after the defeat of Prussia at Auerstaedt; a
loss which one can well imagine that the Town Council of Bremen bore
less philosophically than many another act of power of those merciless
freebooters. Bacchus himself, who dates from 1624, has been empty for
100 years. But what has become of the Rose herself? There are many old
casks in the cellar called after her, but none that I could identify
with the heroine of the story. She is still painted on the ceiling--a
sufficiently ugly specimen (of the variety known as 'La France,' she
appears to be)--very fat and round, with very dirty green foliage, and
round her the following inscription:--

'Cur Rosa Flos Veneris Bacchi depingitur antro,
Causa quod absque mero frigiat ipsa Venus.'

Other bad hexameters follow in other parts of the vault known as the
Rose cellar; as for instance:

'Haec Rosa Luminibus Veneres Nectarque Palato
Objicit, exhalans pocula grata cadis:
Vina vetusta tenet, grandaevi munera Bacchi;
Sint procul hinc juvenes; vos decet iste senes.'

They are in fact the sort of verses that the traditional Eton boy, who
wrote verses for the whole of his Dame's house, could turn out at the
rate of a couplet a minute, adding a few false quantities and concords
by desire of the accomplice for whom they were written, 'because if you
don't, you know, my tutor will never believe they're my own
composition.' Finally, over the entrance door, on the other side of
which is a medallion of Hauff, erected in 1876, comes the following:--

'Was Magen, Leib und Herz, Saft, Kraft, und Geist kann geben,
Betruebte troesten mag, halbtodte kann beleben,
Theilt diese Rose mit, sie hat von hundert Jahren
Den Preis ein edles Oel mit Sorgfalt zu bewahren.'

More could be quoted, but this breathes the spirit of the eighteenth
century quite sufficiently for our purpose.

As for Roland, he is still in the marketplace, a wonderful
fourteenth-century stone figure, nearly twenty feet high, not standing
on a pillar, but simply on a pedestal about two feet from the ground.
He would certainly find it remarkably difficult to sit down, even on a
cask, for he has iron spikes to his knees, which would make him
extremely uncomfortable if he bent them. He did not bow his head to me
as I went away as he did to Hauff, which I felt deeply. It is generally
believed that he only bows his head to those departing visitors who
have had enough Nierstein to appreciate the compliment.