Olla Podrida

by Frederick Marryat

Strasbourg is full of the pomp and circumstance of war. Being one of the keys of France, it has a garrison of ten thousand men, and the drums and bands play from morning to evening, much to the delight of the children, at all events. It is a well-built town, although the houses are most of them of very ancient date, with three stories of mansardes, in their high-peaked roofs. I am rather partial to the Alsatian character; it is a combination of French, Swiss, and German, which make a very good cross. Not being in any particular hurry, I have remained here ten days, and I will say for Strasbourg, that it has many recommendations. It is lively and bustling; the walks outside the ramparts are beautiful, and living is very reasonable. It has, however, the reputation of being a very unhealthy place, and, I am afraid, with truth. It is singular that the beautiful cathedral, although it has already suffered so much by lightning, has not yet been fitted with a conductor. There was a meeting of the dignitaries some years back; some argued in favour and some against it, and it ended in neither party being persuaded, and nothing being done. I met another Englishman here, to whom the question might so properly be put, “What the deuce are you doing here?” An old worthy, nearly seventy, who, after having passed his fair allowance of life very happily in his own country, must, forsooth, come up the Rhine, without being able to speak a word of French, or any other language but his own. He very truly told me that he had just begun to see the world at a time that he should be thinking of going out of it. He honoured me with the office of interpreter as long as he stayed, and I was not sorry to see him booked for the steam-boat, all the way to the London Custom House stairs.

There is one remarkable point about the town of Strasbourg, which is, that the Protestants and Catholics have, I believe always, and do now, live in a state of amity which ought to be an example to others. In running over the history of the town, I do not find that they ever persecuted each other; but if they have not persecuted each other, I am shocked to say that they have not spared the Jews. At the time of the plague, they accused the Jews of having occasioned it by poisoning the wells, and only burnt alive two thousand of them at once! I wonder when the lightning struck the cathedral they did not drown two thousand more in the Rhine—strange Christianity! when smitten by the hand of God, to revenge themselves by smiting their fellow-creatures. I had to call upon a Professor here upon some business; he amused me very much; he fancied that he could speak English: perhaps he might have been able to do so at one time, but if so, he had forgotten it, but he did not think he had. I addressed him in French, and told him my business. “Sir, you speak English?”—“Yes,” replied I. “Then, Sir, I tell you that—” Then he stopped, pondering and perplexed for some minutes, without saying a syllable. “Speak French, Sir,” said I; “I perceive that you have forgotten a word in our language;” and I then put another leading question to him, to which he replied, “Yes, I recollect that very well, and I—” Then another dead pause for the verb. I waited a minute in perfect silence, but his memory was as treacherous as he was obstinately bent upon talking English, and then I again spoke to him, and he replied, “That is true, that you must—” Then he broke down again, and I broke up the conference, as I really could not wait until he formed English words, and he was evidently resolved that he would speak in no other language. Fortunately, it was no business of my own, but a commission from another, which ended in an omission, which, perhaps, did quite as well.

This morning I strolled into a small débit de tabac, to fill my box, and it being excessively warm, was not sorry to sit down and enter into a conversation with the young woman who attended upon the customers. I asked her, among other questions, if the shop was hers. She replied, “That she had hired the license.” This answer struck me, and I inquired if she could obtain a license for herself. She replied, “No, unless,” said she, laughing, “I should marry some old estropié who has been worn out in the service.” She then informed me of what I was not aware which is, that instead of giving pensions to the old militaires, they give them, and them only, the licenses for selling tobacco. They may either carry on the trade themselves, or may lease out their licenses to others, for as much as they can obtain for it per year.

I perceive that the Gallic cock now struts on the head of the staff, bearing regimental colours, instead of the eagle of Napoleon. They certainly have made the cock a most imposing bird, but still a cock is not an eagle. The couplets written upon this change, which was made by Louis Philippe, are somewhat sarcastic:—

“Le vaillant coq Gaulois,
Grattant sur le fumier,
A fait sortir le roi
Louis Philippe Premier;
Qui par juste reconnoissance
Le mit dans les armes de France.”

Did not sleep very comfortably this night; there were too many of us in the bed, and all of us bits of philosophers. I am a bit of a philosopher myself, and surely fleas cannot be considered more than very little bits. All French fleas are philosophers, it having been fairly established by a French punster that they belong to the secte—d’Epicure (des piqueurs).

The English who go up the Rhine to Switzerland generally proceed on the German side. Few pass through Alsace or German France, and those who do, take the shortest route, by which they avoid Colmar. As I took the longest in preference, I shall in few words point out the features of the country. You pass through the valley of the Rhine, which is flat and fertile to excess, the only break in the uniformity of the country being the chain of Vorges mountains, distant about eight miles on your right, and the occasional passage of the dry bed of a winter torrent from the mountains. The cathedral at Colmar is well worth seeing. In outward architecture it is not very remarkable, but its painted windows are quite as fine as those of Strasbourg; and, in one point, it excels all the cathedrals I have seen, which is the choir, handsomely carved in oak, and with good pictures let into the panels. It is in better taste, more solid, and less meretricious in its ornaments, than any I know of. It has also a very fine pulpit, the whole of which, as well as the steps and balustrade leading up to it, is of fine marble. At Colmar, the eye will be struck with the peculiarity of architecture in some of the old buildings; it very often is pure Saracenic. The roads being excellent, we arrived in good time at Basle.

Once more in Switzerland; I have more pleasure now in revisiting a country which has left pleasant reminiscences in my mind, than in passing through one hitherto unexplored. In the latter case, I am usually disappointed. When we revisit those spots in which our childhood was passed, how invariably do we find that the memory is true to what the place appeared to us when children, and hardly to be recognised when our ideas and powers of mind have been developed and enlarged in proportion with our frames. Is it possible? thought I, when I returned, after a lapse of fifteen years, to the house of my childhood out of mere curiosity, for my family had long quitted it. Is this the pond which appeared so immense to my eyes, and this the house in my memory so vast? Why it is a nutshell! I presume that we estimate the relative size of objects in proportion to our stature, and, as when children, we are only half the size of men, of course, to children, everything appears to be twice the size which it really is. And not only the objects about us, but everything in the moral world as well. Our joy is twice the joy of others, and our grief, for the moment, twice as deep: and these joys and griefs all for trifles. Our code of right and wrong is equally magnified: trifles appeared to be crimes of the first magnitude, and the punishments, slight as they were, enough to dissolve our whole frame into tears until we were pardoned. Oh dear! all that’s gone, as Byron says—

“No more, no more, O never more on me,
The freshness of the heart shall fall like dew.”

The cathedral at Basle is nearly one thousand years old, which is a ripe old age, even for a cathedral. I believe that it is only in Switzerland, and England, and Holland, that you find the Protestants in possession of these edifices, raised to celebrate the Catholic faith.