‘Look down,’ Alice answered; ‘you
are not now in Paris.’
I lowered my eyes.... It was true. A dark
plain, intersected here and there by the whitish lines
of roads, was rushing rapidly by below us, and only
behind us on the horizon, like the reflection of an
immense conflagration, rose the great glow of the
innumerable lights of the capital of the world.
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 The veil was withdrawn at last.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.
