LIBRARY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA FROM THE LIBRARY OF F. VON BOSCH AN ed)lofS |)ainfclb; or, % SlBtntcc in Sower ©tpria* lUiMii iK.ii : ^■Kl^l^;i) uy um.lamvni; amico. paii. s uokk. SCHLOSS HAINFELU OR, A WINTER IN LOWER STYRIA. CAPTAIN BASIL HALL. noYAL KAVV. SKCOM) LDITION. liOl'.I-RT CADELL, EDINIUJKGH WHITTAKKR AND Co., LONDON. .MD(CCXXXVI. ADVERTISEMENT. Having on three different occasions made excursions on the Continent, under circumstances of considerable variety, it lately occurred to me that selections from my journals might perhaps be favourably received, either by persons who had never visited the scenes described, or by those who had already seen them, but might choose to view them again through the eyes of another. I accordingly set to work to skim off such parts of my notes as, either from the buoyancy of the expression, or from retaining a portion of the fresh- ness of original interest, had floated to the surface. But I soon found these skimmings accumu- late under my hands in much greater quantity than I had anticipated, or than, I feared, might be relished by others. 2 In this dilemma, I bethought me of the well- known device of the Aeronauts, or Luftschiffer — literally sky-sailors — as the Germans, with their usual pithy quaintness, call them ; and resolved to send off a pilot-balloon to ascertain how the wind set. The following episode was accordingly select- ed for publication ; and if, when let loose, it take the right direction, or, in other words, if it meet with a current of public favour, I may perhaps venture to cut the ropes of the larger work, now in the course of inflation, and trust the whole to the same friendly notice. Edinburgh, 2Ath August, 183(). CON T E X T S. (HAl'TER I THi: INVITATION, II.— THE SCHLOSS, III.— THE COUNTESS, IV. — THE IRON COFFIN, V._THE NEIGHBOrUS, VI THE RIVAL GUESTS, VII. — THE ARCHDUKE JOHN OF Al \ 111.— THE GERMAN LANGUAGE IX.— THE DAY AT HAINFELD, X.— THE WORSER, XI THE BORE, XII QUACKERY AND ABSOLUTISM, XIII. — THE IMPERIAL TOBACCONIST, XIV THE GERMAN BED, XV SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE, XV1._THE FESTIVITIES OF HAINFELD, XVII.— A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS, Win THE ALARM, .... XIX.— THE CATASTROPHE, XX.— THE VAILT, .... 4^ 'STRIA, «»1 II ■2'.>7 A 1 -' \ XI. —THE COUNTESS AND WALTER SCOTT, -iSo SCHLOSS HAINFELD; OR, A WINTER IN LOWER STYRIA ; CHAPTER I. THE INVITATION. Ir was a bright sunny morning, near the end of April 1834, when, accompanied by my wife and family, I left Rome for Naples. The climate of the " Eternal City," which is grateful to most con- stitutions, had not proved so to mine ; and, for the first time in my life, I had fallen into low spirits, and indolent habits. The endless ruins of ancient Home — the wonders of the Vatican — the forest of churches — the gorgeous palaces — even the great Coliseum itself, and almost St Peter's, one by one, had faded into indifference before my languid ob- servation. A smart attack of rheumatism at length A 2 THE INVITATION. brought matters to a crisis ; and my doctor (Mr Gloas: — one of the ablest and most attentive of medical men) — who had much experience of the Roman climate, — so fair and treacherous, — declared, that nothing would do me any good but change of air. Never was learned opinion so quickly verified. At first starting, the warm sun, the clear sky, the nimble air, had no charms for me. And this strange feeling, which admitted the good, but felt only the gloom, so long as I continued in the immediate vi- cinity of Home, gradually, but perceptibly, began to evaporate as the carriage ascended the gentle slope of the ancient volcanic mountain of Albano. By the time we had gained the height of several hundred feet above the dome of St Peter's, judging from its appearance in the distance, I felt as if a load were taken off my lungs, and the bellows which gives activity to the breath, and keeps up the flame of life, was once more free to move. I became enchanted with the blueness of the sky — the sharp- ness of the lights and sliades ; and as the gentle puffs of wind crossed our path, I caugiit myself stretching forward to inhale their new and invigora- ting freshness. Long before reaching Albano, which stands, I should suppose, about a thousand iVct ai>ove the level of the Tiber, I became so hunfn-: THE INVITATION. 8 and happy, that had not some traces of rheumatism tied me by the leg, I should infallibly have leaped from the carriage, and scampered up the hill before the party to order dinner. On arriving at Albano, new objects of interest met our view. Our windovv.>> looked full on the open sea — the beautiful, tha classical Mediterranean — nowhere, exceptat Naples, so fortile in associations as near the coast we now looked upon. The beach might be distant about ten or twelve miles ; and between us and the sea lay a broad flat belt of alluvial, marshy soil, scantily cultivated, and only here and there dotted with a bright, white cottage. Nearer, and where the land gradually rose towards the volcanic focus, the sce- nery partook of a more fertile and varied character; being not only cast into all sorts of shapes by the freaks of ancient earthquakes and eruptions of lava, but covered with villas, gardens, vineyards, and olive orchards, every where glowing with the astonishing verdure of an Italian spring. Peeping through the foliage v»e could perceive many remnants of ancient buildings, which greatly contrii)uted to characterise the scene. Some of these maintained more or less their old shape of towers and arches — others merely showed, by huge piles of brick and sculptured blocks of marble, what they might have been. Far olf to the left, along 4 THE INVITATION. the shore, in the south-eastern direction, we could just distinguish the island of Ponzo, and still farther off, we were told might be seen, in days of peculiar clearness, the island of Ischia, which forms the northern horn of the bay of Naples. Our admiration of this beautiful prospect was interrupted by the necessity of attending to the arrangements of the journey. As we travelled " Vet- turino,'" we had to stop for a couple of hours at Albano ; during which time sundry other carriages arrived, and either passed on smartly with post horses, or stopped to take rest as we had done. Amongst these there was one which particularly en- gaged our attention ; and with that sort of feverish curiosity which proverbially belongs to travelling, I set about trying to discover who the people were with whose appearance we had been struck. Great was our pleasure on learning that here was no other than our amiable and accomplished Polish friend, with the unpronounceable name, the Countess Rzewuska. We lost no time in repairing to her apartment to renew so agreeable an acquaintance, though it was but for a moment ; for it appeared we were pass- ing on opposite tacks, as she was coming from Na})los, and we from Home. No sooner had we entered than she exclaimed — " Oh how fortunate ! It is only a day or two THE INVITATION'. 5 since I received a letter from Germany, containing^ a message to you; and had we not now fallen in with each other, I mio^ht never have been able to deliver it. ^Nly correspondent supposed we were still at Home together, forgetting that at this season the travellers who crowd there in winter, scatter them- selves in all directions, the moment the breath of Spring opens the season. This letter," continued she, pulling one from her reticule, " contains a mes- sage from the Countess Purgstall, an elderly Scotch lady, who, having married forty years ago a noble- man of Austria, has resided in that country ever since. I am desired to ascertain if you be the son of Sir James Hall, one of her earliest and most inti- mate friends in Edinburgh ? And if so, as I be- lieve to he the case, I am re(|uested to invite you, in her name, most cordially, to pay her a visit at her country place, the Schloss, or castle, of Ilainfeld, near Clrat/, should you think of taking the home- ward route through Styria, instead of following the beaten track of the Tyrol." It was impossible such an invitation could have been given to travellers less hampered by plans ; for we made it a constant rule to be guided by circum- stances as they arose, and not to entangle ourselves by previous arrangements which might or might not prove suitable when the time came. Thus, the map G THE INVITATION. of Europe was always before us, where to clioose our place of rest, or rather unrest, and Mrs Starke our guide. Having looked at the various routes, studied them, and made our calculations as to time and place, we came to the resolution that, provided we received, in due season, a somewhat more spe- cific invitation, it might be no bad sport to visit a German castle, as something fresh, and out of the ordinary course of jog-trot travelling. In order to prevent all mistakes, I thought it best to communi- cate at once with the lady herself. I accordingly wrote a letter, mentioning the num- ber of which our party consisted, giving a sketch of our plans for the summer, and requesting farther information about roads, and the best seasons for travelling in Germany. To this letter I received two answers, the second being written under an erroneous impression that the first was misdirected ; and as there are several parts of these letters which help to elucidate the character of our future hostess, I shall venture to make free ex- tracts from both. As yet our purpose of paying her a visit was quite undecided ; but we felt our interest in the project, and our curiosity as to the character and situation of our distant and unseen friend, greatly heightened by these communications. I should mention, that all we knew of the Countess Purg- THE INVITATION. 7 stall was, that she was sister to Mrs Dugald Stew- art, widow of the celebrated writer on moral philoso- phy ; that she had married a German nobleman, to- wards the close of the last century, and proceeded with him to Austria, and that she had never revisited her native country. We had also a vague recollection of having' heard that she had been extremely unfor- tunate in her family, and M'as left solitary in the world ; moreover, that she was remarkably clever, and rather eccentric. But we formed no just con- ception of this extraordinary person from any such glimpses of character as these letters, or other ac- counts afforded us. On reading them now, it is true, when familiar with the whole topic, we can discover many touches which might have given us some in- siglit into a matter which eventually interested us a great deal more sincerely and deeply than we could at first have supposed possiijle. The Countess's first epistle ran thuS' — it was dated 7th May, Hainfeld: — " I have this moment, my dear sir, received your letter, dated Albano, 21st Aprih I am now so un- accustomed to a pleasing sensation, that I tremble while I tell you, it will be doing me a very great favour indeed if Mrs Mail and you will bestow a visit upon me. Your little darlings surely need re- pose. I beseech you to let them find a home for 8 THE INVITATIOX. a few weeks In Hainfeld ; the house is large ; there are thirty-nine rooms on this floor all completely furnished, though in the mode of the last century ; the air and water are good ; the country is rich, well cultivated, and varied enough to be pleasing. I dare not promise you amusements ; I am a widowed woman cut off" from the tree of life ; but if a cordial welcome can render solitude supportable, I am sure you will find it here. Hungary is only three hours distant from this — it is a country little known. You will be well received by my neighbours on the frontier, and find the people a race distinct from any in Europe. " As to this road, I can assure you it is excel- lent — in every respect preferable to the one by Tyrol. The first English travellers by, accident took the road by Tyrol ; this made it the fashion, and ever since they have flown that way like a flock of birds. The Alps and lakes of Styria are fully as interesting as those in Tyrol, and as yet unknown to the English, and Gratz is not inferior to Lnispruck, Besides, you can have an advantage in taking this road I am sure you will know to value — it is to be acquainted with the Archduke John, who lives in ii quiet, sim])le style at his iron works, and will re- ceive you with pleasure. He is wonderfully well informed ; has vast practical knowledge, and his THE INVITATION. manners are truly pleasing. As a man he has few equals — as a prince, he is a phenomenon. " I dare not speak of the home of my youth. Thirty-five years of absence have spunged me from the remembrance of those dearest to me ; but if you graciously visit me, you will draw back the veil and give me a glimpse of things still, alas I too dear to me. '• If you will write me a note and let me know when I dare hope to see you, it will be a great pleasure to me. The Governor of ^lilan. Count Ilardegg, will please you much, and also our coun- tryman, Cieneral Count Nugent, at Trieste. I fear to lose a post, and send you these hurried lines, praying you to believe me your truly obliged, and I trust soon to say grateful, friend, " C* PlR(;STALI.." The second letter is fuller, and still more charac- teristic. • It may be riglit to rxplaiii tliat this C stands (or ('ouiu tcs>, and lint lor tlio initial of a Ciiristian nanio, hers being J. A. It is a miicral lustom on tlie contini'iit for persons of rank to write their title a- a part of the signatwre. 10 the invitation. " My Dear Sir, *' With a grief which I cannot express, I disco- vered a few minutes ago, on looking over the little register of my letters, that I had addressed my an- swer to yours not to Rome, but to Naples. It was a degree of absence worthy of your good grand uncle, of absent memory ; but I have not, alas ! the apology of genius to plead. My mistakes are owing to a very different cause of late — to the state of my health. For more than three years I have been the victim of rheumatism, or what some physicians are pleased to call the tic-douloureux-volant. This cruel disease has torn my nerves in pi?ces, and when I am agitated, as I was when I received your letter — so dearly welcome to me — I became quite confused. Pardon, my dear sir, my seeming delay in answer- ing your letter. I wrote instantly, but my silly letter is literally ^jos^e restante in Naples. I hope these lines will reach you safely, and convince Mrs Ilall and you how unfeignedly happy I shall be to see you and your little darlings. It will indeed be most gratifying to mo if you will allow the infants to repose here for a few weeks, and find in Hainfeld the quiet of home. Your excellent Scotch nursery- maid will revive me with lettinsT nie hear once more the language of my heart. She shall arrange all here exactly as she wishes, and, I trust, make the dear THE INVITATION. 11 t Iiildren comfortable. The house is very large ; there are thirty-nine rooms on this floor. Not only } our tamilj', but any friends you choose to bring along with you, can find place enough. The coun- try is truly healthy ; the soil rich and well cultiva- K'd, and the hills and distant mountains covered A. ith forests. The people resemble their oxen — iliey are diligent and docile. There are few neigh- hours, except in Hungary (three hour*' distance from this) ; and Hungary is a country little known ;ind deserving your attention. Styria is also a country little known, owing to the singular fancy < r fashion of the English always to fly between \ icniia anil Italy, by the way of Tyrol. Kotzebue says, ' The English carry their prejudices, as they do their tea-kettles, all over the world with them.' This, in general, is merely an impertinence; but in ^\Ilat respects the Tyrol road, it holds true; our load is in many respects preferable. '• ^ ou enquire as to the state of the roads. They are excellent. The lulwagen, a kind of diligence, takes regularly fifty-five hours between Trieste and (hatz, and twenty-five hours between Gratz and \ ienna. As man and beast in Austria move dis- creetly, this, with the aid of your post-map, will show you the true state of the roads. " 'I'lie teiuire of jiroperty in this country is very 12 THE INVITATION. different from the English ; and I would fain, were it possible, excite your curiosity as to Styria. The constitution of the American States interested you. Why should not ours do so ? The country is di- vided into circles; mine contains 4200 souls. My bailiff collects all the taxes within the circle; mana- ges the conscription; the police ; the criminal jus- tice in the first instance, the property of minors, &c., &c. He must have passed his trials as an ad- vocate, and I must pay him and his assistants, or what is called my chancery. I defy the public affairs, in as far as this goes, to cost less to a go- vernment. The said bailiff also collects the domi- nical, or what is due to me, and manages the landed property, which, as we have no farming, is kept, ac- cording to the Scotch phrase, in our own hands. The first crop of hay was housed yesterday, so if you travel with your own horses, good food is ready for them. After the wheat and rye are cut down, buek^ wheat is sown, which can ripen even under the snow. It is the food of the peasantry, as oatmeal was formerly of the Scotch Highlanders ; but the crop from the best ground is sold off to pay the very high taxes. The people are good and docile. The noblesse, owing to the dreadful war, &c., are mostly on short commons. We have no poor, which, owing to the question in England respecting the poor-laws, is THE INVITATION. 13 (k'^erving of being noticed. No man is allowed to marry till he can prove he is able to maintain a A\ ife and children ; and this, with the law of celi- bacy of the clergy, and the caution required of the military * — almost an act of celibacy — are checks on ])opulation which would make the hearts of Mr Mal- thas and Miss Martineau burn within them for ad- miration. The result is, the entire demoralizing of the people. The mask of religion helps nothing. At the last grand jubilee, in the next parish, se- venty-two pairs of virgins adorned the procession, dressed in white, and covered with garlands of flowers. In eight months forty-four of them were in the family way. Madame Nature is not a political economist, and she does not let her laws be outraged with impunity. " As another motive to visit Styria, there is a physician at St Gothard, three hours from this, who works all the miracles ever wrought, except raising the dead. Were I not virtually dead, I would con- sult him. He is a Homeopathic ; forty-nine thou- sand sick have been with him since November, and " \cj nfli or in tlu- Austrian army is allowed to marry, unless he previously deposits a sum of money in the hands of (jovorn- ment tiir the niainteiiance of his widow and children in the (■\eiit of his de itli. The sum varies with the rank of the officer.— 15. II. 14 THE INVITATION. all believe in his infallibility. The Alleopathle school endeavour to suffocate the system of Hanne- mann, but in vain. A question of such conse- quence to the human race, and so easily decided on the spot, is surely deserving of your investigation. " I am ashamed to send you so tedious a scrawl, but you will pardon me, for you know it is out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketb. May I trust you will induce Mrs Plall to ' unfa- tigue' herself and her little angels, in this Tadmore in the wilderness ? I have nothing-, alas ! to ofF;.r you all, but my hearty welcome. God knows it ii sincere. In haste, for I fear to lose a post. I bid you, my dear sir, farewell 11th June. My ad- dress is simply Gratz. N.B. There is a respectable library here." These letters very nearly made us decide to take Styria in our way to the North, but we had still much to see in Italy, and elsewhere. It is not my present purpose, however, to enter upon these ad- ventures, though some of them proved highly inter- esting. The following answer which I sent to the Countess's pressing Invitation, will suffice to show what we were about, and in what mind we looked forward to the proposed visit. THE INVITATION. 15 " Xaples, 1th Julij, 1834. •' Mv Deau Madam, " You need have no farther remorse of con- science about the address of your letters, as both of them reached me in safety. In my turn I must apologize and explain the reason of this tardy reply. We have been absent from Naples on a cruise to Sicily and Malta, in a vessel of this place, hired expressly for the voyat^e ; and although we have re- turned more than a week, we have not yet come to such a fixed arrangement for our future plans as to enable us to say, with much precision, at what period we shall be in your neighbourhood. In the mean time, I must no longer delay writing in my own name, and that of Mrs Hall, to thaidv you for your kindness and attention, and to sav that we shall be most happy to avail ourselves of your hospitable invitation on our way north, if we can possibly ar- range to do so. We are at present busily employed in ' seeing up' or ' demolishing' Xaj)les and its beautiful conturni ; but, in the course of this month, or, as the Indian ships say, ' in all July,' we hope to complete our sight-seeing labours. It is probable that towards the middle of September we shall be advancing upon your castle. As the time draws nearer, however, I shall give you due notice of our approach. Our party will not occupy more than 16 THE INVITATIOX. tliree or four of the three dozen apartments which you speak of, and I have no doubt we shall all greatly enjoy our visit. " I shall endeavour to profit also by your advice with respect to Styria ; indeed, we have no espe- cial love for the Tyrol, and should only have followed the beaten Cockney route, from having generally observed that the said Cockney, somehow, almost always finds out the things best worth seeing. Your local authority in this matter, however, will certainly guide us, unless unforeseen circumstances carry us too far out of the way. For my part, I have always so much difficulty in acquiring cor- rect geographical ideas with respect to any country I have not visited, that I can seldom decide which route it is best to take, till the country in question is near at hand. By the time we reach Venice, we shall be better instructed on many such points, and it will certainly be no small comfort to see something 7ieiv on the continent. It is true I am not writing a book ; but I often sigh for some bit of ground to tread upon which has not been ploughed up by the merciless pens of preceding travellers. In this poor exhausted Italy, countless classical scholars, men of wit and fancy, blues, Roman Catholics, Protestants, poets, painters, and philosophers, with ten thousand others, of all persuasions, ciqiacities. THE I h'VITATION. 17 politics, tastes, and experiences have worried and scourged the land till it will scarcely bear a blade of decent grass, or even a thistle for any stray donkey that may be passing. But your account of Styria does stir up my ink-horn; and if I don't make a quarto out of it, the fault is mine ! *' Seriously, I shall be very glad to see the state of manners you allude to, and I look forward with plea- sure to our meeting in the castle of Hainfeld, there, as you say, to * unfatigue ' ourselves ; a process, very suitable, I assure you, after the toils of sight- seeing in the south of Italy at midsummer, more especially as old Vesuvius is now in full eruption, and his sides streaked with fiery torrents. ****** " I feel flattered and gratified by the favour- able opinion expressed by your neighbour of the work I wrote on America. I have had, in my day, my share of abuse ; and very well pleased I was with such notice. When an author takes any particular line, especially in politics, he ought to consider the censure of those he is entirely opposed to, as the best acknowledgment that he has not missed his intended point — that he has not mistated his own views. For the rest, he must be content with the approbation of one or two judicious friends, merelv to satisfv him that he has not, in his zeal. 18 THE INVITATION. done harm instead of good to the cause he wwhes to defend." To this letter I received the following answer when at the delicious Baths of Lucca, the most delightful summer residence in all Italy. There are so many traits, explanatory more or less of the pecu- liarities of our future hostess, scattered up and down these letters, which will assist in introducing her to the reader's acquaintance much better than I could do myself, that I venture to give them almost entire. They will show also how great her anxiety was to engage us, at all hazards, to come to her, and thus serve to explain subsequent passages in the curious hi-itory of our intercourse. " 12//z August. " My Dear Sir, " I had the happiness of receiving your letter of the 7th July, in course ; and a few minutes ago, your second dear letter, dated the 20th. It was only my fear of teazing you with my scribble-scrab- bles, as Winifred Jenkins would call them, that prevented me from answering the first directly. Mrs Hall and you knew, I thought, my sincere wishes, and had promised to bestow on me the long-wished for enjoyment of hearing once more the language of THE INVITATION. 10 my heart. I hoped, and still hope, you will find re- pose at^reeable, particularly for your little darlings, after such long and fatiguing wanderings. I have been very anxious on their account, for the heat this summer is unexampled, and for infants it is danger- ous. Even here the thermometer of Reaumur was at 31^ in the shade, or 102'= of Fahrenheit. " Tyrol is certainly worth seeing, particularly for Cockneys who never saw a mountain ; but as no one of them, by any accident, ever took the Styrian road, they could form no judgment on the subject. Gratz, though a town of no consequence, has finer environs than any town I know, Florence excepted ; and it has a merit which, luckily for its inhabitants, has not been discovered by the English, who are on the saving establishment — it is the cheapest place to live at in Europe. " The Archduke John has founded a museum at Gratz, the geological specimens of which, mostlv collected by himself, will give you a just idea of the fossil 1)oncs of our country. My horses shall be in waiting as soon as you tell me the day and the number necessary to conduct you safely to poor desolate llainfeld, and any friends of yours shall be Itcartihj welcome; only I pray you to prepare them for our half-savage state of existence, ^'ulgar meat and drink in j>lenty, and an uii'liscovered 20 THE INVITATION. country, is all they dare expect. I am sure Venice Avill be very interesting to you. I used to con- sider a fine ship under sail as the proudest work man could boast of; but when one sees this city of palaces sitting on the sea, and smiling at the waves in their fury, every other wonder of the world is annihilated. Its rapid destruction is saddening If it is painful to see a once-lovely woman becoming decrepid, what is it to see Venice sinking into its watery grave ? " You do perfectly well to go by steam, for you can sup at Venice, and breakfast at Trieste. The coast-road is very tedious, and there are often bad fevers about. I am sure you will like the com- mander-in-chief at Trieste, Count Nugent, also Mr Thomas Thomson Hay, a first-rate merchant there, who, from his kind attention to me, I am certain must be a good man. He will give you ])etter information respecting the commerce, &c., of Trieste, than those who govern there. At Adels- berg, three posts on this side of Trieste, there is a vast cavern, which, when illuminated, is, they say, magnificent. A singular kind of fishes is found in a stream that runs through these caves. They have a comb on their heads like that of a cock ; they have 710 eyes, yet, when exposed to the light, they seem to suffer. Near Adelsberg, but about a post oft' the THE INVITATION. 21 road, is a lake called the Cirknitzer See. By means of five or six tunnels, the water leaves it once in the year, and it is possible to cut down corn, hunt, and fish on the same ground, during the same sea- son ! When the waters return, they bring a number of fish, often from six to eight pounds weight, out of their subterranean abode. '• At Laybach, two roads part for Gratz — they are equally good ; but that by Cilly is twelve posts, the other, by Klagenfurt and Upper Styria, is nineteen posts ; and by this road one sees moun- tains, brothers and sisters to the Tyrolese ; and those who love them can satisfy the sentiment. The great iron-works of Vordenbcrg, where the Archduke John resides, are about a post from Leo- l)en. The country from Bruck to Gratz is ex- tremely romantic. Your late arrival, alas I will only sliow you the nakedness of the land, though autumn, as it retires, may still, as Sir Walter expresses it, leave ' it's mantle's fold' on the forests; but ' the >hroud of russet dropped with gold,' is a poor in- demnity for the summer's beauty you have left be- hind you. All things pass ! * * * * *' I am ashamed of so tedious a letter. During the thirty-six years 1 have lived in this country, 1 have forgotten, in a great degree, English ; and I 22 THE INVITATION. see so many new words in a review Mr Hay lent me a few days ago, they quite confuse my poor head. It is a dreadful fate to survive all one lived for, as I have done, — even the language of my mother country. My spirits are failing me to-day, and the very flies will not allow me to write ; they nestle between my spectacles and my eyes, and torment me. I pray write soon, my dear sir." There was one thing about this letter which puzzled us a good deal, especially when we came near the spots she describes, and the routes which we had to choose amongst, after landing at Trieste. While she enumerates several ol)jects of interest which lay in our way, she omits all mention, or even allusion to the great quicksilver mine of Idria, the second in importance of its kind in the world, as I learned lately in a conversation with Humboldt. At all events, as it is by far the most curious thing, and best worth seeing, in that part of the country, we failed not to visit it in passing. But it was not till long afterwards, that I ascertained that the good old Countess had purposely avoided mentioning Idria, in the hope that we should pass it without examination. It seems she had learned that the miners employed in handling the quicksilver are liable to various diseases : and she took it into her THE INVITATION. 23 head, that, as our curiosity might tempt us to ex- ])lore pretty deeply into the mine, and to touch the specimens of the earths and ores containing the in- sidious poison of this extraordinary metal, we might become ill and die, or, at all events, be detained before reaching her ! Now, as her every thought and feeling was occupied at that moment in making out the grand point of our visit, she saw nothing unrea- sonable in concealing from us, so far as she could, even an object of such surpassing interest as the mines of Idiia. Before reaching Hainfeld, however, we kept up a tolerably active correspondence. In answer to hers of the 12th August, I wrote a rather free and easy epistle, to which there speedily came an answer, which showed that so far we had not mistaken the good old lady's character. Her increasing and al- most feverish anxiety to draw us into her castle is well shown in the following letter : — '' September the Qtli. — The thermometer of Reau- mur is now at 27" (92-^'", Fahrenheit), not a drop of ruin falls, so all is burnt up. Water falls every where, but here it is good and enough. " I had last night, my dear sir, the pleasure to receive your thrice welcome letter. I cannot ex- press how proud and hapjiy I shall be if I can in- 24 THE INVITATION. duce you to undertake a voyage of discovery into this our terra incognita. As I write very unintel- ligibly, I have desired my bailiff to trace the roads from Trieste to Gratz after a map, with the name of each post, and a cross at the houses where it is fittest to sleep at. The inns in Germany are less like the Italian than the old Scotch ones. The first mark is at Adelsberg, a short day's journey ; but I thought you would like to explore the vast cavern and the little fishes there. If any thing fails you, speak with the captain of the circle, Comte Bran- dais, in my name. His angel of a wife was dear to me from her jnfancy, but she died so lately I can- not write to him. *' There is no country so full of strange caverns and underground rivers, as the one you will pass through. One of the rivers comes above ground, full grown, near Laybach. Jason and his Argo- nauts passed the winter in Laybach. In the spring they took their ship to pieces and carried it to tlie sea. You will laugh at thfs, but our antiquarians will give you irrefragable authority for it. You will see by the marks I am extremely ghid you prefer the shortest road to Gratz. It is the decision of wisdom, and I have no doubt you will find her ways are pleasantness. Your darlings will, I am sure, be perfectly safe under the care of their German gover- TIU: IN'VlTAilON'. 25 .jss, who, I trust, will find herself perfectly at home; ••. hile your precious Scotch nursery maid and I will ■.mderstand one another famously. Such a person ;.-; she is ceases to be a servant, she is a friend. She can (line with Mr and Mrs Bailiff, or where she -.vills. ****** '"' I must Miun you about the custom-houses — they are one of our plagues. The money you need ■m the road are ])ieces of twenty kreutzers, with what is called u;ood and bad paper money. Ten florins '^ood make twenty-five bad. In all Germany the English are considered as fair game^ particularly in the inns. Our innkeepers do not dispute, like the Italians, for the character of the people is reserved; :ind thi'V will not come down a farthing in their I)ills. It is marked on your map whether the stages are single or double posts, and I have always seen ihe driver paid as one horse ; but unless they are con- tented they drive slowly, and the loss of time and the expense of the inns is more than the difference. If you will have the goodness to write me a line on arriving at Trieste, the horses shall be sent to Gratz to wait for you. " Ilainfeld is about six hours from Gratz. Your sweet infants will be sadly disappointed when, in- stead of a splendid dwelling, tliey see a building c 26 THE INVITATION. like a manufactory ; the grounds in culture to the door, and the cows lodged within a gunshot of their bed-chamber. At first they will be afraid of me, for I am now like nothing they ever saw, except the picture of Mademoiselle Endor in an old family Bible. Alas ! the ravages of time are equally vi- sible on its possessor, and upon poor desolate Hain- feld ! Farewell." [ 27 ] CHAPTER II. THE SCIILOSS. When we hear of a German castle, our imagina- tions represent to us a huge dark looking fabric, on the edge of a frowning precipice, and wellnigh hid in the shade of forests, some centuries older than the buildinof which has Ions: outlived the fame of hira who raised it. Accordingly, as we drove along from Grat/, we pleased our fancy by speculating on the wild scenery of our friend's mansion, which, from the grandeur of tlie neighbourhood of Gratz, we felt fairly entitled to expect, would not belie the romantic character which belongs to such spots. We had, it is true, seen drawings of Hainfeld, but almost all drawings tell such lies, that there is no believing tliem when they speak trutli. It is indeed part of an artist's confession of faith, to avow his love for the imaginative, over what he is pleased to call tiie vulgar reality ; and sooth to say, these gen- tlemen gcnerallv take good care, tiiat if there be 28 THE SCIILOSS. any vulgarity In tlieir nominal representations, it shall not consist in too close a resemblance to the things represented. Be this as it may, we had formed no very correct notion of the place wo v/ere going to, and strained our eyes with some anxiety in the direction pointed out by the Countess's coachman, as we drove along amongst the hills, eager to catch a sight of the castle before the daylight had quite ebbed away. Nothing, however, could we see in the smallest de- gree like a castle, even when the hills spread them- selves out into a broad, flat, richly cultivated valley, with a small sluggish stream, the Ilaab, stealing its \vay along the middle of the bottom land, or haugh, where its course was indicated by a double line of willows, alders, and other thirsty trees, the only em- bellishments of this kind which the thrift of the farmers had left in the centre of the landscape. At length four little sharp turrets, indicating the i'our corners of the long looked for Schloss, or castle, came in sight, and presently afterwards, the whole building, which, to do its looks no injustice, and in the words of its proprietor, resembled nothing so much as a manufactory. Instead of standing boldly on the top of a high rock, the family mansion of the l'ur!;-ta!ls was jilaccd in the flattest part of a flat vallcv, far frc.in the abundant trees and rich scenery THE SCIILOSS. 29 of the adjacent liigli grounds, as if in utter contempt of the many picturesque situations which might have l)cen selected on the same property. As we drove under the old archway which ad- mitted us to the quadrangle in the interior, we might have fancied we were entering the court of a Sjianish or Portuguese convent. There was just light enough to show us the corridor on each of the four sides, arched all along and open to the skj', with a row of doors leading to what in a convent would be the cells, but which here were of course much larger apartments. A worse description of architecture for so rigorous a climate as that of (icrmany could not M'cU be imagined. ^Ve learned afterwards, that it had been introduced by an Italian architect who saw the country only in summer, and that the natives of the day, having little or no acquaintance Mith other countries, and no great iu- geiiuityof their own, had quietlyadopted the fashio!), to the permanent discomfort of themselves, and of all succeeding -as found in evrrv room In the 34 THE SCHLOSS. castle, higli and low, namely, an enormous porcelain stove, white and highly glazed, reaching almost to the ceiling, in a succession of handsome stories, not unlike some Chinese pagodas I have seen in other climes. The fire is introduced into these vast ovens, as they are well called in German, not by an open- ing into the room, but by a door which opens into the corridor. Early in the morning, a large wood fire is lighted in each stove, and such is their mass, that long after the fire has burned out, the heat is retained, and the apartment kept warm till the even- ing, when another heating is given it which suffices for the night. In a climate of great severity, such means of heating rooms are said to be indispensable ; but to English tastes, accustomed to the cheerful- ness of an open fire, and not at all accustomed to the close heated air of a German stove, the fashion is one which it requires a long experience to render to- lerable. Madame de Staol wittily says, " that the Germans live in an atmosphere of beer, stoves, am! tobacco ; " and truly, the more one sees of the coun- try, the less exaggerated does this sarcasm appear. The annoyance of beer one may sometimes escape, but the misery of tobacco smoke and choky stoves is inevitable. CHAPTER III. THE COUNTESS. Miss Jane Anne Cranstoun was born in Scot- land about the year 17G0, of a noble family, both by the father's and the mother's side ; and she en- iovcd likewise the advantajje of being: allied to the aristocracy of talent, by the marriage of her sister with the celebrated Dugald Stewart. Her own abilities and attainments improved these advan- tages, and won for her in early life the intimate friendship of Sir Walter Scott ; and long before he was known to the public, she had discovered the secret of tliat wonderful mine of intellectual gold, which has become in our day the established cur- rency of fashionable literature in every part of the civilized world. In the latter stages of our acquaint- ance Mith her, we came upon some curious circum- stances coimected with this intimacy, which shall be touched upon in due season. In the mean time I may mention, that we made out almost to demon- 36 TilE COUNTESS. stration, that one of tlie most original and spirited of all his female characters, no less a personage than Die Vernon, must have been sketched from this very lady. In the year 1797, Miss Cranstoun married Count Purgstall, a German nobleman of the highest family in Austria, with whom she proceeded to Lower Sty- ria, where his large estates lay ; and she never after- wards returned to her native country. During the fierce wars which Napoleon waged Nvith Austria. her husband served in the army in posts of distinc- tion, until, towards the close of those disastrous periods, he was taken prisoner under circumstances so peculiarly distressing, that his health gave way, and after in vain trying the climate of Italy, he died In 1811. Madame Purgstall was now left with an only child, a son, who lived only a few years after his father's death. No sooner was he gone, tlian up- wards of seventy claimants as heirs-at--]aw pounced on the noble estates of the ancient fi)mily of Purg- stall, and the poor desolate widow had enough to do to establisli her right even to that portion of the property M'hich had been settled upon her. The difficulties she encountered in arranoing: these mat- ters, and the severe distress to which she was reduced by innumerable and apparently interminable law- suits, miglit have brolcen the spirit and wearied out THK tOUNTKSS. 37 the resolution of a less vigorous mind. ^Vitll all her fortitiule, iiuleetl, she seems to have been almost suudiied : and but for the generous assistance of the late Lord Ashburton, a near connexion of hers, she must in all probability have sunk under the joint ^veight of poverty and law proceedings. She v.as now, by these successive bereavements, left quite alone in a foreign land ; and having lost every being who was dear to her, she appears to have had scarcely any other object whilst she remained in the world, but to cherish the remembrance of those ^vllo were gone — to feed her grief, in short, rather than to overcome it. In this spirit, accordingly, she permitted nothing to be changed in the castle, livery article of furniture stood exactly in its old place — not a walk amon^-st the yfrounds was altered — not a trci- cut down — not a book shifted in the librar) . 80 that the castle of Ilainfeld and all its old inmates, all its old usages, went on, or rather Avent not on, but remained as if arrested by the frost of its mistress's grief, in the very position they occupieil at the period of that last and crowning disaster, her son's death, which obliterated the house of Purgstall. In former times, we are told, the Countess had been the gayest of the gay, and the most active person in the country, both in body and mind. 38 THE COUNTESS. But she soon sunk into a state of inactivity ; and by considering it a kind of duty to those she had lost, to make the worst of things, instead of making the best of them, she greatly aggravated the hopeless and forlorn nature of her situation. One of the effects of this indiscreet course of mental discipline was to undermine a constitution naturally robust ; and presently, in addition to her other misfortunes, gout, rheumatism, and tic douloureux, with sundry other inward and painful complaints, took their turns to torment her. Amongst the strange fancies which formed part of her singularly constituted mind, was a firm persuasion that all medical assistance was useless in her case, and indeed, in most cases ; and thus, unquestionably, she allowed some of the dis- eases which preyed upon her to acquire a much greater head than they might have done had they been treated " secundum artem." Whether this be a mistake or not, she presented to the eye a miserable spectacle of bodily suffering and bodily decay ; but these were probably rendered more conspicuous from the undiminished vigour of her in- tellects — the freshness and even vivacity of her dis- position — the uniform suavity of her temper, and the lively interest which, in spite of herself, as it should seem, and her resolution to be unhappy, she conti- nued to take in the concerns of the external world. THE COUNTESS. 39 I should have mentioned, that at the time we first saw the Countess she Iiad been confined to bed three whole years — to the very bed on which her son had expired seventeen years before ; and from which, as she said with too much appearance of truth, she herself could never hope to rise again. Fortunately, her complaints had not attacked her eyes, nor her hands, so that she could both read and write. Nei- ther was she in the least deaf, and her powers of speech were perfect — that is to say, her articulation was perfect, for as to her language, it was made up of a ^tranjic confusion of ton, " there is an evil beyond even your nautical resources to remedy." " Is it?" I cried, catching hold of a bundle con- taining a quarter of a hundred quills just come from Clrat/, and stripping otf the red cord which I have observed in all countries is used by stationers for this purpose, I made one end of it fast to the loop or handle of my recently-established bell-rope, and to the otlicr I fixed the corner of the Countess's ]iocket-handkerchief. " Now," I exclaimed, " you have only to put out }our finger, catch the cord, and in the darkest night pull in your handkerchief, as you M'ould do a fish at ;lie end of a line." The poor Countess was in ecstasies of gratitude, l)ut she .'^^aid nothing to the sick-nurse, who, falling :. sleep in the evening, and not being disturbed till the morning, fancied, on awakening, that her mis- tress must be dead, for such a night of repose, tliey both declared, neither of them had passed during the tliree years of her attendance ! [ 48 ] CHAPTER IV. THE IRON COFFIN. The cordiality of our reception made us feel truly at home from the first moment of our entering the castle ; and the Countess, after apologizing for not doing us the honours in person — as if it had been a thing she could have helped — begged us to select our own hours for breakfast, dinner, tea, and sup- per. " I have secured a good cook for you," she said; " and you will find abundant store of all kind of eatables in a plain way ; and the cook, as well as all the servants, have orders to consider you as their masters, so it will be your own fault if you do not arrange matters to your mind." Thus invited, we took the liberty of naming the reasonable hour of four for dinner, instead of the very barbarous hour — as it seemed to us — of twelve, or even of one or two, as some fashionable fami- lies in that neighbourhood have ventured to make it. Breakfast, in almost all parts of the continent, ■;i!ic iuoN coiiiN. 49 i i a wretclied afiair, and we found it invariably cost 1-^ and all the houseliold so much trouble to get "I) any tiling like a respectable morning meal, that •'.e often passed it by in travelling, and took our ^ up of cuiiee and scrap of bread in silent despair. On ])assing through Gratz, for example, the ca- i»!tal of Styrla, on our way to the Castle, we stopped :a the j)rincipal hotel ; and having reason to think, iVom the astonishment of the people at our demands, •hat they had never before seen an English family, we took great care to instruct them on the subject of l)reakfast. But after waiting for three-quarters of an hour, and despatching three several express missions to the kitchen, the waiter, fancying he was [)crforming wonders, entered the room, literally witli a jug of tepid water, one cup, and six tea- spoons I A\ e could not allbrd to do without breakfast, however, at Ilainfeld, though we had but small hojies of success, even with all the authority of the Countess to back our resolution. .losf})li, the Countess's master of all work, was fortunati'ly soon broken into the oddity of oiu- ways, though it was long ere we succeeded in getting an ade(iuate allowance of plates, knives, and forks. After selecting the most suitable apartments for ■>lee})ing-quarters, the next things to look out for K 50 THE IRON COTFIN. were sitting-rooms — because, although the Countess expressed a strong wish to have some of us always with her, it was clear that her state of health, to say- nothing of our own habits, would render it impos- sible to convert her bedroom into our drawingroom, after the manner |n which her kindness suggested. Under the pilotage of the groom of the chambers, Joseph, we set out accordingly to explore that wing of the Castle which faced the so:jjth-west, and lay on the opposite side of the court from that containing our bedroom suite of apartments. At the extreme left, or southern end of the wing, lay the Countess's own room and those of her attendants — the noisiest, the coldest, and the least convenient in the whole establishment — inasmuch as her bed stood exactly over the arched entrance to the Castle ; and the pavement of this entrance being sadly broken up, every cart or carriage that arrived made a noise as if the Schloss were tumbling about our ears. It was quite enough, however, for the Countess that her son had died in this room, to make her put up with this and any further amount of annoyance. The bare proposal to have her removed to some one of the nine-and-thirty other apartments on the same floor, threw her into extreme agitation. Kext to this sacred chamber came a small anti- room, cr:immcd witli grotesque oak and ebony fur- THE IRON COFFIN. 51 iiirure, and hung round with small pictures. Then followed a commodious, warm, and well-lighted lil)rar\', richlv stored with German and French books, besides a valuable collection of classical English works, mostly — with the exception of the Waverley Novels — more than half a century astern of the pre- sent ta>;to. Adjacent to the library, we came upon the only really comfortable room in the castle, a dis- tinction which it owed to tlie circumstance of its pos- sessing an open fir(>-place — a very rare phenomenon in anv jiart of Germany-pjoind with this exception, I believe, totally unknown in the remote province of Lower Styria. It was of the kind called a Frank- lin, being half stove, half fire-place, and had been placed there many years before by Lord Ashburton, who wiselv thought that a winter in Styria, without the siglit of a Hre, must be a dreary atfair. We at once fixed upon this little room as our evening snuggery, where we took tea when our party was not too large; when company came, the library was used, until the winter fairly set in. 'Die next apartment contained a billiard-table ; then came a small dining-room, and at the end of the whole a larger supper hall, M'hich we occupied only on high (lavs and holldavs; of these — strange to say, cousiderIn<>f the condition of our hostess — we had 52 THE IRON COFFIN. not a few before we disentangled ourselves from the enchantments of this strange castle. Having fairly. established ourselves within doors, we yielded to the wish of the Countess, and made sundry little excursions to the most remarkable places in the neighbourhood, in order, as she sug- gested, to see the country before the beauty of the foliage was all gone, a precaution the more neces- sary, as the summer had been one of unusual heat and drought, and the autumnal tints and attendant decay were thereby antedated many weeks. The first object of curiosity on many accounts, was the castle of Riegersburg. It had been for centuries the ancient abode of the renowned Purg- s tails, and had passed from them only on the death of the last male possessor of the name, the poor Countess's only child. In old times it had proved a fortress of such strength, that the Turks, when they conquered and overran the greater part of tlie country which now forms the Austrian do- niinions, never made any impression upon it; and it is even said, they never dared to attempt its cap- ture. It resembles Edinburgh Castle wonderfully, though it stands rather higher above the plain — if plain it can be called, which plain is none — for a more waving, rolled about country I never THE IKON COFFIN'. 53 hitore looked over, than that wliich surrouncLs Jiieircrsburg-, and extends to the foot of the Rhe- tian Alps. It may be added, that a more richly wooded, and, at the same time, industriously culti- \ated, and better peopled country could not be ^cen. For wherever the plough does not move, the i^round is clad with trees, so that scarcely a nook i-i left unoccupied, except where rich o-reen patches of meadow land in tlic valleys, or sunny knolls on tlic sides of the hills, are kept apart for the nume- rous cattle to graze upon. Almost all the wood is what is called natural, and being kept solely for fuel, is rarely allowed to attain any great size ; whether from the favourable nature of tlio soil and climate, or fiom the inherent beauty which belongs to na- ture when let alone, I know not, but nothing could be more thick and luxuriant than these woods ; and autumn having l)y this lime drawn his many- coloured brush across the picture, the landscape look- ed a-^ if the sky had lost its hold of the rain- bow and sent it in showers over the ground beneath. The interior of the castle possessed a very differ- I'ut and more melancholy kind of interest ; and we could not help feeling what a contra^^t there often is between the best and strongest, and most endu- ring of human works, and the most common, an(', as it were, careless i)roductions of nature. Tiu; 54 THE IRON COFFIN. scenery about Riegersburg Is as young and fresh and vigorous as ever, revelling in eternal succes- sions of beauty — while the gigantic castle, many parts of which are cut out of the living rock, or built of huge masses of stone, bound together with bars of iron, and all destined " to last for ever," according to man's vain boast, is silently but rapidly yielding before Time's scythe ; the effect of whose touch, I think, is often more evident upon such strongholds than it is upon those which possess less of what is termed durability. The most melancholy thing of all in such places, is the cold air of desolation which reigns in the empty halls, the total want of use for the magnificent apartments, and the mixture of splendour and shabbiness, of past wealth and pre- sent poverty, which implies that the abode has changed from high hands to low ones. In tlie prin- cipal room stood the state-bed of the ancient lords of the castle ; but the tattered satin curtains, the tarnished gold of the heavy fringes, and the worm- eaten posts and crumbling cornices, gave token of its long neglect. The ceiling appeared to be the only part of the room which " decay's effacing fingers" had not yet reached. It was formed of very costly inlaid work, consisting of some dark coloured wood, probably ebony, on a white ground of box or beech, so extremely rich in appearance, that it look- THE IRON COFFIN. 55 ed more like the work of a fancy table in a lady's boudoir, than the ceiling- of a castle chamber. In jiassing- from one old room to another, we had to skirt aloni^ by a series of narrow g-alleries, some of thfm (jtiite desolate and abandoned, while others had been converted to vulafar modern uses. On cominor out of the grand banquetting room to pass into the hall or withdrawing- room, we had to go along one of these galleries ; and in doing- so, were oblig-ed to thread our way through piles of Indian corn, stacks of fire-wood, and ranges of washing-tubs, and to duck our heads under cords covered \yith linen hung up to dry. Next minute we found ourselves in the midst of family pictures, Imge coats of arms, carved in oak, gilded cornices, fresco painted walls and etilings, and enormous folding doors covered ^\itll works in relief, and reaching, like the orna- iiKutal entrance to some (i(Jthic churches, nearly to the top of the wall. Anon, on making our exit by one of these solemn portals, instead of finding our- sehes in a grand court, or lobby, or splendid stair- ease, in character with the magnificent suite of apartments we had j)assed through, we had enough to do not to break our noses in scrambling down a steep awkward darkish sort of back-stair, the poor remains of some \anished wing of the Castle. One of those precarious paths brought us, at the 56 THE IRON COFllN. end of our transit, to the main road close to the iron- shod doors of the seventh gate, or highest line of defences, by which, in ancient and barbarous times, the upper part of the fortress had been separated from the lower. It seems that in those good old days the succes- sion of this stronghold had been disputed by two brothers, who held the castle for some years jointly, and all the time in bitter hostility. The eldest had possessed himself of the top, three sides of which being a perpendicular rock, and the fourth in the hands of his amiable relative, he had no means of communication with the surrounding country. He was accordingly in a fair way of being- starved out. when the bold idea occurred to him of cutting a " corniche road" round the face of the precipice, by v.hich m.eans he wound his way out and in, and obtained his supplies. The rival brothers l)eiiig now on pretty equal terms, continued to blaze av.ay at one another till both divisions of the castle were almost demolished. On returnin2:throu<):h tlie lower rans'e of !'ieofer>;- burg, where a picturesque little village has been built under the shadow of the fort, we took a look', by the Countess's desire, at the church, witliin which sh',- told us slie had erected a cliapel. As she Iiad never changed from the Protestantism in whicli she wa ^ THE IRON COFFIN. 57 hroui^lit up at Edinburgh, and had acquired any tliiiio^ but love or respect for the Catholicism of Aus- tria, this proceeding appeared very odd. We ex- amined the chapel, however, which was done up with the sinij)le taste that charactet''>.*^'^2-<'^^*v^*-^-^/^- uiulertook. In the centre she had placed a neat, though rather showy altar; and on one side a hand- some granite monument to her husband and son. ( )ver all blazed the glorious Saint Wenceslaus, the [Kitron of the Purgstall family, not quite in keeping with the quiet elegance of the rest ; and the whole aifair ])uzzled us not a little. These anomalies were explained by the Countess on our return to Ilainfeld. She asked us little or nothing about the decaying grandeur of the ancient seat of lior family in their prosperous days ; and as it had pas^^ed from her hands to those of people who neglectt'd it, and cared for none of its renowned as- sociations, we refrained from alluding to it. l^ut she was elo(|uent on the subject of the chap.-l, where, in fact, owing to the peculiar cast of hi-v temperament, nearly all her interests lay burieii witli luT husband and son : antl we soon found that her sole wish on earth, or at least the wish which was always u})permost in her mind, was to be laid beside them. As ditEculties might arise, however, on the score of her hein-j; a Prot{>'^*ant. or from tlie 58 THE IRON COFFIN. Castle being no longer in the possession of her fa- mily, she thought it prudent to take every precau- tion beforehand to insure this grand object of her anxiety. The priests accordingly were propitiated by this magnificent embellishment of the church ; and the congregation felt themselves obliged to the Countess for placing before their vi^ondering eyes a picture done in Vienna, and so much beyond their provincial conceptions of the power of art. It was generally understood also, that the Countess had left in her will certain sums of money to be distri- buted to the poor after her body should be quietly interred in the family vault of the Purgstalls ; and the clergy of the spot had an idea, whether true or not, that in the same event, the poor in spirit were not forgotten in her ladyship's will. All these things she told us, not only with the utmost vmconcern as to her death, but I may say with that sort of lively interest with which a person speaks of an agreeable visit to be made in the spring of the ensuing year. It was difficult at first to know exactly how to take all this — whether to be grave or gay — since it did not seem quite civil to be discussing as a pleasant aflfair, and in her presence, the details of our worthy hostess's funeral. So I thought it best merely to ask her whether, as in England, there might not be TUE IRON COFFIN. 59 s'lmc rlilBculty as to interment in a vault within the church except in a leaden coffin. I suggested to her, that as in Austria people are buried very quickly after their death, there might be no time, especially in a remote country place, to make the requisite preparations.* " And do you think," retorted the old lady, with a curious sort of smile, " do you think I was going to risk the success of the prime object of my thoughts upon such a contingency as that ? No I no I you shall see," and ringing the bell, slie summoned Joseph. " Get the keys," she exclaimed, " and show Captain Hall my coffin." And turning to us, she added, *' when you see it, I think you will admit tiiat it is not likely to be refused admittance to the * Tlir accidoiital u>c t< tii me t(j nientinn, that under this liile thi ri' ha< lately been publi-lied one of the prettiest little I !iiliinir> books whieh has appeared for a long time ; and I \enture to reeominend " (irave and Gay" to the notice of " |)arint^ and guardians" as a work well calculated to assist them in tlii' ta>k of education. Irom the snccesst'ul manner i.i wl.irli the writer 'Miss l'ra>er TNtler^ has contrived to niaki' relii:ion> principles and moral i)recepts not onh' intelli- gible and striking, i)Ut so engaging as to win for them the attention and ^\iiij)ath\' ofyoung people, the book is nncom- 1 . Illy int( re>tinir, and inu>t >oon become a standard work in e\ cry ju\cnile lii)rary. 60 THE IRON COFFIN, church on the score of want of strength, or, for that matter, for want of beauty." I confess I was not a- little curious to discover how either strength or- beauty could be given to a coffin ; I found, however, it was not made of lead but of iron, and so tastefully contrived, that it looked more like one of those ornamental pieces of sculpture which surmount some of the old monu- raients in Westminster Abbey, than a coffin intended for real use. Having removed three huge fantas- tically-shaped padlocks, we folded back the lid, and I was surprised to see two large bundles, neatly sewed up in white linen, lying in the coffin, one at each end. On stooping down and touching them. I discovered they were papers, and could read in the Countess's handwriting, the following words — " Our Letters J. A. Purgstall." [ ^1 ] CHAPTER V THE NEIGHnOURS. '" Now ,"' said the Countess, " that you have seen ihc ruined, desohite, and uninhabited castle of our exterminated family, I wish you woukl take a walk to another venerable chateau which is not, as yet, deserted, though I fear it is hastening' to the same t'ate as poor lliegersburg. Besides," she added, •• you ought to see something of your neighbours, now tliut }()u are established in Styria." \\\' wore all compliance, and set off next day to vi-it (Ik'iclienberg, which lies about a league and a half amongst the valleys south of ITainfeld, and, un- like that place, really looks its character of a castle, I eing liiiilt on the top of a steep rock, inaccessible ;iii throe sides. In other respects, too, it is beauti- ially situated, and in the season when we first visited it nothing could be more striking than the scene viewed from the windows of the inhabited part of the building. Tlie lustre of th? dc'-nying fdinge, 62 THE NEIGHBOUKS. like the colours of the dying dolphin, almost dazzled the sight; and the thick woods on every side crowded so close upon the castle, that until we came near it we could scarcely see even the turrets. In this re- spect Gleichenberg differs from its opposite neigh- bour Eiegersburg, which is seen from every part of the surrounding country. Like that once famous stronghold, however, poor Gleichenberg is allowed to fall into a wretched state of neglect, and we could not help sighing to think that even a very little ex- pense and a very little trouble might check the process of ruin, and render it one of the most charm- ing places in the world. As it was, we had to make our way, as we best could, amongst piles of rubbish, and along roads, which, though formed in the solid rock, had been so worn out, that they were barely passable, and over bridges scarcely strong enough to bear the weight of a cat. It is always painful to see the ancient residence of magnificence turned to base purposes. We can look with pictures(pie com- placency on a good honest ruin, covered with ivy, and tenanted only by owls and foxes ; but there is little or no pleasure in wandering through the de- serted courts, damp staircases, and empty rooms of a huge jndace, where half a dozen meagre retainers occupy tlie establishment which might have lobj^ed af5 manv hundreds. THE NEIGHBOURS. 63 Witli these feelings, and expecting' nothing but the desolation we had seen enough of at Riegers- burg, we clambered up to the second story, and there, most unexpectedly, came upon a very plea- santly lighted, well furnished, small suite of the snuggest ])Ossible apartments, occupied by the ac- coinjilished proprietor of the castle. ^Iclaucholy though it be to witness the dilapida- tion of an ancient dwelling, it is still more touching, I tliink, to observe the effect of that moral dilapi- dation which is consequent upon ruined fortunes, especially when the remaining fragments, so to speak, are of fine workmanship. I have seldom, in any country, seen a person of more elegant manners tluui this poor lady, once amongst the most distin- guislied stars of the fashionable constellations of \ ieniia, and still a beautiful woman. Though so much reduced in circumstances as to be oblifj-ed to live in the mere corner of her own castle, and sur- rounded by ruin and destruction of every kind, her rooms were neatly, and in many respects, richly fitted up. In spite of all her difficulties, too, she has main- tained, though in a less s})lendid style than formerly, her projjcr position in society. The severest of her trials, I can well believe, was the almost entirely ruined health of her only daughter. It is said that C4 THE NEIGHBOURS. when fifteen montlis old the child sl!])ped through the hands of its nurse, who was dancing- it on a table, and that the fall produced a concussion of the brain, or fracture of the skull, I know not which; in short, an injury, the consequence of which was that the poor little thing could neither speak nor walk for eight years. Since then she had grown up to be a tall fine looking girl ; and, what is a thousand times more interesting, it seems her intellects, which had been only weakened and arrested, as it were, in their course, not destroyed, have been gradually impro- ving, so that there is a prospect of her being en- tirely restored. What a truly heavenly reward must it not be to the mother for all her patience in sor- row, to regain the mental companionship of a daugh- ter, w'ho, unreflecting people might at one time have said, would have been better dead than alive ! On our return the Countess was so pleased with our account of Gleichenberg and its inmates, that she started us off the next day to visit another of her neighbours living in a chateau called Steinberg, one of tlie multitudinous castles with which that part of the country is studded, almost all of which, with tlie single exception of our home, dear old Hainfeld, look the character admirably. It is oidy, however, without that these buildings make any show ; and in our round of visits to the nciuhbour- THE NEIGHBOURS. 65 in Of houses, we found that it was merely a succes- sion of ruins we were called upon to admire openly, and to s'l'rli over in secret. The proprietor of Steinberg had lived so fast that his means became exhausted, and he was obliged to sell the castle and estate, after stripping both as completely as possible. The new purchaser, though UL'itlier a gambler nor a spendthrift, nor a free liver, nor ill i\ny way extravagant, happened not tol)e one of the most economical of men, though one of the mo-^t good-natured, and thus, somehow, it happened that the rents were always spent faster than they came in ; and, in process of time, the castle and lauds once more changed ownership. On this oc- casion rather an odd arrangement was made, which I am surprised is not oftener adopted in like cir- cumstances. In-^tead of the estate being put up for public sale, it was quietly arranged that the next heirs, two nephews, should come at once into posses- sion, while the uncle and his family were to occupy, for life, a small suite of apartments, and to draw tlieir daily bread, and daily beef and potatoes, from the adjacent home farm. At all events, tliere we found iiim, after a Strang-,' navigation through l)roken down corridors and crazy stairs which conducted us to a passage, lii"-li no, from whicli we ngain made a steep (lesco;;t as if \',e 1" 66 THE NEIGHBOURS. Lad been going into a cellar. The rooms, however, were light, airy, and most cheerful, with windows looking over the prettiest part of the country. The good lady of the house, and her whole establishment, were somewhat different from what we had seen the day before, but, in their way, not less pleasing. Her genuine and hearty hospitality was indicated by the restless bustle she kept up during all the time of our visit, toiling and panting between the kitchen and the drawing-room, bringing in dishes of grapes^, trays of glasses filled with syllabub, cakes, and all sorts of good things, till the children were half sick with stuffing, and the rest of the company ashamed or unable to cat more. The rattling of a tea equi- page at last gave us notice that if we did not wish ut- terly to destroy all appetite for dinner we ought to beat our retreat. Amonsfst the numerous curiosities of the castle of Steinberg I shall mention only one. It was a very thin, but strong iron mask, with clasps and locks of the same metal, of which a redoubted Baron of olden times is said to have made frequent use. It appears that he had a very handsome wife, who was sadly coquettish, and more fond of exhibiting her pretty face than he at all approved of. Wlienever lie stirred from home, therefore, he was wont to en- case his slippery partner's head in this iron mask, THE NEIGHBOURS. 67 and put the key in his pocket. Tradition says that the gentleman mistook the application, and quite misplaced the protection, as the lady, though she could not exhibit the lisjht of her countenance to her lovers, whispered still softer endearments through the bars, and in the end taught the foolish noble that in love as in war, physical obstacles, so far from keeping out an invading enemy, generally serve as his best stepping stones to conquest. We should have been glad to be left quiet a little after these two excursions ; but the Countess, who, In a kind and friendly way, was rather arbitrary, rcmhuled us that w^ were close to the frontier of Hungary, on the other side of which some very partievdar friends of hers resided. She therefore beg- L;ed us to drive so far, see a little of that celebrated country, take our dinner with her friends, and return at night. She also gave us instructions how best to see a celebrated field of battle near St Gothard, between the Turks and Austrian*;, in the year \i')l')7), "wlilch," continued slie, "you have doubtless heard of?" We certainlyhad never heard a word of the matter, but away we went, in compliance with her ladyship's wishes, crossed the Hungarian frontier, and having climbed the steeple of the village of St Gothard, which lies at the confluence of the Ilaab and the 68 THE NEIGHBOURS. Feistrltz, were instructed by our guide in the de- tails of the great fight alluded to. I confess I took more interest in the wild, indeed half savage costume and looks of the Hungarians, most of whom were dressed in long, flowing, white cloaks. The language, manners, and appearance in every respect of these people differed essentially from those of the Styrians whom we had left but a fev,' miles behind. This seems the more strange, as the boun- dary between the two countries is nothiiig but an imaginary line, or at most a hedge and a ditch, which the Countess's coachman had some tliiHcult}'. Ithought, in pointing out, though he hadlived tliere - abouts all his life. I cannot better describe Hi Gothard to those who have been in the East tliiu\ by comparing it to an Indian town on a market day : and those who have not been in the East may de- rive some notion of it from Daniell's exquisite draw- ings, or those of less remote scenes from the graphic pencil of Horace Vernet, whose pictures of African manners are so admirably true to nature. Vv'hat we heard of Hungary did not very mucli tempt us to go far into that still half-savage region. The peasantry are kept in a deplorable state of sub- jection by their lords, who, if not vested with th;' power of life and death, in all cases where their will and })lcasure is coairadicled, possess tlie power of THE NEIGHBOURS. 69 punishing corporally and summarily whoever may chance to oftend them. We were shown a letter one day from a lady who had gone as governess to that part of Hungary which lies nearest to Poland, and where, from political and other circumstances, the country is in an extraordinary state of excitement. There it would seem the peasantry have a particu- lar dislike to their seigneurs, and in conse(|uence of some of their insurrectionary proceeedings, no fewer than seventeen of them were hano^ed on the trees close to the house in which the lady was residing ! So that she and her pupils could not go out to walk, without passing the spot where these seventeen victims were exposed i?i terrorcm to the remaining tenantry. Nor dared she or her young ladies stir from the house without three armed servants as an escort. After learning this and many similar enormities, it was pleasant to hear our Hungarian friends assert, that although they form pclitically a part of the Austrian dominions, they are in fact an independent and free nation ; and what was still more amusing, to hear them maintain roundly, that they possessed a con- stitution very much resembling tiiat of England. Upon coming; to close quarters in conversation with some of these Hungarians, we learned that the chief, and, in fact, as far as we could discover, the sole. 70 THE NEIGHBOURS. point of resemblance between the constitutions of Hungary and England consisted in their both ha- ving two legislative chambers. But there occurs this trifling distinction, — in Hungary, both chambers consist of hereditary nobility, neither being elective by the people. Moreover, the country, though not thickly inhabited, contains upwards of three hundred thousand nobles — that is, persons of noble family, all of whom are exempted from taxes, and are vested with many other arbitrary and galling priviloges. However low in life these persons of noble blood may be — butchers, bakers, shoemakers — they retain their nobility, and exercise their privileges. This is only a small item in the catalogue of differences between us ; but we soon found it hopeless to talk to the Hungarians on the subject, and it is perhaps well for them if they are pleased with what they cannot hope to alter. In the midst of these national discussions the dinner appeared ; and as our morning's expedi- tion had made us more than usually hungry, we looked forward with less dread than we had ever done before to the overloaded table which all re- ports of the nature and extent of a German dinner led us to expect. But our fears on this score, if we had any, were groundless, for a less loaded repast never was seen. There was positively too little for TiiE NEIGHBOURS. 71 the company, and wc felt awkward at having-, by our intrusion, diminished the scanty allowance of the family. Every dish was carried oiF the table as clean as if, instead of a goodly company of Ilunirarian ladies and gentlemen, with a couple of liuiiL^ry heretics from England, the baron had in- troduced a dozen of his wild-boar-hounds to lick the [)latters. As this was the only Hungarian dinner we saw during our stay in these parts, a notice of it may perhaps interest the lovers of good cheer. We had first i>f all coldish, dirty-looking, thin soup; then a plate with ill-cut slices of ill-salted tongue ; and after a long and dreary interval, a dish consisting of slices of boiled beef, very cold, very fat, and very tough. I know not whence the fat came; for in tiiat country there are no cattle bred for the table, but only for the plough and the waggon, and after i.'ianv }ears of labour they are killed, not because t!;ey are fit to be eaten (quite the contrary), but be- cause they are no longer fit for work. The next dish pif)mised better, it Mas a salmon, twisted into a circli', w it!i his tail in his mouth, like the allegorical images of 1-lternity. liut I am sure if I were to live, as the AmiM-icans say, from July to l^ternity, I should not wi>h to look upon the like of such a fish again. It had been brought all the way from Carintliia by the l^old l^nrnn himself. I need not sav more. 72 THE NEIGHBOUnS. And yet its bones were so nicely cleaned, that the skeleton might have been placed in a museum of natural history, and named by Agassiz, without further trouble. Next arrived a dish of sausagfes. which disappeared in what the Germans call an Augenblick, or twinkling of an eye. Lastly came the roast, as it always does in those countries, but instead of a jolly English sirloin or haunch, the dish consisted of a small shred of what they facetiously called venison — but such venison I Yet had the ori- ginal stas: been alive from which this morsel was hewn, it could not have moved off faster. To wind up all, instead of dessert, we were presented with a soup plate holding eleven small dry sweet-cakes, each as big as a Genevese watch-glass. In short, not to spin out this sad repast, it reminded me of long bygone days spent in the midshipmen's berth on short allowance, where the daily bread and beef of his gracious INIajcsty used to vanish in like man- ner, and leave, as Shakspeare says, " not a wreclv behind ! " I ought not to omit that the wine was scarcely drinkable, excepting, I presume, one bottle of Burgundy, which the generous master of the house kept faithfully to himself, not offering even the lady by his side, a stranger and his own invited guest, a single glass, but drinking the whole, to the last drop, himself ! So much for a Hungarian mag- CHAPTER VI. THH RIVAL GUESTS. Olr fiieiully liostcss furni:jhed us with many other opportunities of seeing tlie society of her neighbour- hood : for although, as I have mentioned, she liad been for several years bedridden, she nevertheless greatly enjoyed good company, and possessed in her- self the means of entertaining her guests in a man- ner ccpialled by very {aw even of those who are not pinned like her, poor woman, to one spot. It rccpiired, indeed, as will be seen by and by, a good deal more trouble to free the house from dis- agreeable guests, than to procure the company of persons who contributed to the cheerfulness of the party ; for the style of living in Styria differed wide- ly from that of England, or any where else, that we had seen. It remimled us constantly of what we had read in old books, or heard in the stories of old people. Our castle, in fact, was a sort of liberty- hall, to which people came uninvited at all hours G 74 THE RIVAL GUESTS. and seasons ; sometimes they came to dinner : some- times to supper; and generally tliey staid the night, but vanished next day ; — or they remained a week, just as suited themselves, kissing their hostess's hand when they came and when they went, wel- come either M'ay. The master of the house havino- been lono- dead and gone, and the mistress confined to one corner, the chateau, it may be thought, would wear a desolate appearance, and be so in fact. Instead of that, the ancient hospitality was kept up undiminished, under die immediate guidance of the butler Joseph, who, after having fought with Napoleon in most of his campaigns, had, by the change of times, been led to employ his green old age in the service of the Countess. Manfully, indeed, had he stood by her in the midst of her misfortunes. At one time her distress became so great, that what with debts, real and fictitious, the expenses of lawsuits, and the severe exactions of the government to pay off the costs of the dreadful wars in which Austria had been worsted, she was reduced to a state of poverty. This was the more severe upon her, as, up to the time of her son's death, she had been the virtual head of an immense property, and lived in great splendour. At that critical period, when her ruin seemed inevitable, and the poor Countess was almost THE lUVAL GUESTS, 75 L'lilirely deserted, she asked Joseph to stay by her. '• Madam," said the ohl sohlier, " if we shall be reduced to live on potatoes, I shall never desert you." 'Jhis the Countess told me herself, adding, that (lininii; t\vo-and-t\venty years, many of which were years of poverty, and all of them of sickness and sorrow, he had not only never expressed a wish to leave her, but had preserved his cheerfulness lurou<^hout every disaster, and by always taking the bri^'ht side of things (which unfortunately for herself was not the poor Countess's own habit), he had essentially contributed to render her life not absolutely intolerable. This ohl soldier, as I have already said, made a capital Major-Domo ; and being a man of the world, lie lu'lpc'd the company at dinner not merely to to- l)ic<, but to his opinions thereon, which had a very droll elfect at first, and often made strangers stare. As he had learned from his campaignings what the want of comforts was, he became the better able to supply such visitors as ourselves, for instance, with the means of living comfortably. As he was, more- over, a man of abilities and resource, who stuck at nothing, and made no diificulties, we got on fa- mously together. In short, our friend Joseph was truly a second Caleb Balderstone, who, at all haz- ards, made the most of the family means — smiled 76 THE RIVAL GUESTS. under every reverse of fortune, and essentially con- tributed to the maintenance of tlie prosperity of tlic liousehold to which he was attached, by courageously resolving that nothing should or could go wrong at Hainfeld, as long as his mistress lived. The Countess, in my presence, gave him for- mally to understand that I was to be looked upon for the time, as master of the Castle, and my directions were to be obeyed with the same exactness as her own orders ; and these injunctions she desired him to communicate to the whole establishment. " I have already," she continued, but addressing me, " given similar instructions to the cook ; and therefore, if there be any thing within the scope of Hainfeld to produce, for which you or your family do not ask when you require it, the fault is with yourselves, and I shall be very much mortified." The Countess's whole mind, indeed, seemed to be employed at that time in discovering what it was we liked best ; what was most agreeable and useful for the children ; and what, in short, in her house- hold arrangements, in the society she brought to the Castle, and in her own deportment to us, would be most agreeable, and most likely to keep out of our heads all thoughts of going away — any allusion to which threw the old lady into such agitation, that as much as possible we forbore speaking of our THE RIVAL GUESTS. 77 future plans, and merely determined to take our own measures quietly, but to be resolute in going at the period we considered riglit. It will be seen present- ly how ^^kilfully our hostess managed to baffle and upset all our schemes. In the mean time, we very soon found ourselves so much at home, that we set the children to their regular lessons, and fell into habits of business, suck as they were, ourselves. The even tenor of our lives, while it furnished few or no striking incidents, allowed us ample leisure for looking about us, and forming opinions as to the state of the country, chiedv from the conversation of the many intelli- gent |)ersons who visited the Castle. It was some time, however, before the crowd of novel objects ceased to present a confused mass, or we could s])eculate with any feeling of confi- dence cither on the domestic manners or on the })olitical condition of a people circumstanced so dif- ferently from any which our previous travels had given us an opportunity of observing. Neither did we care much, for we intended soon to recommence our journey, and a subject so vast, we felt, was not to l)e grasj)ed in a (cw weeks. So we fairly resigned ourselves into the hands of our obliging hostess, who, when she succeeded in making us promise not to think of leaving her for some time, undertook to 78 THE RIVAL GUESTS. provide us, both indoors and abroad, with objects of interest. How well she kept her word, I shall endeavour to show- When we first arrived at Hainfeld, we found li- ving in the house two young ladies from the neigh- bouring provincial capital of Styria, called Gratz, a very pretty place, and in wealth and fashion just such a rival to Vienna as Bath is to London ; and the manners of the gay world there, it may be presumed, partake of the same distinctions from those of the metropolis. As we were prevented by circumstances from visiting Vienna, we had only a few, and those indirect, means of judging of this important matter. We met, for example, with a good many persons during our stay at Hainfeld, who, though no longer resident in Vienna, had been bred there, and these we could compare with our Gratz acquaintances. Both the young ladies I have mentioned were lively and pleasing persons ; they spoke French readily, but Jiot very well ; and they both sp(jke English a little, and so as to be easily understood; for it is much the fashion in Germany, as we found af- terwards during our extensive tour in that country, to study English. As they professed a great desire to improve themselves in speaking, it would have been a very obvious course to have profited by such THE RIVAL GUESTS. 71) an oj){)ortunity, especially as we were all not only wilHMposed to yield her affections; and such had now beccHue her anxiety to learn her fate, that, find- ing her mother in a most unusually good humour ^\ ith her, in the course of the eveninu: she ventured resj)ectfully to say, ' Mamma, if it be not too great a liberty, may 1 beg of you to tell me the name of the gentleman I am to be married to next week?' ' Liberty ! ' exclaimed the astonished parent, ' li- berty ) ou may well call it ! How dare you ask such 88 THE RIVAL GUESTS. a question ? And,' added slie with a significant shake of her licad, ' let me warn you, my daughter, not to run the risk of incurring your father's dis- pleasure by showing him any of this premature and undutiful curiosity. For, if you do, I should not wonder if he were to pack you back to your convent, not for a season, but for life.' Accordingly, she held her peace, and in ten days afterwards was mar- ried to one of the two men who had dined at the house, but, unfortunately, he was the wrong one ! " But I am forgetting the rival guests, our Gratz and Vienna young ladies, who, although apparently the best friends imaginable, were too little alike to be very cordial, and we had no small difficulty in shaping our course between them so as to avoid giv- ing offence to either group, and yet to profit by the merits of both, for we felt well disposed to all the parties. Indeed, had our Gratz friends been content to let pretty well alone, we should have remained the best friends possible to the end of the chapter. Few people, however, who have not fortitude and self-control enough to repress the feeling of mortifica- tion which springs out of unsuccessful rivalry, have cither pride or discretion enough to restrain its ex- pression, even when the mischief is thereby likely to be aggravated. And in the course of the very first evening after the strangers had arrived, one of 'HIE IIIVAL GUESTS. 89 our old friends said to me, in a repronchfiil tone, that she suspected me of a great " infidelite " to lier. I really did not understand what she meant, and said so. " I grievously suspect," continued the pretty pro- vincial, '"' that you prefer these new comers to your old friends ? " I ought, in all courtesy, to have disclaimed an)'- such dereliction, and to have protested that such an idea was vain and ridiculous, as President Jackson slyly says, In his message to Congress, when accused of bullying the French, but I was taken by surprise, and said nothing ; while the poor girl, colouring with very natural anger, turned away to sip her cup of tea with what appetite she might. A iew days afterwards, just as we sat down to dinner, a carriage drove under the arclnvay, and one of the young ladles being called out, returned in a few minutes, breathless, and with a letter in her hand, exclaiming, " My mother has sent for us — we must go di- rectly." And they left the table long before dinner was over, ostensibly to pack up their things; but In re- ality to bli}) off without taking leave of any one ; and we never saw them more. 'i'he provocation we felt— If, indeed, we felt any 11 90 THE RIVAL GUESTS. — at tills Gratz edition of what is called " taking French leave," was very short-lived. Had it been much greater, indeed, what followed — alas ! too soon — would have obliterated every trace but that of the most kindly feelings towards our earliest Styrian friends. A ball was given at Gratz, not long after the above scenes, at which our two friends attended. The night was bitter cold — but as the ground was dry, and the distance but ten steps across the street, the ladies, hot from the dance, ran over to their home. They had brought, however, a wrong key with them, and no tugging of the bell could aM'aken the drowsy servants. Instead of going back instant- ly, as they ought to have done, they remained for twenty minutes before they gained admittance, all the time exposed to the biting of a harsh north- east wind. In this brief interval the nipping frost liad struck its icy and deadly fangs into the pretty bud which was just beginning to open. The youngest of our lively friends — the poor poetess withal — Avas taken so ill, almost immediately, that she Avas car- ried off by a rapid decline in the course of a fev/ weeks ! [ 91 ] CHAPTER VII. THE ARCHDUKE JOHN OF AUSTRIA. Eve II since our arrival at Hainfeld, there had been much talk of our visiting the Archduke John, the Emperor of Austria's brother. At that season he resided at his vineyard, near Marburg, close to the loot of the Bacher Gebirge, which is one of the east- 1 rn ])rolongations of the Julian Alps, lying on the right bank of the great river Drave. As our friend J he Countess had for the last thirty years been on very friendly terms with his Imperial Highness, she readily managed to arrange our visit, and in her great anxiety that we should receive favourable impres- sions of Styria, its people, and its scenery, she daily urged us to make out this expedition before the wm- ler set in. A messenger was accordingly sent off with a letter, expressing our wish to pay our respects to him at his villa ; and the answer being most obliging, we left our snug quarters at Hainfeld on 92 THE ARCHDUKE JOHN OF AUSTRIA. tlie 16th of October at four o'clock in the morning. As there was nothing in the Archduke's note which related to dinner, we were left in some doubt as to the hour. He had simply stated that he hoped to see us shortly after noon, and we naturally suppo- sed we were expected to take our dinner, or " mit- tagsbrod," as the Germans call it, with his High- ness. Some authorities said he would of course dine at twelve, the common hour in the country — others said, surely he will dine at his usual Vienna hour of two ; and in the end, we resolv^ed, very indiscreetly, and like young travellers, to aim at reaching the vineyard at the latest of the two periods, and to take our chance. We stopped at a place called Knaas, to breakfast, and to pick up a pair of fresh horses, which the ever- considerate Countess had sent on for us. As we carried with us bread, milk, eggs, and tea, and as the coachman who went forward with the relay had taken care, at my suggestion, to provide boiling water, which is the most difficult thing possible to be procured in those countries, we made a capital Friihstiick, as they call it in Germany; " Friih" being early, and " Stlick," a piece, or bit. Thus refreshed, we again started in a cloud of dust, which, however, had it been twice as dense, could not have hid the surpassing beauties of the THE ARCHDUKE JOHN OF AUSTRIA. 93 valley through which we wound our way. Even thir- teen months of drought, unrelieved except by a few transient thunder showers, had not been able to tar- nish, or to do more than slightly tarnish, the lustre of scenery which, in its prime vigour of foliage, must he very striking. But the rapid advance of autumn had wrought a material change in the aspect of things since we passed through the skirts of the same forest a fortnight before. Then, a slight but decided tinge of yellow had been cast rather careless- ly over the woods, and here and there we could spy a tree, the leaves of which had been turned to blood- red, but still the greens in their manifold variety predominated over all. Now, the yellows and the reds had it hollow, and many single trees, as well as an occasional grove on some exposed knoll, had been stripped of every leaf. In general, however, the drapery of the forest remained entire, and shone with a brilliancy which reminded us of the magnifi- cent autumn in the eastern States of North America. We reached the town of Marburg at noon ; but as it had been filled with strangers, collected from the neighbourhood on account of the vintage, which was in full ])rogress, though a full month earlier than usual, we had great dilficulty in getting any one to attend us. We were happy at last in being re- ceived at the Sun, though it was the fourth in rank i;4 THE ARCHDUKE JOHN OF AUSTRIA. of the Inns of the place. Still more difficulty had we in getting fresh horses, so that it was about one before we were fairly under weigh, and on the road to the Archduke's villa. The acclivity at last became so steep, that the postilion declared the horses could no longer drag the carriage, and he pointed out a short cut through the vines, which he said would lead us to the house. After toiling and panting up what seemed more like a flight of steep steps than a walk, we were re- ceived at the top by the Archduke John himself, who, without his hat, had run out to meet and wel- come us. There was so much natural courtesy in his manner, that we felt quite at home with him in a moment. His Imperial Highness is a very pleasing person, about fifty-five years of age, with a fine, high, bald forehead, and an expression of quietness and repose, bordering on melancholy, in his countenance, which is singularly engaging. His conversation and man- ners, too, are so untouched by the slightest shade of affectation, and withal so cordial, that every one must feel at ease in his presence. We soon began to discover that we had unfortu- nately made a great mistake in our calculations as to dinner, for the Archduke, it appeared, had dined at noon, as he always does when living at his vine- TiiK AUCIIDlK-i: JOHN OF AUSTIUA. 1)5 \ar(]. But on licoing into the drawlngroom of the cottage, — for it was no more than a country box, — we were not a little surprised to find a long table laid out with a cold collation, and at least a dozen covers. There was cold venison in slices, cold turkey, cold ham, and cakes of all shapes, Avith fruit and wiiu' in abundance. We naturally connected this pre|)aratlon with our own arrival, and when the Arcn.'uke asked us if we were disposed to eat any thing, we said we certainly were fully prepared, as we had taken nothing since breakfast forty miles off, and eight hours before. But cold meat and dry bread or sweet biscuits arc admirable things, though they form a sorry din- ner, after such a drive as we had made amongst the mountains of Styria ; and long before cur appetites were half satisfied our jaws ached, and our throats became as parched as the roads we had been travel- ling over. We felt highly grateful, however, to our : rene .".nd graceful host for the repast he gave us — ^and we cheerfully accepted his offer to show us over ids grounds. The nature and extent of this collation puzzled us I xceiMliitgly, as they were totally out of keeping Avith e\ery thing else in the establishment, which was (piite simple and cottage-like. Nor was it till towards the end of our visit, that, in the course of a 96 THE ARCHDUKE JOHN OF AUSTRIA. walk we took over tlie vineyard and through the wine-pressing establishment, we discovered the cause. On turning an angle of the road, we came to about a dozen carriages, and fell in with many groups of visitors, this being the Archduke's weekly reception day ; and we now came to understand that the colla- tion into which we had made such deep inroads had been prepared, not for us, but for the country neigh- bours who came to pay their respects to his Impe- rial Hifjfhness. We felt much regret that we had made such inroads on a collation not intended for us — but for others — and we hoped that the disorder we had created might be set to rights before the arrival of the bidden guests. The Archduke gave us, before we started, what was of more substantial importance than a dinner, namely, a set of directions for travelling in Upper Styria, with which country he is intimately ac- quainted, and where he passes a considerable por- tion of the year. His residence, he told us, and pointed out on the map, is at a place called Vor- dernberg, where he takes the active superintendence of some extensive iron-works, which he invited us to examine, promising to be our guide. In conversing about our projected tour in Upper Styria, we fell into a number of collateral topics ; and 1 think I have seldom met with any person who in:. AKCIIDIKE JOHN OF AISTKIA. 97 aj^pearoil so tiiurouj^hly well infonm'd upon all he proft'ssotl any acquaintance with, or whose know- li'di^e seemed to be more general and exact. It is Hue lie is a prince; and we insensibly, and perhaps instinctively, give more weight to merit in such a (juarter than we might do if we found similar attain- ments and talents in a lower sphere. On the other hand, the very circumstance of his being so peculi- arly, and some people might say disadvantageously placed, tends to sharpen the jealous observation of those who converse with him. So that, in fact, liis elevated rank exposes him to a much more severe scrutiny than he would have to endure if he be- longed to a lower station. But the Archduke John of Austria need fear no such cross-examinations — for what he really knows, or thinks, he gives out with such perfect frankness, that every one is con- vinced of the entire sincerity of his opinions, and j)hices reliance on his statement of facts. Without the least fuss or ostentation, he is allowed by all who know him to be the most obliging and friendly of men. His early life was passed in active and exten- sive intercourse with the world, both as a practical statesman and a soldier in command of armies. Lat- terly, while merely a country gentleman and man of science and letters, his innate good taste, and re- markable good sense, combined with genuine public I 98 THE ARCHDUKE JOHN OF AUSTIllA. spirit, have rendered his many excellent qualities extensively current in Styria, where he almost con- stantly resides. An unworthy person placed in his situation would soon be found out, like a base coin gilded, which the friction of the world soon expels from circulation. But a truly virtuous prince, like pure gold, acquires from the discipline of so- ciety a fresh impress and a sterling value which fit him more and more for the uses of the country in proportion as he becomes known. The Archduke John who, many people think, ought to have been made governor of Styria, has been allowed to remain a simple citizen of the state, except, indeed, that he has long been at the head of the engineer department of the Austrian army. In his humble and quiet capacity of a country gentle- man, he has done an immense deal for Styria, and perhaps all that could have been done under its pe- culiar circumstances. He has set agoing numerous agricultural societies, which have greatly improved the cultivation of the whole province. He has also established a splendid museum at Gratz, and endow- ed lectureships which embrace many useful branches of knowledge. But the chief good he has done, as I understand from well-informed Styrians, has been by making himself personally acquainted with almost every man in the country, and encouraging THE AiiciinrKE john of Austria. 99 all classes to persevere in their respective callings with industry and cheerfulness. He is, in short, Uke a good landlord of an immense estate, whose chief pride and pleasure lie in advancing the wel- fare of his tenants. The Archduke's exertions, in- deed, are even more disinterested, since but a small portion of the whole is his own property. It is perhaps a pity that there is no chance of his becoming Emperor of Austria, since most writers seem agreed that a pure despotism, if administered by a thoroughly virtuous and able man, is not only calculated to conduce to the present happiness of its subjects, but may give, in such hands, the best chance for the gradual introduction of those amelio- rations of which the system is capable. It answers no practical purpose, either to demonstrate that a system of government is bad, or to introduce reforms so unsuitable to the tastes and habits of the nation, that they take no root. The history of Austria, under the Emperor Joseph, uncle to the Archduke of whom I am speaking, shows too clearly that the evil is merely aggravated by premature or Ill-judged chan- ges, liut were a truly patriotic and observant man at the head of such a state as Austria, he might have it in his power (at least so it is supposed by many people), without the formidable machinery of a re- volution, to establish many improvements, calcula- 100 THE AIICIIDLKE JOHN OF AUSilllA. ted not only to endure and become national, and to do good in themselves, but to spread wider and "vvider the circle of genuine and legitimate reform, in the sense of amelioration. In the mean time Austria is prosperous, chiefly because, after a long period of war, and every kind of political disorganization, she is allowed the most perfect tranquillity ; and with certain exceptions, which I shall take an opportu- nity of pointing out, the country enjoys a degree of contentment which is very remarkable, all things considered, and especially when many circumstances are taken into account, which in our eyes, are re- volting in the highest degree. Some months afterwards, in the spring of 1835, we had an opportunity of availing ourselves of the Archduke's obliging invitation to pay him a visit at his iron works in Vordernberg, which lie deep amongst the hills of Upper Styria. As \ ordernberg is elevated sixteen or eighteen hundred feet above the country we left, we came in contact with the snow, not eternal snow and great glaciers, it is true, but good honest snow wreaths, many feet deep, and continued from the preceding winter. As we had made a sad bungle of our visit the au- tumn before, we took care to be better informed this time as to his Imperial Ilighness's habits ; and ha- "ving on this occasion, as we thought, ascertained the THE ARCHDUKE JOHN OF AUSTRIA. 101 exact minute when he dined, we drove up to the door at least half an hour before the time, thinking to be invited as a matter of course. We were much mi'^taken, for after ringing repeatedly, the door was opened by a venerable butler-looking domestic, who seemed mightily puzzled by a carriage full of com- pany coming upon him at that moment. As he said the Archduke was out, I gave him my card, and was just driving away, when a secretary sort of man, with spectacles on nose and pen in hand, came flustering into the rain, which was pouring on his bald pate. He seemed to know perfectly who and what we were, and lamented that his Imperial Highness was not at home. " I suppose," added he, in a half doubting, half- suggesting voice, " I suppose you will dine at the inn ; after which the Archduke may have returned, and be ready to receive you." Here, then, for the second time, were all our fond hopes of a dinner with the Archduke knocked down, and we drove to the worst possible inn in the worst possible humour. The day was wretched : the rain fell in torrents, the hills were encumbered with mist, the ground lay bathed in mud and melt- ing snow ankle-deep. The only thing in the way of victuals which the house could provide was misj- r;il)le weak soup, so tinged with satlVon that no one 102 THE ARCHDUKE JOHN OF AUSTRIA. could get beyond the first spoonful : and we sat in a cold, comfortless, dark, naked parlour, waiting^ till the horses should be sufficiently rested to b(j\vl down again into the civilized world. At length I bethought me of an expedient to pass the time, and sending for the landlord, I begged to know what was to be seen in Vordernberg. " Oh ! " cried he, " you can take a view of the smelting furnaces, and see the process of preparing our beautiful iron for the markets of all the world — there is nothing like it any where else." And without giving us ti$iejSp make any remark, he ran off, calling out as he went, " I'll send out instantly and learn when they .will be ready at the nearest forge to draw off the nietal." In ten minutes more we were all under weigh on a voyage of information — it could hardly be called of discovery, still less of pleasure ; for no one but a far- mer takes delight in rain, and it fell upon us now in a style to have gratified the heart of the thirstiest husbandman in Styria after a twelvemonths' drought. Be this as it may, we had to paddle through the mud over our shoe tops, under the guidance of a most obsequious landlord, who, with a huge red um- brella, guarded one of the ladies, while a strapping lass, who acted the part of waiter at the inn, car- ried my daughter in her arms as easily as if she had THE ARCHDUKE JOHN OF AUSTRIA. 103 hoeii a kitten. It was pleasant to get under the shelter at last. The workmen, who waited only for our coining, dashed their bars against the closed orifice of the furnace, and gave vent to the molten iron. In one instant the fiery torrent flowed out in a manner wonderfully resembling in miniature the eruptions of \'esuvius we had witnessed the year before. S(^much so, that I would really recommend any one Wishing to explain the nature and appejf- ance of a stream of lava to those who unhappily have never had the grand pleasure of beholding that noblest of all tej^strial phenomena, to carry his friends to a large smelting furnace, and there begin his lecture on volcanic geology. ^Vhilst we were eMoying this sight, and amusing ourselves by tracing analogies between it and the volcanoes we had seen, and listening to the explana- tions of our host and the workmen, the Archduke's secretary — he of the spectacles, who had given us the broad hint to take dinner at the public house — burst in, breathless, upon us — said he had been cha- sing us over half the village to present his Imperial Ilighness's compliments, anil to say that he would be glad to see us at his furnace, after which he hoped we would do him the pleasure to dine with Lim at four o'clock. This communication brightened our prospects ; 104 THE ARCHDUKE JOHN OF AUSTRIA. and as the Prince's furnace was close at hand, we again sallied forth in the rain and mud, and were most kindly received by the Archduke himself at the door of his workshop. There we saw a second eruption, and enjoyed the benefit of a fuller and clearer, and more scientific explanation of the whole process than our host of the Garter could give us. We now learned that the said host had all along known privately that we were to dine with the Duke — not Duke Humphry, as we had begun, with great reason to fear — but with Duke John, who at last, as if to make up for our cold fare at his vineyard in the autumn before, gave us a capital feast. I may perhaps be excused for naming the dishes, in such an out of the way, and unpromising corner of the globe. There was fish, which they called trout, but it was more like salmon, and being just taken from the stream, and cooked to a second, it was superb. There was venison, too, from the ad- jacent hills — not mock venison, such as they gave us in Hungary — but venison fit for an alderman ; and last of all, a souflet worthy of Very's or Beau- villiers', all racy and hot, and well served, without fuss, and quite becoming a noble Prince who chooses to live retired from the world. The fates had decided, however, that although we should have the honour of dining with his Impe- TJiE AIICHDUKE JOHN OF AUSTKIA. 10') rial Hij^hness, he should not dine with us ; for it appeared he had already dined at noon, accordinir to the fashion of the spot. But he sat down to table with us, and conversed in the most agreeable style, confirming the opinion we had originally foinii'd, that a more simple-mannered, or more agreeable and well-informed gentleman is very rarely to be met with in any rank of life, or in any country ill the world. The Archduke John conforms to all the habits of the people about him ; and being the chief in wealth and importance of the great mining proprietors at \ ordernberg, he uses his influence — and most suc- cessfully — to render the population happy and pros- perous. Previously to his settling there, the miners had l)een for ages in a state of bitter rivalry, and almost of open hostility ; but he, in a quiet way, and so as to wound no man's pride, soon proved to them that each and all would gain more by a cordial union of interests, and companionship in labour, than by pulling and tearing in opposite directions. The blessings of national peace, which were begin- ning to be felt in that unhappy country, came op- portunely in aid of the Archduke's benevolent and public-spirited measures ; and I understand, from those who know all the circumstances well, that there is not in the world a hnppii'r, or more flourish- 106 THE ARCHDUKE JOHN OF AUSTRIA. ing set of people, than these miners now are. It was pleasing to see that wherever this amiable Prince appeared, the people stepped forward and kissed his hand, not with an air of servility, but of cordial respect and attachment. Indeed, it was difficult to recognise, under the coarse dress, and simple manners of a miner, the leader once of mighty armies, in the fierce contests which his country had waged with Napoleon ; and still a man of the highest rank and consequence, in whose veins runs the noblest royal blood in Europe ! The Archduke, as I have already said, passes most of his time in the country, residing at Vienna only during a certain number of weeks, which are considered indispensable, and according to etiquettes from which not even he is exempt in that most for- mal of courts. His chief occupations are, first, su- perintending the operations of the great trigono- metrical survey of Austria, of which, as chief of the engineer department, he has long had the entire control ; secondly, directing the great iron works at Vordernberg ; and, lastly, visiting his estates in Lower Styria, where his extensive vineyards are situated. His chief amusement is the arduous and rather dangerous hunt of the chamois goat; a spoit which in that country takes — and, I am told by good authority, well supplies the place of our fox- THE ARCHDUKE JOHN OF AUSTIIIA. 107 Imntlng — only it is described as vastly more labo- rious, and requiring its admirers, of whom the Arch- duke John is one of the most passionate, to live for days toi^ether amongst the glaciers and eternal snows of the Alps. Another of his amusements is the encouragement ot" science at Ciratz, and elsewhere in Styria ; and as he sets about every thing in the most unpretend- ing way, and by his gentle and elegant manners conciliates all parties, his knowledge on these sub- jects is received not with jealousy or suspicion, but with that degree of personal favour which insures the success of every undertaking to which he wishes well. Upon the whole, there probably have been few men in any station, and not many princes, who liave j)roved greater benefactors to their country. \ eiy few men, indeed, have the means, even if they had the disposition, and talents, and experience re- (juisite for so great a task ; and it is in the highest (iegrce pleasing to witness the effect of so fortunate u combination of circumstances in the person of one individual. I forgot to mention that the Archduke John, in- stead of marrying an ill-favoured, starched princess, oat of some foreign land, and from some cold motive of family or personal ambition, or tortuous state policy, chose to himself a wife from those ranks 108 THE ARCHDUKE JOHN OF AUSTRIA. amongst whom it is his taste, and what he feels to be his duty, to pass his hfe. At the time of our visit to the Archduke's vineyard, we could not speak a word of German, while the lady could not speak a word of any thing else ; and as at our second visit she did not make her appearance, our personal acquaintance is but small. But nothing, surely, can be more satis- factory than to know, that if the Archduke had taken the survey of Europe — as he probably did — in search of a partner, he could not have chosen more wisely for his own happiness ; and if this be so, how well may he not afford to set the court etiquettes, and all their quarterings, at defiance ! During dinner at Vordernberg, the Archduke en- tertained us with an account of the peculiar nature of the iron-works in that neighbourhood. We al- ready knew that the iron of Styria was not only ex- tensively used on the continent, but was sent in large quantities to America. He also explained to us that this was chiefly due to the chemical advantages given to it by nature over most of the irons of Eu- rope, including even the Swedish and the English. The combinations which nature makes, may indeed sometimes be imitated by art, but seldom so effec- tually, it seems, and not often without an expense which gives a preponderating advantage in com- merce to such places as Styria, where an important THL: AllCHDUKE .lOlIN OF AUSIUIA. 109 part of the work is ready clone. The Archduke at least told us, that althou<>h the luiglish beat the Styrians liollow in the processes of refining iron, in making some kinds of steel, and especially in tlie manufac-ture of tools and all kinds of cutlery, still tliev are not able to compete with his countrymen in tiie markets of luirope, in consequence of the nati\e excellence of the material found in the mines of \ ordernbcrg. " There is a tradition," said he, " of very long standing amongst our miners here, which speaks to this point. When the barbarians from the regions north of the Danube drove the Romans from this {)rovince of Styria, then called Noricum, the Genius of the Mountains, willing to do the new inhabitants a favour, appeared to the coiujuerors, and said, — ' '1 ake your choice : AMU you have gold mines for a year? — silver for twenty years? — or iron for ever?' ()ur wise ancestors, who had just begun to learn the true relative value of the precious metals, by ascertaining, practically, that their rude swords were an overmatch for all the wealth of the Romans, at once decided to accept iron for ever ! " L ii« ] CHAPTER VIII. THE GERMAN LANGUAGE. On returning to Hainfield, after our first visit to the Archduke, at his vineyard, we found that our indefatigable friend the Countess had cut out fresh work for us, in the shape of a tour in Upper Styria, which she urged us to make before the season should set in so severely as to render travelling dis- agreeable. It was now getting late in October, and an occasional touch of frost, even in the low situation in which we were, made us shudder when we thought of encountering the Alpine roads of the upper province. But the Countess pressed the matter so much, and she had made so many prepara- tions, that, as we had no particular objection, except what arose from our being remarkably comfortable where we were, she prevailed on us to say we should set off in one of her ladyship's light carriages, on the 20th of October. THE CiEKMAN LANGUAGE. Ill The Countess's professed object in sending us upon this expedition to the hills, was to show us the beauties of the grander parts of her adopted country, and to give us the means of becoming acquainted with a far more manly and inteUigent population than that of Lower Styria, of which alone, as yet, we had any knowledge. But I now verily be- lieve that the good lady's real object — though pro- bably iinavowed even to herself — was to induce us, by any means, to spin out the time till the winter should arrive, and fairly block us up in her castle for the season. For the present, however, our jaunt was inter- rupted by the slight illness of one of the children, and likewise by a change of the weather from mild to bitter ; and as these causes co-operated to detain us from day to day, we finally gave up our in- tended tour, and resolved not to leave Ilainfeld for any such minor purpose, but to remain quiet till ready to start for \'ienna. We made our arrange- ments accordingly for setting off on the 10th of November, thinking that a visit of nearly six weeks, with such a party as ours, was quite as long as we could decently propose to make. But in this estimate we reckoned without our hostess; for when, on the first of the month, I ventured to mention the sub- ject to her, and said, that in ten days or so we 112 THE GERMAN LANGUAGE. meant to set off for Vienna, I thought the good old lady would have expired on the spot. Indeed, so earnest were her entreaties for us to stay, and so touching the appeals which she made to us not so soon to desert her, just as she was becoming ac- quainted with ourselves and the children, that, ha- ving really no particular motive for going away, we agreed to remain a little longer. " Oh ! do not say a little longer," she exclaimed ; " do — oh, do make up your minds to stay the winter here. You know not what it is to travel in winter in Germany ; it will destroy your children, and you yourselves will have no pleasure in it. If you are not perfectly comfortable here — if there is any thing in the world that money will provide — do, I en- treat you, mention it. My sole wish is to make you happy here, and to enjoy, as long as I can, the so- ciety of my country-folks ; for I feel — I know — that you are the last of them I shall ever see. Human nature cannot long stand out against the accumula- tion of sorrow and of bodily disease with which I am pressed to the earth ; and it would be cruel in you to deny me the only pleasure now left me in this weary world. You will have plenty of time to travel in Germany next summer." I do not know how far these appeals might have proved effectual, had we not found ourselves very TIIK OEIIMAN LANGUAGE. 113 ai^recably situated in the old castle, or had we been called upon by any pressing duty to go elsewhere. But as amusement was our only motive in travel- ling-, and as nothini^ could be more entirely to our mind than the style of life which we were allowed to pass at Ilainfeld, we felt half-inclined to take the Countess at her word, and fix ourselves under her roof for the whole winter. But this, upon reflection, we could not help thinkin^^ would be rather too strong a measure, and might prove a gene upon all parties, on farther trial. After a good deal of deliberation, therefore, we finally compro- mised matters by naming the 1st of December as the day of our departure, instead of the 10th of November. To avoid farther discussion, which I saw agitated her, I wrote our determination on a slip of paper, and sent it. In a few minutes 1 re- ceived the following characteristic answer : — " Mv Deak Sir, " Every day Mrs Hall and you bestow on me, I receive gratefully as a blessing. Had Heaven and you vouchsafed to grant my prayers, you wouhl have nestled in poor Ilainfeld as well as you could, till the breath of spring invited you to launch into the world. Faithfully yours, '' r " 114 THE GERMAN LANGUAGE. Thus, for one month more, at all events, we were to be domesticated in our very snug- quarters ; and as the Countess no longer urged us to make any ex- peditions from home, we set about amusing ourselves with what was at hand, and fell into regular habits, which every day tended so strongly to confirm, that before long we ourselves began to look to the period of our departure with almost as much regret as the poor Countess herself did. The even tenour of our own happy life in this re- mote and retired corner of the world, furnished but few prominent points of interest for narration. At first the Countess could not imagine that we, who had been so much in the busy world, could possibly be happy without further society than what she her- self and our own family afforded ; and in order, as she said, to relieve the solitude of Hainfeld, she in- vited all sorts and conditions of people to visit her. Some of these, whose visits, unfortunately, were short and far between, proved uncommonly agree- able and useful acquaintances. Others were of such a milk and water description that they merely came in our way. While again, one or two rendered themselves so particularly disagreeable, that had the Countess not ejected them, we must have spee- dily ejected ourselves. THE GERMAN LANGUAGE. 115 Aldioui^h, as I have mentioned, she was irreco- verably bed-ridden, our poor hostess possessed an acutencss of jud<^ment, which in a great degree sup- plied the place of locomotion, and gave her, by some means or other — the machinery of which we could never perfectly discover — a most exact know- ledge of all that was passing in the Castle ; so that nothing was said or done but she seemed to know of it. What was still more unaccountable, she possessed a sort of jnagical power of getting at what was tliouiiht and felt bv all her y-uests. If she ex- crcised this kind of surveillance over her chance friends, it may be supposed that we sojourners did not escape. In fact, the whole energies of her mind were evidently employed, night as well as (lay, in trying to discover how best she could make our situation so agreeable to ourselves that we should have no wish to move. With all her discernment, however, it was some time before she fully admitted the fact of our being most happy when most alone: that is to say, with no other company but herself; — though the genuine modesty of her mind could by no means allow her to imagine it possible that her conversation could supply, and amply, too, the place of a more extended circle. People may differ greatly as to the true import of the expression " being well employed," but if a per- 116 THE GERMAN LANGUAGE. son's time be fully and agreeably filled up, and no obvious duty is neglected, it cannot, I think, be otherwise than usefully employed. At all events, our chief, and indeed almost only occupation, pro- perly so called, at Hainfeld, was the study of Ger- man. We had been not a little humiliated on the oc- casion of a visit to the great quicksilver mines of Idria, to find ourselves quite helpless. In fact, we were virtually deaf and dumb ; for French, and every other language of which we had any smatter- ing, proved totally useless, and at last, after in vain trying to explain to the people at the inn that we wished something to eat, I remember being reduced to the necessity of sketching an egg, and then making signs for breaking and eating it I After this adventure of the egg, I made a vow that I would learn German, at whatever cost of labour. This was a rash vow, as almost any person will find who tries the experiment, and one which will be sure to prove a very weighty undertaking to those who, like myself, have unfortunately not only no knack, or facility, for learning languages, but have organs so constructed as to render the acquisition of any foreign tongue a work of real difiHcvdty, and that of German wellnigh impossible. Kvery one remembers the story of the Minister's THE GERMAN LANGUAGE. 117 horror, when, after a hfe spent in eager pursuit of olHce, he for the first time behehi his secretary ap- proach with an enormous bundle of papers. But I question if liis dismay was greater than mine, when, within an hour after I had made this magnanimous resolution about the study of German, I encoun- tered the following formidable words in a newspa- per : — P It I V I L E (i I U M S V E R Z I C H T L E I S T U N G I S U 15 A R R E N D I R U N G S V E R H A N D L U N G ! I But I was consoled by the reflection, that scarce- ly any thing is so difficult as it looks, and that if the trouble was great, great was the reward, and so forth. In aid of these commonplaces, I found I had the eager encouragement of the Countess, who was en- chanted with my resolution, and offered to be my preec'j)tress — an ofter which made the natives who were present smile ; for she herself, good lady, spoke a very strange dialect, which, though as they said abundantly intelligible, was any thing but pure (unman. In other countries a few years' residence, and even a few months, are sufficient to enable gifted — often ungifted — people to speak the language flu- ently and correctly. But this will not do in Oer- 118 THE GERMAN LANGUAG E. many, even in the case of the most gifted. Madame de Stael describes the labour in strong terms : — " Une etude tres legere," says she, in her mag- nificent work on that country, " suffit pour ap- prendre I'ltalien et 1' Anglais ; mais c'est une science que I'Allemand." * Now the Countess, who was not very young when she came to the country, and was by nature no lin- guist, and probably had never much leisure to make a scientific study of the language, contented herself with learning merely enough to serve on those occa- sions when French would not answer her purpose, as it generally would in the fashionable society of Vienna. With the charming literature of German)^, however, she had made herself intimately acquaint- ed, and as she had enjoyed the personal acquaintance of many of the distinguished authors who have flou- rished in that country since the end of the last cen- tury, there could not, in many respects, have been a better instructor than she was. Unfortunately, however, it was scarcely possil)le that a less credit- able pupil could have been found, and the progress I made under her tuition was wretchedly small. I got up at six o'clock every morning, and read hard till breakfast-time at my grammars and dlction- * Do I'Allcmagne, Partie II. Chap. IX, THE GERMAN LANGUAGE. 110 iirics, and afterwards worked for several hours alone, and always for at least an hour with our accomplish- ed German governess. In the middle of the day I went to the Countess's room, where, under her direc- tion, and by her aid, I read Kotzebue's plays, or some other easy work. I also learned numberless l"al)les by heart ; talked to every native I could get lu li>ten to me ; and, in short, took a world of pains, but all to little or no purpose, excepting that I de- rived much pleasure from reading some of the Ger- man authors, and in particular the plays of Schiller. It is indeed, a curious fact, that in German it is (^asier to understand verse than prose, a discovery which I made long before I read the following re- markable sentence in Madame de Stael's book : — " L'AUemand est peutetre la seule langue dans laquelb' les vers soient plus faciles ;i comprendre (jue la prose," which, as she goes on to explain, arises from the necessity of shortening the sentences to adaj)t them to the poetical measure ; whereas in jtrose, wjiere no such necessity exists, the periods often extend for more than a page, before the key- word is reached, without which the involved sense cannot be unlocked. It was not till I had spent nearly a year in Ger- many, and after I had read, written, and spoken German with much diligence and the most constant 120 THE GERMAN LANGUAGE. opportunities of hearing it in the country itself, that I learned, with no small mortification, that I had all along been proceeding on a wrong system, and that the methods which I had found sufficient to give me a certain sort of knowledge of French and Spa- nish in Europe, and of Hindostanee and Malays in the East, were totally inoperative when applied to the formidable German. By good fortune, however, I fell in with a ti'uly philosophical professor of German at Paris, M. Ol- lendorff, author of a new and most luminous method of teaching that language. He soon satisfied me of what I had indeed myself begun to suspect, that Ger- man, to be understood properly, must be attacked exactly like mathematics — and that as there is no " royal road" to knowledge in the one case, so is there none in the other. I gave a sigh or two over the ten months' labour I had almost entirely thrown away, and commenced the study anew through the medium of M. Ollendorff's method, which well de- serves the title of the Euclid of German. * After • Nouvelle ^lethode poiir apprcndre ;i lire, a ecrire, ot a par- lor une langue en six mois ; ap{)li(juee a 1' AUcniaiid ; Ouvragc entiferement nouf. "Par H. G. OlkMidorff. Paris, chezrAutciir, 67 Rue de Richelieu, et Barrois fils libraire, 14 Rue de Riche- lieu, ct Ileideloffct Campe, IG Rue Yivieniie." Orders for tliis excellent work maybe given to Messrs Whit- taker & Co., Ave Maria Lane, London. iin: Gi:nMAN language. 121 :x months' close application, I can venture to pro- ^louncc tliat by his method alone, so far as I have I ecn able to understand the subject, can this very difficult, but very charming language, be taught without confusion. To those "wdio, like me, have none of that readiness by which, instinctively as it wore, foreign tongues are breathed in by some peo- ple, and are made use of seemingly without effort, such a method is quite invaluable. By it the scholar advances step by step, understands clearly and thoroughly every thing he reads, and as he goes on, he becomes sensible that all he learns he retains, and all that he retains is useful and practically ap- plicable. At the same time, he scarcely knows how he has got hold of it, so slightly marked are the shades of dailv progression ; and so gentle is the rise, that he feels no unpleasant fatigue on the journt y. Of course the student is called upon to exert no small degree of patient application, and he mu- so difficult a lant complicated rules of grammar, is truly astonish- 124 THE DAY AT HAINFELD. ing. This arises in part, no doubt, from their minds being unencumbered with too many ideas, and from their judgment not being entangled by too great a fastidiousness in the arrangement and expression of their thoughts. At all events, they readily find the means of saying, with unconscious accuracy, whatever they please, while their seniors hesitate, lose patience, and become confused in their vain en- deavours after correctness. I should have mentioned, that before breakfast I had every morning to make a written report to the Countess of the condition of all our party. The circumstances which gave rise to this arrangement are as follow : — I have already stated, that our hostess, though confined to bed, contrived to make herself acquaint- ed with every thing that was going on in the Castle. But she had too much taste, as well as too much good sense, to carry these secret investigations into our private apartments. Yet it was precisely to what passed there that her chief curiosity, or rather her chief anxiety, was now directed. She took it into her head that my little boy, then somewhat more than a year old, was rather delicate in health, — though, in fact, he Mas as stout as an infant Her- cules; and she took similar fancies with respect tothe others, and sometimes honoured l^ipa and Mamma THE DAY AT HAINIKLD. l'2'i wiih a little equally groundless alarm. Now, as a euiisiderable portion of this excellent old lady's nij^ht was passed in weary watchfulness, in consequence of her painful maladies,' she generally — though with- out the shadow of a reason — worked herself into a double degree of fever about the children before niorniii/ eanu\ At daybreak, accordingly, old Jo- >-eph, the butler, used to be summoned to her bedside. In order that he might report if there had been any remarkable stir during the night in our wing of the Castle — any calls for assistance — any message for the doctor : and wlien the old soldier smiled at all these en(jU!ries, and said he believed we had all slept like tops, he was scolded for liis inhumanity, and despatelu'd to our quarters, to learn, if possible, wliethk-r we were dead or alive. The honest fi-llow, who took the direct and sol- dier-li!;e mi thod of going straight to his point, ra{)peil at m\- door, and stated that the Countess having the day before heard the young Graf, or Count, as the servants persisted in calling the poor boy, erv t'.viee ; or having observed one of the young ladies louk i)ale, was quite uneasy till she could know how they had passed the night. This message rendered it necessary that I should go to the nursery to ascertain how the case stood, and tlnis I \'.as oi'ivn e:'.:l'':l upon to disturb both ihe young 125 THE DAY AT HAINFELD. Graf and his sisters, and the old folks too, long before the fitting hour ; and after all, Joseph's report, we found, never satisfied the Countess. It was either too incomplete for her curiosity, or too full for her anxiety, by the details suggesting fresh alarm. So that, when one of us went to her room, as usual, about ten o'clock, we generally found her under some extraordinary delusion as to what was passing with us. So strongly sometimes did these fancies affect her, that she believed she knew much better ^vhat we were doing, than we did ourselves, and fre- quently she wished us to send for the physician, or to persuade us to let her doctor the children, though they had been, and still were, in perfect health ! All this might have been laughed at, so far as it concerned ourselves; but as it seriously affected the Countess's peace of mind, I bethought me of a device which corrected most of the evil, and gave her infi- nite pleasure. I off'ered to send her every morning an official written bulletin of the health of the whole party ; and as I had by this time learned her taste for the details of domestic gossip, and observed the singular accuracy and minuteness of her informa- tion respecting every other department of the Castle, and indeed of the whole estate, this was not difficult. Having thus elected myself her ladyship's spy ex- traordinary upon my own family, I completed the THE DAY AT HAINIELD. 127 circle of her secret knowledge by reporting every single thing that passed in our apartments. The visit which one of us always made to the Countess, about ten o'clock, was merely for a mo- ment to wish her good-morning, or to furnish her with any farther particulars she might be anxious about respecting the preceding night. She took that opportunity of asking when the carriage would be wanted to give the children a drive, or what we should like to have for dinner ; in short, whe- ther there was any thing within the compass of ILiinfeld or fifty miles round which we had the least wish to obtain. For example, she one day heard my eldest girl say she liked chocolate for breakfast ; and though there was a very good sort to be had in the village of Feldbach, hard by, it wi'.s not nearly good enough for the Countess's notions of hospitality. So a man was actually de- sjiatehed on horseback, at three o'clock next morn- ing, to Gratz, between thirty and forty miles off, to j)rocure a particular kind of chocolate made ac- cording to a receipt of the Princess of Sahns. In like manner, when she found that some of us pre- ferred tea to coffee, she was not content with what the village, or even Vienna could produce, but w rote off instantly to a merchant at Trieste to sejid 128 THE DAY AT HAINFELD. her, not a pound or two, but a whole chest of the best and most recently imported tea I Our protests against this sort of extravagance were all in vain ; and when, one day, I incidentally threw out some allusion to the inroad we were making upon her establishment, she rang the bell, sent for the Verwalter, or bailiff, made him bring her the last month's accounts, and took a world of pains to satisfy me that we cost her scarcely any thing additional. " See," she exclaimed, " all the meat, poultry, and milk which are used in the house, come from my jfxirm ; even the flour which makes the bread, is sent from my mill — the vegetables are from m}' garden, and the fuel from my own forests. The other expenses are quite inconsiderable." So far did this generous old lady carry her no- tions of hospitality, that she wished even to pay our postages ; and I think she was a little hurt because we took measures to prevent the shopkeepers at the village from inserting all our purchases in her ac- counts, according to her secret directions. After the short visit we paid to the Countess about ten o'clock, we returned to our rooms, while she " got up," as she good-humoiiredly called making her toilet. This operation — to other ladies a plea- THE DAY AT HAINFtLD. 121) sure — was to our poor friend, all of whose move- ments were accompanied ny sutVering-, a most j)ainful and protracted ta-k. After wliat I have mentioned of her taste and habits, I need scarcely say that she dressed in the ohl st} le, but always with much neat- ness; and beini;- bolstered up by some eight or ten pillows of dilVerent forms and dimensions, she re- ceived her company almost as if she were sittinj^. As the bed, too, was rather low, her face came just on a Kvel with those of her visitors, and as she had no deafness, the conversation was carried on (jviite as easily as if the party had been sittin r maid Pepi, a vei»j' clever person, sent to the iarther side of the bed to search for it. Tiie abi^jfail had address enough on these occasions, so far as she lould take the liberty unobserved, to put things a liltle to riglits ; but it would have been a labour of Lours or of days to arrange matters properly. Had the Countess been laid up in this fashion in any other country, she might have been finely pil- laged by the people about her ; but there is an in- 132 THE DAY AT IIAINIELD. imte good faith and resolute integrity about tlie Germans, which leads them, as a part of then- na- ture, to adopt fair dealing in every thing. AVe had many opportunities of remarking this admirable characteristic of the nation, not only during our re- sidence at Hainfeld, but afterwards in travelling through other parts of the country ; and I hope one day to be able to give some interesting and instruc- tive instances in point, which occurred to us in the course of our subsequent long journey. Until noon, we seldom saw any thing of the Countess, except during the short visit about ten o'clock, which was occupied, as I have said, chiefly in explanations of points in the bulletin of the night, and in settling what we should best like for dinner. The interval between that hour and mid-day was spent by us in studying German, writing letter,-, superintending the education of the elder children, or finally, in putting young Master Basil Sidniouth de Roos to sleep. As the comfort of the afternoon depended essentially, as I shall explain presently, on this small gentleman's getting a sleep in the middle of the day ; and as he took it into his head that nobody but his papa could, or at all events should, hush him to his morning's rest, I was obliged, partly on account of the peace of the famil}-, and partly on that of the Countess, to enact the part of under liJE DAY AT HAINFEI.D. 133 iiur-i,M-v-maicl for lialf an hour, almost every forenoon f )r >()nu' months. It i.s not so easy as tliosc wlio have not tried the exjieiinii'iit mav su])po>c, to hu'^h a child of fifteen mouths to sleep. Tiic Inisiness, indeed, was not (luite new to me ; hut as 1 found my present task much liarder than it had ever heen hefore, I was ()hii^•e(l to have recourse to additional methods. One of theoj)orific monotone set him to sleep. "^riiis hahit of his led to rather a ludicrous scene some months afterwards, at a village near Salt/- luu'g, called lierchtesgaden. We had heen attract- k1 to the clnn-ch hy the sight of a grand procession, and on entering with the crowd, found the priest cek'liratinLT a marriaire. All went on soherlv till 134 THE DAY AT HAINFELD. the ghostly father (who had no more voice than I have) began to chaunt some portion of the service. The instant the well-known sounds reached the child's ears, he struck off, at the full stretch of his voice, with my Irish drinking song. The surprise of the whole party was soon changed into mirth, and the first horror of the priest into such amuse- ment, that he was forced to intermit his chaunt, and join in the irreverent laugh which had spread amongst his hearers. At twelve o'clock exactly, for she was extremely punctual, I went off to our good hostess's room, where, whatever had been her sufferings during the night, however sleepless, she was sure to be found cheerful, and not only ready to converse, but eager to hear what was going on, and to give her opinion upon every thing and every body, just as if she could still mix in society, and influence, as had been long her wont, the opinions and actions of other people. Her chief object in arranging this visit was no- minally the study of German ; but the lessons, so far as that went, proved little profitable ; for it was scarcely possible for me to read ten words before some anecdote occurred to her connected with her early intercourse with Sir Walter Scott or Dugald Stewart, or her later intercourse with the men of THE DAY AT HAINFELD. 135 letters in Germany ; or it mif^ht relate to Napo- leon's occupation of ^'ienna — or to the details of those ruinous campaigns which swept like Debacles over the fertile provinces of Austria — or the topic might be the fashionable society of the capital, and the endless intrigues of the court — or, finally, >he would branch off into some speculation on the magnificent literature of her adopted country, or that of France and Ihiglaiid, with all of which she appeared to be equally familiar. On each and all of these topics, and twenty others which I have not mentioned, she conversed Mith equal readiness, and always in the most lively and appropriate man- ner, never lugging any story in by the head and shoulders — never exhausting any thing, or dwelling a moment longer upon any topic than exactly suited the taste of her company. Her memory seemed to be boundless ; and I have often deeply regretted since that I had not — Hoswell fashion — taken some notes of her conversation ; for almost all her anec- dotes possessed an intrinsic general interest beyond their mere point, from being connected with men and things in which all the world are concerned. At one o'clock, or half-past one, my post by the Countess's bed-side was taken by Mrs Hall, some- times alone, and sometimes accompanied by one, or at most two of her other guests, of whom, durin"- 136 THE DAY AT HAINFELD. the early part of our visit at Hainfeld, there were generally several parties in the Castle besides our- selves. In the mean time, I took a smart walk over the hills, or strolled with the children in the woods, or walked to the village to make some purchase at the omniumgatherum shop which supplied not only the Castle, but the surrounding neighbourhood with every article under the sun — great and small — from a needle to a plough-share. By four o'clock all the company having returned from their walks, rides, or shooting parties, and dressed for dinner, we assembled in the Countess's room. Generally speaking, as 1 have already men- tioned, she found her strength unequal to sustain conversation with more than one or two persons, but during the half hour which elapsed between the dressing bell and the dinner bell, she liked to see the whole of her guests at once. The greatest num- ber ever assembled, and that occurred only upon one occasion, was eighteen ; but generally the numbers ranged from eight to ten or a dozen, including the children, who took all their meals with us. During this period the Countess seldom made any attempt to join in the general conversation, but lay, or rather reclined on her pillows, tranquilly listening to the rest. When dinner was announced, and we had all left Tin: DAY .\T IIAIMELD. I'M Ikt, !>hc sent for the nursery-maid aiul the chihl ; ami I verily believe that the hour or hour and a half wliicli followed were to her tlie happiest in the twen- ty-four. Her fondness for the infant, which was cx- ee>sive, may have been due, in some degree, to the recollection of her own, an only and most extraordi- r.ai v child, and all that .-he had irone through on his account. And it so chanced that our boy took wonder- fullv to her; and thoug-h at first rather frightened by the strange dress, and appearance, and situation of the Countess, he gradually became reassured, and used to sit for hours together on her bed. Sometimes he crept close up to her face, and laid his cheek by hers, in such contrast as to draw many a touching remark from herself, and sometimes to squeeze out a tear from the more sensitive amongst her friends, who knew her sad history. But she never shed a tear herself, even in relating to us her bitterest dis- tresses. 'Ihe whole comfort of this visit, so import- ant to the Countess's happiness, depended upon the little gentleman being in a good humour, and that again turned upon his having had a due allowance of sleep in the forenoon. It was chiefly on this account that I was obliged to occupy myself in contributing to his morning nap, in the manner I have already described. One hears of very wondeiful children in most 138 THE DAY AT HAINFELD. parts of the Morld ; but I am not sure tliat I ever heard of one who excited such unquahfied surprise as the Countess's son. While his mind appears to have been of the most masculine and matured strength, even at a very early age, his bodily frame is described as one of extreme feebleness and deli- cacy ; and though some people have supposed that the Countess, who devoted her life exclusively to him, may have hurt him by over-anxiety, I have learned, from good authority, that he owed his dai- ly life — so to speak — to her unceasing care ; and that such a hot-house plant was he, that, had she for an instant relaxed her attentions, he must have dropped at once into the grave. ■ I could relate many anecdotes of this singular boy, which 1 heard during my stay at Hainfeld ; but I prefer giving the direct testimony of an eye- witness, who I am sure, from all I have learned, rather understates than overstates the fact. The following quotation is from the Travels of J. C. Lemaistre, Esq., published in London in 180G, vol. ii. p. 358. After giving rather an interesting sketch of the Count and Countess Purgstall, he proceeds as fol- lows : — " They have a son who seems to have inherited the talents of his parents, while, like them, his per- THE DAY AT HAIN'FELD. 139 pon is slender and his health delicate. At five years old this wonderful boy, who may fairly be considered as a prodigy, has read various books of science, is well acquainted with history and music, and is so versed in geography, for which he has a particular turn, that he has lately, without any assistance, made a map of A'enice for ]\Irs Lemais- tre, which I mean to keep as a curiosity. " I begged him yesterday to tell me how I should return to I^ny-land without touching: on the Hano- verian, French, or Dutch territories, and he in- stantly traced on the globe the only remaining road. lie sits on a carpet surrounded with his books; and when the gravest and most acute remarks fall from the lips of this little person, a spirit seems to Ler persons, it required strength to be able to go to slcej). We had therefore frequently the mor- tification of learning in the morning, that owing to over exertion to entertain her company, our gene- 144 THE DxVY AT HAINFELD. rous hostess had not herself once closed her eyes during the whole of the weary night. On Tuesdays and Fridays, in the evening, the post came in, generally many days after becoming strictly due. Tiiis arose from the bag being carried by a lumbering cart which wandered over half the country, dropping its cargo by the way at all the different country houses in the valley of the Raab, and ending its long journey with ours. But after a little time we fell into such an agreeable routine of domestic habits, that so far from regretting the tardi- ness of these communications with the external world, we came to consider even this bi-weekly post, as Jo- nathan would call it, rather a teazing interruption. We often felt ourselves, indeed, gradually relapsing into a state of indifference as to the affairs of the busy world lying beyond the limits of our " dreary solitude," a disparaging epithet which was applied to Hainfield — not by us — but by its mistress her- self, to whose broken heart and blasted hopes it had so long proved a desolate and lonely abode. To us it was quite the contrary ; for we could truly say, that during no part of our lives had we ever felt less alone, or more completely contented and happy, than when our whole society became comprised in the person of our matchless Countess ! One evening when I was sitting with her lady- THE DAY AT HAINFELU. 145 -hip, the letter bag came in, and was as usual de- livered into her hands. Of the four or five packets which it contained for herself, she reserved only one for immediate perusal, putting the other less fortunate despatches amongst her innumerable books and pa- pers on her left, where, in all probability, they lay many days, or it may have been weeks, unopened. " Hut this letter," she said, <' will interest both you and me, as it is from Edinburgh — I pray you to read it to me. I took it accordingly, and broke the seal, but for my life I could not make out a single line, though it was evidently written in a plain hand. I opened the window siiutter to its full width ; but still could not see to read. I then discovered that although there was still a bright glow in the western sky, the pure daylight had been exchanged for that uncertain twi- light, which, to some optics, is almost tantamount to no light at all. I had more than once before be- gun to fear that I had reached the age when this descrij)tion of weakness first becomes sensible. I said so to the Countess, and begged her leave to ring for the lamp. " Yes! yes I" cried she, laughing heartily, but begging pardon for doing so — " J}o ring for the lights. I don't wonder to hear you com- plain of this twilight blindness — you have it by inheritance ; and, for that matter," added the old N 146 THE DAY AT HAINFELD. lady, laughing still more, *' I ought to have it by connexion. *' You know," she continued, " or, perhaps, you do not know that my brother-in-law, Dugald Stew- art, had not the faculty of distinguishing colours at any time ; and, like your own father Sir James, he absolutely lost his sight when this sort of twilight set in. It is a most curious fact," she went on to say, " that Dugald Stewart could not see any dif- ference even between colours so strongly contrasted as the ripe mulberry fruit and the leaf of that tree. Yet the practical inconvenience of this singular de- fect in the retina, if such it were, was nothing in comparison to what he suffered from becoming blind when the day was nearly at a close. " I was laughing just now," said the Countess, warming with her topic, as she always did when any thing carried her thoughts back to Edinburgh, which was fifty times a-week — " I was laughing at the recollection of a funny scene 1 had with your father and Mr Stewart at least half a century ago. We had all been drinking tea with my excellent friend the Reverend Mr Alison, who had then a house in Bruntsfield Links. My two companions, the moment they came into the open air, recommen- ced a metaphysical discussion the party had been engaged in, and which, from the popular turn which THE DAY AT IIAINFELI). 147 tljc at- tlements of the old castle. " Presently Mr Stewart, slackening his pace, drew t(» my side, and remarked that the golf-jilay- ers had (piite destroyed the Links for a lady's walk- ing, and that unless I took his arm I might put my foot into one of the holes used in the aforesaid game. As I found none of the inconvenience to which he 148 THE DAY AT HAINFELD. referred, and as we had passed most of tlie rough ground, I begged him not to disturb his philosophi- cal tete-a-tete on my account. But he continued to press me to take his arm. I knew well enough what was the Professor's motive, for I had long been aware of his peculiar optical weakness, and I saw h e could scarcely walk a step without setting his foot on a stone, or into a hole ; but I was willing, by de- clining his twilight civilities, to punish his broad day neglect. Sir James, who as yet saw quite well, had no idea what Mr Stewart was manamvring about, and even tried all he could, being deeply interested in the discussion, to detach the blind lecturer's at- tention from me to himself. Mr Stewart, however, in his fears of a sprained ankle, seemed quite to for- get his moral philosophy, much to your father's sur- prise. " In about five minutes afterwards, however, I was much amused when Sir James also offered me his arm, expressed in like manner a wonderful anxiety about my safety and comfort, and, as Mr Stewart had done before him, insisted upon encumbering me with help of which I stood in no sort of need. It became truly a task of some difficulty to lead these two gentlemen, for as neither of them could see an inch before him, I was obliged to act as a guide to botli. Thc-y, on the other hand, as soon as they THE DAY AT HAIXFKLD. 149 had ro^-aiiied their confidence, through the agency of my j)ilotage, forgot their sudden fit of gallantry, and once more recommenced their unintelligible disquisi- tions, across my very nose, and without once seem- ing to recollect that such an individual as their female protector was in existence I '' As one story is sure to beget another, this adven- ture with the lulinburgh philosophers reminded me at tlie moment of a very different scene with one of them ; and as it amused the Countess, I may per- haj)s be allowed to introduce it here. Long after tlie period described, when my father, no lony-er a student at the College and Dugald Stewart's pupil, was at the head of a numerous fa- mily, he set out in a fine afternoon to walk with one of hi> little boys. It was his wont, in every thing, great or small, to go straight to his object, and some- tii)i>'s without duly considering the labour it was to cost, either to himself or his less robust companions. ()ii the occasion I speak of, being anxious to induct ids i)rogeny to some of those mysteries of geolog\ wiru'h dt'lighted his own imagination, and which he took it -for graTited the i)oy would relish as much as hiiiisclt, be proceeded to the toj) of Corstorphine, a well-known basaltie hill near I'^dinburgii. The sun set as usual, but as my father's enthusiasm never set, auiiy he went, lugging theschooU)oy after him, v.ho 150 THE DAY AT HAINFELD. indeed enjoyed the ramble as ntiueli as liis papa, who "was his most agreeable and constant companion. The point was made out to the satisfaction of both parties ; the hill was gained, and the geologist having examined the spot about which he was cu- rious, set about teaching the young idea of his son how to shoot into past ages. For the rest, both were pleased to have had what they called a scamper over the hills. On turning back, however, it was soon apparent that they had made respectively two very false cal- culations — my father of the duration of the daylight, and my little brother of the strength of his legs. Before they were half-way down the hill, my father, in the twilight, entirely lost his sight, and though the boy could see avcII enough, and knew the way perfectly, he was quite knocked up, and could not walk a step ! In this dilemma, my father, whose ingenuity and resources were not confined to scientific pursuits, readily devised an escape. Being a strong man, and the boy being light, he perched the urchin on his shoulders, and thus, while one furnished legs, the otiier provided eyes, and they regained their home almost as soon, and much more merrily, than if they liad both been on foot ! [ 151 ] CHAPTER X. THE WORSER. On'i: (lay when I entered the Countess's room, I ()l)S(.'r\-e(l that she had been writintr ; but on my sit- tinii; down by her bedside, she sent away the appa- ratu-;, r. tainln<^ oidy one sheet of paper, Avhich slie ]ield up, and said, — " ^()u have written your life; here is mine," and slic ])ut into my hands tlie following- copy of vcrsi-i, bv whom written she would not tell me. Probably they are by herself, for they are certainly I'.xactly such as suited her cast of thoug-ht. I may here repeat, that in sj)ite of all her misfortunes, and the pains she took to clierish her j^rief, she was in- variably in i^ood spirits, and never let fall a liasty or (piendous word. 152 THE MORSER. MY LIFE. My life is like the summer rose, That opens to the morning sky ; But ere the shades of evening close, Is scattered on the ground to die. But on that rose's humble bed, The sweetest dews of night are shed, As if Heav'n wept such waste to see. But none shall weep a tear for me. My life is like the autumnal leaf. That trembles in the moon's pale ray. Its hold is frail — its date is brief — Restless, and soon to pass away. Yet ere that leaf sliall fall or fade, The parent tree shall mourn its sliade, The winds bewail the leafless tree, But none shall breathe a si<;h for me ! My life is like the print that feet Have left on Zara's desert strand ; Soon as the rising tide sliall beat, The track sliall vanish from the sand. Yet, as if grieving to efface All vestige of the human race. On that lone shore loud moans the sea, But none shall e'er lament for me ! THE WORSliK. 153 As the Countess had been relating to me, the day before, some passages of her melancholy history, and pointing out, in very touching terms, the entire desolation of her life, and the utter ruin of all her fondest hopes, I could not help admitting, when she asked me what I thought of the above lines, that they painted her situation but too truly ; " though," I added, " they surely do injustice to the many attached friends you still possess." '• You are very good," she said, sighing and sha- king her head ; but instantly continued, with a smile, — " I should be wicked to complain, for al- though my path has been a thorny one, and all tho>e 1 loved and cherished most have been torn froni me, there has been no dishonour to them nor to me ; ami the past is unclouded by any remorse, or aiiv tiling not in itself pleasing, however melan- eludy to look back upon. You remember," she \\ ent on to say, in her usual aiumated style — " You remend)er the old story of the Jfurstr/ For mv own part, I often think, with great gratitude to Pro- vidence, how much worse otV I might have been, tlioiigii I have successively lost all the friends I most ]o\ed in the world, and am here laid on my dying- bed — for die, and that shortly, 1 believe and hope I shall — ai)roken-hearted, helpless, useless old cripple." I stammered out some commonplaces about ho- 154 THE WORSER. ping that she was still to see many useful and happy days — happy at all events to her friends. She took no notice of these remarks, but continued, in a tone rather more melancholy than she had used before I interrupted her, in the following words : — *' I take rather an interest in hearing stories of persons who are still worse off than myself; and you, too, may possibly be interested in the follow- ing narrative, for the truth of which I can vouch : — " A lady and gentleman several years ago were living at the Hague ; they had been for some time married, and were justly reckoned amongst the hap- piest of the happy. Particular business called the husband away. Shortly afterwards the wife received a letter by express, stating that her husband was dangerously ill ; and that she must use the utmost despatch if she hoped to see him alive. No time was lost, but on approaching the inn she was met by a funeral, and learned, to her unspeakable horror, that the hearse before her contained the dead body of her husband ! She fainted in the streets ; but when the funeral had passed on, the people were at a loss what to do with her, not knowing who or what she was, nor even her connexion with the gen- tleman who had died ; for when she recovered from the fainting fit, her reason had fled. A benevolent lady, however, who witnessed the whole scene from THE WOUSEU. 155 lier window, ran down into the street and desired tliat the unfortunate woman should be carried to her own room. " For some weeks her mind continued unsettled, aiul >he seemed unconscious of every thing, except rliat some dreadful calamity had happened. At I. iiLj'tli h.er senses returned, and with them a full com- ureliensioii of her loss. Her trrief became outrasfeous and uncontrolled, and she constantly exclaimed, * I am the most wretched, the most unfortunate of wo- men — surely never, never was there any one put to ^ uch a trial.' For a little while her unknown but !-:iiul friend did not attempt to stem these bursts of ^rit'f. but at last she said to her, mildly, thougli {irmly — " ^'our lot is hard, but you are not the )no< unfortunate of mortals. Listen to my story. I, too, w;is a hajtpy, hapi)y wife. IMy husband and 1 had j)a>si'd upwards of twenty years in the unin- Tt'nuj)tc'd enjoyment of life, in companionship with our two ehil(h"en, a son and a daughter, who were ■ 11 every respect what we could desire. To our 'nliiiite horror and amazement, we discovered that a \ illain in our own establishment, a man in whom we ]iiu\ trusted, had, by a series of diabolical arts, se- 'hieed the virtue of our poor girl I He fled from our v'ligeance, and his wretched ruined victim died ■■.hortlv afterwards in childbed. Mean while her l)ro- 156 THE WORSER. ther, who was of a delicate frame, and of a sensitive temperament, was so wrought upon by sorrow and humiliation, that he speedily fell into a decline, and we saw before us another inevitable source of grief. " ' To avert the blow, however, as long as pos- sible, a journey to the south of Europe was recom- mended, and the grateful air of a more genial climate seemed to revive the drooping spirits of our son. One day he entered a coifeehouse, and had scarcely sat down before he beheld the destroyer of his sister placed before him. Stupified, and uncertain what to do, he remained silent, while the other at once broke into taunts, allusions, and reproaches. This was too much for human nature to stand, and our poor boy, snatching up a knife, which unfortunately lay within his reach, plunged it into the heart of the monster who had ruined the peace of a M'liole family. " ' Of course he was instantly secured. The trial followed, and in spite of all the extenuating circum- stances which were urged, he was condemned, and, dreadful to relate, executed ! I\iy husl)and returned to me from the horrid scene apparently calm and un- moved. We felt it our duty to support one another under these terrible dispensations, sent upon us, no doubt, for our good, by the wisdom of a Power whose ways are inscrutable. The next day we had agreed to take a drive together ; but after my hus- THE M'ORSER. 157 I'iuul had luiiuled me into the carriage, he said lie luul forgot something, for which he must return to his room. I waited for five or six minutes, and then becoming alarmed, I ran up stairs, and found that he had j)ut a jK'riod to his existence ! '' • Judge now, therefore, my dear madam, whe- tlur there may not he more unfortunate women in the world than you are.' " The Countess beinir in the vein for relatinof anecdotes — as, indeed, she almost always was when there happened to he no particular subject under di.>cus>ion — said, after a short pause, — " You think that rather a painful tale, I fear it was but too true. I'll tell you another, however, which is not so gloomy, the particulars of which I have repeatedly heard from friends on whom I can j)erfectly rely. It would be difficult, I suspect, to invent circumstances so little in the ordinary way of life : but I think I can safely assure you that all I am going to tell you took place. '' One summer evening, in a pretty little village on the pleasant hanks of the Tweed, a gentle tap was heard at the door of the schoolmaster's house, whieh was the first of a line of new buildings at the end of the ' Toon,' as the natives called it. The schoolmaster, who was quite a young man, and just established in his laborious office, opened the door 158 THE WOIISER. himself, and was rather surprised to see an eklerly woman holding in her hand a very pretty person, at whose breast was an infant. " The old woman begged admittance for her young friend, stating that she was quite exhausted, and would presently expire of fatigue if not assist- ed. The schoolmaster of course desired them to enter, and taking the child in one arm, gave the other to the young woman, who fainted as he placed her on a chair. The schoolmaster's mother, an old lady who managed the cottage establishment for him, was somewhat surprised to find such a party installed in the house when she returned from visiting a neighbour. But being of the same kindly disposition as her son, she gave the wearied strangers a hearty welcome ; and although she said she could not ffive them such pfood accommodation as they would have found at the inn farther up the street, she and her son would do the best they could for them. " Next morning a curious dilemma arose. The elderly woman had silently taken her departure in the night ; and as it soon appeared that the young person who with her child had accompanied her was both deaf and duml), no direct means of ascer- taining who and what they were presented them- selves. The young woman, however, wos so ph^a- THE WOUSEi:. 159 siiiL;; ill her manners, so pretty withal, and both she and the cliild so well dressed, that the schoolmaster and his mother felt an involuntary respect for their mysterious guests, and very soon took such an inte- rest ill them, that all thoughts of giving them any liint to retire were out of the (pietion. *' The schoolmaster, as part of his business, had uanu'd the art of speaking on his fingers; and as his mother soon accpured it also, there occurred no ditliciilrv in communicatinu* with the vouni": woman, 'llie first recpiest of the stranger was, that she mii;lit be asked no questions as to her history ; the second was, that she might be permitted to remain where accident hahe explained, an ample sum to discharge her board and lodging for herself and the child for a year. •" In a private consultation held between the scliool master and his mother on this proposal, the prudent old lady strongly objected to such an arrangement, on the j)lea of its indelicacy, and the hazard in which it might place the respectabilitv of the village school, when it was known that a person of sucji (pu'stionable history had become the school- masfi'r's guest. '• The young man, on the other hand, warmly advocated the cause of the forlorn wanderer — ren- 160 THE WORSE R. dered doubly helpless in consequence of her unfor- tunate want of speech and hearing-. As to the indelicacy, he said that was an idle notion, as his mother's presence would effectually maintain all the proprieties. The truth was, however, that the schoolmaster, who was a man of birth considerably above his present station, and who had received a first-rate education, was greatly struck with the beauty of the stranger. Moreover, though he did not confess it, even to himself, he had begun to entertain vague hopes that, in process of time, the mystery might be cleared up. Then, thought he, all the proprieties upon which his mother dwelt might be satisfied in a manner which he scarcely ventured to think of. " Month after month passed in this way. The stranger became every day more and more amiable, and the mother saw, with a feeling of mixed alarm and satisfaction, that while the young people were becoming daily more intimate and attached, the school was more and more neglected, till at length the boys had it all to themselves. It was soon ad- mitted by all parties that this could not be allow- ed to go on long : and after one more fruitless attempt to gain from the young woman some no- tion what she was, or who she was, or where she came from (an attempt which she declared, if re- 'lilE WOKSLK. IGl IK'Hted, must drive her for ever from them), it was agreed tliat a marriaire shoidd take j)lace. " ?\Iairied they were aecordiii;^!)-, and the thou- sand and one |^os.si})s of the villa<>e silenced for the time. The school, which had languished in pro- portion as the courtship of the preceptor had flou- rished, now revived : and what was very important and satisfactory to the neighbourhood, a female de- ])artnu'nt was added. In this the schoolmaster's wife taught writing, cyphering, and sewing — her usefulness being necessarily limited by her want of the senses of hearing and speech. '•' Her success, however, was astonishing, and the school gained great celebrity in conse(pK'nce. The discipline she maintained was perfect, for it received the most exact obedience, while it gained for her the regard as well as the respect of her pu- jiils. The >hrewd ones amongst the young folks used often to assert, when alone, that the mistress must only be pretending to be deaf, as she appeared to discover, with a kind of intuitive accuracy, all that they said near her. But the numberless exjie- rlments which they made to entrap her only tended to establish that It really was no pretence. Final- ly, all >u>pieion (^ii thAv part, as well as on the l)usl)and'^, if indeed any had ever existed, graduiJly died awav. 162 THE WORSER. " In the mean time, she became the mother of seven children, besides the girl who had been with her at the time of her first appearance, and who always called her mamma, and was treated as a daughter by her. I should mention that tlie old woman, who had accompanied her on her arrival, paid her and her children a visit of several days once a-year, and on these occasions she always brought with her a purse of money similar to that which the young woman had produced on tlie morning after she was received by the scliool- master. " One or two attempts to win from the old lady some trace of the young person's mysterious history Avere met by such earnest entreaties not to enquire into the matter, and threatenings of such an alarm- ing nature, that after the second year no further questions were put to her, and every thing fell into a regular, successful, and happy train. No persons could be more attached, no family more flourishing, and no business more satisfactory than the joint school. " The gentry of the neighbourhood were natu- rally much interested in this strange story, and still more interested in the heroine of it, whose man- ners, as I have already mentioned, were those of a much hisrher rank in life. But they tried in vain THE WORSEU. 163 ti) iiiduce her to visit them, and she stuck resolutely to her school and cottage duties. *' On the fourteenth anniversary of her arrival, when the old woman made her periodical appear- ance with her purse of gold, the girl who was call- ed, and who probably M'as, her eldest daughter, chanced to pass unobserved through a room in whicli this old person and her mother were. To her astonishment, and even horror, she heard her mother s[)eak. Greatly alarmed and confused, she ran U) her father, as she always called the school- !:iaster, and communicated the wonderful news to !iim. lie desired the girl to tell no one else, and aid nothing himself till the night came, and every one had retired to bed. '• I le tlu'ii told his wife of the discovery winch had been made, and entreated her to Idess him with the sound of her voice. " ' ^ <)u are very wrong,' she said, 'and you will dei'ply rue this breach of our solemn contract. Vou have heard me speak once — you shall never hear me speak again ! ' " He tried every art — he prayed — he wept — but all in vain — till at length, t Ilainfeld, the most hospitable of all castles, atl'ord- ed small matter for narration, there occurred every now and then incidents, which, though suffi ciently insii^iiificant when compared to the great events of life, possessed considerable importance in our eyes by ruir elR'ct on our comforts at the time. A mus- /.litto is a very little animal, but where is the philo- ^ojilu']- whose jKitieiice miglit not be bu/zed or stung I ut of him by one of those wretches attacking him ('iniiig the whole night ? In like manner, there may bt- found tormenting little animals of the human -peeies, wholly insignificant as regards their use- fulness, but omnipotrnt in their powers of torment- ing others, ^^'ho is there that is not acquainted with a certain luimber of Bores, to meet any one of whom at a party, or in the streets for five mi- nutes, is a punishment only tolerable, because we 168 THE BORE. know the misery is transient ? But think of the in- tense agony of having to live in the same country- house with a finished Bore ! In town one may escape, or other persons may be got together to smo- ther the monster ; but in the country, where there is no escape, and where it is difficult or impossible to dilute the evil by gathering together persons of a diiferent stamp, the calamity becomes almost too great for endurance. We were once exposed to the smarting of this grievance at Hainfeld, for so long a time that at last (as in the parallel case of the musquitto) we wrought ourselves into a fever of impatience and distress, un- worthy, it must be admitted, of rational persons under such circumstances ; bvit the misery was not the less real on that account. Our friendly hostess, in speaking of the various persons who were likely to come to the castle during the winter, with or without invitation, had frequent- ly mentioned to us the name of a lady with whom she had at one time been rather intimate, but whose acquaintance, from a variety of circumstances, had become no longer agreeable. " I have done every thing I can," said the Countess, " to cut her, and to prevent her coming to Hainfeld, but I have not been able to accomplish my purpose : and as the customs of the country permit any one who pleases THE 150UE. 169 to enter and abide in your house, it is very difficult, with a person who will not take a hint, to rid one- self of such a guest. '• I only hope," continued the old lady, getting animated with her topic, " I only hope to goodness that she will not come upon us during your stay, for I fear you would never agree. It is possible," she added, " that you folks who have seen all parts of the world, and love to examine curious specimens of humanity, may be interested by this sample, but I doubt it ; for although she is very well informed and learned in her way, she generally contrives some- how, in spite of very great efforts to please, to ren- der herself universally unpopular with all classes, low as well as high : and you will laugh when I tell you of a curious result of this extensive feeling against my quondam friend. " One of the plagues of my unfortunate situa- tion," continued our hostess, " is the difficulty I find in manajifing: the crowd of servants I am obli- ged to maintain in my castle. It is always bad enough when there is not a master in such an esta- blishment ; but it is still worse when the mistress is bed-ridden, and from not being able to see into matters with her own eyes, must take the report of others. In short, you will easily conceive that I have no small work to keep things smooth amongst v 170 THE BORE. my domestics ; and for some years, indeed ever since I have been laid up entirely, half my time, and more than half my temper, have been spent in settling their foolish quarrels ; so that until you came I have scarcely known any peace on this account, except- ing only," added the Countess, laughing, " when this obliging friend of mine came to pay me a visit. For, you must understand, that she is so cordially hated by all the servants, that whatever hostilities may be waging amongst them, or whatever real or imaginary sources of discontent may be stirring their tempers, and sending them to spout their angry re- criminations to me, all is forgotten the moment this doughty personage arrives ! A treaty of cordial alliance, offensive and defensive, on the ground of common ill-will, is instantly patched up among them, and for the time I hear no more of them and their absurd bickerings. " It is true," said the old lady, with a shake of her head, and a tone of more bitterness than we had previously remarked in her, " that as a set off for this repose below stairs, I am liable to be tormented, not with their complaints of one another, but with my unhappy guest's complaints of them. When, irri- tated by her statements of their negligence or im- pertinence, I summon my people to my bedside, they fully admit the facts as set forth, and justify THE BORE. 171 their conduct by asserting the utter impossibility of liviin;- on any tolerable terms with the individual ill question." Just before this conversation we had been dis- eussinti^ tlie point of our stay at the Castle, and the Countess had been uriring us to give up what she ealK'il our ab-'Urd and cruel intention of going away on the first of December, and to make up our minds To remain at all events over tlie new year, but the discussion had been interrupted by something. I iesuinetl it by saying that I trusted, if we did agree to sta}' so long, she would manage to keep this she- dragon away from us. '' 1 shall do wliat 1 can," she replied, " but I sup- j)ose vou would not Mish me to write to say you make ir a stipulation with me that if you remain, sjie is not to be admitted '?" Whatever we may have thought, AC expressed ourselves duly shocked at such a pro- position, and entreated her not to think of taking such a strong step on our account. " Why," she said, " you need not be so horrified, for I nIiouUI feel little scruple on my own part, as I am already obliged to do something of the sort, in the case of a distant friend who sometimes visits me, and who makes it a condition that this lady shall not only not be invited, but that she shall not 172 THE BORE. be permitted to put her foot within the doors during his visit ! " Happy would it have been for us and for all par- ties, had we too made a similar condition — but it seemed scarcely within the rules of good breeding to suggest such a thing, or even to permit it ; and we passed from the subject, under the hope that something would turn up to save us from such a visitation. While we were yet speaking, a letter came to the Countess from the dreaded person herself, and she opened it with fear and trembling. It was to state the lady's regrets that owing to the illness of one of her family, she could not at present have the plea- sure of coming to Hainfeld, but that she hoped soon to be at liberty to do so. " It is all over with us ! " cried the Countess. " I know the meaning of such a letter as this. She will be here before the week is out. I do not really know how to help it. Perhaps," sighed she, " you may like her very well after all ; for there is not a person alive who makes greater efforts to render her- self popular ; and if she does not always succeed, nature is in fault, not the lady. So pray give her a fair trial." She came accordingly ; and surely never was there any one who looked the character letter, or THE BORE. 173 who, in all possible respects, enacted the Bore more truly to the life. Her voice, harsh and unmusical to the last degree of discord, might be thought melodious in comparison with the jarring elements of her conversation : and what made this worse, was the unceasing exigence of her curiosity, which made her wish to join in all that was passing, and to give iicr opinion unasked upon every topic. She seemed, indeed, to possess an ubiquity the most wonderful : for sit where you chose, talk in as low a voice as you might, still she would contrive to get at you, and to intrude her stale, flat, and unprofitable commonplaces upon you. If you escaped, to have a (juiet chat trte-a-tete with the Countess, she was by your side. If you returned to the library, there she was re-established before you. If, in order to avoid talking, you took volume first of a book, she got hold of volume second, and insisted on com- paring notes, or anticijiating your story, in spite of your teeth. If you wished to read aloud in a re- tired window to a single person, straightway the Bore dragged a chair into your retreat, popped herself triumphantly down, and cried out, " I'll be your puldic — read on ! " Amongst her other accomplishments, this good lad} was very learned in the tongues, and had taken not a few lessons in I'nglish. But, Oil, ye gods 174 THE EORE. and goddesses, what English she did speak ! No written account can convey an adequate idea of sounds so horrible, and yet you could see that she prided herself particularly on her proficiency. Un- til we resolutely put a stop to it, she laid all and each of us under contributions to improve her stock of words. First she tried to elect me to the honour- able post of teacher ; and when I fought shy, she attacked the ladies of my establishment : but the discouraging reserve with which her advances were there met threw her upon a young officer of the Austrian army, a countryman of ours, who, from not being so much accustomed to the world and its ways, knew not how to disentangle himself. She made the poor youth listen for hours together to what she obligingly called reading English — a fact which no one could have dreamed of, had she not informed him that such was the language she was Burking. Then she brought him to correct long foolscap sheets of exercises, also in this unfortu- nate, unknown tongue. Her desire, in short, to show olf, and her possible unconsciousTiess that she was giving pain instead of pleasure, induced her to follow us into whatever corner of the Castle we betook ourselves. As to giving hints, or showing by our looks and manner that we wished to be alone, it was useless. She THE BORE. 175 would not take oftence ; which invulnerable property led a Clratz wa^ to remark of her, that while some people are thin skinned, and others thiek skinned, she seemed clad with the hide of a rhinoceros. If, on the otlier hand, in a sort of despair mixed with remorse, we tried the plan of being remarkably civil, it was instantaneously taken such savage advantaf^e of, in the shape of fresh intrusion, that we were speedily driven back to our coldness and formality. At dinner all conversation was at an end ; for if you spoke to your next neighbour in the lowest whisper, though the Bore was seated at the farthest angle of the table from you, her quick ear caught up what you said ; and before your question was well out of your mouth, she, and not the person it was addressL.'d to, would oblige you with an answer. I have already adverted to the kind of omnipre- sence which belonged to this insinuating personage, which made all parties in the house complain that she was always by their side ; and accordingly, Mlifu at night, and driven to desperation, we fled to our rooms, and compared notes, every one was ready to swear that she had never once intermitted her companionshij). Most fortunately, we began on fill' very first day by declining her oflers of walking with us, aiul many a weary roundabout it cost us to avoid meetin(;s in the woods. 176 THE BORE. In process of time the annoyance I have hut very faintly described became almost unbearable ; and as nearly all our pleasure in the visit was at an end in consequence, we began once more to think se- riously of taking our departure. On the other hand, the good Countess every day urged upon us her increasing anxiety that we should stay till the spring, or at all events till after the new year ; and, indeed, we felt ourselves so very comfortably lodged, with the sole exception of being bored through and through like an old target, that we had the greatest reluctance to break up our snug winter quarters, in order to seek a very questionable enjoyment at Vienna. One day when the Countess was pressing us hard upon this point, and claiming our sympathy — as well she might — on the score of her gradually de- clining health, and the vast addition our party made to her comforts, I said to her, playfully, that if she v.ould only rid the house of a certain person, our minds might easily be made up to remain some time longer. " That is a motive, indeed," quoth the old lady, sighing; " and difficult as the exploit may prove, I trust we shall be able to accomplish the task of dislodging her. But," continued the Countess, " she is like a bur. She comes into the house, and THE BORE. 177 Sticks, and sticks, and pricks every one, but cannot he got rid of. I have already given her a dozen hints, hut all in vain." In fact, we found that the poor mistress of the house had been long pondering in her mind how to terminate the visit of her self-invited and most unwelcome guest ; more especially as she saw that it was next to impossible that we could or would sul)mit for any length of time to this daily increa- sing annoyance, which alternately made us laugh and almost cry with vexation. This was too hot to last long, as Nelson said of Trafalgar ; and it became evident, in the course of a fortnight, that one or the other party must })rescntly abandon the position. \\ hlle matters were in this feverish state, it hap- pened, partly by accident and partly by design of the Countess, that a crowd of company came to the Castle. The bustle proved, however, too much for the old lady's shattered nerves : since each person who in turn visited her, though carefully schooled on the subject, presently forgot that although he was not an invalid, he was talking to one ; accord- iiigly, sonu> talked too loud, others too quick, and all too much; so that the exhausted Countess was almost worn out. This had the ufood cfTect of brinsinof the cam- 178 THE BORE. paign, as we called it, against the Bore, to a crisis. The mistress of the house declared to several of her friends, in confidence, but with her wonted decision of manner, which left no doubt of her determination, that she could not possibly, in her present weak and gradually-declining state of health, entertain more company in the Castle than her own countryfolks, meaning our party ; and that, there- fore, she must entreat them to forgive her for re- questing them to cut short their visit for the present. Every member of the party so appealed to but one not only understood this, and were pleased with the good old lady's frankness, but promised to do their best to aid and assist in freeing her likewise of the person who, they saw, fretted her life and soul out. Accordingly, next day, all but she prepared to re- turn home, or to proceedon other visits. The Countess was distracted, and we were in despair; and it now really seemed as if nothing short of the celebrated Irish hint was likely to have any eft'ect. But it wa-i suggested that even the strongish measure of throw- ing the guest out of the window would have no effect in this particular case, for that she would speedily re-enter the house, thanking you for the air and exercise which the fall and flight had afforded her! At last, and just before the company dispersed, THE BORE. 179 the Countess, who, though bedrid, possessed much eneriry of character, resolved to bring matters to a point. In this view she commissioned two of her other and more reasonable guests, to undertake the delicate task of fairly telling the Bore that she must depart. One of these commissioners was a lady, and she managed her part very well ; but the other, though one of the ablest men I ever met with in any country, nearly bungled all, and defeated, by his bad diplomacy, the well-laid schemes of his colleague. In the course of the evening he took occasion, as if quite carelessly, to ask the lady whom we were all sighing and dying to get rid of, how long she thought of remaining at Ilainfeld, now the Countess was getting feebler, and could not entertain so much company as formerly? " Oh I" cried she briskly, '' I shall remain here as louLT as the Halls do." The indiscreet negotiator having thus given the enemy a fixed point to fight from, was effectually baftled in all his subsequent reasonings about the Countess's delicate state of health — her wish to be quiet — her anxiety to hear only her own native language spoken this winter. All this fell flat and profitless on the dull ear that was dcternuned not to be charmed. The female commissioner took a wiser and more 180 THE BORE. straightforward course. She represented to the lady in so many words, that the Countess, who was a most determined person, and not to be trifled with, had signified her wish to be left alone, or with only her own country people about her. The able nego- tiator softened this communication by representing, that as the request was general to all the guests in the Castle, there could be nothing personally offen- sive intended ; and then seeing that she had made some impression, she followed up the attack by an act of generosity and self-sacrifice worthy of the best times of the martyrs. " Don't distress yourself," said this most excellent and disinterested person, " as to where you shall go from hence — come to my castle over the hills, and there we shall be happy that you stay as long as suits your convenience." There was no standing all this, and presently we had the satisfaction of hearing that the enemy had been brought to terms, and had agreed to evacuate the Castle. Our joy, indeed, was unbounded ; but the old Countess shook her head and remarked, that we must not holla till out of the wood. Next morning the party broke up. Some went south, some west, some east, but, to our sorrow and horror, none went north — the only point of the com- pass we cared about. And when the coast was clear THE liOIlE. 181 of tlie others, and the sound of the carriage-wheels, and tramping horses, and bustling domestics, no longer heard, mc had the mortification to discover that, to all appearance, our evil genius — our bur — our Bore — had not now — and probably never had hud — any serious intention of moving ! She had been ollered the Countess's carriage, but refused it, saying that she meant to write home for her own ; but when the letters for the post bag came to be collected, there appeared no letter in that direction. Thus, the lady's determination to hold on for the winter, became to us more fearfully apparent than ever ! The Countess, however, was not of a tempera- ment to be easily thwarted in what she had under- taken ; and seeing how matters stood, she begged to have' an interview. " The post," said she, " is such a roundabout and uncertain method of com- numication in this slow-moving country, that I have tiiouii:ht it would be more satisfactory to you, as it certaiidy will be to me, to arrange this matter by sending an express. So I have ordered a man and horse to be got ready to carry your letter, and bring back the answer." It was impossible to resist such a home-thrust as this. T!ie letter was written, the messenger des- patched, and the horse trotted out of the court of 182 THE BORE. the Castle as If even the very cattle participated in the general feeling which agitated the household. Next day brought the answer ; and, with it in her hand, the unwelcome guest proceeded to the Countess's bedside to make a last and desperate stand ; and, had not the old lady been a very Wel- lington or Metternich in petticoats, she must have been discomfited. The letter was forthwith read, paragraph by pa- ragraph. It began by a string of compliments and praises of the Countess's liberality, generosity, and above all — hospitality. The reader paused, but as the listener said nothing, she went on. *' You have spoken," said the letter, " of Sun- day for your return. Now, unless it be absolutely necessary, no one, you know, should travel on a Sunday." The reader again paused ; the Countess smiled, but was silent. " In the next place," pursued the epistle, " the chimney of your room smokes so abominably, that you cannot occupy your apartment till the masons who are at work on it shall have finished ; and you really must not think of coming at this season to a cold room." The Countess still took no notice. " Finally," said the writer, " you cannot possibly THE UOUE. 183 :,ave the carriaf^e, as it has l)een sent away, and 'A ill not he hack for some days : and I fear you can- not well come home in any other, as the chaise -eat, in whicli your things are, will not fit, and it inu'^t not he left." " I< th:it all?" said the Countess. " It is all," rejdied the lady ; " and now what is to be (lone? — what can I do?" '• In the first place," said the Countess, laugh- iniif, '• \ our friends know, and you know, and all the (ii'rman world know, that so far from Sunday ht'inir kept holy, as respects travellinir, it is univer- sullv selected as the fittest dav in the whole week for thar ))urpose. But," added she, "■ not to shock your eonseienee. you shall name your own day. •' In tln' lu'xt ])lace. you lately told me that you always had the choice of several other rooms, and as tluTc appears to be nothin^^ the matter with their eiiimiu'vs, you need not be under any alarm, I think, on that score. " As to the third and last difficulty, I do <^rant that it is st'rious, but I shall seiul for the coachman, and if it aj)pears that your box cannot be carried with perfect safety and convenience, of course you will have to wait for your own carria<^e as su<^gested in the letter. But as I apprehend there will be no (litficulty in taking the box, I shall be obliged to you, 184 TilE EOKE. in order to save yourself and me all further anxiety, if you will name the day most suitable to yourself. ' Had our fellow-guest's hide been as strong as the armour of Achilles, it must have been pierced by the sharpness of this reply. With a sigh she hauled down her colours, and said, — " Well, then, I'll take advantage of your lady- ship's obliging offer of the carriage on next Sunday morning." I shall not attempt to paint the joy which reign- ed in the Castle as the news spread rapidly from the library to the laundry, a joy which, however, was suddenly interrupted by an accident which threaten- ed to defeat the whole object of the campaign. It appeared that our friend, when reading in her own room on the evening of the above memorable conference with the Countess, had set fire to her head-dress, and before she could untie the ribbon, her hand and arm, used in extinguishing the flames, were considerably burned. Thus we had before us the pleasant prospect of a long attendance upon her during her slow recovery. For in common decency, if not in common compassion, we must have given up our prejudices and assisted a person under such circumstances. Now, every one has heard of the amiability of a sick monkey ; and a bear with a sore head, as an agreeable companion, is proverbial; but THE BORE. 185 what tliiiik you of passing a month by the sick-bed of a burnt Bore ! Thanks to fate, however, and to that blessed re- medy cotton, the inflammation was kept down, and on Sunday morning we had the inexpressible feli- city of hearing the carriage rattle over the stones ; and feeling that we had now fairly got rid of our incubus — our standing night-mare — we sat down to our little domestic church, with hearts filled with much thankfulness — but I sadly fear, with any thing but a spirit of Christian charity, or unmixed i:ood-will towards men, * * Having alluded above to domestic worship, I think I may 1)1' rendiTing an important service to many persons, especially to travellers who, like us, may be thrown for long periods far out of the way of any Protestant Cluirch service, by calling tlieir attention to a very admirable volume of Family Praj'ers, Mritten by tin- late Henry Tlx^rnton, Ks(i., and })ublished re- cently by his friend, Sir Robert Inglis. The sober piety, iMtelligit)le doctrines, and business-like good sense which per- vade these excellent prayers, to say nothing of the forcible and ('locjuent language in which they are composed, must recom- mend them, sooner or later, to general notice and adoption. [ 186 ] CHAPTER XII. QUACKERY— ABSOLUTISM. I THINK I have already mentioned that the Countess had an unconquerable aversion to all me- dicines, or, as she invariably called them — drugs. She had suffered much from an illness in Switzer- land ; and thence had a notion, whether well or ill- founded I do not know, that she had been impro- perly treated by the medical men in that country ; and she ascribed so much of her subsequent mise- rable sufferings to this cause, real or imaginary, that she not only rejected, with equal disgust, every de- scription of drug, but treated all medical slvill with proportionate scorn. There was no theme, indeed, upon which she was more eloqvient than the univer- sal quackery of the profession of medicine ; but, with a strange kind of inconsistency, she confined her disrespect to the regularly bred professors of the art, while she looked with favour — or at least w ith inte- rest and curiosity — upon those who, without any of QUACKERY ABSOLUTISM. 187 that caution which true science teaches, boldly assumed universal infallibility. One might have thought that she considered the study of medicine as our ancestors did the black art, as something un- lioly and hurtful to mankind ; and, consequently, the deeper any person carried his researches, the nearer he approached to the source of all mischief. ^rhe Countess, however, was far too clever a per- son, and far too well acquainted with the proceed- ings of the world, to maintain the above argument in direct terms. She was aware of the sophistry, as a matter of reasoning ; but having suffered, as she tliought, from the misapplication of the rules of art, she could not help involving the whole profession in the same censure ; and certainly, in practice, she showed her sincerity, by never letting a drug of any kind pass her lips. There lived near her Castle, however, a medical man. whose pretensions dazzled her imagination great I v, and of whom she wrote to me in one of tlie Utters I have already given. It may be remem- bercnl, that amongst the inducements she held out for our visit was the opportunity of seeing a man who had wrought all sorts of miracles. I had not been long at Hainfeld before the Countess renewed this subject, and she was evi- dently provoked witii me because I expressed no 188 QUACKERY — ABSOLUTISM. sort of curiosity to see the wonderful individual, who, if he had not really performed all that was ascribed to him, had certainly persuaded the public — or at least the great numerical majority — that he had done very great wonders. I said to the Coun- tess that I should willingly go to see any professed conjurer play his tricks, and that I should cheer- fully pay my money for being well deceived by sleight of hand, but that I could not scourge myself up to feel any interset whatever in a man who pre- sumed to work medical miracles ; and that, as I con- sidered the whole a piece of arrant quackery, only the more mischievous for being extensive, I could not treat the matter with any thing short of the utmost contempt. I was sorry to see that this strong language nettled the old lady, who, it was clear, had set her heart upon my having an interview with this Dous- terswivel ; but I positively refused to visit him, or to do or say any thing which should imply the smallest faith in the pretensions of one who, it was clear to me, lived and fattened '^ upon the diseases and death of others, and who had nothing to produce hi his favour but his own confident assurances, and the assertions of ignorant patients, upon whose imagina- tions he liad been working "with much greater effect than upon their bodilyTrames. QIACKERY ABSOLUTISM. 189 '• At all events," said the good old Countess, " I hope you will not refuse to see him if he calls here? " " Bless me I " I cried, " are you going to con- sult him ? " " I shall let him feel my pulse," she said, " and see my tongue." " But will you swallow his powders? " '• I have forsworn all powders and every kind of drug, as you know ; but, if I were disposed to take any thing, I don't know but what I might try that which has already done such wonderful things. I should be glad," she continued, " to be free from this pain, which wears and tears me to pieces ; but, to prolong my weary life forms no part of my wishes ; and were it otherwise, I feel too deeply that I am far beyond the reach of any art, or any medi- cine. If my mind, happily, is not diseased, my heart is broken, shivered to pieces — never, never to be repaired in this world." A short pause followed this melancholy burst, but she shed no tears ; the fountain of her grief had long since been parched up, during what she called her fiery trials. Her grief, indeed, was too deep- seated, and too constantly present to her thoughts, to admit of any relief from its expression. Of course, there was nothing to be said, and I found it the best way, on such occasions, to go on speaking in 190 QUACKERY ABSOLUTISM. my usual tone and manner, as if nothing had oc- curred of more than ordinary interest. Before I had time to muster up some commonplace obser- vation, by way of changing the subject, the Coun- tess brought it back to the wonderful doctor, about whom the whole country-side was in a craze, by saying that he was to be at Hainfeld on that day at one o'clock ; " and therefore," she said, " I do beg of you to defer your walk till you have seen him." While she spoke, the door opened, and in he walked. I have seldom seen a face of more resolute shrewdness ; and now that he had fairly come, I confess I felt some curiosity to see to what extent he would carry the joke, or farce, or whatever be the term to give to charlatanry on such an extensive scale. As he was full of his subject, and quite an- xious to speak upon it, no great trouble was required to set him agoing ; and as we managed to keep our countenances, he may have been encouraged to go on, by the belief that he was making an impression. An impression he certainly did make ; but, " I guess," it was not that which he wished to leave. He first dealt in a very startling generalization, by asserting it as an established point, that all diseases which aifect the human frame are merely varieties of a certain cutaneous disorder, of which I QUACKEUV ABSOLUTISM. 191 dare not even write the name before eyes polite, and which, as a Scotchman, I feel it a point of nationality to keep out of sight. In some cases, said our doctor, this malady must be driven in ; in some it must be drawn out. In one case, the disease must be assisted in its progress till the humours are matured ; in another, it must be attacked and coun- teracted by antidotes. '' In ague," said he, "which is assuredly nothing but a variety of this mysterious complaint, we see the disease escaping from the human body by bleedings at the nose and eruptions of the upper lip, clearly making out my theory." After a good deal more in this strain, in which he made out his case with equal precision, we asked him al)out his remedies. This proved a fertile tlienu'. and he rung the changes on nux vomica, belladona, arsenic, and prussic acid, till we stared with the pr()j)er and expected degree of wonderment. Calomel he scarcely condescended to mention, as rather too weak — like the Fire-King in the Strand — w ho disdains hot water for his drink, and addicts himself solely to boiling oil or melted lead ! ^\ hen asked how he ])repared these formidable medieinis, he became less intelligible ; and upon our showing that we did not understand, he smiled with much self-satisfaction, and confessed to us that the virtue of his preparations did not consist so much in 192 QUACKERY — ABSOLUTISM. the drugs themselves, or in the manner in which they were combined, as in the magnetic virtue which he imparted to them. This, I thought, was sailing very- near the wind, and I exchanged glances with the Countess, who was lying on her pillows in a state of the highest enjoyment, for she had a nice percep- tion of the ridiculous ; and on this occasion her amusement was perhaps heightened by some invo- luntary traces of faith in the pretender. At all events, she eagerly encouraged the learned German to go on, and begged to be informed whether the magne- tic virtue of which he spoke was communicated by the touch and through his hands ; and also, how it happened that so subtle a fluid as magnetism, could be arrested and embodied permanently in a packet of powders ? " Oh !" cried the adept, " it is not by the hands at all, but by the force of mind, that I convey to these medicines the masfuetic influence which ogives them their peculiar efficacy. I feel, as it were, the effort of good will, the strong desire to do good, in my mind, and this is followed by the power of impart- ing the requisite degree of virtue to those ]:)owders, which, if swallowed by the patient in a similar spirit, that is, with undoubting faith in their efficacy, will be certain to eff"ect a cure." " Whatever be the disease ? " we asked. <, not the traiUjuillity of contentment. To bring a country into such a state is a melan- cludy aliair : 'J'o keep it so is a difficult and still more mehuicholy task. But as the mind is the first and most important thing to be controlled, the most powerful of all moral machinery is brought to bear upon it — I mean Religion. Before adverting, how- 198 QUACKERY — ABSOLUTISM. ever, to that important engine, I may mention, what indeed most people know, that so rigorous a eeit%or- ship of the press is established in Austria, that scarcely any foreign books, at all calculated to mini- ster to independent thouglits or feelings, are allowed to cross the frontier ; and although the most profli- gate works ever printed, are, in point of fact, smuggled in, and sold in great numbers, the really good books — those which would essentially improve the nation — are generally unknown. Those books, therefore, which minister to the sensual appetites, and give an impulse and direction to vicious indul- gences, are to be found in abundance ; while those which teach habits of self-restraint, and cherish manly and virtuous aspirations, are, in point of practice, carefully excluded as dangerous to the established order of things. I may also mention, that no person, be his rank what it may, high or low, in office or out of office, is permitted to leave the empire without exjircss permission, and without entering into engagements to state where he is going, and what are his pur- poses in going, from home. But the most truly hellish device that the wit of man has yet contrived, is the celibacy of the clergy ; and until that deep curse be removed from the nations of the Continent where the Roman Catholic religion prevails, there QUACKEIIY ABSOLUTISM. 199 scenes not to be a gleam of hope of their obtaining thiit degree of domestic virtue, without Mhich no genuine political freedom can be hoped for. So long- as there exists a numerous, widely-spread, and edu- cated class of men, in close alliance with the state, 4 but whose interests are entirely separate from those of the rest of the country, and whose manners are necessarily, and by universal usage, understood to be profligate, it is in vain to expect that domestic morals will be j)ure. Were it possible, indeed, to detach this privileged class from the rest of the community, there might be a hope : but when, through the medium of public preaching, and, above all, of oral confes- sion, and the innumerable other methods by which th^' l)riests obtain free admission everywhere in those countries, they succeed in establishing their in- ruenee, there is little or no hope left. It is needless, and would only be painful and dis- gusting to go into any details. But this may bo -aid, that the wide-spread looseness of domestic manners in Italy, Austria, and other countries ^vhere tlie same system prevails, not oidy has its eriti:in in the undue intlucncc and profligate habits of the priests, but owes its continuance to their instrumentality. This depravity pervades all classes, j'.nd to such an extent, that shame is out of the qnes- iion : and the whispers of conscience being, espe- 200 QUACKERY ABSOLUTISM. cially with such machinery, the easiest thing pos- sible to set at rest, vice has it all its own way. In hearty co-operation with the priests comes a huge army of a quarter of a million of military men, drawn away from their homes, and virtually, in like manner, condemned to celibacy ; but who are, if possible, even less scrupulous than the priests in their morals, and less restrained in their wish to avenge Insulted nature by breaches of the law in question. This army, as I may have occasion to describe more in detail at another time, is employed in peace chiefly in the collection of the revenue, or, what is the same thing, to punish those who are tardy in their payments. The soldiers are quartered in vast numbers on the inhabitants of the villages all over the country, and thus they become domes- ticated in the families of the peasantry. All this has the double effect of further corrupting the people, and of showing them how utterly hopeless resistance must be. The discipline of the troops is very strict. The corporal punishments are greatly more prompt and severe than in any other army, and, by one means or another, the most implicit obedience is secured. Finally, I need scarcely mention that the press, if not totally extinguished, is allowed to burn with so feeble a flame that it liirhts to no jrood. And (JI'ACKERY ABSOLUTISM. 201 all foreign literature of a generous stamp being, as 1 have already mentioned, jealously excluded, there is exceedingly small chance left for instruction ; there is little or no bounty on knowledge; and as for talents, when they do appear, they are sure to be enlisted on the side of Government. A ery feu- foreigners come into the country at all, and not a man more than the Government can prevent, lliese are chiefly of the upper classes, who have the discretion to be silent when they know that every word they speak, and every letter they send or receive, is liable to be made known to the authorities. On the other hand, as very few persons of higli rank, and scarcely any of the mid- dle or lower ranks, ever go abroad, there seems liardly a possibility of much useful information iinding its way into that huge state prison called Austria. Hefore leaving this topic 1 may be allowed to advert to one striking effect of a considerable length of residence abroad, which is to soften the asperity of political feeling as regards party spirit in our own cduntry. The whole frame-work of society, political and moral, on the continent, is so different — indeed so diametrically ojiposed in most things to what we have in I'^ngland, and is often so degrad- ing, and 1 may well add, disgusting to us, that 202 QUACKERY — ABSOLUTISM. we come in time, and at a distance, to look upon the differences amongst our own politicians as com- paratively trifling shades of the same thing, which, when we consider the gulf lying between England and the Continent, are really not worthy of being named. We have a Protestant church and we have genuine liberty — two blessings which, I affirm, no one can value to their full extent till they visit Italy and Austria, and see the horrible vices en- gendered and fostered by Catholicism — the misery and meanness promoted by the despotic espionage — and, finally, not only the extinction of freedom, but apparently the suppression of almost all wish to be free in those dcGfraded countries. C 203 ] CHAPTER Xlir. Tin: DIPEIIIAL TOBACCONIST. " \o^^•," said the Countess triumphantly, "now that we have Schloss Hainfekl all to ourselves, I trust I shall hear no more of preparations and packinj^s u]), hut that you will, like good people, decide upon staying tlie winter with me. At all events, that }()u \vill stay during the severity of the season, and lielp me to get through this trying period, alwuNs douldy dreary to me. Cod knows if ever I sliall sc>e another spring, and, if it be not im- pious to say so, I hope I never may. INIy wisli," continued the forlorn invalid, " would he to drop oil" ^Iiilo you are here to attend me, instead of be- ing left to die alone — helpless myself — and unpro- tected by others. Oh, do stay l)y me, and I may safely promise not to keep you long I Your children are as dear to me almost as to yourselves — their companionship, and especially that of the infant, 204 THE IMPERIAL TOBACCONIST. gives me a fresher interest in life than I ever dreamed of feeling again. But the link \yill soon snap. I cannot go on long in this way. All my maladies are on the increase, while my physical strength is gradually yielding to the pressure of disease. Had you not come to me so providentially, I should have been dead by this time ; and I should have dii'd wretched and alone, with no hand to close my eyes or smooth my pillow. Heaven has sent you, I feel well assured, to perform these last offices. Do not— oh, do not seek to counteract its dispensations !"' These appeals were hard to resist ; and, in fact, we began to feel it a duty to remain by our poor countrywoman at all events till the opening year gave her fresh strength and spirits, as we were told it always did. As to spirits, however, I may repeat that hers never seemed to flag, even at those mo- ments when severe pain deprived her of sleep for many nights together. At any rate, she was al- ways tranquil, and good-humoured, and kind to u.>, to an extent that no chances or changes of life can ever obliterate from our memory. Our chief happiness, as I have already mentioned, lay at home, as we now called the Castle, but we on- joyed ourselves all the more, I do not doul)t, from the occasional visits which the Countess's recommenda- tions, more than our own wishes, induced us to pay THE IMPERIAL TOBACCONIST. 205 to her ntij^hbours. Karly in December, as the win- ter was still mild and open, we drove for the second time across the hills north of us. A month before we had made a similar expedition ; on that occasion the day was beautiful, and the scenery being- of a bolder character than any we had yet seen in Styria, though most of the trees were stripped of their leave'-, the country looked still very warmly clad. Part of this effect, no doubt, was due to the large tracks of lir-trees, as well as larch and spruce, main- tained almost entirely for fuel, and likewise to the fre(|ueiit broad and well- watered patches of meadow land sjiread out like carpets on all the level parts of the landscape. The valley in which Schloss Plain- feld staucU is called the llaab Tiial, from the small river of that name which flows through it. To the agency of this stream, exercised during the lapse of ages, is to be referred the broad belt of flat allu- vial soil which marks its course, and which is so uncommonly fertile that the wealthy millers on the banks of the stream, and who are most of them landed proj)rictors, are called the Fursten, or princes of the valley. Another similar valley lies seme leagues to the northward, being divided from the Kaab Thai hy a ridge of mountains, or rather hills, of the most irregular and even fantastic shape, and so strangely tossed about by the hand of nature, that the hand 206 THE IMPERIAL TOBACCONIST. of man finds it very difficult to make any tolerably passable communication between the two valleys. As long as your carriage is on the bottom on either side of the ridge, it bowls along as if you were dri- ven on a billiard-table, and you exclaim, " What delightful roads ! " but the moment you take to the right or left you would fancy you were driving over the streets of Paris when broken up by the " Pa- triots of July." In such a fine day as we had for our first expedition in November, we scarcely no- ticed such things, and were tempted to walk a great part of the way over the hills. But a month later, when the weather admitted not of walking, it was scarcely possible to recognise the same scenery, through the rain and mud, boxed up in what is sadly misnamed a close carriage, letting in the wet and wind at twenty places. Although we were much delayed, we had plenty of time to visit one of the four great Tobacco " Fa- briqucs," as they are called, at which all the to- bacco used in Austria is prepared. It all come originally from Hungary, and is strictly monopolized by the Government. There is one of these fabriques in Poland, one in Bohemia, another in Moravia, and, lastly, this one in Styria. Tobacco is not allowed to be cultivated in any part of the Austrian domi- nions except Hungary, from whence it is all trans- THE IMPERIAL TOBACCONIST. 207 ported to these great establisliments. The usual (dhee of a manufactory is to improve the raw mate- rials Mhich nature produces — that is to sa)', either to separate them from what is useless, or to com- bine them, or to twist them up into a manageable >hape. Ijut the express business of the Austrian toljaccu fabri(|ues is to deteriorate the material, and to prej)are it for the market in a less valuable shape than belongs to it when it comes from the field, but in a shape in which it is supposed to yield most revenue to the Government. It appears there are three distinct qualities or sorts of tobacco — very goodj moderately good, and bad. Now the business of the fabriques is to mix these three in such pro- portions that, when the tobacco comes into the market, it shall l)e just good enough to induce people to buy it, but that it shall contain no more of the fu'st sort than can possibly be helped. As the Ciovernment are the only tobacconists in Austria, it must reijuire great nicety in these mixtures, and in the regidation of the prices, to insure the maximum of profit ; for as there is no competition there can be no just estimate formed on these subjects, and all must l)e guess work. That the mixture is too base, and that the price is too high, seems to be evidenced by the prodigious extent of smuggling carried on along thu whole line of the llungai'iau frontier, 208 THE IMPERIAL TOBACCONIST. and the huge army of customhouse officers, assisted by the military, which it is necessary to keep per- manently on foot. The more generally any article is used, especially if it be an article of necessity, such as tobacco in Germany, the better suited perhaps it is for taxa- tion, and thus tobacco may be fairly considered a most fit object on which to levy duties. But it may well be questioned whether the mode of levying it be not highly oppressive, and whether the immense aug- mentation of price, in consequence of the monopoly and the tax, be not more than a counterbalancing evil. In England tobacco is not allowed to be culti- vated, but the principle of this restriction is not one of monopoly. It is adopted because there can be no means devised by which the home growth could be distinguished from that raised abroad ; and as it has been proved it is only that which is imported which can be subjected to a duty, home cultivation would prove fatal to the immense revenue (upwards of three millions sterling) derived from this source. But as much or as little as our free competitors choose, or the country requires, may be introduced. Thus with us the price of the article is augmented by no more than the amount of the tax, which to bo sure is very heavy, being ten or twelve times the original cost of the article I But in England, every THE IMPERIAL TOBACCONIST. 209 mail ulio can pay for it may purchase any sort of tobacco he pleases. Not so in Austria, and thus the liardship is more than doubled, for only that which is mixed up by the Fabriques is allowed to be sold. So the whole nation is condemned to use a hioh priced bad article, instead of a good one at a reasonable cost. The necessities of the state may require the duty to be levied, but it seems hard to insist upon the people smoking bad foreign tobacco when they might whiff better of their own growth. The Austrian Government being thus not only the exclusive deteriorators of tobacco, but the exclusive venders of the article, regulate the price at their pleasure, both in making theii' purchases and in making their sales ; and thus a large, but totally unknown amount of revenue is collected — I mean unknown to all but the highest authorities — for there is no budget in Austria ! 'Hiis grievance is deeply felt, and bitterly and universally complained of, never loudly of course — but not the less deeply on that account. The apolo- gists of the system — and it is right to listen to what can be said on the occasion — say that the Govern- ment cannot possibly go on without this source of revenue, and that, after many trials, they have found that any relaxation of the strictest monopoly guarded by the operations of the Fabriques, led at 210 THE IMPERIAL TOBACCONIST. once to so serious a diminution of tlie income of the state, that the old plan was of necessity resumed. Unfortunately, no other method of raising the same amount of revenue, say the apologists, has yet been suggested, or is even hoped for. In the mean time, the expense of guarding the frontier is enormous ; but as I have no official data to guide me, I am afraid to mention the numbers I have heard stated of the customhouse officers and regular troops who are permanently stationed along the confines of Hungary. The expense, too, of maintaining the numerous smugglers who are taken with tobacco in their pos- session is very great. In every castle, or country- house along the frontiers, there is an express don- jon-kcep, or prison, for the detention of these poor wretches, who are rather heavily ironed, but who may be employed in field or house-work by the pro- prietor of the castle, at his own risk ; that is to say, if they escape, he has to pay the fine which the Govern- ment impose, and for the nonpayment of which the smupfglers are detained. The amount of the fine is regulated in this way — when a person is caught intro- ducing tobacco, the quantity detected is weighed, and he is fined a florin for every two German ounces, or about one shilling an ounce ; and in default of payment, he is confined as many days as there have THE IMPERIAL TOBACCONIST. 211 Ijcen found ounces of tobacco in his possession. I was told iliat this pecuniary commutation is very seldom paid, and thus the offenders are generally hcpt iu confinement during their whole period, at tlic rate of about a month for every pound of tobac- co. The Government makes the proprietor of the ca?itle an allowance for the maintenance of each "muL^u;ler, «o that the cost of the whole becomes very considerable. As this allowance, liowever, is inadequate, the oppression is severely felt by the frontier proprietors. 'J'lic prison of Hainfeld Castle M'as any thing but what we call a dungeon, and figure to ourselves dark and damp. The kind-hearted Countess kept the prisoners assigned to her charge in a well-barred, but well-aired, and well-warmed apartment, on the ground- fioor of the Castle, but not under the ground. ( )ne day T had the curiosity to go into this prison, and v,a> much surprised at seeing there a little boy between seven and eight years old, and actually much more heavily ironed than the men were ! On cnlie spared no j)alns to bring forward and enhance the charms of her person. Her wicked ])urpose was but 224 SACRED AND TROFANE LOVE. too soon known to the profligate and wealthy of the other sex, amongst whom this poor young woman may be said to have been put up to auction. The highest bidder was a nobleman of the adja- cent province of Hungary, who agreed to buy the girl, as if she had been a slave, for several thou- sand florins. The wily mother took his bond for the sum, without any specification of the services for which it was given. On a stated day the Baron, who was a married man with a familj^, came in his own carriage, received his purchase, signed the bond, and drove off towards one of his numerous castles. Before he had gone half a league. however, he was met by a courier bringing letter^ which required his immediate presence at home ; and as he could not well take his companion with him, he drove back to Gratz with his victim, and requested the mother to give her lodging for a few days, till he could settle his affairs ; after Mhich he promised to return and take her away permanently. The story soon got wind, and a wealthy commis- sary having caught a glimpse of the girl, at once made proposals to the mother, and she, without the least ceremony, and as might have been expected, resold the poor child, who, being still under sixteen, was allowed no voice in the matter. SA{ RED AND PROFANE LOVE. 225 By and by the first purchaser came hack and demanded the completion of his bargain. " What barf^ain ?" cried the motlier, lauf^hinj^ in his face. '• It is I who demand the completion of the bargain. Here is your bond for three thou- sand tlorins, for value received, and pay me you shall, if there be eitlier law or justice in Austria." The Baron raved and stormed, refusing to pay a kreuzer ; wliile the lady, dead alike to j)ublic shame and to private virtue, straightway went to law ; and although, of course, a bond expressly for such a horrid purpose would not have held good in the courts, there could be no valid objection made to the instrument as it was drawn up. The Hunga- rian was accordingly obliged to pay the monev, witli costs. Mean while, the commissary, getting tired of his bargain, east off the poor ruined girl, who drop- (m1, step l)y steji, and with a rapidity proportionate to la-r still radiant beauty, into the lowest depths of infamy, want, and sorrow ! In this wretched state she was accidentally seen by a vonng man, son of a wealthy proprietor in a village near Hainfeld. lie brought her to the coun- try with him, and she was no sooner relieved from the coarse depravity of her recent town life, than she recovered a sutlicient portion of her former ani- 226 SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE. mation to engage the attention of one the officers of a hussar regiment, quartered in the village. This young man, who was the son of an old and highly esteemed officer in the service of the Emperor, at first merely trifled with the girl ; but erelong became passionately attached to her, and she to him, with a degree of violence highly characteristic of the national temperament when strongly excited. The result was not less so. The colonel of the regiment, well knowing the extent to which these things were sometimes car- ried, wrote to the young man's father, who, in con- junction with the colonel, took every measure that could be thought of to break off so dangerous a con- nexion ; but it proved in vain. It was now resoi- ved, in order to prevent an unsuitable marriage, to detach the young officer on a distant service in Transylvania, and to send the girl, by force, back to her mother's house at Gratz. As soon as these arrangements became known to the parties, they resolved to elope — he to deseil: from the army, she to accompany him. They esca- ped, accordingly, at midnight — two ruined wretches, galloping to destruction and disgrace, whichever way their passions, altogether uncontrolled, might lead (horn ! At daybreak their fliglit was discovered, and (u'enty mounted parties being sent oil'in as many SACKED AND I'ROl-ANE LOVE. 227 (litrL-reiit directions, the fugitives were soon arrested. Tl'.cy luid ^ot as far as l\adkesbur<^, a town on tli(^ banks of the f^reat river Mur, about four hours' drive south of Ilainfeld. But as they stated that they were too much exhausted to go back immedi- (llat.'ly, the officer in command of the party who had arrtsted them, made no objections to their remain- ing at the iiui, under a guard. This interval, which tlie g(-)od nature of the olhcer allowed them to pass togetlier, they employed chiefly in writing letters. Tiielr cheerfulness astonished every one who saw tlic i!i, cspi'c'i;illy some officers of a regiment stationed in the town, and whoso mess was held at the inn wlicro the lovers were. An invitation to dinner na- turally followed, and was accepted, under the sanc- tion of the officer Avho guarded and accompanied them. Afier dinner, some one came running in to say that the ice which had dammed up the Mur had suddenly given way, and that what is called a De- bacle was the consequence. The river, swollen to twice its usual dimensions, was gushing tumul- tuously through the arches of the bridge, fdled to the key-stone with blocks of drift ice. 'I'he officers all ran oil' to see the sight, and Leo- nora, having exchanged an intelligent glance with her companion, petitioned hard to be allowed to go 228 SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE. too. The guard consented, and away they all went together. The awful scene had attracted half the population of the town. On the highest point of the bridge stood the group of officers, wondering and admiring. Leonora leaned over the parapet, and observed the commotion with a steadier eye than any of the party ; and then turning to her lover, exclaimed, — " Now, Wilhelm ! " And clasped in one another's arms, they flew head- long into the torrent, in which they were instantly swallowed up and lost ! Two letters were found in the girl's handwriting. One of these addressed to the person who had brought her to the country : the other to her mother. In the first, she said, — " You used to reproach me with having no heart, and of my being incapable of any heroic or noble action. I then believed that you were right in your estimate of my character. I did not believe that I could love any one, still less that any one could love me. Both, however, have come to pass. The close of my brief life will prove whether or not I can act nobly ! " To her mother she had written the following bitter words : — SACREU AND TROFANE LOVE. 229 " In'forc this reaches your hands, your most ■\\ retched dauirhter will be no more. Her blood be (Ml your head. She possessed qualities which would liave done you honour, and made her virtuous and liapp}'. had you duly cherished them, or even al- lowed them to grow of themselves. Your avarice blastetl them all. You taught me to consider vice .1 duty. ^ ou see the result. Your daughter has at last awakened to life and love — only to die in de- spair I" 'i'he painful impressions which every part of this story is calculated to leave on the mind will be re- lieved by the following narrative ; for the truth of every particular of which I can answer. At first sight, it might seem that no two pictures of national manner";, or rather of national sentiment, could be more ojiposed to each other; and this is certainly true, so tar as regards the incidents, but the ufuid- iiig princij)le in I)oth is a depth of feeling, and a resolution of purpose essentially German. Not many years ago a young man, eldest son of a gentleman holding a high situation in one of our coloinal possessions, came over to Frankfort, after having studied for some time at Cambridge. His object was partly to read for his examination prejia- ratory to entering the church, and partly to learn the German lanijuaiife. Beiiiir a man of studious 230 SACRED AND PnOFANE LOVE. habits and reserved disposition, he was for some time little seen, and scarcely knovs^n or heard of in that bustling' city. It was during this period of comparative seclusion that Bertrand, as the hero of my story may be called, accidentally met with a young German lady, to whom I shall give the name of Berglein, then about seventeen years of age, and very pretty. She was of a good family ; but from unfortunate circumstances their means had been reduced, and she, in order to support her widowed mother and herself, had taken the resolution of going on the stage as a singer. The Germans are severe critic^5 in this matter, and she had much to struggle against ; but her fine and well-cultivated voice, her beauty, her elegant manners, and her irreproachable conduct, gradually won for her the esteem and the admira- tion of the public. Bertrand lost his heart at first sight ; but he was a man of too much sense and knowledge of the world to be led away merely by a pretty face and sweet voice ; and though he thought he saw under these attractions many other qualities of a higher order, and worthy of a permanent attachment, he concealed all he thought and felt for a considerable time. Dur- ing this interval he abstained with a very reasonable and cautious but most rare self-denial from mani- .SACUED AND PROFANE LOVK. 231 iestinnr the slightest symptom of his growing passion ; !)eiiig firmly resolved to study the character and disposition of his fair friend before he declared his love, or embarked in such a wild adventure as, he oould not conceal from himself, the tide of his pas- sions was rapidly sweeping him into. At this period of the history accidental circum- stances brought him more into company, and people began to wonder where or how so intelligent and rigreeable a person had remained so long concealed amongst them. In his turn he was equally pleased to find society amongst his country people, who could not oidy advance liis professed objects, but who, as it happened, could aid his secret hopes and wishes. It is a safe jreneral rule in aifairs of the heart to bold no communication on the subject except with the person who is most concerned in keeping the secret, if it is to be one, and in whose custody it is safest till the fitting: moment of disclosure. Under such peculiar circumstances, however, of doubt and probable difficulty in the conduct of this affair, Ber- trand did well to take counsel; and he was not less fortunate in friendship than in love. At first, his friend, as might be expected, saw the transaction with very different eyes, and even thought the youth a little noii compos to dream of a serious engagement with a foreign actress. Ileexpos- 232 SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE. tulated with him of course on the precarious nature of such a step, and the hazard in which it placed his future prospects of happiness. Bertrand's natural answer to all this was : "Is there any thing in the birth, character, education, or conduct of this young lady which renders her an unsuitable person for an English clergyman's wife ? " His friend's local acquaintance was extensive, and his enquiries, though quiet, were diligent and searching. The result proved every way satisfactory ; for those who had known her from her childhood were equally warm in their approval of her education, temper, and prin- ciples, with those who had known her more recently, and since she had earned the regard of the public. Thus fortified in his resolutions, Bertrand allowed matters to run on, for nearly a year of increasing intimacy, when it became necessary that he should return to England. Before leaving Frankfort, however, he made his declaration, and met with a ready and happy return of affection and confidence on the part of the lady. His plan w^as to pass his examination at Cambridge, and then to come back immediately. It was a cold and rainy night when he took his departure, and the poor fellow was in wretched spirits. All the folly — so to call it — of his strange adventure stared him in the face : all the chances SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE. 233 of fortune ; all the opposition lie was sure to meet ■with ; all the doubts and fears, in short, of a lover's mind, crowded round him, and formed the compa- nions of his solitary journey. Nor could his cooler friends help thinking, as the carriage drove away, that the whole was a mere romance ; and, like an unhappy fairy tale, must prove an unsubstantial, painful dream. A few weeks' residence in England, thought they, will cure the poor youth of this ano- malous attachment, and break oft' a connexion so little conformable to English habits and sober views of prudence, especially in the case of a clergyman. All these speculations, however, were dissipated by Bertrand's reappearance at Frankfort one fine day, true to his appointment. Whilst in England, he had been ordained by the Bishop of London ; and it was arranged that in three weeks he should pro- ceed to India to officiate as chaplain at the same station with his father. Thus he had but little time to pass with the poor devoted girl, who having given away her whole heart, looked with a sort of despair to being left alone in the wide world. Bertrand, on his side, had no small struggle to make i)etween his inclinations and his sense of duty. But he acted with great firmness and honour ; and his merit is the ofreater from his beingf what is called his own master. For the rest, he was sufficiently in love to commit u 234 SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE* almost any rash act, so far as concerned himself; but he justly considered it incumbent upon him to dis- close his secret to his father and mother, and in good faith, and by legitimate means, to obtain, if possible, their hearty consent to his marriage. To give him any chance of accomplishing this primary duty, it appeared absolutely necessary that he should join his parents, and make his explanations in person. " If, however," said he, to the despairing girl, " after fulfilling my duty as a good son, and having used my best endeavours to win their approbation of our union, I find that I cannot succeed, I shall still act «p to the sacred engagements I have contracted here, and not fail to return to Europe to make you my wife, be the consequences what they may." The poor young woman considered the voyage to India a journey to the next world, or thereabouts ; for her own circumscribed notions of distance reached little farther than to Oft'enbach, or to Mayence, the Ultima Thule of her travels. She was accordingly wellnigh broken-hearted at the idea of being sepa- rated from her lover by the great ocean ; by the globe itself, indeed ; and she in all probability thought, in spite of her firm reliance on his honour, that he might find it impossible ever to return to her. Whatever were the fears that flitted through her mind, however, she gave them no expression ; still less did she seek to comlathl- scn=;e of right, or SACIIKI) AND PROFANE LOVE. 235 to interfere Mith what on the contrary she fully ;'.;i;-ree(l with him in consitieriiifr his duty to his juirents. She, too, liad her severe sacrifices to make on the sc-ore of duty; and she made them with a steadiness and vii^our of character, which, thoufrh they dis- tressed him at the moment, could not fail to establish lier worth more firmly in his breast. lie felt naturally a stroiif^ desire that she should forthwith quit the statue, and employed every argu- inent he could think of to induce her to agree to this. He also placed in her hands a letter of credit to the full amount of her professional salary, in order that, on retiring from the theatre, she might not be deprived of the means of su])porti«g lier mother and several younger brothers and sisters. Her delicacy naturally shrunk from receiving any support from him previous to marriage ; and she replied, with an honourable pride, that having gone upon the stage from a conviction that it was right, she would not now shrink from doing lier duty, while all the circumstances remained as before, with the exception of her own future prospects, and these were contingent. There could be nothing incon- sistent or unsuitable, still less disreputable, she wisely thought, In following industriously that course of life which, experience was just beginning to show 236 SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE. her, afforded her the means of supporting her famil}'. To a mind so constituted, and a heart so engaged, the dangers of such a career were nothing at all, however severe the labours might prove, or how- ever humiliating its conditions might sometimes appear to a generous disposition and refined taste, when contrasted with the almost boundless enjoy- ments of the life which fortune, she fondly whis- pered, might still have in reserve to reward her perseverance and truth. In this temper they parted ; and though the smart of such a separation was very bitter, it had not only no remorse and no misgivings to keep the wound open, but was soothed by the cheerful con- sciousness of rectitude, — a consciousness which, while it always lessens sorrow, generally serves, even in a greater ratio, to brighten hope. On the present occasion there was need of all such support, and the painful interval of more than two years' separation became an ordeal to their true love, which would have scattered a less well-founded passion to the winds and waves. It only deepened and confirmed theirs. Scarcely was Bertrand gone when all the world began to criticise his conduct in every possible way ; and, singularly enough, the very honourable and judicious motive which had prompted him to SAC RED AND I'UOIANE LOVE. 237 (loler his marriage for the present was tortured into an art^ument aj^ainst him in the eyes of the public. It -was maintained that his desire to obtain liis parents' consent was a mere excuse, and all the worse for takinir upon itself the pretext of a duty ; that he had all along been insincere ; and, in short, that tlie woman he had trifled with would never see him, or hear of him again. Much of this and many other things came to the poor girl's ears through the industrious kindness of her friends. She could not help being much distressed at what was so freely handed to her from every corner of the town ; but she never gave way in the least, and only the more fondly cherished in silent confidence her deep- rooted conviction of her lover's honesty and since- rity throughout, and with every appearance of good reason she reckoned on his constancy, knowing how true she was herself. In process of time letters arrived, written during the voyage, from Madeira and elsewhere. These (juicted the noise for a time ; but, ])y degrees, the first notions gained fresh ground Mith the chari- table multitude. As month after month elap-ed, the good people of Frankfort, who are not verv skilful in general geograpln', and may not well understand the nature of an Indian voyage, and the causes of delay in such correspondences, far.cied 238 SACRED AKD I'ROFANE LOVE. themselves quite secure in their belief that Bertrand was never serious when he made his proposals. He, however, wrote constantly, and much of all this gossip might no doubt have been put to rest had not a becoming dignity on the lady's part restrained her from making known these communi- cations. After about a year and a half had passed in this way, a new and very distressing source of uneasi- ness beset the lady. Her mother's patience, which had been gradually becoming less and less as month after month rolled away, altogether left her ; and she began to reproach her daughter day and night with her folly in neglecting the solid advantages of a lucrative profession for the vain chimera of a hap- piness which, to all appearance, was never likely to be realized. All this the daughter could only sub- mit to in silent mortification ; but when urged to make use of the letter of credit left with her, she declared positively that she never would take any advantage of his generosity until she was his wedded wife. These expostulations, by being constantly reite- rated, produced a certain effect, though not exactly that which was aimed at. It was not unnatural also, that after twc-and-twenty months had elapsed, occasional moments of despondency should occur : SACKED AND PROFANE LOVE. 239 raul all the more naturally, perhaps, as lier own .\ftVctions remained uncluuit^ed. In the m'uUt of these harassini^ troubles, she received the import- ant intellij^ence that Bernard's lather and mother liad at la>t consented to his marriao-e, thouti:h his L ttt'r held out no positive hopes of his obtaining im- liiediate leave to come to Kurope. This communication, and the renewed and ardent :issurances of his attachment, enabled her to bear up undtT the many trials she had yet to j^o tlirough. Her mother, however, who had lost all confidence, and who took oidy a business-like and unpoetical view of the matter, never ceased importuning her dautjli- ter to quit the narrow held of Frankfort, and seek to l)elter her condition by trying to obtain an en- gagement on higher terms at some other theatre. it was very difficult for the poor girl to liold out a^^ainst such arguments, when not only unsupported by friends, but actually persecuted by enemies. In tlie first place, she was exposed to the constant and unfeeling jeers of the jjcople about her, and, in the next, to the t} ranny of a certain powerful ])erson- age, mIio, because she had rejected his repeated advances and bribes with the utmost scorn, chose, in revenge, to impede her professional advancement, and to annoy her in every possible way. The jKissivc resignation witli ^\hieh she endured all this 240 SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE. at length gave way, and in a fit of despair she yielded to her mother's representations and entrea- ties, and threw up her moderate engagement at Frankfort. In the depth of winter, and after she had been for many weary months without receiving a line from Bertrand, she set out with her mother on a professional tour to Stutgardt, Munich, and Vienna. In spite of her being extremely low-spirited and disconsolate, and in the worst mood which could be imagined to contribute, night after night, to the amusement of the public, she produced everywhere a great impression. Her unaffected melancholy, her amiable and gentle manners, and her personal attractions, won for her everywhere many friends amongst persons of taste and understanding; while her voice and other accomplishments received the applause of the multitude. But praise fell dead upon her ear, and the success which she met with contributed fully as much to wound her delicacy as to gratify her pride ; and though the mother re- joiced at these opening prospects, the girl herself wept in secret bitterness of spirit over her own po- pularity. In the midst of these applauses, she wrote constantly to her distant lover, and the bur- then of every page was, " Come quickly, and fetch SACItEI) AND PROIANE LOVE. 241 me away ; I am heartily sick of this wretched kind of life." Towards the end of spring it was known at Frank- fort that she had been enii^a^ed, on very advanta- i^eoiis terms, at one of the principal Theatres of \'ienna : and what astonished and mortified those who M ere in the secret of her history, it appeared that she had sij^ncd a contract for two years. It was the more surprising and provoking that she had been comj)elled to adopt this course by the impor- tunities of the people about her, as Bertrand had written in the autumn to say, that in the begin- ning of the year he hoped to obtain leave of ab- sence. As she had not since heard from him, she ought no doubt to have abided by the words of his last letter, and so she promised and resolved to do; but it is one thing to resolve and promise to be prudent and cautious, and another to act in that spirit in the midst of doubts and dilHculties, and especially in the face of those considerations which take the name of duties, and are urged with ear- nestness by those to whom essentially our obedience is due. However this may be judged of by persons who have been exposed to such domestic influence — to call it by its mildest term— our poor, worn-out he- roine at last gave way, and signcil the contract ^^ li'cli X 242 SACRED AND TROFANE LOVE. bound her for two years to a slavery of no small severity, as the issue will show. Two days after she had taken this incautious «tep, a letter was received from Bertrand himself, dated London, and addressed to his faithful friend at Frankfort. Of course it enclosed one for the lady he hoped almost immediately to call his wife, and he instructed his friend to put it into her own hands immediately, for he took it for granted, poor fellow ! that she was still at Frankfort. It also appeared, that owing to some misappre- hension of the proper forms, he had quitted India without having received the regular official leave, so that, on his presenting himself at the Colonial Office, he was called upon to explain the reason of being absent from his post. This he found no difficulty in doing, so far as was necessary to excul- pate himself. Nevertheless, as his being absent was deemed quite irregular, he was peremptorily required to return forthwith in the very vessel which had brought him to Europe. Now, as this ship was to sail about the end of June, and it was already past the 20th of May, he had no time to lose, even supposing that he had nothing but his marriage to get settled. To render him eligible, however, for the appointment which had been sent out to him, but which had crossed sacki;d and imiofane love. 243 bim on bis way home, it was necessary that he should be back in England on the lOtb of June, to be examined by the Bishop of London previous to his admission to priest's orders. So great was his haste, that he wrote to beg his friend to look out for any I'ni^lish clerg-yman who might be travelling through Frankfort, and, if possible, induce him to stay there a day or two, that the marriage ceremony might be performed at the British mission. On the 27th of ]May he arrived at Frankfort, and there learned with unspeakable dismay, that the lady was absent, at a distance, and a bond-ser- vant, as will be seen, to no very lenient task-masters. His disaj)pointmcnt and grief were excessive; but there was no leisure for regrets, and time pressed hard upon bim. Nothing, however, could be done till her answer came to his first letters from Lon- don on bis arrival from India, and he was obliged to wait, in an agony of suspense, till the 3d of June before her reply reached him at Frankfort. Nor did the contents of the despatch serve mate- rially to lessen his distress ; on the contrary, they threw a fearful damp over the whole business, la words, breathing the deepest despair, she announced to her half-distracted lover that tbe manager was in- exorablc, and would not hear of her leaving ^'ienna one hour before the expiration of the two years stipu- 244 SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE. latecl in the fatal contract. How to act, she said, she knew not ; and bitter were the reproaches she lieaped on herself for having been weak enough to sign the ill-fated bond, which chained her to as galling a servitude as ever broke the heart of any galley slave. *' For mercy's sake," she wrote, " do not con- demn me, or suppose that in contracting these odious engagements I dreamed of breaking faith with you. My love and faith are the same, and must be so for ever, and I beseech you to come to Vienna without a moment's loss of time, to bring me away, for in truth I am beside myself. I have 110 one to advise — no one to act for me." We may conceive his state of mind on finding himself unable to comply with a request so urged. But it was quite impossible for him, without utter xuin to all his prospects, to fail in his appointment in England on the 10th. What was to be done ? It struck him and others, that if an application could he made to the British minister at Vienna, stating all the circumstances, and requesting him to inter- cede with the Austrian authorities, she might pos- sibly succeed in getting off. So firmly indeed was he persuaded that this plan would prove successful, that, when an obliging and kind official friend undertook to write to Vienna in the terms suggested, he became SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE. 245 comparatively tranquil, and started the next day for London. He hoped, he said, to be back at Frank- fort by the 18th, after his ordination — by which time lie had no doubt the lady would have arrived, and if the marria<^e could take place on the 19th or 20th of June, there would still be time to reach Portsmouth by the 30th, on which day the Fairy Queen — the romantic and appropriate name of the good ship — was to set sail for India. U'he promised letters were written to the autho- rities at \ ienna, but before any answer had been received, Bertrand suddenly reappeared at Frankfort on the 14 th, several days sooner than it had been cal- culated he could by possibility have returned. To his eai^er and breathless interrogatories, " where is she ? — where can I find her ? " only the forlorn an- swer could l)e given that nothing was yet known. Under the induence of the cheerful views of his friends, and their confident hopes of all going right and in gootl time for his voyage, he became a little more composed, and related to them how it had been possible for him to return to Frankfort so much sooner than he had contemplated. It aj)peared that the Bishop of London, seeing him much agitated, had begged to know the cause of his anxiety. Those who have the hai)piness of being j)ersonally acquainted with this no less amiable 246- SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE. than distinguished prelate, need not betoki with what kindly interest he would listen to such a story. Nor "will they be surprised at the prompt and business- like goodness of heart which induced him at once to suggest to the young man to defer his ordination until his arrival in India. One of the newly appoint- ed bishops, he said, was to sail in a fortnight, and to him the necessary letters demissory should be given, empowering him to ordain our friend on his arrival. His Lordship may well have conceived that the young man's thoughts and feelings were at this moment rather too deeply fixed on the things of this earth for him to attend adequately to the calm and deliberate considerations connected with the solemn ceremony alluded to. The good Bishop did not say so, however, but having merely expressed the strongest interest in the eventual success of these romantic adventures, he begged the young man in- stantly to return to Frankfort, because he must insist upon his sailing at the end of the month, as had been ordered by the Colonial Office. I forgot to mention that Bertrand had lodged a couple of hundred pounds with the captain of the Fairy Queen as part of the passage money for him- self and his wife to India; and he had requested the captain, of whom he had made a cordial friend on his voyage homeward!'^, to wait for him until the SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE. 247 first week of July. To this the other consented; for although it was some days later than he intended to sail, he, in common with every one who knew the circumstances, took a sort of personal interest in our hero's success. The 1st of July, however, was now fast approach- ini^, and the poor fellow, half dead with anxiety, was obliged to wait at Frankfort till some answer came. He (lid exj)ect, indeed, that she for whom he watched would arrive in person to set all to rights. The road leading from Vienna was his only haunt; and every carriage that came that way partook of his scrutiny ; but all in vain. Love seemed to be wingless in this case ; and as the post in Germany is but a poor ropresentative of Cupid, it was not till the 18th, four weary days after Bertrand's arrival from Eng- land, that a letter reached him from Vienna. The lady of his love, it seemed, was in as bad a predicament as ever was any captive damsel in a romance. Her position, she wrote, was almost liopeless ; for the manager was not only inexorable, and deaf to all her prayers and tears, but so appre- lunsive that she would attempt to cut and run, that he ap{)lied to the authorities, and requested them to refuse her a passport, in the event of her apply- ing for one. General orders were accordingly given to this ell'ect ; and two police ollicers being placed 248 SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE. night and day at the door of the house in which she and her mother lodged, she was, to all intents and purposes, a prisoner. True to the proverh, however, the pith of the lady's letter lay in the post- script, which set forth, in a few mysterious words, that something was doing at that moment which might possibly end in her release ; but what this something was she purposely avoided explaining, lest her letter might be tampered with. This communication naturally increased the em- barrassments of our hero's desperate condition, and the grand question became, whether he ought him- self to start for Vienna, and endeavour to carry off his future wife, knight- errant fashion, vi et armis, or wait for two or three days longer, to learn the result of the British minister's interference, which he knew was in progress. It was urged upon him, and he could not deny the force of the reasoning, that he ought at all events to wait till the 23d, the return of post to the official application : and there was a possibility that the lady might arrive at Frankfort by that time, in which case all minor difficulties would be at an end. In that event they could be married on the 24th ; for a clergyman who happened to be passing consented to wait a few days, and held himself ready to clench the bolt which was at last to bind these SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE. 249 true liearts together. If this could be effected, they might still reach London by the 29th or 3Uth, and thus save their passage, by arriving at Portsmouth before the 1st of July. On the other hand it was pointed out to him, that even setting aside the possibility, or rather very great probability of his passing the lady on the road (in wliitli case his journey to Vienna would be worse than useless), he could not be back at Frankfort before the end of the month, and thus inevitably would be too late for the impatient Fairy Queen. The disadvantages attendant upon that contin- gency were not a few. In the first place, he would lose his deposited passage money ; in the second, which was worse, he would incur the displeasure of the Colonial Office; and in the third — besides in some degree breaking faith with the generous Bishop of London — he would certainly fail to meet the liishop of Madras, as had been arranged, and thus his ordi- nation could not take place. These formidable considerations, placed in their naked truth before him, like the technical explanations of a surgeon on tiie necessity of an amputation, opened the poor patients eyes to the jirecarious nature of his position, and with what fortitude he could muster he aiirecd to wait at I'rankfort till the 2'Ad of the month. Ikit when the 23d arrived there arrived no ladv ; 250 SACRED AKD TROFANE LOVE. and what was totally inexplicable, no letter ! Our hero, now grown quite desperate, broke away from all his reasonable friends, hired a carriage, and on that very evening started post for Vienna, with the pleasant prospect of being accompanied in his rattling vehicle by no better companions than his own harassing thoughts, for four days and four nights, before there was a possibility of his anxiety being relieved. Fortunately he had sufficient rationality left be- fore he started to write a few lines to the captain of the ship, to state in what a wretched predicament he was placed, and to entreat him, if he possibly could, to wait a little longer. " If you cannot," added he, " I must of course forfeit my passage money, put my character in hazard, at all events, for prudence and propriety ; and perhaps sacrifice all my prospects in life." Nothing was heard either of the lady or of the gentleman for eight days ; that is to say, until tlie 1st of July, the very day on which, had things gone right, they ought to have been bounding over the waves on board the good ship Fairy Queen. In the evening of that eventful day, the lady and her mother arrived at Frankfort, in good health, but almost expiring with fatigue. She had seen nothing and heard nothing of her lover, and immea- SACKED AND PROFANE LOVE. 251 surable was her disappointment not to find him at Frankfort. It appeared that tlie hidies, having grown despe- rate at the barbarous and unjustifiable treatment of the mana^■er of the theatre, to whom an ample com- pensation had been oft'ered, resolved to have recourse to stratagem ; and as there is a perseverance in the German character which, when stimulated by a gene- rous motive, overcomes every obstacle not absolutely insuperable, these two unassisted females managed to elude even the proverbial vigilance of the Austrian police, though fully on the alert I Ilavin*)- observed that a visitor of their landlord's was somewhat moved by witnessing their distress, they prevailed upon him to assist them in hiring a large cart, drawn by four oxen, which they ordered to be ready for them on the high-road at nine o'clock in the evening of the 24th — just one day after poor Bertrand was posting along to their res- cue in the opposite direction. This cart belonged to a set of smugglers, who for a round sum of money consented to place it at the disposal of the ladies, or to convey them in it to the frontiers of Ba- varia. A little before nine o'clock, accordingly, the ladies stepped out as if to take a walk in the Prater, and as they carried nothing with them but their 252 SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE. purses and parasols, no suspicion was excited, and they succeeded in mounting the waggon unobser- ved. Once there, they were speedily concealed under some straw which had been provided for the occasion ; and as a mattrass was placed at the bot- tom, and an awning drawn overhead, they were not very uncomfortably circumstanced. As the quick- est posting in Germany tries the patience of the most easy going travellers, we may figure to our- selves the agony of a young ]a.dy Jlyhic^ to join her lover in a broad-wheeled waggon, drawn by four oxen, and moving at a foot's pace ; and their misery must have been not a little augmented by knowing how readily they might have been overtaken should the secret of their mode of escape have leaked out. Nothing occurred, however, to disturb them till they came within a few hundred yards of the Bava- rian frontier, when, as they had no passports, they were filled with fears of being stopped by the gens d'armes. It then occurred to them that the best way to avoid exciting suspicion, as the waggon was sure to be searched, was to get out and walk at such a distance before as to imply no connexion between it and them. In this way, with their open prayer-books in their hands, as though on a pilgrim- age, they passed the dreaded frontier — not, in- deed, unobserved, but unobstructed, for every one SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE. 253 made way for the Holy Sisters, and all the men took oft' their hats out of respect, and little dreaming to whom they were paying such honours. By these devices, and various other contrivances, and after travelling by the most heterogeneous con- veyances, and often on foot, for leagues together, they reached Frankfort on the eighth day from the time of their escape from Menna. Strange to say, Bertrand arrived also at Frank- fort, on his return, on the very same evening, an hour before the ladies, after having travelled post eight days and eight nights, during which interval he had made just twice the journey they had gone, and it is certain he must once have met them, and once overtaken them. His surprise on reaching Vienna to find the birds flown was only equalled by his delight to know that they had escaped, and that they could not be tra- ced. He knew well enough the direction of their flight, and in that direction he at once turned his horses' heads, — waiting no longer in the capital than to strike a bargain with a set of wood-cutters, to give the iron-hearted manager of the theatre a souTul cudgelling. The sequel of the story may be easily imagined. The course of true love had been well Macadamized by all this hammering, and ran smooth at last. A 254 SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE. couple of days for rest were deemed no more than enough, as all hopes of the ship having waited for them were gone. Unfortunately, too, the clergy- man who was to have married them had been obliged to leave Frankfort ; so they were compelled to pro- ceed to the Hague, where matrimony crowned with happiness the hero and heroine of so much truth, constancy, and perseverance. The mother, handsomely and permanently provi- ded for by her son-in-law, returned to her own country, while the young couple proceeded at once to London. There they learned, to their great joy, that the generous captain of the Fairy Queen had consented to defer his departure from day to day, in hopes of his young friend being able to make out his marriage. By dint of great exertion they ar- ranged all their business in one day, reached Ports- mouth in the course of the night, in good time to embark ; and set sail, with a fair wind and joyous hearts, for the other side of the world. [ 255 ] CHAPTER XVI. THE FESTIVITIES OF IIAINFELD. Wkek rolled away after week at Hainfeld, and tlie loiisrer we staid and the more we saw of the charming old Countess the less inclined we felt to brave the cold and discomfort of a winter's journey. And though the season proved uncommonly mild, we never felt sure how soon the frost and snow might set in and upset all our calculations. The Countess, who was always on the watch, took ad- vantage of these moments of doubt in our minds, and never ceased urging us to remain by her. As here- tofore, also, she laboured incessantly to amuse us, either by getting pleasant people to come to the house, or sending us to visit such of her neighbours as she thought would interest us. But after all, her own conversation furnished our highest enjoyment, and no portion of every happy day was so delight- ful to us all as that in which we took our regfular turns by her bedside. 256 THE PESTIVITIES OF IIAINFELD. When the clay came which we had last fixed for starting, — I think it was the 1st of December, — no one seemed inclined to take any notice of it, and of course least of all the Countess. And towards the close of the year we had, by a sort of mutual agreement, ceased to speak on the subject of our departure, and for the time we felt as if we had at last found a home after our many wanderings. The closing day of the year has extra claims upon my attention, as it is my birthday ; and I could say at Hainfeld, as I say now, that I do not wish to be one year or one day younger. I suppose, indeed, that the precise period at which people begin to regret being so old, varies with different individuals. I presume that regrets on the score of age will be most acute with those who, on looking back, see many opportunities wasted which they might have enjoyed in their season, but of which they can no longer taste when the years are gone in which alone, by the construction of our nature, these could have been relished. I am acquainted M'ith many persons who try to anticipate these matters, and begin too soon with every thing ; but 1 know still more who are con- stantly a stage too late, who let the seasons of happiness slip past in discontent, and never learn how to profit by the present hour. TJIE FESTIVITIES OF HAINFELD. 257 I cannot say I have been troubled in this way ; for I have enjoyed, to the full, each successive period of my life, as it has rolled over me; and, just as I began to feel that I had had nearly enough of any one period, new circumstances, more or less fortunate and agreeable, began to start up, and to give me fresher, and, generally speaking, more lively interest in the coming period than in that which had just elapsed. As a middy, I was happy — as a lieutenant, happier — as a captain, happiest ! I remember thinking that the period from 1815 to 1823, during which I commanded different ships of war, could not by any possibility be exceeded in enjoyment ; and yet I have found the dozen years which succeeded greatly happier, though in a very different way. It is upon this that the whole mat ter turns. Different seasons of life, like difterent seasons of the year, require different dresses ; and if these be misplaced, there is no comfort. Were I asked to review my happy life, and to say what stage of it I enjoyed most, I think I should ])itch upon that during which I passed my days in the scientific, literary, and political society of London, and my nights in dancing and flirting till sunrise, in the delicious paradise of Almacks, or the still more bewitching ball-rooms of Edin- Y 23S: THE FESTIVITIES OF HAINFELD. burgh ! Perhaps next best was the quiet half-year spent in the Schloss Hainfeld. What the future is to produce is a secret in the keeping of that close old fellow, Time ; but I await the decision with cheerfulness and humble confi- dence, sure that whatever is sent will be for the best, be what it may. The good old Countess, who, as I have men- tioned, lay in bed meditating how she could enter- tain us, contrived on the occasion of my birth-day to get up a little ceremony after the fashion of Styria, to do me honour, as she was good enough to say. I felt much honoured accordingly ; the children were enchanted, and all the household were made very happy in a rustic way ; w^hile the Countess, who superintended the whole in its minutest de- tails, and who, in spite of her griefs, was always cheerful, and often quite merry, enjoyed the festi- vities, so far as she could see them, or hear of them, ■with all the ardour of a young person. On the 31st of December, accordingly, as soon as dinner was over, the master of the revels and chief manager, Joseph, announced to us that the cere- mony was now to commence ; and we were ushered in all form, through the billiard-room, and the little parlour beyond it, into the library. In the middle was placed a semicircular range of chairs, the centre ' THE FESTIVITIES OF HAINFELD. 259- one of which was a huge, old, high-backed, gilt piece of furniture, on which I was desired to seat myself. The older members of my family took post on the right, the younger on the left, except the youngest of all, aged a year and a half, who sat on my knee ; such being considered the place and posi- tion in which the young Graf, as they called him^ was least likely to make an uproar. \i\ front, and a little on one side, were planted two rows of grim looking peasants, each six in number, and facing one another, so as to form an avenue for the procession, which soon entered. Those on the right hand, the hereditary game- keepers of the estate, carried ancient and curious fowling-pieces on their right shoulders. The party facing them, who bore the title of foresters, grasped the appropriate wood-axe in their hands ; and, more- over, each of the twelve bore a blazing torch, which, being the only lights in the room, shed a flaring but imperfect lustre, over the dark oak pannels and long lines of venerable volumes of the old castle library. Presently a flourish of trumpets was heard from the remote apartments of the suite, which was soon followed by the measured tread of fifty rough-shod feet, trampling like so many horses' hoofs over the bare wooden floors, whose naked beauties had never been hid by a carpet since the mansion was founded 260 THE FESTIVITIES OF HAINFELD. by the great-great-grandfather of the last of the Purgstalls. At the head of the procession came the Ver- walter, or, as we should call him in England, the bailiff, or land-steward. In his hand he carried a roll of papers, as an emblem of his office. He was followed by all the different members of the house- hold and of the home-farm, each one bearing, in like manner, some symbol of his specific employ- ment. On reaching the table which stood before us, the Verwalter addressed me in the following speech, which I give, together with my answer, first in the original German, for the advantage of the learned who are curious in such matters, and then in the English translation, for the benefit of the unlearned few who may happen to read these pages. The Verwalter spoke his speech boldly out ; but I took the precaution of reading mine " en Prince;" and I must not conceal the fact of its having been, like other great men's speeches, written for me by my ministers. Unlike kings, however, in such cases, I got full credit with my audience not only for the thoughts — which really were mine — but for the bor- rowed language in which they were clothed. The Vcrwalter's oration was as follows : — '* Zur Feier des Tasrcs, an welch em ein so welt- THE FESTIVITIES OF IIAINFELD. 261 heiuliinter ]Mann G;eboren ward, werdin %vir von der holien Frau I'ligenthumerinn dieses Schlosses gesendet, auch von unserer Seite das Unserige beizutiagen. " Erlauben Sie uns daher, Ihnen bei dieser fest- licheu Gelegcnheit in ihrem Namen, und im Na- mcn der ganzen Gegend unsere Huldigung und unsere besten Wiinsche darzubringen ; und wenii einst Ihr Beruf Sie wieder in weit entfernte Lander dahin fuhrt, so nehmen Sie die Versieherung mit, dass Sie unser Andenken an Ihre Gegenwart und unsere Verehrung iiberall hinbegleiten wird." To which I was graciously pleased to answer in the following words : — a Herr Verwalter I " Ich bin hochst erfreut liber die glitigen Wiinsche meiner ausgezeichneten Freundin, der GrJitinn von Purgstall, vorzUglich, da sie mir von eincni so wissenschaftlichen Mann dargebracht werden. " Ohschon die verehrtc Frau Grannn leider durch Krankheit vcrhiiulert wird, dieses Fest dureh ihre Ge ^TT I TT •! \ 4 Babette Dicher. J (^ Under Housemaids) ( Washerinnen. I ,r • r, i .i -{ Mane Berghold. Marie Stodt. Juliana Knotz Marie Ernst, Constantia Fritz. Joseph Eibl. Valentin Laufer. J (Washerwomen.) 1 Mayerhof Magde. i (Assistants.) Gartner. (Garden- ers.) {Constantia Tramer. IMarie Kershberger. ^ Johan Niiss. Anton P.'imer, Scliiifer. (Shepherd.) ) Kutscher. (Coach- f . ^ t- i '- ^ J. Anton Fmk, j men.) I Hausknechte. ^ (House Servants.) [ Mayerknechte. r(Farm Servants.) r {- cliel Maurer. Joseph Tramer, Joseph Meixncn. Joseph Amshl. Franz StiJrzer. Michl. Greiner, Schmid (Smith.) Lorenz Zach, Maurer (Masons) The Butler "Joseph" does not appear in the above list, as he was far too great a man to join such a train ; while, on the other hand, his rank is much below that of the Verwalter. He escaped from the dilemma bv actiii-r as Master of the Ceremonies. I Johan Milliner. •N Mathias Stess. ( Jacob Baumkirchcr. Michl Brenn. Ziinmer- mann (Carpenter) Augustin Lofter Tin: iKsrivriiES or hainkeld. '2G5 I need not add that the evenina- wound up with a dance and a supper, which made the old Castle shake to its foundations with long forgotten gaii'ty. Vov until our coming, during nearly twenty dreary years, though there had been frequent guests within its walls, there had been no merriment since the fatal day when the poor Countess's son, her only chiUl, and the last of his race, expired in her arms, and left her the desolate mistress of the vacant halls and innumerable apartments of Hainfeld, once the rail} ing point for mirth to all the country round. It was in vain that we laughed and danced or tried to i)e merry. The sad absence of our venerable and excellent friend cast a blank upon every thing, and it was really more to gratify her than ourselves that we engaged in such amusements. The cere- mony just described indeed was entirely her order- ing ; yet she never rested, or could believe that we were happy, unless we took more active steps to show our contentment. To please her, therefore, some friends who lived near us, and who had con- sented to pass Christmas and the New Year at the Castle, aided by our children's governess, a German lad}', and by the children themselves, put a play of Kot/ebue's in preparation. Nothing was thought of fur some weeks but rehearsals, dresses, and de- corations, and a stranger coming in would scarcely 266 THE FESTIVITIES OF HAINFELD. have believed that he was in what the Countess called a house of mourning. " Der Edueationsrath" was accordingly to have been acted on the last day of the year, after the procession of the household, and in their presence. The little piece above men- tioned was chosen for our private theatricals, because it included no more characters than our party had strength for, and, being in one act, was so short that it put no one to any grave or great exertion, and promised to keep none of us out of bed beyond the sober hours which we had established in our peaceful castle. My eldest daughter, then about nine years old, was to take one of the principal cha- racters, and the youngest, who was about five and a half, was to speak the prologue. The whole thing was put in motion by the Countess to amuse the children more than the grown- up folks. But when the day approached, the eldest child took a stiff neck, and it was deemed impossible to proceed with a play of which the principal per- former must have her head on one shoulder. The Countess was in despair at this contretemps^ and one might have imagined her some disappointed young lady, so grievously did she lament over the inter- ruption, for such only she determined it should be. With her usual tone of authority she insisted upon all her friends remaining: in the Castle till the actors were THE FESTIVITIES OF HAINFELD. 267 ready, and as they were nothing loath, our society held together, and in due season we had our play. The prologue was spoken with excellent emphasis and pertinent gesture — so quickly do children pick up a language when living amongst people who speak it constantly. The eldest girl went through her part in the play as if, instead of having applied to Ger- man only a few months, she had been bred and l)orn l)ehind the scenes of the Theatre-imperial at \ ienna ! The other characters were admirably sus- tained, and the whole thing went off with great and deserved applause. Every member of the household was present, and as many of the peasants as the room could hold were squeezed in. Their delight of course was extreme; but not a mortal there, either of actors or audience, seemed to enjoy the fun half "^o much as the poor, old, bed-ridden Countess, to V, liom a report of what was passing was made every (|uarter of an hour by some one of the party. At all stages of these festivities she mixed in every thing, gave her best advice, or issued her com- mands, even to the smallest details. Such indeed was the sort of juvenile excitement of her spirits, that we wt,re really glad when these gaieties were at an end, for we almost feared she wovdd work herself into a worse fever than she already pretty con-^tantly had, in her intense anxiety to make us 268 THE FESTIVITTT^S OF HAINFELD. all SO happy that any thoughts of leaving Hainfeld should be banished from our heads. This being, as I have already mentioned more than once, the grand object of what she called " the small remainder of lier wretched existence in this solitary world." [ 2G9 ] CHAPTER XVII. A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS. A i.oxd while a<^o, mIicu I was preparing' for a voyag-e to China, I asked an okl gentleman, well acquainted with those countries, to give me some hints for my guidance amongst a people so different in manners from those I had been accustomed to. The old boy, who seldom said any thing without a spice of sarcasm, reflected a moment, and then replied, — ^ Whenever you kill a Chinese, throw him as (juietly and quickly as you can into the river!" The satire here was directed against the absurd laws of China, which hold the person who is found nearest to a dead body responsible for the death. 'ilie etfect of this is to drive away all assistance from a person who either is or may l)e thought to be (lying — in sliort, to de])rive him of help exactly at the time M'hen it might be most useful to him, or when, if it could iu)t be \iseful in saving his life, it miirht soothe and cheer his last moments. We 270 A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS. laugli at the perverse folly of the Chinese, but in civilized Europe it is sometimes not much better. At Naples, for instance, a similar law prevails with that in the Celestial Empire ; and I remember hear- ing of an English lady, who w'as driving in her open carriage in the most public street of Naples, when the coachman was seized with a fit and fell back into the carriage ; the people stopped the horses, but as not a Neapolitan would come to the lady's assistance, the man might have died of suffocation from the position he was in, had not an English gentleman, who happened to be passing, rescued him from his awkward predicament. The coachman recovered, and nothing was said ; but had he died on the spot, the gentleman would have been "had- up" as a culprit at the police office, just as if he had been in Canton ! A prudent man, therefore, when travelling in foreign parts, of which he does not well know the laws and customs, will do well either to put his humanity in his pocket, or be very careful how he pulls it out. The safest plan, no doubt, is to follow the example of the priest and the Levite, and pass on the other side of the way. But this will not alwavs do, for external and internal reasons which need not be stated, and travellers, as well as those who remain at home, are sometimes obliged to stop A CHArTER OF ACCIDENTS. 271 and act on occasions when their indolence or their fears might prompt them to pass on as smartly aa possiide. I was taking my usual constitutional walk one day at Hainfeld, on the high-road between the Castle and the village of Feldbach, when I saw two ^voIncn with dishevelled locks and wild gestures running towards me. On nearing them I heard rlieir cries for assistance, and learned that a wretched man, whose waggon (as all carriages are called in rliat country) had been overturned, was lying under ii, and was either dead or dying. On reaching the spot I found, sure enough, the poor knecht, as they called him, lying on his face, with liis arms stretched out, his head down-hill, and his legs underneath the inverted vehicle. Although it was only one of those light travelling carts with a gig seat fixed in it which we see every where, it was too heavy for me to remove altogether. As the man appeared to be dying, however, I prevailed on the women to assist me in moving the cart a little, and Me succeeded at length in getting the left leg free. The other we could by no means disengage for a long time, and I despatched one of the women to a house not far off to beg for more masculine aid in our difficulty. I at last got out tile other leg, and was glad to find it not broken. 272 A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS. My next care was to turn the knecht on his back, and then I saw to my horror that his face was as black as my boot — his eyes closed, and his mouth full of blood. He lay gasping for breath, each inspiration being accompanied by a whistling sound between a cry and a groan. I could just feel his pulse, and in doing so I found his arm as cold as ice. It seemed evident to me that he was dying. My first operation was to slew him round, as we say at sea, so as to bring his head up hill, for the cart had fallen over a bank formed by the sloping side of the road raised above the flat alluvial plain of the Raab-Thal. I was glad to sec the poor knecht's face become less black in the course of a minute or two, but as he was manifestly at any rate not long for this world, I began to think that I ought at all hazards to take some steps for bleeding him, the only chance for his life. I proceeded, therefore, to pull oft' his jacket, intending to tie up his arm with my handkerchief, and to open one of his veins with my pen-knife. I did bethink me, I must own, of the scrape I was likely to get into if I should fail, and be found by the boorish natives with a knife in my hand over the dead body of one of their countrymen ! Just, however, as I had formed the resolution to make the necessary incision as well as I could, I es|>ied a gentleman on horseback canter- A CIIA1>TER OF ACCIDENTS. 273 liiiif past, and I thoug'Iit I might as ucll hold a con- sultation before performing my first operation. The stranger drew up his horse, gave the bridle to one of the women who stood wrino-inpf her Iiands by the side of the dying man, and, before I had time to say a word, cast olV his hussar's cloak, drew from his pocket a strip of linen, bound up the man's iivm, whipped a lancet out of his pocket, and opened a vein, in one-fifth part of the time it has taken me to relate the matter ! I was well content to lie deprived of the honour of ])erfonning a surgical operation, and to act as assistant rather than principal, especially as I soon recognised in the stranger the surgeon of the cavalry regiment (piartercd at Feldbach, who, by strange good luck, liad been called to visit a patient in the neighbourhood. At liist the blood refused to flow, and it was clear the doctor thought all was over with the poor knecht. Prtsentlv, liowever, on relaxing the bandage a btlle, and dashing handfulls of cold water repeatedly in his face, the blood began to stream, and his p;itiy this time plenty of men had come up — tiie 274 A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS. waggon was righted — the knecht's arm dressed — and no bones being broken, he was once more de- posited in his vehicle, and driven home by the land- lord of a public-house hard by. The doctor mounted his horse and galloped off, and I remained to reaj) the honours of the field, having got credit with the peasants for saving their companion's life — a credil: which, in spite of all disclaimers, I most undeser- vedly retained amongst them during the remainder of the winter. It has long been a disputed question amongst naval men what it would be the duty of an officer in command of a ship to do, in the event of a ma;i falling overboard, while in chase of an enemy's vessel of equal or superior force. Like many ques- tions, this one, now that it is settled, surprises us how any doubt could ever have arisen respecting it. But although there can be no doubt that, in tlu) nautical case, humanity must sometimes give way to a sterner duty, it may often prove doubtful on shore, how far we arc called upon to turn out of oia- way to help, or attempt to help those, who have no claims upon our time, our attention, or our pocket- . The story of the Styrian knecht of the black face brings another to my recollection, in which the pros and cons of this question were practically brouglit into p!ay, pretty much after the style of the parable. A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS. 275 On the 27tli of June, towards the end of a little tour I Imd been making with my wife in the south of Enj^land, in the summer of 1831, the carriage passed cvcv Shooter's Hill. As we drove down the Loiidoii side of the stecj), we overtook a waggon, or rather a van, lieavily laden with furniture, proceed- inL"- in a most irregular course, and at far too jjreat a rate, with none of its wheels locked. The weight was evidently too much for the horses, which, besides, were sadly misdirected by two men, who appeared at a l()~s what to do, and who were clearly not sober. As we passed, I heard a loud shriek or shout, and on looking out of the carriage window, I saw one of the men lying flat on his face on the road, bawl- ing lustilv, and moving his legs up and down. He seemed to me to be raving in a fit of drunken- ness : but my servant, seeing me put my head out, declared that after the man fell, the wheel, he thought, had passed over his arm. I ought, of course, instantly to have stopped to have ascertained what was the extent of the injury, if any. But, in the first place, I thought that the mail was merely drunk ; for I readily disbelieved the servant's account, from not wishing it to be true. I also, and more reasonably, wished to save my com- jianion, who was in delicate health, from a scene of pain and misery ; and lastly, I confess, I did not 276 A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS. much fancy the notion of having a drunken carter with a broken arm thrown on my care. Had it been my own carriage wheel which had done the mischief, or had we in any way, however remote, contributed to the accident, there could have been no doubt whatever ; but as we were quite guiltless, I let the boy drive on. I satisfied myself, that as the man was amongst his own class, he would be well looked after, that my interference would do no good — in short — in short— like the two travellers in the in- imitable parable already alluded to — and which, in its practical acceptation, has done such an infinity of good in the world — I passed on, leaving the wounded man half dead, or whole dead, for aught I knew I After driving about a quarter of a mile along the road, I began to say to myself, " This is not alto- gether the right thing — is this like the good Sama- ritan ?" And the word Samaritan, though I had given it no audible expression, kept ringing in my cars, as we trotted away from the scene, which no tnie Samaritan would have left. After proceeding for some distance, say a couple of miles, I became so worried and unhappy that I could not sit still, and I felt sure that the remembrance of the poor Mretch, lying on his face in the dust, would never leave my mind. I resolved never ajrain to pass such an ob- A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS. 277 ject of distress. IJut I found that this resolution went no way to dissipate the remorse which was fast aceuinuhitini>; in my tiiouj^hts, and which, daslied with its portion of shame for my want of decision as Mell as of humanity, was disturbing- my peace of mind at a great rate. '• ^Ulat is to be done?" I asked myself impa- tlentl}', for I had wrought myself into a fever. This question, properly asked, was easily answered, — to go back again, surely. " But in what way go back '.' " 'I'o drive two or three miles over the same road again, merely to ascertain the fact of the man being severely and dangerously wounded, might have answered no good purpose. And while I was jrazzling and puzzling what to do, or rather how to do it, we came in sight of the Green ]\Ian at Blaek- luath : and it instantly occurred to me that the ])eople of this great inn must be quite familiar ^vith such acciilents, and of course that they would be able to put me in the way of assistance. In answer to mv (question whether any surgeon lived thereabouts, the waiter said, " Oh yes, sir, there is the d()(jr of Mr Clemsee's house, an excellent surgeon." Oil" I ran, and was enchanted to find him at home, and quite willing to accompany me to the scene of action; so that in less than two minutes the doctor and I were in a full swing trot back again. 278 A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS. I could detect, at the distance of more than half a mile, a crowd on one side of the road, close to a well-loaded van, which, on a nearer approach, I re- cognised as the fatal cause of the mischief. We quickened our pace, under the smack of the driver's whip, who took much interest in the whole affair. A melancholy scene of pain, anxiety, and confu- sion, presented itself to our eyes, as we separated the crowd to the right and left, and made our way to the centre. The wounded man, all covered with blood and du&t, and as pale, wellnigh, as a dead person, was supported on a chair in front of a neat little cottage, the flowers and shrubs before which had been all crushed down by the bystanders. Two women, the only persons in the group who appeared to have their senses about them, held the poor fel- low's arm and his head, and bathed his temples with cold water. All the rest, about twenty in number, were speaking at once, each one suggesting some- thing, but no one acting, or knowing how to act. A surgeon had been sent to, they said, but he was not at home, and what was next to be done no mortal could decide. The man's companion was drunk, noisy, and worse than useless, and the help with which the rest of the party were encumbering the sufferer only added to his distress. I at once took command of the ground, under the A CIIAIMER OF ACCIDENTS. 279 doctor, insisted upon silence, and brushed away the crowd, to let the wounded man have room to hreathe. The surgeon called for a pair of scissors, and slitting the coat and shirt from the wrist up- wards, exposed the whole arm in a moment — a dread- ful sight ! Tiie wheel had passed over the limb, nearly midway between the elbow and the shoulder, crush- ing the bone in such a manner as to produce what is called a compound fracture of the worst kind. The doctor and I exchanged nods of perfect under- standing upon the point that this was not a case for field practice, and that our patient must be con- veyed to the nearest hospital. '• \N hat is to be done, however," I asked, " in the first place ? " " ^^ e can do nothing," said the surgeon, " but stra}) the arm across the breast, and convey the poor fellow in a chaise to Guy's Hospital in the liorough." " \'ery well," I cried, " is there a chaise to be hired here, or shall I take him in my carriage ?" " Oh," cried out one of the crowd, " I have a chaise and pair on the hill here, all ready, and if you choose to order it, you shall have it in five minutes." In lc-5 than that time, and before the surgeon, 280 A CHArXER OF ACCIDENTS. with Infinite care, and no small skill, had gathered together the shattered limb, and bound It gently over the man's breast, the chaise stood before the cottage-door. Our patient being seated, the doctor prepared to take his place beside him, assuring me, that he would not lose sight of him till he was comfortably lodged, and placed under proper hands. Before we parted, however, I wished to give him a fee for his professional services ; but this he posi- tively refused, and begged that, as I was to pay for the postchalse, he might be allowed to contribute his share in the shape of attendance. As the chaise drove softly away, I turned to the rich-looking owner of the vehicle, and asked what I was in his debt. " So much for the horses, and so much for the tolls, sir." " What!" I said, "will you not, on such an occasion, contribute something ? The doctor would take nothing, you observed ; I think you might go the length of sixpence for the tolls." " No, sir, no ; I'll thank you to pay me for the gates. I have a right to that, and I'll have my right." I next turned to the women, who had taken more trouble than all of us put together ; but, though they were evidently very poor, they would at first accept nothing ; and it was only by my A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS, 281 representing- to them that their clothes, whlcli the poor fellow's wound had stained, would cost a f>;ood deal to put to rights, that I prevailed on them to receive half-a-crown a-piece. At all events, the lower classes, said I to myself, are more disinterested than the class just above them ; but I had scarcely spoken when the crowd shoved a man forward. " What do you want ? " I asked. " I ran up the hill for the chaise, sir." " So then," I observed, " you won't even run a couple of hundred yards to assist a brother work- man who has broken his arm, unless you are paid for your trouble — eh ? " " You told me to go up the hill, and I went," was the dogged reply ; so I had another sixpence to fork out. On returning to the Green Man, it was necessary to water the horses, which had now gone three times over the ground between Shooter's Hill and the inn. During this detention the postilion entertained the assembled household, waiters, housemaids, boots, and hostlers, with a full, true, and particular account of the carter's shattered arm. I motioned to the head waiter to give the narrator a glass of beer, and mechanically pinched a final sixpence between my finger and thumb to pay for the generous draught. 2 A 282 A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS. But the magnanimous domestic only waved his glass-cloth, and declined the payment. The beer, to be sure, was from his master's tap ; but I thanked him with sincerity ; for even the shadow of disinte- restedness pleases us, when we are in a humour to be pleased. Mr Gemsee, the humane and liberal surgeon ■who accompanied the wounded man to the hospital, promised to write me a note of his proceedings ; and accordingly, a day or two afterwards, he sent me the following account : — " Blackheath Hill, Juhj % 1831. " Dear Sir, " I HAVE the pleasure to inform you, that I saw the unfortunate young man safely to Guy's Hospital, and committed him to the care of my friend Mr Sampson Carey, who is a dresser under Mr Bransby Cooper. I went directly to Mr Galloway, the assistant-surgeon, but he was from home. Upon my return to the hospital, I found Mr Carey had written a note to Mr Cooper, Mho would come immediately. I went to see the poor fellow yesterday, and am happy to say he is doing as well as can be expected, and they hope to save the arm. *' I am, your most obedient servant, (Signed) " C. Gemsee." A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS. 283 I had it not in my power to visit Guy's Hospital tor some days ; but when I did, I could scarcely ii'Cooner of Shooter's Hill. He neither knew me, nor recollected any of the circumstances; ami wlu II I boi^an to relate them, supposing nothing could be so interesting, he looked me impatiently in i!ie face, turned his head round, and begged, in a jx'cvish voice, to be left alone. As he was in adrai- i able hands, and in no need of any further assistance !rom ine, I took no more charge of him. When, however, the other day, I came to write down these notes of the adventure, I felt some curiosity to know Aviiat had become of my friend ; whether he had lived or died, and especially whether or not his arm had been saved. I thought the best way to find out was to write to the secretary of Guy's Hospital, from whom, by return of post, 1 received the following statement : — " Gi v's Hospital, 24//i Fth. 1836. " Slit, " In reply to your enquiries respect- ing AVilliam Skudder, I find by the books that he came lure the 27th June, 1831, with a badly frac- luied arm, and went out of the hospital on the 29th 284 A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS. January, 1832. And on the 19tli February follow- ing he returned, having broken his arm again, and left us, 21st May, 1832, since Avhieh we know no- thing about him. " Yours very faithfully, (Signed) " James Browell." I insert the above communication, chiefly to show the accuracy witli which the details of these admi- rable public institutions are managed and recorded. May we not reasonably trace the origin, as well as the voluntary and ample support, of these truly charitable asylums, in a great measure to the beau- tiful and instructive parable above alluded to ? 285 ] CHAPTER XVIII. THE ALARM. Shortly after the festivities of Christmas and the New Year, which the good ohl Countess had got up for our amusement, she came to see, much to our satisfaction, that we really preferred the quiet life of her ancient Castle, with oidy herself and our chil- dren as company. There happened, indeed, to be several little girls in the Castle, orphan daughters of fornun- dependents on the Countess, who proved of inlinite use to our children in learning German. Almost every evening these young folks got up some piece of their own invention ; some scene from Kotzehue's farces; or, what was a thousand times more farcical, a tragedy. For e.\amj)le, we were one night indulged with Schiller's play of \\ illiam Tell, a piece in whicli there are upwards of forty charac- ters ; hut our hold theatricals undertook this splendid tragedy with oidy four actors ! The jioor Cou!itess lay in her bed and laughed at 28G THE ALAHM. tlie account of these proceedings, and more than ever encouraged us to sit with her, and read or chat by her bedside ; and we saw, or thought we saw, that she was gradually gaining strength ; and though it was obvious to every eye that she never could hope to be any thing but a confirmed invalid, we had strong reason to believe that the periodical accession of illness which beset her every winter was for this season gone past. Under this impression, as January gradually slipped away on our happy re- tirement, and February began to advance, we considered it right to bethink us once more of our journey, albeit we were not very anxious to move, and we saw that any such proposition might half or wholly put an end to our generous hostess. We could not remain in Ilainfeld Castle for the rest of our lives, however ; and, all things considered, we believed it right to take our departure while the Countess was in tolerable health. But in order not to give her more pain than was absolutely necessary, we carried on our preparations very quietly ; we also settled it with ourselves that a certain day should at all events form our latest for remaining ; but in order to ease off matters, we agreed to name an earlier day, and if sorely pressed, as we knew we should be, to relax accordingly. Thus we considered it well to fix the 15th of March as our nominal day : but that THE ALARM. 287 Ave inii^ht he prevailed upon to stay till the 23cl, or t ven a day or two later. It was accordingly arranged that 1 should break tlie fatal subject to the Countess on the morning of t!ie 1st of March, or as soon afterwards as I might ■iiul a good opportunity. I felt, indeed, as if I were :>b()ut to attempt the good old lady's life, and could ■ ^arcL'ly screw my courage to the sticking point, ;.nd at one blow destroy the sole happiness, as she frequently called it, which remained to her in this v.ide and desolate world, which she ardently longetl to leave, in order, as she often said, to join those who had torn her heart away with them. Our plan of operations was, that we should start from Ilainfeld after an early breakfast, with four of i!ie f;irm horses from the neighbouring village. These were to be relieved by those of the Countess half way on the road to Gratz : and thus we hoped to reach that city to dine, and yet that we should have daylight enough to reach Feistritz, the coun- try scat of Mr Thinnfeld, a most intelligent and agreeable person, with whom we had formed a great friendship during the winter. There we purposed to remain for a few days, and then to go on to Menna, in time for the fag end of the gay season, to which, liowever, we looked with some dread, after nearly half a year's rustication at 288 THE ALARM. Hainfekl, the most completely out of tlie way corner in the known world. Old Joseph, whom a quarter of a century's service had made well acquainted with his mistress and her peculiarities, shook his head in silent and prophetical despair, as we made our preparations ; and for once in his life he did not communicate to the Countess what was going on in the Castle. "If you go away now," he said one morning; "and if you take away your darling little boy from the Griifin — who reminds her of her own lost child — if you do not stay to read with her, and talk with her ; if the children no more sit by her bed-side and amuse her with their fun and pranks, you'll break her heart. She will never more bear to live in this great Castle alone ; and there is no one in this coun- try to take your places if you go." All this was so obvious that every time I came near an occasion of speaking to her about going away the words stuck in my throat, and I could not utter a syllable. Day by day, too, the little child wound himself closer round the affectionate old lady's heart, and bound, as it were, its broken fragments together. He would sit for hours at her feet, or creep up to her pillow, and lay his hands fondly on her care-worn cheeks, quite happy to be near her. Day by day, too, she grew upon all our best THE ALARM. 289 utroctlons ; and as she unlocked her long- neglected or wasted sympathies, and gave vent to feelings uliich she thought dead, and had heretofore con- sidered it almost a duty not to revive, we felt our obligations not to desert her increase to such a de- gree, that we often said to ourselves, " we can never leave this spot while our venerable friend lives I" On the 24th of February, and happily before we had insinuated any thing of our intended, or rather our projected departure, the Countess became suddenly much worse. She was seized in the night with so violent a fit of coughing, accompanied by fever and pain, that we feared our doubts and difficulties would be but too speedily resolved. She rallied, however, in the day ; and when we were admitted she seemed almost as much herself as ever. The first symptom irresistibly frustrated as if a giant of old had been its master instead of a l)edrid(len, broken-hearted, widowed ladv, the last of an ancient race, long re- nowned in the country of her adoption, which to her had been one continued scene of war, misery, and disappointment. 292 THE ALARM. Things wore on most painfully till the evening of the 4th of March, when the faithful and affec- tionate Joseph came weeping to me to say that his mistress was quite delirious, and that her fever was raging furiously. I went instantly to her bedside, but she knew no one. Her pulse was at a hun- dred and twenty beats in the minute, and every thing seemed to indicate that her last moments were approaching. I visited her many times during the night, and seldom entered the room without expect- ing to find her gone. Although the Countess had the most profound want of faith in all medicines and in all medical men, she allowed the village doctor, who happened to be rather a clever man, to call every day to see her, more, 1 believe, that she might hear the gos- sip of the neighbourhood, than with any idea of profiting by his professional skill. We sent for him of course ; but as he, like most country doc- tors, passed the greater part of every night on horseback, it was not till five in the morning that we could catch him, and by that time she had fallen into a quiet sleep. He at once said that further aid must be sent for, and we despatched the carriage to lladkcrsberg for the most eminent physician of those parts. He did not come till the evening, however ; and, in the THE ALARM. 293 mean time, the patient recovered so much, that we couhl scarcely persuade ourselves that she had been ill. The Countess listened with much interest to all the physician said, answered all his questions, begj^ed him to write his prescriptions, and allowed him to go away with the full conviction on his mind that she was the most docile of patients, and the steadiest beliovor in the efficacy of medicine. I saw her smile as he left the room, and again when I caught up the prescriptions, and despatched an express with them to the village. In my turn I smiled when, an hour or two afterwards, I observed the empty bottle's, and remembered her many anathemas against the whole family of drugs. She said no- thing, however ; but on passing through the ante- room, I learned from her maid that the whole of the medicines had been thrown out of the window ! But our venerable friend, though she seemed to rail v. and was certainly in as cheerful spirits as ever, had gotten a severe shake. Her nights were jiasscd in coughing, high fever, and sharp rheu- matic pains ; but in the daytime she appeared so well, that it was scarcely possible to believe her (1\ ing, in spite of her constant assertions to that effect. I ventured once, at this stage of her illness, to sa\- that I wondered to hear her talkinit about to be extinguished I The equi- nox came, and found the Countess all but dead. On the '2'.](], and less than twenty-four hours after the time she had herself specified, the fatal blow was -truck, and our poor friend was no more 1 During the greater part of the "i'id, the " day of luT doom,'' as she called it, she preserved her facul- ties entire. Her strength, however, was manifestly on the decline, and her eyes began to give indica- 302 THE CATASTROPHE. tion of change. In the middle of the day I carried all the children to take a last look of their vener- able friend who had been so uniformly kind to them. On holding up the infant of whom she had been so fond, and opening a chink of the shutter to let a little light shine on his face, she held out her arms, and exclaimed — " Oh, my dear, dear baby, is that you ! How do you do, my sweet, sweet child ? " I held him close to her and made him touch her cheek, which he did in his usual gentle way, and when she pressed his little hand, he looked her full in the face, and said, as he was wont to do every evening when carried away, " Ta ! ta I" " Ta ! ta ! my own dear infant," exclaimed the dying woman. " You have been a blessing to me this winter. God send you may prove as great a comfort to your parents, Avho have been my pro- tectors in my last hour of need." I then gently drew the little man back that the others might come in front of her. " Ah, Eliza! my dear Eliza! how do you do? give me your hand, my sweet girl. And you, too, dear Fanny Emily ! God bless you both. Your socie- ty has often made me happy. God bless and keep you." And then cordially shaking them both by the hand, she looked up to the governess, and cried, THE CATASTROPHE. 303 '' Ah, Mademoiselle Horthum, how are you ? Is it true that you have so kindly taken charge of my little boy during his maid's illness ? He is a good child. But you are generous and kind to them all." So saying, she laid her head back, closed her eyes, and to these members of our party she never sjxdvc more. Nor did they ever see her again alive, except for a moment when I carried them to the room next day when she was almost gone. I wished them to learn how to look upon such scenes with composure, and without feeling that mysterious sort of dread of a death-bed which belongs to ignorance, and which sometimes prevents persons being useful, who, were it not for these imaginary fears, might render important services to their dying friends. Some hours after she had taken leave of the children, when we were sitting by her, and expecting her to go otf every moment, she opened her eyes, and said, with almost her usual strength of voice, " Yes I — you are always by my bed-side. You Jiavc i)een my protectors and friends, and you will soon have to close my eyes. I shall soon be away, and (»()(l knows how anxiously I pray to be released from this dreadful sutVering. I die contented, how- ever, when I have you about me to see me laid in my grave, and know that, in spite of all the fears which have haunted me for so lonir a time, I shall not 304 THE CATASTROPHE. be left forlorn and desolate to die amongst strangers. You may well be happy to think of the good you have done and are doing me." After this our poor friend became gradually worse and worse. Her pain and cough increased, and during the night when we sat by her, though she evidently recognised us, she could scarcely articulate her words, and these were often disjointed, and uttered at long intervals. In this way the fatal 22d of March passed over and left her still alive. Not so the 23d ; and thus the old lady erred only one day in her calculations. During the morning she sunk so much that it was only by inference we could make out that she still possessed her mind. Towards sunset all pain seemed to have left her, and she lay almost for the first time during her illness quite tranquil in appearance, and without uttering a groan. Of course we scarcely ever quitted her bed-side ; and once, I think about seven in the evening, on seeing her make an eifort to speak, I placed my ear close to her lips, but could distinofuish no sound besides the fearful and well-known death-rattle in her throat. She lay quite motionless, and I had not the least idea that she could hear what was said, or that she still pos- sessed any of her faculties ; but in order to try, I said to her slowly and distinctly, and in a cheerful voice — THE CATASTROPHE. 305 •' We are all here, ma'am — you shall not be deserted." Upon which, to my great surprise, she lifted her hand an inch or two above the bed-clothes, and when I took it in mine and kissed it, I felt her press my hand three several times, as much as to say, " L understand you perfectly." I whispered to Mrs Hall to kiss the Countess's hand, upon which she raised it as l)efore, and turning to us, opened her eyes, from which all life was not yet fled, though very little was left. We felt quite satisfied, how- ever, that she Mas conscious of our being present, and that so far as that kind of protection was con- cerned, for which she had so often expressed a hope, she was gratified in her last moments. About nine o'clock, when we had left the room for a minute, we were suddenly called back by the report that our venerable friend was just expiring, and we felt grieved that even for a moment we had quitted her side. Her hands were now of an icy coldness, and her !)reuthing (|uick and feeble. Ikit the expression of her face was so placid, and I may say even sweet, that it indicated a mind and a body at length at rest. 1 could barely feel her pulse, and at eleven o'clock she (juietly breathed her last : and the noble family of Purgstall. once so numerous and so renowned in Austria, 1)ecame extinct. 306 THE CATASTROPHE. The scene in the room was highly characteristic, though very different,! suspect, from what generally takes place elsewhere on such occasions. The most prominent actor of the party was poor Joseph, the Countess's faithful servant, in whose arms, in the same bed, eighteen years before, her son, her only child, had expired. This affectionate creature, as I have already mentioned, had promised his mistress at that time, when deserted apparently by all the rest of the world, that he never would leave her while she lived — and well he kept his word. Though a hardy old soldier, who had served in all the rugged campaigns of Napoleon, he was quite unmanned by the approaching dissolution of his revered mistress. We could not console him, and made no attempt. We gave him the first place, however ; and, in spite of his remonstrances, made him take the chair near- est to the dying Countess's head, while we sat lower down at the side of the bed. All the women who used to be in attendance in turn upon her, as v/ell as the cook, housemaids, and others, were assembled in the apartment, each with a nicely folded snow- white pocket handkerchief in hand, and while some wept from affection, and some from companionship, they all went through the motions of grief. 'J "he men servants of the house, to the number of a dozen at least, came into the room from time to time, and THE CATASTIIOI'IIE. 307 Leathered in groups round the bed, or stood near the tloor, but all in silence, and without any outward show of sorrow, though I fully believe they all felt very deeply. The Countess, indeed, was universally beloved by her dependents, to whom, on all occasions, she spoke not only with gentleness but \yth respect ; and I heard it remarked by one of the oldest amongst them, who had grown grey in her service, that she neVer once addressed a servant with the pronoun " Du," or thou, which general usage permits to inferior", but always with " Sie," which is used amongst equals. In all essential matters, she was equally considerate ; and in losing her, the whole of that part of the country lost a friend on whose generosity, in all times of trouble, they could safely rely. i'he male domestics whom I have just mentioned, were not elegant, brisk fellows, in gay liveries, but coarsely clad, rough-haired, labourer-looking men — " Ilaus Knechte," as they are called — truly hewers of wood and drawers of water. So that their appearance on this occasion, by the side of their dying mistress, looked not a little strange. Lastly came the parish priest, for although the Countess WHS a strict Protestant, she had always lived on friendly terms with the llomau Catholic clergy of the neighbourhood. This gentleman, in particular. 308 THE CATASTROPHE. she had always esteemed ; and Joseph, knowing how much it would gratify him, as well as how satisfac- tory it would prove to the people on the estate, very judiciously suggested his being invited. With cor- responding delicacy and good taste, the priest did not attempt to interfere with what was going on, but sat at a little ..distance, as a deeply interested spectator, but no more. Old Joseph, however, who was a good Catholic, thinking, I suppose, it might do no harm to give his mistress's soul a chance, took advantage of my back being turned, and stuck a lighted candle into the old lady's hand, a few minutes before she breathed her last. I was startled by this proceeding, and would have removed the candle; but Joseph, down whose cheeks the tears were flowing abundantly, beseech- ed me to let it remain. The effect was not a little picturesque, as it lighted up the dying woman's face, and showed every change of countenance with the utmost distinctness. The lights and shades which it cast on the surrounding anxious groups — for every one now closed round the bed — were in the highest degree striking, and the moment of our poor friend's death might have furnished admirable materials for a picture. \Mien all was over, Joseph's grief became ex- cessive and uncontrollable : quite forgetting the THE CATASTROPHE. 309 man, lie lifted up his voice and wept like a child. Poor fellow I he had lost his best and almost his only friend — by whose side he had served with the habitual devotion of a thorough-bred soldier, during two-and-twenty years of deep suffering, and through many seasons of severe trial. For the few days pre- ceding the Countess's death he had supported him- self with great propriety, but when he saw the breath of life ebbing fast away from his beloved mistress, and the intervals between her last faint gasps be- coming longer and longer, his stock of fortitude was completely exhausted — and in spite of admonitory taps on the arm by one of the attendant maidens, whose feelings were less excited, he cried bitterly. We stood by the old man's side, but said nothing. We respected his grief, in which we shared, though in a very different degree ; for even at that solemn moment, we felt no small satisfaction to think that a jjcrson so estimable was finally relieved from a load of l)0{lily and mental distress all but intole- rable, and translated to a scene of eternal trancpul- " litv — tliere, as she fervently hoped, to be indissolubly united to those, for whose sake alone she had con- sidered life worth possessing. It would l)e wrong to wind up this liistory with- out stating what became of so j)rincipal a personage 310 THE CATASTROPHE. as Joseph (our Caleb Balderstone) after his mistress was gone. By one of those unaccountable anomalies in human conduct which — most particularly in the rase of wills — set all calculations at defiance, the Countess left this old and faithful domestic so very scanty a pro- vision, that it was scarcely possible for him to exist upon it, especially as he was no longer fit for active service, and as, moreover, he had married while in the Countess's employment, under the very natural hope of being amply provided for during the rest of his days. As a full explanation, though perhaps not a full justification, of this omission, it ought to be stated, that the Countess had every reason to suppose that Joseph would have been allowed board and lodging in the Castle as long as he lived ; and in that case the legacy she left him would have been quite suffi- cient. As he was compelled, however, forthwith to quit the mansion he had so long inhabited, it became our duty, so far as we could, to prevent his being cast adrift in his old age. As soon, therefore, as the destitute nature of his situation was ascertained, I wrote to the late Lady Ashburton, the Countess's niece, who was deeply attached to her aunt, and who on one occasion, when driving with her aunt at Hainfeld, had owed THE CATASTROPHE. 311 her lite to Joseph's j^reat exertion in preventing their carriag-e from oversetting — an over exertion, indeed, whicli seriously and permanently injured his health. Her Ladyship, by return of post, wrote not only to me, but in the kindest terms to Joseph himself, saying, she only waited to hear how much would make him perfectly comfortable, before settling a j)ension upon him. This was soon ascertained, and an answer written. Most unfortunately, however. Lady Ashburton died in the interval, quite unex- pectedly, and before the necessary steps could be taken in this matter. In strictness, Joseph had no claims upon Lord C'raustoun, the successor to Lady Ashburton's for- tune — but, under all the peculiarities of the case, I felt it right to lay the foregoing details before his Lordshij) ; and he at once, and in the most generous manner, settled on Joseph the full pension contem- plated by Lady Ashburton. By this addition to his income, the poor fellow has been placed in easy, and even affluent, circumstances for the remainder of his life. [ 312 ] CHAPTER XX THE VAULT. On retiring to our rooms after all was over, it was vain to think of sleep, and we passed most of the remaining part of the night in reflecting on the strange nature of the history just ended, and which, if it had been feigned, instead of real, might well have been called too improbable for belief. Who, indeed, could have ventured to calculate, that at the close of a life so protracted as that of the Countess, she who had been so lono- almost without seeing^ the face of a countryman, should be attended on her death-bed by the son of one of her earliest friends? — for she and my father were very intimate in their youth; — or that, after nearly twenty years of constant anxiety and fear, lest she should be left to die amongst servants and foreigners, without a friend to close her eyes or cheer her solitude, in a far distant region, in which she had outlived all the connexions she had formed with the land of her adoption, there Tiip; VAULT. ;u;3 >h()ul(l at last coine to hor enchanted Castle a family of licr country-folks, as if by the help of some jj^ood fairy .* Still more strani^e did it seem that any such family should lune been at once able and \villin(r to devote so much time to her, just at the very mumont re(juired ; or, finally, that they should hajtpon to be so exactly suited to her tastes and habits that all its members, younted ; but assuredly we had no more thoughts of visiting her than we had of visiting the Cham of Tartary : still less did we ever dream of })assing six entire months in her Castle in 2 D 314 THE VAULT. Styria, of which remote country (except from our school-day recollections of books of geography) we knew nothing. Even at the time we received the invitation we had scarcely a notion that we should ever be able to visit the proprietor, or even to go near that part of Europe. When, however, we did come to the Castle of Hainfeld, found ourselves very happily established there, and saw how greatly we contributed to the Countess's comfort, we began at times to consider seriously what would happen when we should be obliged to leave her. Right glad would she have been if we had offered to take up our permanent quarters with her ; but this, she knew, was out of the question, though, as we afterwards found, she had often discussed it with Joseph ; and once or twice she hinted it to Mrs Cownie, our child's maid, during the many hours they were together every day. To us she often said, half in joke, half in earnest, that she hoped we would stay and see her out, and not desert her in her last hours. But as we could detect no valid reason for supposing she might not live for years, we took great care not to involve ourselves in so vague an engagement, having in our minds the proverbial longevity of old ladies. As the periods which we successively named for our depar- ture approached, we became more sensible of our THE VALI.T. 315 affection and respect for her ; and the more of course we dreaded the baneful efl'ect whicli our abandon- ing her might have. At these moments, I am half ashamed to own, it irresistibly occurred to our minds that the best possible thing the good lady could do, both for her own comfort and for that even of her most attached friends, would be to slip quietly out of the world, as soon as might be. W'c did not, indeed, go so far as to hint this obliging wish to her: but I sometimes thought she read what was passing in our minds ; at least she said more than once, " Only wait a little ; wait till the equinox comes, and you'll see me go out like a candle burned down to the socket." But when the strange event actually turned out true almost to the very letter — we could not help half feeling that we had been somehow parties to iJie act of removins: our excellent friend from the world I And I was rather annoyed with myself when I found I could not lay my hand on my heart and declare that I should have been pleased were the Countess alive again, and as well, or rather as ill as ever I Tiiore came across me, however, many feelings of grief for her loss, so bitter that I ftlt irritated with myself for having rejoiced at her death ; and when t'l ; hours came round at which I used always to take 316 THE VAULT. my station by her bedside, and read or talk with her, or listen to her lively and instructive conversation, and still more when I saw her, in my imagination, fondling my little boy, or praising my eldest daugh- ter's looks, or laughing at the funny remarks of the youngest, or entreating their mother to read her an- other chapter of a Waverley novel, I felt — and still feel — the tears come to my eyes, and I deplore her loss without any unkind and cold-hearted qualifica- tion. On the next day, the Countess's body was exposed in state in tlie Castle chapel. She was dressed, according to the custom of the country, in her best black gown, with a plain muslin cap tied round with a broad black ribbon, a style of dress which is much less disagreeable than the " odious woollen" grave clothes with which we disfigure our defunct friends in England. Be that as it may, the good old Countess's remains were exposed on a high and rather elegant platform in the chapel ; and on the pall which covered it were placed the scutcheons of the family, all in a reversed position, indicating, as we were told, that the person lying in state was the last of the family ; for so busy had Death been, that not another Purgstall now existed TIIK VAII.T. 317 of a race at one time the most numerous and flou- risliin<^ in Austria. Generally speakintr, funerals in those countries take place very soon after death ; l)ut on this occa- sion, owino- to some technical difficulties about j)lacin(^ the body of a Protestant in the Roman Catholic- church, the Countess lay in state for four days. One of these, the 25th of ^Nlarch, happened to l)e a festival of the church, and a brit^ht sunny moniinif- ; and tins fortunate combination of an idle and a fine day brought not only the whole of the little world of the Ilaab Thai, our truly haj)py \'alley I — but all the Morld of the adjacent villa^x's and hamlets ; so that the road to J"\ddl)acli on one hand, and to I'ehrinir on the other, presented a continued double stream of people comiui^ and goin^-. -Many thousands of persons visited theCastle; and although curiosity may have ])rompti'd many, siiR-ere ri'^])ect and affection brought the greater luunbor : for thouirh a stranjifcr in the land, slie was a tru(! friend, not merely to the poor and needy, but to all who were in difliculty or distress, liowever caused. During a rt'sidence of nearly forf\- \ cars in that coinitry, a considerable portion of w hith time was j);issed in a state of fierce war, fo- reign invasion, all the miser\' of rej)eatid conscrip- tion-', anl ever\ kind of military violence, from 318 THE VAULT. friends as well as foes, she had but too many oppor- tunities of exercisingher benevolence and of relieving distresses which she herself was made to share on the grand scale. In those dreadful times the rich and the powerful suffer chiefly from the deprivation of their wonted luxuries or comforts ; but the lower orders are often extinguished altogether; and we repeatedly heard of villages, and even w^hole dis- tricts, which were entirely depopulated ; first by the effects of the conscription, which swept away all the young and healthy ; then by the scarcity of food which followed upon the abstraction of the working hands ; and lastly by those wide-spreading pesti- lences which invariably follow the footsteps of famine, especially when urged on by the savage blood-hounds of war. At sunset of that day, in the presence of a great multitude of people, Joseph and I, according to promise, placed the body of our venerable friend in the iron coffin, which, as I have already men- tioned, the Countess had prepared many years be- fore. We took care to rest her head on the bundle of her husband's and son's letters, which I have before described, and at her feet we placed, accord- ing to her desire, a small box containing, I suppose, other relics. When at length it was time to close the lid, I THE VAULT. 319 tlioiij^iit Joseph would have expired on the floor of tiic chapel, as he kissed his mistress's cohl hands, and on his knees intermixed his prayers for her soul, with passionate expressions of his own despair. I was at last oblij^ed to take the keys from his hand, and close the padlocks myself. Nothinj^ could more forcibly prove tlie extensive authority and influence which the worthy old Coun- tess exercised, althou<^h l)edridden, and to all ap- j^earance helpless, than the staj^nant and desolate i.ir \\liich now reigned not only in the Castle, hut over the whole neighbourhood. We, too, began to miss her, and to become fully sensible of our loss : and all her kindness, to us in particular, re- curred v.ith painful force. T do not know how others felt : but for my part, I could not help being sensil)le that I had never been half kind enough or attentive enough to my aged and generous friend, who never for one moment intermitted her solici- tude for my family. I tried in vain to console myself by the reflection, that in all essentials I had undoubtedly contributed to her happiness, or rather t(j her peace of mind and traiKpiillity in her latter (lays, by acceding to her earnest entreaty not to be left to die alone. Yet, after the death of a friend, tliose small neglects of which we are guilty, even towards persons to whom we are most attached — those 3*20 THE VAULT. impatiences of temper — those selfish indulgences, in place of sacrifices to the wishes of the people about us, and a thousand little nameless faults of omission, if not of commission, are apt to rise up before us, and inflict pangs of remorse which ought assuredly to be improved into good and kind words and works towards those who are still preserved to us, and in whose case such remorse mi'^'ht be a thousand times deeper. On the 26 th of March, when the requisite per- mission came from the authorities at Gralz, an ex- press was sent oif to the clergyman of Riegersburg, to know when the funeral could take place, and to request that the family vault might be opened, and got in readiness accordingly. The answer spread dismay throughout the castle, for every mortal with- in its walls knew the late Countess's anxiety to be laid by the side of her husband and son. The Pfarrcr, or parish priest, wrote back word, that the vault was absolutely full, and that as none of the bodies now placed there could possibly be removed, there was no room for that of the Countess ! This dilemma, it may easily be supposed, was very serious, and it too well justified the poor Countess's fears, that there had been foul play some- where. It was our duty, however, to think of a remedy; and we sat up half the night in vain con- THE VAULT, 321 sultation as to uhat was to be done. It was at length ilecidod, on the morninjr of Friday, that Mr 'i'hinnfold, a j^roat friend t)f the Countess's, and not only an athnirahle man of business, but a person of talents, t tVom \ ii'iuia to execute a j)icture, ot the m(j>t gaudy and flaming nature, of their patron saint, which far outshone every other in the old edilicc, 'I'liis worthy, I may mention, is called Saint I'lorian, and it is to him that all good Catholics pr;i\ when a house is on lire. '1 he metrop(;- lilan arti>t, with a haj)py mixture of taste and ge- nius, had rci)reNented this celotial lliggenbottom scatetl on the angle of a cloud, which looked as 322 THE VAULT. hard and sharp as any block of Portland stone, with a garden watering-pot in hand, extinguishing the flames of a burning village ; and the whole being done down (I suppose designedly) to the capacity of the country congregation, was popular accord- ingly. Mr Thinnfeld, therefore, was less surprised than delighted to find that he was received with smiles both by the priest and the people ; and all minor difficulties being at once removed, they repaired to the vault, into which, sure enough, there was not room, as the mason observed, to thrust a trowel. After a little reflection and consultation with the mason, it occurred to Mr Thinnfeld, that although nothing more could possibly be put in, as things stood, there was no reason why as much earth, as equalled in volume the Countess's iron coffin, should not be taken out from below those which were already there. To this the obliging priest readily consented, and every one exclaimed, as on the occa- sion of Columbus and the egg, " How simple ! " To work went the mason with a select committee of Riegersburgers, and v.ith closed doors, that the public might not be off*ended with these doings. The coffins were hoisted up one by one, till the vault, which was very narrow, was cleared. A couple of sturdy grave-diggers then proceeded to ex- THE VAULT. 323 cuvate the ground, and before midnight the floor of the ^•ault was lowered about half a yard. The iii- tru->ivc culbii was then jjlaced at the bottom, while those of the Countess's husband and son were Lruuot many j)leasant views of the procession, as it threaded its way amon;h spoken in a foreign tongue. The crowd in and around the church at Kiegers- burg was so great, that it was not without consi- derable })ushing that we made our way to the little cha})cl, beneath the lloor of which lay the family vault in which the Countess's remains were to be deposited. The sun, which shone brightly into the church, and just reached to this corner, lighted up the whole of that part of the scene in a maimer the most aiumated and even cheerful. Every accessible point, every " coigne of 'vantage" was occupied by fhe peasantry — even the pulpit was crowded — an(l the tops of all the altars held clusters of little grin- ning urchins, in companionship with the winged cherubims and seraphims, in stone, and all mocking, as it were, the grim symbols of death, and of the last olHces of mortality going on below them. Mean while, a grand " Miserere" was sung by a full i)ody of village choristers, in a style, as it struck us, of much greater simplicity and beauty, and cer- tainly of more earnest solemnity, than any of those pompous " falsettos" we had heard a year before in 328 THE VAULT. St Peter's at Rome, in the presence of the Pope and all his cardinals. There occurred some difficulty in lowering the heavy iron coffin into the vault, or rather in placing it in the right situation. In consequence of the smallness of the opening, it was necessary that one end of the coffin should be lowered down by means of ropes before the other, in order that, after its reaching a certain depth, it might be received by the people below, and by them be guided into its right berth. So fai', all went right ; but when the coffin was pushed on one side, and had partially entered the place assigned to it, and the persons who stood above were about to let go their hold of the ropes, the men below called out that their strength was une- qual to sustain the weight, unless those who held the upper end could preserve their grasp of the rings. This, however, it was soon ascertained could not be done ; and as no second set of ropes had been provided, the dilemma was attended with consider- able danger to the men at the mouth of the vault, who must have been severely bruised, if not crushed to death, had those above relinquished their hold of the rings. A pause of some moments occurred, during which, as no one else seemed to know what to do, I ven- tured to take the command, in order to see whether THE V.VILT. 3*29 my luiutical resources mii^lit not he brought into phiy in performing the hist othces for my venerable friend. I ruslied forward, therefore, and catching hold of one of the ropes which sustained the weight of the colhn, and wliich was made fast to its lower end, rove it through a ring or handle at the u])per end, which the people were just about to let go. I pulled this cord smartly through the ring, during which operation the other line, double manned, sup- ported the whole weight. As we had now a rope at each end of the coffin, it was easily and gently lowered into its final resting place. Thus, as it happened, literally as well as figura- tivelv, I complied with the good Countess's entreaty, that I " would not desert her at the last, but remain by her to close her eyes, and lay her poor old shat- tered head in the grave I " 2 E [ 330 ] CHAPTER XXI. THE COUNTESS AND WALTER SCOTT. I HAVE mentioned more than once in the course of this narrative, that some of the most interesting parts of the Countess's conversation related to the period when she and Sir Walter Scott were both young, and when, although she was considerably his senior, they were great friends and companions. At the time I speak of, towards the close of the last century, he was received in the most friendly terms by the family of the celebrated Dugald Stew- art, of which the Countess, then Miss Cranstoun, and elder sister of INIrs Stewart, was a member. This intimacy led Sir Walter, very early in life, to consult Miss Cranstoun about his literary pro- ductions, respecting which it appears that he, M'ith the usual diffidence of genius and powers unexer- cised, felt extremely distrustful. Fortunately he met not only with sympathy and encouragement. THE COUNTESS AND WALTER SCOTT. 331 Imt with solid counsel, from a congenial mind, whose siiiracity penetrated much sooner than the rest of the world through the modest veil which concealed tliose talents destined so soon to command universal attention. There was nothing, however, of a more tender sentiment between them ; and while her interest in him arose entirely from an early appreciation of his ::^reat capacity, and the unrivalled sweetness of his disposition, his thoughts and his feelings were pointed, with her entire approbation, in quite an- other direction. Unfortunately, the lady to whom he was attach- ed discouraged his suit, or, at all events, her family- did : and in his distress he naturally made Miss CVanstoun his confidant, and he found in her both sympathy and assistance. Her co-operation on this occasion, it is true, led eventually to nothing, so far as the immediate object aimed at was concerned ; l)ut it furnished, accidentally, an interesting and perhaps an important incident in the literary history of the humble youth, who, while his generous friend shortly afterwards banished herself, and was lost sight of, speedily rose to be the legitimate monarch of modern literature. About the year 1793, Burger's extraordinary poem of Leonora found its way to Scotland, and it 332 THE COUNTESS AND AVALTER SCOTT. happened that a translation of it was read at Dugald Stewart's^ I think by Mrs Barbauld. Miss Cran- stoun described this strange work to her friend ; the young poet, whose imagination was set on fire by the strange crowd of wild images and novel situations in this singular production, never rested till, by the help of a grammar and dictionary, he contrived to study It in the original ; and she, as usual, en- couraged him to persevere ; and at the end of a few weeks' application to the German language, he had made out the sense, and had himself written a poeti- cal translation of that poem. One morning, at half-past six. Miss Cranstoun was roused by her maid, who said Mr Scott was in the dining-room, and wished to speak with her immediately. She dressed in a great hurry, and hastened down stairs, wondering what he could have to say to her at that early hour. He met her at the door, and holding up his manuscript, eagerly begged her to listen to his poem ! Of course she gave it all attention, and having duly praised it, she sent him away quite happy, after begging permission to retain the poem for a day or two, in order to look it over more carefully. He said she might keep it till he returned from the country, where he was about to proceed on a visit, to the house where the lady to whom he was attached was residing. THE LOUNTKSS VNI) WALTEIt SCOTT. 333 His friendly critic was already aware of this intended visit, and an idea liavin<^ suo;^i)^csted itself to her durinkine, afterwards Lord Kinneder, and contidcd her scheme to him, of whicli he fully ap- proved. The confeilerates then sallied forth to put their plan in train, and having' repaired to Mr Robert .Miller the bookseller, they soon arranged with him to print a few copies of the new translation of " Lenore," one of which was to be thrown off on the finest paj)er, and bound in the most elegant style. In a few days tlie book was ready, and care being taken to despatch it, addressed to Mr Scott, so that it should arrive at what was deemed the most propi- tious moment, it was placed in the Poet's hands, just as the company were assemi)led round the tea- table after dinner. Much curiosity was expressed by the party — the fair ladv inelu-ive— as the splendid little volume gra- dually esca])ed from its folds, and (lisi)layed itself to the astonislied eyes of the author who, for tlie first time, saw himself in print — and who, all unconscious of tlie glories which awaited him, had possibly never dreamed of aj)pearing in such a dress. Concealment was out of the question, and he was ool THE COUNTESS AND WALTER SCOTT. called upon hy the unanimous acclamation of the party, to read the poem, of which, as it happened, none of them had ever heard even the name. Those who have enjoyed the surpassing delight of hearing Sir Walter Scott read poetry, will easily understand the effect which this recitation of his own earliest printed work, under the excitement of such a moment, must have produced. Indeed, the Only matter of astonishment is, how any simple maiden's heart could have resisted this first wave of the great magician's wand — destined so soon to enchant all mankind ! But so it was ; and the only lasting effect of this little plot was to Increase the intimacy between the young author and his friendlj'' critic. It may easily be supposed that she was now called upon more fre- quently than ever to pronounce her judgment upon a vast variety of productions, drawn from that boundless storehouse of poetical conceptions, which even then was overflowing. The Countess's anecdotes relating to this period were without number ; and I bitterly regretted, when it was too late, that I had not commenced at once, making- memoranda of what she told us. It was indeed quite clear to us, that this accomplished and highly gifted lady, was the first person who not merely encouraged him to persevere, but actually rUV. COUNTESS AND UALTEIl SCOTT. 335 tllrected and chastised those incipient efforts which, when duly matured, and rendered confident by in- dependent exercise, and repeated, though cautious trials, burst forth at last from all control, and gave undisputed law to the whole world of letters. That I am not singular in this opinion, as to the important share which the Countess Purgstall took in the formation of Sir Walter Scott's.charaetcr, I am hap})y to have it in my power to establish, on the best possible authority — I mean that of Mr Lockhart, whose biography of his great father-in- law the public are looking for with so much well- grounded eagerness. The following is an extract from a letter which I received from that gentleman during the winter I >pent at the Countess's Castle of Hainfeld :— - " If, when you read this, you be still in the Chateau of Sir Walter's old and dear friend the Countess Purgstall, pray ask her whether she can give me copies of letters from Sir Walter at the period of their intimacy. He had carefully pre- served, nay, bound up hers : and if I had the other part of the correspondence, many points now dark would be cleared up. It is obvious that Miss Cran- stoun had much influence on the formation of his tastes and manners, and that she was, in short, t/w woman who fir>t took him in hand, and did for him 336 THE COUNTESS AND WALTER SCOTT. the sort of thing, which, until some fair hand does for us, we are all bears ! " I should delight in her reminiscences of the suppers in Frederick Street, that I have so often heard him speak of. " Finally, pray ask the Griifinn whether she ever received a long and beautiful letter from Sir Walter, acknowledging the receipt of a book which was, I conclude, the same I once saw elsewhere, viz. her Denkmahl.* I lately found such a letter unsigned and unaddressed, but charming. I think it possible that he had forgotten it, and that the document now before me is therefore her Ladyship's. If so, I shall have the pleasure of forwarding it as soon as I am informed of the fact." The poor Countess was much agitated when I read her this letter ; she had not received any answer from Sir Walter Scott to the communication she sent along with her melancholy book, the Denkmahl alluded to — and she had felt the keenest disappoint- ment at his fancied neglect of her at a moment when she was almost overwhelmed by domestic sorrow, and when such a letter as he alone could write would • This is a work in German which the Countess had pub- lished, giving an account of her husband and son. Denkmahl means monument. IHE cot NTF.SS AND WALTER SCOTT. 337 have proved — if any thinj^ on earth coukl — a conso- lation to her broken heart. Siie was in a corresponding degree dehghted, therefore, and she expressed herself beyond measure happy to lienr that her earliest friend, in whom she had so entirely trusted, had not indeed deserted her. She made me Write instantly to Mr Lockhart, to beLC liiut this precious paper which Sir Walter had written, but mislaid, should be immediately des- patched to her. It must ever be a source of regret, that the excel- lent old lady did not live to read the letter in ques- tion, though it was forwarded by Mr Lockhart, as desired. This beautiful and feeling composition, every w ord of which would have enchanted her, poor woman, never reached her hands. It was probably tamj)ered with by some of the post offices, through which it had to thread its way, across the Continent, to the remote corner of Lower St vria, in which the per- son for whom it was composed had banished herself. \Mth respect to the other letters of Sir Walter •Scott, she had a melancholy account to give. She and her late husband, the Count Purgstall, had for many years busied themselves in collecting the original letters of the most eminent authors in Ger- many, with most of whom, indeed, they were in iiabits of familiar correspondence. These letters 2 r 338 THE COUNTESS AND WALTER SCOTT. were carefully arranged, and placed apart in a secret drawer of a cabinet in the old library, and were con- sidered in perfect security. At the disastrous period of the poor Countess's history, when her son died, and the estates were laid claim to by a whole host of claimants as heirs-at-law, the property, including the house and all it contained, were put, as usual in Austria, under the charge of the courts of law at Gratz, until the rightful owner could establish his claim. This wise and salutary regulation is generally attended with the best effects, in securing the eventual course of justice, and preserving the property uninjured, in cases of disputed succession. And had the Countess only placed the letters in question in the hands of the Commissioners appoint- ed to take an account of the property, they would no doubt have all been preserved. But, in the agi- tation and grief of that dreadful period, when she was threatened with absolute ruin — and when every thing on earth that was dear to her had been re- moved from her — and when she was overwhelmed with technical business, she entirely forgot these precious documents, along with which were all Sir Walter Scott's letters. •, Nor did she ever think of them, till long afterwards, when the irritating law- suits by which she was harassed were at an end, and she was allowed to sit down in peace — or in I HE CdlNTESS AND UALTKll SCOTT. .'339 >nvh peace as the world could then supply to her liruised spirit — on the small remnant of the immense family estates of the recently obliterated family of the Purjj-stalls. Ilavinyf occasion to refer to a letter from the i>;reat Schiller to her husband — she applied iier master-key to the secret drawer, and lo ! it was empty ! All the papers it contained had been stolen, iruludint;- every scrap of Sir Walter Scott's writintr. J his provoking- circumstance, which left her witiiout one line under the hand of her old friend, made her even more anxious than she would other- wise have been, to possess the precious letter he had written her, and which had been found amongst his j)apers after his death. Not long before she expired, she expressed a hope that it mi<^ht still arrive in time to meet her eyes l)efore they were closed for ever, lint it came not — and it is now, I fear, ir- recoverably lost. I'ortunately Mr Lockhart took the precaution to make a coj)\ betore he trusted such a paper to the dangerous iiandlini;- of the continental post-otHces ; and 1 liave oi)tained my generous friend's permission to make use of this letter in illus- tration (>i the character of tlu' late Countess. Its jteru^al will, I am >un', fully bear out all I have said in her favour— for it is not in such terms of con- fidence that Sir Walter would have written, luuler any feeling short of the well-grounded frienilsliip ot a whole lite. •340 THE COUNTESS AND WALTER SCOTT. Before giving this beautiful and interesting letter, however, it may not be out of place to mention a curious fact in the history of the Countess, his early friend, which, I think, we established com- pletely. From the accounts which she gave of her own independence of character and conduct, and the peculiarity of her ways, especially of her being always on horseback, and always speaking her mind — with other points bordering on eccentricity, which she said she could well afford to laugh at in her old age, we very early conceived the idea that she might possibly have been the person from whom Sir Walter drew his bold and truly original character of Die Vernon ; and when our suspicions were once aroused, we found confirmations at every turn. Amongst other things, it seemed very odd and unaccountable, that of all the works of Sir Walter Scott, the only one she had not seen was Rob Roy ; and upon questioning her as to the cause of this, she mentioned that it was the only one which he had not sent her. Now, on the supposition that the heroine was drawn from her, this is readily to be understood — but scarcely other- wise. Of course, we lost no time in bringing this novel before her, and while we read it to her, we carefully watched the effects it produced. She was much more deeply interested with the story than she had TV)!' COl NTKSS AND WAI.IKR nCOIT. 341 i)cen witli tluit of any of the other novels. She took particular interest in the descriptions of the scenery ; and with all that part which lies in Cum- berland she seemed perfectly familiar ; and as we read on, she repeatedly exclaimed — " Oh, I know that scene — I remember describing it myself to Sir Walter Scott. That anecdote he had from me — I know the man that character is taken from," and so on, throuirh the greater part of the book. But, what was most remarkable, she never once made an observation on the character or proceedings of Die \ ernon. So completely, indeed, were we persuaded, from all the circumstances, that she herself was con- scious of the likeness, that we felt afraid to take the liberty of speaking to her directly upon the subject. Many times, however, we dropped hints, and gave her openings, but though she was (piite communicative on every other point, she was resolutely silent upon tiiis. And what made her reserve the more remark- able was, that when any other of Sir Walter's novels was read to her, she let not a single character pass without the minutest scrutiny — and very often stopped us to relate other characteristic anecdotes ot the persons mentioned, and w hich she said she knew belonged to the same parties from which he had made his sketches. l"'or the rest, I shall only add, that I cannot con- 342 THE COUNTESS AND WALTER SCOTT. ceive any thing more exactly like what we may suppose Die Vernon to have become in her old age, than was our excellent friend Madame Purgstall at seventy-eight. Nearly forty years of expatriation, during scenes of war, pestilence, and famine, with the accompaniment of military despotism and civil tyran- ny, had in no material degree damped the generous spirit, or tarnished the masculine understanding, which early won the future Great Unknown's con- fidence and regard ; and which, in the meridian of his power and fame, he afterwards traced in one of his most original and striking characters. The letter which Sir Walter Scott wrote to the Countess is as follows, and I think it will be admit- ted, that a more enviable Denkmahl, or monument, can hardly be conceived, than is contained in these simple lines, the offspring of a friendship, from which nearly a quarter of a century of separation had taken none of its original warmth : — " 18-iO. "My Dear and much-valued Friend, " You cannot imagine how much I was interest- ed and affected by receiving your token of your kind recollection, after the interval of so many years. Your brother Henry breakfasted with me yester- Tin: ( oi N te.ns and WAi/rnit scon. ;}43 'lay, uiul t^ave me the letter aiul the i)Ook, whieii -«erve(i me as a matter of much mehmcholy retieetion tor munv hours. -• Hardly any thing makes tiie mind recoil so mueii upon itself, as the beintro!i(rly recalleil to times long passed, and that i»y the voice of one whom Me have so much loved and ri's])t'cted. Do not think I have ever forgotten you, or the many happy days I passed in Frederick Street, in »()ciery which fate has separated so far, and for so ^tance and imperfect communication had left nio cither entirely ignorant, or had transmitted onlv inaccurate information. •• Alas! my dear friend, what can the utmost etlorrs of friendship oti'er you, beyond the >vmpathy '.vhieli. however sincere, must sound liki- an I'mpty lonipliment in the ear of affliction, (iod knows with what willingness I would uiulertake any thing uhieii might afford you the melancholy consolation of knowing how much your old and early tricnd in- terosrs himself in the sad event which has no (ieej)ly wounded vour jieace of mind. The versi's, there- tore, which conclude this letter, must tiot t)e weighed .iccording to their intrinsic value, for the mon- in- 344 THE COUNTESS AND WALTER SCOTT. adequate they are to express the feelings they would fain convey, the more they show the author's anxious wish to do what may be grateful to you. " In truth, I have long given up poetry. I have had my day with the public ; and being no great believer in poetical immortality, I was very well pleased to rise a winner, without continuing the game, till I was beggared of any credit I had ac- quired. Besides, I felt the prudence of giving way before the more forcible and powerful genius of Byron. If I were either greedy, or jealous of poe- tical fame — and both are strangers to my nature — I might comfort myself with the thought, that I would hesitate to strip myself to the contest so fearlessly as Byron does ; or to command the won- der and terror of the public, by exhibiting, in my own person, the sublime attitude of the dying gla- diator. But with the old frankness of twenty years since, I will fairly own, that this same delicacy of mine may arise more from conscious want of vigour and inferiority, than from a delicate dislike to the nature of the conflict. At any rate, there is a time for every thing, and without swearing oaths to it, I think my time for poetry has gone by. " My health suffered horridly last year, I think from over labour and excitation ; and though it is now apparently restored to its usual tone, yet during THE COUNTKSS AN!) WAl/rEll SCOTV. 34 tlie loiifr aiul painful (llsordcr (sj)asins in the sto- mach), and the fri>rhtful process of cure, l)y a pro- long^ed use of calomel, I learned that my frame was made of flesh, and not of iron, a conviction which I will long keep in remembrance, and avoid any occu- pation so laborious and ai^itating, as poetry must be, to be worth any thintr. " In this humour, I often think of passing a few weeks on the continent — a summer vacation if I can — and of course my attraction to (iratz would be very strong. I fear this is tlie oidy chance of our meeting in this worhl, we, who once saw each other daily I For I understand from (ieorge and Henry, that there is little chance of your coming here. Antl when I look around me, and consider how many changes you will see in feature, form, and fashion, amongst all you knew and loved ; and how much, no sudden s(|uall, or violent tempest, but tlie slow and gradual progress of life's long voyage, has severed all the gallant fellowships whom you left spreading their sails to the morning breeze, I really am not sure that you would have much pleasure. '' J'he gay and wild romance of life is over with all of us. The real, dull, and stern history of humanity has made a far greater progress over our heads ; and age, dark and unlovely, has laid his 346 THE COUNTESS AND WALTER SCOTT. crutch over the stoutest fellow's shoulders. One thing your old society may boast, that they have all run their course with honour, and almost all with distinction ; and the brother suppers of Fre- derick Street have certainly made a very considerable figure in the world, as was to be expected, from her talents under whose auspices they were assembled. " One of the most pleasant sights which you would see in Scotland, as it now stands, would be your brother George in possession of the most beau- tiful and romantic place in Clydesdale — Corehouse. I have promised often to go out with him, and assist him with my deep experience as a planter and landscape gardener. I promise you my oaks will outlast my laurels ; and I pique myself more upoii my compositions for manure than on any other com- positions whatsoever to which I was ever accessary. But so much does business of one sort or other engage vis both, that we never have been able to fix a time which suited us both ; and with the utmost wish to make out the party, perhaps we never may. " This is a melancholy letter, but it is chiefiy so from the sad tone of yours — who have had such real disasters to lament — while mine is only tlie humorous sadness, which a retrospect on human life is sure to produce on the most prosperous. For my own course of life, I have only to be a-^hamed THE COUNTESS AND WALTER SCOTT. 347 of its prosperity, and afraid of its termination ; for I have little reason, arguing on the doctrine of chances, to hope that the same good fortune will attend me for ever. I have had an affectionate and promising family, many friends, few unfriends, and, I think, no enemies — and more of fame and for- tune than mere literature ever procured for a man before. " I dwell among my own people, and have many wiiosc hajipiness is dependent on me, and which 1 'itudy to the best of my power. I trust my temper, which you know is by nature good and easy, has not ])een spoiled by flattery or prosperity ; and therefore I have escaped entirely that irritability of disposition which I think is planted, like the slave in tlie poet's chariot, to prevent his enjoying his triumph. •' Should things, therefore, change with me -and in these times, or indeed in any times, such change is to l)e apprehended — I trust I shall be able to sur- render these adventitious advantages, as I would my upper dress, as something extremely comfortable, but which I can make shift to do without." The verses al)0ve alluded to by Sir Walter, are no where to be found, and as they aj)pear never to havi- been written, it was probably owing to this circum- 348 THE COUNTESS AND WALTER SCOTT. Stance that the letter was not immediately despatched to his friend the Countess. He may have kept the sheet open in readiness for a moment of inspiration — which moment never arrived — and in the mean time, both the letter itself, and the projected verses, may have altogether escaped his memory. Nor is this extraordinary, when we consider the vast crowd of occupations which were then gathering fast round him, and insensibly preparing that formidaljle cata- strophe which erelong totally overwhelmed his for- tunes. This great and good man — for he was not less good than he was great — seems indeed to have pre- pared himself for the possibility of such a reverse, by contemplating the contingency with a conscious- ness of moral fortitude, which it is pleasing and very instructive to know, never for one instant forsook him when the season of adversity arrived. FINIS. tDINBUROU: PBINTED BY BAIXANTVNE ANDCO.i PAIXb^NOKi O ^' / /i3 THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW. (J^^^^ \%^ REC'DYRL JAN 03 2003 -I u«, at ',r .'.i. . BHA«' • - AA 000 161023 7 ?H^^^SI'^%^^