CHAPTER XXI. VIEW OF EHRENBREITSTEIN.--A NEW ALARM IN GERTRUDE'SHEALTH.--TRARBACH.
ANOTHER time our travellers proceeded from Coblentz to Treves, followingthe course of the Moselle. They stopped on the opposite bank below thebridge that unites Coblentz with the Petersberg, to linger over thesuperb view of Ehrenbreitstein which you may there behold.
It was one of those calm noonday scenes which impress upon us their ownbright and voluptuous tranquillity. There stood the old herdsman leaningon his staff, and the quiet cattle knee-deep in the gliding waters.Never did stream more smooth and sheen than was at that hour the surfaceof the Moselle mirror the images of the pastoral life. Beyond, thedarker shadows of the bridge and of the walls of Coblentz fell deep overthe waves, checkered by the tall sails of the craft that were mooredaround the harbour. But clear against the sun rose the spires and roofsof Coblentz, backed by many a hill sloping away to the horizon. High,dark, and massive, on the opposite bank, swelled the towers and rock ofEhrenbreitstein,--a type of that great chivalric spirit--the HONOUR thatthe rock arrogates for its name--which demands so many sacrifices ofblood and tears, but which ever creates in the restless heart of man afar deeper interest than the more peaceful scenes of life by which it iscontrasted. There, still--from the calm waters, and the abodes of commontoil and ordinary pleasure--turns the aspiring mind! Still as we gaze onthat lofty and immemorial rock we recall the famine and the siege;and own that the more daring crimes of men have a strange privilege inhallowing the very spot which they devastate.
Below, in green curves and mimic bays covered with herbage, the gradualbanks mingled with the water; and just where the bridge closed, asolitary group of trees, standing dark in the thickest shadow, gave thatmelancholy feature to the scene which resembles the one dark thoughtthat often forces itself into our sunniest hours. Their boughs stirrednot; no voice of birds broke the stillness of their gloomy verdure: theeye turned from them, as from the sad moral that belongs to existence.
In proceeding to Trarbach, Gertrude was seized with another of thosefainting fits which had so terrified Trevylyan before; they stopped anhour or two at a little village, but Gertrude rallied with such apparentrapidity, and so strongly insisted on proceeding, that they reluctantlycontinued their way. This event would have thrown a gloom over theirjourney, if Gertrude had not exerted herself to dispel the impressionshe had occasioned; and so light, so cheerful, were her spirits, thatfor the time at least she succeeded.
They arrived at Trarbach late at noon. This now small and humble townis said to have been the Thronus Bacchi of the ancients. From the spotwhere the travellers halted to take, as it were, their impression of thetown, they saw before them the little hostelry, a poor pretender to theThronus Bacchi, with the rude sign of the Holy Mother over the door. Thepeaked roof, the sunk window, the gray walls, checkered with the rudebeams of wood so common to the meaner houses on the Continent, boresomething of a melancholy and prepossessing aspect. Right above, withits Gothic windows and venerable spire, rose the church of the town;and, crowning the summit of a green and almost perpendicular mountain,scowled the remains of one of those mighty castles which make thenever-failing frown on a German landscape.
The scene was one of quiet and of gloom: the exceeding serenity of theday contrasted, with an almost unpleasing brightness, the poverty ofthe town, the thinness of the population, and the dreary grandeur of theruins that overhung the capital of the perished race of the bold Countsof Spanheim.
They passed the night at Trarbach, and continued their journey nextday. At Treves, Gertrude was for some days seriously ill; and when theyreturned to Coblentz, her disease had evidently received a rapid andalarming increase.
The Pilgrims of the Rhine Page 50