by Mark Twain
A round table as large as King Arthur's stood in the center of the room;while the waiters were getting ready to serve our dinner on it weall went out to see the renowned clock on the front of the municipalbuildings.
CHAPTER XII
[What the Wives Saved]
The RATHHAUS, or municipal building, is of the quaintest and mostpicturesque Middle-Age architecture. It has a massive portico and steps,before it, heavily balustraded, and adorned with life-sized rusty ironknights in complete armor. The clock-face on the front of the buildingis very large and of curious pattern. Ordinarily, a gilded angelstrikes the hour on a big bell with a hammer; as the striking ceases, alife-sized figure of Time raises its hour-glass and turns it; two goldenrams advance and butt each other; a gilded cock lifts its wings; but themain features are two great angels, who stand on each side of the dialwith long horns at their lips; it was said that they blew melodiousblasts on these horns every hour--but they did not do it for us. We weretold, later, that they blew only at night, when the town was still.
Within the RATHHAUS were a number of huge wild boars' heads, preserved,and mounted on brackets along the wall; they bore inscriptions tellingwho killed them and how many hundred years ago it was done. One room inthe building was devoted to the preservation of ancient archives. Therethey showed us no end of aged documents; some were signed by Popes,some by Tilly and other great generals, and one was a letter written andsubscribed by Goetz von Berlichingen in Heilbronn in 1519 just after hisrelease from the Square Tower.
This fine old robber-knight was a devoutly and sincerely religiousman, hospitable, charitable to the poor, fearless in fight, active,enterprising, and possessed of a large and generous nature. He had inhim a quality of being able to overlook moderate injuries, and beingable to forgive and forget mortal ones as soon as he had soundlytrounced the authors of them. He was prompt to take up any poor devil'squarrel and risk his neck to right him. The common folk held him dear,and his memory is still green in ballad and tradition. He used to go onthe highway and rob rich wayfarers; and other times he would swoop downfrom his high castle on the hills of the Neckar and capture passingcargoes of merchandise. In his memoirs he piously thanks the Giver ofall Good for remembering him in his needs and delivering sundry suchcargoes into his hands at times when only special providences could haverelieved him. He was a doughty warrior and found a deep joy in battle.In an assault upon a stronghold in Bavaria when he was only twenty-threeyears old, his right hand was shot away, but he was so interested in thefight that he did not observe it for a while. He said that the iron handwhich was made for him afterward, and which he wore for more than half acentury, was nearly as clever a member as the fleshy one had been. I wasglad to get a facsimile of the letter written by this fine old GermanRobin Hood, though I was not able to read it. He was a better artistwith his sword than with his pen.
We went down by the river and saw the Square Tower. It was a veryvenerable structure, very strong, and very ornamental. There was noopening near the ground. They had to use a ladder to get into it, nodoubt.
We visited the principal church, also--a curious old structure, with atowerlike spire adorned with all sorts of grotesque images. The innerwalls of the church were placarded with large mural tablets of copper,bearing engraved inscriptions celebrating the merits of old Heilbronnworthies of two or three centuries ago, and also bearing rudely paintedeffigies of themselves and their families tricked out in the queercostumes of those days. The head of the family sat in the foreground,and beyond him extended a sharply receding and diminishing row ofsons; facing him sat his wife, and beyond her extended a low row ofdiminishing daughters. The family was usually large, but the perspectivebad.
Then we hired the hack and the horse which Goetz von Berlichingen usedto use, and drove several miles into the country to visit the placecalled WEIBERTREU--Wife's Fidelity I suppose it means. It was a feudalcastle of the Middle Ages. When we reached its neighborhood we foundit was beautifully situated, but on top of a mound, or hill, round andtolerably steep, and about two hundred feet high. Therefore, as the sunwas blazing hot, we did not climb up there, but took the place on trust,and observed it from a distance while the horse leaned up against afence and rested. The place has no interest except that which is lent itby its legend, which is a very pretty one--to this effect:
THE LEGEND
In the Middle Ages, a couple of young dukes, brothers, took oppositesides in one of the wars, the one fighting for the Emperor, the otheragainst him. One of them owned the castle and village on top of themound which I have been speaking of, and in his absence his brothercame with his knights and soldiers and began a siege. It was a long andtedious business, for the people made a stubborn and faithful defense.But at last their supplies ran out and starvation began its work;more fell by hunger than by the missiles of the enemy. They by andby surrendered, and begged for charitable terms. But the beleagueringprince was so incensed against them for their long resistance that hesaid he would spare none but the women and children--all men should beput to the sword without exception, and all their goods destroyed. Thenthe women came and fell on their knees and begged for the lives of theirhusbands.
"No," said the prince, "not a man of them shall escape alive; youyourselves shall go with your children into houseless and friendlessbanishment; but that you may not starve I grant you this one grace,that each woman may bear with her from this place as much of her mostvaluable property as she is able to carry."
Very well, presently the gates swung open and out filed those womencarrying their HUSBANDS on their shoulders. The besiegers, furious atthe trick, rushed forward to slaughter the men, but the Duke steppedbetween and said:
"No, put up your swords--a prince's word is inviolable."
When we got back to the hotel, King Arthur's Round Table was ready forus in its white drapery, and the head waiter and his first assistant, inswallow-tails and white cravats, brought in the soup and the hot platesat once.
Mr. X had ordered the dinner, and when the wine came on, he picked upa bottle, glanced at the label, and then turned to the grave, themelancholy, the sepulchral head waiter and said it was not the sort ofwine he had asked for. The head waiter picked up the bottle, cast hisundertaker-eye on it and said:
"It is true; I beg pardon." Then he turned on his subordinate and calmlysaid, "Bring another label."
At the same time he slid the present label off with his hand and laid itaside; it had been newly put on, its paste was still wet. When the newlabel came, he put it on; our French wine being now turned into Germanwine, according to desire, the head waiter went blandly about his otherduties, as if the working of this sort of miracle was a common and easything to him.
Mr. X said he had not known, before, that there were people honestenough to do this miracle in public, but he was aware that thousandsupon thousands of labels were imported into America from Europe everyyear, to enable dealers to furnish to their customers in a quiet andinexpensive way all the different kinds of foreign wines they mightrequire.
We took a turn around the town, after dinner, and found it fully asinteresting in the moonlight as it had been in the daytime. The streetswere narrow and roughly paved, and there was not a sidewalk or astreet-lamp anywhere. The dwellings were centuries old, and vast enoughfor hotels. They widened all the way up; the stories projected furtherand further forward and aside as they ascended, and the long rowsof lighted windows, filled with little bits of panes, curtained withfigured white muslin and adorned outside with boxes of flowers, made apretty effect.
The moon was bright, and the light and shadow very strong; and nothingcould be more picturesque than those curving streets, with their rowsof huge high gables leaning far over toward each other in a friendlygossiping way, and the crowds below drifting through the alternatingblots of gloom and mellow bars of moonlight. Nearly everybody wasabroad, chatting, singing, romping, or massed in lazy comfortableattitudes in the doorways.
In one place there was a public building which was
fenced about with athick, rusty chain, which sagged from post to post in a succession oflow swings. The pavement, here, was made of heavy blocks of stone. Inthe glare of the moon a party of barefooted children were swinging onthose chains and having a noisy good time. They were not the first oneswho have done that; even their great-great-grandfathers had not been thefirst to do it when they were children. The strokes of the bare feethad worn grooves inches deep in the stone flags; it had taken manygenerations of swinging children to accomplish that.
Everywhere in the town were the mold and decay that go with antiquity,and evidence of it; but I do not know that anything else gave us sovivid a sense of the old age of Heilbronn as those footworn grooves inthe paving-stones.
CHAPTER XIII
[My Long Crawl in the Dark]
When we got back to the hotel I wound and set the pedometer and putit in my pocket, for I was to carry it next day and keep record of themiles we made. The work which we had given the instrument to do duringthe day which had just closed had not fatigued it perceptibly.
We were in bed by ten, for we wanted to be up and away on our tramphomeward with the dawn. I hung fire, but Harris went to sleep at once.I hate a man who goes to sleep at once; there is a sort of indefinablesomething about it which is not exactly an insult, and yet is aninsolence; and one which is hard to bear, too. I lay there frettingover this injury, and trying to go to sleep; but the harder I tried, thewider awake I grew. I got to feeling very lonely in the dark, with nocompany but an undigested dinner. My mind got a start by and by, andbegan to consider the beginning of every subject which has ever beenthought of; but it never went further than the beginning; it was touchand go; it fled from topic to topic with a frantic speed. At the end ofan hour my head was in a perfect whirl and I was dead tired, fagged out.
The fatigue was so great that it presently began to make some headagainst the nervous excitement; while imagining myself wide awake, Iwould really doze into momentary unconsciousness, and come suddenly outof it with a physical jerk which nearly wrenched my joints apart--thedelusion of the instant being that I was tumbling backward over aprecipice. After I had fallen over eight or nine precipices and thusfound out that one half of my brain had been asleep eight or nine timeswithout the wide-awake, hard-working other half suspecting it, theperiodical unconsciousnesses began to extend their spell gradually overmore of my brain-territory, and at last I sank into a drowse which grewdeeper and deeper and was doubtless just on the very point of being asolid, blessed dreamless stupor, when--what was that?
My dulled faculties dragged themselves partly back to life and took areceptive attitude. Now out of an immense, a limitless distance, camea something which grew and grew, and approached, and presently wasrecognizable as a sound--it had rather seemed to be a feeling, before.This sound was a mile away, now--perhaps it was the murmur of a storm;and now it was nearer--not a quarter of a mile away; was it the muffledrasping and grinding of distant machinery? No, it came still nearer; wasit the measured tramp of a marching troop? But it came nearer still,and still nearer--and at last it was right in the room: it was merelya mouse gnawing the woodwork. So I had held my breath all that time forsuch a trifle.
Well, what was done could not be helped; I would go to sleep at once andmake up the lost time. That was a thoughtless thought. Without intendingit--hardly knowing it--I fell to listening intently to that sound, andeven unconsciously counting the strokes of the mouse's nutmeg-grater.Presently I was deriving exquisite suffering from this employment, yetmaybe I could have endured it if the mouse had attended steadily tohis work; but he did not do that; he stopped every now and then, and Isuffered more while waiting and listening for him to begin again thanI did while he was gnawing. Along at first I was mentally offering areward of five--six--seven--ten--dollars for that mouse; but towardthe last I was offering rewards which were entirely beyond my means. Iclose-reefed my ears--that is to say, I bent the flaps of them downand furled them into five or six folds, and pressed them against thehearing-orifice--but it did no good: the faculty was so sharpenedby nervous excitement that it was become a microphone and could hearthrough the overlays without trouble.
My anger grew to a frenzy. I finally did what all persons before me havedone, clear back to Adam,--resolved to throw something. I reached downand got my walking-shoes, then sat up in bed and listened, in order toexactly locate the noise. But I couldn't do it; it was as unlocatable asa cricket's noise; and where one thinks that that is, is always the veryplace where it isn't. So I presently hurled a shoe at random, and witha vicious vigor. It struck the wall over Harris's head and fell down onhim; I had not imagined I could throw so far. It woke Harris, and I wasglad of it until I found he was not angry; then I was sorry. He soonwent to sleep again, which pleased me; but straightway the mouse beganagain, which roused my temper once more. I did not want to wake Harrisa second time, but the gnawing continued until I was compelled to throwthe other shoe.
This time I broke a mirror--there were two in the room--I got thelargest one, of course. Harris woke again, but did not complain, andI was sorrier than ever. I resolved that I would suffer all possibletorture before I would disturb him a third time.
The mouse eventually retired, and by and by I was sinking to sleep, whena clock began to strike; I counted till it was done, and was about todrowse again when another clock began; I counted; then the two greatRATHHAUS clock angels began to send forth soft, rich, melodious blastsfrom their long trumpets. I had never heard anything that was so lovely,or weird, or mysterious--but when they got to blowing the quarter-hours,they seemed to me to be overdoing the thing. Every time I droppedoff for the moment, a new noise woke me. Each time I woke I missed mycoverlet, and had to reach down to the floor and get it again.
At last all sleepiness forsook me. I recognized the fact that I washopelessly and permanently wide awake. Wide awake, and feverish andthirsty. When I had lain tossing there as long as I could endure it, itoccurred to me that it would be a good idea to dress and go out in thegreat square and take a refreshing wash in the fountain, and smoke andreflect there until the remnant of the night was gone.
I believed I could dress in the dark without waking Harris. I hadbanished my shoes after the mouse, but my slippers would do for a summernight. So I rose softly, and gradually got on everything--down to onesock. I couldn't seem to get on the track of that sock, any way I couldfix it. But I had to have it; so I went down on my hands and knees, withone slipper on and the other in my hand, and began to paw gently aroundand rake the floor, but with no success. I enlarged my circle, and wenton pawing and raking. With every pressure of my knee, how the floorcreaked! and every time I chanced to rake against any article, it seemedto give out thirty-five or thirty-six times more noise than it wouldhave done in the daytime. In those cases I always stopped and heldmy breath till I was sure Harris had not awakened--then I crept alongagain. I moved on and on, but I could not find the sock; I could notseem to find anything but furniture. I could not remember that there wasmuch furniture in the room when I went to bed, but the place was alivewith it now --especially chairs--chairs everywhere--had a couple offamilies moved in, in the mean time? And I never could seem to GLANCE onone of those chairs, but always struck it full and square with my head.My temper rose, by steady and sure degrees, and as I pawed on and on, Ifell to making vicious comments under my breath.
Finally, with a venomous access of irritation, I said I would leavewithout the sock; so I rose up and made straight for the door--as Isupposed--and suddenly confronted my dim spectral image in the unbrokenmirror. It startled the breath out of me, for an instant; it also showedme that I was lost, and had no sort of idea where I was. When I realizedthis, I was so angry that I had to sit down on the floor and take holdof something to keep from lifting the roof off with an explosion ofopinion. If there had been only one mirror, it might possibly havehelped to locate me; but there were two, and two were as bad as athousand; besides, these were on opposite sides of the room. I could seethe dim blur of the windows
, but in my turned-around condition they wereexactly where they ought not to be, and so they only confused me insteadof helping me.
I started to get up, and knocked down an umbrella; it made a noiselike a pistol-shot when it struck that hard, slick, carpetless floor;I grated my teeth and held my breath--Harris did not stir. I set theumbrella slowly and carefully on end against the wall, but as soon asI took my hand away, its heel slipped from under it, and down it cameagain with another bang. I shrunk together and listened a moment insilent fury--no harm done, everything quiet. With the most painstakingcare and nicety, I stood the umbrella up once more, took my hand away,and down it came again.
I have been strictly reared, but if it had not been so dark and solemnand awful there in that lonely, vast room, I do believe I should havesaid something then which could not be put into a Sunday-school bookwithout injuring the sale of it. If my reasoning powers had not beenalready sapped dry by my harassments, I would have known better than totry to set an umbrella on end on one of those glassy German floors inthe dark; it can't be done in the daytime without four failures to onesuccess. I had one comfort, though--Harris was yet still and silent--hehad not stirred.