A list of the strangers visiting Bad-Ems, Langen-Schwalbach, and Schlangenbad, is published twice a week, and circulated on all the promenades. From it, I find that there are 1200 visiters at Schwalbach alone—an immense number for so small a place. Still, the habits of the people are so quiet, that it does not at all bear the appearance of an English watering-place, and certainly I never before existed in a society where people are left so completely to go their own ways. Whether I stroll up and down the promenade or about the town, whether I mount the hill or ramble into distant villages, no one seems to notice me any more than if I had been born there; and yet out of the 1200 strangers, I happen to be the only specimen to be seen of Old England. No one knows that I have given up feasting in public, for it is not the custom to dine always at the same house; but when one o'clock comes, people go to the Allee Saal, Goldene Kette, &c. just as they feel disposed at the moment.
There are no horses to be hired at Schwalbach, but a profusion of donkeys and mules. It is a pretty, gaudy sight to witness a group of these animals carrying ladies in their parti-coloured bonnets, &c. descending one of the hills. The saddles are covered with coarse scarlet, or bright blue cloth, and the donkey always wears a fine red brow-band; nevertheless, under these brilliant colours, to the eye of a cognoscente, it is too easy to perceive that the poor creatures are sick in their hearts of their finery, and that they are tired, almost unto death, of carrying one large curious lady after another to see Hohenstein, Adolfseck, and other lions, which without metaphor are actually consuming the carcasses of these unhappy asses. The other day I myself hired one, but not being allowed to have the animal alone, I was obliged to submit to be followed by the owner, who, by order of the Duke, was dressed in a blue smockfrock, girded by a buff belt.
I found that I could not produce the slightest effect on the animal’s pace, but that if the man behind me only shook his stick, down went the creature’s long ears, and on we trotted. By this arrangement, I was hurried by objects which I wished to look at, and obliged to crawl before what I was exceedingly anxious to leave behind; and altogether it was travelling so very much like a bag of sand, that ever since I have much preferred propelling myself.
[THE SCHWEIN-GENERAL.]
Every morning at half-past five o'clock, I hear, as I am dressing, the sudden blast of an immense long wooden horn, from which always proceed the same four notes. I have got quite accustomed to this wild reveille, and the vibration has scarcely subsided, it is still ringing among the distant hills, when, leisurely proceeding from almost every door in the street, behold a pig! Some, from their jaded, careworn, dragged appearance, are evidently leaving behind them a numerous litter; others are great, tall, monastic, melancholy-looking creatures, which seem to have no other object left in this wretched world than to become bacon; while others are thin, tiny, light-hearted, brisk, petulant piglings, with the world and all its loves and sorrows before them. Of their own accord these creatures proceed down the street to join the herdsman, who occasionally continues to repeat the sorrowful blast from his horn.
Gregarious, or naturally fond of society, with one curl in their tails, and with their noses almost touching the ground, the pigs trot on, grunting to themselves and to their comrades, halting only whenever they come to anything they can manage to swallow.
I have observed that the old ones pass all the carcasses, which, trailing to the ground, are hanging before the butchers’ shops, as if they were on a sort of parole d'honneur not to touch them; the middle-aged ones wistfully eye this meat, yet jog on also, while the piglings, who (so like mankind) have more appetite than judgment, can rarely resist taking a nibble; yet, no sooner does the dead calf begin again to move, than from the window immediately above out pops the head of a butcher, who, drinking his coffee, whip in hand, inflicts a prompt punishment, sounding quite equal to the offence. As I have stated, the pigs, generally speaking, proceed of their own accord; but shortly after they have passed, there comes down our street a little bareheaded, barefooted, stunted dab of a child, about eleven years old,—a Flibbertigibbet sort of creature, which, in a drawing, one would express by a couple of blots, the small one for her head, the other for her body; while, streaming from the latter, there would be a long line ending in a flourish, to express the immense whip which the child carries in its hand. This little goblin page, the whipper-in, attendant, or aid-de-camp of the old pig-driver, facetiously called, at Langen-Schwalbach, the “Schwein-General,” is a being no one looks at, and who looks at nobody. Whether the hofs of Schwalbach are full of strangers, or empty—whether the promenades are occupied by princes or peasants—whether the weather be good or bad, hot or rainy, she apparently never stops to consider; upon these insignificant subjects it is evident she never for a moment has reflected. But such a pair of eyes for a pig have perhaps seldom beamed from human sockets! The little intelligent urchin knows every house from which a pig ought to have proceeded; she can tell by the door being open or shut, and even by footmarks, whether the creature has joined the herd, or whether, having overslept itself, it is still snoring in its sty—a single glance determines whether she shall pass a yard or enter it; and if a pig, from indolence or greediness, be loitering on the road, the sting of the wasp cannot be sharper or more spiteful than the cut she gives it. As soon as finishing with one street, she joins her General in the main road, the herd slowly proceed down the town.
On meeting them this morning, they really appeared to have no hams at all; their bodies were as flat as if they had been squeezed in a vice, and when they turned sideways, their long sharp noses, and tucked-up bellies, gave to their profile the appearance of starved greyhounds.
As I gravely followed this grunting, unearthly-looking herd of unclean spirits, through that low part of Langen-Schwalbach which is solely inhabited by Jews, I could not help fancying that I observed them holding their very breaths, as if a loathsome pestilence were passing; for though fat pork be a wicked luxury—a forbidden pleasure which the Jew has been supposed occasionally in secret to indulge in, yet one may easily imagine that such very lean ugly pigs have not charms enough to lead them astray.