When the Hofrath concluded, he poured the remainder of the Rosenthaler into his glass, and bowing to each in turn, wished us good-night, while taking the Fraulein Martha’s arm they both disappeared in the shade, as the little party broke up and each wended his way homeward.
CHAPTER XXI. THE STUDENT
If I were not sketching a real personage, and retailing an anecdote once heard, I should pronounce the Hofrath von Froriep a fictitious character, for which reason I bear you no ill-will if you incline to that opinion. I have no witness to call in my defence. There were but two Englishmen in Gottingen in my day; one of them is now no more. Poor fellow! he had just entered the army; his regiment was at Corfu, and he was spending the six months of his first leave in Germany. We chanced to be fellow-travellers, and ended by becoming friends. When he left me, it was for Vienna, from which after a short stay he departed for Venice, where he purchased a yacht, and with eight Greek sailors sailed for a cruise through the Ionian Islands. He was never seen alive again; his body, fearfully gashed and wounded, was discovered on the beach at Zante. His murderers, for such they were, escaped with the vessel, and never were captured. Should any Sixty-first man throw his eye over these pages he will remember that I speak of one beloved by every one who knew him. With all the heroic daring of the stoutest heart, his nature was soft and gentle as a child’s. Poor G——! some of the happiest moments of my life were spent with you; some of the saddest, in thinking over your destiny.
You must take my word for the Hofrath, then, good reader. They who read the modern novels of Germany—the wild exaggerations of Fouqué and Hoffman, Musaeus and Tieck—will comprehend that the story of himself has no extravagance whatever. To ascribe language and human passions to the lower animals, and even to the inanimate creation, is a favourite German notion, the indulgence of which has led to a great deal of that mysticism which we find in their writings; and the secret sympathies of cauliflowers and cabbages for young ladies in love is a constant theme among this class of novelists.
A word now of the students, and I have done. Whatever the absurdities in their code of honour, however ludicrous the etiquette of the ‘comment’ as it is called, there is a world of manly honesty and true-heartedness among them. There is nothing mean or low, nothing dishonourable or unworthy in the spirit of the Burschen-schaft. Exaggerated ideas of their own importance, an overweening sense of their value to the Fatherland, there are in abundance, as well as a mass of crude, unsettled notions about liberty and the regeneration of Germany. But, after all, these are harmless fictions; they are not allied to any evil passions at the time, they lead to no bad results for the future. The murder of Kotzebue, and the attempt on the life of Napoleon by Staps, were much more attributable to the mad enthusiasm of the period than to the principles of the Student-league. The spirit of the nation revolted at the tyranny they had so long submitted to, and these fearful crimes were the agonised expression of endurance pushed to madness. Only they who witnessed the frantic joy of the people when the tide of fortune turned against Napoleon, and his baffled legions retreated through Germany on their return from the Russian campaign, can understand how deeply stored were the wrongs for which they were now to exact vengeance. The Völker Schlacht (the ‘people’s slaughter’), as they love to call the terrible fight of Leipsic, was the dreadful recompense of all their sufferings.
When the French Revolution first broke out, the German students, like many wiser and more thinking heads than theirs in our own country, were struck with the great movement of a mighty people in their march to liberty; but when, disgusted with the atrocities that followed, they afterwards beheld France the first to assail the liberties and trample on the freedom of every other country, they regarded her as a traitor to the cause she once professed. And while their apathy in the early wars of the republican armies marked their sympathy with the wild notions of liberty of which Frenchmen affected to be the apostles in Europe, yet when they saw the lust of conquest and the passion for dominion usurp the place of those high-sounding virtues—Liberté, Egalité—the reverse was a tremendous one, and may well excuse, if excuse were needful, the proud triumph of the German armies when they bivouacked in the streets of Paris.
The changed fortunes of the Continent have of course obliterated every political feature in the student life of Germany; or if such still exist, it takes the form merely of momentary enthusiasm in favour of some banished professor, or a Burschen festival in honour of some martyr of the Press. Still their ancient virtues survive, and the German student is yet a type—one of the few remaining—-of the Europe of thirty years ago. Long may he remain so, say I; long may so interesting a land have its national good faith and brotherly affection rooted in the minds of its youth; long may the country of Schiller, of Wieland, and of Goethe possess the race of those who can appreciate their greatness, or strive to emulate their fame!
I leave to others the task of chronicling their beer orgies, their wild festivals, and their duels; and though not disposed to defend them on such charges, I might, were it not invidious, adduce instances nearer home of practices little more commendable. At those same festivals, at many of which I have been present, I have heard music that would shame most of our orchestras, and listened to singing such as I have never heard surpassed except within the walls of a grand opera. And as to their duelling, the practice is bad enough in all conscience; but still I would mention one instance, of which I myself was a witness, and perhaps even in so little fertile a field we may find one grain of goodly promise.
Among my acquaintances in Gôttingen were two students, both Prussians, and both from the same small town of Magdebourg. They had been school-fellows, and came together to the University, where they lived together on terms of brotherly affection, which even there, where friendship takes all the semblance of a sacred compact, was the subject of remark. Never were two men less alike, however, than these. Eisendecker was a bold, hotheaded fellow, fond of all the riotous excesses of Burschen life; his face, seamed with many a scar, declared him a ‘hahn,’ as in student phrase a confirmed duellist is termed. He was ever foremost in each scheme of wild adventure, and continually being brought up before the senate on some charge of insubordination. Von Mühry, his companion, was exactly the opposite. His sobriquet—for nearly every student had one—was ‘der Zahme (the gentle),’ and never was any more appropriate. His disposition was mildness itself. He was very handsome, almost girlish in his look, with large blue eyes and fine, soft silky hair, which, Germanlike, he wore upon his neck. His voice—the index of his nature—soft, low, and musical, would have predisposed you at once in his favour. Still, those disparities did not prevent the attachment of the two youths; on the contrary, they seemed rather to strengthen the bond between them—each, as it were, supplying to the other the qualities which Nature had denied him. They were never separate in lecture-room, at home, or in the allée (as the promenade was called) or in the garden, where each evening the students resorted to sup, and listen to the music of the Jâger band. Eisendecker and Mühry were names that no one ever heard separated, and when one appeared the other was never more than a few yards off.