If in a pawnbroker’s shop you disinter a carved oak chair heavily wreathed in shrouding cobwebs, be sure that it has wandered hither from the old palace on the Ring; and should you chance to espy a rococo mirror, with curiously fretted gold frame, but tarnished and blurred, do not doubt that at some remote period gallant beaux and stately dames of the house of Bruckenthal have mirrored themselves complacently in its surface.
Look closer still in the miscellaneous heap of bric-à-brac which encumbers this same pawnbroker’s back shop, and ten to one you will be able to recognize on some rotting canvas the grim features of old Samuel Bruckenthal himself, or those of his imperial mistress Maria Theresa.
Some of these old portraits, which I passed almost daily in my peregrinations about the town, seemed to look at me so plaintively with their canvas eyes, as though imploring me to release them from their ignoble position, that I had to take pity upon them at last and offer them an asylum in my house.
Few things ever gave me so vivid an impression of the transitory nature of earthly possessions, and the evanescence of power and grandeur, as these scattered relics of an extinct family meeting the eye at every turn; and as the sea of chance was continually casting up some of these shipwrecked treasures, more than one of them happened to drift my way. Thus one day a poor woman brought to my door a delicate little piece of fancy porcelain, which I was glad to purchase for a small sum. About ten inches high, it represents a miniature citron-tree with blossoms and fruit, growing in a gold-hooped tub of exactly the same shape as the wooden cases in which real orange-trees are often planted. An old lady who recollects the vanished days of the Bruckenthal glory recognized this graceful trifle standing on my drawing-room console, and told me that she remembered a whole set of them, pomegranates and citron-trees alternately, with which the table used to be decked out on the occasion of large dinner-parties.
What has become of the many companions of my lonely citron-tree, I wonder? and where are now all the faces that used to meet round that festive board? Tout passe, tout lasse, tout casse!
[CHAPTER XLIV.]
STILL-LIFE AT HERMANSTADT—A TRANSYLVANIAN CRANFORD.
Life at Hermanstadt always gave me the impression of living inside one of those exquisitely minute Dutch paintings of still-life, in which the anatomy of a lobster or the veins on a vine-leaf are rendered with microscopic fidelity, and where such insignificant objects as half-lemons or mouldy cheese-rinds are exalted to the rank of centre-pieces.
During seven months of the year—from April till November—the idyllic quiet of Hermanstadt was certainly not without its charms. So long as the forest was green and the birds were singing, one did not feel the want of other society, and the répertoire of walks and rides furnished variety sufficient for an active body and a contented mind. It has often been remarked of Transylvania, that while resembling no other country precisely, it partakes of the character of many, and that within the space of half a dozen miles you may be reminded of as many different lands. Thus one day your road will take you through a little piece of Dutch scenery, a sluggish stream bordered by squat willow-trees, with at intervals a sprinkling of quaint old Flemish figures; another time it savors perhaps of Rhineland, as your path, leading upward to the top of a sandy hill, loses itself in a labyrinth of luxuriant vineyards; or else you may deem yourself on the Roman Campagna, when, issuing forth on the vast tracts of waste-land, you see shaggy buffaloes standing about in attitudes of lazy enjoyment, leisurely cropping the sunburnt grass or voluptuously steeping their bodies in the cooling bath of a green shining morass.