Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-13.pdf/16

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1874]
THE NEW HYPERION.
15

my part, out of respect for art, if for nothing else, I asked him frankly the cause of his un-English action. "My views may be peculiar," said he, "but as I think a diplomatist is the mediator between different nations, I consider that he ought to observe all religious practices that are not in themselves immoral."

We next entered a little cell decorated as a chapel. The walls were covered with ex voto offerings, such as little twisted arms and clubbed feet, modeled in plaster: small paintings of many kinds, each with the story of a miraculous cure, told of the intercession of the saints, more powerful here, it would seem, than the thermal springs. In the chapel and around the door were good simple peasants, men and women, muttering their paternosters as they knelt. Sylvester knelt with them, and like them muttered a prayer.

It was after our promenade in the cemetery that I bethought me of a mundane but agreeable resurrection, that of my wardrobe. I dropped Berkley, with rendezvous at the New Trinkhalle, and in the discreet shelter of a tailor's shop caused my old scarred habit to disappear under a neat spring surcoat, with some further transformations of like character. I also procured varnished shoes and a silken hat, so strong upon me was the influence of watering-place vanity and the fear of hotel-stewards. Making then for the Trinkhalle, I found in its vicinity a knot of my philosophic friends from the Casino, together with the painter and the literary man.

Opposite the New Trinkhalle, which is not to be confounded with the old one, rises an edifice in the form of a classic portico, presenting a long gallery upheld by Corinthian pillars. On the wall between each pair of columns is painted in fresco some legend of the country, to the number of fourteen pictures. One of these allegories the painter was demonstrating to his friends, like a geometrical theorem, with the aid of his cane. I joined the group. "It is the story of young Burkhardt Keller, a noble knight. On two different evenings he met, as he was riding through the forest of Kuppenheim, a lady veiled in white, who sank into the ground at his approach. He caused the ground to be dug up in the place where she had disappeared, and found there the remains of a Roman altar, then the fragments of a statue, of which the bust alone remained uninjured. The features were of great beauty, and the gallant Keller would fain have had it play for him the part of Galatea before Pygmalion. In the same wood, at the hour of midnight, Keller met the veiled lady for the third time. On this occasion she did not sink into the earth: leaning against the altar, she slowly raised her veil. The face was that of the statue, but animated and alive. Keller

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