The Grange advance. [volume] (Red Wing, Minn.) 1873-1877, 1876-02-16

gold,-
Nor does the violet breathe one odor less
Because my life is left me dark and cold;
Only while earth and sky such joy express.
fain would turn me from their loveliness.
Spectator.
"REMINISCENCES OF RATISBON.
The Hotel in Which tho Infamous
Don John Was Born-A Visit to the
Dungeons and Torture. ooms of
tho Bath House.
[Charles Dudley Warner in the Hartford Cour-
In order to enjoy Ratisbon you need to
brush up your historic recollections, and
select sunny day for your pilgrimage
to it. In the sourness and darkness of o
November day it is dull and gloomy, and
frowns upon you with its heavy Gothic
architecture. It is, rs You know, a
rusty city which began to decay and
shrink as early as the middle of the
seventeenth century, although it retained
its importance as the meeting.place of
the imperial diet down to 1905. It was
the starting point of a massive stone wall,
strengthed by towers, which the Roman
emperor Probus built from the Danube
to the Rhine, by a winding distance Of
two hundred miles, in the vain expecta-
tion that it would restrain the inroads Of
the German barbarians. It was at Rat
lisbon that crusading warriors and .pil:.
grims to the Holy Land embarked upon
the Danube. A great portion Of the
traffic of the East passed through this
free city of the empire, and its merchants
enjoyed q European credit. l walked
through the broad and vacant street of
Ambassadors, where the coats of arms of
foreign states still attest the former resi-
dence of their ministers.
am staying at the Goldenes Kreutz,
vast inn occupying good part of one
end oft square battlement tower, with
]oop-holes in its thick walls. There are
several Of these old towers in the city,
the remains Of days when tyrants had
frequent need of shelter from popular
rage. Upon one Of them is colossal
picture Of the combat between David and
Goliah, Almost unequal fight in which the
giant never had a chance to show his
strong points. No sooner had secured
my room which is large enough for a
town meeting, than I asked the waiter
to show me the apartment that Charles V.
occupied when he lodged in Ratisbon, in
1916. This emperor ought to be patron
saint of landlords, for he made the for.
tune of every hotel he slept in, in Ger
many. However they had special &C.
casion to remember him here. The year
following his patronage of this house, its
beautifuIhostess Barbara Blu,nberg, gave
birth to Don John Of Austria. One
would need halfa day to explore the ms
and outs, the up stairs and down, the
crooked passages of this old house.
The stately and gilded chamber in which
the emperor slept is unchanged since his
day, and is an apartment Of some splen-
dor leading out Of it but up fight of
stairs, is the room in which Don John
was born. Outside the wall, under the
quaint window with it's small, diamond
panes, is portrait Of the consumate and
. pitilcss, soldier in terra Gotta and an
inscription.
dare say that the event that made
this room celebrated was not. at all ro-
mantle to the lovely Barbara, and she
would have been greatly astonished if
she had been told that three centuries az
ter strangers would come with, consider.
able curiosity to look at the chamber, and
to muse upon the unfortunate circum-
stances to which the world owes the
birth Of the scourge Of the Netherlands.
1t is lamentable, the trouble nearly al.
ways caused by the coming into the
world of a pretty woman. There, in
that ancient mansion opposite the Rath
house, more than a century before the
= birth Of Don John, tournament was
held to maintain the innocence of the
beautiful Agnes Bernauer, maid of hum
bic origin, who had captivatcd the heart
Ct Albert, son of Duke Earnest of Ba-
varia, who married her in spite of his
father S rage at the connection. The old ty.
rant caused the charming girl to be seized
and thrown over the bridge at Strasburg,
into the Danube, and when she freed her.
self from her bonds and swan ashore, a
wretch caught her long hair with q
hooked pole and held her under water
till she drowned. like to recall these
well.kpown stories in these medieval
places in order to come more clearly into
sympathy with the spirit of the good old
= time of faith ad chiyalrny.
In the Rath house saw portrait Of
Barbara Blumberg, in the flat and stiff
style of the art of her period. I asked
the maid who was showing me through
the building if she thought Barbara was
handsome. mo, indeed she said, '*she
was by this picture not pretty, but the
kaiser loved her. The portrait may