COLOGNE, _May_ 28_th_, 1782.
This is the first day of summer; the oak leaves expand, the roses blow,
butterflies are about, and I have spirits enough to write to you. We
have had clouded skies this fortnight past, and roads like the Slough of
Despond. Last Wednesday we were benighted on a dismal plain, apparently
boundless. The moon cast a sickly gleam, and now and then a blue meteor
glided along the morass which lay before us.
After much difficulty we gained an avenue, and in an hour’s time
discovered something like a gateway, shaded by crooked elms and crowned
by a cluster of turrets. Here we paused and knocked; no one answered.
We repeated our knocks; the stout oaken gate returned a hollow sound; the
horses coughed, their riders blew their horns. At length the bars fell,
and we entered—by what means I am ignorant, for no human being appeared.
A labyrinth of narrow winding alleys, dark as the vaults of a cathedral,
opened to our view. We kept wandering along, at least twenty minutes,
between lofty mansions with grated windows, and strange galleries,
projecting one over another, from which depended innumerable uncouth
figures and crosses, in iron-work, swinging to and fro with the wind. At
the end of this gloomy maze we found a long street, not fifteen feet
wide, I am certain; the houses still loftier than those in the alleys,
the windows thicker barred, and the gibbets (for I know not what else to
call them) more frequent. Here and there we saw lights glimmering in the
highest stories, and arches on the right and left, which seemed to lead
into retired courts and deeper darkness.
Along one of these recesses we were jumbled, over such pavement as I hope
you may never tread upon; and, after parading round it, went out at the
same arch whence we came in. This procession seemed at first very
mystical, but it was too soon accounted for by our postillions, who
confessed they had lost their way. A council was held amongst them in
form, and then we struck into another labyrinth of hideous edifices,
habitations I will not venture to call them, as not a creature stirred;
though the rumbling of our carriages was echoed by all the vaults and
arches.
Towards midnight we rested a few minutes, and a head poking out of a
casement directed us to the hotel of Der Heilige Geist, where an
apartment, thirty feet square, was prepared for our reception.