The great fundamental maxim instilled into the mind of every young man entering upon his university career is the vast superiority that students enjoy over all classes in the creation, of what rank soever. The honest citizen of every university town is rudely denominated Philistine in contradistinction to the chosen few; and to such an extent is this carried, that no ties of relationship can mitigate the severity of a law which forbids the student to hold conversation with a burgher. This necessarily leads to counteraction, and woe be to the unhappy townsman who refuses aught to his lordly patron. I well recollect an adventure, the relation of which will set this system in a clearer light than if I were prosing for hours in the abstract.
I was lolling one evening on my sofa enjoying a volume of Kotzebue over my coffee, when my door opened and a tall young man entered. His light-blue frock and long sabre bespoke him a Prussian, no less than the white stripe upon his cloth cap, which, placed on one side of his head with true Burschen familiarity, he made no motion to remove. He immediately addressed me—
“You are an Englishman studying here?”
“Yes.”
“You deal for coffee, et cetera, with Vaust in the Weender Strasse?”
“Yes.”
“Well then, do so no longer.”
This was said not with any menacing air but with the most business-like composure. He seemed to think he had said enough, but judging from my look of surprise that I had not clearly comprehended the full force of the sorites which had led to this conclusion, he added, by way of explanation,—
“I have lived two years in his house, and on my asking this morning he refused to lend me fourteen louis d’or.”
Immediately perceiving the drift of this visit, I recovered presence of mind enough to ask what the consequence would be if I neglected this injunction.