The Malady of the Century | Page 4

CHAPTER X.
A Seaside Romance
CHAPTER XL
In the Horselberg
CHAPTER XII.
Tannhauser's Plight
CHAPTER XIII.
Consummation
CHAPTER XIV.
Uden Horizo
CHAPTER I.
MOUNTAIN AND FOREST.
"Come, you fellows, that's enough joking. This defection of yours,
melancholy Eynhardt, combines obstinacy with wisdom, like Balaam's
ass! Well! may you rest in peace. And now let us be off."

The glasses, filled with clear Affenthaler, rang merrily together, the
smiling landlord took up his money, and the company rose noisily from
the wooden bench, overturning it with a bang. The round table was
only proof against a similar accident on account of its structure, which
some one with wise forethought had so designed that only the most
tremendous shaking could upset its equilibrium. The boisterous group
consisted of five or six young men, easily recognized as students by
their caps with colored bands, the scars on their faces, and their rather
swaggering manner. They slung their knapsacks on, stepped through
the open door of the little arbor where they had been sitting, on to the
highroad, and gathered round the previous speaker. He was a tall,
good-looking young man, with fair hair, laughing blue eyes, and a
budding mustache.
"Then you are determined, Eynhardt, that you won't go any further?"
asked he, with an accent which betrayed him as a Rhinelander.
"Yes, I am determined," Eynhardt answered.
"A groan for the worthless fellow; but more in sorrow than in anger,"
said the tall one to the others. They groaned three times loudly, all
together, while the Rhinelander gravely beat time. An unpracticed ear
would very likely have failed to note the shade of feeling implied in the
noise; but he appeared satisfied.
"Well, just as you like. No compulsion. Freedom is the best thing in
life--including the freedom to do stupid things."
"Perhaps he knows of some cave where he is going to turn hermit," said
one of the group.
"Or he has a little business appointment, and we should be in the way,"
said another.
They laughed, and the Rhinelander went on:
"Well! moon away here, and we will travel on. But before all things be
true to yourself. Don't forget that the whole world is as much a

phantom as the brown Black Forest maiden. And now farewell; and
think a great deal about us phantom people, who will always keep up
the ghost of a friendship for you."
The young man whom he addressed shook him and the others by the
hand, and they all lifted their caps with a loud "hurrah," and struck out
vigorously on the road. The sentiment of the farewell, and the tender
speeches, had been disposed of in the inn, so they now parted gayly, in
youth's happy fullness of life and hope for the future, and without any
of that secret melancholy which Time the immeasurable distils into
every parting. Hardly had they turned their backs on the friend they left
behind them when they began to sing, "Im Schwarzen Walfisch zu
Askalon," exaggerating the melancholy of the first half of the tune, and
the gayety of the second, passing riotously away behind a turn of the
road, their song becoming fainter and fainter in the distance.
This little scene, which took place on an August afternoon in the year
1869, had for its theater the highroad leading from Hausach to Triberg,
just at the place where a footpath descends into the valley to the little
town of Hornberg. The persons represented were young men who had
lately graduated at Heidelberg, and who were taking a holiday together
in the Black Forest, recovering from the recent terrors of examination
in the fragrant air of the pine woods. As far off as Offenburg they had
traveled by the railway in the prosaic fashion of commercial travelers,
from there they had tramped like Canadian backwoodsmen, and
reached Hasslach--twelve miles as the crow flies. After resting for a
day they set out at the first cockcrow, and before the noontide heat
reached the lovely Kinzigthal, which lies all along the way from
Hausach to Hornberg. Over the door of a wayside inn a signboard,
festooned with freshly- cut carpenter's shavings, beckoned invitingly to
them, and here the young men halted. The view from this place was
particularly beautiful. The road made a kind of terrace halfway up the
mountain, on one side rising sheer up for a hundred feet to its summit,
thickly wooded all the way, on the other side sloping to the wide valley,
where the Gutach flowed, at times tumbling over rough stones, or again
spreading itself softly like oil, through flat meadow land. Below lay the
little town of Hornberg, with its crooked streets and alleys, its stately

square, framing an old church, several inns, and prosperous-looking
houses and shops. Beyond the valley rose a