After a slow ride, of nearly eight hours, in what, in Germany, is
called an express train, through a rain and clouds that hid from our
view the Tyrol and the Swabian mountains, over a rolling, pleasant
country, past pretty little railway station-houses, covered with
vines, gay with flowers in the windows, and surrounded with beds of
flowers, past switchmen in flaming scarlet jackets, who stand at the
switches and raise the hand to the temple, and keep it there, in a
military salute, as we go by, we come into old Augsburg, whose
Confession is not so fresh in our minds as it ought to be. Portions
of the ancient wall remain, and many of the towers; and there are
archways, picturesquely opening from street to street, under several
of which we drive on our way to the Three Moors, a stately hostelry
and one of the oldest in Germany.
It stood here in the year 1500; and the room is still shown,
unchanged since then, in which the rich Count Fugger entertained
Charles V. The chambers are nearly all immense. That in which we
are lodged is large enough for Queen Victoria; indeed, I am glad to
say that her sleeping-room at St. Cloud was not half so spacious.
One feels either like a count, or very lonesome, to sit down in a
lofty chamber, say thirty-five feet square, with little furniture,
and historical and tragical life-size figures staring at one from the
wall-paper. One fears that they may come down in the deep night, and
stand at the bedside,--those narrow, canopied beds there in the
distance, like the marble couches in the cathedral. It must be a
fearful thing to be a royal person, and dwell in a palace, with
resounding rooms and naked, waxed, inlaid floors. At the Three Moors
one sees a visitors' book, begun in 1800, which contains the names of
many noble and great people, as well as poets and doctors and titled
ladies, and much sentimental writing in French. It is my impression,
from an inspection of the book, that we are the first untitled
visitors.
The traveler cannot but like Augsburg at once, for its quaint houses,
colored so diversely and yet harmoniously. Remains of its former
brilliancy yet exist in the frescoes on the outside of the buildings,
some of which are still bright in color, though partially defaced.
Those on the House of Fugger have been restored, and are very brave
pictures. These frescoes give great animation and life to the
appearance of a street, and I am glad to see a taste for them
reviving. Augsburg must have been very gay with them two and three
hundred years ago, when, also, it was the home of beautiful women of
the middle class, who married princes. We went to see the house in
which lived the beautiful Agnes Bernauer, daughter of a barber, who
married Duke Albert III. of Bavaria. The house was nought, as old
Samuel Pepys would say, only a high stone building, in a block of
such; but it is enough to make a house attractive for centuries if a
pretty woman once looks out of its latticed windows, as I have no
doubt Agnes often did when the duke and his retinue rode by in
clanking armor.
But there is no lack of reminders of old times. The cathedral, which
was begun before the Christian era could express its age with four
figures, has two fine portals, with quaint carving, and bronze doors
of very old work, whereon the story of Eve and the serpent is
literally given,--a representation of great theological, if of small
artistic value. And there is the old clock and watch tower, which
for eight hundred years has enabled the Augsburgers to keep the time
of day and to look out over the plain for the approach of an enemy.
The city is full of fine bronze fountains some of them of very
elaborate design, and adding a convenience and a beauty to the town
which American cities wholly want. In one quarter of the town is the
Fuggerei, a little city by itself, surrounded by its own wall, the
gates of which are shut at night, with narrow streets and neat little
houses. It was built by Hans Jacob Fugger the Rich, as long ago as
1519, and is still inhabited by indigent Roman-Catholic families,
according to the intention of its founder. In the windows were
lovely flowers. I saw in the street several of those mysterious,
short, old women,--so old and yet so little, all body and hardly any
legs, who appear to have grown down into the ground with advancing
years.
It happened to be a rainy day, and cold, on the 30th of July, when we
left Augsburg; and the flat fields through which we passed were
uninviting under the gray light. Large flocks of geese were feeding
on the windy plains, tended by boys and women, who are the living
fences of this country. I no longer wonder at the number of
feather-beds at the inns, under which we are apparently expected to
sleep even in the warmest nights. Shepherds with the regulation
crooks also were watching herds of sheep. Here and there a cluster
of red-roofed houses were huddled together into a village, and in all
directions rose tapering spires. Especially we marked the steeple of
Blenheim, where Jack Churchill won the name for his magnificent
country-seat, early in the eighteenth century. All this plain where
the silly geese feed has been marched over and fought over by armies
time and again. We effect the passage of, the Danube without
difficulty, and on to Harburg, a little town of little red houses,
inhabited principally by Jews, huddled under a rocky ridge, upon the
summit of which is a picturesque medieval castle, with many towers
and turrets, in as perfect preservation as when feudal flags floated
over it. And so on, slowly, with long stops at many stations, to
give opportunity, I suppose, for the honest passengers to take in
supplies of beer and sausages, to Nuremberg.