Had Fortune decreed that I should be rich, I believe I would have been
the most popular of men. There is such a natural kindness of disposition
in me, blended with the most refined sense of discrimination. I love
humanity in the aggregate, and, at the same time, with a rare delicacy
of sentiment, I can follow through all the tortuous windings of the
heart, and actually sympathize in emotions that I never experienced.
No rank is too exalted, no lot too humble, for the exercise of my
benevolence. I have sat in my arm-chair with a beating, throbbing heart,
as I imagined the troubles of a king, and I have drunk my Bordeaux with
tears of gratitude as I fancied myself a peasant with only water
to slake his thirst. To a man of highly organized temperament, the
privations themselves are not necessary to eliminate the feeling they
would suggest. Coarser natures would require starvation to produce the
sense of hunger, nakedness to cause that of cold, and so on; the gifted
can be in rags, while enclosed in a wadded dressing-gown; they can go
supperless to bed after a meal of oysters and toasted cheese; they can,
if they will, be fatally wounded as they sit over their wine, or cast
away after shipwreck with their feet on the fender. Great privileges all
these; happy is he who has them, happy are they amidst whom he tries to
spread the blessings of his inheritance!
Amid the many admirable traits which I recognize in myself,--and of
which I speak not boastfully, but gratefully, being accidents of my
nature as far removed from my own agency as the color of my eyes or the
shape of my nose,--of these, I say, I know of none more striking than
such as fit me to be a patron. I am graceful as a lover, touching as a
friend, but I am really great as a protector.
Revelling in such sentiments as these, I stood at my window, looking at
the effect of moonlight on the Falls. It seemed to me as though in the
grand spectacle before my eyes I beheld a sort of illustration of my
own nature, wherein generous emotions could come gushing, foaming, and
falling, and yet the source be never exhausted, the flood ever at full.
I ought parenthetically to observe that the champagne was excellent, and
that I had drunk the third glass of the second bottle to the health of
the widow Cliquot herself. Thus standing and musing, I was startled by a
noise behind me, and, turning round, I saw one of the smallest of men in
a little red Greek jacket and short yellow breeches, carefully engaged
in spreading a small piece of carpet on the floor, a strip like a very
diminutive hearth-rug. This done, he gave a little wild exclamation
of “Ho!” and cut a somersault in the air, alighting on the flat of
his back, which he announced by a like cry of “Ha!” He was up again,
however, in an instant, and repeated the performance three times. He was
about, as I judged by the arrangement of certain chairs, to proceed to
other exercises equally diverting, when I stopped him by asking who he
was.
“Your Excellency,” said he, drawing himself up to his full height of,
say, four feet, “I am Vaterchen!”
Every one knows what provoking things are certain chance resemblances,
how disturbing to the right current of thought, how subverting to the
free exercise of reason. Now, this creature before me, in his deeply
indented temples, high narrow forehead, aquiline nose, and resolute
chin, was marvellously like a certain great field-marshal with whose
features, notwithstanding the portraits of him, we are all familiar. It
was not of the least use to me that I knew he was not the illustrious
general, but simply a mountebank. There were the stern traits, haughty
and defiant; and do what I would, the thought of the great man would
clash with the capers of the little one. Owing to this impression,
it was impossible for me to address him without a certain sense of
deference and respect.
“Will you not be seated?” said I, offering him a chair and taking one
myself. He accepted with all the quiet ease of good breeding, and smiled
courteously as I filled a glass and passed it towards him.
I pressed my hand across my eyes for a few moments while I reflected,
and I muttered to myself,--
“Oh, Potts, if instead of a tumbler this had really been the hero, what
an evening might this be! Lives there that man in Europe so capable of
feeling in all its intensity the glorious privilege of such a meeting?
Who, like you, would listen to the wisdom distilling from those
lips? Who would treasure up every trait of voice, accent, and manner,
remembering, not alone every anecdote, but every expression? Who, like
you, could have gracefully led the conversation so as to range over the
whole wide ocean of that great life, taking in battles and sieges and
storm ings and congresses, and scenes of all that is most varied and
exciting in existence? Would not the record of one such night, drawn
by you, have been worth all the cold compilations and bleak biographies
that ever were written? You would have presented him as he sat there in
front of you.” I opened my eyes to paint from the model, and there was
the little dog, with his legs straight up on each side of his head and
forming a sort of gothic arch over his face. The wretch had done the
feat to amuse me, and I almost fainted with horror as I saw it.
“Sit down, sir,” said I, in a voice of stern command. “You little know
the misery you have caused me.”
I refilled his glass, and closed my eyes once more. In my old
pharmaceutical experiences I had often made bread pills, and remembered
well how, almost invariably, they had been deemed successful. What
relief from pain to the agonized sufferer had they not given! What
slumber to the sleepless! What appetite, what vigor, what excitement!
Why should not the same treatment apply to morals as to medicine? Why,
with faith to aid one, cannot he induce every wished-for mood of mind
and thought? The lay figure to support the drapery suffices for the
artist, the Venus herself is in his brain. Now, if that little fellow
there would neither cut capers nor speak, I ask no more of him. Let him
sit firmly as he does now, staring me boldly in the face that way.
“Yes,” said I, “lay your hand on the arm of your chair, so, and let the
other be clenched thus.” And so I placed him. “Never utter a word, but
nod to me at rare intervals.”
He has since acknowledged that he believed me to be deranged; but as I
seemed a harmless case, and he could rely on his activity for escape, he
made no objection to my directions, the less, too, that he enjoyed his
wine immensely, and was at liberty to drink as he pleased.
“Now,” thought I, “one glance, only one, to see that he poses properly.”
All right; nothing could be better. His face was turned slightly to
one side, giving what the painters call action to the head, and he was
perfect I now resigned myself to the working of the spell, and already
I felt its influence over me. Where and with what was I to begin?
Numberless questions thronged to my mind. I wanted to know a thousand
disputed things, and fully as many that were only disputed by myself.
I felt that as such another opportunity would assuredly never present
itself twice in my life, that the really great use of the occasion would
be to make every inquiry subsidiary to my own case,--to make all my
investigations what the Germans would call “Potts-wise.” My intensest
anxiety was then to ascertain if, like myself, his Grace started in life
with very grand aspirations.
“Did you feel, for instance, when playing practical jokes on the maids
of honor in Dublin, some sixty-odd years ago, that you were only, in
sportive vein, throwing off so much light ballast to make room for the
weightier material that was to steady you in the storm-tossed sea
before you? Have you experienced the almost necessity of these little
expansions of eccentricity as I have? Was there always in your heart,
as a young man, as there is now in mine, a profound contempt for the
opinions of your contemporaries? Did you continually find yourself
repeating, '_Respice finem!_ Mark where I shall be yet'?” There was
another investigation which touched me still more closely, but it was
long before I could approach it I saw all the difficulty and delicacy
of the inquiry; but, with that same recklessness of consequences which
would make me catch at a queen by the back hair if I was drowning, I
clutched at this discovery now, and, although trembling at my boldness,
asked, “Was your Grace ever afraid? I know the impertinence of the
question, but if you only guessed how it concerns me, you 'd forgive
it. Nature has made me many things, but not courageous. Nothing on earth
could induce me to risk life; the more I reason about it, the greater
grows my repugnance. Now, I would like to hear, is this what anatomists
call congenital? Am I likely to grow out of it? Shall I ever be a
dare-devil, intrepid, fire-eating sort of creature? How will the change
come over me? Shall I feel it coming? Will it come from within, or
through external agencies? And when it has arrived, what shall I become?
Am I destined to drive the Zouaves into the sea by a bayonet charge of
the North Cork Rifles, or shall I only be great in council, and take
weekly trips in the 'Fairy' to Cowes? I 'd like to know this, and begin
a course of preparation for my position, as I once knew of a militia
captain who hardened himself for a campaign by sleeping every night with
his head on the window-stool.”
As I opened my eyes, I saw the stern features in front of me. I thought
the words, “I was never afraid, sir!” rang through my brain till they
filled every ventricle with their din.
“Not at Assaye?”
“No, sir.”
“Not at the Douro?”
“No, sir.”
“Not at Torres Vedras?”
“I tell you again, no, sir!”
Whether I uttered this last with any uncommon degree of vehemence or
not, I so frightened Vaterchen that he cut a somersault clean over the
chair, and stood grinning at me through the rails at the back of it I
motioned to him to be reseated, while, passing my hand across my brow,
I waved away the bright illusions that beset me, and, with a heavy sigh,
re-entered the dull world of reality.
“You are a clown,” said I, meditatively. “What is a clown?”
He did not answer me in words, but, placing his hands on his knees,
stared at me steadfastly, and then, having fixed my attention, his face
performed a series of the most fearful contortions I ever beheld. With
one horrible spasm he made his mouth appear to stretch from ear to
ear; with another, his nose wagged from side to side; with a third, his
eyebrows went up and down alternately, giving the different sides of his
face two directly antagonistic expressions. I was shocked and horrified,
and called to him to desist.
“And yet,” thought I, “there are natures who can delight in these, and
see in them matter for mirth and laughter!”
“Old man,” said I, gravely, “has it ever occurred to you that in this
horrible commixture of expression, wherein grief wars with Joy and
sadness with levity, you are like one who, with a noble instrument
before him, should, instead of sweet sounds of harmony, produce wild,
unearthly discords, the jangling bursts of fiend-like voices?”
“The Tintefleck can play indifferently well, your Excellency,” said
he, humbly. “I never had any skill that way myself.”
Oh, what a _crassa natura_ was here! What a triple wall of dulness
surrounds such dark intelligences!
“And where is the Tintefleck? Why is she not here?” asked I, anxious to
remove the discussion to a ground of more equality.
“She is without, your Excellency. She did not dare to present herself
till your Excellency had desired, and is waiting in the corridor.”
“Let her come in,” said I, grandly; and I drew my chair to a distant
corner of the room so as to give them a wider area to appear in, while
I could, at the same time, assume that attitude of splendid ease and
graceful protection I have seen a prince accomplish on the stage at
the moment the ballet is about to begin. The door opened, and Vaterchen
entered, leading Tintefleck by the hand.