Complete March Family Trilogy eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,465 pages of information about Complete March Family Trilogy.

Complete March Family Trilogy eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,465 pages of information about Complete March Family Trilogy.

He easily found it for himself in the place which is called the Herder Platz after it.  He went into the Peter and Paul Church there; where Herder used to preach sermons, sometimes not at all liked by the nobility and gentry for their revolutionary tendency; the sovereign was shielded from the worst effects of his doctrine by worshipping apart from other sinners in a glazed gallery.  Herder is buried in the church, and when you ask where, the sacristan lifts a wooden trap-door in the pavement, and you think you are going down into the crypt, but you are only to see Herder’s monumental stone, which is kept covered so to save it from passing feet.  Here also is the greatest picture of that great soul Luke Kranach, who had sincerity enough in his paining to atone for all the swelling German sculptures in the world.  It is a crucifixion, and the cross is of a white birch log, such as might have been cut out of the Weimar woods, shaved smooth on the sides, with the bark showing at the edges.  Kranach has put himself among the spectators, and a stream of blood from the side of the Savior falls in baptism upon the painter’s head.  He is in the company of John the Baptist and Martin Luther; Luther stands with his Bible open, and his finger on the line, “The blood of Jesus cleanseth us.”

Partly because he felt guilty at doing all these things without his wife, and partly because he was now very hungry, March turned from them and got back to his hotel, where she was looking out for him from their open window.  She had the air of being long domesticated there, as she laughed down at seeing him come; and the continued brilliancy of the weather added to the illusion of home.

It was like a day of late spring in Italy or America; the sun in that gardened hollow before the museum was already hot enough to make him glad of the shelter of the hotel.  The summer seemed to have come back to oblige them, and when they learned that they were to see Weimar in a festive mood because this was Sedan Day, their curiosity, if not their sympathy, accepted the chance gratefully.  But they were almost moved to wish that the war had gone otherwise when they learned that all the public carriages were engaged, and they must have one from a stable if they wished to drive after breakfast.  Still it was offered them for such a modest number of marks, and their driver proved so friendly and conversable, that they assented to the course of history, and were more and more reconciled as they bowled along through the grand-ducal park beside the waters of the classic Ilm.

The waters of the classic Ilm are sluggish and slimy in places, and in places clear and brooklike, but always a dull dark green in color.  They flow in the shadow of pensive trees, and by the brinks of sunny meadows, where the after-math wanders in heavy windrows, and the children sport joyously over the smooth-mown surfaces in all the freedom that there is in Germany.  At last, after immemorial appropriation

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Complete March Family Trilogy from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.