I could almost believe this tradition; for I had seen a nearly similar feat once performed by a woman on a projecting mass of rock in the Ahr Thal. The rock is, doubtless, well known to all who have ascended that lovely Rhine-valley, at eve, to eat Forellen, and drink Wallportzheimer. They who do so, generally return the next morning with an inclination for nothing but the cooling mineral waters to be had at Hippingen.
“Besides,” said Knudtzen, “à-propos to cathedrals, sober principles have done them more injury than jolly Emperors. Do you forget that Caroline Bonaparte razed a cathedral in Italy to the ground?”
“I remember hearing of the deed as connected with a church,” said I; “but I have forgotten the reason alleged for it.”
“It was a very sufficient reason for a Bonaparte. Her Highness lived next door to the church; and she had it destroyed, because the noise of the organ kept her awake, and the smell of the incense made her head ache.”
“Royal minds,” I remarked, “cannot condescend to the weaknesses of common people. According to our ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ the pigeons at Pisa were as destructive as Caroline Bonaparte. Pigeons, for many ages, built under the roof of the great church there. Their dung spontaneously took fire at last; and the church was consumed. But, to return to the old, defunct King of Saxony. He was afflicted with a super-delicate attack of virtue; and, during the prevalence of the disorder, he issued a decree for the expulsion, from his picture-gallery, of all those master-pieces, the merit of which lay in the glory of their flesh-colouring. He had grown as modest as the Monk who declared that he had never seen any portion of his body save his face and hands. He is worthy of going down to posterity arm in arm with that old Polish King, who was a cleaner, but not a less delicate, man than the Monk, and who boasted to his Confessor that his purity of mind was so excessive, that he had never touched his own skin with an ungloved hand. In short, the old King of Saxony admirably illustrated the saying of Dean Swift, that ‘a nice man was a man of nasty ideas.’ He had not been a sparer of the wine-flask. Indeed, he had rather sinned that way; and, in expiation thereof, he undertook to perform a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre on foot. A fever of expectation shook Dresden, all the china in it, and the whole line of road, at the idea of again beholding a Christian King turning to the neglected shrine. The expectation was not altogether fulfilled; but the Monarch, nevertheless, performed the pilgrimage.”
“We never heard of it,” exclaimed the travellers, looking at each other with some manifestation of surprise.
“That is to say,” I resumed, “that his Majesty performed it after a fashion. He inquired the distance from his own country-house at Pilnitz, to the Armenian Convent at the Holy City; and, in spite of his education, he was nothing less than astonished, to find that it was something more serious than a promenade to Töplitz. I do not know if he had a vision of boiling his peas, as an English pilgrim did, of whom I could tell you something; but he certainly experienced some unpleasant sensations at the idea that, the way being so long, he might chance to find himself without peas to boil. He wept at the reflection that he might not only be a devout, but a hungry, King, while one-half of Dresden were solacing their appetites on the terrace of Bruhl, and the other, at the Baths of Link, or at the Bastei. He thought of the dangers; but he would be devout. The attendant pains were great; but the resulting pleasures were not to be denied. In short, he would not go to Jerusalem; but he would perform the pilgrimage. Accordingly, the exact distance having been ascertained, he started from his room, and walked the entire number of leagues by pacing up and down a long gallery, deducting from the distance the amount of water passage, which was but fair. If admiration had been great at the commencement, surprising fun was excited during the performance. Every evening the citizens of Dresden knew how far their religious Ruler had proceeded on his way, or how far he would have proceeded, if he had but set out. Now, he was breakfasting, in imagination, at Breslau; sleeping (in fancy) at Olmutz; and passing, by a pleasant fiction, through Buda. During two days that his Majesty suffered from a real bilious attack, the result, perhaps, of a Barmecidal repast at Essek on the Drave, the King rested at Belgrade, while confined to his bed in Dresden. But his zeal soon re-invigorated his liver; and, as he glided to and fro by his palace windows, the mystified multitude below learned that the Monarch was lodging in the house of the Saxon Legation at Istamboul. The pilgrim-traveller suffered a little from the heat (of the room) as he descended from the western coast of Asia Minor; but the inconveniencies of the route were things beneath the thoughts of him who—whether at Bursa, Smyrna, or any other locality on his way—could ring his bell in the Desert, and order Champagne out of his own cellar. The King was puzzled one mid-day, (he had by calculation just reached Beyrout,) his progress being checked by the unexpected arrival of a portion of the imperial family from Vienna. Visitors of such condition must be attended to; nevertheless, his pilgrimage must be continued; and he, like the clever and facetious palmer that he was, did both. He attended his guests with much politeness, during their stay of two days; and he put down the time thus spent, as consumed in a sea voyage from Beyrout to Acre. The moment they left, the royal pilgrim went ashore again, and happily accomplished the remaining distance to Jerusalem, through Nassara and Nablous, without any other hinderance or obstruction than his going one night to see a French vaudeville, while supposed to be enjoying his well-earned repose at Rama or Muddin. And thus was accomplished that royal pilgrimage that was never performed. The King reached Jerusalem without going there; and the people saw him return who had never departed.”
“Well,” said Harold Knudtzen, “the Kings of Saxony are no longer such simpletons. The present Monarch loves, indeed, good wine, ‘craftily qualified;’ but he also, like Uzziah, King of Judah, loves husbandry. Josephine herself had not half so frantic a passion for flowers as he; and not for flowers alone in their beauty,—not for botany, either, merely for amusement’s sake, but for phytology and pharmacy, as connected with it.”
“He lisped Linnæus,” said Löwenskiold, “before he could speak plainly.”
“And, by reputation, he knew Tournefort better than he did Knecht Rupert,” added Harold.