by Mark Twain
CHAPTER XXIV
[I Protect the Empress of Germany]
That was a thoroughly satisfactory walk--and the only one we were everto have which was all the way downhill. We took the train next morningand returned to Baden-Baden through fearful fogs of dust. Every seat wascrowded, too; for it was Sunday, and consequently everybody was takinga "pleasure" excursion. Hot! the sky was an oven--and a sound one,too, with no cracks in it to let in any air. An odd time for a pleasureexcursion, certainly!
Sunday is the great day on the continent--the free day, the happy day.One can break the Sabbath in a hundred ways without committing any sin.
We do not work on Sunday, because the commandment forbids it; theGermans do not work on Sunday, because the commandment forbids it. Werest on Sunday, because the commandment requires it; the Germans rest onSunday because the commandment requires it. But in the definition ofthe word "rest" lies all the difference. With us, its Sunday meaningis, stay in the house and keep still; with the Germans its Sunday andweek-day meanings seem to be the same--rest the _tired part_, and nevermind the other parts of the frame; rest the tired part, and use themeans best calculated to rest that particular part. Thus: If one'sduties have kept him in the house all the week, it will rest him tobe out on Sunday; if his duties have required him to read weighty andserious matter all the week, it will rest him to read light matter onSunday; if his occupation has busied him with death and funerals all theweek, it will rest him to go to the theater Sunday night and put in twoor three hours laughing at a comedy; if he is tired with digging ditchesor felling trees all the week, it will rest him to lie quiet in thehouse on Sunday; if the hand, the arm, the brain, the tongue, or anyother member, is fatigued with inanition, it is not to be rested byaddeding a day's inanition; but if a member is fatigued with exertion,inanition is the right rest for it. Such is the way in which the Germansseem to define the word "rest"; that is to say, they rest a member byrecreating, recuperating, restoring its forces. But our definition isless broad. We all rest alike on Sunday--by secluding ourselves andkeeping still, whether that is the surest way to rest the most of us ornot. The Germans make the actors, the preachers, etc., work on Sunday.We encourage the preachers, the editors, the printers, etc., to work onSunday, and imagine that none of the sin of it falls upon us; but I donot know how we are going to get around the fact that if it is wrong forthe printer to work at his trade on Sunday it must be equally wrong forthe preacher to work at his, since the commandment has made no exceptionin his favor. We buy Monday morning's paper and read it, and thusencourage Sunday printing. But I shall never do it again.
The Germans remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy, by abstainingfrom work, as commanded; we keep it holy by abstaining from work, ascommanded, and by also abstaining from play, which is not commanded.Perhaps we constructively _break_ the command to rest, because theresting we do is in most cases only a name, and not a fact.
These reasonings have sufficed, in a measure, to mend the rent in myconscience which I made by traveling to Baden-Baden that Sunday. Wearrived in time to furbish up and get to the English church beforeservices began. We arrived in considerable style, too, for the landlordhad ordered the first carriage that could be found, since there was notime to lose, and our coachman was so splendidly liveried that we wereprobably mistaken for a brace of stray dukes; why else were we honoredwith a pew all to ourselves, away up among the very elect at the left ofthe chancel? That was my first thought. In the pew directly in front ofus sat an elderly lady, plainly and cheaply dressed; at her side sata young lady with a very sweet face, and she also was quite simplydressed; but around us and about us were clothes and jewels which itwould do anybody's heart good to worship in.
I thought it was pretty manifest that the elderly lady was embarrassedat finding herself in such a conspicuous place arrayed in such cheapapparel; I began to feel sorry for her and troubled about her. Shetried to seem very busy with her prayer-book and her responses, andunconscious that she was out of place, but I said to myself, "She isnot succeeding--there is a distressed tremulousness in her voice whichbetrays increasing embarrassment." Presently the Savior's name wasmentioned, and in her flurry she lost her head completely, and rose andcourtesied, instead of making a slight nod as everybody else did. Thesympathetic blood surged to my temples and I turned and gave those finebirds what I intended to be a beseeching look, but my feelings got thebetter of me and changed it into a look which said, "If any of you petsof fortune laugh at this poor soul, you will deserve to be flayed forit." Things went from bad to worse, and I shortly found myself mentallytaking the unfriended lady under my protection. My mind was wholly uponher. I forgot all about the sermon. Her embarrassment took strongerand stronger hold upon her; she got to snapping the lid of hersmelling-bottle--it made a loud, sharp sound, but in her trouble shesnapped and snapped away, unconscious of what she was doing. The lastextremity was reached when the collection-plate began its rounds; themoderate people threw in pennies, the nobles and the rich contributedsilver, but she laid a twenty-mark gold piece upon the book-rest beforeher with a sounding slap! I said to myself, "She has parted with all herlittle hoard to buy the consideration of these unpitying people--it is asorrowful spectacle." I did not venture to look around this time; butas the service closed, I said to myself, "Let them laugh, it is theiropportunity; but at the door of this church they shall see her step intoour fine carriage with us, and our gaudy coachman shall drive her home."
Then she rose--and all the congregation stood while she walked down theaisle. She was the Empress of Germany!
No--she had not been so much embarrassed as I had supposed. Myimagination had got started on the wrong scent, and that is alwayshopeless; one is sure, then, to go straight on misinterpretingeverything, clear through to the end. The young lady with her imperialMajesty was a maid of honor--and I had been taking her for one of herboarders, all the time.
This is the only time I have ever had an Empress under my personalprotection; and considering my inexperience, I wonder I got throughwith it so well. I should have been a little embarrassed myself if I hadknown earlier what sort of a contract I had on my hands.
We found that the Empress had been in Baden-Baden several days. It issaid that she never attends any but the English form of church service.
I lay abed and read and rested from my journey's fatigues the remainderof that Sunday, but I sent my agent to represent me at the afternoonservice, for I never allow anything to interfere with my habit ofattending church twice every Sunday.
There was a vast crowd in the public grounds that night to hear the bandplay the "Fremersberg." This piece tells one of the old legends of theregion; how a great noble of the Middle Ages got lost in the mountains,and wandered about with his dogs in a violent storm, until at lastthe faint tones of a monastery bell, calling the monks to a midnightservice, caught his ear, and he followed the direction the sounds camefrom and was saved. A beautiful air ran through the music, withoutceasing, sometimes loud and strong, sometimes so soft that it couldhardly be distinguished--but it was always there; it swung grandly alongthrough the shrill whistling of the storm-wind, the rattling patter ofthe rain, and the boom and crash of the thunder; it wound soft and lowthrough the lesser sounds, the distant ones, such as the throbbingof the convent bell, the melodious winding of the hunter's horn, thedistressed bayings of his dogs, and the solemn chanting of the monks;it rose again, with a jubilant ring, and mingled itself with the countrysongs and dances of the peasants assembled in the convent hall tocheer up the rescued huntsman while he ate his supper. The instrumentsimitated all these sounds with a marvelous exactness. More than one manstarted to raise his umbrella when the storm burst forth and the sheetsof mimic rain came driving by; it was hardly possible to keep fromputting your hand to your hat when the fierce wind began to rage andshriek; and it was _not_ possible to refrain from starting when thosesudden and charmingly real thunder-crashes were let loose.
I suppose the "Fremersberg" is a very low-grade music;
I know, indeed,that it _must_ be low-grade music, because it delighted me, warmed me,moved me, stirred me, uplifted me, enraptured me, that I was full ofcry all the time, and mad with enthusiasm. My soul had never had such ascouring out since I was born. The solemn and majestic chanting of themonks was not done by instruments, but by men's voices; and it roseand fell, and rose again in that rich confusion of warring sounds, andpulsing bells, and the stately swing of that ever-present enchantingair, and it seemed to me that nothing but the very lowest of low-grademusic _could_ be so divinely beautiful. The great crowd which the"Fremersberg" had called out was another evidence that it was low-grademusic; for only the few are educated up to a point where high-grademusic gives pleasure. I have never heard enough classic music to be ableto enjoy it. I dislike the opera because I want to love it and can't.
I suppose there are two kinds of music--one kind which one feels, justas an oyster might, and another sort which requires a higher faculty,a faculty which must be assisted and developed by teaching. Yet if basemusic gives certain of us wings, why should we want any other? But wedo. We want it because the higher and better like it. We want it withoutgiving it the necessary time and trouble; so we climb into that uppertier, that dress-circle, by a lie; we _pretend_ we like it. I knowseveral of that sort of people--and I propose to be one of them myselfwhen I get home with my fine European education.
And then there is painting. What a red rag is to a bull, Turner's "SlaveShip" was to me, before I studied art. Mr. Ruskin is educated in artup to a point where that picture throws him into as mad an ecstasy ofpleasure as it used to throw me into one of rage, last year, when I wasignorant. His cultivation enables him--and me, now--to see water in thatglaring yellow mud, and natural effects in those lurid explosionsof mixed smoke and flame, and crimson sunset glories; it reconcileshim--and me, now--to the floating of iron cable-chains and otherunfloatable things; it reconciles us to fishes swimming around on topof the mud--I mean the water. The most of the picture is a manifestimpossibility--that is to say, a lie; and only rigid cultivation canenable a man to find truth in a lie. But it enabled Mr. Ruskin to doit, and it has enabled me to do it, and I am thankful for it. A Bostonnewspaper reporter went and took a look at the Slave Ship flounderingabout in that fierce conflagration of reds and yellows, and said itreminded him of a tortoise-shell cat having a fit in a platterof tomatoes. In my then uneducated state, that went home to mynon-cultivation, and I thought here is a man with an unobstructed eye.Mr. Ruskin would have said: This person is an ass. That is what I wouldsay, now.
Months after this was written, I happened into the National Gallery inLondon, and soon became so fascinated with the Turner pictures that Icould hardly get away from the place. I went there often, afterward,meaning to see the rest of the gallery, but the Turner spell was toostrong; it could not be shaken off. However, the Turners which attractedme most did not remind me of the Slave Ship.
However, our business in Baden-Baden this time, was to join our courier.I had thought it best to hire one, as we should be in Italy, by and by,and we did not know the language. Neither did he. We found him at thehotel, ready to take charge of us. I asked him if he was "all fixed." Hesaid he was. That was very true. He had a trunk, two small satchels,and an umbrella. I was to pay him fifty-five dollars a month and railwayfares. On the continent the railway fare on a trunk is about the sameit is on a man. Couriers do not have to pay any board and lodging. Thisseems a great saving to the tourist--at first. It does not occur to thetourist that _somebody_ pays that man's board and lodging. It occurs tohim by and by, however, in one of his lucid moments.
