But Flemming thought not of the scene before him.  Sorrow unspeakable was upon his spirit in that lonely hour; and, hiding his face in his hands, he exclaimed aloud;

“Spirit of the past! look not so mournfully at me with thy great, tearful eyes!  Touch me not with thy cold hand!  Breathe not upon me with the icy breath of the grave!  Chant no more that dirge of sorrow, through the long and silent watches of the night!”

Mournful voices from afar seemed to answer, “Treuenfels!” and he remembered how others had suffered, and his heart grew still.

Slowly the landscape brightened.  Down therushing stream came a boat, with its white wings spread, and darted like a swallow through the narrow pass of God’s-Help.  The boatmen were singing, but not the song of Roland the Brave, which was heard of old by the weeping Hildegund, as she sat within the walls of that cloister, which now looked forth in the pale morning from amid the leafless linden trees.  The dim traditions of those gray old times rose in the traveller’s memory; for the ruined tower of Rolandseck was still looking down upon the Kloster Nonnenwerth, as if the sound of the funeral bell had changed the faithful Paladin to stone, and he were watching still to see the form of his beloved one come forth, not from her cloister, but from her grave.  Thus the brazen clasps of the book of legends were opened, and, on the page illuminated by the misty rays of the rising sun, he read again the tales of Liba, and the mournful bride of Argenfels, and Siegfried, the mighty slayer of the dragon.  Meanwhile the mists had risen from the Rhine, and the whole air was filled with golden vapor, through which hebeheld the sun, hanging in heaven like a drop of blood.  Even thus shone the sun within him, amid the wintry vapors, uprising from the valley of the shadow of death, through which flowed the stream of his life,—­sighing, sighing!

CHAPTER II.  THE CHRIST OF ANDERNACH.

Paul Flemming resumed his solitary journey.  The morning was still misty, but not cold.  Across the Rhine the sun came wading through the reddish vapors; and soft and silver-white outspread the broad river, without a ripple upon its surface, or visible motion of the ever-moving current.  A little vessel, with one loose sail, was riding at anchor, keel to keel with another, that lay right under it, its own apparition,—­and all was silent, and calm, and beautiful.

The road was for the most part solitary; for there are few travellers upon the Rhine in winter.  Peasant women were at work in the vineyards; climbing up the slippery hill-sides, like beasts of burden, with large baskets of manureupon their backs.  And once during the morning, a band of apprentices, with knapsacks, passed by, singing, “The Rhine!  The Rhine! a blessing on the Rhine!”

O, the pride of the German heart in this noble river!  And right it is; for, of all the rivers of this beautiful earth, there is none so beautiful as this.  There is hardly a league of its whole course, from its cradle in the snowy Alps to its grave in the sands of Holland, which boasts not its peculiar charms.  By heavens!  If I were a German I would be proud of it too; and of the clustering grapes, that hang about its temples, as it reels onward through vineyards, in a triumphal march, like Bacchus, crowned and drunken.