“Go, my nephew,” said old Father Jacob to me, “and complete thy studies
at Strasburg: Heaven surely hath ordained thee for the ministry in
these times of trouble, and my excellent friend Schneider will work out
the divine intention.”
Schneider was an old college friend of uncle Jacob’s, was a Benedictine
monk, and a man famous for his learning; as for me, I was at that time
my uncle’s chorister, clerk, and sacristan; I swept the church, chanted
the prayers with my shrill treble, and swung the great copper
incense-pot on Sundays and feasts; and I toiled over the Fathers for
the other days of the week.
The old gentleman said that my progress was prodigious, and, without
vanity, I believe he was right, for I then verily considered that
praying was my vocation, and not fighting, as I have found since.
You would hardly conceive (said the Captain, swearing a great oath) how
devout and how learned I was in those days; I talked Latin faster than
my own beautiful patois of Alsacian French; I could utterly overthrow
in argument every Protestant (heretics we called them) parson in the
neighborhood, and there was a confounded sprinkling of these
unbelievers in our part of the country. I prayed half a dozen times a
day; I fasted thrice in a week; and, as for penance, I used to scourge
my little sides, till they had no more feeling than a peg-top: such was
the godly life I led at my uncle Jacob’s in the village of Steinbach.
Our family had long dwelt in this place, and a large farm and a
pleasant house were then in the possession of another uncle—uncle
Edward. He was the youngest of the three sons of my grandfather; but
Jacob, the elder, had shown a decided vocation for the church, from, I
believe, the age of three, and now was by no means tired of it at
sixty. My father, who was to have inherited the paternal property, was,
as I hear, a terrible scamp and scapegrace, quarrelled with his family,
and disappeared altogether, living and dying at Paris; so far we knew
through my mother, who came, poor woman, with me, a child of six
months, on her bosom, was refused all shelter by my grandfather, but
was housed and kindly cared for by my good uncle Jacob.
Here she lived for about seven years, and the old gentleman, when she
died, wept over her grave a great deal more than I did, who was then
too young to mind anything but toys or sweetmeats.
During this time my grandfather was likewise carried off: he left, as I
said, the property to his son Edward, with a small proviso in his will
that something should be done for me, his grandson.
Edward was himself a widower, with one daughter, Mary, about three
years older than I, and certainly she was the dearest little treasure
with which Providence ever blessed a miserly father; by the time she
was fifteen, five farmers, three lawyers, twelve Protestant parsons,
and a lieutenant of Dragoons had made her offers: it must not be denied
that she was an heiress as well as a beauty, which, perhaps, had
something to do with the love of these gentlemen. However, Mary
declared that she intended to live single, turned away her lovers one
after another, and devoted herself to the care of her father.
Uncle Jacob was as fond of her as he was of any saint or martyr. As for
me, at the mature age of twelve I had made a kind of divinity of her,
and when we sang “Ave Maria” on Sundays I could not refrain from
turning to her, where she knelt, blushing and praying and looking like
an angel, as she was. Besides her beauty, Mary had a thousand good
qualities; she could play better on the harpsichord, she could dance
more lightly, she could make better pickles and puddings, than any girl
in Alsace; there was not a want or a fancy of the old hunks her father,
or a wish of mine or my uncle’s, that she would not gratify if she
could; as for herself, the sweet soul had neither wants nor wishes
except to see us happy.
I could talk to you for a year of all the pretty kindnesses that she
would do for me; how, when she found me of early mornings among my
books, her presence “would cast a light upon the day;” how she used to
smooth and fold my little surplice, and embroider me caps and gowns for
high feast-days; how she used to bring flowers for the altar, and who
could deck it so well as she? But sentiment does not come glibly from
under a grizzled moustache, so I will drop it, if you please.
Amongst other favors she showed me, Mary used to be particularly fond
of kissing me: it was a thing I did not so much value in those days,
but I found that the more I grew alive to the extent of the benefit,
the less she would condescend to confer it on me; till at last, when I
was about fourteen, she discontinued it altogether, of her own wish at
least; only sometimes I used to be rude, and take what she had now
become so mighty unwilling to give.
I was engaged in a contest of this sort one day with Mary, when, just
as I was about to carry off a kiss from her cheek, I was saluted with a
staggering slap on my own, which was bestowed by uncle Edward, and sent
me reeling some yards down the garden.
The old gentleman, whose tongue was generally as close as his purse,
now poured forth a flood of eloquence which quite astonished me. I did
not think that so much was to be said on any subject as he managed to
utter on one, and that was abuse of me; he stamped, he swore, he
screamed; and then, from complimenting me, he turned to Mary, and
saluted her in a manner equally forcible and significant; she, who was
very much frightened at the commencement of the scene, grew very angry
at the coarse words he used, and the wicked motives he imputed to her.
“The child is but fourteen,” she said; “he is your own nephew, and a
candidate for holy orders:—father, it is a shame that you should thus
speak of me, your daughter, or of one of his holy profession.”
I did not particularly admire this speech myself, but it had an effect
on my uncle, and was the cause of the words with which this history
commences. The old gentleman persuaded his brother that I must be sent
to Strasburg, and there kept until my studies for the church were
concluded. I was furnished with a letter to my uncle’s old college
chum, Professor Schneider, who was to instruct me in theology and
Greek.
I was not sorry to see Strasburg, of the wonders of which I had heard
so much; but felt very loth as the time drew near when I must quit my
pretty cousin, and my good old uncle. Mary and I managed, however, a
parting walk, in which a number of tender things were said on both
sides. I am told that you Englishmen consider it cowardly to cry; as
for me, I wept and roared incessantly: when Mary squeezed me, for the
last time, the tears came out of me as if I had been neither more nor
less than a great wet sponge. My cousin’s eyes were stoically dry; her
ladyship had a part to play, and it would have been wrong for her to be
in love with a young chit of fourteen—so she carried herself with
perfect coolness, as if there was nothing the matter. I should not have
known that she cared for me, had it not been for a letter which she
wrote me a month afterwards—THEN, nobody was by, and the consequence
was that the letter was half washed away with her weeping; if she had
used a watering-pot the thing could not have been better done.
Well, I arrived at Strasburg—a dismal, old-fashioned, rickety town in
those days—and straightway presented myself and letter at Schneider’s
door; over it was written—