Hyperion Part 6

Accordingly he has sent his fair wife to Warsaw. But how pale the poor child looks."

"She has just recovered from severe illness. In the winter, you know, it was thought she would not live from hour to hour."

"And she has hardly recovered from that disease, before she seems threatened with a worse one; namely, a hopeless pa.s.sion. However, people do not die of love now-a-days."

"Seldom, perhaps," said Flemming. "And yet it is folly to pretend that one ever wholly recovers from a disappointed pa.s.sion. Such wounds always leave a scar. There are faces I can never look upon without emotion. There are names I can never hear spoken without almost starting!"

"But whom have we here?"

"That is the French poet Quinet, with his sweet German wife; one of the most interesting women I ever knew. He is the author of a very wild Mystery, or dramatic prose-poem, in which the Ocean, Mont-Blanc, and the Cathedral of Stra.s.sburg have parts to play; and the saints on the stained windows of the minster speak, and the statues and dead kings enact the Dance of Death. It is ent.i.tled Ahasuerus, or the Wandering Jew."

"Or, as the Danes would translate it, the Shoemaker of Jerusalem.

That would be a still more fantastic t.i.tle for his fantastic book.

You know I am no great admirer of the modern French school of writers. The tales of Paul de k.o.c.k, who is, I believe, the most popular of all, seem to me like obscene stories told at dinner-tables, after the ladies have retired. It has been well said of him, that he is not only populaire but populacier; and equally well said of George Sand and Victor Hugo, that their works stand like fortifications, well built and well supplied with warlike munitions; but ineffectual against the Grand Army of G.o.d, which marches onward, as if nothing had happened. In surveying a national literature, the point you must start from, is national character.

That lets you into many a secret; as, for example, Paul de k.o.c.k's popularity. The most prominent trait in the French character, is love of amus.e.m.e.nt, and excitement; and--"

"I should say, rather, the fear of ennui," interrupted Flemming.

"One of their own writers has said with a great deal of truth, that the gentry of France rush into Paris to escape from ennui, as, in the n.o.ble days of chivalry, the defenceless inhabitants of the champaign fled into the castles, at theapproach of some plundering knight, or lawless Baron; forsaking the inspired twilight of their native groves, for the luxurious shades of the royal gardens. What do you think of that?"

The Baron replied with a smile;

"There is only one Paris; and out of Paris there is no salvation for decent people."

Thus conversing of many things, sat the two friends under the linden-trees on the Rent Tower, till gradually the crowd disappeared from the garden, and the objects around them grew indistinct, in the fading twilight. Between them and the amber-colored western sky, the dense foliage of the trees looked heavy and hard, as if cast in bronze; and already the evening stars hung like silver lamps in the towering branches of that Tree of Life, brought more than two centuries ago from its primeval Paradise in America, to beautify the gardens of the Palatinate.

"I take a mournful pleasure in gazing at that tree," said Flemming, as they rose to depart. "It stands there so straight and tall, with iron bandsaround its n.o.ble trunk and limbs, in silent majesty, or whispering only in its native tongue, and freighting the homeward wind with sighs! It reminds me of some captive monarch of a savage tribe, brought over the vast ocean for a show, and chained in the public market-place of the city, disdainfully silent, or breathing only in melancholy accents a prayer for his native forest, a longing to be free."

"Magnificent!" cried the Baron. "I always experience something of the same feeling when I walk through a conservatory. The luxuriant plants of the tropics,--those ill.u.s.trious exotics, with their gorgeous, flamingo-colored blossoms, and great, flapping leaves, like elephant's ears,--have a singular working upon my imagination; and remind me of a menagerie and wild-beasts kept in cages. But your ill.u.s.tration is finer;--indeed, a grand figure. Put it down for an epic poem."

CHAPTER IV. A BEER-SCANDAL.

On their way homeward, Flemming and the Baron pa.s.sed through a narrow lane, in which was a well-known Studenten-Kneipe. At the door stood a young man, whom the Baron at once recognised as his friend Von Kleist. He was a student; and universally acknowledged, among his young acquaintance, as a "devilish handsome fellow"; notwithstanding a tremendous scar on his cheek, and a cream-colored mustache, as soft as the silk of Indian corn. In short he was a renowner, and a duellist.

"What are you doing here, Von Kleist?"

"Ah, my dear Baron! Is it you? Come in; come in. You shall see some sport. A Fox-Commerce is on foot, and a regular Beer-Scandal."

"Shall we go in, Flemming?"

"Certainly. I should like to see how these things are managed in Heidelberg. You are a Baron, and I am a stranger. It is of no consequence what you and I do, as the king's fool Angeli said to the poet Bautru, urging him to put on his hat at the royal dinner-table."

William Lilly, the Astrologer, says, in his Autobiography, that, when he was committed to the guard-room in White Hall, he thought himself in h.e.l.l; for "some were sleeping, others swearing, others smoking tobacco; and in the chimney of the room there were two bushels of broken tobacco-pipes, and almost half a load of ashes."

What he would have thought if he had peeped into this Heidelberg Studenten-Kneipe, I know not. He certainly would not have thought himself in heaven; unless it were a Scandinavian heaven. The windows were open; and yet so dense was the atmosphere with the smoke of tobacco, and the fumes of beer, that the tallow candles burnt but dimly. A crowd of students were sitting at three long tables, in the large hall; a medley of fellows, known at German Universities under the cant names of Old-Ones, Mossy-Heads, Princes of Twilight, and Pomatum-Stallions. They were smoking, drinking, singing, screaming, and discussing the great Laws of the Broad-Stone and the Gutter.

They had a great deal to say, likewise, about Besens, and Zobels, and Poussades; and, if they had been charged for the noise they made, as travellers used to be, in the old Dutch taverns, they would have had a longer bill to pay for that, than for their beer.

In a large arm-chair, upon the middle table, sat one of those distinguished individuals, known among German students as a Senior, or Leader of a Landsmannschaft. He was booted and spurred, and wore a very small crimson cap, and a very tight blue jacket, and very long hair, and a very dirty s.h.i.+rt. He was President of the night; and, as Flemming entered the hall with the Baron and his friend, striking upon the table with a mighty broadsword, he cried in a loud voice;

"Silentium!"

At the same moment a door at the end of the hall was thrown open, and a procession of newcomers, or Nasty-Foxes, as they are called in the college dialect, entered two by two, looking wild, and green, and foolish. As they came forward, they were obliged to pa.s.s under a pair of naked swords, held cross-wise by two Old-Ones, who, with pieces of burnt cork, made an enormous pair of mustaches, on the smooth, rosy cheeks of each, as he pa.s.sed beneath this arch of triumph. While the procession was entering the hall, the President lifted up his voice again, and began to sing the well-known Fox-song, in the chorus of which all present joined l.u.s.tily.

What comes there from the hill?

What comes there from the hill?

What comes there from the leathery hill?

Ha! Ha!

Leathery hill!

What comes there from the hill?

It is a postilion!

It is a postilion!

It is a leathery postilion!

Ha! Ha!

Postilion!

It is a postilion!

What brings the postilion?

What brings the postilion?

What brings the leathery postilion?

Ha! Ha!

Postilion!

What brings the postilion?

He bringeth us a Fox!

He bringeth us a Fox!

He bringeth us a leathery Fox!

Ha! Ha!