Page:Diary of a Pilgrimage (1891).pdf/76

knows it. 'The Brothers of Bornhofen,' story connected with the twin castles of Sterrenberg and Liebenstein. Conrad and Heinrich—brothers—both love Hildegarde. She was very beautiful. Heinrich generously refuses to marry the beautiful Hildegarde, and goes away to the Crusades, leaving her to his brother Conrad. Conrad considers over the matter for a year or two, and then he decides that he won't marry her either, but will leave her, for his brother Heinrich, and he goes off to the Crusades, from whence he returns, a few years later on, with a Grecian bride. The beautiful H., muddled up between the pair of them, and the victim of too much generosity, gets sulky (don't blame her), and shuts herself up in a lonely part of the castle, and won't see anybody for years. Chivalrous Heinrich returns, and is wild that his brother C. has not married the beautiful H. It does not occur to him to marry the girl even then. The feverish yearning displayed by each of these two brothers, that the other one should marry the beloved Hildegarde, is very touching. Heinrich draws his sword, and throws himself upon his brother C. to kill him. The beautiful Hildegarde, however, throws herself between them and reconciliates them, and then, convinced that neither of them means business, and naturally disgusted with the whole affair, retires into a nunnery. Conrad's Grecian bride subsequently throws herself away on another man, upon which Conrad throws himself on his brother H.'s breast, and they swear eternal friendship. (Make it pathetic. Pretend you have sat amid the ruins in the moonlight, and give the scene—with ghosts.) 'Rolandseck,' near Bonn. Tell the story of Roland and Hildegunde (see Baedeker, p. 66). Don't make it too long, because it is so much like the other. Describe the funeral? 'The Watch Tower on the Rhine'