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Paul Flemming resumed his solitary journey.
The morning was still misty, but not cold. Across
the Rhine the sun came wading through the reddish
vapors; and soft and silver-white outspread
the broad river, without a ripple upon its surface,
or visible motion of the ever-moving current. A
little vessel, with one loose sail, was riding at anchor,
keel to keel with another, that lay right under
it, its own apparition,—and all was silent,
and calm, and beautiful.

The road was for the most part solitary; for
there are few travellers upon the Rhine in winter.
Peasant women were at work in the vineyards;
climbing up the slippery hill-sides, like
beasts of burden, with large baskets of manure

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upon their backs. And once during the morning,
a band of apprentices, with knapsacks, passed
by, singing, “The Rhine! The Rhine! a blessing
on the Rhine!”

O, the pride of the German heart in this noble
river! And right it is; for, of all the rivers of
this beautiful earth, there is none so beautiful as
this. There is hardly a league of its whole course,
from its cradle in the snowy Alps to its grave in
the sands of Holland, which boasts not its peculiar
charms. By heavens! If I were a German I
would be proud of it too; and of the clustering
grapes, that hang about its temples, as it reels onward
through vineyards, in a triumphal march,
like Bacchus, crowned and drunken.

But I will not attempt to describe the Rhine; it
would make this chapter much too long. And to
do it well, one should write like a god; and his
style flow onward royally with breaks and dashes,
like the waters of that royal river, and antique,
quaint, and Gothic times, be reflected in it. Alas!
this evening my style flows not at all. Flow,

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then, into this smoke-colored goblet, thou blood of
the Rhine! out of thy prison-house,—out of
thy long-necked, tapering flask, in shape not unlike
a church-spire among thy native hills; and,
from the crystal belfry, loud ring the merry tinkling
bells, while I drink a health to my hero, in
whose heart is sadness, and in whose ears the bells
of Andernach are ringing noon.

He is threading his way alone through a narrow
alley, and now up a flight of stone steps, and
along the city wall, towards that old round tower,
built by the Archbishop Frederick of Cologne in
the twelfth century. It has a romantic interest in
his eyes; for he has still in his mind and heart
that beautiful sketch of Carové, in which is described
a day on the tower of Andernach. He
finds the old keeper and his wife still there; and
the old keeper closes the door behind him slowly,
as of old, lest he should jam too hard the poor
souls in Purgatory, whose fate it is to suffer in the
cracks of doors and hinges. But alas! alas! the
daughter, the maiden with long, dark eyelashes!

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she is asleep in her little grave, under the linden
trees of Feldkirche, with rosemary in her folded
hands!

Flemming returned to the hotel disappointed.
As he passed along the narrow streets, he was
dreaming of many things; but mostly of the keeper's
daughter, asleep in the churchyard of Feldkirche.
Suddenly, on turning the corner of an
ancient, gloomy church, his attention was arrested
by a little chapel in an angle of the wall. It
was only a small thatched roof, like a bird's nest;
under which stood a rude wooden image of the
Saviour on the Cross. A real crown of thorns was
upon his head, which was bowed downward, as if
in the death agony; and drops of blood were
falling down his cheeks, and from his hands and
feet and side. The face was haggard and ghastly
beyond all expression; and wore a look of unutterable
bodily anguish. The rude sculptor had given
it this, but his art could go no farther. The
sublimity of death in a dying Saviour, the expiring
God-likeness of Jesus of Nazareth was not there.

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The artist had caught no heavenly inspiration from
his theme. All was coarse, harsh, and revolting
to a sensitive mind; and Flemming turned away
with a shudder, as he saw this fearful image gazing
at him, with its fixed and half-shut eyes.

He soon reached the hotel, but that face of
agony still haunted him. He could not refrain
from speaking of it to a very old woman, who
sat knitting by the window of the dining-room, in
a high-backed, old-fashioned arm-chair. I believe
she was the innkeeper's grandmother. At all
events she was old enough to be so. She took off
her owl-eyed spectacles, and, as she wiped the
glasses with her handkerchief, said;

“Thou dear Heaven! Is it possible! Did you
never hear of the Christ of Andernach?”

Flemming answered in the negative.

“Thou dear Heaven!” continued the old woman.
“It is a very wonderful story; and a true
one, as every good Christian in Andernach will
tell you. And it all happened before the death

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of my blessed man, four years ago, let me see,—
yes, four years ago, come Christmas.”

Here the old woman stopped speaking, but
went on with her knitting. Other thoughts seemed
to occupy her mind. She was thinking, no
doubt, of her blessed man, as German widows
call their dead husbands. But Flemming having
expressed an ardent wish to hear the wonderful
story, she told it, in nearly the following words.

“There was once a poor old woman in Andernach
whose name was Frau Martha, and she lived
all alone in a house by herself, and loved all the
Saints and the blessed Virgin, and was as good as
an angel, and sold pies down by the Rheinkrahn.
But her house was very old, and the roof-tiles
were broken, and she was too poor to get new ones,
and the rain kept coming in, and no Christian soul
in Andernach would help her. But the Frau
Martha was a good woman, and never did anybody
any harm, but went to mass every morning, and
sold pies by the Rheinkrahn. Now one dark,
windy night, when all the good Christians in

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Andernach were abed and asleep in the feathers, Frau
Martha, who slept under the roof, heard a great
noise over her head, and in her chamber, drip!
drip! drip! as if the rain were dropping down
through the broken tiles. Dear soul! and sure
enough it was. And then there was a pounding
and hammering overhead, as if somebody were at
work on the roof; and she thought it was Pelz-Nickel
tearing the tiles off, because she had not
been to confession often enough. So she began to
pray; and the faster she said her Pater-noster
and her Ave-Maria, the faster Pelz-Nickel pounded
and pulled; and drip! drip! drip! it went all
round her in the dark chamber, till the poor
woman was frightened out of her wits, and ran to
the window to call for help. Then in a moment
all was still,—death-still. But she saw a light
streaming through the mist and rain, and a great
shadow on the house opposite. And then somebody
came down from the top of her house by a
ladder, and had a lantern in his hand; and he took
the ladder on his shoulder and went down the

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street. But she could not see clearly, because
the window was streaked with rain. And in the
morning the old broken tiles were found scattered
about the street, and there were new ones on the
roof, and the old house has never leaked to this
blessed day.

“As soon as mass was over Frau Martha told the
priest what had happened, and he said it was not
Pelz-Nickel, but, without doubt, St. Castor or St.
Florian. Then she went to the market and told
Frau Bridget all about it; and Frau Bridget said,
that, two nights before, Hans Claus, the cooper,
had heard a great pounding in his shop, and in
the morning found new hoops on all his old hogsheads;
and that a man with a lantern and a ladder
had been seen riding out of town at midnight on a
donkey, and that the same night the old windmill,
at Kloster St. Thomas, had been mended up, and
the old gate of the churchyard at Feldkirche made
as good as new, though nobody knew how the
man got across the river. Then Frau Martha
went down to the Rheinkrahn and told all these

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stories over again; and the old ferryman of Fahr
said he could tell something about it; for, the very
night that the churchyard-gate was mended, he
was lying awake in his bed, because he could not
sleep, and he heard a loud knocking at the door,
and somebody calling to him to get up and set
him over the river. And when he got up, he saw
a man down by the river with a lantern and a ladder;
but as he was going down to him, the man
blew out the light, and it was so dark he could not
see who he was; and his boat was old and leaky,
and he was afraid to set him over in the dark; but
the man said he must be in Andernach that night;
and so he set him over. And after they had
crossed the river, he watched the man, till he
came to an image of the Holy Virgin, and saw
him put the ladder against the wall, and go up and
light his lamp, and then walk along the street.
And in the morning he found his old boat all
caulked, and tight, and painted red, and he could
not for his blessed life tell who did it, unless it were

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the man with the lantern. Dear soul! how
strange it was!

“And so it went on for some time; and, whenever
the man with the lantern had been seen walking
through the street at night, so sure as the
morning came, some work had been done for the
sake of some good soul; and everybody knew he
did it; and yet nobody could find out who he was,
nor where he lived;—for, whenever they came
near him, he blew out his light, and turned down
another street, and, if they followed him, he suddenly
disappeared, nobody could tell how. And
some said it was Rübezahl; and some, Pelz-Nickel;
and some, St. Anthony-on-the-Health.

“Now one stormy night a poor, sinful creature
was wandering about the streets, with her babe
in her arms, and she was hungry, and cold, and
no soul in Andernach would take her in. And
when she came to the church, where the great
crucifix stands, she saw no light in the little chapel
at the corner; but she sat down on a stone at the
foot of the cross and began to pray, and prayed,

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till she fell asleep, with her poor little babe on
her bosom. But she did not sleep long; for a
bright light shone full in her face; and, when she
opened her eyes, she saw a pale man, with a lantern,
standing right before her. He was almost
naked; and there was blood upon his hands and
body, and great tears in his beautiful eyes, and
his face was like the face of the Saviour on the
cross. Not a single word did he say to the poor
woman; but looked at her compassionately, and
gave her a loaf of bread, and took the little babe
in his arms, and kissed it. Then the mother
looked up to the great crucifix, but there was no
image there; and she shrieked and fell down as
if she were dead. And there she was found with
her child; and a few days after they both died,
and were buried together in one grave. And nobody
would have believed her story, if a woman,
who lived at the corner, had not gone to the window,
when she heard the scream, and seen the
figure hang the lantern up in its place, and then
set the ladder against the wall, and go up and nail

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itself to the cross. Since that night it has never
moved again. Ach! Herr Je!”

Such was the legend of the Christ of Andernach,
as the old woman in spectacles told it to
Flemming. It made a painful impression on his
sick and morbid soul; and he felt now for the
first time in full force, how great is the power of
popular superstition.

The post-chaise was now at the door, and
Flemming was soon on the road to Coblentz, a city
which stands upon the Rhine, at the mouth of the
Mosel, opposite Ehrenbreitstein. It is by no
means a long drive from Andernach to Coblentz;
and the only incident which occurred to enliven
the way was the appearance of a fat, red-faced
man on horseback, trotting slowly towards Andernach.
As they met, the mad little postilion gave
him a friendly cut with his whip, and broke out
into an exclamation, which showed he was from
Münster;

“Jesmariosp! my friend! How is the Man in
the Custom-House?”

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Now to any candid mind this would seem a fair
question enough; but not so thought the red-faced
man on horseback; for he waxed exceedingly angry,
and replied, as the chaise whirled by;

“The devil take you, and your Westphalian
ham, and pumpernickel!”

Flemming called to his servant, and the servant
to the postilion, for an explanation of this short
dialogue; and the explanation was, that on the
belfry of the Kaufhaus in Coblentz, is a huge
head, with a brazen helmet and a beard; and
whenever the clock strikes, at each stroke of the
hammer, this giant's head opens its great jaws and
smites its teeth together, as if, like the brazen
head of Friar Bacon, it would say; “Time was;
Time is; Time is past.” This figure is known
through all the country round about, as “The
Man in the Custom-House”; and, when a friend in
the country meets a friend from Coblentz, instead
of saying, “How are all the good people in Coblentz?”—
he says, “How is the Man in the
Custom-House?” Thus the giant has a great part

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to play in the town; and thus ended the first day
of Flemming's Rhine-journey; and the only good
deed he had done was to give an alms to a poor
beggar woman, who lifted up her trembling hands
and exclaimed;

“Thou blessed babe!”

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