Three funeral processions which have lately moved through Stuttgart
streets have awakened, on account of peculiar associations connected
with each, more attention and interest, more feeling I might perhaps
say, than we selfish beings usually accord to these mournful black
trains that mean _other_ people's sorrows.
Of these three, the first was the train that bore the Herzog Eugen of
Wuertemberg to his last resting-place. Young, popular, after Prinz
Wilhelm presumptive heir to the throne; the husband of the Princess
Vera,--who is the niece and adopted daughter of the queen, and according
to report a very lovable person,--he had apparently enough to make life
sweet at the moment he was called from it. Recently he went to
Duesseldorf to take command of a regiment there. The Princess Vera
remained at the Residenz in Stuttgart, but was intending to join him
immediately. A slight cold neglected,--a rich banquet followed by
night-air,--and suddenly all was over. He died after an illness of a day
or two, while the princess, summoned by a telegram, was on the train
half-way between Stuttgart and Duesseldorf.
The air is full of fables, and the common people "make great eyes" when
they speak of the poor duke, and dark hints of foul play, poison,
enemies, cabals, perfidy, delight all good souls with a taste for the
sensational. They, however, who have the slightest ground for _knowing_
anything about the matter, and, indeed, all rational people, declare it
was simply a cold, inflammation, congestion, such as makes havoc among
frail mortal flesh, and never draws any distinction in favor of blood
royal.
After the ceremonies at Duesseldorf came the solemn reception of the
remains here. Early in the evening the streets were thronged with an
immense but quiet, patiently waiting crowd, and, along the line where
the procession was to pass, burning tar cast a fitful light over the
mass of people: and the flickering flames, fanned by the night breeze,
now would illumine the Residenz and Schloss Platz and the fine outline
of the "Old Palace," in the chapel of which the duke was to lie; now,
subsiding, would leave the scene in half gloom. The slow, sad voice of
the dirge announced the approach of the procession, the whole effect of
which was intensely solemn and impressive. Outriders with flickering
torches, the escort of cavalry, Uhlans of the Wuertemberg regiment in
which he had served, floating streamers of black and white, the hearse
drawn by coal-black horses, slowly passing, with the loud ringing of all
the bells, made one hold one's breath as the black figures went by in
the lurid light. The inevitable hour had, indeed, awaited him, and
snatched him from his worldly honors and family affection, and "der edle
Ritter," in spite of all the "boast of heraldry and pomp of power" that
so lately had surrounded him, lay silent and cold, while the flames
burned strong and warm and the loud bells clanged, and he rode slowly on
to the chapel in the old castle, beneath which he now rests with others
of his race.
This is not the first sad, stately night-procession that has occurred
here. Wilhelm, father of the present king, was a strong, original
nature, averse to form, and gave strict orders concerning his own
burial. They were to bury him on a hill, some miles from the city,
between midnight and dawn, and simply fire one gun over him, he had
said. His son, however, while observing his wishes as to time and place
of burial, took care that the state and dignity of the procession should
befit royalty dethroned by death. At midnight the train left the palace,
and, with its long line of nobles, cavaliers, and soldiers, swept slowly
out of the city amid the constant ringing of bells and booming of
cannon, and wound through the soft summer night along the Neckar's
banks, over the bridge at Cannstadt, while great fires blazed on every
hill-top, and the old king, in the majesty of death, was borne on, past
the fair vineyards and soft fertile slopes of the land he had loved so
well, to the Rothenberg, on the summit of which they laid him to rest
and fired one gun just as the morning star dropped below the horizon.
"And had he not high honor?
The hillside for his pall,
To lie in state while angels wait
With stars for tapers tall,
And the dark rock-pines, like tossing plumes,
Over his bier to wave--."
Certainly, nothing less than the "Burial of Moses" can have been so
grand as this last dark ride of the strong old king! We behold the train
in its magnificent gloom winding along the Neckar and up the vine-clad
hillside, so often as we see its route, after nightfall. Dusky, stately
forms ride by, and the wail of the dirge sounds on the evening breeze.
Why may we not all be laid at rest at night? Sunlight is cruel to eyes
blinded by tears, and glaring day hurts grieved hearts. The Night is so
solemn and tender, why may she not help us bury our dead?
The next procession that we saw with earnest eyes, after the Duke
Eugen's, was that of a student of the Polytechnic School, who died from
the effects of a sword-wound. There was no anger, no provocation,
nothing which according to the student code might perhaps soften the
memory of the deed. It was simply a trial of skill with the _Degen_, a
slender, murderous-looking sword. Both were expert fencers. The presence
of friends incited them to do their best. Their pride was roused;
neither would yield, and in the excitement one received a cut in the
head, from the effects of which he died in a few days. He was a
promising scholar and a favorite with the students, and the affair seems
very shocking in the cruel uselessness of such a death, though the more
bitter fate of course is his who unwittingly did the deed and must live
with the memory of it in his heart.
These student funerals occur now and then. We have had three or four
this winter. Our countrymen, not sympathizing with student ways and
student traditions, are sometimes apt to call such spectacles
"comedies," but to us the comic element has never been apparent. First
come the musicians, playing a dirge,--on this last occasion a funeral
march from Beethoven. Near the hearse walk the students of the corps of
which the deceased had been a member. They wear their most elegant
uniform,--black velvet blouses or jackets, buff knee-breeches, high
boots, the cap and sash of the color which distinguishes the corps, long
buff gauntlets, and swords,--altogether quite striking. On the draped
coffin are the dead student's cap, sash, and sword. The other corps walk
behind, the professors also, and friends.
The last funeral of the three was hardly grand enough to be called a
procession. It was only a few carriages winding slowly out to the new
_Friedhof_. A touching little story preceded it, perhaps not uncommon,
yet, to those who watched its close, invested with a peculiar pathos. A
young American girl came here last fall, with high hopes and unbounded
energy and courage. She was in the art-school, and it may be her eager
spirit forgot that bodies too must be cared for, and it may be that her
naturally frail constitution had been weakened by overwork before she
came; but at all events a cold, which she ignored in her zeal and
devotion to her studies, led to an illness from which she never
recovered. She was entirely alone and unknown, and at first no one
except the people in her _pension_ knew of her sickness. Patient,
uncomplaining, and reserved, she bore whatever came, and was finally
taken, as she grew worse, to a hospital, where she could command better
and more exclusive care. As the facts became known in the American
colony, she was ministered to most tenderly, and flowers and delicacies
of every description were sent daily to her little room at the _Olga
Heil Anstalt_. Indeed, the good sister who nursed her there found it
difficult to guard her from the visits and kindly proffered
administrations of newly made friends, who came full of tender sympathy
for the lonely girl. Of her loneliness she never made complaint. When
asked by our consul why she had not at once sent for him when she was
first ill, she replied, smilingly, "Because I knew you had quite enough
to do without taking care of me." In fact, she sent for no one, and only
through accident did the English clergyman and the consul hear of her
case. And, lying in her bare room in a foreign hospital, hearing only
the foreign tongue of which she was not yet mistress, and at best, when
her countrywomen came to cheer her, seeing only new faces, instead of
her own home-people, her brave, bright smile was always ready to greet
the visitor, even when she was too languid to utter a word. Her one
confessed regret was that her illness took her from her art-studies; and
her eyes would beam with delight when a fellow-student in the art-school
would speak of it, of the professors, and the work there. Her whole
enthusiastic soul was absorbed in this theme, so that her suffering
seemed, to her, of no account in comparison with her high aims and
ideal. Utterly single-hearted, she lay there, brave and uncomplaining to
the last, and seemed the only one unconscious of the pathos of her
position. Her thoughts were so given to the beautiful pictures she
longed to make, and to the beautiful pictures others had made, she had
none at all left for the poor girl dying alone in a strange land, who
was filling so many eyes with tears and so many hearts with pain. She
faded away very gently, and, for a long time before her death, suffered
more from extreme languor than from acute distress. After it was all
over, there was a little, solemn service in the hospital chapel,
attended by the many who had interested themselves for her, and some of
the professors and pupils of the Kunst Schule, who added their exquisite
wreaths to the lovely flowers about her. And then she was taken to the
new _Friedhof_ and laid beneath the pavement of the Arcade, while a
little band of wanderers stood by--united, many of them, only through
their sympathy with her who was gone--and listened to the solemn words
of the English service, and looked thoughtfully out through the arches
upon a tender gray sky, a wide expanse of land--now almost an unbroken
surface, but one day to be filled with graves--and off upon the hills
rising softly beyond; and the last violets and tuberoses were strewn
upon her resting-place, and the little band separated, each going his
way, but in many hearts was a tender memory for the young girl whose
brief story was just ended,--a sad thought for her who never seemed sad
for herself.