We went by some swimmers, whose white shadowy bodies trembled near the
side of the steamer under water. One man with a round, fair head lifted
his face and one arm from the water and shouted a greeting to us, as if
he were a Niebelung, saluting with bright arm lifted from the water, his
face laughing, the fair moustache hanging over his mouth. Then his white
body swirled in the water, and he was gone, swimming with the
side stroke.
Schaffhausen the town, half old and bygone, half modern, with breweries
and industries, that is not very real. Schaffhausen Falls, with their
factory in the midst and their hotel at the bottom, and the general
cinematograph effect, they are ugly.
It was afternoon when I set out to walk from the Falls to Italy, across
Switzerland. I remember the big, fat, rather gloomy fields of this part
of Baden, damp and unliving. I remember I found some apples under a tree
in a field near a railway embankment, then some mushrooms, and I ate
both. Then I came on to a long, desolate high-road, with dreary,
withered trees on either side, and flanked by great fields where groups
of men and women were working. They looked at me as I went by down the
long, long road, alone and exposed and out of the world.
I remember nobody came at the border village to examine my pack, I
passed through unchallenged. All was quiet and lifeless and hopeless,
with big stretches of heavy land.
Till sunset came, very red and purple, and suddenly, from the heavy
spacious open land I dropped sharply into the Rhine valley again,
suddenly, as if into another glamorous world.
There was the river rushing along between its high, mysterious, romantic
banks, which were high as hills, and covered with vine. And there was
the village of tall, quaint houses flickering its lights on to the
deep-flowing river, and quite silent, save for the rushing of water.
There was a fine covered bridge, very dark. I went to the middle and
looked through the opening at the dark water below, at the façade of
square lights, the tall village-front towering remote and silent above
the river. The hill rose on either side the flood; down here was a
small, forgotten, wonderful world that belonged to the date of isolated
village communities and wandering minstrels.
So I went back to the inn of The Golden Stag, and, climbing some steps,
I made a loud noise. A woman came, and I asked for food. She led me
through a room where were enormous barrels, ten feet in diameter, lying
fatly on their sides; then through a large stone-clean kitchen, with
bright pans, ancient as the Meistersinger; then up some steps and into
the long guest-room, where a few tables were laid for supper.
A few people were eating. I asked for Abendessen, and sat by the window
looking at the darkness of the river below, the covered bridge, the dark
hill opposite, crested with its few lights.
Then I ate a very large quantity of knoedel soup and bread, and drank
beer, and was very sleepy. Only one or two village men came in, and
these soon went again; the place was dead still. Only at a long table on
the opposite side of the room were seated seven or eight men, ragged,
disreputable, some impudent--another came in late; the landlady gave
them all thick soup with dumplings and bread and meat, serving them in a
sort of brief disapprobation. They sat at the long table, eight or nine
tramps and beggars and wanderers out of work and they ate with a sort of
cheerful callousness and brutality for the most part, and as if
ravenously, looking round and grinning sometimes, subdued, cowed, like
prisoners, and yet impudent. At the end one shouted to know where he was
to sleep. The landlady called to the young serving-woman, and in a
classic German severity of disapprobation they were led up the stone
stairs to their room. They tramped off in threes and twos, making a bad,
mean, humiliated exit. It was not yet eight o'clock. The landlady sat
talking to one bearded man, staid and severe, whilst, with her work on
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