This brief intercourse has at least taught me one thing,—which is not to look down with any depreciating pity on the troops of these wayfarers we pass on the road, still less to ridicule their absurd appearance, or make a jest of their varied costume. I now know that amidst those motley figures are men of shrewd intelligence and cultivated minds, content to follow the very humblest callings, and quite satisfied if their share of this world's good things never rises higher than black bread and a cup of sour wine. I should like greatly to see something more of the gypsy life they lead, and if ever the opportunity offer, shall certainly not suffer it to escape me.
We left the inn of the Moorg Thal at daybreak, my mother and Mary Anne in one carriage, the governor and myself in a little open calèche. He spoke little, and seemed deep in thought all the way. From an occasional expression he dropped, I dreaded to surmise that he had resolved on returning to Ireland. One remark which he made of more than ordinary bitterness was: "If we go on as we are doing, we shall at length close every town of Europe against us. We left Brussels in shame, and now we quit Baden in disgrace: the sooner this ends the better."
We did not proceed the whole way to Baden, but stopped about a mile from it, at a village called Lichtenthal, where we found a comfortable inn, with moderate charges. From this I was despatched to our hotel, after nightfall, to arrange our affairs, settle our bill, fetch away our baggage, and make all necessary arrangements for departure.
I am free to own that I entered on my mission with no common sense of shame. I knew, of course, how our story had by this time become the table-talk of Baden, and how, from the prince to the courier, "the Dodds" were the only topic. Such notoriety as this is no boon, and I confess, Bob, that I believe I could have submitted my hand to the knife with less shrinking of the spirit than I raised it to pull the door-bell of the Hôtel de Russie.
When a man has to encounter an anticipated humiliation, he usually puts on an extra amount of offensive armor. I suppose mine, on this occasion, must have been of unquestionable strength. None seemed willing to put it to the proof. The host was humble,—the waiters cringing,—the very porter fawned on me! The secretary—at your flash hotels abroad they always have a secretary, usually a Pole, who has an immense estate under sequestration somewhere,—this dread functionary, who, in presenting you the bill, ever gives you to understand that he is quite prepared to afford you personal satisfaction for any item in the score,—even he, I say, was bland, courteous, and gentle. I little knew at the moment to what circumstance I owed all this unexpected politeness, and that this silky courtesy was a very different testimony from what I suspected; it being neither more nor less than the joyful astonishment of the household at seeing one of us again, and an amazement, rising to enthusiastic delight, at the bare possibility of our paying our bill! Already in their estimation the "Dodd family" had been pronounced swindlers, and various speculations were abroad as to the value of the several trunks, imperials, and valises we had left behind us.
My mother, in her abject misery,—you may imagine the amount of it from the circumstance,—had given me her bank-book, with full liberty to deal with the balance in her favor. In fact, such was her dread of encountering one of her former acquaintances, that I verily believe she would have agreed to an exile to Siberia rather than pass one more week at Baden. Our bill was a swingeing one. With all the external show of politeness, I plainly saw that they treated us just as Napoleon used to treat a conquered nation whose imputed misconduct had outlawed it! For us there was no appeal; we could not threaten the indignation of powerful friends,—the terrors of fashionable exposure,—not even the hackneyed expedient of a letter in the "Times"! Alas! we had ceased to be "reasonable and sufficient bail" for any statement.
Such charges never were seen before, I 'd swear. Dinners and suppers figured as unimportant matters. It was the "extraordinaires" that ruined us; for your hotel-keeper is obliged, for very shame's sake, to observe a semblance of decorum in his demands for recognized items. It is in the indefinable that he revels; just as your geographer indulges every caprice of his imagination when laying down the limits of land and water at the Pole!
It would not amuse, nor could it instruct you, were I to give the details of this iniquitous demand. I shall therefore spare you all, save the grand fact of the total, wherein something less than six weeks' living of four people, with as many servants, amounts to a fraction under three hundred pounds sterling! Meanwhile, the price of rooms, breakfasts, beds, &c, were all reasonable enough. It was "Éclairage," "Service," "Réceptions, Mardi," "Mercredi," and "Jeudi." These were the heavy artillery, to which all the rest was a light-dropping fire. This bill-settling is indeed an awful process; for when you rally from the first horror-stricken feelings that the sum total calls up, and are blandly asked by the smirking secretary, "To what is it that Monsieur objects?" you are totally powerless and prostrated. Your natural impulse would be to say, "To the whole of it,—to that infamous row of figures at the bottom!"
In all probability, you never made an hotel bill in your life. The wretches know this, and they feel the full force of your unhappy situation. Just fancy a surgeon saying, "What particular part of the operation do you dislike, sir? It can't be the first incision; I made it in Cooper's method,—one sweep of the knife. You surely have no complaint about the arteries,—I took them up in eighteen seconds by a stop-watch." "What do I care for all this?" you answer. "I know nothing about science, but I am fully open to the impression of pain." Nothing, however, kills me like the fellow saying, "If Monsieur thinks the lemonade too dear, we'll take off half a franc." Two-and-sixpence deducted from a bill of three hundred pounds!
I went through all this, and more. I went through special appeal cases, from twenty subordinates, on peculiar infractions of broken heads, smashed crockery, and damaged furniture, which each assured me in turn "would be charged against him" if Monsieur had not the honorable "consideration"—that's the formula—to pay it. I satisfied some, I compromised with others; I resisted none. No, Bob. There was no "locus standi," as you would call it, for opposition. None of the Dodds could come into court, and claim to be heard as witnesses.