Yet, we altogether doubt that family alliances have much weight in times of trouble. Of course, in times of peace, they may facilitate the common business of politics. But, when powerful interests appear on the stage, the matrimonial tie is of slender importance; kindred put on their coats-of-mail, and, like Francis of Austria and his son-in-law Napoleon, they throw shot and shell at each other without any ceremony. It is only in poetry that Cupid is more powerful than either Mammon or Mars.
The next lion is Frankfort—a very old lion, 'tis true, but one of the noblest cities of Germany, connected with high recollections, and doing honour, by its fame, to the spirit of commerce. Frankfort has been always a striking object to the traveller; but it has shared, or rather led the way to the general improvement. Its shops, streets, and public buildings all exhibit that march, which is so much superior to the "march of mind," panegyrised by our rabble orators—the march of industry, activity, and invention; Frankfort is one of the liveliest and pleasantest of continental residences.
But the Marquis is discontented with the inns; which, undoubtedly, are places of importance to the sojourner—perhaps of much more importance than the palaces. He reckons them by a "sliding scale;" which, however, is a descending one—Holland bad, Belgium worse, Germany the third degree of comparison. Some of the inns in the great towns are stately; but it unluckily happens that the masters and mistresses of those inns are to the full as stately, and that, after a bow or curtsey at the door to their arriving guests, all their part is at an end. The master and mistress thenceforth transact their affairs by deputy. They are sovereigns, and responsible for nothing. The garçons are the cabinet, and responsible for every thing; but they, like superior personages, shift their responsibility upon any one inclined to take it up; and all is naturally discontent, disturbance, and discomfort. We wonder that the Marquis has not mentioned the German table-d'hôte among his annoyances; for he dined at it. Nothing, in general, can be more adverse to the quiet, the ease, or the good-sense of English manners. The table-d'hôte is essentially vulgar; and no excellence of cuisine, or completeness of equipment, can prevent it from exhibiting proof of its original purpose, namely—to give a cheap dinner to a miscellaneous rabble.
German posting is on a par with German inns, which is as much as to say that it is detestable, even if the roads were good. The roughness, mire, and continual ascents and descents of the roads, try the traveller's patience. The only resource is sleep; but even that is denied by the continual groanings of a miserable French horn, with which the postilion announces his approach to every village.
"Silence, ye wolves, while tipsy Mein-Herr howls,
Making night hideous; answer him, ye owls."
The best chance of getting a tolerable meal in the majority of these roadside houses, is, to take one's own provisions, carry a cook, if we can, and, if not, turn cooks ourselves; but the grand hotels are too "grand" for this, and they insist on supplying the dinner, for which the general name is cochonerrie, and with perfect justice.
On the 12th of September, the Marquis and his family arrived at Nuremberg, where the Bavarian court were assembled, in order to be present at a Camp of Exercise. To the eye of an officer who had been in the habit of seeing the armies of the late war, the military spectacle could not be a matter of much importance, for the camp consisted of but 1800 men. But he had been a comrade of the king, when prince-royal, during the campaigns of 1814 and 1815; and, as such, had helped (and not slightly) to keep the tottering crown on the brow of Bavaria. He now sent to request the opportunity of paying his respects; but Germany, absurd in many things, is especially so in point of etiquette. Those miraculous productions of Providence, the little German sovereigns, live on etiquette, never abate an atom of their opportunities of convincing inferior mortals that they are of a super-eminent breed; and, in part, seem to have strangely forgotten that salutary lesson which Napoleon and his captains taught them, in the days when a republican brigadier, or an imperial aid-de-camp, though the son of a tailor, treated their "Serene Highnesses" and "High Mightinesses" with as little ceremony as the thoroughly beaten deserved from the conquerors. In the present instance, the little king did not choose to receive the gallant soldier, whom, in days of difficulty, he had been rejoiced to find at his side; and the ground assigned was, that the monarch received none but in uniform; the Marquis having mentioned, that he must appear in plain clothes, in consequence of dispatching his uniform to Munich, doubtless under the idea of attending the court there in his proper rank of a general officer.
The Marquis was angry, and the fragment of his reply which we give, was probably as unpalatable a missive as the little king had received since the days of Napoleon.
"My intention was, to express my respect for his majesty, in taking this opportunity to pay my court to him, in the interesting recollection of the kindly feelings which he deigned to exhibit to me and my brother at Vienna, when Prince Royal of Bavaria.