Hyperion | Page 3

There is hardly a league of its whole course, from its cradle in the
snowy Alps to its grave in the sands of Holland, which boasts not its
peculiar charms. By heavens! If I were a German I would be proud of it
too; and of the clustering grapes, that hang about its temples, as it reels
onward through vineyards, in a triumphal march, like Bacchus,

crowned and drunken.
But I will not attempt to describe the Rhine; it would make this chapter
much too long. And to do it well, one should write like a god; and his
style flow onward royally with breaks and dashes, like the waters of
that royal river, and antique, quaint, and Gothic times, be reflected in it.
Alas! this evening my style flows not at all. Flow, then, into this
smoke-colored goblet, thou blood of the Rhine! out of thy
prison-house,--out of thy long-necked, tapering flask, in shape not
unlike a church-spire among thy native hills; and, from the crystal
belfry, loud ring the merry tinkling bells, while I drink a health to my
hero, in whose heart is sadness, and in whose ears the bells of
Andernach are ringing noon.
He is threading his way alone through a narrow alley, and now up a
flight of stone steps, and along the city wall, towards that old round
tower, built by the Archbishop Frederick of Cologne in the twelfth
century. It has a romantic interest in his eyes; for he has still in his
mind and heart that beautiful sketch of Carové, in which is described a
day on the tower of Andernach. He finds the old keeper and his wife
still there; and the old keeper closes the door behind him slowly, as of
old, lest he should jam too hard the poor souls in Purgatory, whose fate
it is to suffer in the cracks of doors and hinges. But alas! alas! the
daughter, the maiden with long, dark eyelashes! she is asleep in her
little grave, under the linden trees of Feldkirche, with rosemary in her
folded hands!
Flemming returned to the hotel disappointed. As he passed along the
narrow streets, he was dreaming of many things; but mostly of the
keeper's daughter, asleep in the churchyard of Feldkirche. Suddenly, on
turning the corner of an ancient, gloomy church, his attention was
arrested by a little chapel in an angle of the wall. It was only a small
thatched roof, like a bird's nest; under which stood a rude wooden
image of the Saviour on the Cross. A real crown of thorns was upon his
head, which was bowed downward, as if in the death agony; and drops
of blood were falling down his cheeks, and from his hands and feet and
side. The face was haggard and ghastly beyond all expression; and
wore a look of unutterable bodily anguish. The rude sculptor had given
it this, but his art could go no farther. The sublimity of death in a dying
Saviour, the expiring God-likeness of Jesus of Nazareth was not there.

The artist had caught no heavenly inspiration from his theme. All was
coarse, harsh, and revolting to a sensitive mind; and Flemming turned
away with a shudder, as he saw this fearful image gazing at him, with
its fixed and half-shut eyes.
He soon reached the hotel, but that face of agony still haunted him. He
could not refrain from speaking of it to a very old woman, who sat
knitting by the window of the dining-room, in a high-backed,
old-fashioned arm-chair. I believe she was the innkeeper's grandmother.
At all events she was old enough to be so. She took off her owl-eyed
spectacles, and, as she wiped the glasses with her handkerchief, said;
"Thou dear Heaven! Is it possible! Did you never hear of the Christ of
Andernach?"
Flemming answered in the negative.
"Thou dear Heaven!" continued the old woman. "It is a very wonderful
story; and a true one, as every good Christian in Andernach will tell
you. And it all happened before the deathof my blessed man, four years
ago, let me see,--yes, four years ago, come Christmas."
Here the old woman stopped speaking, but went on with her knitting.
Other thoughts seemed to occupy her mind. She was thinking, no doubt,
of her blessed man, as German widows call their dead husbands. But
Flemming having expressed an ardent wish to hear the wonderful story,
she told it, in nearly the following words.
"There was once a poor old woman in Andernach whose name was
Frau Martha, and she lived all alone in a house by herself, and loved all
the Saints and the blessed Virgin, and was as good as an angel, and sold
pies down by the Rheinkrahn. But her house was very old, and