Tales of the Caravan, Inn, and Palace

by Wilhelm Hauff

As soon as the ladies had heard these stories from their servants, they tore off their kitchen aprons and caps, and dressed themselves in state. "Nothing is more certain," they exclaimed to their families, while all were running about to set the parlor in order, "nothing is more certain than that the stranger is about to bring his nephew out. The old fool has not had the decency to set his foot in our house for ten years; but we will pardon him on account of the nephew, who must be a charming fellow." Thus said the ladies, and admonished their sons and daughters to appear polite if the strangers came--to stand up straight, and also to take more pains than usual in their speech. And the wise women of the town were not wrong in their calculations, as the old gentleman went the rounds with his nephew, to recommend himself and the young Englishman to the favor of the Gruenwiesel families.

Every-where the people were quite charmed with the appearance of the two strangers, and felt sorry that they had not made the acquaintance of these agreeable gentlemen earlier. The old gentleman showed himself to be a worthy, sensible man, who, to be sure, smiled a little over all he said, so that one was not quite sure whether he was in earnest or not; but he spoke of the weather, of the suburbs, and of the Summer pleasures in the cave on the mountain side, so wisely and elaborately that every one was charmed with him. But the nephew! He bewitched everybody; he took all hearts by storm. Certainly, so far as his exterior was concerned, his face could not be called handsome; the under part, the chin especially, protruded too far, and his complexion was exceedingly dark; then, too, he frequently made all sorts of singular grimaces, closing his eyes and gnashing his teeth; but in spite of all this, the contour of his face was found to be unusually interesting. Nothing could be more athletic than his figure. His clothes, it is true, hung somewhat loosely and unevenly on his body; but he was pleased with every thing; he flew about the room with uncommon activity, threw himself here on a sofa and then in an arm-chair, and stretched out his legs before him. But what in another young man would have been considered vulgar and unseemly, passed in the case of the nephew for agreeableness. "He is an Englishman," they would say, "they are all like that; an Englishman can lie down on a sofa and go to sleep while ten ladies stand up for lack of a seat; we shouldn't take it amiss in an Englishman." He was very watchful, however, of the old gentleman, his uncle; and when he began to spring about the room, or, as he seemed constantly inclined to do, put his feet up in a chair, a serious look served to make him behave himself a little better. And then, how could any one take any thing amiss, when the uncle on entering would say to the lady of the house: "My nephew is still somewhat coarse and uncultured, but I am sanguine that a little society will do much to polish his manners, and I therefore recommend him to you with my whole heart."

Thus was the nephew brought into society, and all Gruenwiesel spoke of nothing else for two whole days. The old gentleman did not stop with this, however, but set about changing his entire course of life. In the afternoon, in company with his nephew, he would go out to the cave on the mountain, where the most respectable gentlemen of Gruenwiesel drank beer and played at bowls. The nephew there showed himself to be an accomplished master of the sport, as he never bowled down less than five or six pins. Now and then, it is true, a singular spirit seemed to control him. He would, for instance, often chase a ball with the speed of an arrow, right down among the pins, and there set up all kinds of strange noises; or when he had knocked down the king, or made a strike, he would stand on his beautifully curled head, and throw his feet into the air; or when a wagon rattled by, he would be found, before he was fairly missed from the room, on the driver's seat, would ride a short distance, and then come back.

On these occasions, the old gentleman was accustomed to beg pardon of the mayor and the other gentlemen, for the antics of his nephew; but they laughed, charged it all to the account of his youth, asserted that at his age they were also as nimble, and loved the harum-scarum chap, as they called him, uncommonly well.

But there were also times when they were not a little vexed with him, and yet they did not venture to make any complaints, because the young Englishman passed every-where as a model of culture and intelligence. The old gentleman was accustomed to take his nephew with him every evening to the "Golden Hirsch," an inn of the town. Although the nephew was quite a young man, he did all that his elders did, placed his glass before him, put on an enormous pair of spectacles, produced a mighty pipe, lighted it, and blew his smoke among them mischievously. If the papers, or war, or peace, were spoken of, and the doctor and the mayor fell into a discussion on these subjects, surprising all the other gentlemen by their deep political knowledge, the nephew was quite liable to interpose very forcible objections; he would strike the table with his hand, from which he never drew the glove, and gave the doctor and the mayor very plainly to understand that they had not any correct information on these subjects; that he had heard all about them himself, and possessed a deeper insight into them. He then gave expression to his own views, in singular broken German, which received, much to the disgust of the mayor, the approval of all the other gentlemen; for he must, naturally, as an Englishman, understand all this much better than they.

Then, when the mayor and doctor, to conceal the anger they did not dare express, sat down to a game of chess, the nephew would come up, look over the mayor's shoulders with his great goggles, and find fault with this and that move, and tell the doctor he must move thus and so, until both men were secretly burning with anger. If then the mayor challenged him to play a game, with the design of mating him speedily--as he held himself to be a second Philidor--the old gentleman would grasp his nephew by the cravat, whereupon the young man at once became quiet and polite, and gave mate to the mayor.

They had been accustomed to play cards of an evening at Gruenwiesel, at half a kreuzer a game for each player; this the nephew thought was a miserable stake, and laid down crown-thalers and ducats himself, asserting that not one of them could play as well as he, but generally consoled the insulted gentlemen by losing large sums of money to them. They suffered no twinges of conscience in this taking of his money. "He is an Englishman, and inherits his wealth," said they, as they shoved the ducats into their pockets.

Thus did the nephew of the strange gentleman establish his respectability in the town in a very short time. The oldest inhabitants could not remember having ever seen a young man of this style in Gruenwiesel, and he created the greatest sensation that had ever been known there. It could not be said that the nephew had learned any thing more than the art of dancing; Latin and Greek were to him, as we were wont to express it, "Bohemian villages." In a game at the mayor's house he was called upon to write something, and it was discovered that he could not even write his own name. In geography, he made the most egregious blunders--as he would place a German city in France, or a Danish town in Poland; he had not read any thing, had not studied any thing, and the minister often shook his head seriously over the utter ignorance of the young man. Yet, in spite of all these defects, every thing he said or did was considered excellent; for he was so impudent as to claim that he was always right, and the close of every one of his speeches was, "I know better than you!"

Winter came, and now the young Englishman appeared in still greater glory. Every party was voted wearisome where he was not a guest. People yawned when a wise man began to speak; but when the young Englishman uttered the veriest nonsense in broken German, all was attention. It was now discovered that the young man was also a poet, for rarely did an evening go by that he did not pull out a piece of paper from his pocket and read some sonnets to the company. There were, to be sure, some people who maintained that some of these poems were poor and without sense, and that others they had read somewhere in print; but the nephew did not permit himself to be put down in any such manner. He read, and read, directed the attention of his hearers to the beauties of his verses, and was applauded to the echo.