The Student-Life of Germany

by William Howitt

Von Plauen soon found again a swarm of acquaintance, and again played over his old tricks. One of his acquaintances received from his native town, which was somewhere not very far distant, a large and most famous cheese, and a hamper of good wine. The others soon got wind of it, and wanted to persuade him to make a merriment over these things. But he assured them that he could not touch a single thing of them, as he expected an immediate visit from his family. His father, he said, had written him that he yet hoped to eat of the cheese with him, and to drink a glass of the wine with him; and on that account he should leave every thing untouched till they arrived.

They pressed him no farther, but one day at noon, as the lawless set knew that he was fast at his lecture in the college, they rushed into his chamber, drank the wine, and filled the bottles with water; and the cheese they scooped so skilfully out from beneath, that nothing but the outward rind remained standing. They set it again in the dish so that nothing was to be seen. It may be imagined what was the poor fellow's dismay as he set the cheese before his newly-arrived relations, and saw it, at the first cut, fall into mere fragments of peel; and what a face the old man made as he came to taste of that flat water instead of his famous Rhine-wine.

Soon afterwards, the student thus treated, missed a sum of money, of some three hundred gulden, which had been remitted him in order to defray the expenses contingent on the taking of his doctoral examination. Von Plauen, who had spent the night with him shortly before the theft was discovered, fell under strong suspicion, more especially, as, at the same time, he was accused of forging bills of exchange. He was thrown into the university prison, and his examination begun. But he did not await his sentence. One evening, as he knew that the fat beadle to whom the care of the prison was entrusted, remained alone in the house, he tore the lock from the door with his hands and hastened down into the beadle's room. The beadle had the keys belonging to the different rooms in the house, just then in his hand,--"How came you here, Herr von Plauen?" demanded he. The prisoner seized a knife that lay on the table, and warned him that if he did not deliver up to him the keys, he would stick the knife into his fat paunch. The terrified man instantly surrendered the keys; the prisoner shut him in his own room, secured him, and escaped from the house. He hastened over the bridge. There he threw himself over the gate, which then was closed every evening; but he stepped up to the window of the gatekeeper, knocked, and laid down a kreutzer, saying, "I will cheat no man of his money."

He was pursued, but without avail; and various reports are in circulation concerning his latter fortunes. Some say that he became a fencing-master in England, and yet lives there; others, that he continually gave himself more and more to drinking, and finally died in the hospital of a great German city, where, in the last hour, he called for a choppin of beer, and drank it o

Freisleben.--So let us, in a better liquor, wish that he had left a better memory. His tricks, if they were not always the best, have at least served to amuse us; and so may it go well with him in the other world, where, as his deeds certainly could not conduct him upwards, let us hope, though somewhat against hope, that a deep and final repentance prevented his going inevitably downwards.

They touch glasses.

STORY OF THE BLACK PETER.

Mr. Traveller, the turn now comes to you to relate something; but it really is a difficult task for you to have to relate something which is connected with Heidelberg.

Mr. Traveller.--Luckily I have recently heard the history of the life of a student, who formerly studied here, and I think it is sufficiently interesting;--I shall, therefore, relate as much of it as I recollect.

Some twenty or thirty years ago, a young man came to Heidelburg, whose name was Schwartzkopf, a native of Fulda in Hesse. His father had been an officer in the Hessian service, but he died early, and his widow was compelled to straiten herself severely, in order to be able to educate her only son out of the proceeds of her small property, and still smaller pension. Nature had made amends to the son of the widow for his poverty by many fine endowments of person and mind, and proudly gazed the affectionate mother on her darling son, as with little solid cash, but on that account with the more well-intended exhortations, and with many tears, she dismissed him on his journey to the university. Many were the anxieties that filled her mind when she thought that her son indeed possessed a good heart, but was still very giddy and of easily persuaded mind. He, with joyful spirits, and full of good resolves, proceeded to his new place of residence. He studied the greater part of the first year with zeal, and he wanted not good friends with whom he could spend his hours of the Muses in the most agreeable manner. His evil angel then caused him to be involved in a duel, and on this occasion he made some acquaintances that were of disastrous influence to him. Through them he became acquainted with play, to which he soon gave himself up passionately. It is true that at first he played only in his leisure hours, when his old friends were not about him; but he soon came to neglect these, and his leisure hours soon became continually less and less able to satisfy his desire for play, and then his studies were sacrificed. His friends grew tedious to him, because they had other interests; his books were covered with thick dust; and if he sometimes attended the lectures, they showed only how far he had fallen behind in the race of knowledge, and he hastened in vexation to the kneip, in order to drown in beer and play the upbraidings of his conscience. Thus he continued to live on for a long time; he returned to his room only to pass the night, even not that always. In the morning he fled from it as early as possible, because all there looked desolate. His books were at length sold, and by degrees he had disposed of every thing to the Jews, except the wretched clothes on his back, in order to feed his unhappy passion. Many a time would he fall into a horror, when he awoke out of a dream, which had carried him back into his early life, and saw around him that empty room, or when he received a letter from his affectionate mother, which was full of tender warnings,--from his mother, who denied herself even the most necessary things, that he might not want that money which he thus consumed on his ruinous habits. But these terrible reflections drove him only for a brief space out of his wild life, for he was already too deep sunk in it, and felt no longer the strength necessary to work himself out of the gulf.