We took our seats, instructed to sit perfectly still, and to restrain
our legs and arms from any straggling. There was no room to spare in the shaft we were about to traverse. Our car was run on to the tram-line, and the two lads, with a sickly smile, and a broad hint at their expected gratuity, began to pull, and promised us a rapid journey. In another minute we were whirring down an incline with a rush and a rattle, through the subterranean passage tunnelled into the solid limestone which runs to the outer edge of the Dürrnberg. The length of this tunnel is considerably more than an English mile.
The reverberation and the want of light were nothing, but we were disagreeably sensible of a cloud of fine stone dust, and knew well that we should come out not only stone deaf, but as white as millers. Clinging to our seats with a cowardly instinct, down we went through a hurricane of sound and dust. At length we were sensible of a diminution in our speed, and the confusion of noises so far ceased, that we could hear the panting of our biped cattle. Then, straight before us, shining in the centre of the pitchy darkness, there was a bright blue star suddenly apparent. One of the poor lads in the whisper of exhaustion, and between his broken pantings for breath, told us that they always know when they have got half way by the blue star, for that is the daylight shining in.
A little necessary rest, and we were off again, the blue star before us growing gradually paler, and expanding and still growing whiter, till with an uncontrollable dash, and a concussion, we are thrown within a few feet of the broad incomparable daylight. With how much contempt of candles did I look up at the noonday sun! The two lads, streaming with perspiration, who had dragged us down the long incline, were made happy by the payment we all gladly offered for their services. Then, as we passed out of the mouth of the shaft, by a rude chamber cut out of the rock, we were induced to pause and purchase from a family of miners who reside there a little box of salt crystals, as a memento of our visit. Truly we must have been among the gnomes, for when I had reached the inn I spread the brilliant crystals I had brought home with me on my bedroom window sill, and there they sparkled in the sun and twinkled rainbows, changing and shifting their bright colours as though there were a living imp at work within. But when I got up next morning and looked for my crystals, in the place where each had stood, I found only a little slop of brine. That fact may, I have
no doubt, be accounted for by the philosophers; but I prefer to think that it was something wondrous strange, and that I fared marvellously like people of whom I had read in German tales, how they received gifts from the good people who live in the bowels of the earth, and what became of them. I have had my experiences, and I do not choose to be sure whether those tales are altogether founded upon fancy.
CHAPTER XXII.
cause and effect.
One September evening we rode into Carlsruhe. We made our entry in a crazy hackney cab behind a lazy horse that had been dragging us for a long time with cheerless industry between a double file of trees, along a road without a bend in it; a long, lanky, Quaker road, heavily drab-coated with dust; a tight-rope of a road that comes from Manheim, and is hooked on to the capital of Baden. Out of that allée we were dragged into the square-cut capital itself, which had evidently been planned by the genius of a ruler—not a prince, but the wooden measure. The horse stopped at the City of Pfortzheim, and as his decision on the subject of our halting-place appeared to be irrevocable, we got out.
At the capital of a grand dukedom, except Weimar, it is better to sleep (it is the only thing to be done there) and pass on; but it so happened that on that particular evening Carlsruhe was in a ferment: there was something brewing. I heard talk of a procession and of certain names, particularly the names Kugelblitz and Thalermacher. Never having heard those names before, and caring therefore nothing in the world about them, I tumbled into bed. To my delight, when I got up in the morning, I found the little town turned upside down. Landlord, boots, and chambermaid, overwhelmed me with exclamations, surmises, and incoherent summaries of the night’s news. There had been an outbreak. Lieber Herr, a revolution! One entire house razed to the ground. “Hep! hep!” that is the old cry, “Down with the Jews!” All their bones would
be made powder of. Tremendous funeral of Kugelblitz. Students on their way in a body from Heidelberg. Thalermacher the rich Jew, soldiers, the entire court, Meinheer, all in despair; a regular sack. Not only Kugelblitz, but Demboffsky, the Russian officer, killed. O hep! hep! a lamentable tragedy. “For they were two such fine-looking young men,” mourned the chambermaid, “especially Demboffsky.” “You had better,” said the landlord, “stay in Carlsruhe till to-morrow.”