CHAPTER XX.
Maître Frantz and his disciple passed quickly through the town. The little houses scattered along the roadsides rapidly succeeded one another, with their barns, stables, and wooden steps with washing hanging upon them—ruddy-faced children asked alms, and old inquisitive women put their nodding heads out of the upper windows. At the end of a quarter of an hour they were in the country, breathing the free air, passing between two rows of chestnut-trees, listening to the song of the birds, and thinking still of the worthy Pastor Schweitzer, by whom they had been so well received—of soft-hearted little Gredel, who had wept so freely at seeing them depart.
When the smoky roofs of Saverne and the weathercock of the church had disappeared behind the mountain, Coucou Peter at length shook off the deep reverie in which he had been indulging, and after two or three times clearing his voice, he gravely chanted the old ballad of ‘The Count of Geroldsek:’ the yellow dwarf keeping watch on the highest tower, the deliverance of the fair Itha, held captive at Haut-Bârr. There was something melancholy in Coucou Peter’s voice, for he was thinking of his little Gredel. Bruno’s step was in cadence; and to the mind of Mathéus, listening to this old language, returned dim and vague memories. After the last verse Coucou Peter took breath, and cried—
“What a jolly life these Counts of Geroldsek led!—going about the mountain, carrying off girls, fighting husbands—drinking, singing, feasting, from morning till night! What a glorious existence! The king himself wasn’t fit to be their cousin!”
“Doubtless—doubtless, the Counts of Geroldsek were great and powerful nobles,” replied Mathéus. “Their authority extended from the county of Bârr to Sûngau, and from Lower Mundat to Bassigny, in Champagne; the richest jewels, the most beautiful arms, the most magnificent hangings, belonged to their sumptuous castles in Alsace and Lorraine; the most exquisite wines filled their cellars, numerous knights rode under their banners, crowds of gentlemen and valets attended upon them in their courts—some monks also, whom they held in great esteem. Unfortunately, instead of practising anthropo-zoological virtues, these noble personages destroyed travellers on the highway; and the Being of Beings, weary of their rapine, has made them descend in the rank of animals.”
“Ah!” cried Coucou Peter, laughing, “it seems to me that I must once have been one of those good monks you have just been speaking about. I must try and find out, the first time I go by Geroldsek.”
“How do you mean to do that?”
“I shall go up to the castle, and if ever I have been one of those good monks, I shall find out the road to the cellar at once.”
While deploring the sensual tendencies of his disciple, Mathéus inwardly laughed at his gay humour. “One cannot be perfect,” he said to himself. “This poor Coucou Peter thinks only of satisfying his physical appetites; but he is so good a fellow that the Great Demiourgos will not be offended with him; he will even laugh, I think, at the idea of the monk and his proof of the cellar of Geroldsek!” And the illustrious philosopher shook his head, as much as to say, “He’ll never change! He’ll never change!”
Chatting in this manner, they made their way quietly along by the Zorn. For more than an hour they had kept to the other side of the road, so as to be within the shade of the trees, for the sun was high, and the heat overpowering. As far as the eye could reach nothing was to be seen on the immense plain of Alsace but waving fields of rye, wheat, and oats; the hot air was laden with the scent of long grass. But the eye turned involuntarily towards the river, under the shadow of the old willows dipping their long branches in the water, and the thought arose, of what delight it would be to bathe in the fresh and limpid waves!
Towards noon, Frantz Mathéus and his disciple halted near a spring surrounded with alders, at a little distance off the road. They unsaddled Bruno. Coucou Peter put his flask of wolxheim to cool in the spring; he then produced the provisions from his haversack, and lay down beside his master, between two ridges of oats, which completely sheltered them from the heat of the day.
It is a delicious sensation, after the fatigue and dust of the road, to rest in the shade, to hear the gush of water through the grass, to watch the thousands of insects passing above one’s head in joyous caravans, and to feel the great golden heads of the corn rustling about one.
Bruno browsed along the hedge; Coucou Peter raised himself upon his elbow with indescribable satisfaction, clicked his tongue, and now and then presented the flask to Mathéus; but it was only for form’s sake, for the illustrious philosopher preferred spring-water to the best wine, especially during such heat. At last the gay fiddler finished his meal, closed his pocket-knife, and cried with a satisfied air—
“All goes well, Maître Frantz; it is clear the Great Demiourgos protects us—clear as day! We’re far from Saverne; and if that beggar of a procureur lays hold of us now, I’ll consent to be hanged at once. Let us now take a last pull at the flask, and get on our way; for if we arrive too late, the gates of the city will be closed.”
Saying that, he replaced his haversack, presented the bridle to Mathéus, and the illustrious philosopher having bestridden Bruno, they went forward, full of courage and confidence. The great heat was passed, the shadow of the neighbouring hills began to stretch across the road, and the Rhine breeze to refresh the air.
At every village, however, Coucou Peter remembered that he had still three francs left of the thirty given him by Dame Thérèse, and made a visit to the nearest wine-shop. Everywhere he fell in with acquaintances, and found a pretext for offering or accepting a bottle. But it was in vain that he begged his master to enter the public-houses; for Mathéus, seeing that in this manner they could never get to the end of their destination, remained on horseback at the door, in the midst of a circle of peasants who collected to look at him. The most he would do was to accept a glass through the window, in token of good-fellowship with the numerous friends of his disciple.
At length, towards evening, they came in sight of the ancient city of Strasbourg. Great animation had already exhibited itself on their passage; every moment they met carriages, waggoners leading their horses by the bridle, customs officers, armed with their sharp iron probe, pricking packages, and diligences filled with conscripts.
A crowd of lights appeared in the distance, and repeated themselves in the dark stream of the Ile. But when they had made their way across the bridge, and through the crowded and noisy corps de garde, and the winding outworks; when they had penetrated into the city, with its old houses, their fronts falling into decay, their thousand windows gleaming in the light of the hanging lamps; its silk-mercers and sweetstuff-shops and library illuminated as if by magic-lanterns; street-doors blocked up with merchandise, tortuous alleys hiding away in the darkness; when all these objects met their view, what tenderly affecting thoughts returned to the good Doctor’s memory!
Here he had spent the happiest years of his youth; here was the Heron beerhouse where every evening, on leaving the medical lecture-room, he came to smoke his pipe and take a pint of beer in company with Ludwig, Conrad, Bastien, and many other joyous comrades. There it was that the seignor perorated gravely in the midst of his subject Burchen; that the pretty waitresses moved about them, laughing with one, replying with a wink to another, and answering the orders of their mistress with, “Coming directly, madame.” Ah, happy days, how far off now! What has become of you, Conrad, Wilhelm, Ludwig, brave drinkers that you were?—what has become of you these forty years? And you, Gretchen, Rosa, Charlotte, what has become of you?—you, so fresh, so graceful, so active, who used to worry little Frantz, sitting always so grave at the corner of the table, smoking calmly and sipping his beer, with his eyes raised to the ceiling, dreaming already, perhaps, of his sublime anthropo-zoological discoveries? What has become of you, youth, grace, beauty, life without care, and with unbounded hope? Ah, you are far, far off! And you, poor Mathéus! have grown old; your locks are grey, you have nothing left but your system to sustain you.
Thus the good man meditated, his heart beating, and the crowd, the vehicles, the shops, and edifices about him having no power to draw him from his recollections.
Sometimes, however, the aspect of the spot he was passing changed the current of his melancholy musing: there, by the custom-house, under the roof of that high house, reflected in the Ile, and looking down upon the passing boats, was his garret-chamber; his little ink-stained deal table, his bed hung with blue curtains in the recess, and he, Frantz Mathéus, young, with his elbows on an ancient folio spread before a solitary candle, studying the principles of the learned Paracelsus, who places the soul in the stomach; of the profound La Caze, who fixes it in the tendonous centre of the diaphragm; of the judicious Ernest Platner, who makes it drawn in with the atmosphere by the lungs; of the sublime Descartes, who incloses it in the pineal gland—of all those great masters of human thoughts. Yes, he again saw all this, and smiled gently; for since then how many precious facts, how many learned discoveries, had been stored in his mind!
“Ah!” he said to himself, “if the body exhausts itself and becomes feeble, the intelligence develops itself every day. Eternal youth of the soul, which cannot grow old, and completes itself by successive transformations!”
Still farther on was the dwelling of Louise—of good, innocent Louise—who span, singing a simple air, while he, Mathéus, seated on a stool at her feet, gazed on her for entire hours, murmuring, “Louise, do you truly love me?” And she would answer, “You know well, Frantz, that I love you.” Oh, sweet memories! can all have been but a dream?
The good man gave himself up to the charm of these distant recollections; he seemed still to be hearing Louise’s spinning-wheel humming in the silence, when the voice of Coucou Peter scattered his charming illusions.
“Where are you going, Maître Frantz?” he asked.
“Where duty calls us,” replied Mathéus.
“Yes, but to what place?”
“To wherever is most proper for the propagation of the doctrine.”
They had reached the Rue des Arcades, and halted under a lamp.
“Are you not hungry, Maître Frantz?” inquired Coucou Peter.
“Slightly, my friend.”
“Like me,” said the disciple, scratching his ear; “the Great Demiourgos ought to send us a supper.”
Mathéus looked at Coucou Peter; he had not in the least the appearance of jesting, and this fact made Mathéus himself very serious.
For more than a quarter of an hour they watched the people passing through the arcades—sellers crying their wares, pretty girls stopping at the shop-windows, students jingling their spurs on the pavement and smacking their riding-whips, grave professors making their way through the crowd, with packets of books under their arms.
At length Coucou Peter said—
“I think, Maître Frantz, the Being of Beings has forgotten us at the present moment. By my faith, we should do no harm to go and earn a few sous in the beershops, instead of waiting till He sends us a supper. If you knew how to sing, I should say come in with me; but as it is, I’ll go in alone, and you can wait for me at the door.”
This proposition appeared very humiliating to Mathéus, but not knowing what answer to make, he resigned himself, and followed his disciple, who went up the Grande Rue and took his violin out of its bag.
Nothing could be sadder to see than the good Doctor going from public-house to public-house, and watching through the window his disciple dancing sometimes on one leg, sometimes on the other, to support the doctrine. He was obliged to remind himself of his high mission, and say to himself that the Being of Beings wished to test his courage before raising him to the highest experience of glory; he did not fail to despise the rich warehouses, the magnificent displays, the luxury and opulence about him, crying to himself—
“Vanitas vanitatum, est omnia vanitas! Your pride is but as dust, O great ones of the earth! You will pass away like shadows, and be as if you had never been!”
All these sublime truths served very little purpose; and, to add to the distress, Bruno was strongly inclined to enter every inn he came to.
They stopped before more than twenty taverns, and towards nine o’clock Coucou Peter had yet but five sous in his pocket.
“Doctor,” he said, “things are going wrong; here are three sous, if you like to take a glass; for myself, I shall go and buy a loaf, for my stomach is getting emptier every moment.”
“Thanks, Coucou Peter—thanks!” replied the good man, very sadly. “I am not thirsty; but listen to me. I recollect now that Georges Müller, the landlord of the Heron hotel, made me promise never to put up at any other house than his. It was on the last day of our Fuchcommerce, our studies being finished. Georges Müller, seeing that my comrades and I had paid up all our debts, shook us by the hand, and offered us his hotel if by chance any of us returned to Strasbourg. The promise I remember as well as if it had been given to-day, and it is my duty to keep my word.”
“How long ago was it?” inquired Coucou Peter, his face lighting up with hope.
“Five-and-thirty years ago,” replied Mathéus, ingenuously.
“Five-and-thirty years!” cried Coucou Peter. “And do you imagine that Georges Müller is still there?”
“No doubt. I observed his sign as I passed; nothing has been changed.”
“Well, then, let us go to the Heron,” said the disciple, with a downcast air. “If there’s nothing to be gained there, there’s nothing to be lost! May the Great Demiourgos come to our assistance!”