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We
stopped at a hotel by the railway-station. Next morning, as we sat in
my room waiting for breakfast to come up, we got a good deal interested
in something which was going on over the way, in front of another hotel.
First, the personage who is called the portier (who is
not the porter, but is a sort of first-mate of a hotel)
appeared at the door in a spick-and-span new blue cloth uniform, decorated
with shining brass buttons, and with bands of gold lace around his cap
and wristbands; and he wore white gloves, too.
He
shed an official glance upon the situation, and then began to give orders.
Two women-servants came out with pails and brooms and brushes, and gave
the sidewalk a thorough scrubbing; meanwhile two others scrubbed the four
marble steps which led up to the door; beyond these we could see some
men-servants taking up the carpet of the grand staircase. This carpet
was carried away and the last grain of dust beaten and banged and swept
out of it; then brought back and put down again. The brass stair-rods
received an exhaustive polishing and were returned to their places. Now
a troop of servants brought pots and tubs of blooming plants and formed
them into a beautiful jungle about the door and the base of the staircase.
Other servants adorned all the balconies of the various stories with flowers
and banners; others ascended to the roof and hoisted a great flag on black
carpet was brought out and laid down the marble steps and out across the
sidewalk to the curbstone. The portier cast his eye along it, and found
it was not absolutely straight; he commanded it to be straightened; the
servants made the effort - made several efforts, in fact - but the portier
was not satisfied. He finally had it taken up, and then he put it down
himself and got it right.
At
this stage of the proceedings, a narrow bright red carpet was unrolled
and stretched from the topof the marble steps to the curbstone, along
the centerof the black carpet. This red path cost the portier more trouble
than even the black one had done. But hepatiently fixed and refixed it
until it was exactly rightand lay precisely in the middle of the black
carpet. In New York these performances would have gathered a mighty crowd
of curious and intensely interested spectators;but here it only captured
an audienc |
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portier
 Illustration:
The Portier
 Appendix
A. - The Portier
Notebook,
early May:
"The
Portier is a most useful & wonderful being. He starts as waiter, then
head waiter, then Portier, then gets a hotel of his own.—Speaks
5 or 6 languages. Let somebody else say this.[...]
Ordered
red pepper in German—waiter
acted happy and intelligent, but returned no more. Rang up head waiter &
ordered red pepper in English —he
sent the portier up with 1 sheet paper. He understood & sent
up the pepper."
Notebook,
May 25:
"The
clerk of a first class hotel in America accomplishes everything you can
possibly desire—& that is what the German portier does—but
there is this difference—if the clerk chooses, he can clog & slight
you, but the portier can't afford that, or his fees would suffer.
Was
told that the portier of one great Berlin Hotel paid $5000 a year (not marks,
but $) for his place." |
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e
of half a dozen little boys who stood in a row across
the pavement,some with their school-knapsacks on their backs and their
hands in their pockets, others with arms full of bundles,and all absorbed
in the show. Occasionally one of them skipped irreverently over the
carpet and took up a positionon the other side. This always visibly
annoyed the portier.
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little
boy
 Illustration:
ONE OF THOSE BOYS. |
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Now came a waiting interval. The landlord, in plain clothes,and bareheaded,
placed himself on the bottom marble step,abreast the portier, who stood
on the other end of the same steps; six or eight waiters, gloved, bareheaded,and
wearing their whitest linen, their whitest cravats, and their finest swallow-tails,
grouped themselves about these chiefs, but leaving the carpetway clear.
Nobody moved or spoke any more but only waited.
In a short time the shrill piping of a coming train was heard, and immediately
groups of people began to gather in the street. Two or three open carriages
arrived, and deposited some maids of honor and some male officials at
the hotel. Presently another open carriage brought the Grand Duke of Baden,
a stately man in uniform, who wore the handsomebrass-mounted, steel-spiked
helmet of the army on his head. Last came the Empress of Germany and the
Grand Duchess of Baden in a closed carriage; these passed through the
low-bowing groups of servants and disappeared in the hotel, exhibiting
to us only the backs of their heads, and then the show was over.
It appears to be as difficult to land a monarch as it is to launch a ship.
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But
as to Heidelberg. The weather was growing pretty warm, — very warm,
in fact. So we left the valley and took quarters at the Schloss
Hotel, on the hill, above the Castle.
Heidelberg lies
at the mouth of a narrow gorge — a gorge the shape of a shepherd's
crook; if one looks up it he perceives that it is about straight, for
a mile and a half, then makes a sharp curve to the right and disappears.
This gorge — along whose bottom pours the swift Neckar — is
confined between (or cloven through) a couple of long, steep ridges, a
thousand feet high and densely wooded clear to their summits, with the
exception of one section which has been shaved and put under cultivation.
These ridges are chopped off at the mouth of the gorge and form two bold
and conspicuous headlands, with Heidelberg nestling between them; from
their bases spreads away the vast dim expanse of the Rhine valley, and
into this expanse the Neckar goes wandering in shining curves and is presently
lost to view.
Now if one turns
and looks up the gorge once more, he will see the Schloss Hotel on the
right perched on a precipice overlooking the Neckar — a precipice
which is so sumptuously cushioned and draped with foliage that no glimpse
of the rock appears. The building seems very airily situated. It has the
appearance of being on a shelf half-way up the wooded mountainside; and
as it is remote and isolated, and very white, it makes a strong mark against
the lofty leafy rampart at its back. |
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Schloss
Hotel

Schloss-Hotel

Illustration: SCHLOSS HOTEL.
Castle
 Illustration:
HEIDELBERG CASTLE.
 Illustration:
HEIDELBERG CASTLE
RIVER
FRONTAGE.

Appendix B. - Heidelberg Castle |
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This
hotel had a feature which was a decided novelty, and one which might
be adopted with advantage by any house which is perched in a commanding
situation. This feature may be described as a series of glass-enclosed
parlors clinging to the outside of the house, one against each
and every bed-chamber and drawing-room. They are like long, narrow,
high-ceiled bird-cages hung against the building. My
room was a corner room, and had two of these things, a north one and
a west one.
From
the north cage one looks up the Neckar gorge; from the west one he looks
down it. This last affords the most extensive view, and it is one of
the loveliest that can be imagined, too. Out of a billowy upheaval of
vivid green foliage, a rifle-shot removed, rises the huge ruin of Heidelberg
Castle ,
with empty window arches, ivy-mailed battlements, moldering towers —
the Lear of inanimate nature — deserted, discrowned, beaten by
the storms, but royal still, and beautiful. It is a fine sight to see
the evening sunlight suddenly strike the leafy declivity at the Castle's
base and dash up it and drench it as with a luminous spray, while the
adjacent groves are in deep shadow.
Behind
the Castle swells a great dome-shaped hill, forest-clad, and beyond
that a nobler and loftier one. The Castle looks down upon the compact
brown-roofed town; and from the town two picturesque old bridges span
the river. Now the view broadens; through the gateway of the sentinel
headlands you gaze out over the wide Rhine plain, which stretches away,
softly and richly tinted, grows gradually and dreamily indistinct, and
finally melts imperceptibly into the remote horizon.
I
have never enjoyed a view which had such a serene and satisfying charm
about it as this one gives.
The
first night we were there, we went to bed and to sleep early; but I
awoke at the end of two or three hours, and lay a comfortable while
listening to the soothing patter of the rain against the balcony windows.
I took it to be rain, but it turned out to be only the murmur of the
restless Neckar, tumbling over her dikes and dams far below, in the
gorge. I got up and went into the west balcony and saw a wonderful sight.
Away down on the level under the black mass of the Castle, the town
lay, stretched along the river, its intricate cobweb of streets jeweled
with twinkling lights; there were rows of lights on the bridges; these
flung lances of light upon the water, in the black shadows of the arches;
and away at the extremity of all this fairy spectacle blinked and glowed
a massed multitude of gas-jets which seemed to cover acres of ground;
it was as if all the diamonds in the world had been spread out there.
I did not know before, that a half-mile of sextuple railway-tracks could
be made such an adornment.
One thinks Heidelberg
by day — with its surroundings — is the last possibility
of the beautiful; but when he sees Heidelberg by night, a fallen Milky
Way, with that glittering railway constellation pinned to the border,
he requires time to consider upon the verdict.
One never tires
of poking about in the dense woods that clothe all these lofty Neckar
hills to their beguiling and impressive charm in any country; but German
legends and fairy tales have given these an added charm. They have peopled
all that region with gnomes, and dwarfs, and all sorts of mysterious
and uncanny creatures. At the time I am writing of, I had been reading
so much of this literature that sometimes I was not sure but I was beginning
to believe in the gnomes and fairies as realities.
One afternoon
I got lost in the woods about a mile from the hotel, and presently fell
into a train of dreamy thought about animals which talk, and kobolds,
and enchanted folk, and the rest of the pleasant legendary stuff; and
so, by stimulating my fancy, I finally got to imagining I glimpsed small
flitting shapes here and there down the columned aisles of the forest.
It was a place which was peculiarly meet for the occasion. It was a
pine wood, with so thick and soft a carpet of brown needles that one's
footfall made no more sound than if he were treading on wool; the tree-trunks
were as round and straight and smooth as pillars, and stood close together;
they were bare of branches to a point about twenty-five feet above-ground,
and from there upward so thick with boughs that not a ray of sunlight
could pierce through. The world was bright with sunshine outside, but
a deep and mellow twilight reigned in there, and also a deep silence
so profound that I seemed to hear my own breathings.
When I had stood
ten minutes, thinking and imagining, and getting my spirit in tune with
the place, and in the right mood to enjoy the supernatural, a raven
suddenly uttered a horse croak over my head. It made me start; and then
I was angry because I started. I looked up, and the creature was sitting
on a limb right over me, looking down at me. I felt something of the
same sense of humiliation and injury which one feels when he finds that
a human stranger has been clandestinely inspecting him in his privacy
and mentally commenting upon him. I eyed the raven, and the raven eyed
me. Nothing was said during some seconds. Then the bird stepped a little
way along his limb to get a better point of observation, lifted his
wings, stuck his head far down below his shoulders toward me and croaked
again — a croak with a distinctly insulting expression about it.
If he had spoken in English he could not have said any more plainly
that he did say in raven, "Well, what do you want here?"
I felt as foolish as if I had been caught in some mean act by a responsible
being, and reproved for it. However, I made no reply; I would not bandy
words with a raven. The adversary waited a while, with his shoulders
still lifted, his head thrust down between them, and his keen bright
eye fixed on me; then he threw out two or three more insults, which
I could not understand, further than that I knew a portion of them consisted
of language not used in church.
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cage
 Illustration:
IN MY CAGE. |
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I
still made no reply. Now the adversary raised his head and called. There
was an answering croak from a little distance in the wood — evidently
a croak of inquiry. The adversary explained with enthusiasm, and the other
raven dropped everything and came. The two sat side by side on the limb
and discussed me as freely and offensively as two great naturalists might
discuss a new kind of bug. The thing became more and more embarrassing.
They called in another friend. This was too much. I saw that they had
the advantage of me, and so I concluded to get out of the scrape by walking
out of it. They enjoyed my defeat as much as any low white people
could have done. They craned their necks and laughed at me (for a raven
CAN laugh, just like a man), they squalled insulting remarks after me
as long as they could see me. They were nothing but ravens — I knew
that — what they thought of me could be a matter of no consequence
— and yet when even a raven shouts after you, "What a hat!"
"Oh, pull down your vest!" and that sort of thing, it hurts
you and humiliates you, and there is no getting around it with fine reasoning
and pretty arguments. |
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...walking
out of it...
 Illustration:
THE REATREAT. |
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Appendix A. - The Portier

Appendix B. - Heidelberg Castle |
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