They were expecting every day in Pestitz the return of the German
gentleman M. de Bouverot, who had been in Haarhaar, putting the last
retouching hand to the almost sketched marriage contract between Luigi
and a Haarhaar princess, Isabella. Augusti was not partial to him, and
even said Bouverot had no _honnêteté_;[72] and related the following,
but with the soft irony of a man of the world:
Some years before, Bouverot had been sent by the court of Haarhaar[73]
to the Pope at Rome, in relation to certain canonical difficulties;
just at the time when Luigi also made the princely procession to Rome,
together with his Romish indictions.[74] Now Haarhaar, which in truth
already went _chapeau-bas_ with the princely hat of Hohenfliess, and had
every possible officinal prospect of wearing it, would not, for this
very reason, present the appearance of looking with cold eyes on the
extinction of the race of Hohenfliess, the more, as the very male
support of the line, Luigi, even in his first years, was not a hero of
any great nervous significance. Nay, it must needs be a matter of some
consequence to the court of Haarhaar that the good thin autumn-flowerage
should return, if possible, _otherwise_ than it went out; and even on
such grounds it privily instructed the German gentleman to
rule and watch over all his pleasures and pains as _maître de
plaisirs_,--especially with _maîtresses de plaisirs_,--in such a manner
as to give perfect satisfaction in this respect. Meanwhile, if our
princely abiturient[75] had started pure as a fœtus, unhappily he was
brought back ground down to a _punctum saliens_, especially as, by
sundry caprioles and other leaps through the hoop of pleasure, he was
spoiled for the leap into the knight's saddle. It may be possible that
the German gentleman was too sanguine in his expectations of the
rejuvenescence of the Prince; yes, he may have imitated the
youth-restoring, wondrous essence of the Marquis d'Aymar,[76] whereby an
innocent old lady, who anointed herself with the elixir more than her
years required, was, through the excessive renovation, reduced to a
little child. In short, by this crusade under the Knight of the Cross,
Bouverot, the princely seat of Hohenfliess--as is often the consequence
of crusades--will be left open at the proper time, and Haarhaar will
seat itself thereon.
I confess reluctantly that Albano, in the beginning,--because, with all
his sharp-sightedness, his purity was quite as great,--comprehended the
fact only confusedly; but when he did get the idea, it was to him
_pharmaceutic_ manna, as it was to Schoppe _Israelitish_. "The Knight of
the Cross," said the latter, "beareth not his cross in vain,--it does
him quite as much service as one daubed on the houses in Italy does to
them: not a soul may do on either of them what even in Rome may be done
before every antechamber."
Not long after that our three friends were going out into the street
just at the hour when the noisy carriages rolled along to tea and play,
when a litter was carried by before them with the seat _backward_,
whereupon, however, a man was sitting. "Holy Father!" cried Schoppe, "in
there sits, bodily, Cephisio, from Rome, who must sometime or other give
me a sound drubbing."--"Softly, softly!" said Augusti, "that is the
German gentleman; Cephisio is his Arcadian name."[77]--"Well, I rejoice
so much the more that I once in my life had a hearty, downright set-to
with the red-nose," said he, turning round and accompanying the litter,
with his arms thrust under it, for almost ten paces, in order to get a
better view of the caged bird, before the latter snatched-to the
curtains. Albano caught a glimpse within the litter, as it passed
swiftly along, only of a sharp eye drawn like a dagger, and a
red-glowing nose-bud.
Schoppe came back and related the transactions in Rome. He said,
against all mortal sinners, blood-guilty men, and imps of iniquity he
bore no such bitter and grim wrath as against professional bankers,
_croupiers_,[78] and _Grecs_; if he had a canker-worm-iron wherewith he
might scrape away this vermin from the earth, or a cochineal-mill
wherewith he might grind them to powder, he would do it most cordially.
"O heavens!" he then broke out, "had I in fact my foot just stretched
out over the curling, coiling worm-stalk (and though that foot had the
gout in it), I would gladly dash it down upon them, and tread out the
vile filth." But what he could, he did. Being his own travelling
servant, and a decoy-spider, darting to and fro through all Europe, he
had full often the pleasure of getting these faro-leaf-caterpillars and
leaf-sappers under his thumb,--of becoming their pretended
associate,--learning their tactics,--and then rolling some fire-wheel or
other into their hissing snakes'-hole. I am not intimately instructed
whether it is known in Leipsic who the ringleader was that, a short time
since, at the fair, played a mock-police with mimic-constables, and
broke up a bank;--at least the bankers were altogether out on the
subject, because they were expecting the real police the next day, and
were begging for some indulgences and _il_legal-benefits; but I am in a
condition here to name the thief-catcher: it was Schoppe. The spoils he
applied mostly to the purpose of running new mines under the
faro-tables.
With Cephisio he had played his cards otherwise. He stepped up before
his bank, and looked on for some minutes, and at last presented a card
with a shield-louis-d'or. It won, and he showed behind the card a long
roll of louis. Bouverot would not pay this roll. "He had not seen
anything," he said. "What is your _croupier_ sitting there for, then?"
said Schoppe, and pronounced them swindlers, if they did not pay. To
escape greater damage, they paid him his winnings. He took the money
coldly, and departed, with these words to the Pointeurs: "Gentlemen, I
assure you, you are playing here with finished cheats; but they have
paid me only because I knew them." Amidst the increasing stiffness and
paleness of the partners he turned, and slowly, with his
broad-shouldered, compact figure, and his knotty cudgel, walked away
unscathed.
Augusti wished from his heart--for the persecution's sake--that Bouverot
might not know the Librarian again. They found at home an invitation
from the Minister to tea and supper. "The poor daughter!" said Augusti;
"for the sake of this Bouverot, the half-blind one must go to-morrow to
the table." Meanwhile, our youth will then surely see her again at last,
and only a spring-day separates him from the dearest object! If Augusti
is right, then my observation fits in here, that a good sound villain is
always the motive-pike which sets the still, quaker-like carp-tribe in
the pond to swimming; the hidden pock-matter, which brings cold children
at once to life.