The theatre is closed; its little stars, dispersed among the small capitals, have shrunk back to their former proportions of third and fourth-rate parts—for though butterflies in July, they are mere grubs in December. The clink of the croupier’s mace is no longer heard, revelling amid the five-franc pieces; all is still and silent in that room which so late the conflict of human passion, hope, envy, fear, and despair, had made a very hell on earth.
The donkeys, too, who but the other day were decked in scarlet trappings, are now despoiled of their gay panoply, and condemned to the mean drudgery of the cart. Poor beasts! their drooping ears and fallen heads seem to show some sense of their changed fortunes; no longer bearing the burden of some fair-cheeked girl or laughing boy along the mountain-side, they are brought down to the daily labour of the cottage, and a cutlet is no more like a mutton-chop than a donkey is like an ass.
So does everything suffer a ‘sea-change.’ The modiste, whose pretty cap with its gay ribbons was itself an advertisement of her wares, has taken to a close bonnet and a woollen shawl—a metamorphosis as complete as is the misshapen mass of cloaks and mud-boots of the agile danseuse, who flitted between earth and air a few moments before. Even the doctor—and what a study is the doctor of a watering-place!—even he has laid by his smiles and his soft speeches, folded up in the same drawer with his black coat for the winter. He has not thrown physic to the dogs, because he is fond of sporting, and would not injure the poor beasts, but he has given it an au revoir; and as grouse come in with autumn, and black-cock in November, so does he feel chalybeates are in season on the first of May. Exchanging his cane for a Manton, and his mild whisper for a dog-whistle, he takes to the pursuit of the lower animals, leaving men for the warmer months.
All this disconcerts one. You hate to be present at those déménagements, where the curtains are coming down, and the carpet is being taken up; where they are nailing canvas across pictures, and storing books into pantries. These smaller revolutions are all very detestable, and you gladly escape into some quiet and retired spot, and wait till the fussing be over. So felt I. Had I come a month later, this place would have suited me perfectly, but this process of human moulting is horrible to witness; and so, say I once more, En route.
Like a Dutchman who took a run of three miles to jump over a hill, and then sat down tired at the foot of it, I flurried myself so completely in canvassing all the possible places I might, could, would, should, or ought to pass the winter in, that I actually took a fortnight to recover my energies before I could set out.
Meanwhile I had made a close friendship with a dyspeptic countryman of mine, who went about the Continent with a small portmanteau and a very large medicine-chest, chasing health from Naples to Paris, and from Aix-la-Chapelle to Wildbad, firmly persuaded that every country had only one month in the year at most wherein it were safe to live there—Spa being the appropriate place to pass the October. He cared nothing for the ordinary topics that engross the attention of mankind; kings might be dethroned and dynasties demolished; states might revolt and subjects be rebellious—all he wanted to know was, not what changes were made in the code but in the pharmacopoeia. The liberty of the Press was a matter of indifference to him; he cared little for what men might say, but a great deal for what it was safe to swallow, and looked upon the inventor of blue-pill as the greatest benefactor of mankind. He had the analysis of every well and spring in Germany at his fingers’ end, and could tell you the temperature and atomic proportions like his alphabet. But his great system was a kind of reciprocity treaty between health and sickness, by which a man could commit any species of gluttony he pleased when he knew the peculiar antagonist principle. And thus he ate—I was going to say like a shark, but let me not in my ignorance calumniate the fish; for I know not if anything that ever swam could eat a soup with a custard pudding, followed by beef and beetroot, stewed mackerel and treacle, pickled oysters and preserved cherries, roast hare and cucumber, venison, salad, prunes, hashed mutton, omelettes, pastry, and finally, to wind up with effect, a sturgeon baked with brandy-peaches in his abdomen—a thing to make a cook weep and a German blessed. Such was my poor friend, Mr. Bartholomew Cater, the most thin, spare, emaciated, and miserable-looking man that ever sipped at Schwalbach or shivered at Kissingen.
To permit these extravagances in diet, however, he had concocted a code of reprisals, consisting of the various mineral waters of Germany and the poisonous metals of modern pharmacy; and having established the fact that ‘bitter wasser’ and ‘Carlsbad,’ the ‘Powon’ and ‘Pilnitz,’ combined with blue-pill, were the natural enemies of all things eatable, he swallowed these freely, and then left the matter to the rebellious ingredients—pretty much as the English used to govern Ireland in times gone by: set both parties by the ears, and wait the result in peace, well aware that a slight derangement of the balance, from time to time, would keep the contest in motion. Such was the state policy of Mr. Cater, and I can only say that his constitution survived it, though that of Ireland seems to suffer grievously from the experiment.
This lively gentleman was then my companion; indeed, with that cohesive property of your true bore, he was ever beside me, relating some little interesting anecdote of a jaundice or a dropsy, a tertian or a typhus, by which agreeable souvenirs he preserved the memory of Athens or Naples, Rome or Dresden, fresh and unclouded in his mind. Not satisfied, however, with narration, like all enthusiasts he would be proselytising; and whether from the force of his arguments or the weakness of my nature, he found a ready victim in me, insomuch that under his admirable instruction I was already beginning to feel a dislike and disgust to all things edible, with an appetite only grown more ravenous, while my reverence for all springs of unsavoury taste and smell—once, I must confess, at a deplorably low ebb—was gradually becoming more developed. It was only by the accidental discovery that my waistcoat could be made to fit by putting it twice round me, and that my coat was a dependency of which I was scarcely the nucleus, that I really became frightened. ‘What!’ thought I, ‘can this be that Arthur O’Leary whom men jested on his rotundity? Is this me, around whom children ran, as they would about a pillar or a monument, and thought it exercise to circumambulate? Arthur, this will be the death of thee; thou wert a happy man and a fat before thou knewest Kochbrunnens and thermometers; run while it is yet time, and be thankful at least that thou art in racing condition.’
With noiseless step and cautious gesture, I crept downstairs one morning at daybreak. My enemy was still asleep. I heard him muttering as I passed his door; doubtless he was dreaming of some new combination of horrors, some infernal alliance of cucumbers and quinine. I passed on in silence; my very teeth chattered with fear. Happy was I to have them to chatter! another fortnight of his intimacy, and they would have trembled from blue-pill as well as panic! With a heavy sigh I paid my bill, and crossed the street towards the diligence office. One place only remained vacant—it was in the banquette. No matter, thought I, anywhere will do at present.
‘Where is monsieur going?—for there will be a place vacant in the coupé at—’