This is a very indisputable event of those same years. The exact date, the figure, circumstances of it were, most likely, never written anywhere but on Conrad's own brain, and are now rubbed out forevermore; but the event itself is certain; and of the highest concernment to this Narrative. Somewhere about the year 1170, likeliest a few years before that, [Rentsch,
Brandenburgischer Ceder-Hein (Baireuth, l682), pp. 273-276.--See also Johann Ulrich Pregitzern,
Teutscher Regierungs-und Ehren-Spiegel, vorbildend &c. des Hauses Hohenzollern (Berlin, 1703), pp. 90-93. A learned and painful Book: by a Tubingen Professor, who is deeply read in the old Histories, and gives Portraits and other Engravings of some value.] this Conrad, riding down from Hohenzoliern, probably with no great stock of luggage about, him,--little dreams of being connected with Brandenburg on the other side of the world; but ISunconsciously more so than any other of the then sons of Adam.
He is the lineal ancestor, twentieth in direct ascent, of the little Boy now sleeping in his cradle at Berlin; let him wait till nineteen generations, valiantly like Conrad, have done their part, and gone out, Conrad will find he is come to this! A man's destiny is strange always; and never wants for miracles, or will want, though it sometimes may for eyes to discern them.
Hohenzollern lies far south in SCHWABEN (Suabia), on the sunward slope of the Rauhe-Alp Country; no great way north from Constance and its Lake; but well aloft, near the springs of the Danube;its back leaning on the Black Forest; it is perhaps definable as the southern summit of that same huge old Hercynian Wood, which is still called the SCHWARZWALD (Black Forest), though now comparatively bare of trees. ["There are still considerable spottings of wood (pine mainly, and 'black' enough); HOLZ-HANDEL(timber-trade) still a considerable branch of business there;--and on the streams of the country are cunning contrivances noticeable, for floating down the article into the Neckar river, and thence into the Rhine and to Holland." ( Tourist's Note. )] Fanciful Dryasdust, doing a little etymology, will tell you the name ZOLLERN is equivalent to TOLLERY or Place of Tolls.
Whereby HOHENZOLLERN comes to mean the HIGH or Upper TOLLERY;--and gives one the notion of antique pedlers climbing painfully, out of Italy and the Swiss valleys, thus far; unstrapping their pack-horses here, and chaffering in unknown dialect about TOLL.
Poor souls;--it may be so, but we do not know, nor shall it concern us. This only is known: That a human kindred, probably of some talent for coercing anarchy and guiding mankind, had, centuries ago, built its BURG there, and done that function in a small but creditable way ever since;--kindred possibly enough derivable from "Thassilo," Charlemagne, King Dagobert, and other Kings, but certainly from Adam and the Almighty Maker, who had given it those qualities;--and that Conrad, a junior member of the same, now goes forth from it in the way we see. "Why should a young fellow that has capabilities," thought Conrad, "stay at home in hungry idleness, with no estate but his javelin and buff jerkin, and no employment but his hawks, when there is a wide opulent world waiting only to be conquered?" This was Conrad's thought; and it proved to be a very just one.
It was now the flower-time of the Romish Kaisership of Germany;about the middle or noon of Barbarossa himself, second of the Hohenstauffens, and greatest of all the Kaisers of that or any other house. Kaiser fallen unintelligible to most modern readers, and wholly unknown, which is a pity. No King so furnished out with apparatus and arena, with personal faculty to rule and scene to do it in, has appeared elsewhere. A magnificent magnanimous man;holding the reins of the world, not quite in the imaginary sense;scourging anarchy down, and urging noble effort up, really on a grand Scale. A terror to evil-doers and a praise to well-doers in this world, probably beyond what was ever seen since. Whom also we salute across the centuries, as a choice Beneficence of Heaven.
Encamped on the Plain of Roncaglia [when he entered Italy, as he too often had occasion to do], his shield was hung out on a high mast over his tent;" and it meant in those old days, "Ho, every one that has suffered wrong; here is a Kaiser come to judge you, as he shall answer it to HIS Master." And men gathered round him;and actually found some justice,--if they could discern it when found. Which they could not always do; neither was the justice capable of being perfect always. A fearfully difficult function, that of Friedrich Redbeard. But an inexorably indispensable one in this world;--though sometimes dispensed with (to the huge joy of Anarchy, which sings Hallelujah through all its Newspapers)for a season!
Kaiser Friedrich had immense difficulties with his Popes, with his Milanese, and the like;--besieged Milan six times over, among other anarchies;--had indeed a heavy-laden hard time of it, his task being great and the greatest. He made Gebhardus, the anarchic Governor of Milan, "lie chained under his table, like a dog, for three days." For the man was in earnest, in that earnest time:--and let us say, they are but paltry sham-men who are not so, in any time; paltry, and far worse than paltry, however high their plumes may be. Of whom the sick world (Anarchy, both vocal and silent, having now swoln rather high) is everywhere getting weary.--Gebhardus, the anarchic Governor, lay three days under the Kaiser's table; as it would be well if every anarchic Governor, of the soft type and of the hard, were made to do on occasion; asking himself, in terrible earnest, "Am I a dog, then; alas, am not I a dog?" Those were serious old times.
