A Tramp Abroad

by Mark Twain

  CHAPTER II

  Heidelberg

  [Landing a Monarch at Heidelberg]

  We stopped at a hotel by the railway-station. Next morning, as we sat inmy room waiting for breakfast to come up, we got a good deal interestedin something which was going on over the way, in front of anotherhotel. First, the personage who is called the _Portier_ (who is not the_Porter_, but is a sort of first-mate of a hotel) [1. See AppendixA] appeared at the door in a spick-and-span new blue cloth uniform,decorated with shining brass buttons, and with bands of gold lace aroundhis cap and wristbands; and he wore white gloves, too.

  He shed an official glance upon the situation, and then began to giveorders. Two women-servants came out with pails and brooms and brushes,and gave the sidewalk a thorough scrubbing; meanwhile two othersscrubbed the four marble steps which led up to the door; beyond these wecould see some men-servants taking up the carpet of the grand staircase.This carpet was carried away and the last grain of dust beaten andbanged and swept out of it; then brought back and put down again. Thebrass stair-rods received an exhaustive polishing and were returned totheir places. Now a troop of servants brought pots and tubs of bloomingplants and formed them into a beautiful jungle about the door and thebase of the staircase. Other servants adorned all the balconies of thevarious stories with flowers and banners; others ascended to theroof and hoisted a great flag on a staff there. Now came some morechamber-maids and retouched the sidewalk, and afterward wiped the marblesteps with damp cloths and finished by dusting them off with featherbrushes. Now a broad black carpet was brought out and laid down themarble steps and out across the sidewalk to the curbstone. The _Portier_cast his eye along it, and found it was not absolutely straight; hecommanded it to be straightened; the servants made the effort--madeseveral efforts, in fact--but the _Portier_ was not satisfied. Hefinally had it taken up, and then he put it down himself and got itright.

  At this stage of the proceedings, a narrow bright red carpet wasunrolled and stretched from the top of the marble steps to thecurbstone, along the center of the black carpet. This red path costthe _Portier_ more trouble than even the black one had done. But hepatiently fixed and refixed it until it was exactly right and layprecisely in the middle of the black carpet. In New York theseperformances would have gathered a mighty crowd of curious and intenselyinterested spectators; but here it only captured an audience of halfa dozen little boys who stood in a row across the pavement, some withtheir school-knapsacks on their backs and their hands in their pockets,others with arms full of bundles, and all absorbed in the show.Occasionally one of them skipped irreverently over the carpet andtook up a position on the other side. This always visibly annoyed the_Portier_.

  Now came a waiting interval. The landlord, in plain clothes, andbareheaded, placed himself on the bottom marble step, abreast the_Portier_, who stood on the other end of the same steps; six or eightwaiters, gloved, bareheaded, and wearing their whitest linen, theirwhitest cravats, and their finest swallow-tails, grouped themselvesabout these chiefs, but leaving the carpetway clear. Nobody moved orspoke any more but only waited.

  In a short time the shrill piping of a coming train was heard, andimmediately groups of people began to gather in the street. Two or threeopen carriages arrived, and deposited some maids of honor and some maleofficials at the hotel. Presently another open carriage brought theGrand Duke of Baden, a stately man in uniform, who wore the handsomebrass-mounted, steel-spiked helmet of the army on his head. Last camethe Empress of Germany and the Grand Duchess of Baden in a closedcarriage; these passed through the low-bowing groups of servants anddisappeared in the hotel, exhibiting to us only the backs of theirheads, and then the show was over.

  It appears to be as difficult to land a monarch as it is to launch aship.

  But as to Heidelberg. The weather was growing pretty warm,--very warm,in fact. So we left the valley and took quarters at the Schloss Hotel,on the hill, above the Castle.

  Heidelberg lies at the mouth of a narrow gorge--a gorge the shape ofa shepherd's crook; if one looks up it he perceives that it is aboutstraight, for a mile and a half, then makes a sharp curve to theright and disappears. This gorge--along whose bottom pours the swiftNeckar--is confined between (or cloven through) a couple of long, steepridges, a thousand feet high and densely wooded clear to their summits,with the exception of one section which has been shaved and put undercultivation. These ridges are chopped off at the mouth of the gorgeand form two bold and conspicuous headlands, with Heidelberg nestlingbetween them; from their bases spreads away the vast dim expanse of theRhine valley, and into this expanse the Neckar goes wandering in shiningcurves and is presently lost to view.

  Now if one turns and looks up the gorge once more, he will see theSchloss Hotel on the right perched on a precipice overlooking theNeckar--a precipice which is so sumptuously cushioned and draped withfoliage that no glimpse of the rock appears. The building seems veryairily situated. It has the appearance of being on a shelf half-wayup the wooded mountainside; and as it is remote and isolated, and verywhite, it makes a strong mark against the lofty leafy rampart at itsback.

  This hotel had a feature which was a decided novelty, and one whichmight be adopted with advantage by any house which is perched in acommanding situation. This feature may be described as a series ofglass-enclosed parlors _clinging to the outside of the house_, oneagainst each and every bed-chamber and drawing-room. They are like long,narrow, high-ceiled bird-cages hung against the building. My room was acorner room, and had two of these things, a north one and a west one.

  From the north cage one looks up the Neckar gorge; from the west one helooks down it. This last affords the most extensive view, and it is oneof the loveliest that can be imagined, too. Out of a billowy upheavalof vivid green foliage, a rifle-shot removed, rises the huge ruinof Heidelberg Castle, [2. See Appendix B] with empty window arches,ivy-mailed battlements, moldering towers--the Lear of inanimatenature--deserted, discrowned, beaten by the storms, but royal still,and beautiful. It is a fine sight to see the evening sunlight suddenlystrike the leafy declivity at the Castle's base and dash up it anddrench it as with a luminous spray, while the adjacent groves are indeep shadow.

  Behind the Castle swells a great dome-shaped hill, forest-clad, andbeyond that a nobler and loftier one. The Castle looks down upon thecompact brown-roofed town; and from the town two picturesque old bridgesspan the river. Now the view broadens; through the gateway of thesentinel headlands you gaze out over the wide Rhine plain, whichstretches away, softly and richly tinted, grows gradually and dreamilyindistinct, and finally melts imperceptibly into the remote horizon.

  I have never enjoyed a view which had such a serene and satisfying charmabout it as this one gives.

  The first night we were there, we went to bed and to sleep early; butI awoke at the end of two or three hours, and lay a comfortable whilelistening to the soothing patter of the rain against the balconywindows. I took it to be rain, but it turned out to be only the murmurof the restless Neckar, tumbling over her dikes and dams far below, inthe gorge. I got up and went into the west balcony and saw a wonderfulsight. Away down on the level under the black mass of the Castle, thetown lay, stretched along the river, its intricate cobweb of streetsjeweled with twinkling lights; there were rows of lights on the bridges;these flung lances of light upon the water, in the black shadows of thearches; and away at the extremity of all this fairy spectacle blinkedand glowed a massed multitude of gas-jets which seemed to cover acres ofground; it was as if all the diamonds in the world had been spreadout there. I did not know before, that a half-mile of sextuplerailway-tracks could be made such an adornment.

  One thinks Heidelberg by day--with its surroundings--is the lastpossibility of the beautiful; but when he sees Heidelberg by night, afallen Milky Way, with that glittering railway constellation pinned tothe border, he requires time to consider upon the verdict.

  One never tires of poking about in the dense woods that clothe all theselofty Neckar hills to their tops. The
great deeps of a boundless foresthave a beguiling and impressive charm in any country; but German legendsand fairy tales have given these an added charm. They have peopled allthat region with gnomes, and dwarfs, and all sorts of mysterious anduncanny creatures. At the time I am writing of, I had been readingso much of this literature that sometimes I was not sure but I wasbeginning to believe in the gnomes and fairies as realities.

  One afternoon I got lost in the woods about a mile from the hotel, andpresently fell into a train of dreamy thought about animals which talk,and kobolds, and enchanted folk, and the rest of the pleasant legendarystuff; and so, by stimulating my fancy, I finally got to imagining Iglimpsed small flitting shapes here and there down the columnedaisles of the forest. It was a place which was peculiarly meet for theoccasion. It was a pine wood, with so thick and soft a carpet of brownneedles that one's footfall made no more sound than if he were treadingon wool; the tree-trunks were as round and straight and smooth aspillars, and stood close together; they were bare of branches to a pointabout twenty-five feet above-ground, and from there upward so thick withboughs that not a ray of sunlight could pierce through. The world wasbright with sunshine outside, but a deep and mellow twilight reigned inthere, and also a deep silence so profound that I seemed to hear my ownbreathings.

  When I had stood ten minutes, thinking and imagining, and gettingmy spirit in tune with the place, and in the right mood to enjoy thesupernatural, a raven suddenly uttered a horse croak over my head. Itmade me start; and then I was angry because I started. I looked up, andthe creature was sitting on a limb right over me, looking down at me.I felt something of the same sense of humiliation and injury whichone feels when he finds that a human stranger has been clandestinelyinspecting him in his privacy and mentally commenting upon him. I eyedthe raven, and the raven eyed me. Nothing was said during some seconds.Then the bird stepped a little way along his limb to get a better pointof observation, lifted his wings, stuck his head far down below hisshoulders toward me and croaked again--a croak with a distinctlyinsulting expression about it. If he had spoken in English he couldnot have said any more plainly than he did say in raven, "Well, what do_you_ want here?" I felt as foolish as if I had been caught in somemean act by a responsible being, and reproved for it. However, I madeno reply; I would not bandy words with a raven. The adversary waiteda while, with his shoulders still lifted, his head thrust down betweenthem, and his keen bright eye fixed on me; then he threw out two orthree more insults, which I could not understand, further than that Iknew a portion of them consisted of language not used in church.

  I still made no reply. Now the adversary raised his head andcalled. There was an answering croak from a little distance in thewood--evidently a croak of inquiry. The adversary explained withenthusiasm, and the other raven dropped everything and came. The two satside by side on the limb and discussed me as freely and offensively astwo great naturalists might discuss a new kind of bug. The thing becamemore and more embarrassing. They called in another friend. This was toomuch. I saw that they had the advantage of me, and so I concluded to getout of the scrape by walking out of it. They enjoyed my defeat as muchas any low white people could have done. They craned their necks andlaughed at me (for a raven _can_ laugh, just like a man), they squalledinsulting remarks after me as long as they could see me. They werenothing but ravens--I knew that--what they thought of me could be amatter of no consequence--and yet when even a raven shouts after you,"What a hat!" "Oh, pull down your vest!" and that sort of thing, ithurts you and humiliates you, and there is no getting around it withfine reasoning and pretty arguments.

  Animals talk to each other, of course. There can be no question aboutthat; but I suppose there are very few people who can understand them.I never knew but one man who could. I knew he could, however, because hetold me so himself. He was a middle-aged, simple-hearted miner who hadlived in a lonely corner of California, among the woods and mountains,a good many years, and had studied the ways of his only neighbors, thebeasts and the birds, until he believed he could accurately translateany remark which they made. This was Jim Baker. According to Jim Baker,some animals have only a limited education, and some use only simplewords, and scarcely ever a comparison or a flowery figure; whereas,certain other animals have a large vocabulary, a fine command oflanguage and a ready and fluent delivery; consequently these latter talka great deal; they like it; they are so conscious of their talent,and they enjoy "showing off." Baker said, that after long and carefulobservation, he had come to the conclusion that the bluejays were thebest talkers he had found among birds and beasts. Said he:

  "There's more _to_ a bluejay than any other creature. He has got moremoods, and more different kinds of feelings than other creatures; and,mind you, whatever a bluejay feels, he can put into language. Andno mere commonplace language, either, but rattling, out-and-outbook-talk--and bristling with metaphor, too--just bristling! And as forcommand of language--why _you_ never see a bluejay get stuck for a word.No man ever did. They just boil out of him! And another thing: I'venoticed a good deal, and there's no bird, or cow, or anything that usesas good grammar as a bluejay. You may say a cat uses good grammar. Well,a cat does--but you let a cat get excited once; you let a cat get topulling fur with another cat on a shed, nights, and you'll hear grammarthat will give you the lockjaw. Ignorant people think it's the _noise_which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it'sthe sickening grammar they use. Now I've never heard a jay use badgrammar but very seldom; and when they do, they are as ashamed as ahuman; they shut right down and leave.

  "You may call a jay a bird. Well, so he is, in a measure--but he's gotfeathers on him, and don't belong to no church, perhaps; but otherwisehe is just as much human as you be. And I'll tell you for why. A jay'sgifts, and instincts, and feelings, and interests, cover the wholeground. A jay hasn't got any more principle than a Congressman. A jaywill lie, a jay will steal, a jay will deceive, a jay will betray; andfour times out of five, a jay will go back on his solemnest promise. Thesacredness of an obligation is such a thing which you can't cram intono bluejay's head. Now, on top of all this, there's another thing; ajay can out-swear any gentleman in the mines. You think a cat can swear.Well, a cat can; but you give a bluejay a subject that calls for hisreserve-powers, and where is your cat? Don't talk to _me_--I know toomuch about this thing; in the one little particular of scolding--justgood, clean, out-and-out scolding--a bluejay can lay over anything,human or divine. Yes, sir, a jay is everything that a man is. A jay cancry, a jay can laugh, a jay can feel shame, a jay can reason and planand discuss, a jay likes gossip and scandal, a jay has got a senseof humor, a jay knows when he is an ass just as well as you do--maybebetter. If a jay ain't human, he better take in his sign, that's all.Now I'm going to tell you a perfectly true fact about some bluejays."