This little scene, which took place on an August afternoon in the year 1869, had for its theater the highroad leading from Hausach to Triberg, just at the place where a footpath descends into the valley to the little town of Hornberg.  The persons represented were young men who had lately graduated at Heidelberg, and who were taking a holiday together in the Black Forest, recovering from the recent terrors of examination in the fragrant air of the pine woods.  As far off as Offenburg they had traveled by the railway in the prosaic fashion of commercial travelers, from there they had tramped like Canadian backwoodsmen, and reached Hasslach—­twelve miles as the crow flies.  After resting for a day they set out at the first cockcrow, and before the noontide heat reached the lovely Kinzigthal, which lies all along the way from Hausach to Hornberg.  Over the door of a wayside inn a signboard, festooned with freshly-cut carpenter’s shavings, beckoned invitingly to them, and here the young men halted.  The view from this place was particularly beautiful.  The road made a kind of terrace halfway up the mountain, on one side rising sheer up for a hundred feet to its summit, thickly wooded all the way, on the other side sloping to the wide valley, where the Gutach flowed, at times tumbling over rough stones, or again spreading itself softly like oil, through flat meadow land.  Below lay the little town of Hornberg, with its crooked streets and alleys, its stately square, framing an old church, several inns, and prosperous-looking houses and shops.  Beyond the valley rose a high, steep hill, with a white path climbing in zigzags through its wooded sides.  On the summit a white house with many windows was perched, seeming to hang perpendicularly a thousand feet above the valley.  Its whitewashed walls stood out sharply against the background of green pine trees, clearly visible for many miles round.  A conspicuous inscription in large black letters showed that this audacious and picturesque house was the Schloss hotel, and a glance at the gray ruined tower which rose behind it gave at once a meaning to the name.  Behind the hill, with its outline softened by trees and encircled by the blue sky, were ridges of other hills in parallel lines meeting the horizon, alternately sharp-edged and rounded, stretching from north to south.  They seemed like some great sea, with majestic wave-hills and wave-valleys; behind the first appeared a second, then a third, then a fourth, as far as one’s eye could see; each one of a distinct tone of color, and of all the shades from the deepest green through blue and violet to vaporous pale gray.

The sight of this picture had decided Wilhelm Eynhardt not to go any further.  The others had resolved to push on to Triberg the same day, and above all, not to turn back till they had bathed in the Boden-see.  As every persuasion was powerless to alter Eynhardt’s decision, they separated, and the travelers started on their walk to Triberg.  Eynhardt, however, stayed at Hornberg, meaning to climb to the Schloss hotel again from the other side.