CHAPTER XLII. A GLIMPSE OF AN OLD FRIEND
If there be anything in our English habits upon which no difference of opinion can exist, it is our proneness to extend to a foreigner a degree of sympathy and an amount of interest that'we obstinately deny to our own people. The English artist struggling all but hopelessly against the town's indifference has but to displace the consonants or multiply the vowels of his name to be a fashion with it and a success. Strange and incomprehensible tendency in a nation so overwhelmingly impressed with a sense of its own vast superiority! But so it is. Mr. Brady may sing to empty benches, while il Signor Bradini would “bring down the house.” What set me thinking over this was, that though Silvio Pellico was a stock theme for English pity and compassion, I very much doubted if a single tear would fall for the misfortunes of Potts. And yet there was a marvellous similarity in our suffering. In each case was the Austrian the jailer; in each case was the victim a creature of tender mould and gentle nature.
I travelled in a sort of covered cart, with a mounted gendarme at either side of me. Indeed, the one faintly alleviating circumstance of my captivity was the sight of those two heavily equipped giants, armed to the teeth, who were supposed to be essential to my safe conduct. It was such an acknowledgment of what they had to apprehend from my well-known prowess and daring, so palpable a confession that every precaution was necessary against the bold intrepidity of a man of my stamp! At times, I almost wished they had put chains upon me. I thought how well it would read in my Memoirs; how I was heavily “manacled,”—a great word that,—“orders being given to the escort to shoot me if I showed the slightest intention to escape.” It was an intense pleasure to me to imagine myself a sort of Nana Sahib, and whenever we halted at some wayside public, and the idle loungers would draw aside the canvas covering and stare in at me, I did my utmost to call up an expression of ogre-like ferocity and wildness, and it was with a thrill of ecstasy I saw a little child clasp its mother by the neck, and scream out to come away as it beheld me.
On the second night of our Journey we halted at a little village at the foot of the Arlberg, called Steuben, where, in default of a regular prison, they lodged me in an old tower, the lower part of which was used for a stable. It stood in the very centre of the town, and from its narrow and barred windows I could catch glimpses of the little world that moved about in happy freedom beneath me. I could see the Marktplatz, from which the booths were now being taken down, and could mark that preparations for some approaching ceremony were going on, but of what nature I could not guess. A large place was neatly swept out, and at last strewn with sawdust,—signs unerring of some exhibition of legerdemain or conjuring, of which the Tyrolese are warm admirers. The arrangements were somewhat more portentous than are usually observed in open-air representations, for I saw seats prepared for the dignitaries of the village, and an evident design to mark the entertainment as under the most distinguished protection. The crowd—now considerable—observed all the decorous bearing of citizens in presence of their authorities.
I nestled myself snugly in the deep recess of the window to watch the proceedings, nor had I long to wait; some half-dozen gayly dressed individuals having now pierced their way through the throng, and commenced those peculiar gambols which bespeak backbones of gristle and legs of pasteboard. It is a class of performance I enjoy vastly. The two fellows who lap over each other like the links of a chain, and the creature who rolls himself about like a ball, and the licensed freedoms of that man of the world—the clown—never weary me, and I believe I laugh at them with all the more zest that I have so often laughed at them before. It was plain, after a while, that a more brilliant part of the spectacle was yet to come, for a large bluff-looking man, in cocked-hat and jack-boots, now entered the ring and indignantly ejected the clowns by sundry admonitions with a lash-whip, which I perceived were not merely make-believes.
“Ah, here he comes! here he is!” was now uttered in accents of eager interest, and an avenue was quickly made through the crowd for the new performer. There was delay after this; and though doubtless the crowd below could satisfy their curiosity, I was so highly perched and so straitened in my embrasure that I had to wait, with what patience I might, the new arrival. I was deep in my guesses what sort of “artist” he might prove, when I saw the head of a horse peering over the shoulders of the audience, and then the entire figure of the quadruped as he emerged into the circle, all sheeted and shrouded from gaze. With one dexterous sweep the groom removed all the clothing, and there stood before me my own lost treasure,—Blondel himself! I would have known him among ten thousand. He was thinner, perhaps, certainly thinner, but in all other respects the same; his silky mane and his long tassel of a tail hung just as gracefully as of yore, and, as he ambled round, he moved his head with a courteous inclination, as though to acknowledge the plaudits he met with.
There was in his air the dignity that said, “I am one who has seen better days. It was not always thus with me. Applaud if you must, and if you will; but remember that I accept your plaudits with reserve, perhaps even with reluctance.” Poor fellow, my heart bled for him! I felt as though I saw a cathedral canon cutting somersaults, and all this while, by some strange inconsistency, I had not a sympathy to bestow on the human actors in the scene. “As for them,” thought I, “they have accepted this degradation of their own free will. If they had not shirked honest labor, they need never have been clowns or pantaloons; but Blondel—Blondel, whom fate had stamped as the palfrey of some high-born maiden, or, at least, the favorite steed of one who would know how to lavish care on an object of such perfection—Blondel, who had borne himself so proudly in high places, and who, even in his declining fortunes, had been the friend and fellow-traveller of—yes, why should I shame to say it? Posterity will speak of Potts without the detracting malice and envious rancor of contemporaries; and when, in some future age, a great philanthropist or statesman should claim the credit of some marvellous discovery, some wondrous secret by which humanity may be bettered, a learned critic will tell the world how this great invention was evidently known to Potts, how at such a line or such a page we shall find that Potts knew it all.”
The wild cheering of the crowd beneath cut short these speculations, and now I saw Blondel cantering gayly round the circle, with a handkerchief in his mouth. If in sportive levity it chanced to fall, he would instantly wheel about and seize it, and then, whisking his tail and shaking his long forelock, resume his course again. It was fine, too, to mark the haughty indifference he manifested towards that whip-cracking monster who stood in the centre, and affected to direct his motions. Not alone did he reject his suggestions, but in a spirit of round defiance did he canter up behind him, and alight with his forelegs on the fellow's-shoulders. I am not sure whether the spectators regarded the tableau as I did, but to me it seemed an allegorical representation of man and his master.
The hard breathing of a person close behind me now made me turn my head, and I saw the jailer, who had come with my supper. A thought flashed suddenly across me. “Go down to those mountebanks, and ask if they will sell that cream-colored pony,” said I. “Bargain as though you wanted him for yourself; he is old and of little value, and you may, perhaps, secure him for eighty or ninety florins; and if so, you shall have ten more for your pains. It is a caprice of mine, nothing more, but help me to gratify it.”
He heard me with evident astonishment, and then gravely asked if I had forgotten the circumstance that I was a prisoner, and likely to remain so for some time.
“Do as I bade you,” said I, “and leave the result to me. There, lose no more time about it, for I see the performance is drawing to a close.”
“Nay, nay,” said he; “the best of all is yet to come. The pretty Moorish girl has not yet appeared. Ha! here she is.”
As he spoke, he crept up into the window beside me, not less eager for the spectacle than myself. A vigorous cheer, and a loud clapping of hands below announced that the favorite was in sight long before she was visible to our eyes.
“What can she do?” asked I, peevishly, perhaps, for I was provoked how completely she had eclipsed poor Blondel in public favor. “What can she do? Is she a rope-dancer, or does she ride in the games of the ring?”
“There, there! Look at her; yonder she goes! and there's the young Prince—they call him a Prince, at least—who follows her everywhere.”
I could not but smile at the poor jailer's simplicity, and would willingly have explained to him that we have outlived the age of Cinderella. Indeed, I had half turned towards him with this object, when a perfect roar of the crowd beneath me drew off my attention from him to what was going on below. I soon saw what it was that entranced the public: it was the young girl, who now, standing on Blondel's back, was careering round the circle at full speed. It is an exercise in which neither the horse nor the rider is seen to advantage; the heavy monotonous tramp of the beast, cramped by the narrow limits, becomes a stilty, wooden gallop. The rider, too, more careful of her balance than intent upon graceful action, restricts herself to a few, and by no means picturesque attitudes. With all this, the girl now before me seemed herself so intensely to enter into the enjoyment of the scene, that all her gestures sprang out of a sort of irrepressible delight. Far from unsteadying her foot, or limiting her action, the speed of the horse appeared to assist the changeful bendings of her graceful figure, as now, dropping on one knee, she would lean over to caress him, or now, standing erect, with folded arms and leg advanced, appeared to dare him to displace her. Faultlessly graceful as she was, there was that in her own evident enjoyment that imparted a strange delight to the beholder, and gave to the spectacle the sort of magnetism by which pleasure finds its way from heart to heart throughout a multitude. At least, I suppose this must have been so, for in the joyous cheering of that crowd there was a ring of wild delight far different from mere applause.
At last, poor Blondel, blown and wearied, turned abruptly into the middle of the ring, and with panting sides and shaking tail came to a dead halt. The girl, with a graceful slide seated herself on his back and patted him playfully. And to me this was by far the most graceful movement of the whole.
It was really a picture! and so natural and so easy withal, that one forgot all about her spangles and tinsel, the golden fillet of her hair, and the tawdry fringe of her sandals; and, what was even harder still, heard not the hoarse-mouthed enthusiasm that greeted her. At length, a tall man, well-dressed and of striking appearance, pushed his way into the ring, and politely presented her with a bouquet, at which piece of courtesy the audience, noways jealous, again redoubled their applause. She now looked round her with an air of triumphant pleasure, and while, with a playful gesture, she flung back the ringlets on her neck, she lifted her face full to my view, and it was Tinte-fleck! With all my might I cried out, “Catinka! Catinka!” I know not why, but the impulse never waited to argue the question. Though I screamed my loudest, the great height at which I was placed, and the humming din of the crowd, totally drowned my words. Again and again I tried it, but to no purpose. There she sat, slowly making the round of the circus, while the stranger walked at her side, to all seeming conversing as though no busy and prying multitude stood watching and observing them. Wearied with my failure to attract notice, I turned to address the jailer; but he had already gone, and I was alone. I next endeavored by a signal to call attention to me, and, at last, saw how two or three of the crowd had observed my waving a handkerchief, and were pointing it out to others. Doubtless they wondered how a poor captive could care for the pleasant follies of a life of whose commonest joys he was to be no sharer, and still greater was their astonishment as I flung forth a piece of money,—a gold Napoleon, it was,—which they speedily caught up and gave to Catinka. How I watched her as she took it and showed it to the stranger! He, by his gesture, seemed angry, and made a motion as though asking her to throw it away; and then there seemed some discussion between them, and his petulance increased; and she, too, grew passionate, and, leaping from the horse, strode haughtily across the circus and disappeared. And then arose a tumult and confusion, the mob shouting madly for the Moorish girl to come back, and many much disposed to avenge her absence on the stranger. As for him, he pushed the mob haughtily aside and went his way; and though for a while the crowd continued to vent its expressions of displeasure and disappointment, the performance soon concluded, and all went their several roads homeward; and when I looked out upon the empty Platz, over which the dusky shadows of the old houses were now stealing to mingle together, and instead of the scene of bustle and excitement saw a few lingering townsfolk moody and purposeless, T asked myself if the whole incidents were not a vision mind-drawn and invented. There was not one single clew by which I could trace it to reality.
More than once in my life had my dreamy temperament played me such pranks; and, strangely too, even when I had assured myself of the deception, there would yet linger in my mind thoughts and impressions strong enough to influence my actions, just as we often see that our disbelief in a scandalous story is not sufficient to disabuse us of a certain power it wields over us.
Oh, what a long and dreary night was that, harassed with doubts, and worn out with speculations! My mind had been much weakened by my fever, and whenever I followed a train of thought too long, confusion was sure to ensue. The terror of this chaotic condition, where all people and lands and ideas and incidents jostle against each other in mad turmoil, can only be estimated by one who has felt it. Like the awful rush of sensations of him who is sliding down some steep descent to a tremendous precipice, one feels the gradual approach of that dreamy condition where reason is lost, and the mind a mere waif upon the waters.
“Here 's your breakfast,” said the jailer, as he stopped the course of my revery. “And the Brigadier hopes you 'll be speedy with it, for you must reach Maltz by nightfall.”
“Tell me,” said I, eagerly, “was there a circus company here yesterday evening? Did they exhibit on the Platz there?”
“You are a deep one, you are!” muttered he, sulkily to himself, and left the cell.