AN INCIDENT OF TRAVEL.
It is now some twelve years ago that I was, in company with two Norwegians, in Prague, loitering beneath the tower of that sacred edifice dedicated to the fearful dancer, St. Vitus. The tower was the same which the drunken Emperor Wenceslaus had caused to be shortened, by some thirty or forty feet, because he took it into his head that it would one day fall, and crush him as he lay on his uneasy couch in the Hradschin. I remarked to my companions, that the empire, in its palmy days, had often been well-nigh lost through the mad caprices of tippling Kaisers.
“There was not a Kaiser of them all,” said Löwenskiold, “who permanently injured either himself or his country by his devotion to drinking.”
“What!” said I; “not even Maximilian?”
“Not even Maximilian,” remarked Knudtzen. “The people, indeed, were occasionally a trifle startled at seeing their ruler proceed, either to the camp or council, with as much white wine in him as might serve the universe for sauces. They slightly objected, on hearing that he walked rosy and reeling to confession; and they were not edified at understanding that his private Almoner stirred up his punch with a silver crucifix. They even remonstrated with Maximilian when he had been once within an ace of destroying Ulm in a drunken frolic. And what was his reply? He kept the deputation of remonstrants the whole night in his palace, and invited the citizens to assemble, at day-break, on whatever spots commanded a view of the towers of the cathedral. The Emperor and the Committee of Moderates finished two hundred and ten bottles of Rhine wine while they waited for sunrise. This, among a temperate party of one score and one, was a tolerable allowance for each individual. At dawn, all Ulm was up, and every eye directed to the cathedral. The towers had scarcely flung back the first rays from heaven, when a joyous procession issued from the imperial residence. The whole party, the Emperor excepted, were as drunk as Æschylus. With difficulty did they follow their Lord, who, at the very top of his speed, and carrying a heavy waggon-wheel on his shoulder, ran to the cathedral, ascended the stairs leading to the summit of one of the towers, and appeared on the rampart, before his straggling followers had reached the low-arched door beneath. With a light bound, he sprang on one of the highest parts of the castellated portion, where there was scarcely footing for him. In that position, however, he poised the wheel aloft with his right hand, let it gently descend on to the foot which he extended above the heads of the multitude, and, holding it there for a moment or two, ended by hurling it into the air, and catching it again, ere it fell on the astounded and admiring crowd below.
“‘There, you calves!’ cried the Emperor, as he gazed tranquilly down on the sea of heads below; ‘do you dare complain that Niedersteiner touches your master’s nerves?’
“‘Never again!’ exclaimed the delighted mass. ‘What can we do to testify our affection for Your Majesty?’
“‘Toss those gentlemen into a tub of Selzer-water,’ said Maximilian, ‘and send me half-a-dozen of Hochheimer, and half-a-dozen blood-puddings, for breakfast.’”
I could almost believe this tradition; for I had seen a nearly similar feat once performed by a woman on a projecting mass of rock in the Ahr Thal. The rock is, doubtless, well known to all who have ascended that lovely Rhine-valley, at eve, to eat Forellen, and drink Wallportzheimer. They who do so, generally return the next morning with an inclination for nothing but the cooling mineral waters to be had at Hippingen.
“Besides,” said Knudtzen, “à-propos to cathedrals, sober principles have done them more injury than jolly Emperors. Do you forget that Caroline Bonaparte razed a cathedral in Italy to the ground?”
“I remember hearing of the deed as connected with a church,” said I; “but I have forgotten the reason alleged for it.”
“It was a very sufficient reason for a Bonaparte. Her Highness lived next door to the church; and she had it destroyed, because the noise of the organ kept her awake, and the smell of the incense made her head ache.”
“Royal minds,” I remarked, “cannot condescend to the weaknesses of common people. According to our ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ the pigeons at Pisa were as destructive as Caroline Bonaparte. Pigeons, for many ages, built under the roof of the great church there. Their dung spontaneously took fire at last; and the church was consumed. But, to return to the old, defunct King of Saxony. He was afflicted with a super-delicate attack of virtue; and, during the prevalence of the disorder, he issued a decree for the expulsion, from his picture-gallery, of all those master-pieces, the merit of which lay in the glory of their flesh-colouring. He had grown as modest as the Monk who declared that he had never seen any portion of his body save his face and hands. He is worthy of going down to posterity arm in arm with that old Polish King, who was a cleaner, but not a less delicate, man than the Monk, and who boasted to his Confessor that his purity of mind was so excessive, that he had never touched his own skin with an ungloved hand. In short, the old King of Saxony admirably illustrated the saying of Dean Swift, that ‘a nice man was a man of nasty ideas.’ He had not been a sparer of the wine-flask. Indeed, he had rather sinned that way; and, in expiation thereof, he undertook to perform a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre on foot. A fever of expectation shook Dresden, all the china in it, and the whole line of road, at the idea of again beholding a Christian King turning to the neglected shrine. The expectation was not altogether fulfilled; but the Monarch, nevertheless, performed the pilgrimage.”
“We never heard of it,” exclaimed the travellers, looking at each other with some manifestation of surprise.
“That is to say,” I resumed, “that his Majesty performed it after a fashion. He inquired the distance from his own country-house at Pilnitz, to the Armenian Convent at the Holy City; and, in spite of his education, he was nothing less than astonished, to find that it was something more serious than a promenade to Töplitz. I do not know if he had a vision of boiling his peas, as an English pilgrim did, of whom I could tell you something; but he certainly experienced some unpleasant sensations at the idea that, the way being so long, he might chance to find himself without peas to boil. He wept at the reflection that he might not only be a devout, but a hungry, King, while one-half of Dresden were solacing their appetites on the terrace of Bruhl, and the other, at the Baths of Link, or at the Bastei. He thought of the dangers; but he would be devout. The attendant pains were great; but the resulting pleasures were not to be denied. In short, he would not go to Jerusalem; but he would perform the pilgrimage. Accordingly, the exact distance having been ascertained, he started from his room, and walked the entire number of leagues by pacing up and down a long gallery, deducting from the distance the amount of water passage, which was but fair. If admiration had been great at the commencement, surprising fun was excited during the performance. Every evening the citizens of Dresden knew how far their religious Ruler had proceeded on his way, or how far he would have proceeded, if he had but set out. Now, he was breakfasting, in imagination, at Breslau; sleeping (in fancy) at Olmutz; and passing, by a pleasant fiction, through Buda. During two days that his Majesty suffered from a real bilious attack, the result, perhaps, of a Barmecidal repast at Essek on the Drave, the King rested at Belgrade, while confined to his bed in Dresden. But his zeal soon re-invigorated his liver; and, as he glided to and fro by his palace windows, the mystified multitude below learned that the Monarch was lodging in the house of the Saxon Legation at Istamboul. The pilgrim-traveller suffered a little from the heat (of the room) as he descended from the western coast of Asia Minor; but the inconveniencies of the route were things beneath the thoughts of him who—whether at Bursa, Smyrna, or any other locality on his way—could ring his bell in the Desert, and order Champagne out of his own cellar. The King was puzzled one mid-day, (he had by calculation just reached Beyrout,) his progress being checked by the unexpected arrival of a portion of the imperial family from Vienna. Visitors of such condition must be attended to; nevertheless, his pilgrimage must be continued; and he, like the clever and facetious palmer that he was, did both. He attended his guests with much politeness, during their stay of two days; and he put down the time thus spent, as consumed in a sea voyage from Beyrout to Acre. The moment they left, the royal pilgrim went ashore again, and happily accomplished the remaining distance to Jerusalem, through Nassara and Nablous, without any other hinderance or obstruction than his going one night to see a French vaudeville, while supposed to be enjoying his well-earned repose at Rama or Muddin. And thus was accomplished that royal pilgrimage that was never performed. The King reached Jerusalem without going there; and the people saw him return who had never departed.”
“Well,” said Harold Knudtzen, “the Kings of Saxony are no longer such simpletons. The present Monarch loves, indeed, good wine, ‘craftily qualified;’ but he also, like Uzziah, King of Judah, loves husbandry. Josephine herself had not half so frantic a passion for flowers as he; and not for flowers alone in their beauty,—not for botany, either, merely for amusement’s sake, but for phytology and pharmacy, as connected with it.”
“He lisped Linnæus,” said Löwenskiold, “before he could speak plainly.”
“And, by reputation, he knew Tournefort better than he did Knecht Rupert,” added Harold.
“He himself told us, when we met him in Dalmatia,” continued the latter, “that he could spell Dodecandria and Trigynia before he could read Grimm’s Story-Book; and that he knew the meanings of monopetalous and campaniform before he was acquainted with the languages from which the terms were derived. I never saw a man so eager in pursuit of apetalous amentaceous flowers; and as for carryophylous”——
“Leave off your abominable phrases!” said I, “and begin by telling me how you two very modest fellows introduced yourselves to the acquaintance of the Sovereign of Saxony.”
“The introduction was effected through a very light-hearted and intelligent fellow-botanizer, whom we met on our way from Zara up to the mountains. We had all three lost our way while endeavouring to find an infundibuliform”——
“Nay,” interrupted I, “I care not what you found, if you choose to tell it in pentameters.”
“Well,” resumed Knudtzen, “we were in a wild part of the country,—weary, hungry, cold, and in the dark. Wanderers could not well be in a worse plight. We were as flûté as Juno’s columns near the church of St. Helia; and the skeleton doing duty there for that of St. Simeon of Judæa, the pride and palladium of the people of Zara, looked in far better condition, and in, especially, better raiment, than could be boasted of by us humble pedestrians. We had walked many leagues, when we reached a sorry inn kept by a Gipsy, where we hoped to find rest and refreshment, but were permitted to enjoy neither. Our swarthy host stood in his door-way, like Horatius Cocles at the head of the bridge. Beds he did not even profess to find for travellers. He had not slept in one himself for years, and was none the worse, he said, for the privation. Leopold asked for wine.
“‘We have three sorts of wine,’ said the Gipsy, ‘which travellers like yourselves once tasted and paid for. I have the very wines which the seven Schwaben asked for in the Goldenes Kreutz at Ueberlingen.’
“‘What! old Sauerampfer?’ cried Löwenskiold.
“‘The same,’ said our singular host. ‘It is not quite so sour as vinegar, but it will pierce the marrow of your bones like a sword; and it will so twist your mouth, that you shall never get it straight again.’
“‘We will try something better than this acid water,’ said I: ‘we will’——
“‘Try the Dreimännerswein? I am sorry there are only women in the house!’
“‘What, in the name of all your saints in Zara, have your women to do with the refreshment we need?’
“‘Do! nothing in the world! that is precisely it! You will want three men each of you. For Dreimännerswein is three times as rough and ten times as sour as vinegar; and he who drinks it must be held fast by two men, while a third pours the liquid down his throat!’
“‘And what of the third of these Olympic beverages?’ said I.
“‘It is called Rachenputzer, and has peculiar qualities too. He who lies down to sleep with a flask of it in his body, must be aroused every half-hour, and turned over. Otherwise a pint of Rachenputzer would eat a hole right through his side!’
“The Gipsy laughed aloud as he uttered these words. We ourselves laughed in despite of our vexation; and, somewhat startlingly, a fourth voice took up the cachinnatory affection, and laughed even louder than the original three. As the new-comer stood in the light of the door-way, the landlord touched his cap, withdrew hastily into the passage, and slammed the door in our faces, leaving us in Cimmerian darkness, summer trousers, and a drizzling rain. The matter was no longer risible, and we were beginning to be seriously annoyed, when the mysterious stranger, whom we could but indistinctly see, invited us to accompany him we knew not whither, and hospitably to partake of we knew not what. We accepted the invitation most gratefully; and after a full half-hour’s walk, we found ourselves on the skirts of a wood. In less than half that time, we subsequently reached a neat little house within the wood itself; and I do not think ten minutes had elapsed, ere we had made such toilette as travellers may, and, with some doubts as to the reality of the circumstance, detected ourselves in the act of eating vermicelli soup, and wondering how it had reached us.
“Before our repast was entirely dispatched, our host, in whom we saw a young, well-made, and exceedingly amiable personage, informed us that he was on a botanizing expedition for the benefit of an establishment in Northern Germany; that he had been two months settled in the house in which we then were, and that he had already given temporary shelter to three plant-explorers, who had resorted, in their need, to the house of Djewitzki, the Gipsy, and who had found to their sorrow, that it had nothing of the quality of an inn about it, except the sign.
“We talked of flowers that night,” continued Knudtzen, “as though they were the foremost as well as the fairest things in all the world. But we were sciolists in the science, and, contrasted with us, our host was a sage. He knew that agrimony was under Jupiter, and angelica under the Sun in Leo; that milfoil was under the influence of Venus, and that garden basil was a herb of Mars. If every new idea be worth the knowing, why, we gained knowledge by the information, that all the dodders are under Saturn. We heard, for the first time, the virtues of the plant enchusa.”
“But,” interrupted Löwenskiold, “we were enabled to remind our host of what Dioscorides says about it,—that if any who have newly eaten of it do but spit in the mouth of a serpent, the reptile instantly dies.”
“True,” said Knudtzen, “we have not been at Upsal for nothing.”
“We may all aid each other by turns,” I remarked to my two friends, as we arrived, after descending from the cathedral, on the old bridge over the Moldau. A large herd of cattle was crossing it at the time; and some of the foremost black oxen of this herd had bunches of amara dulcis (or, “woody nightshade”) hung round their necks; a common custom in Germany, as I told the young travellers, and employed as a remedy against dizziness in the head.
“Of the owner or the ox?” said Harold, with a laugh.
“Of him who wears it,” I rejoined. “But I want to see the entry of your King of Saxony,” I continued, “and not to listen to the description, uses, and property of herbs, plants, and flowers; maiden-hair, moon-wort, and ornithogalum spicatum.”
“So much the worse!” answered Knudtzen, “or Leopold and I had told you what we learned from our entertainer of celandine; and what he told us, from Pliny, of the anemone: how he recommended us, should we ever visit Naples, never to retire to rest without strewing about our bed-chamber some chopped leaves of arse-smart, a herb most murderous to the numerous light troops cantoned in Neapolitan sleeping-rooms; how balm was good for the bite of scorpions; how Pliny recommends endweed for the quinsy;—and a thousand other matters touching leaves, herbs, trees, flowers, roots, and barks. But I will tell you that our Amphitryon was light as well as learned, and loved fun as he did flowers. He would discourse upon ballets as well as battles; knew all about logarithms and the new opera; told anecdotes; remembered sermons; and, finally, lighted us to bed, with a Latin quotation, and a brass candlestick. By day-break we were all out in the vicinity of the house, looking for rare plants, with as much avidity as though they equalled diamonds in value. We returned together to a breakfast exactly adapted to our tastes and capacities; after which, our knapsacks were once more on our shoulders, and, having made due acknowledgment for the hospitality received, we begged to be permitted to know the name of our entertainer.
“‘You might call me,’ said he, ‘the Dalmatian botanist, if I particularly cared about maintaining my incognito. But I hope we shall meet again; and, if you ever visit Dresden, come to me, and you shall have better fare than I have been able to afford you here. Ask for the King of Saxony,’ he added, observing our inquiring looks; ‘and in the mean time write your names on these tablets, and you shall find that in Dresden I have not forgotten the night in Dalmatia.’”
“And did you and the good Frederick Augustus ever meet again?”
“Twice,” said Harold. “We saw one another for a moment, a month afterwards, in Zara. He was accompanying the Emperor of Austria, followed by a brilliant staff, to a review, and he gave us a smile of recognition as he passed.”
“The second time we met him,” added Leopold, “was in the gardens of the Nymphenberg, near Munich. He was alone, amusing himself with feeding the beavers. We spent a very agreeable hour with him in exploring that pleasant retreat of the Kings of Bavaria; and, on parting, he repeated his wish that we might meet again in Dresden,—a circumstance not very unlikely, as we are now on our way to the Sächsische Schweitz.”