“I wish them at the bottom of the river; they cost me a Turkish carabine, a brace of diamond watches, as I’ll be sworn, from the showy fellow that I levelled at, with the valise behind his courier, scented enough to perfume a forest of brown bears.”
“Hang those Hulans,” was the answer. “Ever since the Emperor’s arrival, they have done nothing but gallop about, putting honester men than themselves in fear of their lives, and cutting up our employment so woefully, that it is impossible to make money enough on the road to give a decent education to one’s children. But here comes the captain. We shall now have some news. Speranski never makes his appearance unless something is in the wind.”
This dialogue passed between two Transylvanian pedlars, if a judgment were to be formed from their blue caps, brown cloaks, and the packs strapped to their shoulders. A narrower inspection might have discovered within those cloaks the little heads of a pair of short scimitars; their trousers would have displayed to the curious the profile of two horse-pistols, and their boots developed a pair of those large-bladed knives which the Hungarian robber uses, alike to slice away the trunks of the britchska, to cut the harness of the horse, the throat of the rider, and carve his own sheep’s-milk cheese.
The captain came in, a tall, bold figure, in the dress of an innkeeper. He flung a purse upon the table, and ordered supper. The pedlars disburdened themselves of their boxes, kindled a fire on a hearth which seemed guiltless of having administered to the wants of mankind for many a wild year; produced from an unsuspected store-house under the floor some dried venison, and the paws of a bear, preserved in the most luxurious style of Hungarian cookery; decorated their table even with some pieces of plate, which, though evidently of different fashions, gave proof of their having been under noble roofs, by their armorial bearings and workmanship, though the rest of their history did not lie altogether so much in high life; and in a few minutes the captain, throwing off his innkeeper hat and drab-coloured coat, half sat, half lay down, to a supper worthy of an Emperor, or of a man who generally sups much better—an imperial commissary.
The whole party were forest robbers; the thing must be confessed. But the spirit of the country prevailed even under the rotting roof of “the Ghost’s house,”—the ominous name which this old and ruinous, though still stately mansion, had earned among the peasantry. The name did not exactly express the fact; for, when tenanted at all, it was tenanted by anything rather than ghosts; by some dozens of rough, raw-boned, bold, and hard-living fellows—as solid specimens of flesh and blood as had ever sent a shot right in front of the four horses of a courier’s cabriolet, or had brought to a full stop, scimitar in hand, the heyducs and chasseurs, the shivering valets and frightened postilions of a court chamberlain, whirling along the Vienna road with six to his britchska.
Etiquette was preserved at this supper. The inferior plunderers waited on the superior. Captain Speranski ate his meal alone, and in solemn silence. The pedlars watched his nod; filled out the successive goblets at a glance, and having performed their office, watched, at a respectful distance, the will of the man of authority. A silver chime announced the hour of ten. One of the pedlars drew aside a fragment of a ragged shawl, which covered one of the most superb pendules of the Palais Royal.
If the Apollo who sat harping in gold upon its stytolate, could have given words to his melodies, he might have told a curious narrative; for he had already seen a good deal of the various world of adventure. Since his first transit from the magnificent Horlogerie of M. Sismonde, of all earthly watchmakers the most renowned, this Apollo had first sung to the world and his sister muses in the chamber of the unlucky Prince de Soubise. The fates of France had next transferred him, with the Prince’s camp-plate, despatches, secret orders, and military chest, into the hands of a regiment of Prussian hussars, at the memorable battle of Rosbach, that modern “battle of the Spurs.” But the Prussian colonel was either too much or too little a lover of the arts, to keep Apollo and the Nine all to himself; and the pendule next rang its silver notes over the roulette-table of the most brilliant of Parisian opera-dancers, transferred from the salle of the Academie to the Grand Comedie at Berlin. But roulette, wheel of Plutus as it is, is sometimes the wheel of fortune; and the fair La Pirouette, in spite of the patronage of the court and the nation, found that she must, like generals and monarchs, submit to fate, and part with her brilliant superfluities. The pendule fled from her Parisian mantel-piece, and its chimes were thenceforth to awake the eyelids of the handsomest woman in Hungary, the Countess Lublin née Joblonsky, memorable for her beauty, her skill at loto, and the greatest profusion of rouge since the days of Philip Augustus. Its history now drew to a close. It had scarcely excited the envy of all the countesses of her circle, and, of course, became invaluable to the fair Joblonsky, when it disappeared. A reward of ten times its value was instantly offered. The Princess of Marosin, the arbiter of all elegance, who had once expressed her admiration of its taste, was heard to regret its loss as a specimen of foreign art. The undone proprietor was only still more undone; for of all beauties living or dead, she most hated the Princess, blooming, youthful, and worshipped as she was, to the infinite detriment of all the fading Joblonskys of the creation. But no reward could bring it back. This one source of triumph was irrecoverably gone; and from Presburg to Vienna, all was conjecture, conversation, and consternation. So ended the court history of the pendule.
When the repast was fully over, Speranski, pouring out a glass of Tokay from a bottle which bore the impress of the Black Eagle of the House of Hapsburg, and which had evidently been arrested on its road to the Emperor’s table, ordered one of the pedlars to give him the papers, “which,” said he, with a smile, “that Turkish courier mislaid where he slept last night.” A small packet was handed to him;—he perused it over and over with a vigilant eye, but it was obvious, without any of the results which he expected; for, after a few minutes’ pause, during which he examined every part of the case in which they were enclosed, he threw the letters aside. “What,” said he, in a disappointed tone, “was to be expected from those opium-eaters? Yet they are shrewd in their generation, and the scandals of the harem, the propitious day for shaving the Sultan’s head, the lucky star for combing his illustrious beard, or the price of a dagger-hilt, are as good topics as any that pass in our own diplomacy. Here, Sturnwold, put back this circumcised nonsense into its case, and send it, do you hear, by one of our own couriers, to the Turkish secretary at Vienna; let it be thrown on his pillow, or tied to his turban, just as you please; but, at all events, we must not do the business like a clumsy cabinet messenger. Now, begone; and you, Heinrich, hand me the Turk’s meerschaum.”
The bandit brought him a very handsome pipe, which he said would probably be more suited to the Turk’s tobacco, of which he had deposited a box upon the table. Speranski took the pipe, but, at his first experiment, he found the neck obstructed. His quick conception ascertained the point at once. Cutting the wood across, he found a long roll of paper within. He glanced over its contents, instantly sprang up, ordered the attendance of half a dozen of “his friends” on horseback, looked to the priming of his pistols, and galloped off through the forest.