Again a veil fell over my eyes.... Again I lost consciousness. The veil was
withdrawn at last. What was it down there below? What was this park, with
avenues of lopped lime-trees, with isolated fir-trees of the shape of
parasols, with porticoes and temples in the Pompadour style, with statues
of satyrs and nymphs of the Bernini school, with rococo tritons in the
midst of meandering lakes, closed in by low parapets of blackened marble?
Wasn’t it Versailles? No, it was not Versailles. A small palace, also
rococo, peeped out behind a clump of bushy oaks. The moon shone dimly,
shrouded in mist, and over the earth there was, as it were spread out, a
delicate smoke. The eye could not decide what it was, whether moonlight or
fog. On one of the lakes a swan was asleep; its long back was white as the
snow of the frost-bound steppes, while glow-worms gleamed like diamonds in
the bluish shadow at the base of a statue.
‘We are near Mannheim,’ said Alice; ‘this is the Schwetzingen garden.’
‘We are in Germany,’ I thought, and I fell to listening. All was silence,
except somewhere, secluded and unseen, the splash and babble of falling
water. It seemed continually to repeat the same words: ‘Aye, aye, aye, for
aye, aye.’ And all at once I fancied that in the very centre of one of the
avenues, between clipped walls of green, a cavalier came tripping along in
red-heeled boots, a gold-braided coat, with lace ruffs at his wrists, a
light steel rapier at his thigh, smilingly offering his arm to a lady in a
powdered wig and a gay chintz.... Strange, pale faces.... I tried to look
into them.... But already everything had vanished, and as before there was
nothing but the babbling water.
‘Those are dreams wandering,’ whispered Alice; ‘yesterday there was
much--oh, much--to see; to-day, even the dreams avoid man’s eye. Forward!
forward!’
We soared higher and flew farther on. So smooth and easy was our flight
that it seemed that we moved not, but everything moved to meet us.
Mountains came into view, dark, undulating, covered with forest; they rose
up and swam towards us.... And now they were slipping by beneath us, with
all their windings, hollows, and narrow glades, with gleams of light from
rapid brooks among the slumbering trees at the bottom of the dales; and in
front of us more mountains sprung up again and floated towards us.... We
were in the heart of the Black Forest.
Mountains, still mountains ... and forest, magnificent, ancient, stately
forest. The night sky was clear; I could recognise some kinds of trees,
especially the splendid firs, with their straight white trunks. Here and
there on the edge of the forest, wild goats could be seen; graceful and
alert, they stood on their slender legs and listened, turning their heads
prettily and pricking up their great funnel-shaped ears. A ruined tower,
sightless and gloomy, on the crest of a bare cliff, laid bare its crumbling
turrets; above the old forgotten stones, a little golden star was shining
peacefully. From a small almost black lake rose, like a mysterious wail,
the plaintive croak of tiny frogs. I fancied other notes, long-drawn-out,
languid like the strains of an Æolian harp.... Here we were in the home
of legend! The same delicate moonlight mist, which had struck me in
Schwetzingen, was shed here on every side, and the farther away the
mountains, the thicker was this mist. I counted up five, six, ten different
tones of shadow at different heights on the mountain slopes, and over all
this realm of varied silence the moon queened it pensively. The air blew in
soft, light currents. I felt myself a lightness at heart, and, as it were,
a lofty calm and melancholy....
‘Alice, you must love this country!’
‘I love nothing.’
‘How so? Not me?’
‘Yes ... you!’ she answered indifferently.
It seemed to me that her arm clasped my waist more tightly than before.
‘Forward! forward!’ said Alice, with a sort of cold fervour.
‘Forward!’ I repeated.