Kitabı oku: «Arthur O'Leary: His Wanderings And Ponderings In Many Lands», sayfa 31
CHAPTER XXIX. THE STRANGE GUEST
The Eil Wagen, into whose bowels I had committed myself on leaving Frankfort, rolled along for twenty-four hours before I could come to any determination as to whither I should go; for so is it that perfect liberty is sometimes rather an inconvenience, and a little despotism is now and then no bad thing; and at this moment I could have given a ten-gulden piece to any one who should have named my road, and settled my destination.
‘Where are we?’ said I, at length, as we straggled, nine horses and all, into a great vaulted porte cochère.
‘At the “Koenig von Preussen,” mein Herr,’ said a yellow-haired waiter, who flourished a napkin about him in truly professional style.
‘Ah, very true; but in what town, city, or village, and in whose kingdom?’
‘Ach, du lieber Gott!’ exclaimed he, with his eyes opened to their fullest extent. ‘Where would you be but in the city of Hesse-Cassel, in the Grand-Duchy of Seiner Königlichen Hoheit – ’
‘Enough, more than enough! Let me have supper.’
The Speisesaal was crowded with travellers and townspeople as I entered; but the room was of great size, and a goodly table, amply provided, occupied the middle of it. Taking my place at this, I went ahead through the sliced shoe-leather, yclept beef, the Kalbs-braten and the Gurken-salat, and all the other indigestible abominations of that light meal a German takes before he lies down at night. The company were, with the exception of a few military men, of that nondescript class every German town abounds with – a large-headed, long-haired, plodding-looking generation, with huge side-pockets in their trousers, from one of which a cherry-wood pipe-stick is sure to project; civil, obliging, good sort of people they are, but by no means remarkable for intelligence or agreeability. But then, what mind could emerge from beneath twelve solid inches of beetroot and bouilli, and what brain could bear immersion in Bavarian beer?
One never can understand fully how atrocious the tyranny of Napoleon must have been in Germany, until he has visited that country and seen something of its inhabitants; then only can one compute what must the hurricane have been that convulsed the waters of such a landlocked bay. Never was there a people so little disposed to compete with their rulers, never was obedience more thoroughly an instinct. The whole philosophy of the German’s mind teaches him to look within rather than without; his own resources are more his object in life than the enjoyment of state privileges, and to his peaceful temper endurance is a pleasanter remedy than resistance. Almost a Turk in his love of tranquillity, he has no sympathy with revolutions or public disturbances of any kind, and the provocation must indeed be great when he arouses himself to resist it. That when he is thus called on he can act with energy and vigour, the campaigns of 1813 and 1814 abundantly testify. Twice the French armies had to experience the heavy retribution on unjust invasion. Both Spain and Germany repaid the injuries they had endured, but with a characteristic difference of spirit. In the one case it was the desultory attacks of savage guerillas, animated by the love of plunder as much as by patriotism; in the other, the rising of a great people to defend their homes and altars, presented the glorious spectacle of a nation going forth to the fight. The wild notes of the Basque bugle rang not out with such soul-stirring effects as the beautiful songs of Körner, heard beside the watch-fire or at the peasant’s hearth. The conduct of their own princes might have debased the national spirit of any other people; but the German’s attachment to Fatherland is not a thing of courtly rule nor conventional agreement. He loves the land and the literature of his fathers; he is proud of the good faith and honesty which are the acknowledged traits of Saxon character; he holds to the ‘sittliche Leben,’ the orderly domestic habits of his country; and as he wages not a war of aggression on others, he resists the spoliation of an enemy on the fields of his native country.
When the French revolution fire broke out, the students were amongst its most ardent admirers; the destruction of the Bastile was celebrated among the secret festivals of the Burschenschaft; and although the fever was a brief one, and never extended among the more thinking portion of the nation, to that same enthusiasm for liberty was owing the great burst of national energy which in 1813 convulsed the land from the Baltic to the Tyrol, and made Leipsic the compensation for Jena.
With all his grandeur of intellect, Napoleon never understood the national character – perhaps he may have despised it. One of his most fatal errors, undoubtedly, was the little importance he attached to the traits which distinguish one country from another, and the seeming indifference with which he propounded notions of government diametrically opposed to all the traditions and prejudices of those for whom they were intended. The great desire for centralisation; the ambition to make France the heart of Europe, through whose impulse the life-blood should circulate over the entire Continent; to merge all distinctions of race and origin, and make Frenchmen of one quarter of the globe – was a stupendous idea, and if nations were enrolled in armies, might not be impossible. The effort to effect it, however, cost him the greatest throne of Christendom.
The French rule in Spain, in Italy, and in Holland, so far from conciliating the good-will and affection of the people, has sown the seeds of that hatred to France in each of these countries that a century will not eradicate; while no greater evidence of Napoleon’s ignorance of national character need be adduced than in the expectations he indulged in the event of his landing an army in England. His calculation on support from any part of the British people – no matter how opposed to the ministry of the day, or how extreme in their wishes for extended liberties – was the most chimerical thought that ever entered the brain of man. Very little knowledge of our country might have taught him that the differences of party spirit never survive the mere threat of foreign invasion; that however Englishmen may oppose one another, they reserve a very different spirit of resistance for the stranger who should attack their common country; and that party, however it may array men in opposite ranks, is itself but the evidence of patriotism, seeking different paths for its development.
It was at the close of a little reverie to this purpose that I found myself sitting with one other guest at the long table of the Speisesaal; the rest had dropped off one by one, leaving him in the calm enjoyment of his meerschaum and his cup of black coffee. There was something striking in the air and appearance of this man, and I could not help regarding him closely; he was about fifty years of age, but with a carriage as erect and a step as firm as any man of twenty. A large white moustache met his whiskers of the same colour, and hung in heavy curl over his upper lip; his forehead was high and narrow, and his eyes, deeply set, were of a greenish hue, and shaded by large eyebrows that met when he frowned. His dress was a black frock, braided in Prussian taste and decorated by a single cordon, which hung not over the breast, but on an empty sleeve of his coat, for I now perceived that he had lost his right arm near the shoulder. That he was a soldier and had seen service, the most careless observer could have detected; his very look and bearing bespoke the militaire. He never spoke to any one during supper, and from that circumstance, as well as his dissimilarity to the others, I judged him to be a traveller. There are times when one is more than usually disposed to let Fancy take the bit in her mouth and run off with them; and so I suffered myself to weave a story, or rather a dozen stories, for my companion, and did not perceive that while I was inventing a history for him he had most ungratefully decamped, leaving me in a cloud of tobacco-smoke and difficult conjectures.
When I descended to the Saal the next morning I found him there before me; he was seated at breakfast before one of the windows, which commanded a view over the platz and the distant mountains. And here let me ask, Have you ever been in Hesse-Cassel? The chances are, not. It is the highroad – nowhere. You neither pass it going to Berlin or Dresden. There is no wonder of scenery or art to attract strangers to it; and yet if accident should bring you thither, and plant you in the ‘König von Preussen,’ with no pressing necessity urging you onward, there are many less pleasant things you could do than spend a week there. The hotel stands on one side of a great platz, or square, at either side of which the theatre and a museum form the other two wings; the fourth being left free of building, is occupied by a massive railing of most laboured tracery, which opens to a wide gate in a broad flight of steps, descending about seventy feet into a spacious park. The tall elms and beech-trees can be seen waving their tops over the grille above, and seeming, from the platz, like young timber; beyond, and many miles away, can be seen the bold chain of the Taunus Mountains stretching to the clouds, forming altogether a view which for extent and splendour I know no city that can present the equal. I could scarce restrain my admiration; and as I stood actually riveted to the spot, I was totally inattentive to the second summons of the waiter, informing me that my breakfast awaited me in another part of the room.
‘What, yonder?’ said I, in some disappointment at being so far removed from all chance of the prospect.
‘Perhaps you would join me here, sir,’ said the officer, rising, and with a most affable air saluting me.
‘If not an intrusion – ’
‘By no means,’ said he. ‘I am a passionate admirer of that view myself. I have known it many years, and I always feel happy when a stranger participates in my enjoyment of it.’
I confess I was no less gratified by the opportunity thus presented of forming an acquaintance with the officer himself than with the scenery, and I took my seat with much pleasure. As we chatted away about the town and the surrounding country, he half expressed a curiosity at my taking a route so little travelled by my countrymen, and seemed much amused by my confession that the matter was purely accidental, and that frequently I left the destination of my ramble to the halting-place of the diligence. As English eccentricity can, in a foreigner’s estimation, carry any amount of absurdity, he did not set me down for a madman – which, had I been French or Italian, he most certainly would have done – and only smiled slightly at my efforts to defend a procedure in his eyes so ludicrous.
‘You confess,’ said I, at last, somewhat nettled by the indifference with which he heard my most sapient arguments – ‘you confess on what mere casualties every event of life turns, what straws decide the whole destiny of a man, and what mere trivial circumstances influence the fate of whole nations, and how in our wisest and most matured plans some unexpected contingency is ever arising to disconcert and disarrange us; why, then, not go a step farther – leave more to fate, and reserve all our efforts to behave well and sensibly, wherever we may be placed, in whatever situations thrown? As we shall then have fewer disappointments, we shall also enjoy a more equable frame of mind, to combat with the world’s chances.’
‘True, if a man were to lead a life of idleness, such a wayward course might possibly suffice him as well as any other; but, bethink you, it is not thus men have wrought great deeds, and won high names for themselves. It is not by fickleness and caprice, by indolent yielding to the accident of the hour, that reputations have been acquired – ’
‘You speak,’ said I, interrupting him at this place – ‘you speak as if humble men like myself were to occupy their place in history, and not lie down in the dust of the churchyard undistinguishable and forgotten.’
‘When they cease to act otherwise than to deserve commemoration, rely upon it their course is a false one. Our conscience may be – indeed often is – a bribed judge; and it is only by representing to ourselves how our modes of acting and thinking would tell upon the minds of others, reading of but not knowing us, that we arrive at that certain rule of right so difficult in many worldly trials.
‘And do you think a man becomes happier by this?’
‘I did not say happier,’ said he, with a sorrowful emphasis on the last word. ‘He may be better.’
With that he rose from his seat, and looking at his watch he apologised for leaving me so suddenly, and departed.
‘Who is the gentleman that has just gone out?’ asked I of the waiter.
‘The Baron von Elgenheim,’ replied he; ‘but they mostly call him the Black Colonel. Not for his moustaches,’ added he, laughing with true German familiarity, ‘they are white enough, but he always wears mourning.’
‘Does he belong to Hesse, then?’
‘Not he; he’s an Auslander of some sort – a Swabian, belike; but he comes here every year, and stays three or four weeks at a time. And, droll enough too, though he has been doing so for fifteen or sixteen years, he has not a single acquaintance in all Cassel; indeed, I never saw him speak to a stranger till this morning.’
These particulars, few as they were, all stimulated my curiosity to see more of the colonel; but he did not present himself at the table d’hôte on that day or the following one, and I only met him by chance in the Park, when a formal salute, given with cold politeness, seemed to say our acquaintance was at an end.
Now, there are certain inns which by a strange magnetism are felt as homes at once; there is a certain air of quietude and repose about them that strikes you when you enter, and which gains on you every hour of your stay. The landlord, too, has a bearing compounded of cordiality and respect; and the waiter, divining your tastes and partialities, falls quickly into your ways, and seems to regard you as an habitué while you are yet a stranger; while the ringleted young lady at the bar, who passed you the first day on the stairs with a well-practised indifference, now accosts you with a smile and a curtsy, and already believes you an old acquaintance.
To an indolent man like myself, these houses are impossible to leave. If it be summer, you are sure to have a fresh bouquet in your bedroom every morning when you awake; in winter, the garçon has discovered how you like your slippers toasted on the fender, and your robe de chambre airing on the chair; the cook learns your taste in cutlets, and knows to a nicety how to season your omelette aux fines herbes; the very washerwoman of the establishment has counted the plaits in your shirt, and wouldn’t put one more or less for any bribery. By degrees, too, you become a kind of confidant of the whole household. The host tells you of ma’mselle’s fortune, and the match on the tapis for her, and all the difficulties and advantages, contra and pro; the waiter has revealed to you a secret of passion for the chambermaid, but for which he would be Heaven knows how many thousand miles off, in some wonderful place, where the wages would enable him to retire in less than a twelvemonth; and even Boots, while depositing your Wellingtons before the fire, has unburdened his sorrows and his hopes, and asks your advice, ‘if he shouldn’t become a soldier?’ When this hour arrives, the house is your own. Let what will happen, your fire burns brightly in your bedroom; let who will come, your dinner is cared for to a miracle. The newspaper, coveted by a dozen and eagerly asked for, is laid by for your reading; you are, then, in the poets words —
‘Liber, honoratus, pulcher – Rex denique Regum’;
and let me tell you, there are worse sovereignties.
Apply this to the ‘König von Preussen,’ and wonder not if I found myself its inhabitant for three weeks afterwards.
CHAPTER XXX. THE PARK
In somewhat less than a fortnight’s time I had made a bowing acquaintance with some half-dozen good subjects of Hesse, and formed a chatting intimacy with some three or four frequenters of the table d’hôte, with whom I occasionally strolled out of an afternoon into the Park, to drink coffee, and listen to the military band that played there every evening. The quiet uniformity of the life pleased and never wearied me; for happily – or unhappily, as some would deem it – mine is one of those tame and commonplace natures which need not costly amusements nor expensive tastes to occupy it. I enjoyed the society of agreeable people with a gusto few possess; I can also put up with the association with those of a different stamp, feeling sensibly how much more I am on a level with them, and how little pretension I have to find myself among the others. Fortunately, too, I have no sympathy with the pleasures which wealth alone commands – it was a taste denied me. I neither affect to undervalue their importance, nor sneer at their object; I simply confess that the faculty which renders them desirable was by some accident omitted from my nature, and I never yet felt the smallness of my fortune a source of regret.
There is no such happiness, to my notion, as that which enables a man to be above the dependence on others for his pleasures and amusements, to have the sources of enjoyment in his own mind, and to feel that his own thoughts and his own reflections are his best wealth. There is no selfishness in this; far from it. The stores thus laid by make a man a better member of society, more ready to assist, more able to advise his fellow-men. By standing aloof from the game of life, you can better estimate the chances of success and the skill of the players; and as you have no stake in the issue, the odds are that your opinion is a correct one. But, better than all, how many enjoyments which to the glitter of wealth or the grandeur of a high position would seem insignificant and valueless, are to the humble man sources of hourly delight! And is our happiness anything but an aggregate of these grains of pleasure? There is as much philosophy in the child’s toy as in the nobleman’s coronet; all the better for him who can limit his desires to the attainable, and be satisfied with what lies within his reach. I have practised the system for a life long, and feel that if I now enjoy much of the buoyancy and the spirit of more youthful days, it is because I have never taxed my strength beyond its ability, nor striven for more than I could justly pretend to. There is something of indolence in all this – I know there is; but I was born under a lazy star, and I cannot say I regret my destiny.
From this little exposé of my tastes and habits it may be gathered that Cassel suited me perfectly. The air of repose which rests on these little secluded capitals has something – to me at least – inexpressibly pleasurable. The quaint old-fashioned equipages, drawn along at a gentle amble; the obsolete dress of the men in livery; the studious ceremony of the passers to each other; the absence of all bustle; the primitive objects of sale exposed in the various shops – all contrasting so powerfully with the wealth-seeking tumult of richer communities – suggest thoughts of tranquillity and contentment. They are the bourgeoisie of the great political world. Debarred from the great game which empires and kingdoms are playing, they retire within the limits of their own narrow but safe enjoyments, with ample means for every appliance of comfort; they seek not to astonish the world by any display, but content themselves with the homely happiness within their reach.
Every day I lingered here I felt this conviction the stronger. The small interests which occupied the public mind originated no violent passions, no exaggerated party spirit. The journals – those indices of a nation’s mind – contained less politics than criticism; an amicable little contention about the site of a new fountain or the position of an elector’s statue was the extent of any discussion; while at every opportunity crept out some little congratulating expression on the goodness of the harvest, the abundance of the vintage, or, what was scarcely less valued, the admirable operatic company which had just arrived. These may seem very petty incidents for men to pass their lives amongst, thought I, but still they all seem very happy; there is much comfort, there is no poverty. Like the court whist-table, where the points are only for silver groschen, the amusement is just as great, and no one is ruined by high play.
I am not sure but I should have made an excellent Hessian, thought I, as I deposited two little silver pieces, about the size of a spangle, on the table, in payment for a very appetising little supper, and an ink-bottleful of Rhine wine. And now for the coffee.
I was seated beneath a great chestnut-tree, whose spreading branches shaded me from the rays of the setting sun that came slanting to my very feet. At a short distance off sat a little family party – grandfather, grandchildren, and all – there was no mistaking them; they were eating their supper in the Park, possibly in honour of some domestic fête. Yes, there could be no doubt of it; it was the birthday of that pretty, dark-eyed little girl, of some ten years of age, who wore a wreath of roses in her hair, and sat at the top of the table, beside the Greis. A peal of delighted laughter broke from them all as I looked. And now I could see a little boy of scarce five years old, whose long yellow locks hung midway down his back; he was standing beside his sister’s chair, and I could hear his infant voice reciting a little verse he had learned in honour of the day. The little man, whose gravity contrasted so ludicrously with the merry looks about, went through his task as steadily as a court preacher holding forth before royalty; an occasional breach of memory would make him now and then turn his head to one side, where an elder sister knelt, and then he would go on again as before. I wished much to catch the words, but could only hear the refrain of each verse, which he always repeated louder than the rest —
‘Da sind die Tage lang genuch, Da sind die Nachte mild.’
Scarcely had he finished when his mother caught him to her arms and kissed him a hundred times; while the others struggled to take him, the little fellow clung to her neck with all his strength.
It was a picture of such happiness, that to look on it were alone a blessing. I have that night’s looks and cheerful voices fresh in my memory, and have thought of them many a long mile away from where I then heard them.
A slight noise beside me made me turn round, and I saw the Black Colonel, as the waiter called him, and whom I had not met for several days past. He was seated on a bench near, but with his back towards me, and I could perceive he was evidently unaware of my presence. I had, I must confess it, felt somewhat piqued at his avoidance of me, for such the distant recognition with which he saluted me seemed to imply. He had made the first advances himself, and it was scarcely fair that he should have thus abruptly stopped short, after inviting acquaintance. While I was meditating a retreat, he turned suddenly about, and then, taking off his hat, saluted me with a courtly politeness quite different from his ordinary manner.
‘I see, sir,’ said he with a very sweet smile, as he looked towards the little group – ‘I see, sir, you are indeed an admirer of pretty prospects.’
Few and simple as the words were, they were enough to reconcile me to the speaker; his expression, as he spoke them, had a depth of feeling in it which showed that his heart was touched.
After some commonplace remark of mine on the simplicity of German domestic habits and the happy immunity they enjoyed from that rage of fashion which in other countries involved so many in rivalry with others wealthier than themselves, the colonel assented to the observation, but expressed his sorrow that the period of primitive tastes and pleasures was rapidly passing away. The French Revolution first, and subsequently the wars of the Empire, had done much to destroy the native simplicity of German character; while in latter days the tide of travel had brought a host of vulgar rich people, whose gold corrupted the once happy peasantry, suggesting wants and tastes they never knew nor need to know.
‘As for the great cities of Germany,’ continued he, ‘they have scarcely a trace left of their ancient nationality. Vienna and Berlin, Dresden, and Munich, are but poor imitations of Paris; it is only in the old and less visited towns, such as Nuremberg, or Augsburg, that the Alt Deutsch habits still survive. Some few of the Grand-Ducal States – Weimar, for instance – preserve the primitive simplicity of former days even in courtly etiquette; and there, really, the government is paternal, in the fullest sense of the term. You would think it strange, would you not, to dine at court at four o’clock, and see the grand-ducal ministers and their ladies – the élite of a little world of their own – proceeding, many of them on foot, in court-dress, to dinner with their sovereign? Strange, too, would you deem it – dinner over – to join a promenade with the party in the Park, where all the bourgeoisie of the town are strolling about with their families, taking their coffee and their tea, and only interrupting their conversation or their pleasure to salute the Grand-Duke or Grand-Duchess, and respectfully bid them a “good-e’en”; and then, as it grew later, to return to the palace, for a little whist or a game of chess, or, better still, to make one of that delightful circle in the drawing-room where Goethe was sitting? Yes, such is the life of Weimar. The luxury of your great capitals, the gorgeous salons of London and Paris, the voluptuous pleasures which unbounded wealth and all its train of passions beget, are utterly unknown there; but there is a world of pure enjoyment and of intercourse with high and gifted minds which more than repay you for their absence. A few years more, and all this will be but “matter for an old man’s memory.” Increased facilities of travel and greater knowledge of language erase nationality most rapidly. The venerable habits transmitted from father to son for centuries – the traditional customs of a people – cannot survive a caricature nor a satire. The esprit moqueur of France and the insolent wealth of England have left us scarce a vestige of our Fatherland. Our literature is at this instant a thing of shreds and patches – bad translations of bad books; the deep wisdom and the racy humour of Jean Paul are unknown, while the vapid wit of a modern French novel is extolled. They prefer the false glitter of Dumas and Balzac to the sterling gold of Schiller and Herder; and even Leipsic and Waterloo have not freed us from the slavish adulation of the conquered to the conqueror.’
‘What would you have?’ said I.
‘I would have Germany a nation once more – a nation whose limits should reach from the Baltic to the Tyrol. Her language, her people, her institutions entitle her to be such; and it is only when parcelled into kingdoms and petty States, divided by the artful policy of foreign powers, that our nationality pines and withers.’
‘I can easily conceive,’ said I, ‘that the Confederation of the Rhine must have destroyed in a great measure the patriotic feeling of Western Germany. The peasantry were sold as mercenaries; the nobles, little better, took arms in a cause many of them hated and detested – ’
‘I must stop you here,’ said he, with a smile; ‘not that you would or could say that which should wound my feelings, but you might hurt your own when you came to know that he to whom you are speaking served in that army. Yes, sir, I was a soldier of Napoleon.’
Although nothing could be more unaffectedly easy than his manner as he spoke, I feared I might already have said too much; indeed, I knew not the exact expressions I had used, and there was a pause of some minutes, broken at length by the colonel saying —
‘Let us walk towards the town; for if I mistake not they close the gates of the Park at midnight, and I believe we are the only persons remaining here now.’
Chattering of indifferent matters, we arrived at the hotel; and after accepting an invitation to accompany the baron the next day to Wilhelms Höhe, I wished him good-night and retired.
