37. CYCLE.
They were expecting every day in Pestitz the return of the German gentleman M. de Bouverot, who had been in Haarhaar, putting the last retouching hand to the almost sketched marriage contract between Luigi and a Haarhaar princess, Isabella. Augusti was not partial to him, and even said Bouverot had no honnêteté;[72] and related the following, but with the soft irony of a man of the world:
Some years before, Bouverot had been sent by the court of Haarhaar[73] to the Pope at Rome, in relation to certain canonical difficulties; just at the time when Luigi also made the princely procession to Rome, together with his Romish indictions.[74] Now Haarhaar, which in truth already went chapeau-bas with the princely hat of Hohenfliess, and had every possible officinal prospect of wearing it, would not, for this very reason, present the appearance of looking with cold eyes on the extinction of the race of Hohenfliess, the more, as the very male support of the line, Luigi, even in his first years, was not a hero of any great nervous significance. Nay, it must needs be a matter of some consequence to the court of Haarhaar that the good thin autumn-flowerage should return, if possible, otherwise than it went out; and even on such grounds it privily instructed the German gentleman to rule and watch over all his pleasures and pains as maître de plaisirs,—especially with maîtresses de plaisirs,—in such a manner as to give perfect satisfaction in this respect. Meanwhile, if our princely abiturient[75] had started pure as a fœtus, unhappily he was brought back ground down to a punctum saliens, especially as, by sundry caprioles and other leaps through the hoop of pleasure, he was spoiled for the leap into the knight's saddle. It may be possible that the German gentleman was too sanguine in his expectations of the rejuvenescence of the Prince; yes, he may have imitated the youth-restoring, wondrous essence of the Marquis d'Aymar,[76] whereby an innocent old lady, who anointed herself with the elixir more than her years required, was, through the excessive renovation, reduced to a little child. In short, by this crusade under the Knight of the Cross, Bouverot, the princely seat of Hohenfliess—as is often the consequence of crusades—will be left open at the proper time, and Haarhaar will seat itself thereon.
I confess reluctantly that Albano, in the beginning,—because, with all his sharp-sightedness, his purity was quite as great,—comprehended the fact only confusedly; but when he did get the idea, it was to him pharmaceutic manna, as it was to Schoppe Israelitish. "The Knight of the Cross," said the latter, "beareth not his cross in vain,—it does him quite as much service as one daubed on the houses in Italy does to them: not a soul may do on either of them what even in Rome may be done before every antechamber."
Not long after that our three friends were going out into the street just at the hour when the noisy carriages rolled along to tea and play, when a litter was carried by before them with the seat backward, whereupon, however, a man was sitting. "Holy Father!" cried Schoppe, "in there sits, bodily, Cephisio, from Rome, who must sometime or other give me a sound drubbing."—"Softly, softly!" said Augusti, "that is the German gentleman; Cephisio is his Arcadian name."[77]—"Well, I rejoice so much the more that I once in my life had a hearty, downright set-to with the red-nose," said he, turning round and accompanying the litter, with his arms thrust under it, for almost ten paces, in order to get a better view of the caged bird, before the latter snatched-to the curtains. Albano caught a glimpse within the litter, as it passed swiftly along, only of a sharp eye drawn like a dagger, and a red-glowing nose-bud.
Schoppe came back and related the transactions in Rome. He said, against all mortal sinners, blood-guilty men, and imps of iniquity he bore no such bitter and grim wrath as against professional bankers, croupiers,[78] and Grecs; if he had a canker-worm-iron wherewith he might scrape away this vermin from the earth, or a cochineal-mill wherewith he might grind them to powder, he would do it most cordially. "O heavens!" he then broke out, "had I in fact my foot just stretched out over the curling, coiling worm-stalk (and though that foot had the gout in it), I would gladly dash it down upon them, and tread out the vile filth." But what he could, he did. Being his own travelling servant, and a decoy-spider, darting to and fro through all Europe, he had full often the pleasure of getting these faro-leaf-caterpillars and leaf-sappers under his thumb,—of becoming their pretended associate,—learning their tactics,—and then rolling some fire-wheel or other into their hissing snakes'-hole. I am not intimately instructed whether it is known in Leipsic who the ringleader was that, a short time since, at the fair, played a mock-police with mimic-constables, and broke up a bank;—at least the bankers were altogether out on the subject, because they were expecting the real police the next day, and were begging for some indulgences and illegal-benefits; but I am in a condition here to name the thief-catcher: it was Schoppe. The spoils he applied mostly to the purpose of running new mines under the faro-tables.
With Cephisio he had played his cards otherwise. He stepped up before his bank, and looked on for some minutes, and at last presented a card with a shield-louis-d'or. It won, and he showed behind the card a long roll of louis. Bouverot would not pay this roll. "He had not seen anything," he said. "What is your croupier sitting there for, then?" said Schoppe, and pronounced them swindlers, if they did not pay. To escape greater damage, they paid him his winnings. He took the money coldly, and departed, with these words to the Pointeurs: "Gentlemen, I assure you, you are playing here with finished cheats; but they have paid me only because I knew them." Amidst the increasing stiffness and paleness of the partners he turned, and slowly, with his broad-shouldered, compact figure, and his knotty cudgel, walked away unscathed.
Augusti wished from his heart—for the persecution's sake—that Bouverot might not know the Librarian again. They found at home an invitation from the Minister to tea and supper. "The poor daughter!" said Augusti; "for the sake of this Bouverot, the half-blind one must go to-morrow to the table." Meanwhile, our youth will then surely see her again at last, and only a spring-day separates him from the dearest object! If Augusti is right, then my observation fits in here, that a good sound villain is always the motive-pike which sets the still, quaker-like carp-tribe in the pond to swimming; the hidden pock-matter, which brings cold children at once to life.