The change from Nuremberg to Bruehl was for me like the transition from
Purgatory to Paradise. I enjoyed for the first time all the delights of
liberty. I had no lessons to learn; no stern aunt to obey; but, which was
infinitely pleasanter, a kind-hearted Rhenish Maedchen, with a silver arrow
in her hair, to wait upon me; and an indulgent father whose only orders
were that I should be allowed to have my own way in everything.
And my way was to revel in the air and the sunshine; to roam about the park
and pleasure-grounds; to watch the soldiers at drill, and hear the band
play every day, and wander at will about the deserted state-apartments of
the great empty Chateau.
Looking back upon it from this distance of time, I should pronounce the
Electoral Residenz at Bruehl to be a miracle of bad taste; but not Aladdin's
palace if planted amid the gardens of Armida could then have seemed
lovelier in my eyes. The building, a heavy many-windowed pile in the worst
style of the worst Renaissance period, stood, and still stands, in a fat,
flat country about ten miles from Cologne, to which city it bears much the
same relation that Hampton Court bears to London, or Versailles to Paris.
Stucco and whitewash had been lavished upon it inside and out, and pallid
scagliola did duty everywhere for marble.
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