A Tramp Abroad

by Mark Twain

  CHAPTER XII

  [What the Wives Saved]

  The _Rathhaus_, or municipal building, is of the quaintest and mostpicturesque Middle-Age architecture. It has a massive portico and steps,before it, heavily balustraded, and adorned with life-sized rusty ironknights in complete armor. The clock-face on the front of the buildingis very large and of curious pattern. Ordinarily, a gilded angelstrikes the hour on a big bell with a hammer; as the striking ceases, alife-sized figure of Time raises its hour-glass and turns it; two goldenrams advance and butt each other; a gilded cock lifts its wings; but themain features are two great angels, who stand on each side of the dialwith long horns at their lips; it was said that they blew melodiousblasts on these horns every hour--but they did not do it for us. We weretold, later, that they blew only at night, when the town was still.

  Within the _Rathhaus_ were a number of huge wild boars' heads,preserved, and mounted on brackets along the wall; they boreinscriptions telling who killed them and how many hundred years ago itwas done. One room in the building was devoted to the preservation ofancient archives. There they showed us no end of aged documents; somewere signed by Popes, some by Tilly and other great generals, andone was a letter written and subscribed by Goetz von Berlichingen inHeilbronn in 1519 just after his release from the Square Tower.

  This fine old robber-knight was a devoutly and sincerely religiousman, hospitable, charitable to the poor, fearless in fight, active,enterprising, and possessed of a large and generous nature. He had inhim a quality of being able to overlook moderate injuries, and beingable to forgive and forget mortal ones as soon as he had soundlytrounced the authors of them. He was prompt to take up any poor devil'squarrel and risk his neck to right him. The common folk held him dear,and his memory is still green in ballad and tradition. He used to go onthe highway and rob rich wayfarers; and other times he would swoop downfrom his high castle on the hills of the Neckar and capture passingcargoes of merchandise. In his memoirs he piously thanks the Giver ofall Good for remembering him in his needs and delivering sundry suchcargoes into his hands at times when only special providences could haverelieved him. He was a doughty warrior and found a deep joy in battle.In an assault upon a stronghold in Bavaria when he was only twenty-threeyears old, his right hand was shot away, but he was so interested in thefight that he did not observe it for a while. He said that the iron handwhich was made for him afterward, and which he wore for more than half acentury, was nearly as clever a member as the fleshy one had been. I wasglad to get a facsimile of the letter written by this fine old GermanRobin Hood, though I was not able to read it. He was a better artistwith his sword than with his pen.

  We went down by the river and saw the Square Tower. It was a veryvenerable structure, very strong, and very ornamental. There was noopening near the ground. They had to use a ladder to get into it, nodoubt.

  We visited the principal church, also--a curious old structure, with atowerlike spire adorned with all sorts of grotesque images. The innerwalls of the church were placarded with large mural tablets of copper,bearing engraved inscriptions celebrating the merits of old Heilbronnworthies of two or three centuries ago, and also bearing rudely paintedeffigies of themselves and their families tricked out in the queercostumes of those days. The head of the family sat in the foreground,and beyond him extended a sharply receding and diminishing row ofsons; facing him sat his wife, and beyond her extended a low row ofdiminishing daughters. The family was usually large, but the perspectivebad.

  Then we hired the hack and the horse which Goetz von Berlichingen usedto use, and drove several miles into the country to visit the placecalled _Weibertreu_--Wife's Fidelity I suppose it means. It was a feudalcastle of the Middle Ages. When we reached its neighborhood we foundit was beautifully situated, but on top of a mound, or hill, round andtolerably steep, and about two hundred feet high. Therefore, as the sunwas blazing hot, we did not climb up there, but took the place on trust,and observed it from a distance while the horse leaned up against afence and rested. The place has no interest except that which is lent itby its legend, which is a very pretty one--to this effect:

  THE LEGEND

  In the Middle Ages, a couple of young dukes, brothers, took oppositesides in one of the wars, the one fighting for the Emperor, the otheragainst him. One of them owned the castle and village on top of themound which I have been speaking of, and in his absence his brothercame with his knights and soldiers and began a siege. It was a long andtedious business, for the people made a stubborn and faithful defense.But at last their supplies ran out and starvation began its work;more fell by hunger than by the missiles of the enemy. They by andby surrendered, and begged for charitable terms. But the beleagueringprince was so incensed against them for their long resistance that hesaid he would spare none but the women and children--all men should beput to the sword without exception, and all their goods destroyed. Thenthe women came and fell on their knees and begged for the lives of theirhusbands.

  "No," said the prince, "not a man of them shall escape alive; youyourselves shall go with your children into houseless and friendlessbanishment; but that you may not starve I grant you this one grace,that each woman may bear with her from this place as much of her mostvaluable property as she is able to carry."

  Very well, presently the gates swung open and out filed those womencarrying their _husbands_ on their shoulders. The besiegers, furiousat the trick, rushed forward to slaughter the men, but the Duke steppedbetween and said:

  "No, put up your swords--a prince's word is inviolable."

  When we got back to the hotel, King Arthur's Round Table was ready forus in its white drapery, and the head waiter and his first assistant, inswallow-tails and white cravats, brought in the soup and the hot platesat once.

  Mr. X had ordered the dinner, and when the wine came on, he picked upa bottle, glanced at the label, and then turned to the grave, themelancholy, the sepulchral head waiter and said it was not the sort ofwine he had asked for. The head waiter picked up the bottle, cast hisundertaker-eye on it and said:

  "It is true; I beg pardon." Then he turned on his subordinate and calmlysaid, "Bring another label."

  At the same time he slid the present label off with his hand and laid itaside; it had been newly put on, its paste was still wet. When the newlabel came, he put it on; our French wine being now turned into Germanwine, according to desire, the head waiter went blandly about his otherduties, as if the working of this sort of miracle was a common and easything to him.

  Mr. X said he had not known, before, that there were people honestenough to do this miracle in public, but he was aware that thousandsupon thousands of labels were imported into America from Europe everyyear, to enable dealers to furnish to their customers in a quiet andinexpensive way all the different kinds of foreign wines they mightrequire.

  We took a turn around the town, after dinner, and found it fully asinteresting in the moonlight as it had been in the daytime. The streetswere narrow and roughly paved, and there was not a sidewalk or astreet-lamp anywhere. The dwellings were centuries old, and vast enoughfor hotels. They widened all the way up; the stories projected furtherand further forward and aside as they ascended, and the long rowsof lighted windows, filled with little bits of panes, curtained withfigured white muslin and adorned outside with boxes of flowers, made apretty effect.

  The moon was bright, and the light and shadow very strong; and nothingcould be more picturesque than those curving streets, with their rowsof huge high gables leaning far over toward each other in a friendlygossiping way, and the crowds below drifting through the alternatingblots of gloom and mellow bars of moonlight. Nearly everybody wasabroad, chatting, singing, romping, or massed in lazy comfortableattitudes in the doorways.

  In one place there was a public building which was fenced about with athick, rusty chain, which sagged from post to post in a succession oflow swings. The pavement, here, was made of heavy blocks of stone. Inthe glare of the moon a party of barefooted children were swinging on
those chains and having a noisy good time. They were not the first oneswho have done that; even their great-great-grandfathers had not been thefirst to do it when they were children. The strokes of the bare feethad worn grooves inches deep in the stone flags; it had taken manygenerations of swinging children to accomplish that.

  Everywhere in the town were the mold and decay that go with antiquity,and evidence of it; but I do not know that anything else gave us sovivid a sense of the old age of Heilbronn as those footworn grooves inthe paving-stones.