The Schlangenbad water contains the muriates and carbonates of lime, soda, and magnesia, with a slight excess of carbonic acid which holds the carbonates in solution. The celebrated embellishment which it produces on the skin is, in my opinion, a sort of corrosion, which removes tan, or any other artificial covering that the surface may have attained from exposure and ill-treatment by the sun and wind. In short the body is cleaned by it, just as a kitchen-maid scours her copper saucepan; and the effect being evident, ladies modestly approach it from the most distant parts of Europe. I am by no means certain, however, that they receive any permanent benefit; indeed, on the contrary, I should think that their skins would eventually become, if anything, coarser, from the removal of a slight veil or covering, intended by Nature as a protection to the cuticle.
But whether this water be permanently beneficial to ladies or not, the softness it gives to the whole body is quite delightful; and with two elements, air and water, in perfection, I found that I grew every hour more and more attached to the place.
On the cellar-floor, or lower story of my abode (“the New Bad-Haus”), where the baths are situated, there lived an old man and his wife, whose duty it was to prepare the baths, and to give towels, &c. I do not know whether the Schlangenbad waters corrode the temper as well as the skin, yet, certainly, this old couple appeared to me to be continually quarrelling; and every little trifle I required for my bath, though given to me with the greatest good-will, seemed to form a subject of jealous dispute between this subterranean pair. The old woman, however, invariably got the best of the argument,—a triumph which I suspect proceeded more from her physical than moral powers: in short, as is occasionally the case, the old gentleman was afraid of his companion; and I observed that his attitude, as he argued, very much resembled that of a cat in a corner, when spitting in the face of a terrier dog. Finding that they did not work happily together, I always managed to prevent both of them coming to me at once. The old woman, however, insisted on preparing my bath; and, with a great pole in one hand, stirring up the water—a thermometer in the other, and a pair of spectacles blinded with steam on her nose, she very good-naturedly brought the temperature of the water to the proper degree, which is said to be 27 of Reaumur.
After I had had my bath, the old wife being out of the way, I one day paid a visit of compliment to her husband, who had shown, by many little attempted attentions, that he was, had he dared, as anxious as his partner to serve me. With great delight, he showed me several bottles full of serpents; and then, opening a wooden box, he took out, as a fisherwoman would handle eels, some very long ones—one of which (first looking over his shoulder to see that a certain personage was away) he put upon a line, which she had stretched across the room for drying clothes. In order, I suppose, to demonstrate to me that the reptile was harmless, he took it off the rope, along which it was moving very quickly; and, without submitting his project for my approbation, he suddenly placed it on my breast, along which it crawled, until, stretching its long neck with half its body into the air, it held on, in a most singular manner, by a single fold in the cloth, which, by a sort of contortion of the vertebræ, it firmly grasped.
The old man, apparently highly satisfied with this first act of his entertainment, gravely proceeded to show living serpents of all colours and sizes,—stuffed serpents, and serpents’ skins,—all of which seemed very proper hobbies, to amuse the long winter evenings of the aged servant of Schlangenbad, or the Serpents’ Bath.
At last, however, the fellow’s dry, blanched, wrinkled face began to smile. Grinning, as he slowly mounted on a chair, he took from a high shelf a broad-mouthed, white glass bottle, and then, in a sort of savage ecstasy, pronouncing the word “Baromet!” he placed it in my hands.
The bottle was about half full of dirty water—a few dead flies and crumbs of bread were at the bottom—and near the top there was a small piece of thin wood which went about half across the phial. Upon this slender scaffolding, its fishy eyes staring upwards at a piece of coarse linen, which, being tied round the mouth, served as a cork—the shrivelled skin of its under-jaw moving at every sweltering breath which it took—there sat a large, speckled, living toad!
Like Sterne’s captive, he had not by his side “a bundle of sticks, notched with all the dismal days and nights he had passed there;” yet their sum total was as clearly expressed in the unhealthy colour of the poor creature’s skin; and certainly, in my lifetime, I never had seen what might truly be called—a sick toad.
It was quite impossible to help pitying any living being, confined by itself in so miserable a dungeon. However, the old man’s eyes were beaming with pride and delight at what he conceived to be his own ingenuity—and exclaiming “Schönes Wetter!” (fine weather!) he pointed to the wood-work on which the poor creature was sitting—and then he exultingly explained that, so soon as it should be going to rain, the toad would get down into the water. “Baromet!” repeated the old fellow, grinning from ear to ear, as, mounting on the chair, he replaced his prisoner on the shelf.
My first impression was, “coûte qui coûte,” to buy this barometer,—carry its poor captive to the largest marsh I could find,—and then, breaking the bottle into shivers, to give him, what toads appreciate better than mankind—liberty; but, on reflecting a moment, I felt quite sure that the old inquisitor would soon procure another subject for torture; and, as with toads as with ourselves, “c'est le premier pas qui coûte,” I thought it better that this poor imprisoned creature, to a certain degree accustomed to his misery, should exist in it, than that a fresh toad should suffer:—it also occurred to me, that if I should dare to purchase his rude instrument, the ingenious, unfeeling old wretch of a philosopher might be encouraged to make others for sale.