Cassel.
I began this letter at Frankfort, not suspecting that our departure would be so sudden. But as the day approached on which we had been promised the sight of another cabinet of curiosities, I found the D——’s impatience to be gone increase every moment. So sending our apology to the proprietors of two or three which he had asked permission to visit, we passed one day with Madame de Barkhause’s family, and another with Mr. Gogle’s, and then bidding a hasty adieu to our other acquaintances at Frankfort, we set out for this place. We slept the first night at Marburg, and on the second, about midnight, arrived at Cassel.
As the ground is quite covered with snow, the roads bad, and the posts long, we were obliged to take six horses for each chaise, which, after all, in some places moved no faster than a couple of hearses. The D—— bore this with wonderful serenity, contemplating the happy evasion he had made from the cabinets at Frankfort. A slave who had escaped from the mines could not have shown greater satisfaction. His good humour remained proof against all the phlegm and obstinacy of the German postillions, of which one who has not travelled in the extremity of the winter, and when the roads are covered with snow, through this country, can form no idea.
The contrast of character between the French and Germans is strongly illustrated in the behaviour of the postillions of the two countries.
A French postillion is generally either laughing, or fretting, or singing, or swearing, all the time he is on the road. If a hill or a bad road oblige him to go slow, he will of a sudden fall a cracking his whip above his head for a quarter of an hour together, without rhyme or reason; for he knows the horses cannot go a bit faster, and he does not intend they should. All this noise and emotion, therefore, means nothing; and proceeds entirely from that abhorrence of quiet which every Frenchman sucks in with his mother’s milk.
A German postillion, on the contrary, drives four horses with all possible tranquillity. He neither sings, nor frets, nor laughs: he only smokes;—and when he comes near a narrow defile, he sounds his trumpet to prevent any carriage from entering at the other end till he has got through. If you call to him to go faster, he turns about, looks you in the face, takes his pipe from his mouth, and says, Yaw, Mynher;—yaw, yaw; and then proceeds exactly in the same pace as before. He is no way affected whether the road be good or bad; whether it rains, or shines, or snows:—And he seems to be totally regardless of the people whom he drives, and equally callous to their reproach or applause. He has one object of which he never loses sight, which is, to conduct your chaise and the contents from one post to another, in the manner he thinks best for himself and the horses. And unless his pipe goes out (in which case he strikes his flint and rekindles it), he seems not to have another idea during the whole journey.
Your best course is to let him take his own way at first, for it will come to that at last.—All your noise and bluster are vain.
Non vultus instantis tyranni
Mente quatit solida, neque Auster
Dux inquieti turbidus Adriæ,