and faded furniture, suited the habit of my soul, and I hugged myself
often in the pleasant reflection that my London acquaintances would be
puzzling their brains for my whereabouts, without the slightest clue to
my detection. Now, had I settled in Florence, Frankfort, or Geneva, what
a life I must have led! There is always some dear Mrs. Somebody going to
live in your neighbourhood, who begs you ‘ll look out for a house for
her--something very eligible; eighteen rooms well furnished; a southern
aspect; in the best quarter; a garden indispensable; and all for some
forty pounds a year--or some other dear friend who desires you ‘ll find
a governess, with more accomplishments than Malibran and more learning
than Porson, with the temper of five angels, and a “vow in heaven” to
have no higher salary than a college bed-maker. Then there are the
Thompsons passing through, whom you have taken care never to know
before; but who fall upon you now as strangers in a foreign land, and
take the “benefit” of the “Alien Act” in dinners at your house during
their stay. I stop not to enumerate the crying wants of the more lately
arrived resident, all of which are refreshed for your benefit; the
recommendations to butlers who don’t cheat, to moral music-masters,
grave dancing-masters, and doctors who never take fees--every infraction
by each of these individuals in his peculiar calling being set down as a
just cause of complaint against yourself, requiring an animated
correspondence in writing, and concluding with an abject apology and a
promise to cut the delinquent that day, though you owe him a half-year’s
bill. These are all pleasant; not to speak of the curse of disjointed
society, ill-assorted, ill-conceived, unreasonable pretension, vulgar
impertinence, and fawning toadyism on every side, and not one man to be
found to join you in laughing at the whole thing, which would amply
repay one for any endurance. No, thought I, I ‘ve had enough of this! I
‘ll try my barque in quieter waters, and though it’s only a punt, yet
I’ll hold the sculls myself, and that’s something.

‘So much for the self-gratulation I indulged in, as the old _chaise de
poste_ rattled over the heavy pavement, and drew up short at the portico
of my future dwelling. My wife was charmed with the procession of
villagers who awaited us on the steps, and (although an uglier
population never trod their mother earth in wooden slippers) fancied she
could detect several faces of great beauty and much interest in the
crowd. For my part, I saw nothing but an indiscriminate haze of cotton
nightcaps, striped jackets, blouses, black petticoats and sabots; so,
pushing my way through them, I left the bassoon and the burgomaster to
the united delights of their music and eloquence, and shutting the hall
door threw myself on a seat, and thanked Heaven that my period of peace
and tranquillity was at length to begin.

‘Peace and tranquillity! What airy visions! Had I selected the post of
cad to an omnibus, a steward to a Greenwich steamer, were I a guide to
the Monument or a waiter at Long’s my life had been one of dignified
repose in comparison with my present existence.

‘I had not been a week in the château when a travelling Englishman
sprained his ankle within a short distance of the house. As a matter of
course he was brought there, and taken every care of for the few days of
his stay. He was fed, housed, leeched, and stuped, and when at length he
proceeded upon his journey was profuse in his acknowledgments for the
services rendered him; and yet what was the base return of the
ungrateful man? I have scarcely temper to record it. During the very
moment when we were most lavish in our attention to him, he was sapping
the very peace of his benefactors. He learned from the Flemish servants
of the house that it had formerly been the favourite residence of Van
Dyck; that the very furniture was unchanged since his time; the bed, the
table, the chair he had sat on were all preserved. The wretch--am I not
warranted in calling him so?--made notes of all this; before I had been
three weeks in my abode, out came a _Walk in Flanders_, in two volumes,
with a whole chapter about me, headed “Château de Van Dyck.” There we
were, myself and my wife, in every window of the Row: Longman, Hurst,
Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Blue, had bought us at a price, and paid
for us; there we were--we, who courted solitude and retirement--to be
read of by every puppy in the West End, and every apprentice in
Cheapside. Our hospitality was lauded, as if I kept open house for all
comers, with “hot chops and brown gravy” at a moment’s notice. The
antiquary was bribed to visit me by the fascinations of a spot “sacred
to the reveries of genius”; the sportsman, by the account of my
“preserves”; the idler, to say he had been there; and the guide-
bookmaker and historical biographer, to vamp up details for a new
edition of _Belgium as it was_, or _Van Dyck and his Contemporaries_.

‘From the hour of the publication of that horrid book I never enjoyed a
moment’s peace or ease. The whole tide of my travelling countrymen--and
what a flood it is!--came pouring into Ghent. Post-horses could not be
found sufficient for half the demand; the hotels were crowded;
respectable peasants gave up their daily employ to become guides to the
château; and little busts of Van Dyck were hawked about the
neighbourhood by children of four years old. The great cathedral of
Ghent, Van Scamp’s pictures, all the historic remains of that ancient
city were at a discount; and they who formerly exhibited them as a
livelihood were now thrown out of bread. Like the dancing-master who has
not gone up to Paris for the last pirouette, or the physician who has
not taken up the stethoscope, they were reputed old-fashioned and
_passé_; and if they could not describe the Château de Van Dyck, were
voted among the bygones.

‘The impulse once given, there was no stopping; the current was
irresistible. The double lock on the gate of the avenue, the bulldog at
the hall door, the closed shutters, the cut-away bell-rope, announced a
firm resolution in the fortress not to surrender; but we were taken by
assault, escaladed, and starved out in turns.

‘Scarcely was the tea-urn on the breakfast-table when they began to pour
in--old and young, the halt, the one-eyed, the fat, the thin, the
melancholy, the merry, the dissipated, the dyspeptic, the sentimental,
the jocose, the blunt, the ceremonious, the courtly, the rude, the
critical, and the free and easy. One came forty miles out of his way,
and pronounced the whole thing an imposition, and myself a humbug;
another insisted upon my getting up at dinner, that he might sit down in
my chair, characterised by the confounded guides as “le fauteuil de Van
Dyck”; a third went so far as to propose lying down in our great four-
post bed, just to say he had been there, though my wife was then in it.
I speak not of the miserable practice of cutting slices off all the
furniture as relics. John Murray took an inventory of the whole contents
of the house for a new edition of his guidebook; and Holman, the blind
traveller, _felt_ me all over with his hand as I sat at tea with my
wife; and last of all, a respectable cheesemonger from the Strand, after
inspecting the entire building from the attics to the cellar, pressed
sixpence into my hand at parting, and said, “Happy to see you, Mr. Van
Dyck, if you come into the city!”

‘Then the advice and counsel I met with, oral and written, would fill a
volume, and did; for I was compelled to keep an album in the hall for
the visitors’ names. One suggested that my desecration of the temple of
genius would be less disgusting if I dined in my kitchen, and left the
ancient dining-room as the great artist had left it. Another hinted that
my presence in my own house destroyed all the illusion of its historic
associations. A third, a young lady--to judge by the writing--proposed
my wearing a point-beard and lace ruffles, with trunk hose and a feather
in my hat, probably to favour the “illusion” so urgently mentioned by
the other writer, and, perhaps, to indulge visitors like my friend the
cheesemonger. Many pitied me--well might they!--as one insensible to the
associations of the spot; while my very servants, regarding me only as a
show part of the establishment, neglected their duties on every side,
and betook themselves to ciceroneship, each allocating his peculiar
territory to himself, like the people who show the lions and the armour
in the Tower.

‘No weather was either too hot or too cold, too sultry or too
boisterous; no hour too late or too early; no day was sacred. If the
family were at prayers or at dinner or at breakfast or in bed, it
mattered not; they had come many miles to see the chateau, and see it
they would. “Alas!” thought I, “if, as some learned persons suppose,
individuals be recognisable in the next world, what a melancholy time of
it will be yours, poor Van Dyck! If they make all this hubbub about the
house you lived in, what will they do about your fleshy tabernacle?”

‘As the season advanced, the crowds increased; and as autumn began, the
conflicting currents to and from the Rhine all met in my bedroom. There
took place all the rendezvous of Europe. Runaway daughters there first
repented in papa’s arms, and profligate sons promised amendment for the
future. Myself and my wife were passed by unnoticed and disregarded amid
this tumult of recognition and salutation. We were emaciated like
skeletons; our meals we ate when we could, like soldiers on a retreat;
and we slept in our clothes, not knowing at what moment the enemy might
be upon us. Locks, bolts, and bars were ineffectual; our resistance only
increased curiosity, and our garrison was ever open to bribery.

‘It was to no purpose that I broke the windows to let in the north wind
and acute rheumatism; to little good did I try an alarm of fire every
day about two, when the house was fullest; and I failed signally in
terrifying my torturers when I painted the gardener’s wife sky-blue, and
had her placed in the hall, with a large label over the bed, “collapsed
cholera.” Bless your heart! the tourist cares for none of these; and I
often think it would have saved English powder and shot to have exported
half a dozen of them to the East for the siege of Seringapatam. Had they
been only told of an old picture, a teapot, a hearth-brush, or a
candlestick that once belonged to Godfrey de Bouillon or Peter the
Hermit, they would have stormed it under all the fire of Egypt! Well,
it’s all over at last; human patience could endure no longer. We escaped
by night, got away by stealth to Ghent, took post-horses in a feigned
name, and fled from the Château de Van Dyck as from the plague.
Determined no longer to trust to chances, I have built a cottage myself,
which has no historic associations further back than six weeks ago; and
fearful even of being known as the _ci-devant_ possessor of the château,
I never confess to have been in Ghent in my life; and if Van Dyck be
mentioned, I ask if he is not the postmaster at Tervueren.

‘Here, then, I conclude my miseries. I cannot tell what may be the
pleasure that awaits the _live_ “lion,” but I envy no man the delights
that fall to his lot who inhabits the den of the _dead_ one.’

CHAPTER XX. BONN AND STUDENT LIFE

When I look at the heading of this chapter, and read there the name of a
little town upon the Rhine--which, doubtless, the majority of my readers
has visited--and reflect on how worn the track, how beaten the path I
have been guiding them on so long, I really begin to feel somewhat
faint-hearted. Have we not all seen Brussels and Antwerp, Waterloo and
Quatre Bras? Are we not acquainted with Belgium, as well as we are with
Middlesex; don’t we know the whole country, from its cathedrals down to
Sergeant Cotton?--and what do we want with Mr. O’Leary here? And the
Rhine--bless the dear man!--have we not steamed it up and down in every
dampschiffe of the rival companies? The Drachenfels and St. Goar, the
Caub and Bingen, are familiar to our eyes as Chelsea and Tilbury Fort.
True, all true, mesdames and messieurs--I have been your fellow-
traveller myself. I have watched you pattering along, John Murray in
hand, through every narrow street and ill-paved square, conversing with
your commissionaire in such French as it pleased God, and receiving his
replies in equivalent English. I have seen you at table d’hôte, vainly
in search of what you deemed eatable--hungry and thirsty in the midst of
plenty; I have beheld you yawning at the opera, and grave at the
Vaudeville; and I knew you were making your summer excursion of
pleasure, ‘doing your Belgium and Germany,’ like men who would not be
behind their neighbours. And still, with all this fatigue of sea and
land, this rough-riding and railroading, this penance of short bed and
shorter board, though you studied your handbook from the Scheldt to
Schaffhausen, you came back with little more knowledge of the Continent
than when you left home. It is true, your son Thomas--that lamblike
scion of your stock, with light eyes and hair--has been initiated into
the mysteries of _rouge et noir_ and _roulette_; madame, your wife, has
obtained a more extravagant sense of what is becoming in costume; your
daughter has had her mind opened to the fascinations of a French
_escroc_ or a ‘refugee Pole’; and you, yourself, somewhat the worse for
your change of habits, have found the salads of Germany imparting a
tinge of acidity to your disposition. These are, doubtless, valuable
imports to bring back--not the less so, that they are duty free. Yet,
after all, ‘joy’s recollection is no longer joy’; and I doubt if the
retrospect of your wanderings be a repayment for their fatigues.

‘Would he have us stay at home, Pa?’ lisps out, in pouting accents of
impatience, some fair damsel, whose ringlets alone would make a furore
at Paris.

Nothing of the kind, my dear. Travel by all means. There’s nothing will
improve your French accent like a winter abroad; and as to your carriage
and air, it is all-essential you should be pressed in the waltz by some
dark-moustached Hungarian or tight-laced Austrian. Your German will fall
all the more trippingly off your tongue that you have studied it in the
land of beer and beetroot; while, as a safeguard against those
distressing sensations of which shame and modesty are the parents, the
air of the Rhine is sovereign, and its watering-places an unerring
remedy. All I bargain for is, to be of the party. Let there be a corner
in a portmanteau, or an imperial, a carriage-pocket, or a courier’s sack
for me, and I’m content. If ‘John’ be your guide, let Arthur be your
mentor. He’ll tell you of the roads; I, of the travellers.

To him belong pictures and statues, churches, châteaux, and curiosities;
_my_ province is the people--the living actors of the scene, the
characters who walk the stage in prominent parts, and without some
knowledge of whom your ramble would lose its interest. Occasionally, it
is true, they may not be the best of company. Que voulez-vous? ‘If ever
you travel, you mustn’t feel queer,’ as Mathews said or sung--I forget
which. I shall only do my endeavour to deal more with faults than vices,
more with foibles than failings. The eccentricities of my fellow-men are
more my game than their crimes; and therefore do not fear that in my
company I shall teach you bad habits, nor introduce you to low
acquaintances; and above all, no disparagement--and it is with that
thought I set out--no disparagement of me that I take you over a much-
travelled track. If it be so, there’s the more reason you should know
the company whom you are in the habit of visiting frequently; and
secondly, if you accompany me here, I promise you better hereafter; and
lastly, one of the pleasantest books that ever was written was the
_Voyage autour de ma Chambre_. Come, then, is it agreed--are we fellow-
travellers? You might do worse than take me. I’ll neither eat you up,
like your English footmen, nor sell you to the landlord, like your
German courier, nor give you over to brigands, like your Italian valet.
It’s a bargain, then; and here we are at Bonn.

It is one o’clock, and you can’t do better than sit down to the table
d’hôte: call it breakfast, if your prejudices run high, and take your
place. I have supposed you at ‘Die Sterne’ (The Star), in the little
square of the town; and, certes, you might be less comfortably housed.
The cuisine is excellent, both French and German, and the wines
delicious. The company at first blush might induce you to step back,
under the impression that you had mistaken the salon, and accidentally
fallen upon a military mess. They are nearly all officers of the cavalry
regiments garrisoned at Bonn, well-looking and well-dressed fellows,
stout, bronzed, and soldierlike, and wearing their moustaches like men
who felt hair on the upper lip to be a birthright. If a little too noisy
and uproarious at table, it proceeds not from any quarrelsome spirit:
the fault, in a great measure, lies with the language. German, except
spoken by a Saxon madchen, invariably suggests the idea of a row to an
uninterested bystander; and if Goethe himself were to recite his ballads
before an English audience, I’d venture long odds they’d accuse him of
blasphemy. Welsh and Irish are soft zephyrs compared to it.

A stray Herr Baron or two, large, portly, responsible-looking men, with
cordons at their button-holes, and pipe-sticks projecting from their
breast-pockets, and a sprinkling of students of the higher class--it is
too dear for the others--make up the party. Of course, there are
English; but my present business is not with them.

By the time you have arrived at the ‘Rae-braten, with capers’--which on
a fair average, taken in the months of spring and summer, may be after
about an hour and a half’s diligent performance--you’ll have more time
to survey the party, who by this time are clinking their glasses, and
drinking hospitably to one another in champagne; for there is always
some newly returned comrade to be feted, or a colonel’s birthday or a
battle, a poet or some sentimentalism about the Rhine or the Fatherland,
to be celebrated. Happy, joyous spirits, removed equally from the
contemplation of vast wealth or ignominious poverty! The equality so
much talked of in France is really felt in Germany; and however the
exclusives of Berlin and Vienna, or the still more exalted coteries of
Baden or Darmstadt, rave of the fourteen quarterings which give the
_entrée_ to their salons, the nation has no sympathy with these follies.
The unaffected, simple-minded, primitive German has no thought of
assuming an air of distance to one his inferior in rank; and I have
myself seen a sovereign prince take his place at table d’hôte beside the
landlord, and hobnob with him cordially during dinner.

I do not mean to say that the German has no respect for rank; on the
contrary, none more than he looks up to aristocracy, and reveres its
privileges; but he does so from its association with the greatness of
the Fatherland. The great names of his nobles recall those of the heroes
and sages of whom the traditions of the country bear record; they are
the watchwords of German liberty or German glory; they are the monuments
of which he feels proudest. His reverence for their descendants is not
tinged with any vulgar desire to be thought their equal or their
associate; far from it, he has no such yearnings. His own position could
never be affected by anything in theirs. The skipper of the fishing-
craft might join convoy with the great fleet, but he knows that he only
commands a shallop after all.

This, be it remarked, is a very different feeling from what we
occasionally see nearer home. I have seen a good deal of student-life in
Germany, and never witnessed anything approaching that process so
significantly termed ‘tuft-hunting’ with us. Perhaps it may be alleged
in answer that rank and riches, so generally allied in this country, are
not so there; and that consequently much of what the world deems the
prestige of condition is wanting to create that respect. Doubtless this
is, to a certain extent, true; but I have seen the descendants of the
most distinguished houses in Germany mixing with the students of a very
humble walk on terms the most agreeable and familiar, assuming nothing
themselves, and certainly receiving no marks of peculiar favour or
deference from their companions. When one knows something of German
character, this does not surprise one. As a people, highly imaginative
and poetic in temperament, dreamy and contemplative, falling back rather
on the past than facing the future, they are infinitely more assailable
by souvenirs than promises; and in this wise the ancient fame of a
Hohenstauffen has a far firmer hold on the attachment of a Prussian than
the hopes he may conceive from his successor. It was by recalling to the
German youth the former glories of the Fatherland, that the beautiful
queen of that country revived the drooping spirit of the nation. It was
over the tomb of the Great Frederick that the monarch swore to his
alliance with Alexander against the invading legions of France. The
songs of Uhland and Goethe, the lyrics of Burger and Korner, have their
source and spirit in the heartfelt patriotism of the people. The great
features of the land, and the more striking traits of national
character, are inextricably woven in their writings, as if allied to
each other; and the Rhine and the male energy of German blood, their
native mountains and their native virtues, are made to reciprocate with
one another; and thus the eternal landmarks of Germany are consecrated
as the altars of its faithfulness and its truth.

The students are a means of perpetuating these notions. The young German
is essentially romantic. A poet and a patriot, his dreams are of the
greatness of his Fatherland, of its high mission among the nations of
Europe; and however he may exaggerate the claims of his country or
overrate his own efforts in her cause, his devotion is a noble one; and
when sobered down by experience and years, it gives to Germany that race
of faithful and high-souled people, the best guardians of her liberty
and the most attached defenders of her soil.

A great deal of _mauvaise plaisanterie_ has been expended by French and
English authors on the subject of the German student. The theme was
perhaps an inviting one. Certainly nothing was easier than to ridicule
absurdities in their manner and extravagances in their costume--their
long pipes and their long beards, their long skirts and long boots and
long sabres, their love of beer and their law-code of honour. Russell,
in his little work on Germany--in many respects the only English book
worth reading on that country--has been most unjustly severe upon them.
As to French authors, one never expects truth from _them_, except it
slip out unconsciously in a work of fiction. Still, they have displayed
a more than common spirit of detraction when speaking of the German
student. The truth is, they cannot forget the part these same truths
performed in repelling the French invasion of their country. The spirit
evoked by Kôrner, and responded to from the Hartz to the Black Forest,
was the death-note to the dominant tyranny of France. The patriotism
which in the Basque provinces called into existence the wild Guerillas,
and in the Tyrol created the Jager-bund, in more cultivated Germany
elicited that race of poets and warriors whose war-songs aroused the
nation from its sleep of slavery, and called them to avenge the injuries
of their nation.

Laugh, then, if you will, at the strange figures whose uncouth costumes
of cap and jack-boot bespeak them a hybrid between a civilian and a
soldier. The exterior is, after all, no bad type of what lies within;
its contradictions are indeed scarcely as great. The spectacles and
moustaches, the note-book beneath the arm and the sabre at the side, the
ink-bottle at the button-hole and the spurs jingling at the heels, are
all the outward signs of that extraordinary mixture of patient industry
and hot-headed enthusiasm, of deep thought and impetuous rashness, of
matter-of-fact shrewdness and poetic fervour, and, lastly, of the most
forgiving temper allied to an unconquerable propensity for duelling.
Laugh if you will at him, but he is a fine fellow for all that; and
despite all the contrarieties of his nature he has the seed of those
virtues which in the peaceful life of his native country grow up into
the ripe fruits of manly truth and honesty.

I wish you then to think well of the Bursche, and forgive the
eccentricities into which a college life and a most absurd doctrine of
its ordinances will now and then lead him. That wild-looking youth, for
all that he has a sabre-wound across his cheek, and wears his neck bare
like a Malay, despite his savage moustache and his lowering look, has a
soft heart, though it beats behind that mass of nonsensical braiding. He
could recite you for hours long the ballads of Schiller and the lyrics
of Uhland; ah! and sing for you, too, with no mean skill, the music of
Spohr and Weber, accompanying himself the while on the piano, with a
touch that would make your heart thrill. And I am not sure that even in
his wildest moments of enthusiastic folly he is not nearly as much an
object of hope to his country as though he were making a book on the
Derby, or studying ‘the odds’ among the ‘legs’ at Tattersall’s.

Above all things, I would beg of you not to be too hasty in judging him.
Put not much trust in half what English writers lay to his charge;
believe not one syllable of any Frenchman on the subject--no, not even
that estimable Alexandre Dumas, who represents the ‘Student’ as
demanding alms on the highroad--thus confounding him with the Lehr-
Junker (the travelling apprentice), who by the laws of Germany is
obliged to spend two years in wandering through different countries
before he is permitted to reside permanently in his own. The blunder
would have been too gross for anything but a Frenchman and a Parisian;
but the Rue St. Denis covers a multitude of mistakes, and the Boulevard
de Montmartre is a dispensation to all truth. Howitt, if you can read a
heavy book, will tell you nearly everything a _book_ can tell; but
setting a Quaker to describe Burschen life, was pretty much like sending
a Hindu to report at a county meeting.

Now, all this time we have been wandering from Bonn and its gardens,
sloping down into the very Rhine, and its beautiful park, the former
pleasure-ground of that palace which now forms the building of the
University. There are few sweeter spots than this. You have escaped from
the long, low swamps of Holland, you have left behind you the land of
marsh and fog, and already the mountainous region of Germany breaks on
the view; the Sieben Gebirge are in sight, and the bold Drachenfels,
with its ruined tower on its summit, is an earnest of the glorious
scenery to come. The river itself looks brighter and fresher; its eddies
seem to sparkle with a lustre they know not when circling along the
swampy shores of Nimmegen.

Besides, there is really something in a name, and the sound of
Deutschland is pleasanter than that of the country of ‘dull fogs and
dank ditches’; and although I would not have you salute it, like
Voltaire--

‘Adieu, canaille--canards, canaux!’

still, be thankful for being where you are, take your coffee, and let us
have a ramble through the Park.

Alas! the autumn is running into the winter; each breeze that sighs
along the ground is the dirge over the dead leaves that lie strewn
around us. The bare branches throw their gaunt arms to and fro as the
cold grey clouds flit past; the student, too, has donned his fur-lined
mantle, and strides along, with cap bent down, and hurried step. But a
few weeks since, and these alleys were crowded with gay and smiling
groups, lingering beneath the shadow of tall trees, and listening to the
Jager band that played in yonder pavilion. The grey-haired professor
moved slowly along, uncovering his venerable head as some student
passed, and respectfully saluting him; and there too walked his fair
daughters, the ‘frauleins with the yellow hair.’ How calmly sweet their
full blue eyes! what gentleness is written in their quiet gait! Yet,
see! as each bar of the distant waltz is heard beating on the ear, how
their footsteps keep time and mark the measure! Alas! the summer hours
have fled, and with them those calm nights when by the flickering moon
the pathways echoed to the steps of lingering feet now homeward turning.

I never can visit a University town in Germany without a sigh after the
time when I was myself a Bursche, read myself to sleep each night with
Ludwig Tieck, and sported two broadswords crosswise above my chimney.

I was a student at Göttingen, the Georgia Augusta; and in the days I
speak of--I know not well what King Ernest has done since--it was rather
a proud thing to be ein Göttinger Bursche. There was considered
something of style to appertain to it above the other Universities; and
we looked down upon a Heidelberger or a Halle man as only something
above a ‘Philister.’ The professors had given a great celebrity to the
University too. There was Stromeyer in chemistry, and Hausman in
philology; Behr in Greek, Shrader in botany; and, greater than all, old
Blumenbach himself, lecturing four days each week on everything he could
think of--natural philosophy, physics, geography, anatomy, physiology,
optics, colours, metallurgy, magnetism, and the whale-fishery in the
South Seas--making the most abstruse and grave subjects interesting by
the charm of his manner, and elevating trivial topics into consequence
by their connection with weightier matters. He was the only lecturer I
ever heard of who concluded his hour to the regret of his hearers, and
left them longing for the continuation. Anecdote and illustration fell
from him with a profusion almost inconceivable and perfectly miraculous,
when it is borne in mind that he rarely was known to repeat himself in a
figure, and more rarely still in a story; and when he had detected
himself in this latter he would suddenly stop short, with an ‘Ach Gott,
I’m growing old,’ and immediately turn into another channel, and by some
new and unheard-of history extricate himself from his difficulty. With
all the learning of a Buffon and a Cuvier, he was simple and unaffected
as a child. His little receptions in the summer months were in his
garden. I have him before me this minute, seated under the wide-
spreading linden-tree, with his little table before him, holding his
coffee and a few books--his long hair, white as snow, escaping beneath
his round cap of dark-green velvet, falling loosely on his shoulders,
and his large grey eyes, now widely opened with astonishment at some
piece of intelligence a boy would have heard without amazement, then
twinkling with sly humour at the droll thoughts passing through his
mind; while around him sat his brother professors and their families,
chatting pleasantly over the little news of their peaceful community --
the good vraus knitting and listening, and the frauleins demurely
sitting by, wearing a look of mock attention to some learned
dissertation, and ever and anon stealing a sly glance at the handsome
youth who was honoured by an invitation to the soirée.

How charming, too, to hear them speak of the great men of the land as
their old friends and college companions! It was not the author of
_Wallenstein_ and _Don Carlos_, but Frederick Schiller, the student of
medicine, as they knew him in his boyhood--bold, ardent, and ambitious;
toiling along a path he loved not, and feeling within him the working of
that great genius which one day was to make him the pride of his
Fatherland; and Wieland, strange and eccentric, old in his youth, with
the innocence of a child and the wisdom of a sage; and Hoffman, the
victim of his gloomy imagination, whose spectral shapes and dark
warnings were not the forced efforts of his brain, but the companions of
his wanderings, the beings of his sleep. How did they jest with him on
his half-crazed notions, and laugh at his eccentricities! It was strange
to hear them tell of going home with Hummel, then a mere boy, and how,
as the evening closed in, he sat down to the pianoforte, and played and
sang, and played again for hours long, now exciting their wonder by
passages of brilliant and glittering effect, now knocking at their
hearts by tones of plaintive beauty. There was a little melody he played
the night they spoke of--some short and touching ballad, the inspiration
of the moment--made on the approaching departure of some one amongst
them, which many years after in _Fidelio_ called down thunders of
applause; mayhap the tribute of his first audience was a sweeter homage
after all.

While thus they chatted on, the great world without and all its mighty
interests seemed forgotten by them. France might have taken another
choleric fit, and been in march upon the Rhine; England might have once
more covered the ocean with her fleets, and scattered to the waves the
wreck of another Trafalgar; Russia might be pouring down her hordes from
the Don and Dnieper--little chance had they of knowing aught of these
things! The orchards that surrounded the ramparts shut out the rest of
Europe, and they lived as remote from all the collisions of politics and
the strife of nations as though the University had been in another
planet.

I must not forget the old Hofrath Froriep, Ordentliche-Professor von--
Heaven knows what! No one ever saw his collegium (lecture-room); no one
ever heard him lecture. He had been a special tutor to the Princes--as
the Dukes of Cumberland and Cambridge were then called--about forty
years ago, and he seemed to live upon the memory of those great days
when a Royal Highness took notes beside his chair, and when he addressed
his class as ‘Princes and Gentlemen!’ What pride he felt in his clasp of
the Guelph, and an autograph letter of the Herzog von Clarence, who once
paid him a visit at his house in Gottingen! It was a strange thing to
hear the royal family of England spoken thus of among foreigners, who
neither knew our land nor its language. One was suddenly recalled to the
recollection of that Saxon stock from which our common ancestry
proceeded--the bond of union between us, and the source from which so
many of the best traits of English character take their origin. The love
of truth, the manly independence, the habits of patient industry which
we derived from our German blood are not inferior to the enterprising
spirit and the chivalrous daring of Norman origin.

But to return to the Hofrath, or Privy Councillor Froriep, for so was he
most rigidly styled. I remember him so well as he used to come slowly
down the garden-walk, leaning on his sister’s arm. He was the junior by
some years, but no one could have made the discovery now; the thing
rested on tradition, however, and was not disputed. The Fräulein Martha
von Froriep was the daguerreotype of her brother. To see them sitting
opposite each other was actually ludicrous; not only were the features
alike, but the expressions tallied so completely that it was as if one
face reflected the other. Did the professor look grave, the Fräulein
Martha’s face was serious; did he laugh, straightway her features took a
merry cast; if his coffee was too hot, or did he burn his fingers with
his pipe, the old lady’s sympathies were with him still. The Siamese
twins were on terms of distant acquaintanceship, compared with the
instinctive relation these two bore each other.

How was it possible, you will ask, that such an eternal similarity
should have marked their dispositions? The answer is an easy one. The
fräulein was deaf, perfectly destitute of hearing. The last recorded act
of her auditory nerves was on the occasion of some public rejoicing,
when twenty-four large guns were discharged in a few seconds of time,
and by the reverberation broke every window in Göttingen; the old lady,
who was knitting at the time, merely stopped her work and called out
‘Come in!’ thinking it was a tap at the room door. To her malady, then,
was it owing that she so perfectly resembled the professor, her brother.
She watched him with an anxious eye; his face was the dial that
regulated every hour of her existence; and as the telegraph repeats the
signal that is made to it, yet knows not the interpretation of the sign,
so did she signalise the passing emotions of his mind long perhaps after
her own could take interest in the cause.

Nothing had a stranger effect, however, than to listen to the
professor’s conversation, to which the assent of the deaf old lady
chimed in at short and regular intervals. For years long she had been in
the habit of corroborating everything he said, and continued the
practice now from habit; it was like a clock that struck the hour when
all its machinery had run down. And so, whether the Hofrath descanted on
some learned question of Greek particles, some much-disputed fact of
ancient history, or, as was more often the case, narrated with German
broadness some little anecdote of his student life, the old lady’s ‘Ja,
ja, den sah ich selbst; da war ich auch!’ (Yes, yes, I saw it myself; I
was there, too!) bore testimony to the truth of Tacitus or Herodotus,
or, more remarkable still, to these little traits of her brother’s
youthful existence, which, to say the least, were as well
uncorroborated.

The Hofrath had passed his life as a bachelor--a circumstance which
could not fail to surprise, for his stories were generally of his love
adventures and perils; and all teemed with dissertations on the great
susceptibility of his heart, and his devoted admiration of female
beauty--weaknesses of which it was plain he felt vain, and loved to hear
authenticated by his old associates. In this respect Blumenbach indulged
him perfectly--now recalling to his memory some tender scene, or some
afflicting separation, which invariably drew him into a story.

If these little reminiscences possessed not all the point and interest
of more adventurous histories, to me at least they were more amusing by
the force of truth, and by the singular look, voice, and manner of him
who related them. Imagine, then, a meagre old man, about five feet two,
whose head was a wedge with the thin side foremost, the nose standing
abruptly out, like the cut-water of a man-o’-war gig; a large mouth,
forming a bold semicircle, with the convexity downwards, the angles of
which were lost in a mass of wrinkles on his withered cheeks; two
fierce-looking, fiery, little grey eyes set slantwise in his head
without a vestige of eyelash over them. His hair combed back with great
precision, and tied behind into a queue, had from long pulling gradually
drawn the eyebrows upwards to double their natural height, where they
remained fixed, giving to this uncouth face an expression of everlasting
surprise--in fact, he appeared as if he were perpetually beholding the
ghost of somebody. His voice was a strange, unnatural, clattering sound,
as though the machinery of speech had been left a long while without
oiling, and could not work flippantly; but to be sure, the language was
German, and that may excuse much.

Such was the Herr Hofrath Froriep--once, if you were to believe himself,
a lady-killer of the first water. Indeed, still, when he stretched forth
his thin and twisted shanks attired in satin shorts and black silk
stockings, a gleam of conscious pride would light up his features, and
he would seem to say to himself, ‘These legs might do some mischief
yet.’ Caroline Pichler, the novelist, had been one of his loves, and, if
you believed himself, a victim to his fascinations. However, another
version of the tale had obtained currency, and was frequently alluded to
by his companions at those moments when a more boastful spirit than they
deemed suitable animated his discourse; and at such times I remarked
that the Hofrath became unusually sensitive, and anxious to change the
subject.

It was one evening, when we sat somewhat later than our wont in the
garden, tempted by the delicious fragrance of the flowers and the mild
light of a new moon, that at last the Hofrath’s madchen made her
appearance, lantern in hand, to conduct him home. She carried on her arm
a mass of cloaks, shawls, and envelopes that would have clothed a
procession, with which she proceeded leisurely and artistically to dress
up the professor and his sister, until the impression came over the
bystanders that none but she who hid them in that mountain of wearables
would ever be able to discover them again.

‘Ach Gott,’ exclaimed the Hofrath, as she crowned him with a quilted
nightcap, whose jaws descended and fastened beneath the chin like an
antique helmet, leaving the miserable old face, like an uncouth pattern,
in the middle of the Berlin embroidery--‘Ach Gott, but for that!’

‘But for that!’ reiterated old Hausman, in a solemn tone, as if he knew
the secret grief his friend alluded to, and gave him all his sympathy.

‘Sit down again, Froriep,’ said Blumenbach; ‘it is an hour too soon for
young folk like us to separate. We’ll have a glass of Rosenthaler, and
you shall tell us that story.’

‘Be it so,’ said the Hofrath, as he made signs to the madchen that he
would cast his skin. ‘Ich bin dabei (I ‘m ready).’

‘Wi’ tippenny we fear nae evil; Wi’ usquebaugh we ‘d face the devil,’

quoth Burns; and surely Tarn’s knowledge of human nature took a wide
circuit when he uttered those words. The whole philosophy of temptation
is comprised in the distich, and the adage of coming up ‘to a man’s
price’ has no happier illustration; and certainly, had the poet been a
Bursche in Germany, he could not have conveyed the ‘sliding scale’ of
professors’ agreeability under a more suitable formula. He who would be
civil with a pipe becomes communicative with coffee, and brotherly with
beer; but he opens every secret of his nature under the high-pressure
power of a flask of Rhenish. The very smack of the Hofrath’s lips as he
drained his glass to the bottom, and then exclaimed in a transport, ‘Er
ist zum küssen, der Wein!’ announced that the folding-doors of his heart
stood wide open, and that he might enter who would.

‘Rosenthaler was Goethe’s favourite,’ quoth Stromeyer; ‘and he had a
good taste in wine.’

‘Your great folk,’ said Hausman, ‘ever like to show some decided
preference to one vintage above the rest; Napoleon adopted chambertin,
Joseph the Second drank nothing but tokay, and Peter the Great found
brandy the only fluid to his palate.’

‘A plague on their fancies!’ interrupted old Blumenbach. ‘Let us have
the story!’

‘Ah, well, well,’ said the Hofrath, throwing up his eyes with an air of
sentimentalism, ‘so you shall. Love’s young dream was sweet, after all!
We were in the Hartz,’ continued he, at once springing into his story
with a true Demosthenic abruptness--‘we were in the Hartz Mountains,
making a little tour, for it was semester, and all the classes were
closed in the University. There was Tieck, and Feldtbourg the Dane, and
Upsal, and old Langendorf of Jena, and Grotchen von Zobelschein, and
Mina Upsal, and Caroline, and Martha there--she, poor thing, was getting
deaf at the time, and could not take the same pleasure as the rest of
us. She was always stupid, you know.’

Here he looked over at her, when she immediately responded--

‘Yes, yes, what he says is true.’

‘Each morning we used to set off up the mountains, botanising and
hammering among the limestone rocks, and seeking for cryptogamia and
felspar, lichens and jungermannia and primitive rock--mingling our
little diversions with pleasant talk about the poets, and reciting
verses to one another from Hans Sachs and the old writers, and chatting
away about Schiller: the “Lager” was just come out, and more than one
among us could scarcely believe it was Frederick did it.

‘Tieck and I soon found that we were rivals; for before a week each of
us was in love with Caroline. Now, Ludwig was a clever fellow, and had a
thousand little ways of ingratiating himself with a pretty woman--and a
poetess besides. He could come down every day to breakfast with some ode
or sonnet, or maybe a dream; and then he was ready after dinner with his
bit of poetry, which sometimes, when he found a piano, he ‘d set to
music; or maybe in the evening he’d invent one of those strange
rigmarole stories of his, about a blue-bottle fly dying for love of a
white moth or some superannuated old drone bee, retiring from public
life, and spending his days reviling the rest of the world. You know his
nonsense well; but somehow one could not help listening, and, what’s
worse, feeling interest in it. As for Caroline, she became crazed about
gnats and spiders, and fleas, and would hear for whole days long the
stories of their loves and sorrows.

‘For some time I bore up as well as I could. There was a limit--Heaven
be thanked!--to that branch of the creation; and as he had now got down
to millepedes, I trusted that before the week was over he ‘d have
reached mites, beyond which it was impossible he could be expected to
proceed. Alas! I little knew the resources of his genius; for one
evening, when I thought him running fast aground, he sat down in the
midst of us, and began a tale of the life and adventures of the Herr
Baron von Beetroot, in search of his lost love the Fräulein von
Cucumber. This confounded narrative had its scene in an old garden in
Silesia, where there were incidents of real beauty and interest
interwoven, ay, and verses that would make your heart thrill. Caroline
could evidently resist no longer. The Baron von Beetroot was ever
uppermost in her mind; and if she ate Gurken-salat, it brought the tears
into her eyes. In this sad strait I wandered out alone one evening, and
without knowing it reached the “Rase Mühle,” near Oltdorf. There I went
in and ordered a supper; but they had nothing but thick-milk and kalte-
schade. *

* Thick-milk--a mess of sour cream thickened with sugar and crumbs of
bread _Kallte-schade_--the same species of abomination, the only
difference being beer, for cream, for the fluid.

No matter, thought I--a man in such grief as mine need little care what
he eats; and I ordered both, that I might afterwards decide which I’d
prefer. They came, and were placed before me. Himmel und Erde! what did
I do but eat the two!--beer and cream, cream and beer, pepper and sugar,
brown bread and nutmeg! Such was my abstraction, that I never noticed
what I was doing till I saw the two empty bowls before me. “I am a dead
Hofrath before day breaks,” said I, “and I’ll make my will”; but before
I could put the plan into execution I became very ill, and they were
obliged to carry me to bed. From that moment my senses began to wander;
exhaustion, sour beer, and despair were all working within me, and I was
mad. It was a brief paroxysm, but a fearful one. A hundred and fifty
thousand ridiculous fancies went at racing speed through my mind, and I
spent the night alternately laughing and crying. My pipe, that lay on
the chair beside the bed, figured in nearly every scene, and performed a
part in many a strange adventure.

‘By noon the others learned where I was, and came over to see me. After
sitting for half an hour beside me they were going away, when I called
Caroline and Martha back. Caroline blushed; but, taking Martha’s arm,
she seated herself upon a sofa, and asked in a timid voice what I wished
for.

‘“To hear before I die,” replied I; “to listen to a wonderful vision I
have seen this night.”

“A vision,” said Caroline; “oh, what was it?”

‘“A beautiful and a touching one. Let me tell it to you. I will call it
‘The-never-to-be-lost-sight-of, though not-the-less-on-that-account-to-
be-concealed, Loves of the Mug and the Meerschaum.’”

‘Caroline sprang to my side as I uttered these words, and as she wiped
the tears from her eyes she sobbed forth--

‘“Let me but hear it! let me but hear it!”

‘“Sit down,” said I, taking her hand and pressing it to my lips--“sit
down, and you shall.” With that I began my tale. I suppose,’ continued
the Hofrath, ‘you don’t wish to have the story?’

‘Gott bewahre (Heaven forbid)!’ broke in the whole company in a breath.
‘Leave the Mug and the Meerschaum, and go on with Caroline!’

‘Well, from that hour her heart was mine. Ludwig might call all the
reptiles that ever crawled, every vegetable that ever grew, to his aid--
the victory was with me. He saw it, and, irritated by defeat, returned
to Berlin without bidding us even farewell; and we never heard of him
till we saw his new novel of _Fortunio_. But to go on. The day after
Tieck left us was my birthday, and they all arranged to give me a little
fête; and truly nothing could be prettier. The garden of the inn was a
sweet spot, and there was a large linden like this, where the table was
spread; and there was a chair all decked with roses and myrtle for me--
Caroline herself had done it; and they had composed a little hymn in
honour of me, wherein were sundry compliments to my distinction in
science and poesy, the gifts of my mind and the graces of my person.
Ach, ja! I was handsome then.

‘Well, well, I must close my tale--I cannot bear to think of it even
now. Caroline came forward, dressed in white, with a crown of roses and
laurel leaves intertwined, and approached me gracefully, as I sat
waiting to receive her--all the rest ranged on either side of me.

‘Auf seine Stirne, wo das Licht-----’

(Upon that brow where shines the light)

said Caroline, raising the chaplet.

‘“Ach, Du Heiliger!” screamed Martha, who only that instant saw I was
bareheaded, “the dear man will catch his death of cold!” and with that
she snatched this confounded nightcap from her pocket, and rushing
forward clapped it on my head before I could know it was done. I
struggled and kicked like one possessed, but it was of no use; she had
tied the strings in a black knot, and they could neither be loosened nor
broken. “Be still there!” said she; “thou knowest well that at fifty-
three----” You can conceive,’ said the Hofrath in a parenthesis, ‘that
her passion obliterated her memory. At fifty-three one can’t play the
fool like at twenty.’

‘Ach, ja! it was over with me for ever. Caroline screamed at the cap,
first laughing, then crying, and then both; the rest nearly died of it,
and so did I. Caroline would never look at me after, and I came back
home, disappointed in my love--and all because of a woollen nightcap.’

When the Hofrath concluded, he poured the remainder of the Rosenthaler
into his glass, and bowing to each in turn, wished us good-night, while
taking the Fraulein Martha’s arm they both disappeared in the shade, as
the little party broke up and each wended his way homeward.

CHAPTER XXI. THE STUDENT

If I were not sketching a real personage, and retailing an anecdote once
heard, I should pronounce the Hofrath von Froriep a fictitious
character, for which reason I bear you no ill-will if you incline to
that opinion. I have no witness to call in my defence. There were but
two Englishmen in Gottingen in my day; one of them is now no more. Poor
fellow! he had just entered the army; his regiment was at Corfu, and he
was spending the six months of his first leave in Germany. We chanced to
be fellow-travellers, and ended by becoming friends. When he left me, it
was for Vienna, from which after a short stay he departed for Venice,
where he purchased a yacht, and with eight Greek sailors sailed for a
cruise through the Ionian Islands. He was never seen alive again; his
body, fearfully gashed and wounded, was discovered on the beach at
Zante. His murderers, for such they were, escaped with the vessel, and
never were captured. Should any Sixty-first man throw his eye over these
pages he will remember that I speak of one beloved by every one who knew
him. With all the heroic daring of the stoutest heart, his nature was
soft and gentle as a child’s. Poor G----! some of the happiest moments
of my life were spent with you; some of the saddest, in thinking over
your destiny.

You must take my word for the Hofrath, then, good reader. They who read
the modern novels of Germany--the wild exaggerations of Fouqué and
Hoffman, Musaeus and Tieck--will comprehend that the story of himself
has no extravagance whatever. To ascribe language and human passions to
the lower animals, and even to the inanimate creation, is a favourite
German notion, the indulgence of which has led to a great deal of that
mysticism which we find in their writings; and the secret sympathies of
cauliflowers and cabbages for young ladies in love is a constant theme
among this class of novelists.

A word now of the students, and I have done. Whatever the absurdities in
their code of honour, however ludicrous the etiquette of the ‘comment’
as it is called, there is a world of manly honesty and true-heartedness
among them. There is nothing mean or low, nothing dishonourable or
unworthy in the spirit of the Burschen-schaft. Exaggerated ideas of
their own importance, an overweening sense of their value to the
Fatherland, there are in abundance, as well as a mass of crude,
unsettled notions about liberty and the regeneration of Germany. But,
after all, these are harmless fictions; they are not allied to any evil
passions at the time, they lead to no bad results for the future. The
murder of Kotzebue, and the attempt on the life of Napoleon by Staps,
were much more attributable to the mad enthusiasm of the period than to
the principles of the Student-league. The spirit of the nation revolted
at the tyranny they had so long submitted to, and these fearful crimes
were the agonised expression of endurance pushed to madness. Only they
who witnessed the frantic joy of the people when the tide of fortune
turned against Napoleon, and his baffled legions retreated through
Germany on their return from the Russian campaign, can understand how
deeply stored were the wrongs for which they were now to exact
vengeance. The _Völker Schlacht_ (the ‘people’s slaughter’), as they
love to call the terrible fight of Leipsic, was the dreadful recompense
of all their sufferings.

When the French Revolution first broke out, the German students, like
many wiser and more thinking heads than theirs in our own country, were
struck with the great movement of a mighty people in their march to
liberty; but when, disgusted with the atrocities that followed, they
afterwards beheld France the first to assail the liberties and trample
on the freedom of every other country, they regarded her as a traitor to
the cause she once professed. And while their apathy in the early wars
of the republican armies marked their sympathy with the wild notions of
liberty of which Frenchmen affected to be the apostles in Europe, yet
when they saw the lust of conquest and the passion for dominion usurp
the place of those high-sounding virtues--_Liberté, Egalité_--the
reverse was a tremendous one, and may well excuse, if excuse were
needful, the proud triumph of the German armies when they bivouacked in
the streets of Paris.

The changed fortunes of the Continent have of course obliterated every
political feature in the student life of Germany; or if such still
exist, it takes the form merely of momentary enthusiasm in favour of
some banished professor, or a Burschen festival in honour of some martyr
of the Press. Still their ancient virtues survive, and the German
student is yet a type--one of the few remaining---of the Europe of
thirty years ago. Long may he remain so, say I; long may so interesting
a land have its national good faith and brotherly affection rooted in
the minds of its youth; long may the country of Schiller, of Wieland,
and of Goethe possess the race of those who can appreciate their
greatness, or strive to emulate their fame!

I leave to others the task of chronicling their beer orgies, their wild
festivals, and their duels; and though not disposed to defend them on
such charges, I might, were it not invidious, adduce instances nearer
home of practices little more commendable. At those same festivals, at
many of which I have been present, I have heard music that would shame
most of our orchestras, and listened to singing such as I have never
heard surpassed except within the walls of a grand opera. And as to
their duelling, the practice is bad enough in all conscience; but still
I would mention one instance, of which I myself was a witness, and
perhaps even in so little fertile a field we may find one grain of
goodly promise.

Among my acquaintances in Gôttingen were two students, both Prussians,
and both from the same small town of Magdebourg. They had been school-
fellows, and came together to the University, where they lived together
on terms of brotherly affection, which even there, where friendship
takes all the semblance of a sacred compact, was the subject of remark.
Never were two men less alike, however, than these. Eisendecker was a
bold, hotheaded fellow, fond of all the riotous excesses of Burschen
life; his face, seamed with many a scar, declared him a ‘hahn,’ as in
student phrase a confirmed duellist is termed. He was ever foremost in
each scheme of wild adventure, and continually being brought up before
the senate on some charge of insubordination. Von Mühry, his companion,
was exactly the opposite. His sobriquet--for nearly every student had
one--was ‘der Zahme (the gentle),’ and never was any more appropriate.
His disposition was mildness itself. He was very handsome, almost
girlish in his look, with large blue eyes and fine, soft silky hair,
which, Germanlike, he wore upon his neck. His voice--the index of his
nature--soft, low, and musical, would have predisposed you at once in
his favour. Still, those disparities did not prevent the attachment of
the two youths; on the contrary, they seemed rather to strengthen the
bond between them--each, as it were, supplying to the other the
qualities which Nature had denied him. They were never separate in
lecture-room, at home, or in the _allée_ (as the promenade was called)
or in the garden, where each evening the students resorted to sup, and
listen to the music of the Jâger band. Eisendecker and Mühry were names
that no one ever heard separated, and when one appeared the other was
never more than a few yards off.

Such was their friendship, when an unhappy incident occurred to trouble
its even course, and sow dissension between these who never had known a
passing difference in their lives. The sub-rector of Göttingen was in
the habit of giving little receptions every week, to which many of the
students were invited, and to which Eisendecker and Mühry were
frequently asked, as they both belonged to the professor’s class. In the
quiet world of a little University town, these soirées were great
occasions; and the invited plumed themselves not a little on the
distinction of a card which gave the privilege of bowing in the Herr
professor’s drawing-room, and kissing the hand of his fair daughter the
Frederica von Ettenheim, the belle of Göttingen. Frederica was the
prettiest German girl I ever saw; for this reason, that having been
partly educated at Paris, French _espièglerie_ relieved what had been
otherwise the too regular monotony of her Saxon features, and imparted a
character of sauciness--or _fierté_ is a better word--to that quietude
which is too tame to give the varied expression so charming in female
beauty. The _esprit_, that delicious ingredient which has been so
lamentably omitted in German character, she had imbibed from her French
education; and in lieu of that plodding interchange of flat commonplaces
which constitute the ordinary staple of conversation between the young
of opposite sexes beyond the Rhine, she had imported the light, delicate
tone of Parisian raillery--the easy and familiar gaiety of French
society, so inexpressibly charming in France, and such a boon from
heaven when one meets it by accident elsewhere.

Oh, confess it, ye who, in the dull round of this world’s so-called
pleasure, in the Eryboean darkness of the dinners and evening parties of
your fashionable friends, sit nights long, speaking and answering, half
at random, without one thought to amuse, without one idea to interest
you--what pleasure have you felt when some chance expression, some
remark--a mere word, perhaps--of your neighbour beside you, reveals that
she has attained that wondrous charm, that most fascinating of all
possessions--the art to converse; that neither fearful of being deemed
pedantic on the one hand, or uninformed on the other, she launches forth
freely on the topic of the moment, gracefully illustrating her meaning
by womanly touches of sensibility and delicacy, as though to say, these
lighter weapons were her own peculiar arms, while men might wield the
more massive ones of sense and judgment. Then with what lightness she
flits along from theme to theme, half affecting to infer that she dares
not venture deep, yet showing every instant traits of thoughtfulness and
reflection!

How long since have you forgotten that she who thus holds you entranced
is the brunette, with features rather too bold than otherwise; that
those eyes which now sparkle with the fire of mind seemed but half an
hour ago to have a look of cold effrontery? Such is the charm of
_esprit_; and without it the prettiest woman wants her greatest charm. A
diamond she may be, and as bright and of purest water; but the setting,
which gives such lustre to the stone, is absent, and half the brilliancy
of the gem is lost to the beholder.

Now, of all tongues ever invented by man, German is the most difficult
and clumsy for all purposes of conversation. You may preach in it, you
may pray in it, you may hold a learned argument, or you may lay down
some involved and intricate statement--you may, if you have the gift,
even tell a story in it, provided the hearers be patient, and some have
gone so far as to venture on expressing a humorous idea in German; but
these have been bold men, and their venturous conduct is more to be
admired than imitated. At the same time, it is right to add that a
German joke is a very wooden contrivance at best, and that the praise it
meets with is rather in the proportion of the difficulty of the
manufacture than of the superiority of the article--just as we admire
those Indian toys carved with a rusty nail, or those fourth-string
performances of Paganini and his followers.

And now to come back to the students, whom mayhap you deem to have been
forgotten by me all this time, but for whose peculiar illustration my
digression was intended--it being neither more nor less than to show
that if Frederica von Ettenheim turned half the heads in Göttingen,
Messrs. Eisendecker and Mühry were of the number. What a feature it was
of the little town, her coming to reside in it! What a sweet atmosphere
of womanly gracefulness spread itself like a perfume through those old
salons, whose dusty curtains and moth-eaten chairs looked like the
fossils of some antediluvian furniture! With what magic were the old
ceremonials of a professor’s reception exchanged for the easier habits
of a politer world! The venerable dignitaries of the University felt the
change, but knew not where it lay, and could not account for the
pleasure they now experienced in the vice-rector’s soirees; while the
students knew no bounds to the enthusiastic admiration, and ‘Die
Ettenheim’ reigned in every heart in Göttingen.

Of all her admirers none seemed to hold a higher place in her favour
than Von Mühry. Several causes contributed to this, in addition to his
own personal advantages and the distinction of his talents, which were
of a high order. He was particularly noticed by the vice-rector, from
the circumstance of his father holding a responsible position in the
Prussian Government; while Adolphe himself gave ample promise of one day
making a figure in the world. He was never omitted in any invitation,
nor forgotten in any of the many little parties so frequent among the
professors; and even where the society was limited to the dignitaries of
the college, some excuse would ever be made by the vice-rector to have
him present, either on the pretence of wanting him for something, or
that Frederica had asked him without thinking.

Such was the state of this little world when I settled in it, and took
up my residence at the Meissner Thor, intending to pass my summer there.
The first evening I spent at the vice-rector’s, the matter was quite
clear to my eyes. Frederica and Adolphe were lovers. It was to no
purpose that when he had accompanied her on the piano he retreated to a
distant part of the room when she ceased to sing. It signified not that
he scarcely ever spoke to her, and when he did, but a few words,
hurriedly and in confusion. Their looks met once; I saw them exchange
one glance--a fleeting one, too--but I read in it their whole secret,
mayhap even more than they knew themselves. Well had it been, if I alone
had witnessed this, but there was another at my side who saw it also,
and whispered in my ear, ‘Der Zahme is in love.’ I turned round--it was
Eisendecker: his face, sallow and sickly, while large circles of dark
olive surrounded his eyes, and gave him an air of deep suffering. ‘Did
you see that?’ said he suddenly, as he leaned his hand on my arm, where
it shook like one in ague.

‘Did you see that?’

‘What--the flower?’

‘Yes, the flower. It was she dropped it, when she crossed the room. You
saw him take it up, didn’t you?’

The tone he spoke in was harsh and hissing, as if he uttered the words
with his teeth clenched. It was clear to me now that he, too, was in
love with Frederica, and I trembled to think of the cruel shock their
friendship must sustain ere long.

A short time after, when I was about to retire, Eisendecker took my arm,
and said, ‘Are you for going home? May I go with you?’ I gave a willing
assent, our lodgings being near, and we spent much of every day in each
other’s chambers. It was the first time we had ever returned without
waiting for Mühry; and fearing what a separation, once begun, might lead
to, I stopped suddenly on the stairs, and said, as if suddenly
remembering--‘By-the-bye, we are going without Adolphe.’

Eisendecker’s fingers clutched me convulsively, and while a bitter laugh
broke from him, he said, ‘You wouldn’t tear them asunder, would you?’
For the rest of the way he never spoke again, and I, fearful of
awakening the expression of that grief which, when avowed, became
confirmed, never opened my lips, save to say, ‘Good-night.’

I never intended to have involved myself in a regular story when I began
this chapter, nor must I do so now, though, sooth to say, it would not
be without its interest to trace the career of these two youths, who now
became gradually estranged from each other, and were no longer to be
seen, as of old, walking with arms on each other’s shoulder--the most
perfect realisation of true brotherly affection. Day by day the distance
widened between them; each knew the secret of the other’s heart, yet
neither dared to speak of it. From distrust there is but a short step to
dislike--alas! it is scarcely even a step. They parted.

Every one knows that the reaction which takes place when some long-
standing friendship has been ruptured is proportionate to the warmth of
the previous attachment. Still the cause of this, in a great measure, is
more attributable to the world about us than to ourselves; we make
partisans to console us for the loss of one who was our confidant, and
in the violence of _their_ passions we are carried away as in a current.
The students were no exception to this theory; scarcely had they ceased
to regard each other as friends when they began to feel as enemies.
Alas! is it not ever so? Does not the good soil, which, when cultivated
with care, produce the fairest flowers and the richest fruits, rear up,
when neglected and abandoned, the most noxious weeds and the rankest
thistles? And yet it was love for another--that passion so humanising in
its influence, so calculated to assuage the stormy and vindictive traits
of even a savage nature--it was love that made them thus. To how many is
the ‘light that lies in woman’s eyes’ but a beacon to lure to ruin? When
we think that but one can succeed where so many strive, what sadness and
misery must not result to others?

Another change came over them, and a stranger still. Eisendecker, the
violent youth, of ungovernable temper and impetuous passion, who loved
the wildest freak of student-daring, and ever was the first to lead the
way in each mad scheme, had now become silent and thoughtful; a gentle
sadness tempered down the fierce traits of his hot nature, and he no
longer frequented his old haunts of the cellar and the fighting school,
but wandered alone into the country, and spent whole days in solitude.
Von Muhry, on the other hand, seemed to have assumed the castaway mantle
of his once friend: the gentle bearing and almost submissive tone of his
manner were exchanged for an air of conscious pride--a demeanour that
bespoke a triumphant spirit; and the quiet youth suddenly seemed changed
to a rash, high-spirited boy, reckless from very happiness. During this
time, Eisendecker had attached himself particularly to me; and although
I had always hitherto preferred Von Muhry, the feeling of the other’s
unhappiness, a sense of compassion for suffering, which it was easy to
see was great, drew me closer in my friendship towards him; and, at
last, I scarcely saw Adolphe at all, and when we did meet, a mutual
feeling of embarrassment separated and estranged us from each other.
About this time I set off on an excursion to the Hartz Mountains, to
visit the Brocken, and see the mines; my absence, delayed beyond what I
first intended, was above four weeks, and I returned to Gottingen just
as the summer vacation was about to begin.

About five leagues from Gottingen, on the road towards Nordheim, there
is a little village called Meissner, a favourite resort of the students,
in all their festivals; while, at something less than a mile distant,
stands a water-mill, on a little rivulet among the hills--a wild,
sequestered spot, overgrown with stunted oak and brushwood. A narrow
bridle-path leads to it from the village, and this was the most approved
place for settling all those affairs of honour whose character was too
serious to make it safe to decide nearer the University: for, strangely
enough, while by the laws of the University duelling was rigidly
denounced, yet whenever the quarrel was decided by the sword, the
authorities never or almost never interfered, but if a pistol was the
weapon, the thing at once took a more serious aspect.

For what reasons the mills have been always selected as the appropriate
scenes for such encounters, I never could discover; but the fact is
unquestionable, and I never knew a University town that did not possess
its ‘water-privileges’ in this manner.

Towards the mill I was journeying at the easy pace of my pony, early on
a summer’s morning, preferring the rural breakfast with the miller--for
they are always a kind of innkeepers--to the fare of the village. I
entered the little bridle-path that conducted to his door, and was
sauntering listlessly along, dreaming pleasantly, as one does, when the
song of the lark and the heavy odour of dew-pressed flowers steep the
heart in happiness all its own, when, behind me, I heard the regular
tramp of marching. I listened; had I been a stranger to the sound, I
should have thought them soldiers, but I knew too well the measured
tread of the student, and I heard the jingling of their heavy sabres--a
peculiar clank a student’s ear cannot be deceived in. I guessed at once
the object of their coming, and grew sick at heart to think that the
storm of men’s stubborn passions and the strife of their revengeful
nature should desecrate a peaceful spot like this. I was about to turn
back, disgusted at the thought, when I remembered I must return by the
same path, and meet them; but even this I shrank from. The footsteps
came nearer and nearer, and I had barely time to move off the path into
the brushwood, and lead my pony after, when they turned the angle of the
way. They who walked first were muffled in their cloaks, whose high
collars concealed their faces; but the caps of many a gaudy colour
proclaimed them students. At a little distance behind, and with a slower
step, came another party, among whom I noticed one who walked between
two others, his head sunk on his bosom, and evidently overcome with
emotions of deep sorrow. A movement of my horse at this instant
attracted their attention towards the thicket; they stopped, and a voice
called out my name. I looked round, and there stood Eisendecker before
me. He was dressed in deep mourning, and looked pale and worn, his black
beard and moustache deepening the haggard expression of features, to
which the red borders of his eyelids, and his bloodless lips, gave an
air of the deepest suffering. ‘Ah, my friend,’ said he, with a sad
effort at a smile, ‘you are here quite _à propos_. I am going to fight
Adolphe this morning.’ A fearful presentiment that such was the case
came over me the instant I saw him; but when he said so, a thrill ran
through me, and I grew cold from head to foot.

‘I see you are sorry,’ said he, tenderly while he took my hand within
both of his; ‘but you would not blame me--indeed you would not--if you
knew all.’

‘What, then, was the cause of this quarrel? How came you to an open
rupture?’

He turned round, and as he did so his face was purple, the blood
suffused every feature, and his very eyeballs seemed as if about to
burst. He tried to speak; but I only heard a rushing noise like a
hoarse-drawn breath.

‘Be calm, my dear Eisendecker,’ said I. ‘Cannot this be settled
otherwise than thus?’

‘No, no!’ said he, in the voice of indignant passion I used to hear from
him long before, ‘never!’ He waved his hand impatiently as he spoke, and
turned his head from me. At the same moment one of his companions made a
sign with his hand towards me.

‘What!’ whispered I in horror--‘a blow?’

A brief nod was the reply. Alas! from that minute all hope left me. Too
well I knew the desperate alternative that awaited such an insult.
Reconciliation was no longer to be thought of. I asked no more, but
followed the group along the path towards the mill.

In a little garden, as it was called--we should rather term it a close-
shaven grass-plot--where some tables and benches were placed under the
shade of large chestnut-trees, Adolphe von Muhry stood, surrounded by a
number of his friends. He was dressed in his costume as a member of the
Prussian club of the Landsmanschaft--a kind of uniform of blue and
white, with a silver braiding on the cuffs and collar--and looked
handsomer than ever I saw him. The change his features had undergone
gave him an air of manliness and confidence that greatly improved him,
and his whole carriage indicated a degree of self-reliance and energy
which became him perfectly. A faint blush coloured his cheek as he saw
me enter, and he lifted his cap straight above his head and saluted me
courteously, but with an evident effort to appear at ease before me. I
returned his salute mournfully--perhaps reproachfully, too, for he
turned away and whispered something to a friend at his side.

Although I had seen many duels with the sword, it was the first time I
was present at an affair with pistols in Germany; and I was no less
surprised than shocked to perceive that one of the party produced a
dice-box and dice, and placed them on a table.

Eisendecker all this time sat far apart from the rest, and, with folded
arms and half-closed eyelids, seemed to wait in patience for the moment
of being called on.

‘What are they throwing for, yonder?’ whispered I to a Saxon student
near me.

‘For the shot, of course,’ said he; ‘not but that they might spare
themselves the labour. Eisendecker must fire first; and as for who comes
second after him----’

‘Is he so sure as that?’ asked I in terror; for the fearful vision of
blood would not leave my mind.

‘That is he. The fellow that can knock a bullet off a champagne bottle
at five-and-twenty paces may chance to hit a man at fifteen.’

‘Mühry has it,’ cried out one of those at the table; and I heard the
words repeated from mouth to mouth till they reached Eisendecker, as he
moved his cane listlessly to and fro in the mill-stream.

‘Remember Ludwig,’ said his friend, as he grasped his arm with a
stronger clasp; ‘remember what I told you.’

The other nodded carelessly, and merely said, ‘Is all ready?’

‘Stand here, Eisendecker,’ said Mühry’s second, as he dropped a pebble
in the grass.

Mühry was already placed, and stood erect, his eyes steadily directed to
his antagonist, who never once looked towards him, but kept his glance
fixed straight in front.

‘You fire first, sir,’ said Mühry’s friend, while I could mark that his
voice trembled slightly at the words. ‘You may reserve your fire till I
have counted twenty after the word is given.’

As he spoke he placed the pistol in Eisendecker’s hand, and called out--

‘Gentlemen, fall back, fall back; I am about to give the word. Herr
Eisendecker, are your ready?’

A nod was the reply.

‘Now!’ cried he, in a loud voice; and scarcely was the word uttered when
the discharge of the pistol was heard. So rapid, indeed, was the motion,
that we never saw him lift his arm; nor could any one say what direction
the ball had taken.

‘I knew it, I knew it,’ muttered Eisendecker’s friend, in tones of
agony. ‘All is over with him now.’

Before a minute elapsed, the word to fall back was again given, and I
now beheld Von Mühry standing with his pistol in hand, while a smile of
cool but determined malice sat on his features.

While the second repeated the same words over to him, I turned to look
at Eisendecker, but he evinced no apparent consciousness of what was
going on about him; his eyes, as before, were bent on vacancy; his pale
face, unmoved, showed no signs of passion. In an instant the fearful
‘Now’ rang out, and Mühry slowly raised his arm, and, levelling his
pistol steadily, stood with his eye bent on his victim. While the deep
voice of the second slowly repeated one--two--three--four--never was
anything like the terrible suspense of that moment. It seemed as if the
very seconds of human life were measuring out one by one. As the word
‘ten’ dropped from his lips, I saw Mühry’s hand shake. In his revengeful
desire to kill his man, he had waited too long, and now he was growing
nervous; he let fall his arm to his side, and waited for a few seconds,
then raising it again, he took a steady aim, and at the word ‘nineteen’
fired.

A slight movement of Eisendecker’s head at this instant brought his face
full front; and the bullet, which would have transfixed his head, now
merely passed along his cheek, tearing a rude flesh-wound as it went.

A half-cry broke from Mühry: I heard not the word; but the accent I
shall never cease to remember. It was now Eisendecker’s time; and as the
blood streamed down his cheek, and fell in great drops upon his neck and
shoulders, I saw his face assume the expression it used to wear in
former days. A terrible smile lit up his dark features, and a gleam of
passionate vengeance made his eye glow like that of a maniac.

‘I am ready--give the word,’ cried he, in frantic impatience.

But Mühry’s second, fearful of giving way to such a moment of passion,
hesitated; when Eisendecker again called out, ‘The word, sir, the word!’
and the bystanders, indignant at the appearance of unfairness, repeated
the cry.

The crowd fell back, and the word was given. Eisendecker raised his
weapon, poised it for a second in his hand, and then, elevating it above
his head, brought it gradually down, till, from the position where I
stood, I could see that he aimed at the heart.

His hand was now motionless, as if it were marble; while his eye,
riveted on his antagonist, seemed to be fixed on one small spot, as
though his whole vengeance was to be glutted there. Never was suspense
more dreadful, and I stood breathless, in the expectation of the fatal
flash, when, with a jerk of his arm, he threw up the pistol and fired
above his head; and then, with a heart-rending cry of ‘Mein bruder, mein
brader!’ he rushed into Mühry’s arms, and fell into a torrent of tears.

The scene was indeed a trying one, and few could witness it unmoved. As
for me, I turned away completely overcome; while my heart found vent in
thankfulness that such a fearful beginning should end thus happily.

‘Yes,’ said Eisendecker, as we rode home together that evening, when,
after a long silence, he spoke; ‘yes, I had resolved to kill him; but
when my finger was even on the trigger, I saw a look upon his features
that reminded me of those earlier and happier days when we had but one
home and one heart, and I felt as if I was about to become the murderer
of my brother.’

Need I add that they were friends for ever after?

But I must leave Göttingen and its memories too. They recall happy days,
it is true; but they who made them so--where are they?

CHAPTER XXII. SPAS AND GRAND DUKEDOMS

It was a strange ordinance of the age that made watering-places equally
the resort of the sick and the fashionable, the dyspeptic and the
dissipated. One cannot readily see by what magic chalybeates can
minister to a mind diseased, nor how sub-carbonates and proto-chlorides
may compensate to the faded spirit of an _ennuyée_ fine lady for the
bygone delights of a London or a Paris season; much less, through what
magnetic influence gambling and gossip can possibly alleviate affections
of the liver, or roulette be made a medical agent in the treatment of
chronic rheumatism.

It may be replied that much of the benefit--some would go farther, and
say all--to be expected from the watering-places is derivable from
change of scene and habit of living, new faces, new interests, new
objects of curiosity, aided by agreeable intercourse, and what the
medical folk call ‘pleasant and cheerful society.’ This, be it known, is
no chance collocation of words set down at random; it is a _bona fide_
technical--as much so as the hardest Greek compound that ever floored an
apothecary. ‘Pleasant and cheerful society!’ they speak of it as they
would of the latest improvement in chemistry or the last patent
medicine--a thing to be had for asking for, like opodeldoc or Morison’s
pills. A line of treatment is prescribed for you, winding up in this one
principle; and your physician, as he shakes your hand and says ‘good-
bye,’ seems like an angel of benevolence, who, instead of consigning you
to the horrors of the pharmacopoeia and a sick-bed, tells you to pack
off to the Rhine, spend your summer at Ems or Wiesbaden, and, above all
things, keep early hours, and ‘pleasant, cheerful society.’

Oh, why has no martyr to the miseries of a ‘liver’ or the sorrows of
‘nerves’ ever asked his M.D. where--where is this delightful intercourse
to be found? or by what universal principle of application can the same
tone of society please the mirthful and the melancholy, the man of
depressed, desponding habit, and the man of sanguine, hopeful
temperament? How can the indolent and lethargic soul be made to derive
pleasure from the hustling energies of more excited natures, or the
fidgety victim of instability sympathise with the delights of quiet and
tranquillity? He who enjoys ‘rude health’--the phrase must have been
invented by a fashionable physician; none other could have deemed such a
possession an offensive quality--may very well amuse himself by the
oddities and eccentricities of his fellow-men, so ludicrously exhibited
_en scene_ before him. But in what way will these things appear to the
individual with an ailing body and a distempered brain? It is impossible
that contrarieties of temperament would ever draw men into close
intimacy during illness. The very nature of a sick man’s temper is to
undervalue all sufferings save his own and those resembling his. The
victim of obesity has no sympathies with the martyr to atrophy; he may
envy, he cannot pity him. The man who cannot eat surely has little
compassion for the woes of him who has the ‘wolf,’ and must be muzzled
at meal times. The result, then, is obvious. The gloomy men get together
in groups, and croak in concert; each mind brings its share of
affliction to the common fund, and they form a joint-stock company of
misery that rapidly assists their progress to the grave; while the
nervously excited ones herd together by dozens, suggesting daily new
extravagances and caprices for the adoption of one another, till there
is not an air-drawn dagger of the mind unfamiliar to one among them; and
in this race of exaggerated sensibility they not uncommonly tumble over
the narrow boundary that separates eccentricity from something worse.

This massing together of such people in hundreds must be ruinous to
many, and few can resist the depressing influence which streets full of
pale faces suggest, or be proof against the melancholy derivable from a
whole promenade of cripples. There is something indescribably sad in
these rendezvous of ailing people from all parts of Europe--north,
south, east, and west; the snows of Norway and the suns of Italy; the
mountains of Scotland and the steppes of Russia; comparing their
symptoms and chronicling their sufferings; watching with the egotism of
sickness the pallor on their neighbour’s cheek, and calculating their
own chances of recovery by the progress of some other invalid.

But were this all, the aspect might suggest gloomy thoughts, but could
not excite indignant ones. Unhappily, however, there is a reverse to the
medal. ‘The pleasant and cheerful society,’ so confidently spoken of by
your doctor has another representation than in the faces of sick people.
These watering-places are the depots of continental vice, the licensed
bazaars of foreign iniquity, the sanctuary of the outlaw, the home of
the swindler, the last resource of the ruined debauchee, the one spot of
earth beneath the feet of the banished defaulter. They are the
parliaments of European blackguardism, to which Paris contributes her
_escrocs_, England her ‘legs’ from Newmarket and Doncaster, and Poland
her refugee counts--victims of Russian cruelty and barbarity.

To begin--and to understand the matter properly, you must begin by
forgetting all you have been so studiously storing up as fact from the
books of Head, Granville, and others, and merely regard them as the
pleasant romances of gentlemen who like to indulge their own easy
humours in a vein of agreeable gossip, or the more profitable occupation
of collecting grand-ducal stars and snuff-boxes.

These delightful pictures of Brunnens, secluded in the recesses of wild
mountain districts inaccessible save to some adventurous traveller; the
peaceful simplicity of the rural life; the primitive habits of a happy
peasantry; the humble but contented existence of a little community
estranged from all the shocks and strife of the world; the lovely
scenery; the charming intercourse with gifted and cultivated minds; the
delightful reunions, where Metternich, Chateaubriand, and Humboldt are
nightly to be met, mixing among the rest of the company, and chatting
familiarly with every stranger; the peaceful tranquillity of the spot--
an oasis in the great desert of the world’s troubles, where the
exhausted mind and tired spirit may lie down in peace and take its rest,
lulled by the sound of falling water or the strains of German song --
these, I say, cleverly put forward, with ‘eight illustrations taken on
the spot,’ make pretty books--pleasant to read, but not less dangerous
to follow; while exaggerated catalogues of cures and recoveries, the
restoration from sufferings of a life long, the miraculous list of sick
men made sound ones through the agency of sulphurates and sub-
carbonates, are still more to be guarded against as guides to the spas
of Germany.

Now, I would not for a moment be supposed to throw discredit on the
efficiency of Aix or Ems, Wiesbaden or Töplitz, or any of them. In some
cases they have done, and will do, it may be hoped, considerable benefit
to many sufferers. I would merely desire to slide in, amidst the
universal paen of praise, a few words of caution respecting the _morale_
of these watering-places; and in doing so I shall be guided entirely by
the same principle I have followed in all the notes of my ‘Loiterings,’
rather to touch follies and absurdities than to go deeper down into the
strata of crimes and vices; at the same time, wherever it may be
necessary for my purpose, I shall not scruple to cut into the quick if
the malady need it.

And to begin--imagine in the first place a Grand-Duchy of such moderate
proportions that its sovereign dare not take in the ‘Times’ newspaper;
for if he opened it, he must intrude upon the territory of his
neighbours. His little kingdom, however, having all the attributes of a
real state, possesses a minister for the home and a minister for the
foreign department; it has a chancellor of the exchequer and a
secretary-at-war; and if there were half a mile of seaboard, would
inevitably have a board of admiralty and a _ministre de la marine_. It
is also provided with a little army, something in the fashion of
Bombastes Furioso’s, where each arm of the service has its one
representative, or that admirable Irish corps, which, when inquired
after by the General of the District, ‘Where is the Donegal Light
Horse?’ was met by the answer of, ‘Here I am, yer honour!’ And though
certainly nothing could possibly be more modestly devised than the whole
retinue of state, though the _fantassins_ be fifty, and the cavalry
five, still they must be fed, clothed, and kept in tobacco--a question
of some embarrassment, when it is considered that the Grand-Duchy
produces little grain and less grass, has neither manufacture nor trade,
nor the means of providing for other wants than those of a simple and
hard-working peasantry. There is, however, a palace, with its
accompaniments of grand maréchal, equerries, cooks, and scullions--a
vast variety of officials of every grade and class, who must be provided
for. How is this done? Simply enough, when the secret is once known--
four yards of green baize, with two gentlemen armed with wooden rakes,
and a box full of five-franc pieces. Nothing more is wanting. For the
mere luxury of the thing, as a matter of pin-money to the grand-duchess,
if there be one, you may add a roulette-table; but _rouge et noir_ will
supply all the trumpery expedients of taxation, direct and indirect. You
neither want collectors, custom-houses, nor colonies; you may snap your
fingers at trade and import duties, and laugh at the clumsy contrivances
by which other chancellors provide for the expenditure of other
countries.

The machinery of revenue reduces itself to this: first catch a Jew. For
your petty villainies any man will suffice; but for your grand schemes
of wholesale plunder, there is nothing like an Israelite; besides, he
has a kind of pride in his vocation. For the privilege of the gambling-
table he will pay munificently, he will keep the whole grand-ducal realm
in beer and beetroot the year through, and give a very respectable privy
purse to the sovereign besides. To him you deliver up all the nations of
the earth outside your own little frontier, none of those within it
being under any pretext admitted inside the walls of the gambling-house;
for, like the sick apothecary, you know better than to take anything in
the shop. You give him a carte-blanche, sparing the little realm of
Hesse-Homburg, to cheat the English, pigeon the Russians, ruin French,
Swedes, Swiss, and Yankees to his heart’s content; you set no limits to
his grand career of roguery; you deliver, bound, into his hands all
travellers within your realm, to be fleeced as it may seem fit. What
care you for the din of factories or the clanking hammers of the
foundries? The rattle of the dice-box and the scraping of the croupier’s
mace are pleasanter sounds, and fully as suggestive of wealth. You need
not descend into the bowels of the earth for riches; the gold, ready
stamped from the mint, comes bright and shining to your hand. Fleets may
founder and argosies may sink, but your dollars come safely in the
pockets of their owners, and are paid, without any cost of collection,
into the treasury of the State. Manchester may glut the earth with her
printed calicoes, Sheffield may produce more carving-knives than there
are carvers. _Your_ resources can suffer no such casualties as these;
you trade upon the vices of mankind, and need never dread a year of
scarcity. The passion for play is more contagious than the smallpox, and
unhappily the malady returns after the first access. Every gambler who
leaves fifty napoleons in your territory is bound in a kind of
recognisance to return next year and lose double the sum. Each loss is
but an instalment of the grand total of his ruin, and you have
contracted for that.

But even the winner does not escape you. A hundred temptations are
provided to seduce him into extravagance and plunge him into expense--
tastes are suggested, and habits of luxury inculcated, that turn out sad
comforters when a reverse of fortune compels him to a more limited
expenditure; so that when you extinguish the unlucky man by a summary
process, you reserve a lingering death for the more fortunate one. In
the language of the dock, it is only ‘a long day’ he obtains, after all.

How pleasant, besides, to reflect that the storms of political strife,
which agitate other heads, never reach yours. The violence of party
spirit, the rancour of the press, are hushed before the decorous silence
of the gaming-table and the death-like stillness of _rouge et noir_.
There is no need of a censorship when there is a croupier. The
literature of your realm is reduced to a card, to be pricked by the pin
of a gamester; and men have no heads for the pleasures of reading, when
stared in the face by ruin. Other states may occupy themselves with
projects of philanthropy and benevolence, they may project schemes of
public usefulness and advantage, they may advance the arts of
civilisation, and promote plans of national greatness; your course is an
easier path, and is never unsuccessful.

But some one may say here, How are these people to live? I agree at once
with the sentiment--no one is more ready to assent to that excellent
adage--‘Il faut que tout le monde vive, even grand-dukes.’ But there are
a hundred ways of eking out subsistence in cheap countries, without
trenching on morality. The military service of Austria, Prussia, and
Russia is open to them, should their own small territories not suffice
for moderate wants and wishes. In any case I am not going to trouble my
head with providing for German princes, while I have a large stock of
nephews and nieces little better off. All I care for at present is to
point out the facts of a case, and not to speculate how they might be
altered.

Now, to proceed. In proportion as vice is more prevalent, the decorum of
the world would appear to increase, and internal rottenness and external
decency bear a due relation to each other. People could not thus violate
the outward semblance of morality, by flocking in hundreds and tens of
hundreds to those gambling states, those _rouge et noir_ dependencies,
those duchies of the dice-box. A man’s asking a passport for Baden would
be a tacit averment, ‘I am going to gamble.’ Ordering post-horses for
Ems would be like calling for ‘fresh cards’; and you would as soon
confess to having passed a few years in Van Diemen’s Land as acknowledge
a summer on the Rhine.

What, then, was to be done? It was certainly a difficulty, and might
have puzzled less ingenious heads than grand-ducal advisers. They,
however, soon hit upon the expedient. They are shrewd observers, and
clever men of the world. They perceived that while other eras have been
marked by the characteristic designation of brass, gold, or iron,
_this_, with more propriety, might be called the age of bile. Never was
there a period when men felt so much interested in their stomachs; at no
epoch were mankind so deeply concerned for their livers; this passion--
for it is such--not being limited to the old or feeble, to the broken
and shattered constitution, but extending to all age and sex, including
the veteran of a dozen campaigns and the belle of a London season, the
hard-lined and seasoned features of a polar traveller, and the pale,
soft cheek of beauty, the lean proportions of shrunken age, and the
plump development of youthful loveliness. In the words of the song--

‘No age, no profession, no station is free.’

It is the universal mania of our century, and we may expect that one
day, our vigorous pursuit of knowledge on the subject will allow us to
be honourably classed with the equally intelligent seekers for the
philosopher’s stone. With this great feature of the time, then, nothing
was easier than to comply. The little realm of Hesse-Homburg might not
have attractions of scenery or society; its climate might, like most of
those north of the Alps, be nothing to boast of; its social advantages
being a zero, what could it possess as a reason--a good, plausible
reason, for drawing travellers to its frontier? Of course, a Spa!--
something very nauseous and very foul smelling, as nearly as possible
like a warm infusion of rotten eggs, thickened with red clay. Germany
happily abounds in these; Nature has been kind to her, at least
underground, and you have only to dig two feet in any limestone district
to meet with the most sovereign thing on earth for stomachic
derangements.

The Spa discovered, a doctor was found to analyse it, and another to
write a book upon it. Nothing more were necessary. The work, translated
into three or four languages, set forth all the congenial advantages of
pumps and promenades, sub-carbonates, tables d’hôte, waltzing, and
mineral waters. The pursuit of health no longer presented a grim goddess
masquerading in rusty black and a bald forehead, but a lovely nymph, in
a Parisian toilette, conversing like a Frenchwoman, and dancing like an
Austrian.

Who would not be ill, I wonder? Who would not discover that Hampshire
was too high and Essex too low, Devon too close and Cumberland too
bracing? Who would not give up his village M.D., and all his array of
bottles, with their long white cravats, for a ramble to the Rhine, where
luxurious living, belles, and balls abounded, and where _soit dit en
passant_, the _rouge et noir_ table afforded the easy resource of
supplying all such pleasures, so that you might grow robust and rich at
once, and while imbibing iron into your blood, lay up a stock of gold
with your banker? Hence the connection between Spas and gambling; hence
the fashionable flocking to those healthful spots by thousands who never
felt illness; hence the unblushing avowal of having been a month at
Baden by those who would flinch at acknowledging an hour in a ‘hell’;
and hence, more important than all, at least to one individual
concerned, the source of that real alchemy by which a grand-duke, like
Macheath, can

‘Turn all his lead to gold.’ Well may he exclaim, with the gallant
captain--

‘Fill every glass!’

Were the liquor champagne or tokay, it could not be a hundredth part as
profitable; and the whole thing presents a picture of ‘hocussing’ on the
grandest scale ever adopted.

The fifteen glasses of abomination demand a walk of half an hour, or a
sojourn in the Cursaal. The Cursaal is a hell! there is no need to mince
it. The taste for play is easily imbibed--what bad taste is not?--and
thus, while you are drawing the pump, the grand-duke is diving into your
pocket. Here, then--I shall not add a word--is the true state of the
Spas of Germany. As I believe it is customary to distinguish all writers
on these ‘fountains of health’ by some mark of princely favour
proportionate to their services of praise, I beg to add, if the Gross
Herzog von Hesse-Homburg deems the present a suitable instance for
notice, that Arthur O’Leary will receive such evidence of grand-ducal
approbation with a most grateful spirit, and acknowledge the same in
some future volume of his ‘Loiterings,’ only requesting to mention that
when Theodore Hook--poor fellow!--was dining once with a London alderman
remarkable for the display and the tedium of his dinners, he felt
himself at the end of an hour and a half’s vigorous performance only in
the middle of the entertainment; upon which he laid down his knife, and
in a whisper uttered: ‘_Eating_ more is out of the question; so I ‘ll
take the rest out in money.’

CHAPTER XXIII. THE TRAVELLING PARTY

I have already taken occasion to indoctrinate my reader on the subject
of what I deem the most perfect species of table d’hôte. May I now beg
of him, or her, if she will be kind enough, to accompany me to the
_table-monstre_ of Wiesbaden, Ems, or Baden-Baden? We are at the
Cursaal, or Shuberts, or the ‘Hof von Nassau’ at Wiesbaden. Four hundred
guests are assembled, their names indicative of every land of Europe,
and no small portion of America; the mixture of language giving the
impression of its being a grand banquet to the ‘operatives at Babel,’
but who, not satisfied with the chances of misunderstanding afforded by
speaking their own tongues to foreigners, have adventured on the more
certain project of endeavouring to being totally unintelligible, by
speaking languages with which they are unacquainted; while in their
dress, manner, and appearance, the great object seems to be an accurate
imitation of some other country than their own. Hence Frenchmen affect
to seem English, English to look like Prussians, Prussians to appear
Poles, Poles to be Calmucks. Your ‘elegant’ of the Boulevard de Ghent
sports a ‘cut away’ like a Yorkshire squire, and rides in cords; your
Londoner wears his hair on his shoulders, and his moustaches, like a
Pomeranian count; Turks find their way into tight trousers and
‘Wellingtons’; and even the Yankees cannot resist the general tendency
to transmutation, but take three inches off their hair behind.

Nothing is more amusing than these general congresses of European
vagrancy. Characters the most original meet you at every step, and
display most happily traits you never have the opportunity to inspect at
home. For so it is, the very fact of leaving home with most people seems
like an absolution from all the necessities of sustaining a part. They
feel as though they had taken off the stage finery in which they had
fretted away their hours before, and stand forth themselves _in
propria_. Thus your grave Chancery lawyer becomes a chatty pleasant man
of the world, witty and conversable; your abstruse mathematician,
leaving conic sections behind him, talks away with the harmless
innocence of a child about men and politics; and even your cold
‘exclusive’ bids a temporary farewell to his ‘morgue,’ and answers his
next neighbour at table without feeling shocked at his obtrusion.

There must be some secret sympathy--of whose operations we know nothing-
-between our trunks and our temperaments, our characters and our carpet-
bags; and that by the same law which opens one to the inspection of an
official at the frontier, the other must be laid bare when we pass
across it. How well would it have been for us, if the analogy had been
pushed a little further, that the fiscal regulations adopted in the
former were but extended to the latter, and that we had applied the
tariff to the morals, as well as to the manufactures, of the Continent.

It was in some such musing as this I sat in a window of the ‘Nassau,’ at
Wiesbaden, during the height of the season of----. Strangers were
constantly arriving, and hourly was the reply ‘no room’ given to the
disconsolate travellers, who peered from their carriages with the road-
sick look of a long journey. As for myself, I had been daily and nightly
transferred from one quarter of the hotel to another--now sleeping in an
apartment forty feet square, in a bed generally reserved for royalty,
now bivouacking under the very slates; one night exposed to the
incessant din of the street beside my windows, the next, in a remote
wing of the building, where there were no bells in the chambers, nor any
waiter was ever known to wander. In fact, I began to believe that they
made use of me to air the beds of the establishment, and was seriously
disposed to make a demand for some compensation in my bill; and if I
might judge from the pains in my bones I contracted in ‘Lit de Parade,’
I must have saved her Majesty of Greece, who was my successor in it, a
notable attack of rheumatism. To this shuttlecock state of existence the
easiness of my nature made me submit tamely enough, and I never dreamed
of rebellion.

I was sitting conning over to myself the recollections of some faces I
had seen before, when the head waiter appeared before me, with a request
that I would be kind enough to give up my place at the table, which was
No. 14, to a gentleman lately arrived, and who desired to sit near his
friends in that vicinity. ‘To be sure,’ said I at once; ‘I have no
acquaintance here, and 114 will do me as well as 14--place me where you
like.’ At the same time, it rather puzzled me to learn what the
individual could be like who conceived such a violent desire to be in
the neighbourhood of some Hamburg Jews--for such were the party around
me--when the waiter began to make room for a group that entered the
room, and walked up to the end of that table. A glance told they were
English. There was an elderly man, tall and well-looking, with the air
‘gentleman’ very legibly written on his quiet, composed features; the
carriage of his head, and a something in his walk, induced me to believe
him military. A lady leaned on his arm, some thirty years his junior--he
was about sixty-six or seven--whose dress and style were fashionable,
and at the same time they had not that perfect type of unpretending
legitimacy that belongs essentially to but one class. She was, in fact,
_trop bien mise_ for a table d’hote; for although only a morning
costume, there was a display about it which was faulty in its taste; her
features, without being handsome, were striking, as much for the
carriage of her head as anything in themselves. There was an air of good
looks, as though to say, ‘If you don’t think me handsome, the fault is
yours.’ Her eyes were of a bluish grey, large and full, with lightly
arched brows; but the mouth was the most characteristic feature--it was
firm and resolute-looking, closely compressed, and with a slight
protrusion of the lower lip, that said as plainly as words could say it,
‘I will, and that’s enough.’ In walking, she took some pains to display
her foot, which, with all the advantages of a Parisian shoe, was
scarcely as pretty as she conceived it, but on the whole was well
formed, and rather erring on the score of size than symmetry.

They were followed by three or four young men, of whom I could only
remark that they wore the uniform appearance of young Englishmen of good
class, very clean-looking faces, well-brushed hair, and well-fitting
frock-coats. One sported a moustache of a dirty-yellow colour, and
whiskers to match, and by his manner, and a certain half-shut-eye kind
of glance, proclaimed himself the knowing man of the party.

While they were taking their places, which they did at once on entering,
I heard a general burst of salutations break from them in very welcome
accent: ‘Oh, here he is, here he comes. Ah, I knew we should see him.’
At the same instant, a tall, well-dressed fellow leaned over the table
and shook hands with them all in succession.

‘When did you arrive?’ said he, turning to the lady.

‘Only an hour ago; Sir Marmaduke would stay at Frankfort yesterday, to
see Duvernet dance, and so we were detained beyond our time.’

The old gentleman half blushed at this charge, and while a look of
pleasure showed that he did not dislike the accusation, he said--

‘No, no; I stayed to please Calthorpe.’

‘Indeed!’ said the lady, turning a look of very peculiar, but
unmistakable, anger at him of the yellow moustache. ‘Indeed, my lord!’

‘Oh yes, that is a weakness of mine,’ said he, in an easy tone of
careless banter, which degenerated to a mutter, heard only by the lady
herself.

‘I ought to have a place somewhere here about,’ said the tall man.
‘Number 14 or 15, the waiter said. Hallo, _garçon_-----’

At this he turned round, and I saw the well-remembered face of my
fellow-traveller, the Honourable Jack Smallbranes. He looked very hard
at me, as if he were puzzled to remember where or when we had met, and
then, with a cool nod, said, ‘How d’ye do?--over in England lately?’

‘Not since I had the pleasure of meeting you at Rotterdam. Did you go
far with the alderman’s daughters?’

A very decided wink and a draw down of the brows cautioned me to silence
on that subject; but not before the lady had heard my question, and
looked up in his face with an expression that said--‘I’ll hear more of
that affair before long.’

‘Monsieur has given you his place, sir,’ said the waiter, arranging a
chair at No. 14. ‘I have put _you_ at 83.’

‘All right,’ replied Jack, as if no recognition were called for on his
part, and that he was not sorry to be separated from one with an
unpleasant memory.

‘I am shocked, sir,’ said the lady, addressing me in her blandest
accents, ‘at our depriving you of your place, but Mr. Carrisbrook will,
I ‘m sure, give you his.’

While I protested against such a surrender, and Mr. Carrisbrook looked
very much annoyed at the proposal, the lady only insisted the more, and
it ended in Mr. Carrisbrook--one of the youths already mentioned--being
sent down to 83, while I took up my position in front of the party in
his place.

I knew to what circumstance I was indebted for this favourable notice;
she looked up to me as a kind of king’s evidence, whenever the
Honourable Jack should be called up for trial, and already I had seen a
great deal into the history and relative position of all parties. Such
was the state of matters when the soup appeared.

And now, to impart to my readers, as is my wont, such information as I
possessed afterwards, and not to keep them waiting for the order in
which I obtained it: the party before me consisted of Sir Marmaduke
Lonsdall and his lady--he, an old general officer of good family and
connections, who, with most unexceptionable manners and courtly address,
had contrived to spend a very easy, good-for-nothing existence, without
ever seeing an hour’s service, his clubs and his dinner-parties filling
up life tolerably well, with the occasional excitement arising from who
was in and who was out, to season the whole. Sometimes a Lord of the
Treasury, with a seat for a Government borough, and sometimes
patriotically sitting among the opposition when his friends were out, he
was looked upon as a very honourable, straightforward person, who could
not be ‘overlooked’ when his party were distributing favours.

My Lady Lonsdall was a _soi-disant_ heiress, the daughter of some person
unknown in the city, the greater part of whose fortune was unhappily
embarked in Poyais Scrip--a fact only ascertained when too late, and,
consequently, though discoursing most eloquently in a prospectus about
mines of gold and silver, strata of pearl necklaces, and diamond ear-
rings, all ready to put on, turned out an unfortunate investment, and
only realised an article in the _Times_, headed ‘another bubble
speculation.’ Still, however, she was reputed very rich, and Sir
Marmaduke received the congratulations of his club on the event with the
air of a conqueror. She married him simply because, having waited long
and impatiently for a title, she was fain to put up at last with a
baronet. Her ambition was to be in the fashionable world; to be among
that sect of London elect who rule at Almack’s and dictate at the West
End; to occupy her portion of the _Morning Post_, and to have her name
circulated among the illustrious few who entertain royalty, and receive
archdukes at luncheon. If the Poyais investment, in its result, denied
the means of these extravagances, it did not, unhappily, obliterate the
taste for them; and my lady’s ambition to be fashionable was never at a
higher spring-tide than when her fortunes were at the ebb. Now, certes,
there are two ways to London distinction--rank and wealth. A fair union
of both will do much, but, without either, the pursuit is utterly
hopeless. There is but one course, then, for these unfortunate aspirants
of celebrity--it is to change the venue and come abroad. They may not,
it is true, have the rank and riches which give position at home. Still,
they are better off than most foreigners: they have not the wealth of
the aristocracy, yet they can imitate their wickedness; their habits may
be costly, but their vices are cheap; and thus they can assert their
high position and their fashionable standing by displaying the
abandonment which is unhappily the distinctive feature of a certain set
in the high world of London.

Followed, then, by a train of admirers, she paraded about the Continent,
her effrontery exalted into beauty, her cold insolence assumed to be
high breeding; her impertinence to women was merely exclusiveness, and
her condescending manner to men the simple acknowledgment of that homage
to which she was so unquestionably entitled.

Of her suite, they were animated by different motives. Some were young
enough to be in love with any woman who, a great deal older than
themselves, would deign to notice them. The noble lord, who accompanied
her always, was a ruined baron, whose own wife had deserted him for
another; he had left his character and his fortune at Doncaster and
Epsom; and having been horsewhipped as a defaulter, and outlawed for
debt, was of course in no condition to face his acquaintances in
England. Still he was a lord--there was no denying that; Debrett and
Burke had chronicled his baptism, and the eighth baron from Hugo de
Colbrooke, who carried the helmet of his sovereign at Agincourt, was
unquestionably of the best blood of the peerage. Like your true white
feather, he wore a most _farouche_ exterior; his moustaches seemed to
bristle with pugnacity, and the expression of his eye was indescribably
martial; he walked as if he was stepping out the ground, and in his
salute he assumed the cold politeness with which a second takes off his
hat to the opposite principal in a duel; even his valet seemed to favour
the illusion, as he ostentatiously employed himself cleaning his
master’s pistols, and arranging the locks, as though there was no
knowing at what moment of the day he might not be unexpectedly called to
shoot somebody.

This noble lord, I say, was a part of the household. Sir Marmaduke
finding his society rather agreeable, and the lady regarding him as the
cork-jacket on which she was to swim into the ocean of fashion at some
remote period or other of her existence.

As for the Honourable Jack Smallbranes, who was he not in love with-- or
rather who was not in love with him? Poor fellow! he was born, in his
own estimation, to be the destroyer of all domestic peace; he was
created to be the ruin to all female happiness. Such a destiny might
well have filled any one with sadness and depression; most men would
have grieved over a lot which condemned them to be the origin of
suffering. Not so, Jack; he felt he couldn’t help it--that it was no
affair of his if he were the best-looking fellow in the world. The thing
was so palpable; women ought to take care of themselves; he sailed under
no false flag. No, there he was, the most irresistible, well-dressed,
and handsomest fellow to be met with; and if they didn’t escape--or, to
use his own expression, ‘cut their lucky’ in time--the fault was all
their own. If queens smiled and archduchesses looked kind upon him, let
kings and archdukes look to it. He took no unfair or underhand
advantages; he made no secret attacks, no dark advances--he carried
every fortress by assault, and in noonday. Some malicious people-- the
world abounds in such--used to say that Jack’s gallantries were
something like Falstaff’s deeds of prowess, and that his victims were
all ‘in buckram.’ But who could believe it? Did not victory sit on his
very brow; were not his looks the signs of conquest; and, better than
all, who that ever knew him had not the assurance from his own lips?
With what a happy mixture of nonchalance and self-satisfaction would he
make these confessions! How admirably blended was the sense of triumph
with the consciousness of its ease! How he would shake his ambrosial
curls, and throw himself into a pose of elegance, as though to say,
‘’Twas thus I did it; ain’t I a sad dog?’

Well, if these conquests were illusions, they were certainly the
pleasantest ever a man indulged in. They consoled him at heart for the
loss of fortune, country, and position; they were his recompense for all
the lost glories of Crockford’s and the ‘Clarendon.’ Never was there
such a picture of perfect tranquillity and unclouded happiness. Oh, let
moralists talk as they will about the serenity of mind derivable alone
from a pure conscience, the peaceful nature that flows from a source of
true honour, and then look abroad upon the world and count the hundreds
whose hairs are never tinged with grey, whose cheeks show no wrinkles,
whose elastic steps suffer no touch of age, and whose ready smile and
cheerful laugh are the ever-present signs of their contentment--let them
look on these, and reflect that of such are nine-tenths of those who
figure in lists of outlawry, whose bills do but make the stamps they are
written on of no value, whose creditors are legion and whose credit is
at zero, and say which seem the happier. To see them one would opine
that there must be some secret good in cheating a coachmaker, or some
hidden virtue in tricking a jeweller; that hotel-keepers are a natural
enemy to mankind, and that a tailor has not a right even to a decimal
fraction of honesty. Never was Epicurean philosophy like theirs; they
have a fine liberal sense of the blackguardisms that a man may commit,
and yet not forfeit his position in society. They know the precise
condition in life when he may practise dishonesty; and they also see
when he must be circumspect. They have one rule for the city and another
for the club; and, better than all, they have stored their minds with
sage maxims and wise reflections, which, like the philosophers of old,
they adduce on every suitable occasion; and many a wounded spirit has
been consoled by that beautiful sentiment, so frequent in their mouths,
of--

‘Go ahead! for what’s the odds so long as you ‘re happy?’

Such, my reader, was the clique in which, strangely enough, I now found
myself; and were it not that such characters abound in every part of the
Continent, that they swarm at spas and infest whole cities, I would
scruple to introduce you to such company. It is as well, however, that
you should be put on your guard against them, and that any amusement you
may derive from the study of eccentricity should not be tarnished with
the recollection of your being imposed upon.

There happened, on the day I speak of, to be a man of some rank at
table, with whom I had a slight, a very slight acquaintance; but in
passing from the room he caught my eye, came over and conversed with me
for a few minutes. From that moment Lady Lonsdall’s manners underwent a
great change in my regard. Not only did she venture to look at me
without expressing any air of supercilious disdain, but even vouchsafed
the ghost of a smile; and, as we rose from table, I overheard her ask
the Honourable Jack for my name. I could not hear the first part of his
reply, but the last was couched in that very classic slang, expressive
of my unknown condition--

‘I take it, he hain’t got no friends!’

Notwithstanding this Foundling-hospital sentence, Sir Marmaduke was
instructed to invite me to take coffee--an honour which, having
declined, we separated, as do people who are to speak when next they
meet.

Meditating on the unjust impression foreigners must conceive of England
and the English by the unhappy specimens we ‘grind for exportation,’ I
sat alone at a little table in the park. It was a sad subject, and it
led me further than I wished or knew of. I thought I could trace much of
the animosity of foreign journals to English policy in their mistaken
notions of national character, and could well conceive how dubiously
they must receive our claim to being high-spirited and honourable, when
their own experiences would incline to a different conclusion; for,
after all, the Fleet Prison, however fashionable its inmates, would
scarcely be a flattering specimen of England, nor do I think Horsemonger
Lane ought to be taken as a fair sample of the country. It is vain to
assure foreigners that these people are not known nor received at home,
neither held in credit nor estimation; their conclusive reply is, ‘How
is it, then, that they are admitted to the tables of your ambassadors,
and presented at our courts? Is it possible you would dare to introduce
to our sovereigns those whom you could not present to your own?’ This
answer is a fatal one. The fact is so; the most rigid censor of morals
leaves his conscience at the Ship Hotel at Dover; he has no room for it
on a voyage, or perhaps he thinks it might be detained by a revenue-
officer. Whatever the cause, he will know at Baden--ay, and walk with--
the man he would cut in Bond Street, and drive with the party at
Brussels he would pass to-morrow if he met in Hyde Park.

This ‘sliding scale’ of morality has great disadvantages; none greater
than the injury it inflicts on national character, and the occasion it
offers for our disparagement at the hands of other people. It is in vain
that liberal and enlightened measures mark our government, or that
philanthropy and humanity distinguish our institutions, we only get
credit for hypocrisy so long as we throw a mantle over our titled
swindlers and dishonourable defaulters. If Napoleon found little
difficulty in making the sobriquet of ‘La Perfide Albion’ popular in
France, we owe it much more to the degraded characters of our refugee
English than to any justice in the charge against the nation. In a word,
I have never met a foreigner commonly fair in his estimate of English
character, who had not travelled in England; and I never met one unjust
in all that regarded national good faith, honesty, and uprightness, who
had visited our shores. The immunity from arrest would seem to suggest
to our runaways an immunity from all the ties of good conduct and
character of our countrymen, who, under that strange delusion of the
‘immorality of France,’ seem to think that a change of behaviour should
be adopted in conformity with foreign usage; and as they put on less
clothing, so they might dispense with a little virtue also.

These be unpleasant reflections, Arthur, and I fear the coffee or the
maraschino must have been amiss; in any case, away with them, and now
for a stroll in the Cursaal!

CHAPTER XXIV. THE GAMBLING-ROOM

Englishmen keep their solemnity and respectful deportment for a church;
foreigners reserve theirs for a gambling-table. Never was I more struck
than by the decorous stillness and well-bred quietness of the room in
which the highest play went forward. All the animation of French
character, all the bluntness of German, all the impetuosity of the
Italian or the violent rashness of the Russian, were calmed down and
subdued beneath the influence of the great passion; and it seemed as
though the Devil would not accept the homage of his votaries if not
rendered with the well-bred manners of true gentlemen. It was not enough
that men should be ruined--they should be ruined with easy propriety and
thorough good-breeding. Whatever their hearts might feel, their faces
should express no discomfiture; though their head should ache and their
hand should tremble, the lip must be taught to say ‘rouge’ or ‘noir’
without any emotion.

I do not scruple to own that all this decorum was more dreadful than any
scene of wild violence or excitement The forced calmness, the pent-up
passion, might be kept from any outbreak of words; but no training could
completely subdue the emotions which speak by the bloodshot eye, the
quivering cheek, the livid lip.

No man’s heart is consecrated so entirely to one passion as a gambler’s.
Hope with him usurps the place of every other feeling. Hope, however
rude the shocks it meets from disappointment, however beaten and
baffled, is still there; the flame may waste down to a few embers, but a
single spark may live amid the ashes, yet it is enough to kindle up into
a blaze before the breath of fortune. At first he lives but for moments
like these; all his agonies, all his sufferings, all the torturings of a
mind verging on despair are repaid by such brief intervals of luck. Yet
each reverse of fate is telling on him heavily; the many disappointments
to his wishes are sapping by degrees his confidence in fortune. His hope
is dashed with fear; and now commences within him that struggle which is
the most fearful man’s nature can endure. The fickleness of chance, the
waywardness of fortune, fill his mind with doubts and hesitations.
Sceptical on the sources of his great passion, he becomes a doubter on
every subject; he has seen his confidence so often at fault that he
trusts nothing, and at last the ruling feature of his character is
suspicion. When this rules paramount, he is a perfect gambler; from that
moment he has done with the world and all its pleasures and pursuits;
life offers to him no path of ambition, no goal to stimulate his
energies. With a mock stoicism he affects to be superior to the race
which other men are running, and laughs at the collisions of party and
the contests of politics. Society, art, literature, love itself, have no
attractions for him then; all excitements are feeble compared with the
alternations of the gaming-table; and the chances of fortune in real
life are too tame and too tedious for the impatience of a gambler.

I have no intention of winding up these few remarks by any moral episode
of a gambler’s life, though my memory could supply me with more than one
such--when the baneful passion became the ruin, not of a thoughtless,
giddy youth, inexperienced and untried, but of one who had already won
golden opinions from the world, and stood high in the ranks which lead
to honour and distinction. These stories have, unhappily, a sameness
which mars the force of their lesson; they are listened to like the
refrain of an old song, and from their frequency are disregarded. No; I
trust in the fact that education and the tastes that flow from it are
the best safeguards against a contagion of a heartless, soulless
passion, and would rather warn my young countrymen at this place against
the individuals than the system.

‘Am I in your way, sir?’ said a short, somewhat overdressed man, with
red whiskers, as he made room for me to approach the play-table, with a
politeness quite remarkable--‘am I in your way, sir?’

‘Not in the least; I beg you ‘ll not stir.’

‘Pray take my seat; I request you will.’

‘By no means, sir; I never play. I was merely looking on.’

‘Nor I either--or at least very rarely,’ said he, rising with the air of
a man who felt no pleasure in what was going forward. ‘You don’t happen