But to return to the Hofrath, or Privy Councillor Froriep, for so was he most rigidly styled. I remember him so well as he used to come slowly down the garden-walk, leaning on his sister’s arm. He was the junior by some years, but no one could have made the discovery now; the thing rested on tradition, however, and was not disputed. The Fräulein Martha von Froriep was the daguerreotype of her brother. To see them sitting opposite each other was actually ludicrous; not only were the features alike, but the expressions tallied so completely that it was as if one face reflected the other. Did the professor look grave, the Fräulein Martha’s face was serious; did he laugh, straightway her features took a merry cast; if his coffee was too hot, or did he burn his fingers with his pipe, the old lady’s sympathies were with him still. The Siamese twins were on terms of distant acquaintanceship, compared with the instinctive relation these two bore each other.
How was it possible, you will ask, that such an eternal similarity should have marked their dispositions? The answer is an easy one. The fräulein was deaf, perfectly destitute of hearing. The last recorded act of her auditory nerves was on the occasion of some public rejoicing, when twenty-four large guns were discharged in a few seconds of time, and by the reverberation broke every window in Göttingen; the old lady, who was knitting at the time, merely stopped her work and called out ‘Come in!’ thinking it was a tap at the room door. To her malady, then, was it owing that she so perfectly resembled the professor, her brother. She watched him with an anxious eye; his face was the dial that regulated every hour of her existence; and as the telegraph repeats the signal that is made to it, yet knows not the interpretation of the sign, so did she signalise the passing emotions of his mind long perhaps after her own could take interest in the cause.
Nothing had a stranger effect, however, than to listen to the professor’s conversation, to which the assent of the deaf old lady chimed in at short and regular intervals. For years long she had been in the habit of corroborating everything he said, and continued the practice now from habit; it was like a clock that struck the hour when all its machinery had run down. And so, whether the Hofrath descanted on some learned question of Greek particles, some much-disputed fact of ancient history, or, as was more often the case, narrated with German broadness some little anecdote of his student life, the old lady’s ‘Ja, ja, den sah ich selbst; da war ich auch!’ (Yes, yes, I saw it myself; I was there, too!) bore testimony to the truth of Tacitus or Herodotus, or, more remarkable still, to these little traits of her brother’s youthful existence, which, to say the least, were as well uncorroborated.
The Hofrath had passed his life as a bachelor—a circumstance which could not fail to surprise, for his stories were generally of his love adventures and perils; and all teemed with dissertations on the great susceptibility of his heart, and his devoted admiration of female beauty—weaknesses of which it was plain he felt vain, and loved to hear authenticated by his old associates. In this respect Blumenbach indulged him perfectly—now recalling to his memory some tender scene, or some afflicting separation, which invariably drew him into a story.
If these little reminiscences possessed not all the point and interest of more adventurous histories, to me at least they were more amusing by the force of truth, and by the singular look, voice, and manner of him who related them. Imagine, then, a meagre old man, about five feet two, whose head was a wedge with the thin side foremost, the nose standing abruptly out, like the cut-water of a man-o’-war gig; a large mouth, forming a bold semicircle, with the convexity downwards, the angles of which were lost in a mass of wrinkles on his withered cheeks; two fierce-looking, fiery, little grey eyes set slantwise in his head without a vestige of eyelash over them. His hair combed back with great precision, and tied behind into a queue, had from long pulling gradually drawn the eyebrows upwards to double their natural height, where they remained fixed, giving to this uncouth face an expression of everlasting surprise—in fact, he appeared as if he were perpetually beholding the ghost of somebody. His voice was a strange, unnatural, clattering sound, as though the machinery of speech had been left a long while without oiling, and could not work flippantly; but to be sure, the language was German, and that may excuse much.
Such was the Herr Hofrath Froriep—once, if you were to believe himself, a lady-killer of the first water. Indeed, still, when he stretched forth his thin and twisted shanks attired in satin shorts and black silk stockings, a gleam of conscious pride would light up his features, and he would seem to say to himself, ‘These legs might do some mischief yet.’ Caroline Pichler, the novelist, had been one of his loves, and, if you believed himself, a victim to his fascinations. However, another version of the tale had obtained currency, and was frequently alluded to by his companions at those moments when a more boastful spirit than they deemed suitable animated his discourse; and at such times I remarked that the Hofrath became unusually sensitive, and anxious to change the subject.
It was one evening, when we sat somewhat later than our wont in the garden, tempted by the delicious fragrance of the flowers and the mild light of a new moon, that at last the Hofrath’s madchen made her appearance, lantern in hand, to conduct him home. She carried on her arm a mass of cloaks, shawls, and envelopes that would have clothed a procession, with which she proceeded leisurely and artistically to dress up the professor and his sister, until the impression came over the bystanders that none but she who hid them in that mountain of wearables would ever be able to discover them again.
‘Ach Gott,’ exclaimed the Hofrath, as she crowned him with a quilted nightcap, whose jaws descended and fastened beneath the chin like an antique helmet, leaving the miserable old face, like an uncouth pattern, in the middle of the Berlin embroidery—‘Ach Gott, but for that!’
‘But for that!’ reiterated old Hausman, in a solemn tone, as if he knew the secret grief his friend alluded to, and gave him all his sympathy.
‘Sit down again, Froriep,’ said Blumenbach; ‘it is an hour too soon for young folk like us to separate. We’ll have a glass of Rosenthaler, and you shall tell us that story.’