THE WATERS OF HERCULES.-PART III. CHAPTER VIII.-THE VALLEY-GOD. denn sehr geliebt von den Göttern Wohnen wir weit abwärts." WHEN the Romans-so says Roumanian tradition wearied with the conquest of the world, began to sigh after rest and refreshment, it was to the valley of Hercules they came to seek it. Here, to heal their wounds and strengthen their enfeebled limbs, they passed three days and three nights sitting up to their necks in the hot sulphur-springs, -a proceeding, let it be parenthetically observed, which would have meant certain death to anything short of an ancient Roman. But an antique constitution could defy any thing, it seems; for on the third day of this memorable bath, the heroes, emerging from the sulphur waves, found that they had not only regained their former strength, but had doubled and quadrupled it. Their muscles were iron, their blood was fire; and in the drunkenness of their new-born life they cried aloud: "What enemy is strong enough to be worthy of our sword? Behold, all countries of the earth are trampled, let us measure our strength with Heaven!" In spite, however, of the sulphur-springs, the war between between Rome and Heaven proved unequal; and the conquerors of the world, repeating the angels' fall, lost not only the battle with Heaven, but their possessions upon earth as well. And thus, according to the Roumanian peasant's theory, the Hercules Waters caused the fall of Rome. - Voss's Odyssey. cent failure, the sulphur springs to this day retain power enough to do almost anything, except raising man to the level of a god, -so, at least, say the people of the country; and it must be confessed that in the lonely depth of that valley, penetrated with its wildness, intoxicated by its beauty, even a stranger feels inclined to share the half-superstitious and almost adoring awe with which the Roumanian peasant regards the "sacred" springs of Hercules. Some lingering trace of heathendom seems indeed still to hang about the valley. In this remote corner of the earth the ancient gods are not quite forgotten. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that, though he has his blest medals and his relics, though he beats his breast and tells his beads, yet every peasant of the valley is at heart a little bit of an innocent pagan. He will never fail to sprinkle himself with holy water on leaving church; yet, if the truth were known, the Apa Hercului (Hercules Water), whose almost miraculous effects he daily sees, is to him the holier water of the two. He will never forget to bend his head low when he passes by a wayside cross; but with unconscious idol-worship he bends it still lower when he passes by the stone Hercules, that stands like the guardian spirit of the place, and has stood here since the time of the Romans. Mythology and Christianity are Notwithstanding this magnifi- inextricably jumbled up in the rustic mind; and though, practically, the valley inhabitants may be as good Christians as any peasants of any country, their idea of the Creator of the world is yet slightly mixed up with their idea of the hero of the twelve great labours of antiquity. It is by his name that the men of the valley swear; it is with the fear of his club that the women of the valley silence their crying children. He is at once their patron and their bogy. "The god of the valley," is a phrase so current in the popular mouth, that even strangers adopt it; and though they be enlightened enough to laugh at superstition, and learned enough to understand the chemical analysis of the Hercules Waters, yet unconsciously they slip into the habit of talking of the "Sacred Springs." Perhaps the deep shade, so seldom lifted from the valley, serves to feed this mysterious awe; for the hours of sunlight are short and rare. When Gretchen opened her eyes on the morning following their arrival, the forenoon was well advanced, and yet no sunbeam had reached the depth of the valley. The morning mist still lingered, weaving a soft chill bloom over everything. The sun will burn that bloom away, when it has risen high enough to look over the mountains. The mountains! How wonderful they were! Gretchen's eyes rose towards them and hung there entranced. The pic ture had a strange power of fascination the cold shadowy valley, the mountains yellow with the morning sun, and towering so near as to shut out the sky. It might have been awful, if it had not been so beautiful. I do not suppose that there is in Europe any watering-place of importance which compresses itself into such a limited space as the Baths of Hercules. The Baths of Hercules have had no choice in the matter; compression was unavoidable, for the simple reason that there was no more room in which to expand. Two rows of houses, forming a short street, is all that the width of the valley will allow of the river Djernis filling up what remains in breadth. Most of these houses are old and shabby, but three of the buildings belong to a more modern date. The Cursalon, graceful and majestic, seems to press its Byzantine walls and elaborate roof straight against the rock behind, which falls in a sheer precipice from the mountain. On each side a sweep of covered arcade connects the Cursalon with a monster hotel. A tiny church stands as the last building of the miniature town; and when that is passed, there is nothing but solitude. The very road dies away, and the footpath grows rougher, and the Djernis's voice louder, the higher the explorer strays up the valley. This spot of earth seems to be connected with nothing else on earth: the beautiful wilderness is a kingdom by itself, and to the kingdom there is not wanting a king. A Hungarian of high family and large fortune was the present lord of the valley-or, to put it more plainly, Baron István Tolnay was the tenant who held the place in lease direct from the hands of Government, and under whose sway every visitor and doctor, every hotel-keeper and restaurateur, found himself perforce placed. The valley-king" enjoyed a regard next only to that paid to the "valley-god"; and could the rustic conception of power and authority have been summed up in three words, the result would have been-Dumne deň (the Lord God), Hercules, and the Baron. "I shall certainly fall asleep if I sit still much longer," said Gretchen on that first afternoon as they sat at the hotel window. One night's rest had not been enough to make up for the many that had been lost, and the sound of the rushing river hummed in her ears like a lullaby. Ascelinde was not to be moved from her sofa; so contenting herself with the escort of her brother Kurt, Gretchen started on her first journey of discovery. Kurt Mohr, be it here observed, was a rather strange specimen of humanity. Neither exactly a boy nor exactly a man, he had never really been the one nor was he yet the other, and yet he was both. His sixteenth birthday had been passed some months ago; but though by his stature he might have been taken for less, in expression and manner he generally was taken for more. In frame he was short and somewhat thick-set, in face sallow and square-featured: there was no particle of his sister's beauty about him; the difference between the two was the difference between a goblin and a fairy. But Kurt was not a goblin of the repulsive sort: a look of careless contentment sat for ever on his face; he had never been known to lose his temper, never been seen flurried, never was in a hurry, never was excited. Throughout the whole of the worries of travelling, his contentment had remained unflawed no noise seemed to disturb him; no dust could succeed in clinging to him; no mid-day sun could heat him; no sight betray him into an exclamation of wonder. With his hands in his pockets he had stared at each prospect in turn, and taken it all for granted. As he now walked down the Brother and sister strayed into the small Curgarten, and from there into the covered arcades, where in the height of the season all shopping is done. Everything as yet bore the stamp of the opening season: most of the shops were still closed; some were entering on preparations; glass panes were being polished, and packing-cases opened. They looked into the Cursalon and saw a lofty space handsomely decorated in the oriental style, and with piles of velvet chairs stowed into a corner. the far end one puny youth in shirt-sleeves was languidly rubbing the floor with a cloth: the sound of his steps echoed round and round the large apartment. The hotels seemed all to be breathing in a supply of fresh air for the summer; every window was wide open; within the bath-houses thermometer and shower-baths were being tested and put to rights. At Further on the air was charged with sulphur-fumes; but when the last building was passed, and the loneliness of the valley gained, there were only the wild flowers to scent the breeze. The footpath ran on the top of the riverbank; and the noise and gurgling of the water was so great, that it seemed to fill the whole valley with its sound. The overhanging rocks re-echoed it, and the trees nodded in the wind as they bent to listen to it. They came to a bridge, and caught sight of a path winding up into the wood at the other side. Its tempting invitation was not be resisted. "Kurt," said Gretchen, "if I thought there were no bears and wolves in that forest, I should go up at once; it looks so beautiful there!" Kurt having expressed the greatest contempt for the bears and wolves suggested, the ascent was accordingly risked. It was indeed beautiful in the wood. From between the stones of the rugged pathway the maidenhair and spleenwort were beginning to peep in tiny, tender, green points; young brackens were uncoiling their crisp, brown rings; the lilac - bushes, growing wild, flung their fresh scent on the air, and clustered in coloured masses against the young green of beechtrees, just bursting into perfect leaf. The branches of hawthorn and bramble, white with blossom, broke through the midst of green tangles and floated on each breath of air. A few late violets still lingered and hung their bleached heads, drooping in the shade of rising cowslips, and fading beside the brightness of blue lobelia, which spread itself up and down the banks in gaudy patches. The wild vine was only now beginning to spin fine threads round the branches on which it hung; soft green tendrils clung timidly where still rustled the dry brown stalks, and here and there dangled a withered leaf of last year's growth. Only the sober fir-trees, solitary among the beeches, had not thought of putting on summer garments; tall they stood and dark, wellnigh black, amid all the freshness of young flowers and bursting buds. It was beautiful, but it was silent; for silence is the peculi arity of these secluded forests. There was not a bird's note in the whole height and depth of the woods, nor coming from the mountains around. There was no chirrup and flutter to tell you of a thrush-family learning to fly, nor any cry of an anxious parent-bird; there was no blackbird flying up startled from its nest in the hawthorn-bush. It was all a deathlike silence; only the rush of the Djernis down there, turned to a far-off murmur here, and the rattle which a squirrel made high above Gretchen's head, as slowly she climbed the steep path. In this country the people explain everything by legends; and the peasant of the Hercules valley has a legend to account for the silence of his woods. Once the valley not only had songsters, but such wonderful songsters that their voices attracted the attention of the gods and awakened their jealousy. jealousy. "We have nothing like that in Olympus," they said; and having apparently a taste for good music, they robbed the feathered musicians for their own service and delight. But the gods had reckoned without their host; soon there arose in the valley music of another sort. The cries of the deprived people were so piercing that they quite prevailed over the birds in Olympus; and in order to pacify the screamers and enjoy their orchestra in peace, the gods caused the Djernis river to flow, and gave it a voice of musical sweetness. More learned but less poetical people account for the want of singing - birds by the injurious effects of the sulphur - steams. To this latter theory, as being the more logical of the two, Gretchen would probably have agreed. But the want of birds did not strike her; for she had never been in a wood before, and even a wood without birds was enchantment enough. She did not stay long on the path; the first clump of cowslips on which her eyes fell, was inducement enough to leave it. She returned with her hands half full; she went off again for a branch of pink and white hawthorn; she broke her way through the bushes back to the path; but just then the sunlight, which fell slanting into the wood, had touched a drooping head of lilac, melting it into liquid colour, and Gretchen felt that she must have that lilac. She reached it and tore it down; but there were more slanting sunbeams and they fell through the branches upon other lilacs, and upon yellow cowslips, which under their touch glowed into living gold; and they bronzed the uncurling brackens, and speckled the moss, until Gretchen, wandering on from bush to bush, and always meaning to turn back, and never doing so, stood still at last with both her hands full, and looked around her in perplexity, wondering where the path could be. "Kurt!" she called out; "Kurt, where are you?" and then she stood still and listened. The bushes rustled, and Kurt appeared with his hands in his pockets. "Not the faintest." loosened as she broke through the bushes; it floated over her shoulders like a veil of gold; a head of white hawthorn had been caught in the silken net, and hung there a willing prisoner. Gretchen drew a long breath of the evening air, and half unconsciously she sank back upon the bank. It made such a luxurious couch, and the loose sheaf of flowers she had gathered was such a soft pillow for her head. She put up her hands and clasped them behind her neck, and lay staring up into the branches and the quivering leaves overhead. "You look like a large babe in a wood," remarked Kurt, crouching on the ground and pulling up an ivy-trail with his fingers. "Leave me in peace," was the drowsy remonstrance. "So I shall, presently," said Kurt, throwing the ivy-trail across his sister, and looking up at the nearest beech-tree with the eye of a connoisseur, as if marking its most favourable points of attack. There was a long silence before he spoke again. "You are not going to sleep, are you?" he asked, showering a handful of anemone - heads over Gretchen. "Oh no," she murmured in luxurious drowsiness. "What are you "Kurt, have you a notion where throwing at me? What have you the path is?" put round my arms? Cannot you leave me alone?" She stirred her arm and heard some leaves rustling. Kurt was laughing in his impish way; but her eyelids were too heavy to raise themselves. "We cannot have lost our way," said Gretchen; "it stands to reason that the path is close at hand, but I am not going to look for it till I have rested." Gretchen, as she spoke, threw down her armful of flowers, and sat down beside them on the sloping bank. Her hair had got It was so pleasant to lie herethe moss so soft-the trees rustling-or was it the Djernis? It did not matter which, for Gretchen was asleep. |