So the company of adventurers traveled through the new, strange, lovely
country, feasting and making merry, spending the Marshal’s money
royally; and of such queer warp is the cloth of Human Nature woven,
the grotesque homage of Köhler and von Steyregg ceased to be quite
intolerable in the estimation of Dunoisse.
When the inns and posting-houses began to display the arms of the von
Widinitz, the coroneted casque _argent_, with its _panache_ surmounted
by the heron, _overt_, _sable_, Köhler, being nimbler of the pair,
leaped out of the brown landau, climbed the steps of the green chariot,
and offered homage to the pretender to the feudal dignities.
“Now your Serene Highness is upon your own territory,” said he, and
would have grabbed Dunoisse’s hand to kiss, but that its owner put
it in his pocket. Von Steyregg was standing up in the vehicle that
followed, waving a huge, dingy silk handkerchief, and shedding tears
of loyal enthusiasm from both eyes.
“How Monsieur the Baron loves His Serene Highness!” said Henriette’s
maid to her mistress at hairbrushing time that night. “Fancy, Madame,
he rocked him in his arms as an infant, and taught him to ride his
little horse. Monseigneur would go nowhere without his good M. von
Steyregg, who plunged into a boiling torrent (into which Monseigneur’s
nurse had accidentally dropped him) and saved him at the risk of life.
It is incredible, such devotion! It makes one weep to hear Monsieur the
Baron talk!”
And the maid made good her words with a snuffle or two; and the
mistress even wept a little in sympathy. Tears came at call to those
beautiful eyes of Henriette’s.
Thus, daily drawing nearer to the scene of destined humiliation and
well-earned disgrace, the green chariot and the brown landau rolled
on, until at high noon upon the Vigil of the Assumption, after a three
hours’ drive through ancient oak and beech-forests, when a hundred
unseen church-bells were tripling the Angelus, the gray walls and gates
of the towers of Widinitz rose before the travelers, venerable in their
setting of ivy only less ancient, whose rugged stems grew thick as the
body of a man.
It was a city in a forest, with the tops of more trees waving over
the ivied walls of it. Oak and beech followed the chariot and the
landau to the drawbridge, fell back as the vehicles crunched over the
gravel-covered timbers, started up under the gateway, and marched
with them through the streets that were bordered with runnels of
clear water. Signs of preparation for the morrow’s solemnities were
not lacking. Men leading donkeys burdened with panniers of white or
reddish-colored sand, were distributing this medium in astonishing
patterns over the principal thoroughfares. Others, who followed, were
strewing them with pine-branches and the glossy leaves of laurel and
bay. Lamps, as yet unlighted, twinkled among the boughs. Venetian masts
of the Bavarian colors supported garlands of many-colored streamers.
The Market Place was a blaze of color, with temporary altars erected
at the opening of every street. And nearly every householder, with
his family and servants, was engaged in decorating his dwelling with
carpets, bunting, and wreaths. Said von Steyregg, as he tumbled out of
the brown landau, and ran with servile hurry and flapping coat-tails,
to open the door of the green chariot when it finally stopped under the
sign of “The Three Crown” inn: “One would think, Highness, that the
news of your intended visit had reached Widinitz before you.” His tear
hung trembling upon his eyelid as, with an egregious affectation of
respect and reverence, he assisted his principal to descend.
“It is in honor of Our Lady’s Feast to-morrow, all that you see,”
explained the landlord, a short man in claret-colored kersey
knee-breeches, blue yarn stockings, snowy shirt-sleeves, and spotless
apron, who had come out to receive the strange guests. He possessed
a suite of private rooms, worthy of persons of such distinction. He
pointed out one or two of the lions of Widinitz before he ushered them
in--the Schloss, a square building of red granite with pepper-box
towers, topping a green hill that breasted up upon the northern side
of the Market-Place. Another steeper hill rose upon the southern side
of the great white square that was spangled with silver, dancing
fountains; and the towers and roofs and steeples of the city proper
covered this like a fungus-growth. The ancient Gothic pile of the
Cathedral crowned the summit; the smaller, fortress-like building
adjoining, the host pointed out as the Archbishop’s Palace, an
episcopal habitation, reared on the foundations of what had been a
Roman camp.
“Sprung, your Excellencies, or our most learned Professors lie,”
explained the voluble landlord, “from the ruins of a temple where the
Old Slavonians used to sacrifice white cocks and new mead to Svantovid,
their god of War. God or no god, the gentleman had a sufficiently queer
name, as your Excellencies will agree; and as to white cocks, the broth
of one is--according to the old nurse-women of our principality--a
certain remedy for tetters. Heathen they were that drank sickly mead in
preference to sound wine!--but thanks be to Heaven and St. Procopius,
who converted them, we that are come down from those old sinners know
better to-day; and the vineyards of the Wid yield a liquor that has no
equal in Bavaria.”
And the landlord proudly pointed to a third hill that cropped up
westwards; at the foot of which eminence a jade-green trout-river,
spanned by three bridges of white marble, rushed foaming between rocky
banks that were covered with vines, laden now with the glowing purple
clusters from which an excellent red wine was made by the vine-growers
of the principality.
Flasks of this sterling vintage figured upon the guest-table of the Inn
of “The Three Crowns,” when the newly-arrived travelers sat down to
dine, the occupants of the green chariot being served in their private
apartment: the Marshal’s agents, for humility or for the sake of freer
elbow-play than is licensed by strict good manners, preferring to
eat at the common ordinary, spread in the coffee-room, together with
Madame’s maid and the Colonel’s man.
Here, down both sides of a long table, were ranged perhaps a score of
decent citizens of the sterner sex, indicating the nature of their
several professions, trades, and occupations, in the fashion of their
attire, as was the custom then; and engaged in discussing what, for the
ninety-nine per cent. of Catholics among the company, was the single
meal of the fasting-day.
Judge, then, how frigidly received by the faithful were Steyregg’s
Gargantuan praises of the fish, flesh, fowl, and pastry which were
set before himself and his partner, and of which both ate copiously,
washing down their meal with plentiful libations of the juice of the
local vine.
The pickled sturgeon with mushrooms and cucumbers, to which Madame’s
tirewoman discreetly restricted herself, proved a mere whet to the
gross Baron’s huge appetite. Half a ham and the greater moiety of a
pasty of eggs and capons, hurled to the ravening wolf concealed behind
his dingy shirt-bosom, left him with a niche quite available for
tartlets, and a chink remaining for cream-cheese.
He said at length, piling a block of this delicacy on a rusk, bolting
the mouthful, and sending a generous draught of the strong red wine
hissing on the heels of it:
“Now, having fed, I may say my _Nunc Dimittis_. After such a meal”--he
produced and proceeded to use a battered silver toothpick--“I feel
myself the equal of Prince, Regent, or Archbishop, I care not which!”
A clean-shaven, fresh-faced, gray-haired citizen, clad in a long-tailed
coat and buckled knee-breeches of speckless gray-blue broadcloth, with
a starched and snowy shirt-frill jutting from his bosom and rasping his
triple chin, looked up from his dish of fricasseed eggs at this boast
of von Steyregg’s and said, a trifle sourly:
“The late Prince, sir, being with the departed, presumably has done
with eating and drinking, although our Regent, being of the Lutheran
persuasion, is at liberty to feed as freely upon the Vigil of the
Assumption, as upon all other prescribed fasting-days.... But of his
Lordship, the Archbishop, I dare to say that like any other respectable
religious, he is, with his clergy, in strict retreat at this moment;
and if anything beyond pulse--or dry bread and water--have passed his
lips to-day, I will undertake to eat this book of mine!”
He indicated, amidst some tokens of amusement manifested by other
abstainers at the table, a Missal that was propped up against the
cruet at his side; then wiped his lips, threw off a glass of water,
whisked the napkin-end from the bosom of his spotless waistcoat, and
beckoned the waiter, asking what was to pay? The man named fifty
pfennigs, the client threw down a mark and asked for change. But before
the base metal could be transferred from apron-pouch to pocket, von
Steyregg, completely deserted by his guardian Angel, tipped the wink to
Köhler--who was diligently cramming plum-pie with whipped cream--and
rose up, stretching out an immense protesting, mottled hand. His tear
hung in his eye, his strawberry nose and flabby mouth quivered with
emotion:
“Take up that coin, sir, I beg of you! Nothing is to pay, for you,
or any other citizen of Widinitz who occupies a chair at this board
together with my companion and myself on this auspicious day. You have
told me that your Prince is no more; I say to you that, being dead,
he cries from the tomb--‘_Resurgam!_’ For in an heir of his blood and
name he shall live again; the youthful phœnix but waits the signal to
emerge full-fledged from the parental pyre of flaming spices.... What?
Do you doubt! O! man of tepid faith, I will prove it you! His Serene
Highness is, at this moment, with Her Excellency, deigning to partake
of refreshment in the private room overhead!”
“_Wie? Was?_” ejaculated the tradesman, staring at von Steyregg with
bulging eyes, as the big fist banged the table, and the cutlery and
glasses danced about, while the fifty pfennigs change leaped from the
plate held by the startled servitor, and ran into a corner and hid as
cleverly as little coins can. “_Ach so!_” the astonished man added,
bringing down his eyebrows with some difficulty. “What you tell us is
very surprising, if it be true!”
“And all tales are not true!” put in the oracular barber, who had been
polishing off a plate of pickled sturgeon; while von Steyregg held
forth.
“Decidedly,” added a bookbinder, who was lingering over a bowl of
cabbage-soup and black bread, “one is wise not to believe everything
one hears.”
“My friends, I state the fact, upon the honor of a Magyar nobleman!”
von Steyregg asseverated. He appealed to Köhler, who replied:
“Undoubtedly,” and went on munching, looking sharply this way and that
out of his round brown twinkling rat’s eyes. “You hear the eloquent
testimony of my associate,” the self-styled Baron went on. “You see
these highly-respectable persons,” he pointed with a flourish to the
abashed valet and the blushing maid, “who in their varying capacities
have the honor to serve His Serene Highness the Prince-Aspirant of
Widinitz,--traveling _incognito_ under the style and cognomen of
Colonel von Widinitz-Dunoisse,--and the noble and lovely lady”--a cough
momentarily checked the flood of the Steyreggian eloquence, and then it
rolled turbidly on again--“whom I mentioned just now. They are here,
as I have said, partaking, after the fatigues of their journey, of
marinaded trout, ragout of veal, salmi of grouse, and _quelquechoses_.
Your privileged eyes will behold them presently, when they descend
to distinguish your boulevards and promenades by taking the air upon
them.... To-morrow, when the Procession of the Feast takes place--in
preparation for which anniversary your streets are even now being
strewn with pine-branches and oak-leaves, your public and private
buildings adorned with banners and hung with lamps--your maidens are
twining garlands, your infants of both sexes learning hymns--to-morrow
all Widinitz will behold its hereditary Sovereign participating in the
solemnity; and draw, I trust, parallel between Gothic intolerance--I
name no names!--and noble, princely piety! Excuse me, my good sirs,”
the Baron added, and ostentatiously wiped his lachrymose eye, “I am not
easily moved to emotion, but the inward chords cannot but respond to
the conception of a spectacle so poignant and so memorable. You must
pardon me this single tear!”
A murmur of ambiguous meaning traveled round the table. The plump
tradesman whom von Steyregg had first addressed pushed back his chair
and rose, picked up his Missal, tucked it under his arm, took his soft
felt hat and thick, tasseled walking-cane from the waiter’s hands; and
then said, turning to the Magyar nobleman:
“_Würdig Herr_, you have paid for my dinner, and I am bound to be civil
to you. But this is a Catholic State all said and done; the Lutherans
are the peppercorns sprinkled through the salad, and if any other man
than you had told me that this gentleman could take part in Our Lady’s
Procession, having filled his belly full of fish, flesh, and fowl upon
the Eve of the Feast, I should have called him a liar! knowing that no
person is permitted to take part in the solemnity who is not in a state
of grace. By that is understood fasting, or at least abstinence, upon
the Vigil, with confession, absolution, penance duly discharged, and
Communion crowning all; added, a proper spirit of devotion to the most
chaste Mother of God, Who, let me tell you! is honored in this State.
I might add that the recommendation of a priest is usually required,
and here in Widinitz the sanction of his Lordship the Archbishop. But
perhaps your principal has a dispensation which releases him from these
trifling obligations?”
Teeth showed, or bits of German boxwood strung on silver wires; or
gums that lacked even these substitutes, in the faces that were set
about the table. The Pagan Steyregg, flustered by wine and confused by
theological terminology, rushed upon his fate. Of course, he declared,
his principal had a dispensation and Madame also.... Every member of
the party was furnished with the requisite in case of need.... It was
not customary for persons moving in exalted social spheres to travel
without, he begged leave to inform the company. Whose entertainment was
to be charged, he emphatically insisted, upon His Serene Highness’s
bill.
The table was vacated, the room emptied without any special
demonstration of gratitude on the part of those who had participated
in His Highness’s bounty. The guests dispersed, to tell their wives or
housekeepers, or to forget to do so, not one remaining save the portly
citizen with the finely-starched shirt-frill. He said, once safely
outside the coffee-room door, pausing to offer his snuff-box to the
landlord, whom he encountered on his way from the cellar, bearing a
flask of Benedictine and a bottle of special Kirschwasser:
“You have queer guests upstairs, or I have been listening to a lunatic
within there!”
The speaker, dusting the pungent brown powder from a first finger
and thumb, pointed the indicatory digit in the direction of the
coffee-room. The landlord said, holding the Kirsch between his eye and
the light:
“Heretics, who come to witness our procession of The Assumption as
they might visit a theater-play. Well! one can only pray for their
conversion, and charge their impiety among the extras on the bill.”
His expression portended a total of appalling magnitude. He added:
“They give the surnames of von Widinitz-Dunoisse. He does, that is! And
we have learned enough since His late Serene Highness was gathered to
his fathers to know what rascally impudence tacks the two together.”
The citizen said, putting away his snuff-box, and flicking some of the
brown grains from his shirt-frill:
“His secretary, steward, pimp, or parasite--whatever the bigger
of the two rogues in there”--he signed with his chin towards
the coffee-room--“may be to your man upstairs, styles him the
Prince-Aspirant, Serene Highness, and what-not. One would say, to hear
the braggart, that this son of Napoleon’s old marauder had the King
of Bavaria, the Federative Council, and the General Assembly at his
back!” He added: “As for the lady who accompanies him, she is styled
Excellency. One can only hope she is his wife?”
“_Meinherr_, not so. Upon this point I may pronounce authoritatively.”
The landlord of “The Three Crowns” looked extremely wise. “Married Her
Excellency may be; that is extremely probable!... But it is not to the
fellow who will pay for this!”
“_Ach, ach!_” ejaculated the sleek citizen, shaking his scandalized
head, “this is truly deplorable!” He added, knowing an instant’s doubt
of the intuition of the innkeeper: “But how are you sure? May you not
mistake?”
“Because,” said the host, whose chatter and round vacant face had
beguiled Henriette into believing him a simple child of Nature,
“because the _Herr_ Colonel (who for all his fine figure and good looks
is a mere _Duselfritz_), because the Colonel--when Madame holds up her
little finger--obeys without questioning--that is why I am sure! The
legal partner of a man’s bosom may nag or cajole him; she does not
issue orders or commands. It is the mistress, not the wife, who gives
herself such masterful airs. Again, my _Frau_ tells me that Madame’s
nightcaps are of real Valenciennes, with little moss-rosebuds set
inside the frills; and, says my dear one--no respectable married woman
would, for a mere husband, thus bedeck----”
“Prut--prut! it would be well, my good friend,” interrupted the
respectable tradesman hastily, “to remember that this is a peculiarly
solemn season, and----”
But the host went pounding on:
“Moreover, all the gold plate of Madame’s dressing-case is engraved
‘H. de R----.’ But to my mind the thing that convinces most is that
the _Herr_ Colonel (who is a _Quatschkopf_ as well as a _Duselfritz_)
should let her order up this from the cellar just to taste!”--the
speaker lovingly blew a cobweb from the fat neck of the Kirsch
bottle--“though Kirsch of fifty years old is four thalers the bottle,
and he has said to her how he hates the stuff! Would any husband, even
of a week or so, tolerate such prodigality in a wife?”
“_Nu, nu!_” said the portly citizen, completely convinced. “What should
be done,” he cried in great agitation, “to rid the town of such a
scandal? Think! My wits are upside down!”
He wrung his hands. The innkeeper, that simple child of Nature, rubbed
his nose with the knuckle of his thumb, and said:
“What if you, _Meinherr_, who supply the Palace with groceries and are
so highly respected, should drop a hint to his Lordship in writing?
Retreat or no retreat, I’ll bet you a flask of my best the Archbishop
takes measures, and promptly, too! Here, as it chances, is my cook’s
errand-boy with his basket. Look you, I will put a new-caught trout
from the Wid inside it, and your bit of paper under that. The Father
Economus will be sure to spy it; the rest we may confidently leave to
Heaven!”
* * * * *
Meanwhile the Marshal’s agents, having fed largely and drunk to
correspond, rang the bell, summoned the innkeeper, and issued orders.
Then von Steyregg mounted to the private room, scratched the door after
the manner of the confidential attendants of royal personages, and
appeared, contorted with bows, before the Colonel and Madame, hoping
that the entertainment set before them had not been utterly unworthy
of personages so exalted! “It is not, Your Serene Highness, as though
you were at your own Schloss over yonder,” he said, spreading his thick
hands and shrugging his big shoulders. “Ere long let us hope that
Destiny and Your Serene Highness’s lucky star will restore you to your
own! Meanwhile, I have ordered a barouche, with four outriders, being
the best equipage the establishment can furnish. It is but fitting
that Your Highness should utilize the earliest opportunity following
your arrival to make a Royal Progress--I would say, a little tour of
inspection--embracing the chief objects of interest in the town.”
Dunoisse, inwardly sickened by this prospect, made objections, but
Henriette overruled them all. That idea of a Royal Progress was
pleasantly titillating. The Eve in her snatched at the apple tendered
by the serpent von Steyregg. The barouche came lumbering to the front
door before the dispute ended in Madame’s favor; she glided away to
“make herself beautiful,” leaving a mollifying glance and smile behind
with her vanquished opponent. So, petulantly fuming, Dunoisse made
ready to accompany her, mentally thanking Heaven that the Staff uniform
of ceremony (in which the Baron suggested his victim should array
himself) had been left behind in the Rue de Bac.
If the four stout, long-maned, and amply-tailed nags attached to the
barouche had not proved pink-eyed and cream-colored; if the vehicle
itself had not been so conspicuously yellow; if the blue-and-scarlet
livery of the coachman and the brace of badly-matching footmen, who
hung to the back-straps and occupied the board behind, had been less
tawdry and belaced with grease; if the red-nosed elderly outriders had
not been so obviously bemused with potent liquor, and their beasts less
spavined, broken-kneed and cracked in wind, that so-called progress
through the capital of his ancestors’ hereditary principality might
have proved less intolerable to the unlucky scion of their race. But
with Köhler and von Steyregg on the front seat, both bare-headed and
bare-toothed, oozing with respect and deference, the Baron’s bosom
heaving with loyal enthusiasm beneath the metal starfish previously
described; some luckless subject of mediæval justice newly flayed, and
paraded upon the hangman’s cart for the popular obloquy, might have
felt as raw and smarting as did Dunoisse.
A straggling cortège of beggars, spectacle-hunters, servant-maids in
their high crimped caps and silver breast-chains, loafers and idlers of
both sexes accompanied the yellow barouche. Vocal dogs and an Italian
organ-grinder with a pair of monkeys brought up the rear of this motley
following. Every now and then von Steyregg would plunge his hand into
a stout linen bag, which he nursed upon his knees, and scatter small
change among these gentry. You may imagine this largesse received
with yells, cheers, and scrambling. Black eyes and gory noses were
distributed at each fresh shower.
The Town Hall and the Museum, occupying an entire side of the Market
Place, the Church of the Pied Friars, and the Tower of the Clock with
its life-sized brazen woman spinning at the top of the weathercock,
occupied but passing notice from the distinguished visitors. The
yellow barouche, with its huzzaing tail of ragamuffins, breasted the
State Street, while the holiday strollers that thronged the sidewalks
stood still to stare, and heads were projected from upper windows. And
reaching the Cathedral Square that crowned the hilltop, the noble party
alighted at the west porch of the stately building and passed in.
Not for years had Dunoisse set foot across the threshold of the House
of God; the cult of devotion and worship, the high belief in glorious
things unseen, the fulfillment of the obligations of the Catholic
faith, had long ceased to be indispensable or even necessary to the
man; he looked back upon the piety and fervor of his boyhood with a
wonder that was largely mingled with contempt. Now, as he mechanically
dipped two fingers in the miniature font that was supported by a
sculptured shield bearing the casque with the _panache_, surmounted
by the sable heron of Widinitz, made the Sign of the Cross, and bent
the knee before the solemn splendors of the High Altar--gleaming upon
the vision from the distant end of the huge echoing nave--he glanced
at Henriette in wonder at the contained and modest reverence of her
demeanor; and, seeing her sink down gracefully amidst her whispering
flounces and bow her lovely head as though in adoration, felt the
muscles of his lips twitch with the ironical desire to smile.
“Wonderful!” he thought, more nearly approaching to a critical analysis
of her than he had ever permitted himself. “Whether she believes or
not, she never dispenses with the outward observance of religion! She
is an enigma, a problem to baffle Œdipus! One would say she and not the
son of my mother had Carmel in the blood!”
For how strangely amorous license and devotional fervor commingled in
the nature of this woman, who should know better than this man....
How often, waking in the perfumed, darkened chamber from the deep,
dreamless slumber that falls on the indulged and satiate senses, had
not Dunoisse found himself alone, and realized, with a creeping chill
of awe mingled with repugnance, that she was kneeling, a white-robed
figure veiled in shadowy hair, before the ivory Crucifix that hung
above the _prie-dieu_, praying....
Ah! with what abandonment of sighs and sobs, and tears!... Ere she
would rise, traverse the velvet carpet silently as some pale moonray,
and glide, mysteriously smiling, into her lover’s arms.
“Why should I not pray?” she had said to him once. “After all, Christ
died for sinners, and I am a sinner.... And even devils believe, they
say. It is only men who deny!”
Dunoisse had long joined the ranks of the deniers. He had determined
that for him yonder shining, jeweled tabernacle should thenceforth
house no Unspeakable Mystery, shelter no Heavenly Guest. Nothing
beyond an amiable superstition, an innocent, exquisite myth, embodying
a profound religious truth for two hundred and sixty millions of
Christians; modified or rejected by the Lutheran, Reformed, and
Presbyterian Churches; ignored by Confucianist, Taoist, and Buddhist,
abhorred by the Hindu, the Mohammedan, and the Jew, should henceforth
be enshrined there. He had come to the conclusion that it was better so.
The light of faith had been quenched in the man’s heart by his own
deliberate act of will. He had said to his soul, unwitting that he had
thus spoken:
“If I believed, could I continue to live as I am doing, storing up
sharp retribution, dreadful expiation, inconceivable anguish for the
world to come? Not so! Therefore I will forget such words as Death and
Judgment. For these poignant, embittered, passing joys, I am content to
barter the hope of eternal bliss.”
And yet, upon those rare occasions when, as now, Dunoisse found himself
in the House of his Maker, the still air, fragrant with the incense of
the most recent Sacrifice, oppressed him, and the very silence seemed
eloquent as a voice of Divine reproach....
For you may slough your skin of State-patronized, easy-going
Protestantism as easily as you can change your political convictions,
and presently, with Modern Buddhism, or Spiritualism, or Platonism,
Christian Science, Agnosticism, Mormonism, or Hedonism, be covered and
clad anew, but Catholicism penetrates the bones, and permeates the very
marrow. You cannot pluck that forth; it is rooted in the fibers of the
soul.
* * * * *
Dunoisse followed his Fate up the great echoing nave of the Cathedral,
ushered by the gyrating von Steyregg. Penitents of both sexes, waiting
their turn in lengthy rows outside the occupied confessionals, glanced
up from their beads, as, in a whisper that rattled amidst the carved
rafters of the lofty roof, the agent announced:
“Here lie Your Serene Highness’s illustrious forefathers!” And
ostentatiously dried his sympathetic tear with a vast flapping
handkerchief of Isabella hue.
Certainly the sacred fane was populous with departed von Widinitz, from
Albertus I., First of the Line, and his spouse, the chaste Philippina;
to Ludovicus, the latest departed, whose Bathildis had predeceased him
by a generation or two.
You saw them represented from life-size to the quarter-bust, in brass,
bronze, lead, marble, porphyry, granite, alabaster--every conceivable
medium known to sepulchral Art. And to Dunoisse’s peculiar torment,
those tricksy sprites, von Steyregg and Köhler, united in discovering
between the cast or sculptured countenances of these worthies and the
moody visage of their harassed descendant resemblances of the striking
kind. To hear the knaves appeal to one another--warrant, justify,
and approve the claim of a thirteenth-century nose to its modern
reproduction--to witness them scouring aisles or rummaging chapels
in full cry after a chin, or mouth, or ear, or forehead; to see them
run the elusive feature from metal or stone to living earth; and
congratulate one another on the fortunate issue of the chase; would
have provoked a smile on the countenance of a Trappist. Their sacrifice
laughed even whilst he writhed.
The ceremony of leaving cards upon the Archbishop of Widinitz followed.
A trap-mouthed, blue-shaven ecclesiastic of the humbler sort, who wore
a bunch of keys at the girdle of his well-darned cassock, opened the
oaken, iron-studded door, and took the proffered oblongs of pasteboard
without enthusiasm, intimating that His Lordship did not receive
strangers upon days of solemn retreat. With this janitor von Steyregg
parleyed vainly, maintaining a brisk exchange of arguments at the top
of the Palace doorsteps, whilst his principals waited at the bottom in
the yellow barouche.
A sportive Fate at this juncture breaks the thread of the narrative
with a Pantomime Interlude. For as, more in sorrow than in anger
at the obstinacy of the janitor, the Baron shook off his tear upon
the inhospitable threshold, and turned upon his heel--a little
white-headed, berry-brown urchin--a bare-legged messenger, arrayed in a
tattered shirt and the upper half of a pair of adult breeches, carrying
a reed-basket in which reposed a fine, fat, silvery trout, newly-caught
and tempting,--dived between the legs that so strikingly resembled
balusters, and dodged into the Palace with a flourish of dirty heels.
If a portly Magyar of noble rank, in the act of rolling down a
steepish flight of limestone steps, could possibly be regarded as a
mirth-provoking object, one might be tempted to smile as von Steyregg,
recording each revolution upon his person with grievous bumps and
bruises, performed the horizontal descent. Henriette screamed, Köhler
beat his bosom, the tag-rag and bobtail roared with glee, while
Dunoisse, compelled to share in their amusement despite the sickness at
his heart, jumped out of the carriage and picked up the groaning Baron,
restored him his battered curly-brimmed hat, the comb, hairbrush, and
piece of soap which had escaped from his coat-tails in the course of
transit, thrust him into the vehicle, and bade the coachman return to
“The Three Crowns.”