. m.