Chapter VIII: Part 8

To see Interlaken then is to behold her at her gayest. Bridge-parties forsake their cards, late diners their ices, and billiardists their cues. Each little balcony on the hotel fronts is promptly crowded, orchestras strike up lively Strauss waltzes, troops of delighted guests hurry across the Höheweg and pour into the meadow, until one might fairly conclude there was a carnival on, from the overflow of laughter and merrymaking. It is always a great moment at the Kursaal. There the excitement seekers have been wandering from parlors to lounging-rooms and ending up in the cheery gaming-hall, where a toy train on a long green table darts around a little track, laden with the francs and merry hopes of modest challengers of fortune, and comes to an exciting and leisurely stop before some station with the name of a European capital. Just then, like as not, as the _croupier_ begins raking in the scattered piles of silver and the losers are being gleefully accosted by their friends, somebody suddenly shouts “Fireworks!” and forthwith all run hurrahing into the gardens and cry out like summer children in vast delight over the rockets that go hurtling skyward from the Höhenmatte. It is all quite of the nature of a very elegant international fête to which the Old World and the New have accredited their most _recherché_ representatives.

There is seldom a lack of keen activity at Interlaken, but at this hour it is most abounding; nor will the new arrival fail to note the contrast between the sharp alertness of this company and the lethargic listlessness that depresses, for instance, the bored idlers who bask in the dusty olive gardens of the Riviera. In the intermittent glow of the fireworks, cottages and distant hotels spring out of the surrounding darkness. The top of a hillside sanatorium appears of a sudden white against the dark pines, the packsaddle roof of the church tower discovers itself, a turret shows with the red field and white Greek cross of the Swiss flag lazily unfolding above it, and one looks anxiously for just one glimpse of the old cloister’s round towers and cone-shaped roofs that reminded Longfellow of “tall tapers with extinguishers.” Music drifts down from remote cafés and pavilions nestling in wooded nooks. The air is heady and buoyant with the scent of pine and fir. Life seems at high tide; and then just as suddenly it is all over, and the gay company resumes its interrupted activities with infinite laughter and handclapping.

There is a positive spell to all this Alpine comedy. No new arrival will feel inclined to return at once to hotel conventionalities, with a soft purple mist shrouding the Lauterbrunnen Valley, and the distant Jungfrau lying pallid and wan in the moonlight. He will gaze about him in wonder at the snow-crowned peaks that hem in the little Bödeli plain where Interlaken snuggles, and will feel how wonderful it is that the boisterous Lütschine and its fellow torrents could ever have filled in this alluvial barrier between the deep lakes that fought them inch by inch. He will think of the enchanted regions of the Bernese Oberland that lie just before him, and of the contrasting beauty of the inland seas that stretch away on either hand: Lake Brienz, mysterious and austere, scowling at its precipitous mountain shores, roaring welcomes to its thundering waterfalls, and begrudging standing-room for the tiniest of hamlets; Lake Thun, “the Riviera of Switzerland,” with lovely vistas of green meadows, châteaux-dotted hillsides and distant snowy summits, all breathing such mildness and serenity as befitted the former abode of the holy hermit of St. Beatenberg. And doubtless he will seek out some tree-embowered path that winds along the Aare, and there indulge in contemplative thought of this glittering blue link between the lakes. Nor could he do better, for this arrogant stream is an illustrious instance of a reformed rake. Of evil repute for riotous cascade and brawling torrent all the way up to its home by the Grimsel Pass, it responds to the touch of civilization at Interlaken and meekly accepts the bondage of steam for the remainder of its career. What a gratifying example of reform it presents as it proceeds demurely along from this scene of moral crisis, laving thankful little towns, reporting conscientiously to the proper authorities at Bern, and, after an exhibition review-sweep around the capital, flowing sweetly on to Waldshut and modestly laying down its burden on the broad bosom of the Rhine. The stranger will perceive that virtue has its rewards, with rivers as with humans, when he takes note of the extravagant petting and eulogy that has followed the repentance of the Aare at Interlaken, its adornment with promenades, gardens, and artistic bridges, and the choice of much excellent society, particularly at night, on the part of ruminating savants and romantic lovers of all ages.

Strolling along the river paths carpeted with sweet-scented pine needles, the delighted new arrival has only to lift his eyes to discover how picturesquely the little city lies in its bed of lush and fertile meadows. It will seem to him like a great stage set for a mammoth spectacle. For background there is the black and flinty Harder, set with the grim rock face of the scowling Hardermannli, rugged in boulders and sheer cliffs and hiding its base in treacherous, grassy slopes; the Aare skirts it fearfully, and the pretty little cottages of Unterseen shrink close to Lake Thun on its farther side. Prostrate Interlaken lies supine before it, gazing appealingly through its innumerable windows across the open Höhenmatte, over the beeches and firs of the protruding shoulder of the Rugen, and on up the dodging, narrow Lütschine Valley to the remote and sympathetic Jungfrau. The scene is ready for the curtain when you have dotted the mountain slopes with châlets.

Or perhaps, if the stranger is fanciful, he will conceive the Alpine ravens thinking it some enormous eagle swooping toward the Lauterbrunnen Valley, with clustered houses for an attenuated body and two lakes for powerful blue wings beating out and back. Or, again, he may be reminded by this group of huge hotels of some fleet of old-time ships-of-the-line that started down the valley to bombard the Jungfrau. Early in the action formation was lost and the great hulks drifted about in hopeless confusion. Several, apparently, went promptly aground on the banks of the Aare right under the precipices of the Harder; all of the big ones foundered in a row along the Höheweg; a number became desperately entangled in the square before the Spielmatten Island; some trailed southward in what we call Jungfraustrasse, and others in Alpenstrasse; here and there one lies at anchor along the farther meadows, waiting for signals from the flagship on the Höheweg; and at least one, in the guise of an ugly white church, was caught in some violent cross-current and tossed up high and dry on the brow of the fir-smothered Gsteig.

The evening guest who does not fancy reveries along a mountain stream, nor yet the quiet pacing of the neat lanes that are so characteristic of this immaculate republic of “spotless towns,” whose very flag appropriately suggests the Red Cross Society’s familiar emblem of sanitation, will find it amusing to loiter among the little shops of the village and see the curious wooden trifles of Brienz, the delicately tinted majolica ware of Thun, exquisite ivory carvings, and rare _bijouterie_ of filigree silver wrought with infinite patience and skill. Tiring of these, he may ramble under the fine old walnut-trees of the Höheweg and congratulate himself that he is not under the horse-chestnuts of Lucerne to look out on inferior mountain prospects and breathe a less intoxicating air.

The most approved form of evening entertainment is a round of calls among friends scattered over the broad lawns of the hotels, when one may divert himself with summer orchestras or itinerant bands of Italian singers in crimson sashes, or revel in a rare profusion of beautiful flowers; and, from time to time, look gladly up at a crisp sky splendid with great luminous stars whose tremulous ardor, in Walter Pater’s famous phrase, “burns like a gem.” It is a capital place to gather impressions of what life at Interlaken means and what goes forward each day among its votaries. It is perfectly plain that this must be a great place; everybody is so bubblingly cheerful and so devoutly grateful for being just here and no possible spot else. You will hear them insisting that Interlaken, being halfway between, is an admirable combination of the complacent “prettiness” of Geneva and the austere solemnity of the vaunted Engadine Valley. Or there will be fragments of conversation reaching you about tennis matches on the Höhenmatte, lake bathing in Brienz, motor-bus runs from the golf links of Bönigen, where the residents plant a fruit tree whenever a baby is born, or of desperate scrambles up the zigzag trails of the Harder beloved of Weber, Mendelssohn, and Wagner, with rapturous accounts of the inspiring view from the _Kulm_. Some, you will gather, have passed the day uneventfully among the park walks of the Rugen, gazing down on Lake Brienz from the Trinkhalle Café, or on Lake Thun from the Scheffel Pavilion, or on both from farther up on the belvedere of the Heimwehfluh. Others again, it seems, have actually crossed the mild Wagner Ravine and ascended the lofty Abendberg of the Grosser Rugen; and for this pitiful adventure you hear them pose as veteran mountain conquerors who will carry their alpenstocks home with them and forever after speak familiarly of edelweiss and the flora of the summits. There even appear to have been romantic souls, familiar with Madame de Staël’s accounts of St. Berchtold festivals, who have spent the hours in dreams of Byron’s “Manfred” down by the old round tower of the dilapidated wreckage of Unspunnen Castle—in truth, the most abject of ruins, and quite as forlorn as Mariana’s Moated Grange. Not a few will have the courage to confess that they have done nothing more heroic than stroll by the shaded Goldei promenades along the Aare until they came to Unterseen, where they deliberately sat down and gazed to satiety at the curious toy houses with the long carved balconies and amazing roofs that project beyond all belief.

Thus, by merely catching flying ends of talk, a stranger may imbibe the proper amount of enthusiasm and gather some rambling notion of the fine things Interlaken has in store for him.

But the real evening-heroes must be looked for at the Kursaal. That is where you hear the great champion talkers of the world! What was the amiable Tartarin to such as these? Or Baron Munchausen? Or Sir John Mandeville? On such deaf ears fell the warning ignored of “Excelsior”:—

“Beware the pine-tree’s withered branch!
Beware the awful avalanche!”

Behold them at their ease in wicker chairs in the lounging-room, stretching the weary limbs that have borne them in safety through a hundred Alpine perils. For all who will listen, what tales may be heard of desperate daring amid the imminent deadly breach of crevasse and avalanche! Under the vivid hand of the actual participant one fairly sees the progress of the proud mountain-queller—follows with bated breath the slow and tedious early stages, the hazardous upward advance, the surmounting of final barriers by dint of ice-axe and life-rope, and so enters into the joy of the ultimate conquest of the wild, bleak, wind-swept summit. Who would have the hardihood in such a presence to speak a word of such contemptible contrivances as mountain tramways and funicular railroads! It is enough that the uninitiated should realize in the shuddering depths of his soul that there still remains _terra incognita_ to the listless, the fat, and the asthmatic. Later on, of course, we come to view these hardy characters in a somewhat truer perspective; but that will be after we have talked with their guides, or ourselves turned heroes and bluffed at like hazards.

All the same, there is no denying the satisfaction a newcomer has, in the beginning, in attending the impressive conversation of these desperate and intrepid Kursaal adventurers. He certainly feels that he has at last reached a region of hardy men and genuine mountain hand-to-hand struggles. He hears, with popping eyes, of the lofty little hamlet of Mürren, away up in cloudland, whose tiny cottages stagger under broad, stone-freighted roofs and where vast, sublime Titans scowl awfully from inaccessible heights. They tell him it is a region of eternal dazzling whiteness, with patches of black here and there that are really forests half buried in snow, and where the air is stifling with the constant odor of ice and frost. A truly shuddering place, they say, where men cannot hear themselves talk for the incessant thundering of plunging avalanches, and where the herdsman seldom ventures and the sunrise is never heralded by the alphorn of the hardy _Senn_. Later on, to be sure, we journey luxuriously to this same Mürren in a comfortable mountain railway and with considerably less of peril than attends going to office by elevator in a sky-scraper at home; and we find it a green and peaceful retreat, well supplied with hotels and gratefully affected by delicate old ladies with weak lungs. Just the same, we would not have missed the thrills of that first Kursaal account. Alas for all disillusionment, anyway! Most of the beautiful white, velvety edelweiss these rocking-chair climbers produce from their pockets in proof of their presence in frightful and remote ravines has really been bought for a franc on the Höheweg, and the chamois they stalked in summit passes generally dwindle down to the little ivory ones you find in the shops of Jungfraustrasse.

The truth of the Kursaal, when you get it, is stranger than its fiction; as when the talk turns to the progress of the construction work on the Jungfrau Railway, that imperishable monument to the genius and patience of the late Adolf Guyer-Zeller, of Zurich. It is then you hear of the loftiest tunnels in the world, eight and ten miles long, through icy mountain shoulders ten thousand feet above the sea; of gradients of one in four; of squirrel locomotives so ingeniously contrived that if the electric power were suddenly to fail they could generate enough by their own weight to clap on brakes and come down in safety; of searchlights in the stations on the peaks so strong that a man can read by them away over at Thun; of powerful telescopes, free to patrons, through which you may observe the occupations of the crowds on the Rigi and Mount Pilatus at remote Lucerne; of roomy and luxurious stations blasted out of the depths of the mountains, whose floors are parquetry and whose light and heat are electricity, with twenty-foot windows piercing the rock and appearing, even from across the neighboring abyss, like tiny pin-pricks in the perpendicular cliff; of the highest post-office on earth, from whose windows you look out on twenty glaciers. Of the truth of all this you are to learn later on when you make the unforgettable run to Eismeer—“sea of ice”—the farthest point so far attained in the steady progress of this marvelous railway toward the summit of the Jungfrau, now only a mile or two beyond, and which had been the despair of mountain climbers of all time until the Meyer brothers conquered it, one hundred years ago.

One finds the evening gossipers of the Kursaal scarcely less fascinating when they focus their talents on nearer regions; for “distant meadows” are not always “the greenest.” Agreeable things are to be heard of Schynige Platte, whither, it appears, you journey by cogwheel railway up steep gradients in an observation car behind a violently puffing locomotive, past pretty toy stations, around dizzy corners, through the startling blackness of unexpected tunnels, and so on out and up to the giddy plateau and an overpowering prospect of snowfields, misty valleys, gorges, and cataracts upon which you gaze in spellbound astonishment from the comfortable terrace of the “Alpenrose.” From no other viewpoint, they tell you, does the stupendous Mönch (Monk) seem to stand out so squarely in the middle distance in his cowl of snow, playing his traditional rôle of discouraging duenna between the coveted Jungfrau and the eager Eiger whom he repels with an eternal arm of glittering, blue ridge-ice.

When the conversation takes up Grindelwald, it becomes so attractive that you make a mental note to go there the first thing in the morning. It seems you are to take one of those droll little coaches of the Bernese Oberland Road marked “B.O.B.,” and proceed delightedly up the green valley of the Lütschine. Very soon will loom before you the bleak shoulders of the Wetterhorn, seared and precipitous, capped and pocketed with snow; the overwhelming pyramid of the Eiger, fearful with gorge and chasm; the regal Jungfrau, immaculate and stupendous; and, most uncommon spectacle of all, the awe-inspiring glacier—a frozen tumble of scarred boulders and grimy icebergs, pierced by glittering ice grottoes and ridged with terraced ways from which you stare down into yawning black gulfs that are fringed with giant icicles pendent from the frozen ledges. What was it Coleridge said of glaciers?

“Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!”

But many there will be at the Kursaal to tell you such tales of the enchanted Lauterbrunnen Valley as to incline you to reconsider any resolution about going first to Grindelwald. There, it is clear, we are to find quality rather than quantity: a narrow ravine through the mountains, carpeted with the greenest of turf and hung with glorious waterfalls that come tumbling down from lofty limestone precipices. We are to drive beside a turbulent stream set with occasional châlets whose projecting roofs will suggest broad-brimmed hats jammed down over their eyes, and here and there we shall come across a white stone church. Shortly there will be raging, leaping torrents all about us, vaulting down great cliffs of strange and startling appearance, and a vista of wonderland will open before us with the stately Steinberg enthroned in the midst. Next, climax on climax, the incomparable Staubbach! Before this queen of cataracts every other “hanging thread” is instantly and hopelessly dwarfed, as it launches its “wreaths of dangling water-smoke” from a thousand feet above. We will think this “dust brook” a mere feathery spray fluttered in a capricious breeze, so astonishing is the evidence of the resistance of the air and the friction of the rocks back of it; but once we have gone behind it and observed the “perpetual iris” made by the sun in shining through, it will appear a wonder beyond classification. Byron fancied it “the tail of the White Horse”; Wordsworth called it “the sky-born waterfall”; and Goethe’s dripping song of it runs:—

“In clouds of spray,
Like silver dust,
It veils the rock
In rainbow hues;
And dancing down
With music soft,
Is lost in air.”

Lesser lights are to be found among the Kursaal heroes who will confess to nothing more unusual in the way of activity than salmon-fishing in the neighboring lakes or bagging red partridge and hazel hens in the upper meadows. But these, by contrast, appear sportsmen of so mean an order that the stranger who has fed fat on the succulent yarns of the Munchausens receives with impatience information for which, in fact, he should be grateful. For instance: that in the winter the thermometers of the higher settlements get down to fifty-four below freezing and yet the dry air keeps people warmer than in the valleys, and that the snow falls in such incredible quantities that artificial lights have to be used in the lower stories of the houses all day and trenches cut for exit; that up there when the terrific Föhn blows from the south no man can make headway against it, but must lie flat on his face and hang on and then jump up and dart forward a few yards between gusts; that those people can foretell the weather by changes in the color of the ice—blue meaning fine, green for snow, and white for fog; that the Alpine crows of the summits are dark blue, with yellow beaks and red feet, and the “wall-creepers” are gray as mice, with white and red spots on their wings and with beaks shaped like awls. At some such point as this the stranger will rise with a yawn and go away in disgust, annoyed at being taken for a credulous fool. The seed, however, has been sown and it flourishes like the fabled mustard. The new arrival becomes a confirmed zealot and burns with all the ardor of a convert; albeit his brain is a confused and bewildered muddle of harsh-sounding mountain names, all, apparently, ending in _horn_.

When he comes out on the lawns he finds the guests still thronging the verandas, although it is nearly eleven and prodigies of mountaineering are slated for the morrow, and he hears the bands still engaged with Puccini and the latest Vienna successes. In the fragrant, dewy gardens fountains are playing, and lovers are discreetly screening behind clumps of flowering shrubs. Returning excursionists are excitedly vocal over the illumination of the Giessbach, whence they have just arrived in one of those pompous lake steamers whose sure and cautious pace reminded the satirical Victor Tissot of “the dignified motion of a canalboat.” To hear these enthusiasts, this appears to have been one more of those exceptionable occasions that the absent are always missing, and that the renowned waterfall never before roared and tumbled and foamed half so extravagantly in making its long, mad plunge through the dusky, dark-green firs. Out on the Höheweg a walking-party in knickerbockers and hobnailed shoes, and with edelweiss stuck in green felt hats, are flourishing their alpenstocks and driving bargains with sunburned guides whose names, undoubtedly, are either Melchior or Mathias; these latter, we are to learn, are of a fearless but canny and laconic nature, “economical as gypsies and punctual as executioners.”

How keenly people take their pleasures in the sparkling evenings of Interlaken. How sharp and distinct are sounds and sights, and how varied the night life. Each little street is as gayly illuminated as though for some special celebration, and so hearty with good cheer that one looks for some band of Bernese wrestlers, returning in triumph from a festival, to round the next corner and strike up that clarion anthem “Stehe fest, O Vaterland.” It would seem as though the “Fête du Mi-Été” must actually be in full swing right here, instead of afar in the upland pastures. Even at this hour a joyful multitude still streams along under the Höheweg’s century-old walnuts, hatless, radiant, and babbling in every European tongue. They flock about the confectioners’ stands and in and out of the curiosity-châlets, greeting acquaintances with eager pleasure and proposing jolly plans for to-morrow. Each little shop seems selling to capacity. Occasionally a peasant girl passes, brusque and stolid, in short skirt and bright bodice, with V-shaped rows of edelweiss buttons. Out on the green Höhenmatte lively groups loiter about aimlessly, and somewhere in the vague distance some one is singing the ever-popular “Trittst im Morgenrot daher.” The thickly-wooded Rugen seems a colossal black mastiff asleep with his head between his paws. Away up the misty valley, whose vital air is so sweet with refreshing odors and so soothing with soft music, the regal Jungfrau looms in dim and spectral outline, as ghostly and deceptive as any faint feathering of cumulus clouds.

A distant _Jödel_ or the lilt of a plaintive _Ranz des Vaches_ excites cordial thoughts of this fair Helvetia and her strong and devoted people. “I wonder,” a friend once said to me at Interlaken, “if these men and women really appreciate how lovely their country is.” Perhaps the best answer is to be found in the desperate resolution with which they have held it for six hundred years. Hard necessity has taught these brawny mountaineers, whom Mr. Ruskin ungenerously called “ungenerous and unchivalrous,” that to be “painfully economical” is wiser than to chance privation. One thinks with wonder of the hardships endured by the herdsman away up in the mountain pastures, eating his sweet-bread and draining his milk-filled wooden bowl in a rude pine hut, with goats and kine for comrades, and, for his sole diversion, an occasional glimpse of a leaping chamois, a sly mountain fox, a white hare, or the whistling, rat-like, shadowy marmot. With his long alphorn he calls the cattle home or sounds the vesper hour, until the loud echoes shout back from snowfield and ice gorge and the great ravens swerve in their swimming flight. In summer, fluttering clouds of butterflies will drift above the pansies and Alpine roses and gentians on his meadow; but in winter the pallid, velvety edelweiss is all the huntsman will find on those frozen ledges. What a wild and tragic region it must be when the last _Senn_ has driven his herd down into the valleys and old Winter is in undisturbed possession of his “dear domestic cave.” The herdsman may rejoice that he is not there then; for it becomes a world of black and white, of illimitable snow and blotches of black forests, of death and waste and the frightful stillness of stupendous heights. Then it is a deserted realm of ice and snow set with pitfalls of treacherous crevasses and dreadful perils from hidden gulfs and pitiless avalanches; a shuddering space of cloud banks and waving vapor-scarfs; a haunted borderland of sinister shapes in the writhing mists like wraiths of Alpine legends.

Even so, hundreds of failing foreigners go a long way up in those forbidding regions in winter for an “enthusiasm of the blood” and a “fairy titillation of the nerves.” And when the days are bright and of their peculiar crystal clearness, and the skies are a cloudless blue and the sunshine a deluge, these invalids revel in skating and curling and the hockey they call “bandy”; and will even try appalling flights by ski and toboggan through the “nipping and eager air,” over smooth trails of glistening snow, rivaling the records of the “blue-ribbon” Schatzalp course at Davos, where they do the two-mile run in something under four minutes. There is a chance observation in “Silas Marner” that “youth is not exclusively the period of folly!”

Of a summer evening, however, it might not be altogether unpleasant in some parts of that cloudland. Could we return with the happy little mule-boy who has just now come “jödeling” down from the passes, doubtless we should find the sound of goat bells both romantic and soothing up there, and might even in time muster a respectable show of excitement over the passage of the four-horse diligences as they rattle by in storms of dust. Certainly we should come across many a charming little wayside inn far up those winding roads that climb to solitude, and they would have overhanging eaves and carved wooden balconies and boxes of rich orange nasturtiums before the tiny windows with the lozenge panes; and when we pushed open the door and walked in, there would be a great stone stove in a bar parlor and the face of William Tell on an old clock behind the door.

One reads in “Hyperion” of a stolid Englishman so far forgetting his cherished reserve as to exclaim: “This Interlaken! This Interlaken! It is the loveliest spot on the face of the earth!” It is a nice question as to whether any one might not easily be guilty of like enthusiasm, provided the time were evening, and that he were capable of responding to something of such passionate sympathy for mountain and valley as breathes through Schiller’s “Wilhelm Tell.” It is impossible not to be moved by such unusual beauty or uplifted by such sublimity. Here jangled nerves recover rhythm and dulled interests vitality. Boredom and ennui fall away, and work and responsibility acquire new value and lustre. In the still of these pine-scented evenings, luminous with enormous stars, a keen and sobering joy of life takes full and welcome possession. Here, if anywhere, the sun of youth will have its afterglow.

There is something like benediction in a night-vision of the magic Jungfrau—peerless “bride of quietness.” With such an appealing spectacle in view, what wonder that the houses have so many windows, or the night “a thousand eyes.” It is the master touch to Interlaken, completing and glorifying the picture as it banks the far end of the valley with towering clouds of snow. Neither Mont Blanc nor the Matterhorn may rival this queen of the Alps, so charming in outline, vast in bulk, and ravishing in purity. It could not fail to dominate any region of earth, and Interlaken acknowledges its supremacy with a completeness that is not without a certain flavor of proprietorship. Each hillside has its view-pavilion, belvedere, or simple clearing, like so many chapels for devotion. We come each morning for our sunrise view, pass the day in adoration, marvel at sunset and the afterglow, and close the evening with a wonderwist contemplation of the phantom peak in moonlight. Of these “stations” of the mount, the afterglow is the climax. Nor is the reason far to seek, once you have stood among the awed and reverent throng that crowds the Höhenmatte each late afternoon, and have seen black night about you in the valley, while, for an hour or more after, the snowfields of the Jungfrau’s summits still continued to blaze brilliantly in full sunshine. And then, as we watched, there came the color-miracle of glittering white merging into every hue of the rose, into scarlet stains and a deluge of crimson, into deepening tints and sombre shades of blue, and finally fading gradually to a misty, grayish, cloudy shadow as the last fires burned out and the great mountain paled to a phantom of the night.

“When daylight dies,
The azure skies
Seem sparkling with a thousand eyes,
That watch with grace
From depths of space
The sleeping Jungfrau’s lovely face.”

How spirit-like, how faint and fair the magic mountain swims at night among its silver cloud veils! What serenity and majesty invest it! Did God here plan another flood, and stay His hand when He had heaped an angry ocean into this dread tidal wave and left it piled in suspended motion, with giant frozen seas, furious with foam, mounting to that appalling crest that seems to dash its icy spray against the very skies? No man may look with undaunted heart upon the chaos of its glittering snowy plains, vast, chaste, and spectral in the moonlight. How base and contemptible appear the petty pursuits of man in the presence of such thrilling sublimity! It reconciles him to his lot in life, where his “much” is really so very little; and inspires courage, and shames the heart from low, ignoble ends.

There is reverent awe in thoughts of the breathless hush of the far, white vales no man has trod; the remote and shuddering abysses into which the very birds of the air look down with affright. There is magic of inspiration in its sublime aloofness—as with those “unheard melodies that are sweetest,” those supremest joys that lie beyond attainment. Through the hidden, echoing caverns of this fair, pallid mount wan spirits of Snowland may even now be dancing; along its lonely, lovely glades are “horns of elfland faintly blowing.” Of its profoundest and most secret mysteries not even the friendly moon may have too curious knowledge—mysteries unknown of man since first the morning stars sang together.

VENICE

11 P.M. TO MIDNIGHT

A July moon over, a gondola under, a tenor lilting a _barcarolle_, thousands with you on the Grand Canal—Venice _a festa_! From a near-by belfry, a clock booms eleven. Eleven! and we are only to the Foscari Palace. An hour ago we started at the Rialto, a thousand gay gondolas with bunting, lanterns, and greens, everybody jostling, singing, and shouting, and in the centre, like the queen-jewel of a tiara, the brilliant _barca_ filled with orchestra and singers and ablaze in a myriad of colored lights. This is a great occasion, the _serenata ufficiale_. The _festa_ of the Redentore is near its close. Church portals hang with mulberry branches begged by the monks of St. Francis, and the people have feasted royally on the luscious black fruit bought at the little stands on the Giudecca quays. Last Sunday the priestly procession in full canonicals crossed the bridge of boats to the Giudecca on its annual pilgrimage to the church of the Redentore. Venice thus sustains her reputation as a reverencer of traditions; they are burning lamps still in San Marco Cathedral for an innocent man who was put to death hundreds of years ago. And so the church of the Redentore is packed to suffocation at least one day of the year, and after that, with the religious rites off her mind, Venice suddenly gives up trying to look solemn and bursts out into the joy and tumult of the “Official Serenade.”

This year it is splendid. Every moment belated gondolas are arriving like flocks of black swans, with fresh quotas of enthusiasm and an increase of gayety and confusion. What laughter and fun! The Canal is a hopeless jam. Dancing lanterns play light and shade on thousands of bright faces, and the gondoliers, in fresh white blouses and blue sailor collars, look like shadows as they lean silently on their long oars. In the intervals of the music there is something weird and frantic to both their labor and their language as they agonize to protect their beloved boats from scratches and smashes and at the same time retain positions of vantage in this ice-floe of a tangle as the _barca_ struggles forward a few difficult yards to its next point of serenade. There are ten or a dozen of these serenade-points, and at each the writhing flotilla pauses, and singers and orchestra provide the entertainment. It is finest to be afloat, but, oh, the land! Red-and-green fire throws into enormous relief fairylike towers and turrets that have figured in song and story for a thousand years; and in windows, terraces, balconies, and tops there throngs a multitude that none of us may number. Every face is turned toward the _barca_; every handkerchief waves our way. An occasional searchlight darts impartially over them and us, picks out a spot in sudden brilliance and as suddenly drops it back into blacker obscurity. But in that brief flashing, scattered friends have discovered friends, and gondolas are started inching toward each other, and presently parties are joined and ice boxes uncovered. After covertly studying the apparently aimless movements of our own gondola I finally unearthed a dark conspiracy in the reunion line that interested only Paolo, our gondolier, and an occasional crony at a neighboring oar. Paolo’s face and manners are innocence itself, but his guile is fathoms deep. We could not understand why he did not get us nearer to the _barca_, the universal objective, until we saw the bottle pass between him and a raven-haired, flashing-toothed athlete at the nearest oar and surprised the quick greeting and low, musical laugh of congratulation and content. But who minds, with Venice _a festa_! And Venice is Paolo’s—not ours, alas!

Night on the Grand Canal! What a realm of witchery! “The horns of elfland faintly blowing.” What lullaby could soothe more sweetly than the dip of the oar or the soft plash of the dark water under the gondola’s prow! The charm of unreality invests the shadowy, spiritualized palaces rising like silver wraiths from the quivering stream. The summer moon touches each carven arch and column, each stone-lace balcony, each fretted embrasure, each delicate ogive window and sculptured capital, and lo, a magician’s wand has reared a dream-land of unearthly beauty!

In the soft and odorous darkness the birds that love this Venice are securely nesting—the gulls, that in winter whirl up the canals with harsh clamors of the coming storms, are now at rest along the beaches of their blue Adriatic; the swallows and pigeons are sleeping among the red tiles of the crooked gables; the sparrows are aloft among the mulberry-trees of the Giudecca and the sycamores of the Public Gardens; the canaries are dim spots in fragrant magnolia-trees or in spreading beds of purple oleander; and the ortolans, robins, and blackbirds nestle among azaleas and the heavy festoons of banksias. All their music now is hushed, and they are as mute and soundless to-night as were their awe-struck sires, long centuries since, when gentle St. Francis read them his offices under the cypresses of Del Deserto.

The night is fragrant with the breath of roses, carnations, and camellias from palace gardens and with spicy honeysuckle from the neighboring Zattere. Visions of stirring romance and adventure crowd in on the mind. Down the pebbly paths of yonder garden surely some lover has just passed, brave in velvet doublet and silken hose, from laying his roses at the satin-slippered feet of his lady! Presently he will drift this way in his cushioned gondola and the soft night winds will bear her the mellow throb of his guitar and many a plaintive sigh of love and Venice. But hush! from out that old black watergate, in bravo’s cloak and with muffled oar, who bears the helpless lady away through the deep shadows under the garden wall? Hard with your oar, my gondolier! A purse of golden ducats if you speed me to San Marco! I shall slip this scribbled note into the Lion’s Mouth! Ho, for the vengeance of The Ten!

If it were day, what a different scene we should have on this twisting sea-serpent of a Grand Canal. Venice would then be a sparkling vision resplendent with every sea charm, tinted with pinks and opals and pearls, and as changeful and full of caprice as any other coquette. Instead of this spangle of stars above, we should have a vast expanse of pale-blue sky, cloudless and glittering, and the misty reflections that now sink faintly deep down into these dark waters would vanish before a stream so azure and brilliant that it would seem as if a portion of the sky above had been cut and fitted between the palace fronts below. And how these mellow old churches and houses would glow and their wavering shadows shake in the stream! The exquisite traceries on balcony, arch, and column would seem carven of ivory, and from under the red-tiled eaves grim heads of stone would stare down over sculptured cornices and peep out through delicate quatrefoils and creamy foliations. And into these wonder-palaces the eager sun would peer to see the lofty ceilings all frescoed and gilded, the floors of colored marbles, the carven furniture and faded rich hangings, and the deep and arched recesses that overlook the gardens in the rear. And what gardens! Mellow brick walls festooned in pale-blue wistaria and lined with hedges of white thorn, a solemn cypress in either corner, clumps of fig-trees and mulberry and golden magnolia, airy grapevine pergolas of slender, osier-bound willow, little paths snugly bordered with box, trellises of gorgeous roses, and here and there some antique statue or rude stone urn half hidden in color masses of scarlet pomegranates and snowy lilies.

The day-life of this famed waterway is very gay and picturesque. Here is both energy and idleness, and jolly friendships and laughter and light-heartedness. Deep-laden market scows pass ponderously by, piled high with fruits and vegetables, the rowers singing at their oars or shouting voluble greetings. Fishermen step slowly along, balancing baskets on their heads. Swarthy, black-eyed women, in dark skirts and gay neckerchiefs and with mauve-colored shawls falling gracefully from head to waist, throng the _riva_ shops and bargain over purchases with violent gestures and eager earnestness. Priests returning from mass in rusty black cassocks loiter among the noisy groups and are received with profound bows and reverent touches of the cap. Husky, barefooted girl water-carriers, known as the _bigolanti_, stride by with copper vessels hanging from the yoke across their shoulders and offer you a supply for a _soldo_. Up the intersecting canals endless processions are passing over the arching bridges, and you pause, perhaps, to observe the varied life from a place by the rail: girl bead-stringers with wooden trays full of turquoise bits; garrulous pleasure parties off for the Lido; laboring boatmen, breaking out into song; old men and women shuffling along to gossip and quarrel around the carven well-heads of the little _campi_; and now and then some withered old aristocrat on his way to have coffee and chess at Florian’s and then a solemn smoke over the “Gazetta di Venezia” before the Caffè Orientale in the warm morning sun of the _riva_ of the Schiavoni.

How well the Foscari Palace, there, looks by night. The Foscari Palace—poor old Foscari! It is a sad but glowing chapter his name recalls. Here lived the great Doge, the least serene of all their Serenities. Grown old in power and worn with foreign wars, his heart broke over the treason of his worthless son, and the helpless, sobbing old man, no longer of use, was deposed by The Ten in his tottering age. The very next day he died—and there, in that palace. Just now, when the red-fire glowed, a pale campanile stood out of the gloom to the right and beyond the palace; that is where they buried him, in the church of the Frari. With belated reverence and remorseful at having dishonored him a few hours since, they proceeded to make history in Venice with the splendor of his obsequies. They clothed him in cloth of gold, set his ducal cap upon his head, buckled on his golden spurs, and laid his great sword by his side. And thus in solemn pomp, attended by nobles and lighted by countless tapers, the pageant passed out of San Marco, crossed the Rialto, and came at last to the church of the Frari. And there what is left of Doge Foscari lies to this day. It is not a poor place to be in, either. The bones of Titian and Canova are beside him, a Titian masterpiece glorifies the choir, and on the opposite wall are two altar pieces of Bellini’s so lovely as to mark the very zenith of Venetian art.

A pause in the music of the serenade brings us suddenly back to the Venice of to-night. A vast scramble is in progress. We jostle and scrape forward another few yards. The _barca_ sends a light hose-spray to right, left, and in front in a desperate effort to clear a passage. Dilatory or helpless gondoliers are lightly sprinkled, and all those of us who a moment since had been envying their good positions now basely give way to howls of joy. No use to struggle: all gondoliers are alike in such a crush. A champion Castellani is no better than Paolo, if he _is_ strong enough to bend copper _centesimi_ pieces between thumb and finger. Presently we stop. The tumult rages, good-naturedly and jolly, as the jockeying goes on for improved positions. And then there falls a sudden silence. A tenor is singing the “Cielo e Mar” of “La Gioconda.” You lie at full length on the cushions, the gondola lifting slowly with an indolent sway, and under the spell of the dreamy, witching music you watch the smoke of your cigar as it drifts up and over and out and away toward the little streets in the dark.

Ah, little streets of Venice; under whatever name of _calle_ or _corto_ or _salizzada_, you are just the same—bedraggled and delightful! What rare surprises are always reserved for each revisit—an overlooked doorway, a balcony, some sculptured detail! If the house-fronts are plastered and patched—still they are picturesquely discolored. If the fantastic windows are out of plumb the gay shutters, nevertheless, are charmingly faded and there are pretty faces behind the bars. The roofs let in the rain—but how rookish and rickety they are. The battered doors are low—but they have knockers that are ponderous and imposing. Name plates are surprisingly large and keyholes deep and cavernous. The stirrup-handled bell-wires run almost to the tiny iron balconies, away up under the oval windows of the eaves—those little balconies that for ages have never refused sympathetic regard for the hum of slippered feet on the stone pavements below. And there are weathered store-fronts with corrugated iron shutters and gilt signs on black boards; and under your feet in the pavement are odd little slits for water to run off in, that remind you of openings in letter-drops at home. There, too, are the shops whose modest output arrays the Venetian poor to such advantage, and there are the stores and markets where they bargain for _frittole_ of white flour and oil, or _polenta_ of ground corn, and personally pick out their sardines at ten for a penny, or indulge in a fine _brunrino_ as large as a trout. There one sees picturesque lanterns and gay little window-boxes full of flowers away up among the chimneys and tin waterpipes. The rooms, perhaps, seem dark and gloomy to us of modern houses, but you stop with a thrill of delight at the happiness in the voice that carols a gay air from “Traviata” somewhere in their depths, and you look up with a smile at the bright bird that loves that dark cage. Some carping and fussy visitors may compare these rude homes to the dungeons under the “Leads” beyond the Bridge of Sighs, but how could they consistently be other than they are, venerable and dirty, with splotches of paint and charcoal markings and half-effaced pencil-drawings, of cracked plaster full of holes, and all toned down by time and weather to a uniform mellow gray! Of course, such critics accept, with all Italy, the proud ones with the marble tablets that tell that Marco Polo lived there, or Petrarch, or Titian, or Garibaldi, but the nameless and undistinguished many are quite as worth preserving. Thus one appreciates the inspiration of the authorities and applauds their industry in profusely tacking up those little ovals of blue tin with the jealous warning in white letters, “Divieto di Affisione”—that is, “Don’t spoil these walls with placards!” So, peace, harping Philistine, to whom nothing is ever hallowed! Though your emotions are thin and your enthusiasms a-chill, respect these little byways; and if not for themselves, then for where they bring you—to fascinating curiosity shops of the antiquarians up the back courts; to charming _campi_ where you stand by graven well-heads, wonderwist in the lengthening shadows of historic churches; to lichen-grown bridges, themselves pictures, arched over sunny canals overhung by gabled windows and flanked by garden walls pale blue with wistaria; or (could you have forgotten?) to nothing less than the great Piazza itself and glittering San Marco, the supreme jewel-casket of the world.

But the wistful “Cielo e Mar” is ended, and we move along to opposite the Accademia, treasure-temple of Venetian art. You uncovered just then, my comrade of the night, and out of reverence to the Titian Assumption, I dare say. I uncovered, too, but it was to the madonnas and saints of Giovanni Bellini. Do you know them well? No? Not the Santa Conversazione? Ah, then life still holds a delight in reserve for you.

A sudden great and universal hush has fallen on canal and shore. Another tenor, sweet and vibrant as a bell, breathes that tenderest of all serenades, the one from “Don Pasquale.” At all times irresistible, it seems doubly so now. The faces that you see are grave and eager and transported. The silence and rapt attention is a tribute beyond words to composer and singer; and where else but in Italy would a multitude hush to a whisper when music sounds, and break into wild tumult when it ceases? A few weeks here, and one comes to understand that music is the very breath and life of these people. The vagabond Venetian, penniless but happy, comes out of his doze in a corner of a sunny _riva_ and before his mouth has settled from its yawn it is rounded into a song. A bottle of cheap wine, a loaf of bread, and a guitar provide joy enough for an army in the family parties of the poor that float out on to the lagoon in rough market gondolas at sunset. Verdi and Rossini make work light for women, walk to business with the men, and hum comfort and courage all day. And so one needs to be discreet and silent when a solo begins or be prepared for an instant and tempestuous rebuke. But there seems little need for a warning to-night, with the hand of Venice so strong upon us.

Between serenades one takes his ease on the cushions and looks about on the people around him. Some one begins to whistle the jolly old “Carnival of Venice,” and it is promptly taken up on all sides, bolder spirits even venturing upon the variations. A German gives us the Fatherland’s version, about the hat that had three corners. An enormous Spaniard near at hand bellows a fragment of “I Pagliacci,” and is thunderously applauded. His friends, embarrassed but elated, urge him on to a second effort, which is received with indifference. On his third attempt he is hissed. Such is the caprice of an open-air audience in Italy.

The jolly stag party in the gondola to the right presses upon us the hospitality of the capacious hamper, which we decline with a thousand thanks and in gestures more intelligible than our pidgin-Italian. At our elbow two slender American women in black provide excellent eavesdropping entertainment. Here is talk to our liking, thrilling with the names of men of fame who knew and loved this Venice. “Just over there, Helen, is the palace where Browning lived and died. What an elaborate place for a poet! Howells lived next door, you know, when he wrote his ‘Venetian Life.’ These places are ever so much finer than the one farther down where Goldoni wrote his comedies. Oh, don’t you know the Goldoni house? It is this side the Rialto, just opposite the Byron Palace with the blue-striped gondola posts.” “I think,” says the other, “that the memories are quite as rich farther on. At the Hotel Europa, you remember, Chateaubriand once lived, and so did George Eliot; and from there you can see the Danieli where George Sand and Alfred de Musset sought happiness but only found misery.” At mention of the Europa the face of her friend is transfigured and our own hearts beat high in sympathy with the reverence of the lowered voice: “Wagner wrote ‘Tristan und Isolde’ at the Europa. He died in the palace where the three trees stand, away down beyond the Rialto.” Oh, deathless Venice! Oh, universal Love! They marvel at this elfin world—the English father, mother, and son in the gondola ahead.

“It is a mode of mind.”

“Or a form of hypnosis; a psychological phase.”

The boy turns from the distant fairy candles of San Marco and regards them with amaze and disapproval. His enthusiasms are keen and a-quiver and the freshness of life’s morning is on his face. “Don’t analyze,” he says. “Just breathe it and feel it.” The parents exchange amused glances and smile indulgently. “‘Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings,’” quotes the father under his breath; but we know, and they know, that they have been answered.