It was amusing, too, to hear him talk of Luther, as familiarly as though he had known him personally, mentioning little anecdotes of his career, and repeating his opinions as if they were things of yesterday; but indeed his mind had little more perspective than a Chinese tea-tray—everything stood beside its neighbour, without shadow, or relief of any kind, and to hear him talk, you would say that Melancthon and Marshal Macdonald might have been personal friends, and Martin Luther and Ney passed an evening in the blue salon of the Reuten Krantz. As for Eisenach and all about it, he knew as little as though it were a city of Egypt. He hoped there was a public library now—he knew there was in his father’s time, but the French used to make cartridges with the books in many towns they passed through—perhaps they had done the same here. These confounded French—they seemed some way to fill every avenue of his brain—there was no inlet of his senses, without a French sentinel on guard over it.
Now,—for my sins, I suppose,—it so chanced that I was laid up here for several weeks, with a return of an old rheumatism I had contracted in one of my wanderings. Books, they brought me, but alas! the only volumes a German circulating library ever contains are translations of the very worst French and English works. The weather was, for the most part, rainy and broken, and even when my strength permitted me to venture into the garden, I generally got soundly drenched before I reached the house again. What insupportable ennui is that which inhabits the inn of a little remote town, where come few travellers, and no news! What a fearful blank in existence is such a place. Just think of sitting in the little silent and sanded parlour, with its six hard chairs, and one straight old sofa, upholstered with flock and fleas; counting over the four prints in black wood frames, upon the walls. Scripture subjects, where Judith, with a quilted petticoat and sabots, cuts the head off a Holofernes in buckskins and top boots, and catches the blood in a soup tureen; an Abraham with a horse pistol, is threatening a little Isaac in jacket and trowsers, with a most villanous expression about the corners of his eyes; and the old looking-glass, cracked in the middle, and representing your face, in two hemispheres, with a nose and one eye to each—the whole tinged with a verd antique colouring that makes you look like a man in bronze.
Outside the door, but near enough for every purpose of annoyance, stands a great hulking old clock, that ticks away incessantly—true type of time that passes on its road whether you be sick or sorry, merry or mournful. With what a burr the old fellow announces that he is going to strike—it is like the asthmatic wheezing of some invalid, making an exertion beyond his strength, and then, the heavy plod of sabots, back and forward through the little hall, into the kitchen, and out again to the stable yard; with the shrill yell of some drabbled wench, screaming for “Johann” or “Jacob;” and all the little platitudes of the “ménage” that reach you, seasoned from time to time by the coarse laughter of the boors, or the squabbling sounds that issue streetwards, where some vender of “schnaps” or “kirch-wasser” holds his tap.
What a dreary sensation comes over one, to think of the people who pass their lives in such a place, with its poor little miserable interests and occupations! and how one shudders at the bare idea of sinking down to the level of such a stagnant pool—knowing the small notorieties, and talking like them; and yet, with all this holy horror, how rapidly, and insensibly, is such a change induced. Every day rubs off some former prejudice, and induces some new habit, and, as the eye of the prisoner, in his darksome dungeon, learns to distinguish each object clear, as if in noon-day; so will the mind accommodate itself to the moral gloom of such a cell as this, ay, and take a vivid interest in each slight event that goes on there, as though he were to the “manner born.”
In a fortnight, or even less, I lay awake, conjecturing why the urchin who brought the mail from Gotha, had not arrived;—before three weeks I participated in the shock of the town, at the conduct of the Frow von Bütterwick, who raised the price of Schenkin or Schweinfleisch, I forget which—by some decimal of a farthing; and fully entered into the distressed feelings of the inhabitants, who foretold a European war, from the fact that a Prussian corporal with a pack on his shoulders, was seen passing through the town, that morning, before day-break.
When I came to think over these things, I got into a grievous state of alarm. “Another week, Arthur,” said I, “and thou art done for: Eisenach may claim thee as its own; and the Grand Duke of———, Heaven forgive me! but I forget the Potentate of the realm,—he may summon thee to his counsels, as the Hoch Wohlgeborner und Gelehrter, Herr von O’Leary; and thou may’st be found here some half century hence, with a pipe in thy mouth, and thy hands in thy side pockets, discoursing fat consonants, like any Saxon of them all. Run for it, man, run for it; away, with half a leg, if need be; out of the kingdom with all haste; and if it be not larger than its neighbours, a hop, step, and jump, ought to suffice for it.”
Will any one tell me—I’ll wager they cannot—why it is, that if you pass a week or a month, in any out-of-the-way place, and either from sulk or sickness, lead a solitary kind of humdrum life; that when you are about to take your leave, you find half the family in tears. Every man, woman, and child, thinks it incumbent on them to sport a mourning face. The host wipes his eye with the corner of the bill; the waiter blows his nose in the napkin; the chambermaid holds up her apron; and boots, with a side wipe of his blacking hand, leaves his countenance in a very fit state for the application of the polishing brush. As for yourself, the position is awkward beyond endurance.
That instant you feel sick of the whole household, from the cellar to the garret. You had perilled your soul in damning them all in turn; and now it comes out, that you are the “enfant chéri” of the establishment. What a base, blackhearted fellow you must be all the time; in short, you feel it; otherwise, why is your finger exploring so low in the recesses of your purse. Confound it, you have been very harsh and hasty with the good people, and they did their best after all.
Take up your abode at Mivart’s or the Clarendon; occupy for the six months of winter, the suite of apartments at Crillons or Meurice; engage the whole of the “Schwann” at Vienna; aye, or even the Grand Monarque, at Aix; and I’ll wager my head, you go forth at the end of it, without causing a sigh in the whole household. Don’t flatter yourself that Mivart will stand blubbering over the bill, or Meurice be half choked with his sobs. The Schwann doesn’t care a feather of his wing, and as for the Grand Monarque, you might as well expect his prototype would rise from the grave to embrace you. A civil grin, that half implies, “You’ve been well plucked here,” is the extent of parting emotion, and a tear couldn’t be had for the price of Tokay.
Well, I bid adieu to the Reuten Krantz, in a different sort of mood from what I expected. I shook the old “Rue Branch” himself heartily by the hand, and having distributed a circle of gratuities—for the sum total of which I should have probably been maltreated by a London waiter—I took my staff, and sallied forth towards Weimar, accompanied by a shower of prayers and kind wishes, that, whether sincere or not, made me feel happier the whole day after.