This messenger was from Neckargemünd, sent to announce to the inhabitants of Heidelberg this event, which the people living on the banks of the river, and especially the boat-people, always look forward to with great anxiety, and take their measures of precaution accordingly. But especially in that winter were people full of apprehension, as the ice-covering had acquired an extraordinary thickness; and indeed, in some places, could no longer be called a covering, since the flood in shallow places was completely frozen to the bottom. After a fierce and early-occurring season of severity, the actual warmth of spring suddenly broke out, and the soft south wind melted the snow so rapidly on the hills that the waters ran in streams down their sides. But all was in readiness; and as soon as the four students reached the bridge, they saw, wherever the houses on the banks of the Neckar did not completely occupy its strand to the edge, groups of men, who had provided themselves with cressets with rolls of pitched torches, called pitch garlands, and awaited the spectacle with eager looks. The bridge itself was covered with men, and scarcely a place at the balustrade was to be fought out. From this place an interesting scene presented itself. So far as you could see the banks of the Neckar, the torches flamed, and threw their flickering lights on the surface of ice, on the crowding spectators, and on the neighbouring landscape. In the city itself, most of the houses were lit up for the festival, while above them, in the country, the mountains and the old castle shrouded themselves in the deepest gloom. Most of those who had assembled on the bridge, were men in their ordinary dress, who had, on the announcement of the ice-break, hastened hither from the punch-bowl. But others had been roused from their beds, and exhibited themselves in costumes singular enough, over which they had hastily thrown their cloaks; out of which their nightcaps peeped above.