Donau: it is a famed war-country this; known
to me well in my young Eugene-Marlborough days!--"Hm, Ha, yes!" For
the Prince is preoccupied with black cares; and thinks Blenheim and the
Schellenberg businesses befell long since, and were perhaps simple to
what he has now on hand. That Feuchtwang scene, it would appear, has
brought him to a resolution. There is a young page Keith of the party,
Lieutenant Keith of Wesel's Brother; of this page Keith, who is often
busy about horses, he cautiously makes question, What help may be in
him? A willing mind traceable in this poor lad, but his terrors great.

To Donauworth from Anspach, through Feuchtwang and Nordlingen, is some
seventy or eighty miles. At Donauworth one surely ought to lodge, and
see the Schellenberg on the morrow; nay drive to the Field of Hochstadt
(Blenheim, BLINDHEIM), which is but a few miles farther up the River?
Buddenbrock was there, and Anhalt-Dessau: for their very sake, were
there nothing farther, one surely ought to go? Such was the probability,
a visit to Blenheim field in passing. And surely, somewhere in those
heart-rending masses of Historical Rubbish, I did at last find express
evanescent mention of the fact,--but cannot now say where;--the exact
record, or conceivable image of which, would have been a perceptible
pleasure to us. Alas, in those dim dreary Books, all whirling dismal
round one's soul, like vortices of dim Brandenburg sand, how should
anything human be searched out and mentioned to us; and a thousand,
things not-human be searched out, and eternally suppressed from us, for
the sake of that? I please myself figuring young Friedrich looking at
the vestiges of Marlborough, even in a preoccupied uncertain manner.
Your Majesty too, this is the very "Schellenberg (or JINGLE-HILL)," this
Hill we are now skirting, on highways, on swift wheels; which overhangs
Donauworth, our resting-place this hot July evening. Yes, your Majesty,
here was a feat of storming done,--pang, pang!--such a noise as never
jingled on that Hill before: like Doomsday come; and a hero-head to rule
the Doomsday, and turn it to heroic marching music. A very pretty
feat of war, your Majesty! His Majesty well knows it; feat of his
Marlborough's doing, famed everywhere for the twenty-six years last
past; and will go to see the Schellenberg and its Lines. The great Duke
is dead four years; sank sadly, eclipsed under tears of dotage of his
own, and under human stupidity of oth