VON LICHTENBERG
The Hôtel des Hollandaise was situated, I believe, in the
Wilhelmstrasse, an old-fashioned inn with a courtyard. It has long
vanished, giving place to a more modern building.
Nowadays, when the Continent is inundated with travellers, when you are
received at a great hotel with about as much consideration as a pauper
is received at a workhouse, it is hard to imagine the old conditions of
travel.
Weigand, the proprietor of the Hôtel des Hollandaise, received us in
person, backed by half a dozen waiters, all happy and smiling. They had
the art of seeming to have known us for years; the luggage was removed
as tenderly as though it were packed with Sèvres, and, led by the host,
we were conducted to our rooms, a suite on the first floor.
When Marie Antoinette came to France, at the first halting-place beyond
the frontier she slept in a room whose tapestry represented the Massacre
of the Innocents.
Our sitting-room in the Hôtel des Hollandaise, a large room, had upon
its walls the Siege of Troy, not in tapestry, but wall-paper. On this
day, when the seeds of my future life were sown, it was a coincidence,
strange enough, this villainous wall-decoration, with its tale of war,
ruin, and love.
Whilst my father was writing letters, I, active and inquisitive as a
terrier, explored the suite, examined the town from the balcony of the
sitting-room, and, finding the prospect unexciting, proceeded to the
examination of the hotel.
A balcony surrounded the large central courtyard, where people were
seated at tables, some smoking, some drinking beer from tall mugs with
lids to them. Waiters passed to and fro; it was delightful to watch,
delightful to speculate and weave romances about the unromantical
drinkers--Jews, travellers, and traders; foreign to my eyes as the
denizens of a bazaar in Samarcand.
Now casting my eyes up, and led by the spirit that makes children see
what is not intended for them, I saw, at a door in the gallery opposite
to me, Joubert, who had just been superintending the stabling of the
horses. He was coming on to the gallery from the staircase. A fat, ugly,
German maidservant was passing him, and he--just as another person would
say "Good-day!"--slipped his arm round her waist and kissed her, made a
grimace, and passed on round the gallery towards me.
"Why do you kiss them if you say their feet are so large, Joubert?" I
asked, recalling his strictures on German females.
"Ma foi!" replied Joubert--"one does not kiss their feet."
He leaned with me over the balcony watching the scene below.
The hatred of Germans which filled the breast of Joubert was a hatred
based on the firm foundation of Blücher. Joubert did not hate the
English. This "cur of a Blücher," who turned up on Waterloo Day to reap
the harvest of other men's work, gave him all the food for hatred he
required.
"Joubert," said I, "do you see that man with the big stomach and
watchchain sitting there--the one with a cigar?"
"Mais, oui!" replied Joubert. "I know him well."
"What is he, Joubert?"
"He? His name is Bambabouff; he lives just beyond there, in a street to
the right as you go out, and he sells sausages. And see you, beside
him--yes, he, that German rat--with the ring on his first finger. His
name is Squintz, he sells Bambabouff the dogs and cats of which he makes
his sausages. Ah, yes; if German sausages could bark and mew, you could
not hear yourself speak in Frankfort. And he--look you over
there!--sitting at the table behind Bambabouff, with the mug of beer to
his lips, he is Monsieur Saurkraut."
"And what does he do, Joubert?"
Before Joubert could answer, a man entered the hall, a dark man, just
off the road, to judge by his travelling costume, and with a face the
picture of which is stamped on my mind, an impression never to be
removed.
"Ah, ha!" said Joubert. "Here comes the Marquis de Carabas. Hats
off--hats off, gentlemen, to the Marquis de Carabas!"
Now, Bambabouff did look exactly like a person who might have made a
fortune out of sausages, for Joubert had the art of hitting a person
off, caricaturing him in a few words. Squintz's personality was
humorously in keeping with his supposed business in life. And the
new-comer--well, "the Marquis de Carabas" was his portrait in four
words. Tall, stately, a nobleman a league off; handsome enough, with a
dark, saturnine face, and a piercing eye that seemed at times to
contemplate things far beyond the world we live in. The face of a
mystic.
Weigand, washing his hands with invisible soap, accompanied this
gentleman, half walking beside him, half leading the way. They had
reached the centre of the hall when the stranger looked up and saw my
small face and Joubert's cat-like physiognomy regarding him over the
balustrade of the gallery.
He started, stopped dead, and stared at me. Had he seen a ghost he could
not have come to a sharper pause, or have expressed more astonishment
without speech.
Then, with a word to the landlord, who also looked up, he passed on, and
we lost sight of him under the gallery.
"Ma foi!" said Joubert. "The Marquis de Carabas seems to know us, then."
"Joubert," said I, "that man knows me, and I'm-m-m----" "Afraid" was the
word, but I did not say it, for I was a Mahon, with the family
traditions to keep up.
"Know you?" cried Joubert, becoming serious. "Why, where did you ever
see him before?"
"Nowhere."
Before Joubert could speak again Weigand appeared on the gallery.
"His Excellency the Baron Carl von Lichtenberg, to see his Excellency
Count Mahon!" cried Weigand. "The Baron, hearing of his Excellency's
arrival, has driven over from the Schloss Lichtenberg to present his
respects in person. The Baron waits in the salon his Excellency's
convenience."
Joubert took the card which Weigand presented, went to our sitting-room
door, knocked, and entered.
I heard my father's voice. "Aha, the Baron! He must have got my letter
from Mayence. Show him up."
Then I knew that the Marquis de Carabas was our relation Baron Carl von
Lichtenberg, the man at whose house we were to stop. A momentary and
inexplicable terror filled my soul, and was banished, giving place to a
deep curiosity.
Then I heard steps on the gallery, and the Baron, led by the innkeeper,
made his appearance, and, without looking in my direction, entered the
sitting-room where my father was.
I heard their greeting, then the door was shut.
Waiters came up with wine. I leaned on the railing, wondering what my
father and the stranger were conversing about, and watching the people
in the courtyard below. Bambabouff and his supposed partner had entered
into an argument that seemed to threaten blows, and I had almost
forgotten the Baron and my fear of him, watching the proceedings below,
when the sitting-room door opened and my father cried: "Patrick!"
He beckoned me into the room. A haze of cigar-smoke hung in the air, and
by the table, on which stood glasses and decanters, sat Baron Carl von
Lichtenberg, leaning sideways in his chair, his legs crossed, his arms
folded, his dark countenance somewhat drooped, as though he were in
meditation.
"This is Patrick," said my father. "Patrick, this is our relation and
friend the Baron Carl von Lichtenberg."
I had been taught to salute my elders and superiors in the military
style; my dress was the uniform of the French school-boy. I brought my
feet together, and, stiff as a ramrod, made the salute. The Baron, with
a half-laugh, returned it, sitting straight up in his chair to do so.
Having returned my salute, and spoken a few words, the Baron resumed his
conversation with my father; and I, with the apparent heedlessness of
childhood, played with Marengo, our boarhound, on the hearthrug before
the big fireplace.
I say the apparent heedlessness of childhood. There are few things so
deep as the subterfuge of a child. Whilst playing with the dog and
pulling his ears, I was listening intently; not a word of the
conversation was missed by me. They were talking mostly about the
Emperor of the French, a close friend of my father's. He was just then
at Biarritz, with the Empress; and the conversation, which included the
names of De Morny and half a dozen others, would have been interesting,
no doubt, to a diplomat. As I listened, I could tell that the Baron was
sustaining the conversation, despite the fact that his thoughts were
fixed elsewhere. I could tell that his thoughts were fixed on me; that
he was watching me intently, yet furtively, and I knew in some
mysterious manner that this man feared me.
Feared me, a child of nine!
I read it partly in his expression, partly in his furtive manner. He had
seemed to dismiss me from his mind after our introduction; yet no man
ever watched another with more furtive and brooding attention than the
Baron Carl von Lichtenberg as he sat watching me.
"Well," said the Baron, rising to go, "to-morrow, we will expect you in
the afternoon. Till then, farewell."
He saluted me as he left the room in the same forced, half-jocular
manner with which he had returned my salute when I entered.
Then he was gone, and I was playing again with Marengo on the hearthrug,
and my father, cigar in mouth, had returned to the letters he had been
engaged on when the Baron was announced.
"Joubert," said I, as he tucked me up in my bed that night, "I wish we
were home again. Joubert, I don't like the Marquis de Carabas."
Joubert grunted. His opinion of the Marquis was the same as mine,
evidently, but be was too much of a nursery despot to admit the fact.
"Attention!" cried he, holding the candle-stick in one hand, and the
finger and thumb of the other ready to extinguish the light.
"Attention!" cried Joubert, as though he were addressing a company of
the "Growlers." "One!" I nestled down in bed. "Two!" I shut my eyes.
"Three!" he snuffed out the candle.
That was the formula every night ere I marched off for dreamland with my
knapsack on my back, a soldier to the last buttons on my gaiters.