We had mounted a terrace from whose eminence the whole spread of the
valley was visible. Profanation! No sooner had we attained the plateau
than a covered gallery appeared, and a Teutonic voice was heard with
the familiar inquiry, "Will the gentlemen take wine or beer?"

Was ever a man of delicacy and feeling so ruthlessly treated as I?
To be tempted by circumstances into pouring out one's most intimate
confessions to an icy person to whom one owes money, and then to have
even this imperfect confidence interrupted by a tavern-waiter in an
apron! Miserable hireling! give us solitude and meditation, not beer!

Flying the "Repose of Sophie" without the concession of a glance, we
mounted toward the ancient castle, whose ruins seemed ready to roll on
us down the hillside. It was indeed romantic. The wind, in plaintive,
melodious tones, searched our ears as it came perfumed from the tufted
walls. We penetrated through a scene of high and mossy rocks, bound in
the lean embrace of knotted ivy, and finally by a dismantled postern
we intruded into the castle. Sacrilege again! The stone-masons were
tranquilly working here and there, solidifying old ruins and very
probably fabricating new ones. The wind, whose sighing we had admired,
was the cat-like harmony of the æolian harps: these harps were
artlessly stretched across each of the old vaulted windows. We arrived
at the high portal of the ancient manor, a genuine Roman construction
of Aurelius Aquensis--a gateway with a round arch: it was obstructed
by hired cabs, by whole herds of venal donkeys saddled and bridled,
and by holiday-makers of Baden in Sunday clothes preserved for ten
or fifteen years. The old pile itself is transformed into a hostelry.
Gray was wrong: the paths of glory lead not to the grave, but to the
_gasthaus_; and Matthisson could have imitated the "Elegy" about as
well in the gaming-hall as among these rejuvenated ruins.