Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/368

 night! Although the moon happened to be new, objects were distinguishable at a considerable distance, while the evening star shines here so brightly that shadows are cast by its light.

At three o'clock in the morning we were again in the saddle, riding toward the East through a valley and between high mountains, along the same road which Walther von Habenichts once followed with his twelve thousand crusaders. The hills were covered with olive trees and flowering bushes filled with nightingales. At sunset we reached the extensive lake of Isnik. The gigantic walls and towers on the opposite shore used to protect a powerful city, for which the crusaders often fought. Today they surround the few miserable huts and rubbish heaps which centuries ago were Nicea. It was here that an assembly of one hundred learned bishops expounded the mystery of the Trinity, and decided to burn all who held a different view. What would these proud prelates have said if a man had prophesied to them that the time would come when their rich and mighty city would be a rubbish heap, and their cathedral the ruins of a Turkish mosque; when the empire of the Greek emperors would be destroyed, and their own exegesis, yes, even their entire religion, would have disappeared from these parts, and when for hundreds of miles and through hundreds of years the name of the camel-driver of Medina would be the only one in the mouths of the people.

The Moslems, who abhor all pictures, have covered with whitewash the paintings in the Greek churches. In the Cathedral of Nicea, where the famous council was held, there glistens even today through the white coating of the wall, where the high altar used to be, the proud promise, I. H. S. (in hoc signo, i. e., under this sign, the cross, you will win). But directly over it is written the first dogma of Islam, "There is no God but God." There is a lesson of tolerance in these faded inscriptions, and it seems as if Heaven itself wished to listen as well to the Credo as to the Allah il allah.