THE worthy physician went home and told his housekeeper he was in agony
from “a bad burn.” Those were the words. For in phlogistic as in other
things, we cauterize our neighbour's digits, but burn our own fingers.
His housekeeper applied some old women's remedy mild as milk. He
submitted like a lamb to her experience: his sole object in the case
of this patient being cure: meantime he made out his bill for broken
phials, and took measures to have the travellers imprisoned at once. He
made oath before a magistrate that they, being strangers and indebted to
him, meditated instant flight from the township.
Alas! it was his unlucky day. His sincere desire and honest endeavour to
perjure himself were baffled by a circumstance he had never foreseen nor
indeed thought possible.
He had spoken the truth.
And IN AN AFFIDAVIT!
The officers, on reaching “The Silver Lion”, found the birds were flown.
They went down to the river, and from intelligence they received there,
started up the bank in hot pursuit.
This temporary escape the friends owed to Denys's good sense and
observation. After a peal of laughter, that it was a cordial to hear,
and after venting his watchword three times, he turned short grave, and
told Gerard Dusseldorf was no place for them. “That old fellow,” said
he, “went off unnaturally silent for such a babbler: we are strangers
here; the bailiff is his friend: in five minutes we shall lie in a
dungeon for assaulting a Dusseldorf dignity, are you strong enough to
hobble to the water's edge? it is hard by. Once there you have but to
lie down in a boat instead of a bed; and what is the odds?”
“The odds, Denys? untold, and all in favour of the boat. I pine for
Rome; for Rome is my road to Sevenbergen; and then we shall lie in the
boat, but ON the Rhine, the famous Rhine; the cool, refreshing Rhine.
I feel its breezes coming: the very sight will cure a little
hop-'o-my-thumb fever like mine; away! away!”
Finding his excitable friend in this mood, Denys settled hastily with
the landlord, and they hurried to the river. On inquiry they found to
their dismay that the public boat was gone this half hour, and no other
would start that day, being afternoon. By dint, however, of asking a
great many questions, and collecting a crowd, they obtained an offer of
a private boat from an old man and his two sons.
This was duly ridiculed by a bystander. “The current is too strong for
three oars.”
“Then my comrade and I will help row,” said the invalid.
“No need,” said the old man. “Bless your silly heart, he owns t'other
boat.”
There was a powerful breeze right astern; the boatmen set a broad sail,
and rowing also, went off at a spanking rate.
“Are ye better, lad, for the river breeze?”
“Much better. But indeed the doctor did me good.”
“The doctor? Why, you would none of his cures.”
“No, but I mean--you will say I am nought--but knocking the old fool
down--somehow--it soothed me.”
“Amiable dove! how thy little character opens more and more every day,
like a rosebud. I read thee all wrong at first.”
“Nay, Denys, mistake me not, neither. I trust I had borne with his idle
threats, though in sooth his voice went through my poor ears; but he was
an infidel, or next door to one, and such I have been taught to abhor.
Did he not as good as say, we owed our inward parts to men with long
Greek names, and not to Him, whose name is but a syllable, but whose
hand is over all the earth? Pagan!”
“So you knocked him down forthwith--like a good Christian.”
“Now, Denys, you will still be jesting. Take not an ill man's part. Had
it been a thunderbolt from Heaven, he had met but his due; yet he took
but a sorry bolster from this weak arm.”
“What weak arm?” inquired Denys, with twinkling eyes. “I have lived
among arms, and by Samson's hairy pow never saw I one more like a
catapult. The bolster wrapped round his nose and the two ends kissed
behind his head, and his forehead resounded, and had he been Goliath,
or Julius Caesar, instead of an old quacksalver, down he had gone. St.
Denys guard me from such feeble opposites as thou! and above all from
their weak arms--thou diabolical young hypocrite.”
The river took many turns, and this sometimes brought the wind on their
side instead of right astern. Then they all moved to the weather side
to prevent the boat heeling over too much all but a child of about five
years old, the grandson of the boatman, and his darling; this urchin
had slipped on board at the moment of starting, and being too light
to affect the boat's trim, was above, or rather below, the laws of
navigation.
They sailed merrily on, little conscious that they were pursued by a
whole posse of constables armed with the bailiff's writ, and that their
pursuers were coming up with them; for if the wind was strong, so was
the current.
And now Gerard suddenly remembered that this was a very good way to
Rome, but not to Burgundy. “Oh, Denys,” said he, with an almost alarmed
look, “this is not your road.”
“I know it,” said Denys quietly; “but what can I do? I cannot leave thee
till the fever leaves thee; and it is on thee still, for thou art
both red and white by turns; I have watched thee. I must e'en go on to
Cologne, I doubt, and then strike across.”
“Thank Heaven,” said Gerard joyfully. He added eagerly, with a little
touch of self-deception, “'Twere a sin to be so near Cologne and not see
it. Oh, man, it is a vast and ancient city such as I have often dreamed
of, but ne'er had the good luck to see. Me miserable, by what hard
fortune do I come to it now? Well then, Denys,” continued the young man
less warmly, “it is old enough to have been founded by a Roman lady
in the first century of grace, and sacked by Attila the barbarous, and
afterwards sore defaced by the Norman Lothaire. And it has a church
for every week in the year forbye chapels and churches innumerable
of convents and nunneries, and above all, the stupendous minster yet
unfinished, and therein, but in their own chapel, lie the three kings
that brought gifts to our Lord, Melchior gold, and Gaspar frankincense,
and Balthazar the black king, he brought myrrh; and over their bones
stands the shrine the wonder of the world; it is of ever-shining brass
brighter than gold, studded with images fairly wrought, and inlaid with
exquisite devices, and brave with colours; and two broad stripes run to
and fro, of jewels so great, so rare, each might adorn a crown or
ransom its wearer at need; and upon it stand the three kings curiously
counterfeited, two in solid silver, richly gilt; these be bareheaded;
but he of Aethiop ebony, and beareth a golden crown; and in the midst
our blessed Lady, in virgin silver, with Christ in her arms; and at the
corners, in golden branches, four goodly waxen tapers do burn night and
day. Holy eyes have watched and renewed that light unceasingly for
ages, and holy eyes shall watch them in saecula. I tell thee, Denys, the
oldest song, the oldest Flemish or German legend, found them burning,
and they shall light the earth to its grave. And there is St. Ursel's
church, a British saint's, where lie her bones and all the other virgins
her fellows; eleven thousand were they who died for the faith, being put
to the sword by barbarous Moors, on the twenty-third day of October, two
hundred and thirty-eight. Their bones are piled in the vaults, and many
of their skulls are in the church. St. Ursel's is in a thin golden case,
and stands on the high altar, but shown to humble Christians only on
solemn days.”
“Eleven thousand virgins!” cried Denys. “What babies German men must
have been in days of yore. Well, would all their bones might turn flesh
again, and their skulls sweet faces, as we pass through the gates. 'Tis
odds but some of them are wearied of their estate by this time.”
“Tush, Denys!” said Gerard; “why wilt thou, being good, still make
thyself seem evil? If thy wishing-cap be on, pray that we may meet the
meanest she of all those wise virgins in the next world, and to that
end let us reverence their holy dust in this one. And then there is the
church of the Maccabees, and the cauldron in which they and their
mother Solomona were boiled by a wicked king for refusing to eat swine's
flesh.”
“Oh, peremptory king! and pig-headed Maccabees! I had eaten bacon with
my pork liever than change places at the fire with my meat.”
“What scurvy words are these? it was their faith.”
“Nay, bridle thy choler, and tell me, are there nought but churches
in this thy so vaunted city? for I affect rather Sir Knight than Sir
Priest.”
“Ay, marry, there is an university near a hundred years old; and there
is a market-place, no fairer in the world, and at the four sides of
it houses great as palaces; and there is a stupendous senate-house all
covered with images, and at the head of them stands one of stout Herman
Gryn, a soldier like thyself, lad.”
“Ay. Tell me of him! what feat of arms earned him his niche?”
“A rare one. He slew a lion in fair combat, with nought but his cloak
and a short sword. He thrust the cloak in the brute's mouth, and cut
his spine in twain, and there is the man's effigy and eke the lion's to
prove it. The like was never done but by three more, I ween; Samson
was one, and Lysimachus of Macedon another, and Benaiah, a captain of
David's host.”
“Marry! three tall fellows. I would like well to sup with them all
to-night.”
“So would not I,” said Gerard drily.
“But tell me,” said Denys, with some surprise, “when wast thou in
Cologne?”
“Never but in the spirit. I prattle with the good monks by the way, and
they tell me all the notable things both old and new.
“Ay, ay, have not I seen your nose under their very cowls? But when I
speak of matters that are out of sight, my words they are small, and the
thing it was big; now thy words be as big or bigger than the things; art
a good limner with thy tongue; I have said it; and for a saint, as ready
with hand, or steel, or bolster--as any poor sinner living; and so,
shall I tell thee which of all these things thou hast described draws me
to Cologne?”
“Ay, Denys.”
“Thou, and thou only; no dead saint, but my living friend and comrade
true; 'tis thou alone draws Denys of Burgundy to Cologne?”
Gerard hung his head.
At this juncture one of the younger boatmen suddenly inquired what was
amiss with “little turnip-face?”
His young nephew thus described had just come aft grave as a judge, and
burst out crying in the midst without more ado. On this phenomenon,
so sharply defined, he was subjected to many interrogatories, some
coaxingly uttered, some not. Had he hurt himself? had he over-ate
himself? was he frightened? was he cold? was he sick? was he an idiot?
To all and each he uttered the same reply, which English writers render
thus, oh! oh! oh! and French writers thus, hi! hi! hi! So fixed are
Fiction's phonetics.
“Who can tell what ails the peevish brat?” snarled the young boatman
impatiently. “Rather look this way and tell me whom be these after!”
The old man and his other son looked, and saw four men walking along
the east bank of the river; at the sight they left rowing awhile, and
gathered mysteriously in the stern, whispering and casting glances
alternately at their passengers and the pedestrians.
The sequel may show they would have employed speculation better in
trying to fathom the turnip-face mystery; I beg pardon of my age: I mean
the deep mind of dauntless infancy.
“If 'tis as I doubt,” whispered one of the young men, “why not give them
a squeak for their lives; let us make for the west bank.”
The old man objected stoutly. “What,” said he, “run our heads into
trouble for strangers! are ye mad? Nay, let us rather cross to the east
side; still side with the strong arm! that is my rede. What say you,
Werter?”
“I say, please yourselves.”
What age and youth could not decide upon, a puff of wind settled most
impartially. Came a squall, and the little vessel heeled over; the men
jumped to windward to trim her; but to their horror they saw in the very
boat from stem to stern a ditch of water rushing to leeward, and the
next moment they saw nothing, but felt the Rhine, the cold and rushing
Rhine.
“Turnip-face” had drawn the plug.
The officers unwound the cords from their waists.
Gerard could swim like a duck; but the best swimmer, canted out of a
boat capsized, must sink ere he can swim. The dark water bubbled loudly
over his head, and then he came up almost blind and deaf for a moment;
the next, he saw the black boat bottom uppermost, and figures clinging
to it; he shook his head like a water-dog, and made for it by a sort of
unthinking imitation; but ere he reached it he heard a voice behind him
cry not loud but with deep manly distress, “Adieu, comrade, adieu!”
He looked, and there was poor Denys sinking, sinking, weighed down by
his wretched arbalest. His face was pale, and his eyes staring wide,
and turned despairingly on his dear friend. Gerard uttered a wild cry
of love and terror, and made for him, cleaving the water madly; but the
next moment Denys was under water.
The next, Gerard was after him.
The officers knotted a rope and threw the end in.