My chalky comrade, who was also very lame, lay on the ground in a desperate condition before the day was over, and it was with some difficulty that I brought him safe by nightfall into Wusterhausen. He had become also mysterious, and evidently inquisitive
as to the state of my finances, exhibiting on his own part hasty glimpses of a brass medal wrapped up in fine wool, which he wished me to look upon as a double ducat. When we got to the inn-door, my friend made a hurried proposition very nervously, which made his purpose clear. There were sixty English miles of road between us and Berlin; he was knocked up, and a fast coach, or rumbling omnibus, accommodating six insides, would start for Berlin in the morning. He thought he could bargain with the coachman to take us to Berlin for a dollar—three shillings—a piece, if I did not mind advancing his fare, because he did not want to change the double ducat until he got home. I put no difficulty in his way, for he was a good fellow, and moreover would be well able to help me in return, by telling me the addresses of some people I depended upon finding in Berlin. He proceeded, therefore, into the agonies of bargaining, and was not disappointed in his expectation. At the price of a dollar a-piece we were packed next morning in a frowsy vehicle, tainted with much tobacco-smoke, to which he came with his swollen feet pressed only half-way down into the legs of his best Wellingtons. The ride was long and dull, for there was little prospect to be caught through the small, dirty window; and the air tasted of German tinder. From a cottage villa on the roadside, a German student added himself to the three passengers that started from Wusterhausen. He came to us with a pipe in his mouth, unwashed, and hurriedly swaddled in a morning gown, carelessly tied with a cord about the middle. After a few miles travelling the vehicle was full, and remained full—until we at last reached Berlin.
There I found no work, and wandered listlessly through the museums and picture-galleries; for a troubled mind is a poor critic in works of art. So I squeezed myself into the Police Court, meaning to leave Berlin, and had the distinction of being beckoned, before my turn out of the reeking mass of applicants for passports, because my clothes had a respectable appearance, and I wore a showy pin in my cravat.
CHAPTER IX.
berlin.—our herberge.
Fairly in Prussia! We have passed the frontier town of Perleberg, and press onward in company with a glovemaker of Berlin, last from Copenhagen, whom we have overtaken on the road towards Wusterhausen.
“Thou wouldst know, good friend, the nature of my prospects in Berlin when I arrive there? Have I letters of recommendation—am I provided in case of the worst? Brother, not so! I am provided for nothing. I dare the vicissitudes of fortune. I had a friend in Hamburg, a Frenchman, who departed thence five months ago for Berlin, under a promise to write to me at the lapse of a month. He has never written, and he is my hope. That is all. Let us go on.”
“I have a cousin,” says the glovemaker, “who is a jeweller in Berlin. I will recommend you to him. His name is Kupferkram.”
“Strange! I knew a Kupferkram in Hamburg; a short, sallow man, with no beard.”
“A Prussian?”