Vivandière du regiment,
Javotte l'on me nomme,
Je vends, je donne, et bois gaîment
Mon vin et mon rogomme.
J'ai le pied leste et l'œil mutin,
Tin tin, tin tin, tin tin, tin tin,
R'lin lin tin[16].
There you have another reason why I withstand your seductions; you are frivolous; you would betray me. Fly away then, Dame Javotte of Bavaria, like your predecessor, Madame Isabeau[17].
2 June 1833.
I have left Hollfeld, I am passing through Bamberg at night. All is sleeping: I see only a tiny light whose feeble glimmer comes from the back of a room to grow wan at a window. What is waking here: pleasure or sorrow, love or death?
At Bamberg, in 1815, Berthier, Prince of Neufchâtel, fell from a balcony into the street[18]: his master was about to fall from a greater height.
Sunday 2 June.
At Dettelbach, reappearance of the vines. Four growths mark the limit of four natures and four climates: the birch, the vine, the olive and the palm, always going towards the sun.
The Hunchback.
After Dettelbach, two stages to Würzburg, and a female hunchback seated behind my carriage; it was Terence's Andria: Inopia.... egregia forma.... ætate integra.[19] The postillion wanted to make her get down; I objected, for two reasons: first, because I should have been afraid lest that fairy should have thrown a spell over me; secondly, because, having read in a biography of myself that I am a hunchback, all female hunchbacks are my sisters. Who can satisfy himself that he is not hunchbacked? Who will ever tell you that you are? If you look at yourself in the glass, you cannot say at all; do we ever see ourselves as we are? You will find a turn in your figure that suits you to perfection. All hunchbacks are proud and happy; the advantages of the hump are hallowed in song. At the entrance to a lane, my hunchback, in her ragged finery, stepped majestically to the ground: carrying her burden, like all mortals, Serpentina plunged into a corn-field and disappeared among spikes taller than herself.
At mid-day, on the 2nd of June, I had reached the top of a hill from which one descried Würzburg: the citadel on a height, the town below, with its palace, its steeples and its turrets. The palace, although thick-set, would be handsome even in Florence; in case of rain, the Prince could give shelter to all his subjects in his mansion without giving up his own apartments.