Gotthard Pass

“ Moses ben Uri of Emden followed them and instructed them in Judaism. Some other converts followed, among them monks, statesmen and scholars. One of the most prominent rabbis of Amsterdam was Menasseh ben Israel, who in 1654, tried to obtain from Cromwell official permission for the Jews to resettle in England, whence they had been expelled in 1290. A bill introduced into Parliament for the readmission failed to pass, but prominent jurists rendered an opinion that the expulsion was not a legal act. The Jews already in London were not molested, opened a synagogue and acquired a cemetery in 1660. ”

“ We dined that evening at an inn near the station and played cards to keep awake till the St. Gotthard train came along. It was a slow and crowded train, and we were very glad to arrive about 11 P. M. at Goschenen and follow the porter of the Lion to that very excellent hotel.
Next morning we were up betimes and starting afoot over the St. Gotthard carriage road. It is a very fine piece of engineering, zigzagging back and forth in long loops to keep the grade easy. The scenery is, like that of the Simplon, Tête Noire and other carriage roads, picturesque rather than magnificent. ”

“ He cannot throw with his right hand, he is perplexed at meal times between knife and fork, and his ideas of the rule of the road—he is a cyclist—are still a dangerous confusion. And there is not a scrap of evidence to show that before these occurrences Gottfried was at all left-handed.
There is yet another wonderful fact in this preposterous business. Gottfried produces three photographs of himself. You have him at the age of five or six, thrusting fat legs at you from under a plaid frock, and scowling. ”

“ Leaving Ober-Ammergau I returned by Switzerland to London. At Lucerne while waiting for the train, I turned over the book in the waiting-room that describes the construction of the Gotthard railway. About one thousand tons of dynamite, it is said, had sufficed to pierce the tunnels through the mountain barrier that separated Italy from Switzerland. Blasting powder could never have done the work. That helped to level the military roads for the legions of Suwarrow. It needed dynamite to tunnel the St. Gotthard—dynamite directed by science—and as I read this I fell a-thinking. ”

“ Now, that is not the only singularity of Gottfried’s structure, although it is the only one that would appeal to the untrained mind. Careful sounding of Gottfried’s internal arrangements by a well-known surgeon seems to point to the fact that all the other unsymmetrical parts of his body are similarly misplaced. The right lobe of his liver is on the left side, the left on his right; while his lungs, too, are similarly contraposed. What is still more singular, unless Gottfried is a consummate actor, we must believe that his right hand has recently become his left. ”

“ Gothard, on the Swiss side, the grandeur diminishes—and it is the same on the Italian side of the Pass of Simplon; yet when (after the gradual ascent from the village, the last inhabited spot) a turning of the road first presents to view in a clear atmosphere, beneath a bright blue sky (so we were favoured) , the ancient Spittal with its ornamented Tower standing at the further end of a wide oblong hollow, surrounded by granite pikes, snow pikes—masses of granite—cool, black, motionless shadows, and sparkling sunshine, it is not possible for the dullest imagination to be unmoved. ”

“ Gothard will remember that below Andermatt there is one of those Alpine gorges which reach the very utmost limits of the sublime and terrible. The feelings of the traveller have become more and more highly wrought at every step, until at last the naked and overhanging precipices seem to close above his head, as he crosses a bridge hung in mid-air over a roaring waterfall, and enters on the darkness of a tunnel, hewn out of the rock. ”

“ Gothard is not, indeed, the highest mountain of Switzerland (in Savoy, Mont Blanc has a far higher elevation) ; and yet it maintains above all others the rank of a king of mountains, because all the great chains converge together around it, and all rest upon it as on their base. Indeed, if I do not make a great mistake, I think I was told at Berne, by Herr Wyttenbach, who from its highest summit had seen the peaks of all the others, that the latter all leaned toward it. The mountains of Schweitz and Unterwalden, joined by those of Uri, range from the north ”

“ Statthalter Möller struck into the forest on the right, shouting the names of the laborers, while Gotthold hastily walked on by the path, which in a few moments brought him to the edge of the forest, where an old beech-tree stood alone in the open field, upon which the moon shed a dim, fitful light through the rifts in the heavy black clouds. It was the rye-field, which they had been reaping that day. A loaded wagon was just starting, and men were still working around a few others, but, as it seemed to Gotthold, rather lazily ”

“ However, in general, I may be disposed to take things as they go, it would, I must confess, be highly annoying to me if we should be forced to retrace our steps again. If we are fortunate we shall be by to-morrow evening at Realp or S. Gotthard, and by noon the next day among the Capuchins at the summit of the mountain. If things go unfortunately we nave two roads open for a retreat. Back through the whole of Valais, and by the well-known road over Berne to Lucerne; or back to Brieg, and then by a wide detour to S. Gotthard. ”

“ A mysterious curse lay upon the noble house of Gottmar. No male scion was suffered to perpetuate the race. The bride of his selection died on her wedding-day, and he himself was doomed to follow quickly after. The rich possessions passed to the nearest relative, who, by virtue of an ancient law, assumed the name of Gottmar. The family was very ancient. ”

“ Gothard in the face of a French force and passed down the valley of the Reuss to Lake Uri. Here he found his path to Zurich blocked, as no boats for the conveyance of his troops could be found on the lake. Turning up towards the mountains, Suwarow led his army along the Kinzig Pass to Muotta, and there learned that Korsakow had been defeated and driven out of Switzerland by the French. Suwarow led his army then along the Pragel Pass, hoping to find in the Canton of Glarus a friendly Austrian force. The hope was vain, and the path to Naefels was blocked by the French army. ”

“ Meantime Gotthold drove on through the pouring rain, which shrouded the whole landscape in a gray veil that grew denser and denser hour by hour. The wind whistled through the chinks in the leathern curtains, which had been buttoned down to protect the occupants of the chaise from the storm; the crazy old vehicle creaked and groaned whenever--which happened only too often--the wheels on the right or left slipped into the holes of the rough road ”

“ How the face of Gotthold's enemy--the only one he had ever had--rose in almost tangible outlines before his mind, while a sharp pang ran through the deep scar which, beginning under his hair, passed over the right temple, across the cheek, and even divided the heavy beard, the scar on whose account the sexton's wife, mindful of the words that marked people should be avoided, had been so unwilling to leave the stately stranger alone in the church. ”

“ And when they were alone, Gottlieb was not ashamed to hide his tears on his mother's heart.
"See, darling mother!" he said, "the dear Saviour did send the raven! Perhaps, one day, He will make us good enough for Him to send the angels."
Then the simple family all knelt down and thanked God from their hearts, and Gottlieb added one especial bit of his own of praise and prayer for his kind Hans, of whom, on account of his grim face and rough voice, he had stood in some dread. ”

“ Yet, in Gotthold's sensitive mood, the man's loud laugh had a horrible sound, and his clear voice a disagreeably shrill tone never heard before, as, flourishing his riding-whip in the air, according to his custom, he cried: "I have heard all; I always say: Don't turn your back, something always happens which wouldn't have occurred otherwise. I shouldn't have let you go on such a wild-goose chase, any more than I would have commenced reaping at the end next the barn. ”

“ It had long overhung the morass, and the rain had made long cracks in it, so I said to myself: 'If they drive back to-night, and the carriage is turned out of the road here, the earth will break off, and the whole thing will slide down, and that's an accident which might happen to the best driver, on a stormy night such as this will be.'"
"Only you might easily have gone down with the rest," said Gotthold.
"You mean, if I hadn't jumped out of the carriage at the right time? Bah, sir! It's no harder than to get off a horse that is running away, when one sees it is going to fall. ”

“ Life is then a beautiful night, in which not one star goes down but another rises in its place.
Gottreich possessed a paradise, in which he labored as his father's gardener; he was at once the wife, the brother, the friend, the all that is to be loved by man, of his parent. Every Sunday brought him a new pleasure, that of preaching a sermon before his father. He displayed so much power in his pulpit eloquence, that he seemed to labor more for the elevation and edification of his father than for the enlightenment of the common people ”

“ After the affair of the broken peel there was a coolness between Gottlieb and the elder apprentice, which, increasing, led to a positive coldness, and then to a separation. And then it was that Fate put a large spoke in all the wheels which ran in the Café Nürnberg by bringing into Gottlieb's employment a ruddy young Nürnberger, lately come out of that ancient city to America, named Hans Kuhn.
It was not chance that led Hans to earn his living in a bakery when he came to New York. He was a born baker: a baker by choice, by force of natural genius, by hereditary right. ”

“ Every bench was a church chair, all was peaceful and holy, and the firmament above an infinite church dome.
In many a village and in many a house a true Eden may be hid, which has neither been named nor marked down; for joy is fond of covering over and concealing her tenderest flowers. Gottreich reposed in such a fulness of bliss and love, of poetry and religion, of springtime, of the past and of the future, that he feared in the bottom of his heart to speak his happiness out, save in prayer. In prayer, thought he, man may say all, his happiness and his misery. ”

“ When he heard the voice, Gottlieb roused himself, and read; and it was written, “Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation; the spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Then, for a little while, Gottlieb was warned, and he walked like one awake; but, after a time, such power had this sleepy air, he was again almost as drowsy as ever, and his eyes were nearly closed. Then, before Gehulfè could give him a second warning, he placed his foot in a hole, which he would have easily passed by, if he had been watching ”

“ Well, I have complained of my fate more than is seemly; but in the presence of a man of your stamp, one is too painfully reminded of what he might perhaps have made himself, and what he has finally become. Good night, old fellow, and pleasant dreams!"
And now Gotthold stood at the open window in the cosy old gable-room. But eagerly as he inhaled the night breeze, which blew fresh and cool through the trees, still dripping with rain-drops, it did not lighten his heart, which throbbed heavily and painfully in his panting breast, like a sleeper whose brain is oppressed by some painful dream. ”

“ Gothard tunnel is open, it will be possible to leave London, we will say, on a Monday morning and be at Faido by six or seven o’clock the next evening, just as one can now do with S. Ambrogio on the line between Susa and Turin, of which more hereafter.
True, by making use of the tunnel one will miss the St. Gothard scenery, but I would not, if I were the reader, lay this too much to heart. Mountain scenery, when one is staying right in the middle of it, or when one is on foot, is one thing, and mountain scenery as seen from the top of a diligence very likely smothered in dust is another. ”

“ There seems here evidence of the strongest confirmatory character that Gottfried has exchanged his left side for his right. Yet how a human being can be so changed, short of a fantastic and pointless miracle, it is exceedingly hard to suggest.
In one way, of course, these facts might be explicable on the supposition that Plattner has undertaken an elaborate mystification, on the strength of his heart’s displacement. Photographs may be faked, and left-handedness imitated. But the character of the man does not lend itself to any such theory. ”

“ Gottlieb was very shrewd at devising schemes that came just within the law and used to amuse himself by so doing in his leisure moments. One of the best—the idea which he sold for three hundred dollars and which is still being used in New York, Chicago, and elsewhere—is the following:
An old man, with a square of plate glass in a newspaper and a bundle of glass-cutter's tools by his side is seen sitting dejectedly on a curb with his head in his hands. He has no coat and the icy wind blows through his straggling locks of gray hair—a pathetic picture. ”

“ The report of a musket rang through the forest at some distance on their left, whither the wolves had taken their flight.
"That was he," said Jochen, in a low tone; "he only needs to whistle and they run straight within reach of his gun. Yes, yes, Herr Gotthold, you said just now that there was nothing of the kind; but you'll make an exception of old Boslaf. He can do more than one trick which no honest Christian can imitate."
"So the old man is still alive?" asked Gotthold as they drove cautiously on through the forest. ”