_The Lord Archbishop Adolfe of Nassau having bethought him of John Gutenberg, the printer, causes a search to be made for him by one of his horsemen, who finds him in a fisherman’s hut._
In the district of the Rheingau, on the right-hand side of the great river, some miles below Maïence, is a little town to which, in the present day, is given two different names, according to fancy; it is sometimes called Eltvil or Elfeld. When those smoking Leviathans, the steamboats, pass roaring before the modest houses of Eltvil, the sound of the silvery bell has scarcely echoed in the air, when a little boat, carrying a white and red flag, is unmoored and cuts swiftly through the water. It arrives alongside, the passengers mount the large vessel, but the tourists, strutting up and down the deck, scarcely condescend to cast even a vacant look on their new fellow-travellers. And why should they? Of what importance to the fair daughter of Albion, reclining on one of the benches, is the graceful Rheingau peasant, who, with her basket on her arm, and her knitting in her hand, mounts silently the side of the boat, and after addressing her parting adieus to her friends, male and female, whom she leaves on the bank, goes quietly and takes her seat on a rustic wooden stool.
It is at Eltvil that we shall take up again the thread of our story, which was so abruptly broken by the incendiary of Maïence. Three years have passed since that event, three cruel years to the poor inhabitants of the Rhine country. Gutenberg has resumed, as before, his pilgrim’s staff. Claude Musny walks in front in charge of the light baggage of the little caravan, and this joyous child of a light-hearted nation, thanks to his gaiety, which neither privations nor contrarieties can reach, has it often in his power to bring back moments of forgetfulness and serenity to the old man. Lawrence Beildech, inseparable from his master, walks by his side, sometimes supporting Gutenberg’s faltering steps, and when necessary coming to the assistance of his failing eyesight.
What a caravan, and what a journey; and what thoughts must have passed through the mind of the chief actor and guide when he reflected, especially on that first occasion of his flight in this very same direction--a flight then resembling that of an eagle soaring from its nest! Beildech carefully avoided every word which might recal those days to his Master; but one evening when our travellers had halted on a hill overlooking the Rhine, Gutenberg broke the general silence by saying, with much sadness, “Dost thou recollect, my good Beildech, how in the year --20 we travelled this road together? I proudly on horseback, a boasting young aristocrat, just like all the rest, thinking myself quite equal to the Furstenberg, the Volksberg, the Gelthuss, the Humbert, canst thou not see me now with my fine floating feather fastened to my velvet cap, and my slashed doublet covered with an abundance of ribbon? Ah, Lawrence, how handsome it was! and how merrily we passed by on the road heavily mounted cavaliers sent by the abbots and the citizens, so desirous were we to be the first to salute the Emperor Rupert; and, afterwards, when we were far away, how the people of Maïence came and attacked our houses....”