At that moment a miracle happened.
Only a little way from me, I suddenly saw my horse. He was grazing calmly and peacefully, illuminated by the moonlight like a unicorn in a fairy landscape. He raised his head when he sensed me on the outskirts of the wood.
I took a deep breath and then ran as I had never run before in my life. I could hear shouting and gunfire behind me. However, I took no notice but swung myself up on the horse and dug my heels into his sides. The horse reared up, whinnying, and then raced away over the marshy fields.
The cries behind me died down, and soon I was on the road again. Without looking back, I galloped on and on, until at last a narrow stone bridge appeared before me.
The bridge to Linderhof.
I thundered over it and stopped at the wall around the castle park. Inside it, I could see the Temple of Venus shimmering white on a hill. The castle lay beyond it. I had nearly reached my destination, but at this time of night the iron gate was locked. Jumping off my horse, I shook the bars of the gate frantically.
“Hey there!” I cried, hoarse after my headlong flight. “Open the gate at once! In the name of the king!”
Suddenly I heard the hoofbeats of a galloping horse behind me. They were quickly coming closer. Once again I tugged at the barred gate and shouted for the gatekeeper. At last I caught the sound of dragging footsteps and the clink of a key.
“Coming, in the devil’s name, just coming!” growled a voice inside the gate. “It’s four in the morning—wait a moment, will you?”
At that moment a gigantic figure appeared on the bridge, a monster from a shadowy world. It took me a moment to recognize it as a mounted man with his coattails fluttering in the wind like two great wings.
Von Strelitz.
He had bound up his upper arm and shoulder as best he might with a piece of cloth. Sitting erect on his gray horse, he held his pistol in his left hand, aiming it at me, his face distorted with hatred and pain. Open-mouthed, incapable even of fear and unable to move, I stared into the muzzle of the pistol, expecting to see a jet of fire hiss out of it at any moment.
But it never came.
Squealing, the barred gate opened. Holding my horse’s reins, I reeled through the narrow opening into the park, stumbled, and fell almost fainting into the tall grass. There was a loud bang; I couldn’t have said whether it was the pistol being fired or the gate closing behind me. Then at last everything went black before my eyes. I smelled fallen leaves and felt my horse licking my face.
I was safe. For the time being, anyway.
XOIMLQI
A little later, although still out of breath, I had calmed down enough to hurry after the baffled gatekeeper toward the castle. In the moonlight, with its shimmering white statues and latticework ornamentation, it looked to me like an elf-king’s palace. Two peacocks made of valuable Sèvres porcelain stood to the right and left of the entrance. They announced, as I knew from earlier visits, that the king was in residence.
As I strode toward the building, past the flowering gardens on the terrace and the sparkling fountain in its basin, old Johann from Berchtesgaden, one of the simple old-style Bavarian servants whom Ludwig liked to have around him, came to meet me.
“Why, Herr Marot!” he cried in surprise. “God in heaven, what happened to you?”
“Never mind that now,” I panted. “I must speak to the king at once! It’s a matter of life and death.”
Johann nodded obediently and pointed to the hill behind us. “His Majesty is in the Grotto of Venus. May I take you there?”
I shook my head. “No, thank you, I can get there by myself.”
Making my way along dark paths under canopies of foliage over the terraces behind the castle, I finally reached the music pavilion. From here it was not far to the Grotto of Venus, Ludwig’s favorite spot.
In the darkness that was at its deepest now, just before morning twilight, I could see a narrow strip of light not far away. When I approached, I saw rocks piled on top of one another, and a stone door standing slightly ajar, like the entrance to a magical cavern. Only when I knocked on it cautiously did I realize that it was only a thin layer of cement. Blue light shone through the gap, and I heard the gentle lapping of waves breaking on a shallow bank.
Hesitantly, I opened the imitation rock door and stepped into the grotto.
The magnificent sight of it made me forget my fears for a moment. It was as if I had entered a world so far from all the noise, stink, and busy activity of our modern times that I felt safe, as if held in the earth mother’s lap. After going down a long, narrow passage lined with rocky niches, I finally came to an artificial cave bathed in blue light. Stalactites and plaster garlands of brightly colored flowers hung from the ceiling, and I heard the sound of a waterfall to the right. A small, sparkling lake lay in the middle of the grotto, and two swans with their heads raised swam past me. Farther on, a gilded boat shaped like a huge seashell rocked on the shining surface of the water.