Truly a most fantastical history, and one which leaves us in some doubt whether it be a genuine legend of Heidelberg, or one of M. Dumas's dreams in the diligence after dining upon pig and cherry sauce. At any rate, if not true it is ben trovato.
Heidelberg, whither M. Dumas next proceeds, is to our mind one of the pleasantest places near the Rhine, from which river it is now, thanks to the railroad, within half an hour's journey. The country around is delightful, and the town itself, owing to its possessing an university, and to the vast number of strangers who visit and pass through it during the summer months, is far more lively than most small German towns. The kind of liveliness, however, caused by the presence of seven or eight hundred students, is not always of the most agreeable character. It has been the fashion in England to talk and write a vast deal about German universities; and sundry well filled, or at least bulky tomes have been devoted to accounts of the students' mode of life, their duels and drinkings, and peculiarities of all kinds. Friend Howitt favoured us a year or two ago with a corpulent volume—translated in part from the MSS. of some studiosus emeritus—a sort of life in Heidelberg, entering into great detail concerning university doings, and with illustrations of a very sportive description; wherein mustached and bespurred cavaliers are slashing at each other with broad swords, or cantering over the country mounted upon gallant steeds, and looking something between Dick Turpins and field-marshals in muftee. 'Tis a sad thing to have too much imagination—it tempts a man to mislead his neighbours; and no one who has read friend William's picturesque descriptions of Student Leben, but would feel grievously disappointed when he came to investigate the subject for himself. Nothing can be more puerile and absurd, and in many instances disgusting, than the habitual pastimes and amusements of the students; or at least of that large majority of them who attend no lectures and study, nothing that they can possibly avoid, but look upon their residence at the university as three or four years to be devoted to smoking, beer-drinking, and scratching one another's faces in duels. These duels, by the by, are pieces of the most intense humbug that can be imagined. They take place now in the large room of the inn at Ziegelhausen, a village on the banks of the Neckar, about two miles from Heidelberg, and are fought with straight swords, square but sharp at the extremity, and having guards as big as a soup-plate.
Before the fight begins, the combatants don their defensive arms, consisting of a strong and broad-brimmed hat protecting the head and eyes, an immense leathern breastplate defending the chest and stomach, a padded case, also of leather, which shields the arm from wrist to shoulder, and an impenetrable cravat which protects the neck up to the ears. The nose, and a bit of each cheek, is all that can be possibly wounded. Thus equipped the heroes set to work, slashing away at each other, (it is forbidden to thrust,) shaving off pieces of their padded armour, and looking exceeding fierce and valiant the while; until, after a greater or less time, according as the combatants are equal in skill or not, one of them gets a scratch across the nose, or small eyelet hole in the cheek, which terminates this caricature of a duel. Since "young Germany" finds amusement in so harmless a practice, it might very well be allowed them; provided they afterwards, like good boys, took their books and learned their lessons. But such a proceeding would be by no means consistent with the Burschen-Freiheit—the academic freedom of which these hopeful youths make their boast. To celebrate the valour of the victory, and show sympathy with the sufferings of the vanquished—whose wound is by this time dressed with an inch of sticking plaster—the party repairs to a tavern to breakfast; and there the morning is killed over beer and Rhine wine till one o'clock, by which time some of them are usually more than half tipsy. They then repair to the table-d'hôte, dine, drink more, and finally stagger home to sleep off their libations. We have more than once, in German university towns, seen students reeling-drunk at four in the afternoon.
About seven in the evening, the kneipes or drinking-houses begin to fill. In all of these there are rooms set apart for the different clubs of students to assemble in; and in those sanctuaries they put on the caps and colours of their communities, which they have of late years been forbidden to wear in public. On the ribands which they wear round their necks, are inscribed the date of their various duels. A barrel of beer is now broached, pipes are loaded and lighted, and they sit the whole evening, sotting, smoking, and singing songs about the Rhine, liberty, and fatherland, with ear-splitting and interminable choruses of Viva lera lera. A German student's song generally consists of couplets of two lines, with a chorus that lasts a quarter of an hour.
The quantity of beer consumed by some of these heroes is almost incredible. They become actually bloated with it. One of the most important and respected persons at a German university is the Beer King, who ought to be able to drink, not any given quantity, but an unlimited one; to be perpetually drinking, in short. M. Dumas tells us, that the reigning monarch of malt at Heidelberg is able to absorb twelve schoppens of beer, or six of wine, while the clock strikes twelve. A Heidelberg schoppen is very nearly an English bottle. This is rather hard to swallow, M. Dumas. Either the drinker is very fast, or the clock very slow. We can vouch, however, for the scarcely less astonishing fact, of there being drinkers at the universities who will imbibe twenty-five bottles of beer at a sitting. The German beer is, of course, not of a very intoxicating nature.
From beer to tobacco the transition is natural enough; and we cannot conclude our gossip about the Rhine without a word or two as to the frightful abuse made by the Germans of the Indian weed. We are not of the number of those who condemn the moderate use of tobacco, but, on the contrary, know right well how to appreciate its soothing and cheering effects; but the difference is wide between a limited enjoyment of the habit, and the stupefying, besotting excess to which it is carried by the Germans. The dirty way, too, in which they smoke, renders the custom as annoying to those who live amongst them, as it must be unwholesome and detrimental to themselves. It is possible to smoke much, and yet cleanly: take the Spaniard for instance—unquestionably a great smoker; yet the difference between smoking on the Rhine or Elbe, and on the Manzanares or Ebro, is immense—the one the gluttony and abuse, the other the refinement of the practice. While Don Español, with his fragrant puro, or straw or paper covered cigarrito, smoketh cleanly, spitteth not, uses his tobacco, as he uses most things, like a gentleman; the werther Deutscher takes his huge pipe, rarely cleaned and with the essence of tobacco oozing from every joint, and filling it from a bag, or rather sack, of coarse and vile-smelling tobacco, puffs forth volumes of smoke, expectorating ad nauseam at intervals of a minute or less. No considerations of place or person hinder him from indulging in his favourite pastime. In steam-boats, in diligences, in the public walks and promenades, into the dining-rooms of hotels, every where does the pipe intrude itself; carried as habitually as a walking-cane; and even when not in actual use, emitting the most evil odour from the bowl and tube, saturated as they are with tobacco juice.
However unpleasant all this may be to foreigners, especially to English ladies accustomed to the more cleanly habits of their own countrymen, the German dames are perfectly reconciled to it. Had we to draw a picture of domestic felicity on the Rhine, we would sketch it thus:—a summer evening—a flower garden—a table with tea or coffee—a dozen chairs occupied by persons of both sexes—the women big-feeted, blue-eyed, placid creatures, knitting stockings—the men heavy and awkward, each with a monstrous signet-ring on the dirty forefinger of his right hand, smoking unceasingly, and puffing the vapour into the faces of their better halves, who heed it not, and occasionally may even be seen replenishing with their own delicate digits the enormous porcelain or meerschaum bowls of the pipes. If you doubt the accuracy of our description, reader, go and judge for yourself. The distance is short, and summer is at hand. Put yourself on board a steamboat, whisk over to Ostend or Antwerp, and thence rail and rattle it down to the Rhine. You shall not be three days on German soil without encountering a score such groups as the one we have just sketched.