Yes, Madame, there was I born, and I am particular in calling
attention to the fact, lest after my death seven cities--those
of Schilda, Krähwinkel, Polkwitz, Bockum, Dülken, Göttingen, and
Schöppenstadt[6]--should contend for the honour of being my birthplace.
Düsseldorf is a town on the Rhine; sixteen thousand people live there,
and many hundred thousands besides are buried there. And among them are
many of whom my mother says it were better if they were still alive--for
example, my grand-father and my uncle, the old Herr von Geldern, and the
young Herr von Geldern, who were both such celebrated doctors, and saved
the lives of so many men, and yet must both die themselves. And pious
Ursula, who carried me as a child in her arms, also lies buried there,
and a rose-bush grows over her grave--she loved rose-perfume so much in
her life, and her heart was all rose-perfume and goodness. And the
shrewd old Canonicus also lies there buried. Lord, how miserable he
looked when I last saw him! He consisted of nothing but soul and
plasters, and yet he studied night and day as though he feared lest the
worms might find a few ideas missing in his head. Little William also
lies there--and that is my fault. We were schoolmates in the Franciscan
cloister, and were one day playing on that side of the building where
the Düssel flows between stone walls, and I said, "William, do get the
kitten out, which has just fallen in!" and he cheerfully climbed out on
the board which stretched over the brook, and pulled the cat out of the
water, but fell in himself, and when they took him out he was cold and
dead. The kitten lived to a good old age.
The town of Düsseldorf is very beautiful, and if you think of it when in
foreign lands, and happen at the same time to have been born there,
strange feelings come over the soul. I was born there, and feel as if I
must go directly home. And when I say _home_, I mean the Volkerstrasse
and the house where I was born. This house will be some day very
remarkable, and I have sent word to the old lady who owns it, that she
must not for her life sell it. For the whole house she would now hardly
get as much as the present which the green-veiled distinguished English
ladies will give the servant when she shows them the room where I was
born, and the hen-house wherein my father generally imprisoned me for
stealing grapes, and also the brown door on which my mother taught me to
write with chalk. Ah me! should I ever become a famous author, it has
cost my poor mother trouble enough.
But my fame still slumbers in the marble quarries of Carrara; the waste
paper laurel with which they have bedecked my brow has not yet spread
its perfume through the wide world, and when the green-veiled
distinguished English ladies visit Düsseldorf, they leave the celebrated
house unvisited, and go direct to the Market Place, and there gaze on
the colossal black equestrian statue which stands in its midst. This
represents the Prince Elector, Jan Wilhelm. He wears black armour and a
long, hanging wig. When a boy, I was told that the artist who made this
statue observed with terror while it was being cast that he had not
metal enough, and then all the citizens of the town came running with
all their silver spoons, and threw them in to fill the mould; and I
often stood for hours before the statue puzzling my head as to how many
spoons were sticking in it, and how many apple-tarts all that silver
would buy. Apple-tarts were then my passion--now it is love, truth,
freedom, and crab-soup--and not far from the statue of the Prince
Elector, at the theatre corner, generally stood a curiously constructed
sabre-legged rascal with a white apron, and a basket girt around him
full of smoking apple-tarts, which he knew how to praise with an
irresistible treble voice. "Apple tarts! quite fresh! so delicious!"
Truly, whenever in my later years the Evil One sought to win me, he
always cried in just such an enticing treble, and I should certainly
have never remained twelve hours by the Signora Giulietta, if she had
not thrilled me with her sweet, fragrant, apple-tart-tones. And, in
fact, the apple-tarts would never have so enticed me, if the crooked
Hermann had not covered them up so mysteriously with his white
apron--and it is aprons, you know, which--but I wander from the subject.
I was speaking of the equestrian statue which has so many silver spoons
in its body and no soup, and which represents the Prince Elector, Jan
Wilhelm.
He must have been a brave gentleman, very fond of art, and skilful
himself. He founded the picture gallery in Düsseldorf, and in the
observatory there they show a very artistic piece of woodwork, which he,
himself, had carved in his leisure hours, of which latter he had every
day four-and-twenty.
In those days princes were not the persecuted wretches which they now
are; the crowns grew firmly on their heads, and at night they drew their
night-caps over it and slept peacefully, and their people slumbered
peacefully at their feet, and when they awoke in the morning they said,
"Good morning, father!" and he replied, "Good morning, dear children!"
But there came a sudden change over all this. One morning when we awoke
in Düsseldorf and would say, "Good morning, father!" the father had
travelled away, and in the whole town there was nothing but dumb sorrow.
Everywhere there was a funeral-like expression, and people slipped
silently to the market and read the long paper on the door of the Town
Hall. It was bad weather, yet the lean tailor Kilian stood in his
nankeen jacket, which he generally wore only at home, and his blue
woollen stockings hung down so that his little bare legs peeped out in a
troubled way, and his thin lips quivered as he murmured the placard. An
old invalid soldier from the Palatine read it rather louder, and at some
words a clear tear ran down his white honourable old moustache. I stood
near him, crying too, and asked why we were crying? And he replied "The
Prince Elector has abdicated." And then he read further, and at the
words, "for the long manifested fidelity of my subjects," "and hereby
release you from allegiance," he wept still more. It is a strange sight
to see, when an old man, in faded uniform, and scarred veteran's face,
suddenly bursts into tears. While we read, the Princely Electoral coat
of arms was being taken down from the Town Hall, and everything began to
appear as anxiously dreary as though we were waiting for an eclipse of
the sun. The town councillors went about at an abdicating, wearisome
gait; even the omnipotent beadle looked as though he had no more
commands to give, and stood calmly indifferent, although the crazy
Aloysius stood upon one leg and chattered the names of French generals
with foolish grimaces, while the tipsy, crooked Gumpertz rolled around
in the gutter, singing _ça ira! ça ira!_
But I went home crying and lamenting, "The Prince Elector has
abdicated." My mother might do what she would, I knew what I knew, and
went crying to bed, and in the night dreamed that the world had come to
an end--the fair flower gardens and green meadows of the world were
taken up and rolled away like carpets from the floor, the beadle
climbed up on a high ladder and took down the sun, and the tailor Kilian
stood by and said to himself, "I must go home and dress myself neatly,
for I am dead and am to be buried this afternoon." And it grew darker
and darker--a few stars glimmered on high, and even these fell down like
yellow leaves in autumn, men gradually vanished, and I, poor child,
wandered in anguish around, until before the willow fence of a deserted
farm-house I saw a man digging up the earth with a spade, and near him
an ugly, spiteful-looking woman, who held something in her apron like a
human head, but it was the moon, and she laid it carefully in the open
grave--and behind me stood the Palatine soldier sobbing, and spelling,
"The Prince Elector has abdicated."
When I awoke the sun shone as usual through the window, there was a
sound of drums in the street, and as I entered our sitting-room and
wished my father--who sat in his white dressing-gown--good morning, I
heard the little light-footed barber, as he made up his hair, narrate
very minutely that homage would that morning be offered at the Town Hall
to the Arch Duke Joachim. I heard, too, that the new ruler was of
excellent family, that he had married the sister of the Emperor
Napoleon, and was really a very respectable man, that he wore his
beautiful black hair in curls, that he would shortly enter the town, and
would certainly please all the ladies. Meanwhile, the drumming in the
streets continued, and I stood before the house-door and looked at the
French troops marching, those joyous and famous people who swept over
the world, singing and playing, the merry, serious faces of the
grenadiers, the bearskin shakoes, the tri-coloured cockades, the
glittering bayonets, the _voltigeurs_ full of vivacity and _point
d'honneur_, and the giant-like silver-laced Tambour Major, who cast his
_bâton_ with the gilded head as high as the first storey, and his eyes
to the second, where pretty girls gazed from the windows. I was so glad
that soldiers were to be quartered in our house--my mother was not
glad--and I hastened to the market-place. There everything looked
changed; it was as though the world had been new whitewashed. A new coat
of arms was placed on the Town Hall, its iron balconies were hung with
embroidered velvet drapery, French grenadiers stood as sentinels, the
old town councillors had put on new faces and Sunday coats, and looked
at each other French fashion, and said, _"Bon jour!"_ ladies peeped from
every window, inquisitive citizens and soldiers filled the square, and
I, with other boys, climbed on the shining Prince Elector's great bronze
horse, and looked down on the motley crowd.
Neighbour Peter and Long Conrad nearly broke their necks on this
occasion, and that would have been well, for the one afterwards ran away
from his parents, enlisted as a soldier, deserted, and was finally shot
in Mayence, while the other, having made geographical researches in
strange pockets, became a working member of a public tread-mill
institute. But having broken the iron bands which bound him to his
fatherland, he passed safely beyond sea, and eventually died in London,
in consequence of wearing a much too long cravat, one end of which
happened to be firmly attached to something, just as a royal official
removed a plank from beneath his feet.
Long Conrad told us there was no school to-day on account of the homage.
We had to wait a long time till this was over. At last the balcony of
the Council House was filled with gay gentlemen, flags and trumpets, and
our burgomaster, in his celebrated red coat, delivered an oration, which
stretched out like India rubber, or like a night-cap into which one has
thrown a stone--only that it was not the stone of wisdom--and I could
distinctly understand many of his phrases, for instance, that "we are
now to be made happy"--and at the last words the trumpets and drums
sounded, and the flags waved, and the people cried Hurrah!--and as I
myself cried Hurrah! I held fast to the old Prince Elector. And that was
necessary, for I began to grow giddy; it seemed to me that the people
were standing on their heads while the world whizzed around, and the
Prince Elector, with his long wig, nodded and whispered, "Hold fast to
me!"--and not till the cannon re-echoed along the wall did I become
sobered, and climbed slowly down from the great bronze horse.
As I went home I saw crazy Aloysius again dancing on one leg, while he
chattered the names of French generals, and crooked Gumpertz was rolling
in the gutter drunk, and growling _ça ira, ça ira_--and I said to my
mother that we were all to be made happy, and so there was no school
to-day.