EST VIRGINIA.
FISH CREEK VALLEY, WEST VIRGINIA.
CHEAT RIVER VALLEY AND MOUNTAINS.
CHEAT RIVERS NARROWS.
SCHLOSS SCHWALBEN.

THE NEW HYPERION.

FROM PARIS TO MARLY BY WAY OF THE RHINE.

IV.--A DAY IN STRASBURG.

[Illustration: TEARING UP THE PONTOON BRIDGE.]

Behold me, then, with five hours around my neck, like so many
millstones, in Strasburg, on the abjured Rhine! Had I not vowed never
to visit that bewitched current again? Was it not by Rhine-bank that
I learned to quote the minnesingers and to unctuate my hair? From her
owl-tower did not old Frau Himmelauen use to observe me, my cane, and
my curls, and my gloves? Did not her gossips compare me to Wilhelm
Meister? And so, when he thought he was ripe, the innocent Paul
Flemming must needs proceed to pour his curls, his songs and his love
into the lap of Mary Ashburton; and the discreet siren responded, "You
had better go back to Heidelberg and grow: you are not the Magician."

Yet before that little disaster of my calf period I sighed for the
Rhine: I used its wines more freely than was perhaps good for me, and
when the smoke-colored goblet was empty would declare that if I were a
German I should be proud of the grape-wreathed river too. At Bingen
I once sat up to behold the bold outline of the banks crested with
ruins, which in the morning proved to be a slated roof and chimneys.
And when at Heidelberg I saw the Neckar open upon the broad Rhine
plain like the mouth of a trumpet, I felt inspired, and built
every evening on my table a perfect cathedral of slim, spire-shaped
bottles--sunny pinnacles of Johannisberger.

And now, decoyed to the Rhine by a puerile conspiracy, how could I
best get the small change for my five hours?

[Illustration: STRASBURG CATHEDRAL IN FLAMES.]

Should I sulk like a bear in the parlor of the Maison Rouge until the
departure of the Paris train, or should I explore the city? Some wave
from my fond, foolish past flowed over me and filled me with desire.
I felt that I loved the Rhine and the Rhine cities once more. And where
could I better retie myself to those old pilgrim habits than in this
citadel of heroism, a place sanctied by recent woes, a city proved
by its endurance through a siege which even that of Paris hardly
surpassed? One draught, then, from the epic Rhine! To-morrow, at
Marly, I could laugh over it all with Hohenfels.

The Muenster was before me--the highest tower in Europe, if we except
the hide