CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028083727 EUROPEAN ACQUAINTANCE BEING SKETCHES OF PEOPLE IN EUROPE. BY J. W. DE FOREST. ACTHOB OP "OBIENTAL ACQUAINTANCE," &V. N E "W Y K K : "^^ '- - ' ' it?y HAKPEE & BEOTHEBS, P FRANKLIN SQUABE. 1858. ublishe'k's,'/; Entered, according to Act, of Congress, in the year one tliousand eight hundred and fifty-eight, by Habfeb & Bbothebs, in the Clerk's OfSco of the District Court of the Southern District of New York, 73 S CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. FLOEENCE TO VENICE. Cause of my Travels. — The Cafe Bpney. — Greenough sends me to Graefeuberg. — The Boad to Ven{«fe7A misplaced Station-house. — ^A scantyTurse. — An amphibiovis'omnibus. — The Albergo d'Eu- ropa. — Sight-seeing. — The CiriES of the Poets Page 6 CHAPTER n. IN VENICE. Fellow-countrymen. — ^A Conversation on Hydropathy. — Difficulty with the Police. — D'Arcy's Controversy with the Police. — D'Arcy and Horace Greeley. — A dangerous Broadbrim. — ^The Austrian Empire saved. — ^The terrific Hat of Signor Budd. — Condition of Lombardy under Austria 12 CHAPTER HI. TO GSAEEENBEHG. Trieste. — ^A beautiful Land. — Hanging one's Head up. — Eadetzky. — The Hotels of Vienna. — Suspicious Politeness. — German in one easy Lesson. — Vienna to Herrmanstadt. — Inquiries concerning Priessnitz. — A friendly Native. — To Preiwaldau. — The Golden Star 22 CHAPTER IV. INSTALLATION AT QBAEFENBEEG. A Walk to Graefenberg. — ^A Land of Lunatics. — The Establishment. — Bad Odors. — Cheap Accommodations. — An Ox-stable for a Bed-room. — ^A sensitive Russian. — A strong Dinner for weak Stom- achs. — ^The Emperor and the Dough Balls. — Cool Slumbers.... 30 CHAPTER V. FIRST DIPS IN GKAEFENBEEG. Priessnitz. — ^The wet Packing. — An awful Cellar. — Scared Patients. — ^Rubbing and Scrubbing. — ^The Air-bath. — Thin Raiment. — Wa- ter-fogged. — ^The Walks and Fountains. — A Patent Digester. — BieaUast. — Cnps, Canes, and Fanaticism. — A multitudinous Ugli- ness 37 CHAPTER VI. CEETAIN GEAEFENBEEGEES. Franz theBathman. — The human Owl. — The cracked Hungarian. — A 11 CONTENTS. The Hamburg Merchant. — Burroughs. — The Prussian Lady. — ^ Georgian Hospitality. — Two Graefenberg Veterans. — A rummy Hydropath. — Stripping to it. — The pretty Countess Page 46 CHAPTEB Vn. GBAEFEKBEEGESSES AND GEAEFENBEEGIANISMS. Native Beauties. — The Strawberry Girls. — The weekly Balls.— A mixed Company. — Eccentric Dancers. — ^The Priessnitz Pamily. — A Squall at a Ball. — A placable Duelist. — ^An Englishman's Meth- od of cutting a Friend • 54 CHAPTER Vm. FAREWELL TO GEAEFENBBEG. Eccentric Hospitals. — The Curd Cure. — ^The Straw Cure. — The Wine Cure. — ^A lively Patient. — Freezing out an Inflammation of the Lnngs. — Ducking a Eever and Ague. — Priessnitz's Prudence. — A remarkable CureV — My own Case. — Farewell to Graefen- berg , , 68 CHAPTER IX. DIVONNE, OE MEEMASHOOD IN FEANOE. Short Account of a long Journey. — A disappointed Sight Seer. — Ge- neva to Divonne.^ — Mrs. Parley the Porter. — The Doctor. — ^Poche's Dictionary. — Trompette.^ The Establishment. — Dinner and its Devourers. — First-Bath at Divonne. — Francois the Bathman.— Learning French 69 CHAPTER X. PASTIMES IN DIVONNE. A Quadrille. — Cat and Eat. — A French Game. — ^The Juba. — A rev- erend Donble-shufiier. — Ida. — Morning Service. — £>es Methodistes. — A strong-minded Lady. — The Free Kirk on thp Continent. — A reverend Sabbath-breaker. — Scenery about Divonne. — Sunsets and Sunrises. — ^Nyon and Maitre Jacques. — Catholic verszis Prot- estant 80 CHAPTER XI. PEESONS AND POLITICS IN DITON-NE. Aristocratic Invalids. — Observations on Nobilities. — The Count of Divonne. — ^The Baron de Pres.^An Italian Hero.— :Threatenings of a Duel. — Male Kisses. — French Opinions of English Manners. — Winter. — Making Tracks. — Learning Fi-ench. — My Teacher. Friendly Warnings. — ^The Cmp d'itat. — A fugitive Republican. Stirring Reports. — Tyranny triumphant. — The Elections. — A lib- eral Lawyer and an illiberal Prefect. — ^The French Peasantry.. 91 CHAPTER XIL WINTER IN DIVONNE. Snows and Mists. — ^The Northers. — Ennui. — Concerning TrompettSi CONTENTS. ui — Concerning our Sheep. — Concerning Monsieur Trocon. — French Egotism.— Trocon's Fight for Liberty.— His Duel.— His Quarrel , with the Priest. — A French Theorist. — Polemics on Religion and. Politics. — The Immorality of Eetailing Page 108 CHAPTER Xin. SPKIN& IN DIVONNE. New Arrivals. — Count de G . — Arrest Number One. — Arrest Nnmber Two. — Arrest Number Three. — Russian Nobles. — A speechless Princeling.— American Sympathies with Russians; — Prince Georges on Slavery. — The Princess Georges on Ditto. — Re- publicanism in Russia 123 CHAPTER XIV. STORT-TELUNG IN DIVONNE. Stories of Travel. — Prince Eugene's Story of the Haunted Attic. — The Doctor's Story of the Haunted Room. — The Story of the Bur- ied Treasure of Mantry 135 CHAPTER XV. MESMERISM IN DIVONNE. Conversations on Mesmerism. — The magnetic Button of Mr. Rob- son. — ^A conscious Somnambulist. — Jolivet's Diplomacy. — Mesme- ric Experiences of a Russian Lady. — ^A second-sighted Servant- girl. — ^The Somnambula of Ny on. — Her Prophecy. — My Departure from Divonne 147 CHAPTER XVI. A CHEAP WATEEING-PI-ACB. Up Lake Leman. — A Patriotic American. — The Black and Blue Gentleman and his Black Tmnk. — American Ignorance of foreign Tongues. — First Dinner at Bex. — A singular Lover. — The Irish Doctor and his remarkable Over-coat. — Moral Instruction to Youth. — The Nobility of Berne. — A Dialogue on Matrimony. — The Doc- tor's Farewell 163 CHAPTER XVn. DnraEKS AND DINEES AT PARIS. An old Comrade. — Of the Death of Priessnitz. — ;A Boarding-house. — ^Mrs. Keene. — Mrs. Keene's Economy. — Mrs. Keene's Brother. — Father Pipelet and Wife. — Making French easy. — A Tour through Parisian Restaurants. — ^The Cafe Jouffi'oy . — Superannuated Beanx. — A Table d'hote. — A fine old Gallic Gentleman. — Concerning. Horsebeef. — A jolly Baron. — A Recollection of Beethoven... 177 CHAPTER XVin. PrOBENCE AND ITS CASCINE. The Charm of Florence. — The Cafe Doney. — ^Breakfast. — Long Giu- seppe. — Enrichetta the Fioraia, — An envious Italiana. — Scissor- IV CONTENTS. ing a Woman. — The Institution of Flower-girls. — Cafe Prices in Florence.— The Cafe Wital.— Dinner at the Luna.— Bargaining with a Coachman.— To the Cascine. — A Music-day.— Beatrice. —The Ceucifixion Page 191 CHAPTER XIX. CEETAIN FLOKEKirUE LOCNGEES. Confessions of an Idler.— A Florentine Day.— Fruits and Wines. — A Florentine Evening. — Translating. — Loungers at the Cafe Do- ney. — Viardot. — Disappointed Love. — Buonacosta. — A Conversa- tion on Fortune-hunting. — Bartoldi. — Cheap Dandyism. — ^A Cos- mopolite 208 CHAPTER XX. ECCENTEICS AHD ECCENTEICITIES IN FLOEENCE. John Bull Abroad. — Major O'Rourke. — Philosophy under Calami- ties. — A new Remedy for a Broken Heart. — Florentine Duels. — A Neapolitan Hero. — A Duel at Pisa. — ^Punishment of Dueling. — A Four-legged Florentine Gentleman. — A Clever Coachman. — Tout de suite. — A sacrilegious Blunder 222 CHAPTER XXI. MAEIA AND HEE ST0KIE8. Maria of Sienna. — Her Mother's Adventure with a Witch. — The Story of the Demon Goat. — The Story of the Midnight Mass. — ^The Adventure of "Martino with Satanasso. — Maria's Bible. — The Sac- EAMENT OF COLUMBHS AT PalOS 235 CHAPTER XXn. AL MEZZOGIOEHO. Florence to Rome. — Roman Bandits and Papal Dragoons. — Mine Host on the Monte Pincio. — Kissing the Pope's Toe. — Pio Nono's Opinion of Mustaches. — Tyranny in the Roman States. — ^A Canine Exemplar. — Prospects of Italian Liberty. — Continental domestic Architecture. — Italian Women. — Italian Lovers. — ^Manly Tears. — An Italian Reception. — An Italian Evening 251 CHAPTER XXin. ACQUAINTANCE IN STONE. Man's Crea,tions his Acquaintance. — Disappointed Expectations. Sensuous Iniluence of Florence.— The Florentine Palaces. — ^The Campanile. — ^The Duomo. — Tomb of Michael Angelo. — The Saint George of Donatello.— The David of Michael Angelo.— The Mer- cury of Giovanni di Bologna. — Canova. — ^Tenerani. — The Descent from the Cross. — The Angel of the Last Judgment. — Emotional Life at Rome. — The Pantheon. — The Tombs of the Scipios. Conclusion 265 EUROPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. CHAPTEE I. PLOEENCE TO VENICE. PuESUED by the fretting enmity of a monotonous invalidism, I one day reached the triple saloon, the white pillars, and the marble-covered tables of the Cafe Doney in Florence. I was hob-a-nobbing with Gait, the sculptor, over a couple of ice-creams, when my companion looked up from his spoon, and addressed an individual who stood before us with a " Good evening, Mr. Greenough." I rose and shook hands with a gentleman of agree- able air, though reserved and commanding, whose feat- ures were high and fine, whose eyes were of a stern gray, and whose full beard and mustache gave him all his itatural grave manliness of aspect. Drawing a furred glove from his white taper fingers, Greenough sat down by us, and began to urge me with his rich voice and earnest manner to exchange the warm breezes of Italy for the cool waters of Graefenberg. Hydropathy, he thought, was the temple of health, and Priessnitz was its high priest, or rather its deity. He had spent eighteen months in the establishment at Graefenberg, beholding in that time marvelous cures, not on strangers only, but also on members of his own family. So fervent was his faith, that I finally accept- 6 EDEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE, ed it as my own^ and was persuaded to look for my lost health in the rivulets of Silesia, as Ponce de Leon sought his departed youth in Floridian fountains. In the person of JSTeuville, a V irginian looker-on in Florence, and also a sufferer from some of the chronic flagrancies of nature, I found a fellow-traveler and co- disciple in hydropathy. When we bade Greenough good-by, he gave us a letter of introduction to Priess- nitz. Thanks be unto the merciful angel who veils from us futurity ! for it would have been a sombre parting had we known that we were never to see this fine artist and gentleman again. Before I returned to Florence, delirium and fever had torn his cunning hands from the marble, and swept his poetic spirit away to other visions than those of earthly beauty. Through Bologna, Ferrara, Pavia, glancing from the prison of Tasso to the banquet-rooms of Este, from the chamber of Parasina to the dungeon of Hugo, from wonder-halls of painting to cathedrals of aged solem- nity, we passed over the mountains and the broad, rich plains which separate Florence from Venice. A rail- road station now puffs its disrespectful smobe inter- mittently over the lagoons which glitter around the dethroned Queen of the Adriatic, and makes itself es- pecially ridiculous by reminding the traveler of Vesu- vius breatiing out its fire and vapor over the Bay of Naples. It was twilight by the time we got out of the cars, and dim evening before we emerged from a passport -office looking toward the distant lights of Venice. Gondoliers bellowing from black gondolas wanted to carry us to the city, like undertakers with floating coffins desirous of conveying us to some sea- FLORENCE TO VENICE. 7 deep cemetery. Thei-e was at first a contest among these amphitious gentry as to whether we should take a gondola or an omnibus ; hut, unable to agree among themselves, or perhaps out of sheer good-nature, they finally left the matter to our decision. When I tell the poetic reader that we selected the omnibus, he will probably sniff with contempt and resolve to cut our acquaintance. But let him grant us his patience ; we had financial reasons for our choice : we were as hard up for cash as Mother Hubbard's dog for a bone. Having miscalculated traveling necessities at starting, our united pockets now contained the residuum of one zwanziger, or about fourteen cents. We might have flourished our letters of credit, to be sure ; but the gon- doliers would have understood their value as little as that of the belles-lettres. The 'bus was half price ; the 'bus, we thought, would roll us straight to the ho- tel ; and so, in sultry disappointment, we declared for the prosaic 'bus. Off went our trunks with the agility of chairs and tables under the influence of old witches or modem spirits ; and, struggling after them through the noisy, eddying crowd, we reached a long covered boat, which looked as much like a gondola as a horse looks like a pony. " Enter, gentlemen, enter ; take your places under the canopy," said the master boatman, pointing with a warning finger to heavy clouds floating low in the twi- light air. We got in cautiously, as people get into all tight places, knocked our knees together, knocked our hats together, and took the latter off. " This isn't an omnibus," said Neuville, looking me gravely in the face at the distance of six inches. 8 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. "No; but I suppose we shall find it on the other side of the ferry, if this is a ferry." " But what if we have to pay the ferry extra ?" "Can't do it. That's their look-out. We must tell them they should have thought of that before, and have arranged matters better for gentlemen who only had a zwanziger." Such was our desperate conversation, while trunks and individuals were being rammed into our pen until we were as close as little pigs riding to market. The boatmen took their places, and we glided out of the -turmoil of gondolas, gondoliers, passengers, and police- men. Night had fallen by this time, sullen and star- less, changing- Venice into shapeless masses of shadow which sat mysteriously on dusky waters. A pattering of rain-drops, the monotonous dip of paddles, quick cries of men who passed us unseen like warning but invisible spectres, were the only jarrings on the won- derful silence. We knew that we were threading the avenues of a great city, and therefore the darkness ap- peared more ghostly, the stUlness more supernatural ; therefore did it seem as if we were traversing no city of upper earth, but rather those " caverns measureless to man which run down to the sunless sea." Through the Grand Canal without knowing it, between rows of lofty palaces without beholding them, under the Rialto without a consciousness of its shadow, we passed noise- lessly, blindly, like those who are ferried over the river of death. I felt a vague melancholy, an ineffable sor- row stealing over me, as if I were riding as chief mourner at my own funeral, and wonderingwhose turn would come next. FLORENCE TO VENICE. 9 " It seems to me that it takes a great while to get to the omnibus," was my remark. "I don't believe there is any omnibus," replied Neuville, with the indignation of outraged good faith. Presently the bow of the boat grated against some stony obstacle, and we became conscious that our watery bier had ceased to advance. "Behold us arrived," said the boat-master. "Be- hold the Albergo d'Europa." I crushed my hat in the little doorway, straightened myself up, and bounded on to a broad flight of steps wet with the rippling of the canal. Above me rose gigantic stories of a palace front fretted with columns and pilasters, and casting red glares of light outward through deep windows and open balconies. Before it slept sombre waters, flickering here and there under lamp-flashes or the sparkle of a lost star-beam, and spreading solemnly away into an intensity of darkness and mystery, from some unknown shore of which shone other lights, as of fairy islands unattainable by human presences. "Is this the hotel?" I questioned. "Yes, gentlemen," responded a head-waiter in a white waistcoat; "this is the Hotel of Europe, at your service." " But where is the omnibus ?" was the inquiry of my undiminished perplexity. "You have just got out of the omnibus, gentlemen. That boat there is the omnibus." " Oh," said I, turning to Neuville, "I thought that was the omnibus all the while." " Of course you did," replied Neuville, scornfully ; A 2 10 EUROPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. "it looks as much like an omnibus as an alligator looks like an elephant." Having stared anew , at the maritime vehicle, we told the waiter to pay for our passage, and walked into the hotel, wiser than before on the subject of omnibuses. I have no intention of describing Venice at length, inasmuch as it has been visited by other travelers equally well provided with Murrays. We sailed in gondolas, visited the Arsenal, made an excursion to the Lido, paid a boatman to sing. Tasso and love- songs under the Rialto, and did various other things appropriate to the locality. We likened the fretted architecture of the palaces to a filigree of marble ; Saint Mark's, with its many domes and colors, to a mass of gigantic bubble-work ; the rich canvases of the Venetian painters to gorgeous sunsets hanging in the walls of the west ; the black gondolas, vanishing down watery avenues, to hearses borne along the dim naves of mighty cathedrals. THE ISLAND CITY. The tnidnight mariner with wondering eyes Beholds a city on the Adrian waves, Whose palaces from ocean depths arise, Like saintly shining souls from earthly graves. The moonlight glorifies its vaulted fanes, Its proud pavilions and its dizzy towers ; The lamplight from its arched windows rains Along the sea in ardent, trembling showers. No whii-ring wheels, no clanging coui-sers sweep Beneath the shadows of its princely piles ; But sombre barks, inaudible as sleep, Glide down the silence of sea-paven aisles. FLOEENCB TO VENICE. Discovered through its air of lucent balm, Though near, it seems mysterious and far ; Its life is beautiful, unearthly, calm — An angel city of some sinless star. So shines that splendid city of delight Which poets build on Fancy's magic surge ; Yet richer far, more delicately bright Than cloud-wrought cities on the sunset's verge. Most musical the sea around it chimes, Besponsive to the mind-harps in its halls ; Most fragrant breezes from all starry climes Uplift the standards on its shining walls. And poet souls in barks of amethyst Sail down the ripple of those tides of love. And feel their foreheads gently crowned and kiss'd By unseen angels bending from above. O joyous palaces ! heroic towers ! O trustful oratories ! yearning spires ! Seraphic limuings, ferveut-hued as flowers ! Eternal sculptures, passionate as fires I Who leaveth earth ? Who voyageth with me ? Who lifteth sail in Poesy's rich air. To search Imagination's wonder-sea. And find the poets' Island City there ? 12 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. CHAPTER 11. IN VENICE. About a week after our arrival in Venice, while pa- trolling the colonnades of the Piazza San Marco, Neu- ville and I met a couple of fellow-countrymen, Irwine and BuiTOUghs, Southerners, whom we had previously seen at Florence. As we had a stomach apiece, all empty at the moment, we adjourned for conversation to a restaurant handily situated in one of the palace- fronted edifices which, on three sides, confront and en- noble the piazza. " We are going to Graefenberg," said Neuville over his macaroni a la Milanese. "We are going to Graefenberg," echoed Irwine over a glass of 7}ino rosso. "We shall take the cure," continued Neuville. "I suppose you try it also." " Not a bit of it," replied Irwine. " Priessnitz will have to talk himself to death before he inveigles me into his tubs. I know aU about those water privi- leges." " Oh, you have been through the mill, then?" " Not such a blockhead, if you please. But I have seen other people in the suds, and was satisfied with the simple spectacle. I went to an American water- cure with a friend, and was incautious enough to stay over-night. They stirred me up in the morning, and decoyed me, while I was half asleep, into a wet-sheet. IN VENICE. 13 I got out of it as quick as I could, and went off at a canter, in hopes of getting warm once more in my life. Came to a spring at last, among the brushwood ; a little dirty spring, with footmarks in the mud all about it. There was a sick minister and his wife, with their tin cups in their hands, looking at the spring and look- ing at the mud. The minister was very small in the legs and very much wrapped up about the head ; gave a fellow the' idea of a fork standing on its tines. I thought of two chickens on a frosty morning staring at the snow, with one leg tucked up among the feath- ers. At last we all stepped gingerly into the mud, like cats, drank more than we wanted, and went off up the hills in very low spirits. When I got back to the house, I found the little minister and his wife, as chilly as ever, surveying the breakfast table. It was a long pine table without any cloth, a row of white plates set like buttons along the edges, with pieces of brown bread and tumblers of milk between them. « My dear,' says the minister, ' it looks like a very cold breakfast for such a sharp morning.' ' Oh dear me !' says she, ' I suppose it's good for us.' I ate what I could get, and then took the first conveyance out of the place. So, yon see, I know what you fellows are coming to. I prefer to die without suffering so much. You might as well kill a man outright as starve and freeze him to death." At the expiration of a fortnight in Venice we went to the police-office to demand the right of departure. All over Italy, excepting perhaps Piedmont, the police have the same troublesome habit of taking away a trav- eler's passport when he enters a city, and obliging him. 14 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. if lie stays over a week, to procure what they call a paper of residence, or paper of surety. At the end of his sojourn he swaps off his carta di residema for his passport, gives a little something to boot most probably, and is allowed to go in peace. I knew very well of the existence of this unprofitable custom, but somehow forgot it at Yenice, and so never appHed at all for the said residential papers. Accordingly, when Neuville and I appeared at the police-oflSce, and quiet- ly demanded our passports without any thing to ex- change for them but our forgetful heads, the officer nearly burst with wrath and astonishment. "Howl" he thundered, nearly petrifying us with the ferocity of his green spectacles; "no paper of resi- dence ! I should like to know what this means. How dare you live a whole fortnight in Venice without a paper of residence ?" We explained to him that we did not know what it meant ourselves ; that we did not dare to live so any longer, and that we wanted to get away and go some- where else as soon as possible. He seemed utterly dumbfounded by our apologies, and indeed by the whole circumstance, which was perhaps unparalleled in his official experience, and was certainly a stigma on the police of the city. He gave us the passports, however, after shaking his head at us long enough to upset his brains, and perhaps went addle-pated before bedtime under the belief that the world was full of Yankees who had no papers of residence. We were rather lucky in getting off with so little trouble. Had we been Englishmen instead of Amer- icans, we might have gone farther and fared worse; IN VENICE. 15 that is, been turned out of Austria altogether, or, pos- sibly, expressed on to some unpleasant Hungarian pris- on. Perfidious Albion was just then in great disfa- vor with the government of the Caesars, which accord- ingly delighted in entangling and thwarting those traveling Britons who happened to touch its mighty spider-web of watchfulness. An amusing Irishman named D'Arcy, whom I met at Dresden, related to me how he had a difference of opinion with the Venetian police concerning his projected journey from Venice to Vienna. "We can not give you a permit to go to Vienna," said the official ; "we shall make out your passport for Milan." "But I have just come from Milan," returned the surprised D'Arcy. " I have seen Milan, and seen it enough." "Very possibly ; but we want you to go back there. It is extremely suspicious that you are so anxious to go to Vienna." " Not at aU. I want to go to Vienna because I want to see it. Every body wants to see Vienna." "But what makes you so resolute to see Vienna? What is your particular motive — your object ?" " Oh, I want to see it because it is such a beautiful city, and because it has such beautiful palaces in it, and because it has such beautiful women in it. Ev- ery body tells me about the beautiful women there ; and, begging your ptodon for taking such a liberty, I shall die if you disappoint me." The official looked monstrously puzzled, for every one was on the broad grin, and a certain suspect Hun- garian was treasonably enjoying himself in a hearty 16 EUROPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. laugh fcehind his traveling cap. At last he ungracious- ly appended his valuable autograph to the passport; and the dear, darling D'Arcy, as his friends called him, ■went off triumphantly to see the pretty women of Vienna, among whom, as I afterward heard, he made no trifling sensation. "I must tell you, by the way, of a dispute that I had with a countryman of yours," said D'Arcy to Bur- roughs and myself. " I was sitting in an Italian ho- tel, close by a party of Americans, when one of them declared that Old England was nigh her downfall. ' I'll take you up on that,' said I. ' I'll meet you,' said he. So we had it there, back and forth, for an hour together, without convincing each other a particle. He gave me his card when we separated. His name was Greeley, and I heard that he was the editor of a large New York paper." "Greeley! I'm glad you pitched into him," said Burroughs, who hated England himself, but who, as a Southerner, hated Greeley more. Returning to my subject, I observe that stories in- numerable might be collected of ludicrous encounters between travelers and the Continental police, especially that of Austria. The broad brims of wide-awakes have repeatedly afforded a spacious battle-field for these two antagonistic classes of society. A friend of mine jour- neyed in one of those revolutionary head-dresses from Florence to Vienna without molestation ; but it was not permitted that he should brave the Austrian eagle in its nest with impunity, and that watchful fowl made a triumphant peck at him when he least expected it. Taken into custody in the street by a spy in citizen IN VENICE. 17 costume, aided by a couple of soldiers, he was marched to a police-office, with the proof of his political turpi- tude on his devoted head. The chief of the office got into a fearful rage at sight of him — not so much because of the hat, as because it was late, and dinner was wait- ing. They were about to secure the government for one night against the seditious broad-brim by locking it up, and leaking its owner up with it, when a friend, who had witnessed the capture, arrived with a valet de place from the hotel just in time to make expla- nations, and save our countryman from repenting of wide-awakes in the night-watches of an Austrian prison. "It was all a mistake, then?" asked the officer. " Oh ! quite a mistake." "You had no evil intentions in wearing a broad- brimmed hat ?" "None at all; not an intention in the world." " Wen, go then. But buy another hat. Do not be seen again in the streets with such a hat as this, or the consequences may be very serious." My friend bought a steeple-crown before breakfast the next morning, and thus, for a second time, was the Austrian empire saved from destruction. A farce on the same subject as the above was played at Milan, partly in my own presence. Presenting my passport at the police-office of that city, I met an En- glish acquaintance, a capital fellow named Budd, who, with a look of brazen impenitence, was receiving an admonition concerning the radical character of his hat. " Good-morning, Signer Budd," said the officer from behind his desk, leaning forward, and looking search- 18 EUROPEAN ACQUAINTANCiE. ingly, though civilly, into the broad, handsome, good- humored, but determined face which confronted him. "We sent for you, signor, to speak to you about your hat — ^the one you have in your hand at this moment." "It is worthy of the honor," said Budd; "it is a good hat." And he held up the battered, dusky-white broad-brim with an air of affectionate admiration. " Precisely, signor ; very useful, I have no doubt. But it may bring you into trouble. Tou are aware, doubtless, that its form and color are both unusual; you are aware that hats of that species have been the badge of a certaii? disorderly and treasonable party. You have also a full, long beard, which is equally a badge of the said party. The whole marks you as singular, and attracts an unpleasant degree of popular notice." "But," responded Budd, "I am not an Italian. I have nothing to do with Italian politics. I wear such a hat and beard as suit my style of beauty and my notions of convenience." "Exactly, signor. You have nothing to do with politics ; we know it well. We know aU your tastes and aU your haunts. You went into the country yesterday. You were at the Oafe delle Colonne the evening before. You were at the house of Signora Bellina the evening before that. You have been watched ever since you reached MUan, and we could tell you where you have been and what you have done on every single day. We now know that you are not a dangerous individual, and we wish to persuade you to avoid the appearance of being such. We have no IN VENICE. 19 - intentions against your beard, signor; you are welcome to keep it. But we would counsel you to discontinue wearing that hat : it would be so easy to lay it aside, and might save you so much trouble." " Very well," said Budd ; " but, if I am to change my dress at the suggestion of the government, I want some particular directions as to the new style which I am to adopts Just give me a written order specifying the kind of hat which I am to wear, and I am ready to obey it. But I must have the order. I want to send it to England ; it shall be published in Piinch or the T^mes. I could get five pounds for such a paper in England." The officer was nettled, and looked angrily at the row of white teeth which glittered maliciously through Budd's black mustaches. Controlling his temper, however, he went on with his admonition, although not in quite so composedly gracious a tone as before. "Signor, we can not give you such an order; it would be absurd. We leave the matter to your own sense of propriety and your prudence. But what we spe- cially complain of is not so much the hat itself as your manner of wearing it. You wear it turned up, and turned down, and twisted, and cocked, in a style which attracts a great deal of attention, and is particularly obnoxious." " Oh, I wear it according to circumstances," said Budd. " I will explain all that to you (sticking it on his head). Now, when the sun is on my right, I turn it down so (hauling the right brim down) ; and when the sun is on my left, I turn it down so (a haul at the left brim) ; and when I want to take a general view 20 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. of the country, I turn it up all around (brim cocked up throughout its entire circumference) ; and when the wind Hows, I slap it down on the top for safety (a smart pat on the yielding crown). " But just give me an order Iww I shall wear my hat. It would he better than the other. The Times would give me twenty pounds for such a document as that." " Signor," said the officer, losing all patience, and beginning to stammer, "you will find, perhaps,*that this is no jesting matter. You had better consider it seriously, and answer us seriously. We are advising you what is for your own good, and what may save you a great deal of annoyance. Think of it again, and see if you do not come to our opinion." In short, they had a long, and, in part, a rather stormy discussion, some of which I heard, whUe the rest Budd related to me afterward. In the end, he had the moderation to take the officer's advice, and lay aside his wide-awake while he remained on Aus- trian territory. It is a fact that the obnoxious head- dress excited no little popular attention ; all the more, doubtless, because it shaded keen black eyes, a jetty beard, and a visage remarkably Italian in feature. People stopped to gaze at him as he passed along the streets, and gathered round him by the dozen when he halted before any object of a tourist's interest, staring with an earnestness almost of expectation, as if they saw before them Mazzini or Garibaldi about to cry, " Yiva la repuhblicaT It is small consolation to the traveler who is pes- tered by these impertinent regulations to observe that IN VENICE. 21 they fall with double force upon the natives. It makes him indignant, rather, to see a foreign yoke lying upon so fair a country, so nobly fashioned for empire, and to see the sons of that country so slavishly submissive. But, on the other hand, he can not help acknowledging that in hardly any other similar expanse of Italy is life so respected, property so safe, and land so well tilled as in the Austrian Lombardy, The people are gov- erned sternly, but not stupidly; they are not allowed to think for themselves, but they are encouraged to work for themselves ; and this is not visible certainly under the Italic rule of Pio Nono and King Bomba. Venice is, indeed, decayed and decaying ; but such mu5t have been its destiny, no matter who were its rulers ; for its riches and power necessarily flew away on the vanishing wings of its commerce; and the Austrians are hardly more responsible for its decline than for the fall of Babylon or the death of the first Cheops. 22 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. CHAPTER III. TENICE TO GEAEFENBEEG. A TOLERABLE steam-boat carried us to Trieste, which I ohserved to be a newish city, affluent in ships and store-houses, and lively with a rapid circulation of dust and people about its broad streets. In freshness, movement, and an appearance of growth, it reminded me of Marseilles, and even of sea-port towns in my own flourishing country. Coming in late at night, we got so little sleep that it was hardly worth taking, and by ten in the morning were bundled off in a rickety, uncomfortable omnibus for Vienna. A few hours of leisurely ascent brought us into one of the most beautiful highland districts in the world, full of abrupt turfy hills, rocky precipices, dells spotted with thickets, lucent rivulets, endless diversifications of feature in short, all shaded into fine variety by an abounding verdure of dark, tapering firs, exactly suited in color and contour to the Alpine character of the scenery. I would describe this lovely land more minutely, but that I was crushed by sleep, and rode through a large portion of it with closed eyes, and mouth perhaps open ; so that I have only an indis- tinct recollection of its sharply-sketched landscapes, as if I had seen them through a mist, or a pair of some gi-andmother's spectacles. Once, as my head jolted about unpleasantly, I partially awoke, and stuck it VENICE TO GEAEFENBEEG. 23 through a strap which depended from the roof of the vehicle for the support of passengers' elbows. There it hung an hour or two, like a head cut off for a trophy, until I aroused thoroughly, and wanted it again to look out of the window. We reached Laybach, changed our abominable dili- gence for a rail-road car, and thenceforward journeyed most comforta|)ly. On the way we learned that Ea- detzky, the victor of Novara, the greatest living gen- eral of Austria, was in the train with us, hastening to a convention of the Austrian, Russian, and Prussian monarchs at Olmutz. At Gratz, a fine large city, the station was surrounded by an extremely well-dressed multitude, with many beautiful women in its ranks, all eyes and mouth to welcome the great man. Pres- ently there rose a shout, signifying that he was visible, and we leaned out of the windows to share the spectacle of heroism in a white coat. A very little old hero he was, with very white mustaches, very sore eyes, and a very wizened appearance generally, as if much dried up by the hot fires of musketry to which he had been exposed. After standing a moment in full view on the platform of the car, he caught hold of the iron guard and made a little boy's jump to the ground. There was a great hurrah, as if the Gratzonians were de- lighted beyond control to see him keep his legs with- out assistance. I felt no inclination to quarrel with them on the score of their enthusiasm, for Eadetzky is said to be as kind-hearted as he is brave, able, and energetic. They have good hotels at Vienna, glorious coffee, bread unequaled otherwheres, and the most artistic 24 EUROPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. soups. We were strengthening ourselves in the eating saloon of that most recommendable house, the Eomis- chen Kaiser, when we were addressed by a stranger, a tall, genteel, middle-aged man, with a newspaper in his hand, who was lounging near us at a table from which the remnants of his dinner had just been removed. "Excuse me, gentlemen," he said in good English, marked by only a slight foreign accent, " excuse me for interrupting you; buti see that you are Americans, and I am most happy to meet you. I have spent many years in your country, and always feel, in addressing an American, as if I were speaking to a compatriot. Still, I am a German ; not an Austrian, however, but from Baden. I must observe, notwithstanding, that I am acquainted in Vienna — ^widely acquainted. Allow me to ask if you stay long here." " Only a week, probably," said one of us, while the others stared in wonder at this outpouring of courteous communicativeness. "I am sorry for that, as I should take great pleasr ure in presenting you to some of the first classes here," continued our magnificent friend. "I have many acquaintances among the upper ranks of society here, who would be most happy to receive any of your countrymen introduced by me. By the way, I am sur- prised that so few Americans ever select Germany as a place of residence. There are in the United States many families, with moderate incomes, who could make their means go much farther and include many more luxuries here than there. Baden, for example, would be an admirable place of residence. A court, if you care for such things ; a very respectable theatre ; an VENICE TO GEAEPENBEEG. 25 Opera even ; baths and society ; galleries and univer- sities better than your own, within easy reach ; all, too, at a wonderfully small expense. An American &mily might live there comfortably, educate its chil- dren thoroughly, learn French and German well, and amuse itself very pleasantly, for less money than it would cost it to live at home unamused and only half instructed." In this politely patronizing style our friendly un- known discoursed for half an hour, and then, with el- egant sadness that he should probably see us no more, took his departure. " What do you think of him ?" said one. " He is a humbug," said another. " He is a spy," said a third. ' " He is a professional gambler," said a fourth. Toung America, it must be observed, was in this case quite young, for which reason it flung out its verdicts with a vigor amounting perhaps to un- charity. Tet it had reason for its suspicions : it was in a land tainted with espionage; in a community broken out with rouge et noir. Unknown, too, in Eu- rope, is such hospitable confidence as this, of introduc- ing to the best society strangers who bring no other recommendation than the cut of their coats and faces. The German is acquired with astonishing facility, and Neuville proved it. Irwine, the only one of us who had any previous intimacy with that tongue, went to the principal theatre to hear a German tragedy. Neuville accompanied him — not with any Babelish fancy of listening to an unknown speech, but to get an idea of the aiTangement of an Austrian theatre, and the appearance of a Vienna audience. On their return they were in a state of equal enthusiasm as to the excellence B 26 EUROPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. of the scenery, the power of the actors, the. ingenuity of the plot, and the sublimity of the language. " Why, good heavens, NeuviUe," said Irwine, " what in the world did you understand ?" " Oh," replied NeuviUe, with infinite gravity, " I heard some fellows saying '■Mein Gott P " We spent eight days among the galleries, churches, palaces, gardens, and promenades of Vienna, all of which time my great hurry to reach Graefenherg compels me to bury in oblivion. Once more on the rail-road, we never halted until we were in HeiTmanstadt, a village some thirty miles short of our moist destination. It was Saturday night when we landed at the little hotel on the public square, and we spent Sunday in staring at the huge boots and gorgeous short petticoats of the peasant bucks and belles. As Irwine and Burroughs still hesitated about taking the cure, we sent for the landlord, and questioned him concerning Priessnitz's reputation in the surrounding country. He did not know ; he could not say any thing certain ; Priessnitz had cured some people and hurt some people ; but he had a friend who had been there, and would tell us all about it. In the evening came.hig friend — a tall, thin, long- nosed young German, who spoke English comprehen- sibly, having learned it, as he sa,id, from his British fellow-patients at Graefenberg. With the universal good-humor of his countrymen — the most obliging set of mortals under the sun — ^he sat down to a pipe, and told us all he knew about hydropathy and its results. "Tou can go if you like," said he, "but I advise you no. You will stay there long time and think you get VENICE TO GRAEPENBEBG. 27 better, but you will be as the first day, but worse ; and aU the time you think you get well the next day. I stay there eighteen months, and then I ask Priess- nitz why I am not better, and he say that I stay not long enough ; but I say that I stay too long, and I come away. There are some peoples who think they are ctired, and go away and get back all their mala- dies. Nevertheless you can go and try, but I think you will find it as I say." Thus he went on fijr half an hour or more, murder- ing our language and our hopes in the same breath. He was so evidently sincere and well-informed that he nearly converted us to despair, and made the faces of Neuville and myself in particular look as long as rope- walks. We thanked him heartily for his kindness, although it nearly killed us ; and he went away, char- itably wishing us a better streak of luck than he had found himsdfl After his departure we talked up our courage again to a moderate height, and finally bade the landlord arrange for transporting us to Graefenberg the next morning. A green, rolling, woodland country, the eminences of which steadily heightened as we advanced, was the scene of our day's journey. It drew toward evening when we found ourselves rolling through the long winding valley in which stands the little borough of Freiwaldau, and above which towers the hill of Graefen- berg. A vagrant rivulet touched at intervals upon the road side, chilling us already with prospective baths in its swift and fiigidly crystalline waters. Here and there stood linen factories, around which bleached long strips of cloth, stretched out like immeasurable recum- 28 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. bent ghosts on the emerald meadows. What a provi- dence, I thought, that the great water-doctor should have been bom in a country where he could so easily supply himself with douches and bandages ! As we neared Freiwaldau, the road was lined by cunning lit- tle cottages, built roughly of hewn logs, but blooming through every window with pots of flowers. It aston- ished me to see this poor and uneducated peasantry thus adorn its dwellings with those simple beauties of nature, which our better-fed and better-schooled laboring classes of New England usually neglect, if they do not coarsely despise. Eattling into an open square, with a town-house in the centre, encircled by the more aristocratic buildings of Freiwaldau, we pulled up at the Golden Star, ob- tained rooms, sent for the landlord, and instituted new inquiries concerning the success of Priessnitz in killing or curing his patients. But here Priessnitz was taken for granted — ^Priessnitz was an axiom, an admitted fact. The only point on which our host differed from the pos- sible opinion of the great man was in a certain theory that his hotel was a much better place of residence th^n the Establishment. The lodging was wretched at Graefenberg, he said ; the food was worse, and the building had a bad odor. As to ablutions, he would order a tub big enough for us all, have a bath-man come to the hotel to superintend our moistenings, and provide us with as much water as four reasonable mer- men even could desire. The Golden Star was a pleasant planet enough, and some of us were disposed to accept its head-angel's in- vitation ; but Irwine, whom the air of the locality had VENICE TO GKAEFENBEEG. 29 abeady fanaticized, declared for Graefenberg, no matter how disagreeably musty; so that we finally resolved to visit the Establishment and smell it for ourselves, be- fore we rejected the privilege of living under the imme- diate wing and duck of Priessnitz. 30 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. CHAPTER IV. INSTALLATION AT GEAEFENBEKG. The whole landscape was buttered with sunshine when we sallied out to climb the long lull, halfway up which shone the whitewashed walls of the great Sile- sian Water-cure. It was, nevertheless, the weather of a belated spring ; so cool that we covered ourselves against its breath with our winter overcoats. I wiU also remark (begging the public's pardon for mention- ing such a thing) that we were, one and all, stoutly underdothed with flannel; and I wish particular no- tice to be taken of this fact, as it is of considerable in- terest when taken in connection with the butterfly cos- tume in which we fluttered about a few days afterward. Through streets of solid stone-and-plaster houses we passed into a narrow sweep of meadows, and cross- ed a lively brook of clear water, variously useftil in washing invalids and dirty clothes. In the shop win- dows were displayed huge brogans, stout canes shod with iron, drinking-horns, and pretty cups of Bohe- mian glass, all significant of the teetotal peripatetic society into whose haunts we were about to venture. Half way up the hill we came to a little fountain, where a solitary individual was swallowing water with an air as if he thought very small beer of the liquid, but sup- posed it was good for him. Some hundred yards far- ther on was another costive fountain, dripping from INSTALLATION AT GEAEFENBEEG. 31 the base of an obelisk of gray stone, on which shone the inscription, " Au genie de l'eau feoide." From here onward we met numbers of people of a cheerfully crazed appearance, wandering confusedly hither and thither, like ants when you scatter their nest, aU of them shabbily attired — some in linen, as if in derision of our flannels ; some bareheaded, with clipped hair, others with towels about their temples — their pockets bulky with glass cups, or their shoulders harnessed with drinking-horns. Most of them carried thick canes, and raced up the eminences with the hearty good-will of Christian climbing the hUl Difficulty. La- dies, too, were visible, shoeless and stockingless, wad- ing through the dewy grass, their feet burning with what Doctor Johnson would have called auroral frigid- ity and herbiferous friction. They aU kept in constant motion, and seemed never to speak to each other, re- minding me of those bewildered knights in Ariosto's enchanted palace, who wandered perpetually up and down, hearing the voices of dear friends, but seeing no one. The centre of movement for this distracted crowd was an irregular square, stony and verdureless, on one side of which rose two enormous ghastly buildings, with multitudinous windows, constituting the estab- lishment proper ; while opposite these, at various dis- tances, glared low, whitewashed cottages, also used for the stowage and cleansing of a vast invalidism. From a concave in the masonry of the outer stairway to the principal edifice gushed a hearty little jet of water, abundantly supplying the horns and cups which were continually presented to its humid mouth. Priessnitz was absent for the nonce at Freiwaldau ; 32 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. but a bathman led us to the superintendent of the Es- tablishment. Entering a side door, we mounted to the dining-hall, with our handkerchiefs to our offended nos- trils ; for the landlord of the Golden Star had not mis- represented the perfumes which haunted the building. Our first supposition was that these smells arose from decayed patients, who had got water-logged and mouldy from having been kept too long under treatment ; but our guide througt this rancid region favored us with a more humane, and, as I afterward discovered, a more probable explanation. In Silesia, as in Syria, the na- tives still preserve a venerable custom, derived, I pre- sume, from Noah's ark, of uniting stable and dwelling- house under one roof. The Arabs, indeed, keep hogs out of their cellars, and are not apt to overcrowd them with cows and calves ; but the Silesians despise or ig- nore these fastidious precautions, and consequently our noses were in great indignation. Bare, creaking stairways and floors brought us to a prodigious desert of an eating-room, varied by an oasis of table (land), and scattered with caravans of unpaint- ed chairs in lieu of camels. The superintendent, a short, flabby man, with a baldish crown, an apple-dump- ling face, and white eyes, came to receive us. I have forgotten the exact price which he demanded for board and lodging, but it was something extremely insignif- icant ; not more, certainly, than three dollars a week. It was so much like gratuitous hospitality that we sent ■ a porter to the Golden Star for our trunks, and follow- ed the superintendent to one of the cottages. We found it a very rustic one, built of raw clapboards, and approached through a puddle, the overrunnings of INSTALLATION AT GEAEFENBEKG. 33 a neighboring water-trough. It had begun life, in- deed, as a stable ; but we objected very little to that, as the scent of quadruped life had been totally exor- cised from its breezy chambers. The floors and par- titions were of the consistency of pasteboard, and we saw at once that, if we did not wish to disturb our neighbors, we must live in a whisper. Every thing was of unsophigticated pine : the walls, the narrow bed- steads, the chairs, and the aguish wash-stands. There were only three chambers for four of us, and but one of them was double-bedded and double-chaired. We tossed up kreutzers for the single rooms. Irwine got one of them, and Burroughs the other. While the trunks were coming we commenced a dance in celebra- tion of our advent, thinking that, perhaps, we should never feel like it again. Presently we heard a yell of fury from some profundity below, accompanied by a double knock against the floor under our feet fr-om what seemed to be a pair of boots. We paused in our Shaker exercises, questioning what abodes of tor- ture might exist beneath us, and what lost mortal or demon might inhabit them. We afterward found that a neuralgic Russian lived on the first floor, and that, feeling annoyed by our clamor, he had sought to mend matters by howling and throwing his shoe-leather about. Presently we all gathered in the passage to catechise a young Englishman who was also (in)stalled in our ex-stable. Having been three months under treatment, he could give us some idea of what we were to do and to suffer ; but, in the very middle of his talk, he was imperiously summoned away by a moist, cool execu- B 2 34 EUEOPBAN ACQUAINTANCE. tioner, armed with a wet sheet. In a moment more we heard, with mingled mirth and horror, the rasping splash of the dripping linen as it fell upon our friend's devoted body ; and, a quarter of an hour afterward, we saw him hurry out, with" wet locks, and make off, at a shivering canter, for the mountain paths. By half past twelve we were bearing our empty, expectant stomachs up and down the great eating-halL Patients followed patients through the creaking doors until nearly two hundred sick, blind, and deformed people were hungrily patrolling around the long tables. Eight or ten neat, cmiously white-faced damsels hur- ried in and out, loaded with piles of plates, or with monstrous loaves of what seemed to be mahogany bread. Presently they all entered in a column, bear- ing spacious, smoking platters of meat and vegetables, prepared, as I afterward found, by cooks of Satan's providing. No other signal was necessary to the fam- ished invalids, who immediately made for the tables at a pace which reminded one of the fast-trotting boarders of a Western hotel. However sick they may have been in other respects, they were certainly well enough to eat ; and I think I never saw, before nor since, such an average large appetite among such a number of people. A disgracefully dirty man, with an ugly, swelled face, who sat on our left, fiUed his plate three or four inches deep with every kind of provender, ate it up, and then did it again, and a third time, as if it were no feat at all. We afterward learned that Priessnitz counseled his patients to eat all they wished — the more the better; for the old peasant was as perversely ignorant of a stom- ach as if he carried a crop and digested with pebbles, INSTALLATION AT GEAEFENBEEG. 35 like a chicken ; maintaining, among other heresies, that a water-patient's gastric powers should he strengthened by hard digestion, as much as his legs by hard walk- ing. Partly in consequence of this monstrous theory, and partly because of the native savageness of Silesian cookery, the food was of the worst description, consist- ing of such horrors as veal ten days old, sauer-kraut, and the most unsusceptible dough-balls. Such a diet would produce a galloping dyspepsia in any one who was not invigorated by frequent baths and wet rub- bings ; but, as things were, I imagine that no great harm was done, and that, in a general way, two hund- red ostriches could not have digested better. A man who takes four cold duckings per diem, walks five or six miles after each of them, and wears a wet bandage over his abdomen, may confide, even to recklessness, in his gastric juices. When we came to discuss the dough-balls above- mentioned, a German astonished us by saying that they were the favorite dish of the Emperor Ferdinand of Austria. "Yes," said "he, "with those they coax him to sign state papers. He is rather childish now, and thinks it a great bore to be always putting his signature to proclamations and treaties. According- ly, Schwartzenberg tells him that, if he will write his name so many times, he shall have dough-balls for dinner." Our meal closed with spacious fruit pies, not much less than two feet in diameter. All these indigestibles gave OUT stomachs exercise until six o'clock, when the table was set again with the fragments of the mahogany loaves, and pitchers of sweet and sour milk. At ten 36 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. we went to bed, and discovered that we were expected to keep warm with one blanket apiece, although the weather was chilly enough to palliate the use of four. For fear of a wet sheet, however, or some other such cold comfort, we took care to call for no additional covering, and supplied the hiatus for the night with, our plaids and overcoats. FIEST DIPS IN GEAEFENBEEG. 37 CHAPTER V. FIEST DIPS IN GEAEFENBEEG Eaelt in the morning Priessnitz came into oux room, followed by Franz, the bathman, and by Irwine, who lent himself as interpreter. I saw before me a medium-Sized person, with weather-beaten features ; a complexion which would have been fair but for deep sunburn; eyes of blue, inclining to gray; thin, light- brown hair, touched in with silver, and an expression reserved, composed, grave, and earnest. He sometimes smUed very pleasantly, but he spoke little, and wore, in general, an air of quiet, simple dignity. Altogether, I felt as if I were in the presence of a kindly-tempered man of superior mind, accustomed to command, and habitually confident in his own powers. I afterward observed that he kept the same impassive self-posses- sion in the presence of every one, were it even the highest noble of the Austrian empire. He listened to a brief history of my malady, seem- ing very indifferent to its past symptoms, but examin- ing attentively the color of my skin and the develop- ment of my muscles. He then ordered the wet sheet to be spread, and signed me to stretch myself in it. As soon as I had measured my length on the dripping linen, Franz folded me up rapidly, and then packed me thickly in blankets and coverlets, as if I were a batch of dough -set away to rise. Neuville followed 38 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCK. my damp example, and our teeth were soon chattering in chilly sympathy. Having noted the intensity of our ague, as if it were a means of judging what degree of vigor in the treatment we could bear, Priessnitz march- ed off to survey the agonies of Irwine and Burroughs. Neuville and I remained as fixed, and nearly as moist, as King Log in the pond. But in a state of anguish far beyond the capacities of that solid potentate. We were so cold that we could not speak plainly, and shivered until our bedsteads caught the infection. Then a change came — a graduated, almost uncon- scious change to warmth— and, at the end of ten min- utes, it was hard to say whether we were uncomforta- ble or not. A few minutes more brought a sensation of absolute physical pleasure, and I began to think that, after all, water was my element, and that it was quite a mistake that I was not furnished with tasty red fins like a perch, or a convenient long tail, for sculling, like a poUiwog. Just at this pleasant stage of the experiment, when I would have been glad to continue it longer, Priess- nitz came back, and declared us ready for the plunge- bath. Franz turned up the blanket so as to leave my feet and ankles free, shod me with a pair of straw slippers, set me unsteadily upright, like a staggering ninepin, took firm hold of my envelopments behind, and started me on my pilgrimage. I set off at the rate of a furlong an hour, which was the top of my possible speed under the circumstances. Forming a little procession, with Priessnitz ahead as the officia- ting priest, then myself as the walking corpse, and then Franz as sexton, we moved solemnly on until FIEST DIPS IN GRAEFENBEBG. 39 we reached a stairway leading into a most gloomy and low-spirited cellar. Dank, rude, dirty flagstones were visible at the bottom, while from an unseen corner bubbled the threatening voice of a runlet of water. The stair was so steep and the steps so narrow that it seemed impossible to descend without pitching for- ward ; but, confiding myself desperately to the attrac- tion of gravitation, I cautiously raised my left foot, made a pivot of the right one, wheeled half a diameter, settled carefully down six inches, wheeled back again to a front face, brought my dextral foot down, and found myself on the first step. Ten repetitions of this delicate and complicated manoeuvre carried me to the flooring of the cellar. Franz now engineered me into a side room, and halt- ed me alongside of an oblong cistern, brimming with black water, supplied by a brooklet, which fell into it with a perpetual chUly gurgle. In a moment his prac- ticed fingers had peeled me like an orange, only far quicker than any orange was ever yet stripped of its envelope. As I shuffled off the last tag of that humid coil, the steam curled up from my body as from an ac- ceptable sacrifice, or an ear of hot boiled corn, Priess- nitz pointed to the cistern, like an angel of destiny signing to my tomb, and I bolted into it in a hurry, as wise people always bolt out of the frying-pan into the fire, when there is no help for it. In a minute my whole surface was so perfectly iced that it felt hard, smooth, and glossy, like a skin of marble. I got out on the first symptom of permission, when Franz set about rubbing me down with a new linen sheet, still possessed of all its native asperity. If I had been a 40 • EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTAKCE. mammoth or an ichthyosaurus, with a cuticle a foot thick, he could not have put more emphasis into his eflForts to bring my blood back to a vigorous circular tion. Priessnitz joined in as if !he enjoyed the exer- cise, and honored me with a searching attrition firom his knowing fingers. Then, after examining me, to see if I grew healthfdlly rosy under the excitement, he signed me to throw a dry sheet over my shoulders, and give myself an air-bath before a window into which a fresh morning breeze was pouring. Holding tight with both hands to the corners of the sheet, I flapped my linen wings as if I were some gigantic bat or but- terfly about to take flight through the orifice, and soar away over the meadows. "Goot!" said Priessnitz, nodding his solemn head in token of ample satisfac- tion ; and, folding my drapery around me, I marched up stairs, like a statue looking for a pedestal, or a be- lated ghost returning to its church-yard. I met Neu- ville descending with a stifihess of dignity which made me think of Bunker Hill Monument walking down to get a bath in the harbor ; so woefully solemn, so du- bious about his footing, so bolt upright and yet so tot- tering, that he would have shaken the gravity of a pyr- amid, or moved a weeping crocodile to laughter. Once more in the double-bedded chamber, I gave myself a few hurried rubs of superei^ogation, and was about dressing, when Neuville and Franz reappeared from the lower regions. With shivering fingers I seized my thick under-wrapper, and proceeded to don it, with a glorious sense of anticipatory comfort. But that atrocious Franz saw it, snatcbed it, tucked it under his arm, made a grab next at my drawers and stockings, FIEST DIPS IN GEAEPENBEEG. 41 and then signified, by menacing signs, that I was to leave my cloak on its nail. No luckless urchin in Dotheboys Hall was ever stripped half so pitilessly. As for Neuville, who had been toasting himself over American fires through the mediocre chill of a Floren- tine winter, and was as sensitive to wind as a butter- fly, or a weathercock, or Mr. Jarndyce himself, he was despoiled with the same hyperborean unkindness. Out' we went, nearly as thinly dressed as Adam and Eve, but leaving no Paradise behind us ; forth we hurried, driven by Franz, that bald-headed cherub, horribly armed with a wet sheet ; away into the woods we fled, to wander like Cains, and drink three or four tumblers of water before we might venture back to breakfast. I took my first taste at the House fountain, and swallowed a pint with difficulty. I seemed to be choke-full of water ; oozing with it at every pore, like the earth in spring time ; ready to brim over with it if I were turned ever so little ofi" my perpendicular ; fit to boil and steam like a tea-kettle, should I incautious- ly venture near a fire. It is astonishing how much moisture can be absorbed into the system through the skin ; how nearly a man can resemble a water-logged ship or a dropsical cucumber. It was a raw, misty morning, as are nearly all Graef- enberg mornings, and the chill humidity crept like a breath of ice through our thin remainder of raiment. Loose and shaky, from our coat skirts to our teeth, we ambled up the hill back of the Establishment, in hopes of sheltering ourselves in its woods from an ill-dispo- sitioned wind, which blows, year in and year out, over those unfortunate landscapes. People passed us or met 42 EDEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE, US every mimite ; some just starting out, in a state of aguish misery; some returning, rosy and happy in their triumphant reaction. The wide path, moistened- here and there by spacious puddles, entered the forest, and wound gradually up the mountain. At every hundred yards or so, smaller tracks diverged through the thick- ets, or a bubbling fountain reminded the passer that it was time to quench his thirst, if he had any. There must have been twenty miles of pathway around Graef- enbergj aU, or nearly all of which had been paid for out of a small weekly tax levied on the patients. Sev- eral score of fountains, some of them mere wooden troughs, others basins or obelisks of stone, had been erected by means of this same revenue. Then there was a bronzed lion, and two other monuments of con- siderable cost, dedicated to the honor of Priessnitz, one by the Prussian patients, one by the Hungarians, and the third, I believe, by some German noble. Now and then we found some favorite fountain sur- rounded by invalids, chatting cosily, or pausing to drain their cups, and reminding one of a parcel of hens clucking and drinking about a water-trough. Neuville and I made a very respectable pedestrian effort that morning, and returned to the house with anxious voids in our stomachs, notwithstanding that we occasionally stopped to refill them with water. I should have men- tioned that Franz had surcingled us with broad linen bandages, of which the two first turns were wet, and the two last dry, so as to constitute altogether a kind of towel-and-water poultice. This is the finest digestive aid or curative that I know of; as much superior to stomachic pills and cordials as it is nearer to nature. FIEST DIPS IN GEAEFENBEEG. 43 Breakfast was on the table, as it had been for two hours, when we entered the eating-hall. Like the last night's supper, it consisted of sweet and sour milk, with the usual rye and barley bread. By the time we had swallowed a disgraceful quantity of this simple nutriment, our waist bandages were dry, and required a new wetting. Then we repaired to a booth and bought stout canes, witk iron foot-spikes and curved handles, the thickest and fiercest that could be had. Then we debated whether we should get drinking-horns to wear over our shoulders, or drinking-cups to carry in our pockets. At last we decided in favor of the cups, and resolved to visit Freiwaldau after dinner, and choose some handsome ones of Bohemian glass. Then eleven o'clock arrived, and Franz had us away to sit face to face, for fifteen minutes, in tubs of cold water, at the end of which he polished us off with wet sheets in lieu of sand-paper. Then we got ashamed of the effemi- nacy of hats, and walked out conspicuously under bare polls and green umbrellas. At one o'clock came din- ner, which gave us hard work in the digestive and per- ipatetic line for some hours afterward. At five, Franz wanted to put us in the wet sheet again, and would not take " no" for an answer. Then we had to walk half an hour or more to get warm ; and, by the time we returned, it was necessary to eat more sour milk and mahogany. Then we remoistened bandages, prepara- tory to trotting for an hour or two up and down the great, ill-lighted hall, in' company with scores of other uncomfortable people. The room was naturally chilly, built so expressly and by malice aforethought, as I be- lieve ; in addition to which, that rascally superintend- 44 EUEOPEAK ACQUAINTANCE. ent delighted in throwing open an elevated range of win- dows, thereby giving copious ingress to a damp wind that wandered among our shivering forms like the ghost of a wet sheet. Nine o'clock sent Franz after us, who insisted on wetting our handages and putting us imme- diately to bed, in as comfortless a state as half-drown- ed puppies. Kepeatedly in the night we woke, aching with cold, for our rations of bed-clothing were still restricted to a single blanket. At five in the morning Franz was upon us, like the Philistines upon Samson, or like Samson upon the Philistines (for it seems to have been nip and tuck between those old fellows), dragging us down again into those awful nether re- gions of wet pavements, brooks, and cisterns. It was astonishing how rapidly we became feinati- cized under the influence of the cure and the example of our fellow-invalids. Before a week was over I had discarded all my woolen garments of every cut, and wore linen from head to foot in a temperature like that of a New England March or a Charleston December. It blew every minute, and rained nearly as often ; yet we caught no colds, and were savagely indifferent to our discomforts. All this, too, was in despite of sar- castic declarations, made on our arrival, that we would dress and behave like civilized people, and not like the slouching, bare-headed, bare-footed fanatics around us. It was also remarkable how this general carelessness in exteriors depreciated the average beauty of the pa^ tients. Among the five hundred persons who were under cure in Graefenberg and Freiwaldau, there must have been a number with some natural claims to come- liness ; but, by dint of shabby clothes, cropped hair. FIRST DIPS IN GEAEFENBEEG. 45 and neglected beaids, this favored few had melted away into the great aggregate of ugliness, or retained, like Lucifer, only a doubtful halo of former beauty. One of our party, a man of sensitive nerves, complained that the daily spectacle of such a deteriorated human- ity made him unwell, and that he never should con- valesce until he could see some handsome people. 46 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. CHAPTER VI. CERTAIN GKAEFENBERGEES. Neuville and I had a pearl of a bathman. He was a strong, slow, blue-eyed, light-colored Silesian peasant, who had once possessed a scalp full of sandy hair, but had lost at least half of it in his journey to middle life. His whole appearance, and especially his smooth, shining pate, reeked with an indescribably cool, dewy expression, which made one think of cucumbers, wet pebbles, drenched roses, or heads of lettuce after a shower. Neuville insisted that he gained this fresh appearance by living on such things as celery and water- cresses, and by sleeping in one of the cisterns, or per- haps down a well like a bullfrog. It may be, indeed, that the instinct of association deceived us, and that we imputed this aqueous nature to the man solely be- cause he had so much to do with our baths; but, how- ever that was, we certainly never looked at him with- out being impressed with the idea that he would slice up cold and juicy, like a melon or a tomato. Franz exhibited a forty-hostler power in rubbing us down, and had, perhaps, curried the hides of our quad- ruped predecessors in the building. In fact, when I think of his frictions, and consider how wet I was at the time, I almost wonder that I was not rubbed out of existence, like a pencil-mark. Occasionally it was impossible not to shout or stamp under the excitation, CEETAIN GRAEFENBEEGEES. 47 at which times the old Eussian below would bombard our floor with his box)ts, in token of disapprobation. Among so many homely people as we had about us, there were necessarily some whose ugliness ran into eccentricity, if not absurdity. Neuville, who had an extraordinary feculty at discovering resemblances be- tween men and beasts, or birds, soon fixed on one old gentleman as tlie Owl ; and I was obliged to confess that, bating the claws, the said human certainly did bear a striking likeness to the solemn anchorite of ornithology. He was a man of about sixty, with light gray hair, light gray beard, and a light gray suit of clothes, so that, from a distance, you might suppose him to be dressed in light gray feathers. He was tol- erably bare of chin, and his mouth had retired under a bower of light gray mustaches. His long, curved nose looked wonderfully like a beak, and his eyes were always wide open with an expression of unquali- fied astonishment. However early we rose, however fast and far we went, we invariably met him already returning, as if he had started out for his morning walk some time the day previous. Neuville affirmed that he staid in the woods all night, and amused him- self with hooting and chasing field-mice until daybreak, when he would leave off at the approach of the earliest patients, and hurry down to the Establishment to take a bath. Another interesting personage was a middle-aged, muscular Hungarian, with startling black eyes and wavy black beard, who had the fame of being crazy, or at least unreasonably original. He carried an enormous yellow cane, one end of which was fash- 48 EUROPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. ioned into a passable flute. He always walked alone, like a man who had dealings with fairies and wood- nymphs ; and, when he thought no human being was within hearing, he would put his cane to his lips, and treat his elfin friends to a melody. If a wandering fellow-patient came upon him in one of these dulcet moments, he dropped the end of his cane, whisked it about unconcernedly, and looked all aroimd, or up into the clouds, as if he wondered who the deuce made those noises. I suspected him of being Orpheus, who, it will be remembered, was in the cold water line, and had a fancy for playing airs to locks, fishes, and other dumb creatures. They told us at Graefenberg of a Mexican who came there a year or two before us for the sake of trying the cure on his dyspepsia. He went through his first packing with great indignation, and was then taken down stairs into that horrible abyss of plunge-baths. Priessnitz pointed to the cistern and bade him get into it. " Never !" he thundered ; and, marching up stairs, he dressed himself, and went straight back to Mexico. Another man in the same situation is said to have fallen on his knees before Priessnitz, exclaiming, " Oh sir, remember that I have a wife and children!" Directly opposite us at table sat an excellent old gentleman, a wealthy merchant from Hamburg. Nat- urally thin and grizzly, in addition dilapidated like our whole company, he had a ludicrously astonished way of looking over his spectacles whenever any one ad- dressed him, if it were only to say "Good-morning." He seemed to be lost in some chaos far away fi-om outer life, wandering, perhaps, through the interior CEKTAIN GEAEFENBEEGEES. 49 gloom of his own invalidism. At tlie sound of a voice he raised his head slowly ; the round eyes and round spectacles settled upon the speaker, one above another, like the ports of a two-decker about to open fire; and then, collecting his vagrant faculties, he would smile and utter a few words of overflowing grave good- nature. He spoke English pretty well, and, like aU Germans, was lyilling to put his linguistic knowledge in practice on every possible occasion. He took an especial fancy to Burroughs, inviting him, if he went to Hamburg, to visit his family. Indeed, this Georgian comrade of mine, young, gay, full of mirth and conver- sation, insinuating in manners, had rapidly become a pet among our congress of invalids, and was on terms of intimate companionship with men even between whom and himself there was no bond of common lan- guage. I doubt not but many of them stiU remember him with occasional kindly laughter. For my part, I can not speak of him with sufficient gentleness; for he is already numbered in the sacred company of the dead, a victim to the yellow fever of Savannah. Next to our Hamburg friend sat a tolerably pretty and intolerably haughty Prussian lady, the wife of some government official, and therefore, according to German etiquette, always addressed by the title of her august husband. She sometimes made use of our grave neigh- bor as an interpreter between herself and our Georgian; and once she signified, in a jesting way, that when she came to America she should pay'him a visit. " Tell her," replied Burroughs, with Oriental mag- nificence, " that if she will come and see me I will give her five hundred negroes to wait on her." C 50 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. The old Hamburgher, incapable of suspecting a joke, opened his eyes to an unaccustomed extent at such an extravagance of hospitality. " I think," said he, after a moment's reflection, "that five would be better than five hundred." He translated the splendid profier, which was received with a hearty laugh, and went the rounds of the lady's acquaintance with great success. From that time for- ward, Burroughs's consequence, and, indeed, that of our whole party, was considerably increased in the eyes of the Graefenbergers. A man who could be courteous to the amount of five hundred negro waiters was worth smiling upon. Several members of our invalid regiment were veter- ans in point of service. A tall, gray-headed Swedish count, who occupied a little cottage by himself, and cultivated its diminutive garden with his own hands, had been under cure eleven years. A rosy German baron, of about sixty-five, was three years his senior in hydropathic experiences. "I am very well," he used to say in explanation, "very well as long as I stay here ; but as soon as I go away I get sick again. The regular doctors can do nothing for me. I have tried them all, and taken every one of their drugs, with no result except spoiling my stomach. Accord- ingly, every time that I have left Graefenberg I have been obliged to return to it. At last I have resolved to settle here for life. Why not ? I have plenty of respectable society. I live at Freiwaldau, where I can have good food and lodging. I am incurable; our honest Priessnitz teUs me so himself; but as long as I remain here I do not suifer. Why not remain ? Of course." CERTAIN GEAEFENBEEGEES. 51 Still another noticeable hydropath was a bald, fat- headed, capacious Parisian, of about forty, round as a puncheon, and very similar to one in other respects. In plain words, he was an occasional drunkard, who had been coaxed to Graefenberg by his friends in a hope that the cure might rid him of his unfortunate appetite. Priessnitz had done his utmost in the way of cold wa- ter and warm expostulations ; had even ordered the hotel-keepers of Freiwaldau, under penalty of his very powerful displeasure, not to furnish Monsieur Cognac with any spirituous drinks ; but all to no purpose. By all sorts of invisible ways and underground rail- roads, the forbidden thing woiild find its passage to the unfortunate man's stomach and brain. As he held a respectable position in society and visited nice peo- ple, he sometimes produced considerable scandal by the contrast between his conduct and his company. During one of his staggery moments he happened in on a nervous American lady, and quite alarmed her by what she considered his eccentric behavior. The next day he came again, full of dim, regretful recollections, and voluble with apologetical explanations. He had had a crisis, he said — some kind of nervous crisis — in fact, he had such turns frequently; they were the symptoms of his peculiar malady. He hoped he had said nothing disagreeable to Madame ; sometimes his attacks were so violent that he hardly knew what he said ; he prayed that she would excuse him, and be- lieve that he was her most respectful though unworthy servant. There was a tall, stout grenadier of a Swedish count, in the prime of life, who was also one of our notables. 52 EDEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. He nursed a curious fancy of stealing away into the woods, dressed in nothing at all, not even a collar, and stroUing ahout thus attired, with an axe in his hand, to the great confusion, doubtless, of all the un- dines and tree-nymphs. His idea was to take a copi- ous air-bath, warming himself at intervals by a few chops at wayside saplings ; and he thought that these occasional returns to a primitive state of existence had a most invigorating effect on- his physical and moral na- ture. He used to manage his sylvan escapades from the douche-houses, wretched little huts well retired within the leafy soUtude of the forest. " Oh, not at all," said he, in answer to some one who asked him if such promenades a la garden of Eden did not some- times lead him into embarrassing situations. "I meet no one but strawberry-girls, and they only laugh and get out of my way." The prettiest of all our patients — ^the only beautifiil one, I verily believe, among them — was a little baron- ess of eighteen or nineteen summers, from Vienna. With a clear bruiiette complexion flushing on the cheek into roses, the brightest of black eyes, features sufficiently regular, and a plump but graceful form, she would have been attractive in any place, or amid any constellation of fair women; but, floating through our medley of varied ugliness, she was delightfuL I never saw her without her mother, who, like aU Conti- nental mammas, held that maidenhood demands the watchfulness of little less than giants and dragons. My nearest intimacy with her, unfortunately, or per- haps fortunately, was to know several of her acquaint- ance. One of them, an American, told me that she CEETAIN GEAEFENBERGEES. 63 was a fresh and simple child of nature ; another, a French count, laughed at the idea, and a£armed that she was a coquette. I incline to the opinion 'of the Frenchman ; firstly, because I think he was the best judge of European manners ; secondly, because I im- agine my countryman to have been a little in love with the petite haronne. This pretty girl came to Graefenberg, a few months brfore my arrival, so deadly sick with a heart disease that no one thought she could live. Priessnitz re- fused to undertake her cure, saying that she was too far gone for any hope, and would probably die under the first baths ; but, at the earnest entreaties of her relatives, he revoked his decision and commenced her treatment, washing his hands, however, of all respon- sibility. At the first envelopment in the wet sheet, her heart beat so violently that its pulsations were dis- tinctly visible through the usual covering of three blankets. She survived this opening struggle, and thenceforward convalesced rapidly. When I saw her she used to climb the steep lulls around Graefenberg with such an aspect of health as if she had never been ill, nor would be so forever. 54 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. CHAPTER Vn. GEAEFENBEEGESSES AND GEAEFENBEEGIANISMS. I OUGHT to say one word of the native beauties of Graefenberg. When I speak of them as beauties, it makes me laugh to think how ugly they were ; but I ought to be ashamed of myself, for it was no laughing matter to the poor creatures themselves. As there were a number of wealthy families in the borough of Freiwaldau, there were, of course, some young ladies there who dressed well, and considered themselves aristocratic. But, however genteel, they were not handsome, and had, in particular, a dropsical, cadaver- ous look, as if overbleached in their papas' linen-facto- ries. I never tried to talk to them ; common sense forbade it ; I spoke no German. The only damsels of the locality with whom it was easy to come to an understanding were the peasant girls, who collected every morning around the House fountain to seU us cakes, strawberries, and cherries. Jovial, laughing bodies aU of them, several were rath- er pretty in a coarse way, by reason of merry blue eyes, mouths full of fine teeth, and cheeks fuU of dim- ples. One of them, who did me the favor of officia- ting as my washer-woman, was really handsome, as far as regular features, a clear rosy skin, a smaU coral mouth, and a nicely-rounded form are sufficient to con- stitute handsomeness. The advantages of shoes were GEAEFENBEEGESSES AND GEAEFENBEEGIANISMS. 55 acknowledged by these nymphs; but they scorned stockings, and wore economical frocks reaching only six inches below the knee, in consequence of which they made a startling display of solid sun-burnt legs, generally well modeled, and not seldom profusely scratched by the thickets and brambles through which they waded to collect their horticultural merchandise. Alas for the romance of these sylvan scenes ! these daughters of nature were decidedly more frail than fair, the morals of the peasantry for miles around Graefen- berg having been lamentably corrupted by its unscru- pulous bachelor patients. Much evil, Priessnitz said, had been brought into the district by his establish- ment, and no good thing besides money. As for the young ladies of our invalid set, and old ladies too, I had a fair opportunity of seeing them at their best, in the balls which took place twice a week in the great dining-hall. On Sunday evenings and Thursday evenings the chairs and tables were hud- dled into one end of the room, so as to give space to dancing and flirtation. Directly over the principal door a smaU gaUeiy trembled under a riotous mob of fiddles and trumpets, which some laborious Silesian peasants vainly tried to reduce to melodious order. The society was as mixed a one as could easily be collected in the Hartz Mountains of a Walpurgis night, all languages, classes, and manners being there repre- sented, from Americans to Russians, and from dukes to dog-doctors. As Priessnitz insisted that every one should dance who could, it naturally happened that some people tried to dance who could not. I remember one un- 56 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. lucky individual, apparently troubled with the string- halt, who twitched his legs after him in a style that was too much for the gravity of us youth, and who, , as he made the circle of the saloon in a waltz or polka, was followed by an epidemic smile shooting from face to face, as if he were some planet of mirthfulness, dis- pensing a splendor of broad grins upon every thing which bordered his orbit. Then there was an indis- creet little man in black, who invariably coupled him- self with the tallest woman present, and manoeuvred her about the hall with the helpless jerkings of a jolly- boat trying to tow a frigate. Many of the guests, however, shpwed themselves natural and experienced dancers, managing their heels with an eloquence of motion which put to shame the inarticulate bleating of the wretched music. The favorite dance was a wild gallop, much like a steeple-chase in point of reckless rapidity, whirling people around the enchanted circle with the briskness and rumpled confusion of hens blown about like a whirlwind. A very advantageous step it was for those ladies who had pretty ankles; and for this artistic reason it was as popular with the outsiders as with the performers. But the finest thing of aU was a thun- dering Polish mazurka, emphasized with Jieavy boots, in a style which made one feel as if he were envel- oped in a charge of cavalry. The balls usually commenced at half past seven, and continued vehemently until half past nine, when the patients began to drop off to their chambers. Priessnitz was almost always present, attended by his family, a pleasant smile playing on his red-oak face. GEAEFENBEEGESSES AND GEAEFENBERGIANISMS. 57 while he talked with the old fellows who had the hon- or of his intimacy, or gazed approvingly at the hig- gledy-piggledy whirl of feet and faces. Here, as ev- ery where, he spoke little, and I presume that he had few ideas except such as were good to put in practice ; for I understood that he had never learned to read un- til he was twenty-five, and that even now his lections were limited to an occasional newspaper. Near him usually sat Sirs. Priessnitz, a rather hard-featured, careful-eyed woman, not as kindly in manner as her hushand, and, to all appearance, still more taciturn. The eldest daughter I never saw, thanks to an attract- ive dowry hy which she had secured a Hungarian no- ble for her husband. The second daughter, a pale and rather iaughty blonde of eighteen, neither handsome nor homely, was one of the best and most frenetic of the dancers. When nine o'clock came, the old couple quietly walked off, leaving their absence as a hint to the revelers that it was time to wet their bandages and go to bed. Among such a number of young gallants and peo- ple made irritable by indigestions, gouts, and neural- gias, it was natural that insults should sometimes be passed which nothing but blood and gunpowder could expiate. A very interesting squabble took place on the occasion of an associated baU, given by ten or a dozen leading dandies (or lions, as they say in French) of our savage society. One of the managers was a corpulent Frenchman, named D'HauteviUe^ a social, civil man, like most of his countrymen, as long as he was well treated, but sufficiently quick on the trigger for all fighting purposes. Among the invited was a C2 58 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. long, awkward, tow-headed Austrian lieutenant, a Sax- on by birth, quite a young feUow, but so insufferably conceited that you wanted to quaiTcl with him at first sight. To prevent confusion in the supper-room, it had been agreed that the managers alone should hand refreshments to the ladies. Our Saxon, despising this sumptuary law and its enactors, escorted a couple of damsels to the tables, and proceeded to furnish them liberally with whatever he could lay his sprawling hands on. D'Hauteville softly remonstrated in his long ears, repeating the above-mentioned agreement, and begging him to submit to some little unavoidable delay rather than open a scene of confusion. The lieu- tenant replied that his ladies had already waited an annoying time for hungry people, who doubtless wore wet bandages, and that he should now see to it him- self that they received the proper convivial attentions^ D'Hauteville retorted, with the spunk of the true Gal- lic cock, that he should prevent him ; and in a moment both parties were ready to disembowel each other with their dessert-spoons, a species of contest in which the Frenchman would have been at a great disadvantage by reason of his superior abdominal development. They were separated for the moment, however, and the even- ing passed off without further disturbance. The next day, every body concerned wanted satis- faction, and the result was a resolution to settle the matter by pistols and surgeons. A rendezvous of death was appointed in Prussia, some eight or ten miles from Graefenberg, and a couple of sorry hacks bore to it the proposed combatants, with their train of Job's comforters. On the way, in consequence of the CtEAEfenbeeuesses and gkaefenbeegianisms. 59 badness of the roads or the horses, the lieutenant had so much time for reflection, and employed it also to so amiable a purpose, that he resolved, before he would fight, to see all the laws of honor where they came from, that is, in Tophet. Arrived at the ground, he made the explanations that he would not make ten hours before, retracted aU his offensive remarks, and, in consequence, spoiled the fun of the seconds. They were as indignant as disappointed people usually are, especially those who ai-e called out of bed for nothing ; and they subsequently treated the placable young man's feelings with great inhumanity, insisting that he should resign his commission. Another duel actually came off between an Austrian officer, whose name I have forgotten, and an English lieutenant called Drummond. The Austrian, having taken a great fancy to Drummond, improved every op- portunity of seizing him by the button-hole and in- flicting upon him certain lengthened conversations. His love was but iU requited, for Drummond consid- ered him a bore from the first, and liked him all the less as they became more intimate. Such a contrari- ety of pulling on the cords of fiiendship could not last long without producing a rupture; and Drum- mond, who was nervous by right of dyspepsia, soon grew excessively irritable under the Austrian's famil- iarities, like a snappish dog who gets indignant at little Bobby's affectionate but awkward attachment to his taiL Happening to meet one morning when the wind was due east, the Austrian bowed as usual, but his over- wearied friend passed on without vouchsafing a look 60 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. in reply. The forsaken one halted with a martial stare of indignant wonder ; but, remembering that English- men are eccentric, he resolved, to wait for further de- velopments before he considered himself insulted. A short time afterward they encountered again, and the Austrian repeated his salute. Drummond turned his back on him, and marched off with a gesture of su- preme contempt. The next morning he received a call from a friend of his late friend, who, after a cere- monious bow, made known that his business was to demand explanation of certain irreverent conduct of Lieutenant Drummond toward Captain Whatshisname' stein of the Austrian army. " Certainly," said Drummond. " The truth is, that I am tired of your friend's acquaintance, and want to relieve myself of it. I did my best, in a civil way, to make him understand that he bored me. He would not take a hint, and I had to insult him. That is the whole affair." " Of course, then, you are ready to grant him the only satisfaction that remains to a gentleman in his cirumstances ?" " Of course. All he wants — ^whenever he pleases." " My principal, being the injured party, has a right to the choice of arms. Still, he desires to know wheth- er there is any particular weapon that you would pre- fer." "No ; any thing — any thing that he likes." " Are you acquainted with the use of the broad- sword ?" "Not at all." " I am sorry. It is the weapon of predilection in 6EAEFENBEEGESSES AND GEAEFENBEEGIANISMS. 61 the Austrian service for such occasions, and the one which my principal would choose before all others." " Oh, don't hesitate on my account. Let it be the broadsword, if your friend at all desires it ; and the broader the better." Accordingly, broadsword it was, the next morning, in a high-pitched room in one of the hotels of Frei- waldau. Drummond had time to take a lesson or two m sa- bre exercise from the fencing-master of the village, so as not to be delivered up to his adversary's blade un- resistingly. Fencing lessons, in such pressing cases, always consist of a few simple parries, with two or three only of the most prudent offensive strokes. The novice is strongly counseled to stand as much as pos- sible on guard, and to make very cautious cuts at his in»-d-vis, reserving even these until the chance is pal- pable. As German duels usually end with the first blood drawn, this method of fighting is very favorable to green hands ; and the skirmish generally closes with some insignificant scratch, which does not always fall upon the least practiced of the combatants. Drummond followed out this system of tactics with great coolness and success. Parrying carefully the wrathful storm of blows which fell on his sabre, he at last got a chance to let in a hit of his own, grazing his opponent's arm, and sending a small streak of crimson down the bare white skin. Observing the blood, and supposing that satisfaction had been given, he neglect- ed to recover guard, and received a light tap on the shoulder from the German, who, it seems, was uncon- scious of being wounded. Drummond brought up his 62 EDEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. sabre again, and administered another mild slash ; for his opponent had, in turn, dropped guard at sight of the bloody shoulder. All this passed like lightning, and before the seconds could interfere to prevent the double mistake, which certainly appears in a most com- ical light if the reader will only consider that a couple of heads might have been whipped off by it. It wiU be observed, also, that the confident, experienced swords- man had received two wounds, and the cautious novice only one. The duel was now over, and honor satis- fied ; nothing remained but to settle the disagreement. The seconds called on the principals to shake hands and forget their differences. " I will shake hands," said Drummond, " but not forget the difference. It is unreasonable to expect me to take all this trouble to get rid of a man's acquaint- ance, and then continue as intimate with him as be- fore. Here is my hand, but on condition that we keep apart hereafter." The Germans agreed to this proposition out of re- spect to English eccentricity, and Drummond left the room, charmed at having got quietly rid of his trouble- some admirer. I ought to add that I witnessed nei- ther of these affairs, and, therefore, relate their history at second-hand, which is as safe a hand as a man can have in a duel. THE CDEES OP aEAEFENBEEG. 63 CHAPTER VIII. THE CUEES OP GEAEFENBEEG. Whethee the Silesians are naturally given to het- erodox methods of doctoring^ or whether simply the success of Priessnitz had generated imitators, I can not decide ; but one or other of these causes had fa- vored the neighborhood of Graefenberg with a variety of odd establishments for the healing of diseases. There was a Curd Cure, wherein sick people were fed exclusively on curdled milk, and, if I was rightly in- formed, put asoak in it. There was a Straw Cure, wherein the patients not only drank intemperately of straw tea, but were horribly tormented by being put naked inside of straw beds, and kept there until they were nearly flayed by the points and edges of this me- dicinal fodder. And, about two miles from Graefen- berg, in the vaUey of the little stream of Freiwaldau, was still another eccentric hospital devoted to a meth- od of treatment called the Wine Cure. Here horrible sweatings, of eight hotirs, in numerous dry blankets, made the nights miserable ; while a curious system of diet, arranged on a sliding scale, carried the patients through all the stages of starvation and repletion, com- mencing with abundant meals, and descending gradu- ally to the circumscribed rations of three small rolls a day ; then creeping up the digestive staircase again to aldermanic breakfasts and dinners, and so on, up and down, until the sufferer was either cored, buried, or 64 EUROPEAN ACQUAINTANCE, driven to the desperation of flight. In compensation for this sharp mortification of the flesh, a considerable daily portion of wine was allowed, and on Saturdays double treats. D'HauteviUe told me that, happening in there one Saturday afternoon, he found the patients and the doctor all fiiddled together. One old acquaint- ance, too glad to see him to wait tiU he could reach the door, stuck his fist through a pane of glass to shake hands, after which he hallooed riotously, declaring that he felt better every minute, and denouncing Priessnitz as a quack and cold water as a nuisance. Singular as it may seem, this system often effected cures, and drew over Various renegades from Graefen- berg. One of these apostates from cold water told me that he and his comrades suffered very little from hun- ger during the long fasts above mentioned, and seemed to lose their appetites in proportion as their food was diminished. StiU, the wine-doctor's severe sweatings and dietings were exceedingly hard upon delicate con- stitutions, and, on the whole, his practice, like that of a Kentucky rifleman, was apt to be attended by very sudden deaths. Personally he was a tall, heavy, hulk- ing fellow of about fifty, with the tone and manners of an unmistakable peasant. He pretended to be the predecessor of Priessnitz in medicine ; he was even profane enough to teU us that the great Graefenberger was only his imitator. As for our party in the stable, we remained faithful to cold water, nnseduced by the fascinations of curds, straw tea, or even wine cures. We took ibur baths a day, at a minimum, and occasionally more. In oppo- sition to a light fever, Neuville once accomplished fif- THE CUEES OF GKAEFENBEEG. 65 teen packings between sunrise and bedtime. However violent an illness might be, people at Graefenberg nev- er betoot themselves to their beds, but rather to sup- plementary waterings and walkings. I knew an En- glish lady, the wife of a Swiss clergyman, who, to drive off an inflammation of the lungs, was dashed with handfuls of cold water for a couple of hours together ; and, when she was so completely chilled that no sur- face heat remained any where, except a little about her head, a couple of stout bathwomen took her by the arms and Walked her to and fro until the circulation returned. Two operations of this sort, followed by a sound night's sleep, expelled, or, in the words of Priessnitz,yrc>2e out the inflammation. A young Dantzicker, who had been pestered for three months by an intermittent fever, was stripped, folded in a dripping wet sheet, and seated by an open window through whidi a strong draught was flowing. From time to time, as his envelopment gave signs of drying, he was doused with a pailful of water. Two hours of this treatment scattered the fever for three days, and, when it reappeared, a second session of the same nature so disgusted it, that, like an exorcised devil, it decamped and returned no more. Such cases as these, however, were extreme ones, and our good doctor was sometimes cautious to an appearance of timidity. A stout, florid Italian lady, bearing semblance of unvaried health, told me that Priessnitz refused to give her any of the usual baths, and would submit her to no operation beyond a slight rubbing with dampened towels. She begged hard to be allowed the wet sheet, which is also a moist rubbing, 66 EUEOPBAN ACQUAINTANCE. but of a much moister quality. Priessnitz consented unwillingly, and told the bathwoman to send for him in case of any alarming result. The wet sheet was applied, and brought on an immediate fit of violent hysterics — an excellent proof, I thought, of the peas- ant-doctor's prudence and keen professional insight. One case which I witnessed excited a great deal of admiration among the patients, as it was one of the marvelous cures which sometimes happened at Graef- enberg. A pleasant-faced Hungarian girl came to the Establishment, with one eye totally blinded, and the sight of the other failing. Every day I saw her pass and repass our rooms, her head swathed with wet bandages, her steps guided by the arm of an elder sister. After two or three weeks of the treatment, the light went away altogether from her dark orbs, and she was completely sightless. People muttered loudly at the poor girl's misfortune, and attributed it to the rashness or clumsiness of the doctor. Priess- nitz said that the visual nerve had been paralyzed by an internal ulcer, which would soon break, and give way to a rapid recovery. Great was the wonder of Graefenberg at the result; for at the end of a week or so this hazardous prophecy became fact: a discharge of matter took place, and both the girl's eyes resumed their vision. The effect of the cure on myself was not such in manner as I had anticipated, but was, if any thing, more than I had presumed to hope. Some years of unrewarded obedience to doctors and of fruitless fora^ gings in apothecaries' shops had taught me to put little trust in great medicines of whatsoever description. THE CURES OP 6EAEFENBEEG. 67 Still, there was a fascination in the labors of hydrop- athy, an epidemic in the immense faith of every one around me, which made me look forward with vague expectation to quick and satisfactory results. I waited for a crisis of some strange sort — a fever, an eruption, or as many boils as Job, and then a sudden falling of the burden from my weary shoulders. What I found was a gradual increase of strength, a hitherto unknown power of enduring fatigue, a new buoyancy of hope and cheerfulness. Day by day the spirit of my dream changed from sickness to health, until I discovered to my surprise that I was recovering without a miracle. I learned to walk ten miles over the hills in the early morning without other stomachic support than water, and felt after it, when I sat down to breakfast, as if I could eat not only the sour milk before me, but the cow that gave it. There was no fatigue from which a bath would not raise me, and send me out again to track the mountain paths until my long-tasked muscles demanded another invigoration from the benevolent water-naiad. To the habitual invalid, to him who feels it for the first time in years, or perhaps in life, there is no sensation more glorious, more superhuman, than the consciousness of abounding and sufficient strength. All labors seem so easy, all trials so insig- nificant, all nature so friendly and sympathizing. Tet, notwithstanding all the benefits received at Graefenberg, I left it before my cure was half com- pleted. The climate, as I have said, was detestable. It rained nearly half the time, even when it was fair weather. The winds were as cold as if they slept in wet sheets, and blew all the while, without pause or 68 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. punctuation. The food was an insult to the palate and an injury to the stomach. I knew not the differ- ence in hydropathic physicians, and hoped to find, in some more supportable locality, another as skillful as Priessnitz. D'HauteviUe told me of places in^ his country where I could continue my cure, and, at the same time, practice good French instead of bad Ger- man. Thus, after a residence of two months at Graefen- berg, I wandered away in the company of Burroughs, and, now seeking a ruined castle, now a water-cure, traversed middle Germany with all the haunted Rhine- land. DIVONNE, OR MEEMANHOOD IN FRANCE. 69 CHAPTER IX. DIVONNE, OR MERMANHOOD IN PRANCE. Ode obliging secretaxy of legation at Paris, Mr. Hen- ry Sandford, interested himself in the object of my search, and soon discovered the locality and circum- stances that I wanted. In the southeastern part of France, said he, fifteen minutes' walk from the Swiss frontier, and one hour's walk from Lake Leman, you will find the new and highly-recommended hydropath- ic establishment of Divonne. I left Paris in the Genevan diligence, and amused myself for about forty hours in looking out of the coupe windows. I observed that the hills were too rounded and bare of trees, the meadow lands too few, and the vineyards too much like bean-fields, to permit any great number of charming landscapes. I was vex- ed to see that the picturesque old chateaux with point- ed towers had been mostly pulled down and replaced by whitewashed boxes of the renaissance order, dating chiefly, I thought, from the tasteless times of Louis XV. I judged from the faces and manners of the French peasantry that they were own cousins to the Irish peasantry, particularly when I came upon a quar- tet of them dancing gayly in wooden shoes, on a mud- dy road, of a rainy day. I was reminded of Puss-in- boots when I saw the postillions up to their waists in ponderous cowhide ; and I turned from their absurd bobtailed coats to a recollection of those elders of Is- 70 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. rael who had their skirts cut off about their middles by Hanun, king of the Ammonites. The reader stares, perhaps, and wonders whether this is all that I saw in passing through France the beautiful. I reply that I saw many other things, but that he has already heard of them, even to greater satiety than of these. At Dijon the coupe received two other travelers, brothers, by birth Scotchmen, by residence Londoners. At first they took me for an aborigine, and one of them made in rheumatic French some advances toward an intimacy. Our conversation hobbled in a helpless style until each saw plainly that the other was no Gaul, and then, with a bound of delighted surprise, it sailed airily away on its native wings of English. From the top of the brown Jura we descended by a sinuous road into an "astonishing valley, where Lake Leman shone splendidly in a setting of mountains, while to the south, under the bridges of Geneva, flow- ed away the humid glitter of the Rhone, and behind towered, in blinding whiteness, tbe sublime brother- hood of Swiss mountains. Furiously down the zig- zag descent rattled the diligence, grating dangerously around sharp corners, and exposing, in jrapid succes- sion, now one side and now the other to the vast un- der landscape. As it tacked and veered, our three wondering faces clustered alternately on the right-hand or left-hand window, peeping out like inquisitive young opossums from the omnibus of their mother's corpo- rality. "Tou don't mean to say that those are the real Alps ?" said the younger Scotchman, pointing with the stem of his clay pipe at Mont Blanc and Company. DIVONNE, OR MEEMANHOOD IN FRANCE. 71 " To be siire they are," responded his brother, who had seen them before. " Dear me ! God bless me ! how remarkably small they are ! Why, I expected to see them stick up right over my head. Where's the tobacco, Jim ? I'll take another smoke." " For shame, you barbarian ! Talk about smoking when there is s^ch scenery to be looked at !" " Have patience, Jim. I shall grow up to the sen- timent by-and-by, I suppose, but they look confound- ed smaU. at present." And here the disappointed sight- seer curled himself back in the middle of the coupe to puff at the consolatory Virginia. How many a man has experienced this same dwarfing of emotion when he has at last come in sight of the Alps, Niagara, Eome, Raphael, or any other bourne of gigantic expectation ! At the Hotel de la Couronne I summoned the head waiter, and inquired what he knew of Doctor Vidart's hydropathic conveniences and capacities. " Sir," he replied, " I am acquainted well with the place. I have not myself visited it, but Madame, the proprietress of this hotel, was there cured of a malady. Let me as- sure you, sir, that you will there be very content ; you will there find a doctor of much capacity and a society very agreeable." Thus encouraged, I took coach the next day for Di- vonne. Over the translucent Rhone, right by the green, breezy island of Rousseau, along the ineffable beauty of Lake Leman, through a country of neat cottages and costly villas, a couple of sorry horses bore me in two hours to the gates of Doctor Paul Vidart, where I de- scended, and made application for a hospitable admit- 72 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. tance. Yes, there was a chamber at the service of Monsieur; yes, Monsieur the Doctor was with himself; yes, the pcirter should cause the baggages to mount immediately ; yes, said the gay Savoyard portress to all my questions and all my demands. Lodgings secured, face and hands washed, I received a visit from the doctor, a handsome, portly man of thir- ty-five, with something of the dignity of his retired surgeonship from the French army, and all the jovial, easy politeness which is the birthright of most French- men. My performance of the salutations was tolera- ble, but I found it a far harder thing to describe symp- toms and understand prescriptions, and I tried to evade the difficulty. Alas ! he had no knowledge of En- glish ; he regretted that he could boast no speaking acquaintance with the Italian ; he knew a little Ara- bic, which was entirely at my service if agreeable, but his language was French. Courage, perseverance, and a pocket dictionary car- ried me victoriously through the trial. The doctor and I came to an understanding, which,.! am happy to say, was never followed by a. misunderstanding. Speaking of pocket dictionaries, by the wa,y, I may as well confess that I used my dictionnaire depocAe for some months before I discovered that J*oche was not the author of it. The doctor gone, I wandered down stairs, and strolled about the grounds of the establishment Young trees waved over neat flower-bands and graveled walks, while here a swan-fountain poured forth its cool luxury, and there a small jet flung up its trembling pillar of spray. The buildings were three in number: a long stone DIYONNE, OK MBKMANHOOD IN FEANCE. 73 affair, originally a factory; a modern addition, con- taining the saloon, dining-hall, and kitchen; finally, in separate dignity, behind a large oak, the small hut comfortable house of the doctor. A roofed passage, which was really a bridge, spanning a swift rivulet of the purest, gayest water, united the two edifices of the establishment proper. The patients tad apparently sought shelter indoors from the monotonous di'izzle of an autumnal rain, and no one was about besides myself and a shaggy, under- sized dog, who had taken up a position on three legs beneath the oak-tree. He seemed to be a humorist, for, as I passed him, he put his tongue in his cheek, or, rather, out of one comer of his mouth, and eyed me with a quizzical expression, which seemed to say, " There's another of 'em ; you'll see him in the brook to-morrow. I know where they'll put him ; it isn't a warm, dry place neither." The saloon was a ground-floor room, thirty or thirty- five feet long, simply furnished, though gorgeous now to my mind's eye with aU the gay hours that I after- ward spent there. I noticed pUlars to sustain the ceiling, crimson curtains over the tall windows, a piano near the fireplace, and modern French novels strewed about the tables. As the hour-hand of a mantel-dock verged toward one, hungry patients filed in to the number of three or four dozen, and presently a short, stupid waiter (who twice afterward basted my coat with gravy) invited us, in horrible Alsatian French, to enter the dining-hall. Sailing in quietly and decent- ly, we halted with our faces to a long table, like a shoal of well-behaved fishes with their noses to the bait. D 74 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. Being the last coiner, I was seated very near the lower end, between a short, yeUow-headed Swiss, and a tall, black-headed Frenchman. The dinner was excellent, and I felt that I was in a civilized country, where I need have no fears, as at Graefenberg, lest the next dish should be boiled gentleman, and lady. The knives and forks rattled cheerfully, but not boisterously, and above all rose a courteous mirthfulness of French talk and laughter. Before reaching Divonne I had made the resolution to speak French there, or perish in the attempt. I commenced on my yellow-haired comrade, who seem- ed glad of the provocation, and bombarded me for the space of an hour with a whole arsenal of unintelligible questions and observations. However, I bore up gallantly under the assault, guessed out some of his meanings,, made him comprehend several of mine, and felt, on the whole, heroic, confident, victorious. Now and then I glanced up the line of guests to get an idea of the character and appetites of my present associates. At the head appeared the portly figure, regular features, and merry eye of the doctor, his lips parting at every moment to let in a morsel or let out a sentence, while now and then the gleam of his small white teeth pref- aced a shout of laughter, the echo of some good joke or comic story. On his left sat his brother, remark- able for the same broad frame, blue eye, and Grecian nose, but graver, more reposeful, and more taciturn. Beside the two were their wives, small, quiet Swiss ladies, almost eclipsed, both physically and morally, by the robustious presence of their husbands. A chair or two below the doctor sat a dark-browed man DIVONNE, OE MERMANHOOD IN FBANCE. 75 of middle age, who was pointed out to me as rrederick Monod, one of the most distinguished Protestant min- isters in France, an embodiment of no sanctimonious misanthropy, but rather of a genial sympathy with humanity, in its happiness as well as in its misery. He and the doctor seemed to keep up a perpetual popping of gay repartees, like two baskets of Cham- pagne bombarding each other with alternate mirthful corks and hilarious foam-spouts. Below them several decorous ladies and bright demoiselles listened earn- estly over their plates, echoing back the jokes with frequent laughter. One girl of fifteen attracted my attention by a remarkably handsome face — one of the prettie^ in fact, that I had yet seen in Emrope. Very beautiful hazel eyes, regular features, and a rich bru- nette color, with an expression strangely mingled of reserve and devemess, made a whole that shines dis- tinctly yet in my memory. Like all good French girls in the presence of their mothers or of strangers, she had a timid air, and seldom gave utterance to her • little fancies. , Below Ida came a long, row of comparatively unin- teresting jaws, some feminine, some bearded, but all hard at work over their food or their conversation. Two or three conscious button-holes blushed with the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor. One gentleman thus adorned had the air of an extremely stupid man, remarkable for nothing but a squint of horrible per- verseness. I cautiously inquired of a young Pied- montese, who spoke some English, whether this un- promising legionary had been decorated for strabismus, and my question was politely taken as a very good hit 76 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. at the facility with which medals and ribbons had been conferred in France. It struck me as possible, also, that the gentleman got his squint subsequently to his embellishment, in consequence of trying to keep one admiring eye always fixed on his honorahle button- hole. The dinner, as I have said, was excellent, simple in its selection of dishes, well cooked, and only faulty in finishing with a dessert of pastry. The doctor aft- erward confided to me that he suffered this dyspeptic dish out of respect for his numerous Genevese patients, who were nonsensically attached to their preserves and pie-crust. Dinner over, the bachelors and the hus- bands of bachelor habits (numerous classes botj) on the Continent) dropped away to the biUiard-room, to smoke or to punch the heads of those much-persecuted ivory bullets. The others, deterred from lounging out of doors by the interminable rain, scattered about the spacious parlor. A tall, fair, silent girl from Geneva, a niece of the doctor's wife, sat down to the piano,,and played, with admirable execution, a .series of waltzes and opera airs. Some listened to the music, some fumbled the illustrated novels and magazines on the table, some kept up the murmur of conversation which had commenced over the soup. As an hour passed on, people dropped away to their rooms, or braved the rain in the peripatetic philosophy of thick boots and umbrellas. There was no insanity here in the cure, no summer cloth for winter weather, no wet toweling for hatless heads, no ostentatious display of bare feet and ankles. Fanaticized as I was by the savage en- thusiasm of Graefenberg, I secretly mourned over this DIVONNB, OE MERMANHOOD IN FEANCE. 77 effeminacy, fearing lest Divonne should be the Capua of my hydropathic hardihood; and- 1 only waited a better acquaintance with the doctor, or rather with his language, to instill into him more ferocious ideas of the treatment, and a more orthodox zeal for making his patients wholesomely uncomfortable. At four o'clock, the hour of afternoon immersion, I looked up my particular bathman, and placed myself at his discretion. I was soon hermetically kerneled in a dripping sheet and a stout packing of blankets, the whole being tucked in with a puffy upper crust of feather bed. This last affair was one of those light, downy syllabubs used by the Germans as coverlets, but so insupportably warm as to give one an extrava- gant idea of the winter comforts of geese, hens, and other feathered creatures. The reaction was rapid under these sultry circumstances, and if I had been an egg, I should certainly have been hatched in fifteen or twenty minutes. In the style of getting down stairs there was a vast improvement upon Graefenberg. In- stead of being walked down like a galvanized mummy, I was picked up by two stalwart Swiss and borne off in state, as if I were the Grand Lama or the success- ful candidate of an Irish election. Deposited on a bench in the clean, spacious bathing-room, I was de- lighted by finding every desirable luxury in the way of douches, sitting-baths, squirt-guns of various de- scriptions, plunges, and so forth. Into the great cis- tern where I was finally emptied there rushed, with a fall of four or five feet, a really respectable rivulet, up- roarious, bubbly, translucent, and of an unchanging frigidity throughout the whole round of seasons. This 78 EUEOPEAN ACQUAHfTAIfCE. streamlet, the same that once urged the wheels of the mill, took its rise, a quarter of a mile distant, in a magnificent natural spring, which doubtless drew its sparkling treasures through cavernous reservoirs from the snows of the neighboring Jura. Fran9ois, my present overseer, was a muscular Swiss, with a moist blue eye, a skin well burned by sunshine and wine, and a nose inclining to scarlet fe- ver at the apex. A soured temper and a muddled in- tellect completed his resemblance to our old-fashioned cider-guzzlers of New Jersey and New England. Un- like my old Franz of Graefenberg, he was an infidel as regarded the virtues of water, and took no further in- terest in his profession than to drink something strong in order to keep out the wet. He would never, like Prince Hal, have wasted any astonishment on Fal- staff 's twopennyworth of bread to an intolerable deal of sack. When I told him of the Wine-cure, he was ravished with the idea, and marveled greatly that so excellent a system had not spread over the universe. I one day tried to enforce upon him the impression that it was a sinftil inconsistency in him to drink wine while he administered so much water to other people. "What!" said he, interrupting his scrubbing, and putting his hands on his hips with an air of solemn re- monstrance, " we bathmen not drink wine ! I should like to know how we would carry all you heavy gen- tlemen about the house, then. No, no ; we poor dev- ils never could do that on water." Fran9ois had been a soldier in the service of Hol- land, and used to entertain me with indistinct accounts of his adventures in that horizontal country. In re- DIVONNE, OK MEEMANHOOD IN FEANCE. 79 tarn, I told him, as well as my ignorance of French would allow, short stories about our Indians and ne- groes ; and, judging from his expressions of astonish- ment, I flattered myself that I enlarged his information materially concerning the colored and semi-colored races. But, in spite of his advantages, Fran9ois con- tinued a blockhead, and was at last turned away for getting drunk,*beating his wife, and being saucy to the doctor. At six o'clock there was a heavy supper; another bad idea of our medicine-man. The table exhibited a phalanx of hot meats, cold meats, boiled potatoes, cold milk, scalded mUk, but no sour milk. I observed one dyspeptic female lay in two courses of beefsteak for nocturnal digestion, and concluded that she calculated to work them off by taking a ride of nine or ten hours on the nightmare. After supper came another long sitting in the parlor, enlivened by music, reading, sewing, and plenty of conversation, in which last, by the way, I took no part, because I could not speak French, and would not speak English. Before three iays had passed, however, I put bashfulness behind me, as I would Sata^ and made myself conspicuous by talking incessantly a singular jargon approaching in sound to French. I began sentences without know- ing whether I could finish them ; held long coUoquies of which I scarcely understood my own half; saluted the ladies freely after the sociable Continental fashion ; and, in short, made myself perfectly at home in the establishment, to which comfortable end I was greatly aided by the courteous, gregarious nature of my broth- er and sister invalids. 80 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. CHAPTEE X. PASTIMES IN DIVONNE. A FEW evenings after my advent in Divonne a quad- rille was started, which proved a failure from the lack of capable quadrillians. Then came something which succeeded better — a series of games after the fashion of "Fox and Geese," or "Button," which, for almost every evening of more than a month, kept us in an up- roar of merriment. Capital players were these French invalids, abounding in queer conceits, rich with perpet- ual laughter, and as chirrupy as summer birds. We had all ages and characters in our giggling circle, from grave old Pastor Passevant, with his mild, wrinkled phiz and black velvet cap, down to three flaxen-haired Swedish sisters, none of them yet in their teens. Now and then, also, a couple of Mr. Monod's sons came over from Geneva ; and being wild-pated, rough-and-tumble urchins, they contributed not a little to the claraorous- ness of our recreations. In the game of " Fox and Goose," or, as the French call it, " Cat and Eat," a circle is formed, two deep, around which there is abundance of steeple-chasing, the cat seeking to overtake, and the rat to escape by placing himself inside of one of the couples. It would have made Timon the Athenian laugh to see our capa- cwus doctor cantering around the ring, hard on the flight of little Marie, the youngest daughter of the Swedish captain, and to hear our general shriek of de- PASTIMES IN DIVONNE. 81 light as Marie dodged through some opening in the circle and found a goal of safety. Then, perhaps, Mr. Monod was started out as the fugitive, and away roll- ed the two big men in a ponderous scamper around the excited spectators. Then it was the turn of Ca- prini, the slatternly, slipshod Italian, who drew forth new bursts of merriment by the agitated shuffle of his insecure slippers. Then I was the Eat, with the in- cessant Cat at my flying heels, while plaudits of laugh- ter complimented the vigorous manner in which Young America managed his somewhat extensive traveling apparatus. After the Cat and Eat had worn themselves com- pletely out, another play came into general favor. I despair of doing it justice, for I doubt whether it is known in America, and no one who has not seen it can form an idea of its risible character. The com- pany formed in a circle facing inward, with some one — Mr. Monod, for instance — ^in the centre. At the signal to start, Mr. Monod commenced a ludicrous dance, consisting of a series of short jumps, in the per- formance of which he advanced across the circle, and halted opposite some one, whom we will suppose to have been little Marie Seeman. Marie began the same step now, though remaining stationary, while Mr. Monod, still in a hopping state, lifted up his voice in a sing-song to these words : ^^JBonjour, ionjour, commere Marie; comment seporte compere Yidart!" (" Good-day, good-day, goodwife Mary ; how is good- man Vidart?") Marie, never ceasing her dance, was bound to reply immediately in the same chanting tone: "Je rCen D2 82 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. sais rien, je ri'en sais rien ; je TrUen vais voir." (" I do not know, I do not know ; I'll go and see.") This dialogue finished, Mr. Monod hopped into Ma- rie's place and became quiescent, while it was her bus- iness to hop across the circle to goodman Vidart, and send him on an errand of inquiry concerning the health of some other goodman or goodwife. And thus the gaine went on, until we had jumped and sung our- selves tired, or the time-piece on the mantel warned us that we had best prepare for the morrow. Sapless and uninteresting as all this may seem in description, it was most ludicrous to see it in execution ; to look on while two persons of contrasting heights and ages hopped up and down in face of each other, like two chickens fighting ; to note their arms dangling absurd- ly by their sides, their heads balanced stiffly, and their faces crimsoned with laughter. Then there were riddles, guessings of proverbs, and various plays attended by forfeits. It was once allot- ted to me as a punishment to dance some ridiculous dance ; and having, in the leisure of my boyhood, mas- tered the negro Jvba, I gave it out with marked em- phasis. It proved a season hit; it was comique! chcmnant ! tres curieux ! Not only was I called on for a repetition night after night, but several persons wanted to learn the step of me ; and one of the most fanatical in carrying this point was a severe Swiss minister, a man of the Boanerges type, with stem black eyes, and a long black beard of apostolic digni- ty. Over and over again did my reverend disciple carefully watch my feet while I danced the Juba, and then set himself with solemn perseverance to imitate PASTIMES IN DIVONNE. 83, the compKcated caper. Such a blessing followed his efforts that he very soon had the step at his fingers' ends, or rather at his toes' ends ; and day after day 1 used to hear him double-shuffle, or hoe corn and dig potatoes around the billiard-room and down the pas- sage by way of a reaction after his bath. He told me that he wanted to amuse his children with the dance, and I only hope that it diverted them as much as it diverted their papa. The gem of our little company, the pet of every body, male and female, the. social luxury necessary to our fuU enjoyment, was Ida. When half past nine of the evening came, and she had to go to her aunt's room, our circle remained like a ring from which the diamond has been taken. French girls, and girls in general on the Continent, are kept under such severe restraint that they can seldom speak or act out their real character. Silent, reserved, easily embarrassed, they follow their mothers like shadows, as inseparable, as quiet, and almost as little noticed. Ida had more of this repressed manner than usual, and seemed one of those persons who learn too early to feel in silence, either hopeless of sympathy, or shrinking from the idea of being penetrated and known by another. The heedless merriment of our games was exactly calcula- ted to tear aside this veil, thrown around her by pre- cocity or education ; and she never appeared so well, so true to the pretty artlessness of girlhood, as when she had to sit down and lean her head against the wall, because the doctor or Mr. Monod was so funny! In spite of Ida's reserve, and although we always conversed in a tongue that was foreign to at least one 84 EUROPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. of US, I could see that she was more than commonly clever. She played well, danced as girls of fifteen us- ually dance, had a good knowledge of German, and no bad one of English. Her accent in our language was just foreign enough to be as delightful as quaint mu- sic. It was accounted very unlucky for us aU when, about six weeks after my arrival, Ida's aunt got well, and they consequently left Divonne. A coach was ' driven to the door, and piled with trunks so big that it seemed as if there were two or three coaches stand- ing on top of each other. Madame Duprez kissed all the married ladies, and shook hands with all the min- isters ; Ida threw her arms around a girl friend, and both burst into sobs as their wet cheeks touched; the driver cracked his whip a dozen times in succes- sion ; the shaggy horses gave a spasmodic scramble, as if to see which should be foremost ; and, with the grim steadiness of destiny, the black coach-top slid in be- tween my eyes and a pretty face which had aided to light up some wteks of life in a foreign land. For six weeks or two months after my arrival, a quarter of an hour was devoted every morning to a religious Protestant service held in some private room. It was attended by a majority of the patieats, for we were nearly all Protestants, and boasted quite a body of living divinity in the shape of four Swiss clergymen, one English, and the two celebrated brothers, Fred- erick and Adolph Monod, of Paris. A chapter of the Bible, a few quiet observations on the text, a hymn, and a short prayer, all in French, constituted the form of devotion. On Sunday we sometimes went to a neighboring chapel, belonging to tlie doctor or his > PASTIMES IN DIVONNE. 85 brother, where we listened to a regular service and ser- mon from a Huguenot preacher. Occasionally, too, we walked over to Grassy, a Swiss frontier village about two miles distant, and sat at the feet of its jo- cund pastor, the Kev. M. Taillefer, a man more given to making sinners laugh than to converting them. Many of our people were of the most serious, evan- gelical class in France and Switzerland — such persons as the French respectfully designate as devots, or con- temptuously as Metlwdistes, Those from Geneva were followers of Merle d'Aubigne and Cesar Malan ; those from France, of such men as Frederick and Adolph Mo- nod. Hitherto in Europe I had encountered no char- acters of this type — no approach, even, to the serious piety and incessant Christianizing zeal of these my present companions. They seemed to me the most charming possible examples of those who are com- monly called pious people ; amiable in manners, cheer- ful in conversation, conscious of the beauty of earth and of their brotherhood with humanity, yet never forgetful of their mystic life, their heavenly calling, the price of their redemption. In short, they com- bined the existence of this world and the existence of the invisible more easily, gracefully, and lovingly than any class of persons that I had before seen. Yet sometimes this mixture of two modes of sentiment and being was carried to such results, that, to my American eyes, they took the form of a strange incon- sistency. I remember one pale Swiss lady, of fragile form and impressible nerves, who was possessed by a singular religious zeal, and who, for instance, did not hesitate one Sunday to supply the lack of a clergy- 86 EUROPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. man by reading aloud a chapter in the Bible, and then praying before us all, men as well as women, her hus- band standing among us. It was, I think, during the afternoon of that very day that I saw her sitting lan- guidly in the saloon, perusing a volume of the Tauch- nitz edition of English authors. I was curious enough to ask her what book she had, for I felt sure that those Tauchnitz bindings covered no works of devotion. Without the slightest hesitation, she placed in my hands some novel of modem society. I looked in her face earnestly, but there was not a trace of annoyance there at my inquisitiveness ; not a remote conscious- ness of any contrast between the book and the day. " Ah ! it is a novel," I said. "Yes; my poor head is so wearied that I must give it some relaxation." She took the romance again, and went on reading with all the placidity of a quiet conscience. Some years ago, when the Free Kirk of Scotland made its exodus from the Established Church, a sim- ilar movement — ^in fact, an echo of that one — ^took place in various countries of the Continent. In most of them, especially in France, it failed miserably. Frederick Monod, formerly one of the best attended preachers in Paris, saw his congregation diminish to sixty or seventy people, principally chambermaids, while his fifteen thousand francs of salary, a large stipend in France, feU to an indefinitely small sum, which came, as the Arabs say, when God pleased. In Switzerland the result was not wonderfully better, and the free congregations mostly, if not universally, found easy room in insignificant chapels. A good PASTIMES IN DIVONNE, 87 deal of jealousy and ill-will naturally sprang up be- tween the two churches, the stronger one, as it could not persecute the other physically, rather liking to call it hard names and poke fun at it. The term Metho- diste, especially, is freely applied to the Independents, and generally roUs out of orthodox lips with an into- nation of hearty, contemptuous dislike. The Metho- distes, by the way, are the best Christians of the two, as far as I am capable of judging. Pastor TaiUefer, of Grassy, was of the Established Church, and held Methodists in particular disrelish. As I have already said, he was a jolly man, who had little disposition to trouble a body about heaven or hell, and whose ideas of pastoral duty fitted him as easy as so many old shoes. One Sunday he gave no- tice that there would be no preaching after dinner, and then drove into Geneva, a distance of fifteen mUes, to see M. Poitevin make an ascension with his famous aeronautic pony. I easily excused Madame LasaJle for reading her novel, but I am inclined to be hard upon Pastor TaiUefer, and to aflSrm that he broke the Sabbath. It is possible, indeed, that he thought Poi- tevin was going clear up, and that he wished to verify his conceptions of the ascent of Ehjah ; but I am very much afraid that he was only actuated by a worldly desire to see a balloon. I have said nothing about the scenery of Divonne, or the interesting objects in its vicinity. It was in France, as I have already observed, but so hard on the borders of Switzei'land that a walk of a quarter of a mile eastward brought you to a little bridge, the oth- er end of which rested on the soil of the mountain re- 88 EUROPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. public. It was no mountain here, however, for on every side stretched the valley of Lake Leman. Three miles from Divonne, distinctly visible from the hill back of the village, rolled those waves of wonderful beauty which Byron and Rousseau have made famous. Beyond them were the hills of Savoy ; and behind these were mountains on mountains, peeping over each other in increasing altitude and pearliness, until the vista closed in the awful pyramid of Mont Blanc; yes, long rows of snowy mountains, like a Titanic army of spectres, towering from north to south through a hundred miles or more, in an array of terrible, blind- ing whiteness. The sun threw a glorious mantle upon them as he bade them a nightly adieu, and went away into the golden west. Very wonderful also, and such as I have seen in no other part of earth, were the sun- rises that came over them in the winter mornings. While the enormous line of peaks still remained of a deathly, ashy white, aU the air above them burned with splendor, raying like a halo, as if the mountains were sanctified, and had put on, not only their robes of spotlessness, but their crowns of glory. It is the sole place where I have yet seen sunrises as lovely, brilliant, and impressive as any sunset. Caprini, in a fit of enthusiasm far beyond his character, said that the clime of his native Italy was beckoning to him from across the Alps. Three miles from Divonne, going toward the lake, was the family residence of the De Staels. Six or seven miles farther north, directly upon the shore, was Nyon, a picturesque little city surmounted by a gi- gantic old chateau. In the principal street stood a PASTIMES IN DIVONNE. 89 bronze statue, of rude antique workmanship, which the people called Mattre Jacques ; a grim-visaged, stiff- kneed fellow, in complete armor, who looked as if he might have been a very ungovernable sort of " Master James" while living, but whose sole, placable business it is now to remind people that the Canton de Vaud was once no republic, but divided into feudal estates, and ruled hj Sa^yard governors. I could learn noth- ing of who Maitre Jacques was,. or what he had done to be thus commemorated, or what he was maitre of; only I fancied, from the completeness of his knightly harness, that, if he was the master of any thing in par- ticular, it was of the noble art of self-defense. The mystery attached to "Master James" interested me more, perhaps, than his true story could have done, and I never visited Nyon without passing a few mo- ments in the contemplation of his ugly and solemn physiognomy. Beyond Nyon, on the lake, lay Vevay, and Clarens, and Chillon, and somewhat behind them, on a lofty hill, rose Lausanne ; but the reader knows that it is not the purpose of my book to hash up celebrities. Returning to our little, inconsequential Divonne, I will observe that it became quite interesting when you surveyed it in contrast to the Protestant villages of the Canton de Vaud. These last were tidy, solidly built, nicely whitewashed, abounding in bee-hives (that tolerably sure sign of a provident people), and inhabit- ed by broad, burly, vigorous men, evidently one of the sturdiest, wealthiest peasant populations in Europe. No neglected fields were visible here; no musty, tum- ble-down houses ; no rag-tag-and-bobtail population. 90 EUROPEAN ACQUAINTAKCE. Divonne, on the contrary, Catholic Divonne, blessed with the true Church, holy water, the Bishop of Frei- burg, and all those orthodox advantages, was as mean, dirty a little village as you shall see marring the beauty of a summer's day. A whole company of soldiers kept it in quietness, and secured its allegiance to Paris. Martial law spread her crimson wings over its muddy streets and shabby rooms ; scores of bayonets occa- sionally turned up its asparagus-beds and potato- patches to search for illegal pikes or rebellious car- bines. In the Canton de Vaud I saw the Swiss farmers and mechanics practicing with their own sure rifles, not a soldier on guard to keep them from aiming at their rulers, and no holy water near to wet their republican primings. PEESONS AND POLITICS IN DIVONNE. 91 CHAPTER XI. PEESONS AND POLITICS IN DIVONNE. OuE socieiy was composed for a time of simple cit- izens only, but a month or more after my arrival came some specimens of European nobility. They were the Countess of Manteuffel, with her son and daughter, Grermans by descent, but Russians by nationality, be- longing in one of those Sclavonic provinces on the Baltic which were anciently conquered and feudalized by adventurers of the Teutonic race. They bore no relationship to the famous Russian minister of the same name ; their very armorial bearings were di£fer- ent. The elder countess was a lady of tall and state- ly form, with a nuld dignify in her face and air, eyes of calm azure, and high, regular features, marking a beauty which must have been noticeable thirty years ago. She looked and stepped very nobly, yet very quietly and sweetly, although at the bottom of aU there seemed to be a hidden spring of proud reserve. The count, a man of twenty-five years, and his sis- ter, two or three years younger, were very different from their mother. They showed ordinary round physiognomies, with blue, laughing eyes, curling hair, and brief noses. The brother was a quiet, plain-man- nered man, a good fellow from the bottom of his heart, with no more air of pretension about him than if he had been bom a shoeblack. His sister exactly resembled him in easy, kindly simplicity and unobtrusiveness. 92 EUROPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. One so little expects to see homely people do beau- tiful things, that I looked on with admiring wonder when an action of charming grace fell from this young countess. In company with two or three other ladies, all busy over books or embroidery, she sat in the sa- loon one evening, unobservant that her mother had en- tered. Mademoiselle Arnaud, a young Genevoise, rose, sprang to a chair, brought it to the table, and with a pretty gesture invited the elder countess to sit down by them. The daughter rose also, but she had been anticipated. Without a word, she went up to Mademoiselle Arnaud, bent down and kissed her cheek, then quietly resumed her place and her occupation. No hesitancy, no awkwardness, no ostentation ap- peared in this little tribute of thanks, which was as naturally given as it was conceived amiably. These Manteuffels were fair specimens of the sim- pler and more unpretending class of European nobili- ty. I must do that style of humanity the justice to say that, as far as I had an opportunity of watching its manners, they were remarkable for nothing so much as naturalness and good taste. I was surprised to find in them less haughtiness, less reserve, less affectation of superiority than in many of our own leading people, or even some few of the upper hmirgeoisie of Europe. Pride incomparable there may be in the soul, but on the surface only a fascinating courtesy and unpreten- tiousness. The Eussian nobility have the reputation of being the haughtiest in manner, at the same time . that they are the least ancient and most plebeian in or- igin. A German noble is seldom troubled by fits of arrogance except when he thinks a commoner of his PEESONS AND POLITICS IN DIYONNE. 93 own nation is too presumptuous and persevering in his approaches. The English aristocracy, what very little I have seen of it, has a cold, quiet, passionless civility, which jars on no stranger's self-respect, and may con- ceal. Heaven knows what, of immeasurable haughti- ness or sincere amiability. But of all nobilities that I have observed, the Italian seemed to me the most facile, sociable, unassuming. Wonderfully good-na- tured, good-for-nothing fellows are those bachelor counts and marquesses who haunt the caf^s and drive on the promenades of Italian cities ; talking about operas and ices, comedies and women; on bowing terms with every body, from the Grand-Duke to some insignificant clerk in the post-office; always idle and useless, always glad to be amused, always particularly civil to a foreigner. I remember one elderly Neapol- itan duke, a man of real position and a respectable au- thor, who was the most cozy, comfortable, chatty, in- consequential old gentleman that was ever perfectly at home in talk and sunshine. Such are my general im- pressions of the manners of European aristocracy, the best behaved class of humanity that I ever had the pleasure of observing. Two families of the old country-nobility of France resided in our immediate neighborhood. About twen- ty rods from the Establishment, on a high, abrupt green knoll, which overlooked the village and the plain, stood the chateau of the Count of Divonne. It was a quadrangular modem building, like an ordinary coun- try-house, with no pretensions to magnificence beyond its command over that majestic landscape ; in short, a very unworthy successor to the knightly old castle 94 EUROPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. which it replaced, and o£ whose martial masonry a fragment still peeped humbly from the garden walL The count himself was a kind of modern reconstruc- tion, being, if I recollect right, only a cousin of the direct line of the family. I never heard him speak, as he had few dealings with our Protestant doctor, and none whatever with his Calvinistic invalids. He was a tall, dark man of about forty, of good appear- ance^nd grave manners. He was anti-Republican, fer- vently Catholic, and his house was for some time the home of that famously troublesome Jesuit and exile, the Bishop of Freiburg. I inquired the income of this French aristocrat, and was told that he might have about four thousand dollars a year, which my inform- ants seemed to consider a very pretty sum. Our other feudal neighbor was a tall, stout, blond man of about thirty, called Baron de Pres. His cha^ teau, a building as modem as the count's, and still plainer in architecture, lay a mile and a half from theEs- tablishment, just on the frontier of Switzerland. The baron had the healthy sunburn and lajge muscular frame of the neighboring farmers of the Canton de Vaud. He had been little in Paris, so that his manners and talk had a provincial smack, reminding one much more of a Swiss than a Frenchman ; but his blood was real- ly ancient, and his features had the true aristocratic type, a Grecian inclining to aquiline. His father dis- tinguished himself on the insurgent side in the first French Revolution, since which the family has always been republican, or at least liberal, in politics. Our baron seemed to me one of the sensible men of France, a moderate Democrat of the Cavaignac school, the only PERSONS AND POLITICS IN DIVONNE. 95 set under whom the republic was possible. In man- ners he was rather shy of strangers, but a good fellow at heart, and a boisterous joker when cozUy settled at the table of his crony the doctor. Turning from an invalid aristocracy to our invalid plebeianism in the Establishment, I am arrested by a recoUection of the Italian Caprini. A little slovenly fellow of twentyjfour, with a venerable air, which ap- peared to consist in looking very snuffy and shufify-, he always seemed dirty in spite of his four washings a day, and was, on the whole, what might be called an ugly man, although his features were regular, his dark cheek flushed with color, and his eyes of a fine hazel. He spoke French pretty fluently, but with one of the strongest and most disagreeable accents in the world. On his alien lips the simplest sounds of the language withered into something outlandish and incomprehen- sible. Chose became sose ; and argent, arzent. Some of our Frenchmen, forbearing as that nation usually is to blunderers in its syntax, got out of all grammatical patience with Caprini, and Used to badger him like schoolmasters about his heathenish dialogue. "My God !" said one of them, in a transport of impatience, " you are insupportable ; you have certain phrases that come from the other world." Caprini, unlike the Piedmontese in general, was a supreme coward, and the mischievous set who haunt- ed our biUiard-room had several good jokes against him on the score of his sensitive nervous system. He sometimes visited Nyon, which was about six mUes from Divonne, the road to it leading through a fine plain, well cultivated, and Siprinkled with country- 96 EUROPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. seats. A couple of our people were lounging along this road about dusk, and had reached the shadow of a small grove, through which shone the white walla of a gentleman's country-residence, when from beyond a turn in the route they heard footsteps approaching in great haste. In a moment more Caprini bolted round the comer, holding a cocked pistol straight be- fore him, and looking from right to left among the trees with as much alarm as if, to his certain knowl- edge, the forty thieves had been hidden among the peaceable and well-pruned foliage. At sight of his bath-fellows he gave a joyftd shout, and ran forward to meet them. " What is the matter ?" said they. " What are you doing with that pistol ? Have you seen any body ?" " Oh, nobody ; but I thought it looked dangerous in this forest ; and then I was walking fast, and rob- bers always think you have money when you walk fast ; and so I took out my pistol to deter them from an attack." His hearers set up a shout of scornful laughter, and told him that the country was as safe as a bath-tub. A few days after this perilous adventure he had a disagreement over a bet at billiards with a Frenchman named Trocon, a pugnacious, powerful fellow, who would have had no fear of settling the dispute corpo- really, either with fists or pistols. Frenchmen, how- ever, seldom proceed to personal violence in their quar- rels ; usually, if the dispute can not be decided by words, falling back quietly on the duel, so that the Italian was quite safe from being cuffed by his Her- culean opponent. But as Trocon happened to be ab- PERSONS AND POLITICS IN DIVONNE. 97 sent at Nyon the next day, our jok«rs got up' a report that he had gone there to procure seconds and pistols, with the intention of washing out his aifront in Ca- prini's blood. The most horrible accounts were cir- culated concerning his ferocity of temper, and his deadly feats of marksmanship in former grave affairs of the kind. The poor Italian fled from the now in- sufferable billiai^d-room, and sought consolation in pouring his tale of woe into my bosom. He had lost command over his French for the moment, and spoke in his native language. In an agonyof stammering and trembling he pretended to take his fate coolly, and paraded a philosophical indifference to death. "Oosa mi imjporta la vitaf^ " What do I care for life ?" said he, looking as if he would give his ears for an assur- ance that he should exist twenty-four hours longer. To my eternal honor, I was pitiful, and tried to. con- vince him that our billiard-room jesters were only cracking a joke at his expense. At night Trocon came back from Nyon with no pistols, and laughed uproar- iously but pacifically when informed of the tales and terrors of the day. : Winter was now approaching, and my comrades be- gan to take flight for their homes. The two brothers Monod left us, one after the other, each departure be- ing a heavy drain on the interest and spfightliness of our society. I shall always remember, for another reason, when Frederick Monod went away, and that is, that I was then kissed for the first time by one of my own sex. "A. la Franfaise," said this delightful pas- tor, and, before I recovered from my surprise, we had kissed each other on both cheeks. It was not so bad E 98 EUROPEAN ACQUAINTANCE, as I had expected, but I can imagine that it" would be much more agreeable to exchange the same salute with a woman. ^ Very strange it seems to Europeans of the Conti- nent that, in England and America, men never bestow this token of affection on their male friends, and, above all, that it is never exchanged between male relations. " Queer people," said the doctor, talking of this sub- ject. "An Englishman wiU not kiss his own broth- er. "Yes," said Prince Georges L , a Russian, " and, worse than that, a father in that chilly country will refuse to put his lips to the cheek of his son. The son has perhaps been in India twenty years ; he comes home, and lands at London ; they meet on the quay, and shake hands as if they had parted over night." "Very unpleasant manners," rejoined the doctor. "And just notice how cold and discourteous they are to ladies. There is Mr. Reynolds, one of my patients, a man of learning, and, they say, a gentleman bom ; but see him meet our lady friends in the garden or by the fountains. He never says 'Good-morning;' he even passes them without raising his hat." " But," interposed I, " Mr. Reynolds does not know all the ladies; he Speaks to those he is acquainted with." " But he ought to salute the others when he passes them ; every body does it," insisted the doctor. " No ; there excuse me. Every body does it here, but not in England and America. More than that, you are not permitted there to salute a lady with whom PERSONS AND POLITICS IN DIVONNE, 99 you are not on speaking terms. It would be consid- ered an impertinence ; you would not te answered." " What ! not when you were living under the same roof?" " Not even then." "Well, there it is again," persisted the doctor. " The people are kind enough at heart, but iced all over in manners by their absurd reserve. Give me something more civil in appearance, I say, even if there is not much soul in it." During the autumn a great deal of rain fell, and De- cember marked its passage by some light dashes of snow. They were only temporary visitors from the top of the neighboring Jura, and usually degenerated into slush and mud within twenty-four hours ; but ev- 'ery week we could see the white drapery of the east- em peaks reaching farther down toward Leman, as if the prudent Alps were letting out the tucks in their winter garments. As the frosts thickened around us, we garnished our feet with those huge wooden shoes, called sabots, so much worn by the French peasantry. I stared in amazement at my own pedals when I first saw them cased in those ponderous pieces of carpen- try ; and I certainly never made such tracks before nor since as I then imprinted in the snowdrifts which thicker and thicker gathered over our deserted land- scapes. It costs time and pains (many pains) to get one's feet used to these whitewood slippers, even with the protection of an interior sock of woven list ; but they are necessities, for, except in large cities, India- rubbers are unknown on the Continent, and ordinary shoeing was no match for the wear and wet of hydrop- 100 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. athy in a Juiatic winter ; for into the winter I was steadily going, under a full sail of moist sheets and towels, as heroic in pursuit of health as a Nantucket whaler in chase of polaric blubher. I was still gain- ing on my malady, but not so rapidly as at Graefen- berg, perhaps because I was now very near the far- thest limits of recovery, and it was therefore harder to improve. In one object of my residence in a French Water- cure — ^that is, in acquiring the language — I had been even more successful than I anticipated. Without numerous and excellent letters of introduction, I could not possibly have obtained otherwheres and otherwise so much good society as I found at Divonne. It is vexations to an American to discover how long he may live in a city of the Continent, and yet have occasion to address none of its inhabitants except coachmen, waiters^ and other persons whose grammar and con- versation are equally unedifying. Boarding-houses at Paris, for instance, are almost unknown ; and those two or three which exist are filled with Anglo-Saxons, who come there in the hope of talking French, but talk only English. At the hotels you meet travelers and transient natives, who stay but a night or so, and- with whom you form no intimacy. But at Divonne, in a week's time, I found myself on sociable terms with fifty people, nearly aU well educated, and some of them belonging to the best classes of European society. Ee- serve would have been difficult in our circumstances, and no one had the bad taste to attempt it. Thus I heard at Divonne not only better French than would have been vouchsafed to me at Paris, but more in a PEESONS AND POLITICS IN DITONNE. 101 week than I should have heard there in a month. During about four months, indeed, I spoke no other language, not meeting in that period a solitary En- glishman or American. The consequence of all this was a facile acquisition of words and accent which surprised me, and won numherless eulogiums from my native acqusdntance. My object in noting these cir- cumstances is to show Americans abroad where to leam a foreign tongue, and how. Not in the unsocial populousness of great cities ; not by taking bachelor lodgings and dining at the restaurants ; but at some table d^hbte, where you meet from day to day the same faces, and, best of all, when such a table can be found in the freedom of a country resort. To get along faster on my grammatical stilts (for thus awkward are the first steps in a foreign tongue), I took a teacher, a young man, the clerk of the vil- lage lawyer. He was not of the best quality, for he had something of the accent of the district ; and, in ad- dition, he was entirely unaccustomed to the style of for- eigners in French, so that my idioms often puzzled him to that degree that he could hardly tell whether they were right or wrong. But he was usefiil in mak- ■ ing me write regularly, as also in giving me conversa- tional practice, after my fellow-patients had mostly de- parted. He used to come every afternoon, in his suit of plain gray, and sit for an hour or two over my com- fortable stove, discussing the composition of the morn- ing, and closing with a miscellaneous talk on all things and some others. One day our tongues rambled on to the state of the commonwealths of South America. "I suppose," said he, "that you will seize upon those 102 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. countries some day. They are devilishly behindhand {diablement en arriere), and want somebody to start them on." The expression amused me. Politics was our favorite subject, especially French politics, and its different phases in struggling towai-d a true and steady Republicanism. He believed in the Republic ; at all events, passionately hoped in it ; and he looked forward to another outburst in the spring — a new strife for a complete liberty, which should alto- gether triumph. "Do not resume your travels for some months," said he ; " our electipns come on soon, and then there wUl be a rising. When France rises, Europe rises ; and you wiU not then find a country near us in which you can travel safely. Here you are not in danger, but it would be different in Paris or in the cities of Italy. When the people strikes again it will punish the traitors, and by mistake you might fall in some dark night for another." Whether he said this firom a knowledge of the plots which were then weaving to entangle the Prince-Pres- ident, or whether he was simply a looker-on in Venice, and but talked on guess-work, I never asked him and never knew. An answer was preparing to his oracle such as he little expected. On the fourth of December, 1852, as the half a doz- en patients who stiU remained were sitting down to dinner, the Swiss pastor Berteau walked into the room, holding out a Journal des Debats just from Paris. His fine lips curled contemptuously under his jetty beard, and his black eyes flashed with a strange mixture of scorn and anger. Swiss and Republican to the bottom of his soul ; proud of his national liberty PEESONS AND POLITICS IN DIYONNE. 103 as Lucifer of his morning supremacy, he gtasped in his hand the condemnation of a people which had tried in vain to be free. " Hurrah for the Republic !" he said, in a fierce, contemptuous tone, and flung the journal on the table before the doctor. "What do you mean?" asked the other, with a stare of vague inquietude. " Hurrah for Mie Republic ! Read there," repeated Berteau, placing his finger on a passage of two or three lines at the bottom of a column. The doctor raised the paper and read aloud this announcement: " Paris is in a state of siege. The National Assem- bly is dissolved. The streets are occupied by troops." A veil of sudden, hopeless dismay fell on every countenance. There was an expectation, a silence, a turning of the head to see if any one were near. A few words, very few, expressed the astonishment, and fewer stiU the wrath of the auditors. Even in that distant republican comer of France the coup d'etat was received unresisted, undenounced, in stupor, and in terror. Directly opposite me sat a man who for weeks past had been openly swearing vengeance against the enemies of French liberty, and prophesy- ing an imminent hour when they should be swept into sudden nothingness. Not a word now passed his lips at this condemnation of his hopes ; and after the first stare of amazement, he never lifted his eyes from his food. It seemed as if every hand were par- alyzed by unseen manacles, and every head bent to- ward the glitter of the guillotine by an iiTcsistible fas- cination, as flowers are drawn toward the brightness of the sun. This man — ^this Red Republican, who sat 104 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE!. before me, rose from the table speecHesB, and lived for weeks thereafter in a silent terror greater than his noisy confidence of before. . The day following we heard that our Eepnblican friend, Baron de Pres, had fled across the frontier to the Swiss village of CrasSy. Trocon, my teacher, and I made him a visit, and fonnd him in a hired room, with a gooisiook-ont toward France, and three or four rifles and fowling-pieces standing loaded in one comer. " Here I am," said he, " running away from the coup d'etai. I was in no particular danger, that I know of; but my opinions are understood, and I thought it best to be on the safe side of the frontier. There is no telling what &ncies a prefect of police might take to one in a time like this. But I teU you one thing, Trocon ; we must aU turn Protestants. France will never be free as long as these cursed priests rule the souls of our population. Hereafter I mean to go pret- ty often to the Protestant church, if it is only to spite the shaved devils. Sacred name of names ! it is the sole revenge they have left us. And to think of being fooled in this way by an idiot — a dull, slow ass — ^an accident. This Louis Napoleon is not a man ; he is only an event. Well, events succeed each other ; I am waiting for ours." Good reader, Catholic reader, reactionist reader, suf- fer the baron to rail, or even swear, in the bitterness of his disappointment and the foam of his impotent wrath. He has been cheated of his republic, and rendered for years to come a suspected man, whose rise is impossible except on the smoky wings of hy- pocrisy. He sits in a hired apartment on foreign soil. PEESONS AND POLITICS IN DIVONNE. 105 looking at his lands and chateau, without daring to pluck the fruit of the one or darken the threshold of the other. He knows that thousands who believe as he does are thus situated, and even as much worse off as prison and death can make them, solely that Louis Napoleon may reign unmolested. Let him rave. News soon came of fighting in Paris, barricades hastily thrown up, desperate struggles on the Boule- vards, alternations of victory and defeat. The hopes of our village Republicans were raised only to be dashed harder to earth. We learned that the troops remained faithful to the usurper, and the usurper faithful in audacity and energy to himself. A letter came to a young villager from his brother, a soldier in the gar- rison of Lyons. " We are di-unk all the while," he wrote ; " the men get double pay ; the oflScers have received large presents according to their grades." Reports followed tiiat a rising, sullied by deep atroc- ities, had taken, place along the frontier districts bor- dering on western Switzerland and Savoy ; that one department was entirely in the hands of the insurrec- tionists, and that the fire was creeping from valley to valley of that wooded and broken country. Then came news of marchings of troops, provincial prisons full of Eepublicans, and a corpse-like quiet in the population. Over the ruinous track of the coup d'etat came the lying elections, like a mirage succeeding to a simoom. Fountains, rivers, oceans of liberty were advertised, and the people of France was driven up to satisfy its thirst for liberty at a ballot-box as densely surrounded by bayonets as a spring by bulrushes. Eighty soldiers E 2 106 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE, of the Kne watched the freemen of our village as they tremblingly exercised the glorious right of suffrage. Billets marked Oui were printed for those who were in favor of making Louis Napoleon President for ten years, billets marked Non for those who did not think him worthy of that considerable proof of confidence. I observed that the latter were so distinguished by a black line around the edge that they could not possibly be folded in a manner to have them mistaken for the others. The Count of Divonne sat by the ballot-box, sternly noting every man who deposited a lined billet; and it was thought an act of immense hardihood when Trocon, my Republican friend, laid down a broad, un- disguised Nbn, Our village, weU known as violently Liberal, if not Red, gave a large majority of votes for the Prince-President. How many of these patriotic Ouis were the suffrages of the Count of Divonne, and how many were deposited by men who neither dared vote otherwise nor stay away, would be a curious problem, difficult of solution. One of the leading lawyers of Gex, a small city about eight miles from Divonne, undertook to distrib- ute billets of Non to his fellow-citizens. The Prefect of Police sent for him, and received him with an air of grim confidence. "I understand. Monsieur Leroux," said he, " that you are distributing billets of Nort." " It is true. Monsieur the Prefect. I believe that I have a constitutional right to do so." " Oh, certainly. Monsieur ; no one disputes your right. But allow me to observe that, if you distribute any more of them, the consequences may be very un- pleasant to yourself, Monsieur Leroux — extremely PERSONS AND POLITICS IN DIVONNE. 107 unpleasant. Observe, Monsieur," continued the pre- fect, taking a pinch of snufif, and looking the lawyer steadUy in the eyes, "I do not wish to interfere with your liberty ; I only forewarn you of a very probable and very disagreeable result to the continuance of your present conduct. Good-day, Monsieur Leroux. I have the honor to salute you." Leroux himgplf told me this story, and frankly ac- knowledged that, from fear of those evil consequences so plainly hinted at by the friendly oflScial, he took care to be seen with no more bundles of negative bil- lets in his Republican fingers. I asked my teacher if the immense mass of peasant- ry had not Democratic principle enough to rise against such contemptuous menaces and cajoleries. " But," said he, " they know nothing about it. How should they ? They have had no political education. They say, 'Oh, we must have some one there at Paris.' They would vote for a king under a republic, and not know that they had committed a contradiction. • For the rest, they will obey the priests." Such were the elections with which Louis Napoleon attempted to drape his usurpation. France may have fallen lower at other times, but she never fell more ridiculously. It was bad enough to be beaten thus like a hound ; but to be forced to gambol and wag her tail under the rod was ludicrously contemptible. 108 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. CHAPTER XII. WINTER IN DIVONNE. Subsequent to the bustle of those farcical elections came several months remarkable for little to me be- sides winter and loneliness. The patients of Divonne were not hardened to cold hj the enthusiasm of the Gxaefenbergers, so that only two braves, Trocon and I, remained to encounter the inclemency of January- packings and douches. The climate of the Valley of Geneva is not at any season of the year a very perfect one, except in two or three sheltered nooks like Mon- treuil; while in winter it is boisterous and glacial enough to make a white bear curse the north pole, and wish himself at the equator. No great quantity of snow fell — ^not more, perhaps, at any one time than five or six inches ; but from the Jura and the opposite Alps descended a frozen breath which neutralized our warm- est noontide. Sometimes for a week together the air was gray with a chilly fog, rendering the immense sur- rounding peaks as invisible as if they had no exist- ence, sheeting the whole lower landscape like a spec- tral shroud, freezing with a slow persistency, and grad- ually covering every branch, and twig, and frostbitten herb with an icy filigree, until, when the sun came out, the valley seemed like a fairy land, opulent with forests of feathery silver fruiting into diamonds. Then the ^se, or north wind, rushed furiously down from the WINTER IN DIVONNE. 109 upper end of the lake, replacing the still, duU frigidity of the mist by an equal monotony of whistling blasts, chill, strong, and unwearying. This bise is about the same thing as the mistral of Marseilles, which is said to blow something like four- teen days out of every week. Its favorite place of bustle around Lake Leman is the city of Geneva, which, being situated at the bottom of the valley, where it narrows very nearly to the breadth of the Rhone, is about as much exposed to gusts as if it were in the nozzle of a bellows. A torrent of dust often crowds its narrow streets, scouring in at the northern side of the city and out at the southern, like a current of mad emigration, tending toward some humid bourne in Mediterranean billows. I never in my life wore my hat tighter on my head, nor got more gravel and dust in my eyes, than during vaj visits to Geneva. Notwithstanding atmospheric observations and lin- guistic studies, I sometimes felt dreadfully lonely and unemployed in my hydropathic seclusion. Even Tro- con was at one time absent for more than a week. The reader can imagine how hard pushed I was for amusement when I tell him that I once passed five minutes very agreeably in making faces at a strange cat, who had perched himself on the outer window-siU to observe the solitude of the saloon. The animal stared in undisguised amazement until the spectacle apparently" became too harrowing for endurance, when he disappeared with a scared jump, like a rustic fright- ened by a ghost. Another means of diversion was Trompette, a good- natured, good-for-nothing, loafing specimen of a bushy- 110 EUEOPEAN ACQUADfTANCE. tailed small dog. As white as a dirty dog could be, shaggy and uncombed, with short legs, a tongue that was too long for him, a very neatly turned peroration, and lively red eyes, he looked like a quadruped of char- acter. A sharp dog he was for cutting summersets; skiUfnl at playing toss up and catch with lumps of sug- ar ; remarkable also for whining lamentably in tune to the church bells. It was his misfortune to have fleas, but not his fault, I am sure, for he took the most vigor- ous measures to get rid of them. He would bite mad- ly at his populous back, then roll himself desperately in the gravel, then take to his heels with such swiftness as to leave his tail behind him (an inch or so), then halt to nibble again as if he meant to eat himself up entirely. On account of this misfortune, Trompette was not a welcome guest in the house, and seldom dared enliven it with his flea-bitten presence, so that whenever he was admitted he took it as a rare favor, turning sum- mersets of gratitude, and wagging his tail as indefati- gably as a pendulum. K allowed to remain to dinner, he took post by t"he chair of the most charitable person in the company, but held himself prepared to foUow up any other chance prospect of an immediate morsel. His head awry, and one eye cocked at you like a chicken, he watched every bit in its transit from the plate to your mouth with an anxiety which he made no attempt to conceal ; and when it finally disappear- ed in that orifice where bits (whether horses' or other bits) usually go, he licked his chops involuntarily, as if from instinctive sympathy (somewhat envious) with your happiness. . He evidently had not strength of mind to tear himself from this unprofitable spectacle, WINTER m DIVONNE. Ill the most aggravating species of misery, perhaps, of which a doggish nature is capable. Dui-ing the month of warm weather which I saw at Divonne, Trompette enjoyed himself beyond descrip- tion in the sunshine. Couching in the sultriest noon- tide, he sunk into a luxurious dream-life, sometimes waking up with a start at the sensation of a fly on his nose or a flea in his ear, exerting his lazy facul- ties for a moment to bite or shake off the enemy of his peace, then spreading himself again to the sun, so sweltering, so toasted that he was all but ready to pop, like a chestnut in the ashes. And all this while there was a remarkably shrewd, self-satisfied air about him, as though he would have said, " If I ain't a watch-dog, I know the time of day ; if I ain't a pointer, I am a keen dog at aU. points ; my nose is rather to the point, I fancy, and so are my ears ; there is health in my bark, and waggishness in my tail." Our establishment also boasted a pet lamb, who van- ished mysteriously about the beginning of winter, and whom I supposed to have been killed and eaten, as usually happens at last to the respectable part of the woolly population. But on one of the early warm days of spring he reappeared, now grown up to sheephood ; and,' emerging fi-om the stable, where he had passed the cold weather among the cows and horses, proceeded to divert himself by stepping on the flower-beds, munch- ing the oleanders and rose-bushes, butting at Trom- pette and the hens, until, having done mischief enough in an hour to satisfy a reasonable sheep for a week, he was finally chased back to his stall by the outraged gardener. Two or three repetitions of this foray gen- 112 EUROPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. erally exhausted the patience of the doctor, who would then cause Bunty to te tied up again in the stable, and thus force him to let the hens and oleanders alone for ^ season. ' I must bequeath a page or so to the memory of my particular friend and boon companion in the revels of hydropathy. Monsieur Trocon. He was a middle- sized Frenchman of thirty-three or thereabouts, with heavy shoulders, a broad chest, and immense muscles; in short, a perfect model of those fine fellows whom one sees about France in the red trowsers of the Zou- aves or the blue tunics of the Chasseurs ; just the kind of man to leap up the fire-swept precipices of the Alma, or to struggle with a heroic vitality through the fatigues and privations of a Crimean winter. He had served a while in the artillery, where his reckless tem- per and wild love of pleasure had several times brought him into difficulties, and at last forced him to buy him- self out in order to escape ^he severity of his officers. He considered it curious, and, in fact, rather humorous, that the man who replaced him was finished, a short time after, by the well-aimed bullet of an Arab in Al- geria. Having rid himself of cannon and sabre exercise, he turned his attention to getting a living, and when I knew him was a very respectable and well-to-do car- riage-maker. It was actually a disappointment in love which shook his colossal constitution, and sent him for health to the restorative humidities of Di- vonne. Once there, he became fascinated by the cure, and precipitated himself into a dissipation of packings and sitz-baths. At one time the doctor sent him ■WINTER IN DITONNE. 113 away, telling Hm that he was well ; but in a week he was back again, declaring that his life hang by a thread. The thread in question would probably have served a Brobdignag tailor, for at this very time he was a kind of enormity of muscular force. In fact, he had got hypped, and imagined himself sick, in consequence of having been too well all the early part of his life. Many a man who has lived thirty years in perfect health believes himself going into a decline on the first attack of stomach-ache. Whether a Frenchman has more vanity than an American or an Englishman, I do not know ; but, at all events, he takes the liberty to show more of it in his conversation. He is apt to talk copiously about himself, analyze at large his own peculiarities of char- acter, and conclude himself, on the whole, to be a good fellow. I have heard French-women describe most minutely, particularize even to hair-splitting, their sentiments toward men whom they had loved, or sup- posed they had loved. On the other hand, I may no- tice that the French are very charitable to this sociable egotism in other people, and listen to a fellow-mortal's expatiations on himself without impatience, without reproaching him, even behind his back, for self-con- ceit. What seems to us vanity may be in part only a greater degree of frankness and communicativeness. Trocon had this characteristic of discussing himself as minutely as if he was a delicate jplat, or a ques- tion before the Assemblee Nationale. If any one re- monstrated with him on some unreasonable habit or prejudice, he would give, as an all-sufficient explana- tion, " That's my way" (tTe suis comme pa). This ro- 114 EUROPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. bust and self-reliant reason was good for every thing, from his peculiarity of hating priests and aristocrats worse than he hated the devU, down to his other pe- culiarity of eating boiled eggs for breakfast in contra- diction of all rules of hydropathic diet. In exact truth, his was an instinctive nature, abominating things because they were uncongenial, and loving them be- cause they were sympathetic. A downright French' character it was — ^very much resembling the Irish; more moved by emotion than by reason; vigorous rather than persevering. In politics and religion his sentiments were on the right side ; Natui'e had made him a hater of despotism, whether monarchic or priest- ly. But, with this passionate energy as a motor of ac- tion, he would, I think, have been a reckless man in success, a famous feUow for heads and confiscations. If not an absolute "Ked," he was something more than light pink or rose color. I have seen him shake his iron fist and howl like a wild beast as the flushed, haughty face, and tranquil, assured step of the Bishop of Freiburg passed our door. The coup d'etat fell upon him like a personal misfortune; it broke his sleep, made him melaneholy and almost sick. His revolutionary tastes showed themselves early, or rather, perhaps, were formed by an incident which occurred in his boyhood. At fourteen he was an ap- prentice in a workshop at Paris, when, some umbrage having been excited by the new government of Louis Philippe, the blouses resorted to their fayorite political measure of barricades and arms. Little Trocoii pick- ed up a musket and cartridge-box in the street, and, concluding that it was a free fight, counted himself in WINTER IN DIVONNE. 115 without ceremony. " I found myself with some other workmen from the shop," said he, " and we fi^ed upon all the soldiers we could see. Sometimes we ran away from the dragoons, and sometimes I thought I had lived my last day. Then we would take a new post around some comer, and shoot at them down the street. I can not say if I hit any body or not, for there was such a- dust and hurry that I hardly saw any thing. And during all that time there I never knew what I was fighting for. If any one had said to me, Trocon, what wantest thou ? I would not have known what to reply. But how we fought those beggars of soldiers ! My God ! I laugh when I think of it." That scene occurred over twenty years ago, but the outlines and coloring for such another exist to-day. If a revolution should happen to-morrow in Paris,- hund- reds of little Trocons, just as indifferent to motives, just as heedless of results, would man the barricades, and fight like heroes and ignoramuses. The plebeians of Rome, the blouses of Paris, the b'hoys of New York, the filibusters of New Orleans, are the same race, and, mor- ally speaking, live in the same country, the same epoch. Trocon had fought a duel, too, which he described somewhat in the following style : " I was living in Paris then ; I was a man grown, and knew life a lit- tle. There arrived there a young fellow from my place, who looked me up. As he was the son of an old friend of our family, I made him see the city, and did my best to divert him. One evening we took chairs outside of the Cafe Tortoni, and demanded something — I have forgotten what now — but coffee and brandy perhaps. Close by us were a couple of 116 EDEOPEAN ACQUAIKTANCE. officers — lieutenants — fellows just risen from the ranks, I suppose — real bears. One of them wanted a light for his cigar, and, instead of asking it of the waiter, he turned upon my friend and lighted from him — with- out asking permission, mark you, or even touching his hat. My young feUow got all red; but, being no more than a boy, and not knowing life, he said noth- ing. I took the matter up there. ' Monsieur,' said I, ' that is not the manner of a gentleman who lights his cigar.' He regarded me very impertinently, and said, ' It seems to me that that concerns your comrade, and not you.' I replied, ' Monsieur, I make it concern me ; my friend, being a stranger here, is under my protec- tion, and I demand that you make your apology to him.' Eh! weU; one word led to another, and, in fine, it was decided that we should finish it with the pistol. The morning after, we encountered each other early in the Wood of Boulogne. It fell to him by lot to fire the first. He raised his pistol, pulled, and never hit me. Then I pulled, and, my God ! I never hit him neither. Eh 1 well ; that ended the affair, and I have never seen the beggar since." At Divonne, Trocon came very near being involved in a duel with one of the officers of the little garrison. After the coup d'etat he cut the acquaintance of the priest of the village, that being the only sacrifice of re- venge which he could accord to his outraged country. Happening to meet the reverend gentleman promenad- ing with a lieutenant who was a mutual friend, he passed them both without a recognition, unwilling to let the priest suppose that even half of a bow was meant for him. The lieutenant was incensed, demand- WINTER IN DIVONNE. 117 ed explanations, received the above reason, declared it unsatisfactory, insisted upon apologies to himself and his reverend friend. His brother officers, including the captain, were called in, and, rather curiously, de- cided against him. He ungraciously accepted the as- sertions of Trocon that no personal offense was in- tended, and lived on very ceremoniously bearish terms with him thereafter. Another acquaintance, of the same political creed as Trocon, but very different from him in character, was a Frenchman whom I shall call Jolivet, a tall, slender man, American rather than French in his build, and somewhat American, too, in his slow tones and lounging manner. In opinions he was a radical progressive, doubting the old creeds of religion, doubting the exist- ing forms of society, looking confidently to something new, something better- — in short, to the onward march and ultimate perfection of humanity. As I was ortho- dox in religion, and believed society in the present shape of the family to be the only society possible, we never talked on these subjects without disputing. Like infidels in general, he kept his temper admirably, made his assertions cautiously, and had rather the air of an in- quirer after truth than a preacher of any particular dog- ma. I, on the contrary, after the fashion of most people who imagine that they have Heaven on their side, was apt to be positive in my assertions and very crushing in my denunciations. I was startled and shocked at his quiet denials of what I had been educated to consider sacred truths, and I had not always the self-possession to remember that I must prove that these truths were sacred befoi:e I could demand his respect for them. He, 118 EUROPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. on the other hand, free from any educational belief (often more obstinate and violent than a reasoned one), and resting in that tranquil nonentity of faith which Rousseau calls a state of respectful doubt, had no prejudices to wound, no fixed positions to defend, and so kept his temper unmoved in the controversy. As he never at first stated his opinions broadly, but al- lowed me gradually to draw them out of him, I was some time in discovering his exact credence. " Why, then," I said to him at last, "you are no more nor less than an atheist." " Excuse me : not at all. I believe in God." "But you are, at least, infidel to the Christian re- ligion." " Let me explain. I believe somewhat in the di- vine nature of Jesus, as I believe that all noble and superior souls partake largely of the divine intellect and goodness. If you speak of the Christian religion as it is commonly stated, I acknowledge that I am in- credulous of that. The fall and the redemption — I deny them, I admit it." It was the second time in my life that I had heard so frank a declaration of infidelity, and I stared in some naive astonishment at its hardihood. As the discussion went on, I fell back upon that proof of Christianity which exists in the interior spiritual life of the devout. And here I showed my ignorance of human nature and of the intimate history of religions in general by asserting that this inward piety, these seemingly supernatural emotions, are confined entirely to Christians, and almost altogether to Protestants. 1_Allow me to doubt that," said he, with his usual WINTER IN DIVONNE. 119 cold tone and courteous manner. "I am inclined to think that the Moslems and Brahmins experience those phenomena, and I know that they exist abundantly among Catholics. Only our revelations take a char- acter from our education just as yours from your edu- cation ; and as you have sublime emotions concerning Christ and the fathers, so do ours seem to descend from ths Virgin ^d the saints. I can tell you some^ thing of that from my own experience. I was educa^ ted for a priest. A mere boy of sixteen, I was sur- rounded by hqly fathers, and believed fervently all that they taught me. I used to pray constantly, and fast often, to gain these spiritual enlightenments; and I fancied that I received them. I sometimes had rap- tures — ecstasies of devotional feeling; and once or twice came visions of the Virgin, urging me to strug- gle toward heaven. But all this passed away as cii- cumstances changed and the priestly influences around me declined. I am convinced that these spiritual im- pressions are nothing but the effects of education act- ing on a fervent and impressible imagination. You see that I have had this interior life that you adduce as a proof of Christianity, and without result on my belief. Tour appeal fails, therefore ; we must return to our reasoning." Such was a specimen of Jolivet's conversation on points of religious credence. With regard to theories on society, he had reached exactly the same limit — a negation of the justice of what existed, but no positive idea of what will be or should be. He often read so- cialistic books, but I could not find that he put faith in any one of them. He attached little importance 120 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. to Fourier's system of phalansteries, and had nq sim- ilar plan of his own to propose. But" he had a firm assurance that something would yet be found gentler than the family, stronger than the police, broader than Republicanism, which would give quiet to humanity^ and well-being to every one of its members. I main- tained that, as far as possible, the individual should be left free, unassisted by law, as well as untrammeled by it. I adduced America as the country where this idea was carried fullest into action, and challenged him to produce a land in which society is more stable or prosperity more equally divided. " I have no immense admiration for your state of things in America," he replied. " It is superficial and temporary. It derives from this, that you have ten times more land than you want, and therefore easily raise food enough for every one. You would be im- beciles, and less than men, if you failed to do so. But build cities of a million inhabitants, crowd your coun- try with four hundred souls to the square mile, and you will have as much wretchedness as England or France. We want something better than this — some- thing more humane than mere individualism— some-' thing more powerful than mere democracy. I consid- er America behind France in a true view of the social question. Tou are satisfied with your present sys- tem, although it simply works well from temporary circumstances which are fast passing away. Tou will not reach our discoveries until your masses are as pov- erty-stricken as ours. We have long ago lived dear through your social existence, and are commencingj I hope, a new era. We have finished with your brute WINTEE IN DIVONNE. 121 well-teing, your happiness of tread and meat, and have begun to think out a reform which shall suit hu- manity in all its stages of progress and perfection. A hundred years hence America will be forced to tread in our footsteps. By then we may have placed things on some true basis. God knows. It is a hard thing to overturn prejudices of six thousand years' stand- ing." France is full of men wandering blindly and anx- iously up and down the steps of socialistic platforms. Even the brother of our doctor, although in general nothing worse than a good Republican, threw out at least one idea tinged with Fourierism. " Property," says Proudhon, " is robbery." My friend only went so far as to say, " Retail is robbery." The merchant, he averred, buys at one rate, and sells to the consumer at an advanced rate ; therefore he picks the consum- er's pocket of all the difference between the two rates, which is clearly robbery ; and as the mass of consum- ers are poor men, this robbery is doubly unprincipled, because cruel. It was of no use to reply that, if it were not for the merchant, the poor man would have to go to China for his tea and to Cuba for his sugar, which in the end would be more expensive than even a large commission to the retailer. "The govern- ment," he said, " might see to that. There ought to be vast magazines where merchandise should be re- tailed at wholesale prices." Strange to say, Trocon took my view of the sub- ject; and, stranger still, a French Legitimist noble sided with my antagonist. We had a long dispute, in which we talked vociferously, and, after the man- F 122 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. ner of Frenclimen, all together, nobody taking tlie trouble to listen to the opposite party. As visual in discussions, not a soul was convinced ; and we ended, like dancers in a quadrille, with each one occupying his first position. SPEING IN DIVONNE. 123 CHAPTER Xin. SPRING IN DIVONNE. As spring returned, the giant landscape around us freshened into verdure, while the atrocious bise dimin- ished its chilliness and frequency; until Divonne became a pleasanter place than I had yet imagined it. New company also began to arrive, cheering me even more than the young flowers, the gushings of bird-music, and thp lengthened days of summer sky. The harbinger of this featherless flock of spring water-fowl was the Count de G , a Frenchman of about twenty-eight, whom I soon discovered to be one of the most fanatical hydropaths that ever performed the douche-dance. It was perfectly in the character of the man, an enthusiast in every thing, a zealous Papist, a passionate anti-Republican, a loyal subject of Henri Cinq, a scorner of every political thing in France which was not old regime Legitimist. Yet, aristocrat in feeling and in blood as he was, he fell readily into our burgess society, not even holding himself aloof from radical, coach-building Monsieur Trocon. He was too sociable to be distant, too well-bred to assume superiority; and then there was a bond between us which in his eyes was almost equal to nobility : that bond was the brotherhood of hydropathy, for which his respect was indescribable. He had been at Graef- enberg, and, when he mentioned the circumstance, I 124 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. remembered having seen him figure in the balls there, although I then supposed, from his fair complexion and tall form, that he was an Englishman or an American. In his company I enjoyed the excitement of being arrested three times by the patrolling gendarmes who protected our frontier of France from the machinations of Republicans and sinners. It is my belief that these inquests were chiefly provoked by the uncivilized cos- tume in which the count chose to pursue his watery la- bors. Without hat, witliput cravat, tramping through the mud and rain of early spring in a suit of brown linen, he certainly looked like a " vagrom man fit to be comprehended." In consequence of his promptings, as well as of my own Graefenberg education, I also fell into the scarecrow mode of dressing, and so shared his annoyances. Walking one day bareheaded through a driizzling rain, we were met about half a mile from the Swiss frontier by a tall, powerful trooper, a splendid specimen of the French soibreur, wearing the uniform of the mounted gendarmerie. He fixed the broad glare of his full hazel eye upon us, turning his head after us as we passed, and finally, checking his horse, called out, "Gentlemen, wait one instant." We stopped and faced him. " Where are you go- ing?" he continued. " We are taking a walk," replied the count, rather contemptuously, as he resumed his march toward the land of freedom. " Stop where you are !" shouted the trooper, spur- ring his horse past us, and .placing himself across our route. " Now tell me where you are going and whence you come." SPBING IN DIVONNE. 125 " We come from the village back here, and we are walking for exercise." " You have not the air of belonging in such a village as this, and you are not dressed like people who are simply taking a walk. Gentlemen, you will please follow me before the mayor of Divonne. I wish to hear what he says of you." " This is nonsense and insolence," said the count, getting angry ; " I do not choose to be interrupted in my amusements in this style, and you have no right to do it, no authority to make an arrest." "Monsieur, this department is under martial law. I am a sergeant of the military police, and my orders are to arrest every person who has the air of a sus- picious character. You will have the goodness to walk before me to the village." " I shall do nothing of the sort," said the count, making a resolute push to get by our officious friends The sergeant gave his bridle a dexterous turn, and, hitting my comrade with the horse's flank, nearly flung him into a ditch which bordered the road. Obstinacy was clearly useless; the trooper was determined to know us better, and two old umbrellas were no match for pistols and a long sabre ; besides which, it was sup- per-time, or very nearly. Wheeling about, we meekly retraced our steps toward Divonne, keeping pace with the fast-walking, powerful steed of our guardian. The count was overboiling with scornful rage, which he expressed in a series of bantering remarks, addressed to me, but meant to excoriate the sensibilities of the trooper. Johnny Darme got mad at the sarcasms, and was puzzled by the indifference we exhibited to 126 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. our fate; he tried to respond cuttingly, but by the time we had reached the outskirts of the village he was anxious to get rid of us. Meeting a squad of youngsters who were chasing each other in their clumsy sabots through the outskirting puddles of Di- vonne, he pulled up and inquired, with a despairing effort at dignity, "My children, do you know these gentlemen ?" " Oh yes, we see them every day," responded the little fellows, with a stare of unlimited astonish- ment. " It is well," declared the trooper ; " that suffices me. Gentlemen, I bid you good-day." " Good-day," said the count, with a smile of indig- nation ; "Good-day," said I, with the sarcastic civility of a man who wishes somebody better luck another time; and the mortified sergeant, driving spurs into his beast, plunged forward through the sloughy streets to a station of gendarmerie in the centre of the village. As it was now too late to continue our walk, we marched straight to the Establishment, where the history of our adventure was received with roars of laughter. " I must have a reform in the costume of my pa- tients," said the doctor. "Why, the devil! it is scandalous to have them trooping about in such style as to be taken up for Socialists and vagrant Eepubli- cans." "Excellent!" said his father-in-law, a joUy, red- faced Genevese. "I can not, for my part, imagine why he let you go at all. The trooper found that you were not running away. Well, what of that? It was clearly his duty to take you to some Bedlam or SPRING IN DIVONNE. 127 other, and have you put out of the way of doing harm to sane people." A few days after this, as we were wandering near the chateau of Baron de Pres, we were arrested by a gendarme on foot. He, too, wanted to know, our names and conditions, where we were going, and what was our business in the country ; and he was partic- ularly incredulous of our being in a hydropathic estab- lishment at that ungenial season of the year. The count's genteel address and elegant accent bore passa- ble witness to his respectability. The gendarme turn- ed to me. "Tou are an Italian," he said, in a posi- tive way. "No ; excuse me, I am not in the least Italian." " But you have a certain Italian accent, I am pret- ty sure." " Very possibly. I learned Italian before French, and my first lessons in French were from an Italian master." " Of what nation are you, then ?" " An American, at your service." " What is an American doing here ? Taking the cure also ? Do you come all the way from America to practice hydropathy in Divonne ?" "Not precisely ; but, being here, I seized the oppor- tunity." "I know something of Doctor Vidart. Tell me a little about his house and family. I shall know wheth- er you are describing with exactness." I accordingly portrayed our doctor's respectable physique, followed up with an account of his wife and brother, and closed with a particular narration of the 128 EDEOPEAN ACQUAnfTANCB. names, ages, and appearance of his duldren. " Very well," said the gendarme, with a grin ; and, dropping his steady eye, which he had fixed hitherto on mine, he left US with a salute. A week or two later, the count, Trocon, and I hor- rowed the doctor's carriage, and drove over to the Kt- tle aij of Gex. Lounging about its irregular streets, we came upon a station ot-ffendarmerie, and were im- mediately arrested in a body by those entertaining peo- ple. They were uncommonly polite this time, and only insisted on having our names and conditions, by way of souvenir, in their little album. The count and Trocon were easily written down, but my position was rather more difficult to define. The stumpy, red-fiiced old sergeant had no suspicion that I was a foreigner," and my French name was not calculated to undeceive him. " Your place of residence?" aatid he. " Connecticut." " What ?" he asked, bringing his chirography to a full stop, and looking me full in ihe face. " Con-nect-i-cut." " In what department ?" said he, with an air of sus- picion. " The gentleman is an American," observed the count, " and Connecticut is a province of the United States." " Ah ! really !" said the old fellow, and asked for my passport immediately. Then, after two or three in- effectual attempts to repeat the name of my native state, he wrote it out, I have no idea with what ortho- graphical success, and told us that we might go. Among the earliest ^rivals of spring were two Rus- SPEING IN DIVONNE. 129 sian princes, brothers, Eugene and Georges L , not Germans by race, like the Manteuffels, but unmixed and indigenous Muscovites. Eugene, the eldest, was a man of about thirty-seven, small and dark, with gen^ tie manners and a thoughtful expression, which changed when he spoke into a lively good-humor. Georges, seven or eight years younger, was very different : fair complexioned, with stern blue eyes, irregular Northern features, lofty stature, and a military air verging on haughtiness. His wife, a tall and proud blonde, was excessively vain of him, and assured me that I might consider him the model of a handsome Russian. The wife of the elder larother, also fair and blue-eyed, but small, resembled her husband in the quiet amiability of her expression and manners. These people entered easily into our little circle, and soon presented, at least to me, one of the most inter- esting features in its cosmopolitan variety. Even Eugene's little boy, a child of three years old or there- abouts, was a character worth observing, inasmuch as he understood three languages — English, French, and Russian — ^but obstinately refused to utter a word of any one of them. I suspect that he was dumbfound- ed by the large choice of expressions offered him, and preferred waiting till he had discovered which lingo best suited his infantile necessities. The parents were naturally afraid that he might be dumb, and consulted the doctor anxiously concerning the little fellow's taci- turnity. " Give yourself no alarm," said an old Gen- evese, who had come to Divonne to be cured of sleep- lessness. " He will talk some day when nobody ex- pects it, and speak all three of his languages together. r2 130 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. I had a friend in Berne who had just such a little hoy. This poor little devil had an English mother, a French nurse, and heard German all around him. He thought he was in the Tower of Babel, I suppose, for he never said a word till he was four years old. His father feared that he was dumb, and got all the doctors in Berne to give- their opinions on him. The doctors physicked him, and nearly pulled his tongue out to see ' why it never talked ; but he made nogreater progress for all that. Well, one day, when they had nearly given up all hope of his ever speaking, he came out on a sudden with a whole sentence in English. From that day he talked all his languages, aiid talked them fluently, just like any other child of four years old. And so it will be with this little chap — ^never fear." Strange as it may seem for a Republican to say so, I soon found that I had more national sympathies with these Russians than with any other people that I had met in Europe. As we Americans complain of being traduced and unmeritedly ridiciiled by foreign travelers, so had the indignation of these Muscovites been aroused by a series of French Trollopes and Ger- man Basil Halls. The Germans indeed, they said, were usually careful observers and conscientious nar- rators, but the Frenchmen were, almost without ex- ception, superficial, flippant, impertinent, and false. They remarked with some bitterness on the insolent civilization of Western Europe, which would acknowl- edge no merit, no greatness out of its own geograph- ical boundaries. Like us, too, they relied on the fu- ture for making their character known and their claims SPRING IN DIVONNE. 131 to respectability acknowledged. "You and we," said they, " have the time to come ; we can afford to bear with these people for a season." Another subject, not so bright in its future aspects, on which we could talk in sympathy, was slavery. As their father owned nineteen hundred serfs, I was rather surprised to find them theoretically abolition- ists. But, like the mass of our Northern people, they looked upon emancipation rather as a desideratum than a near expectancy. " Our Nicholas," said Prince Greorges, "has declared that he will abolish serfage, but he never will do it, for he never will dare. The question is too tremendous to be solved suddenly, even by despotic power. The wrong will, I am afraid, live on until it is righted by revolution and carnage. My God ! if we had only four millions of serfs, like you, we would soon put an end to the system. But just imagine the awful number of fifty millions !" " Are there any socialistic ideas among the serfs ?" I asked — " any thoughts of striking for their liberty?" "None whatever. They are too ignorant to devise such an abstract idea as the equal rights of man. They are perfectly contented, perfectly tranquil." " Oh, they love their masters," struck in his wife. "Love them!" said the prince, laughing. "Ah! that is a good joke. I confess, however, that they do not hate them." "But they do love them sometimes, Georges," per- sisted the pretty woman. " There is my maid ; she shows that she loves me ; and then she tells me that she does." " My dear wife," said the prince, " she would not 132 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. dare to tell you the contrary. You would not ^ve her any more old dresses. " No," he continued, turning to me, " I do not ap- prehend an insurrection from any discontent that now exists among our serfs, but I do when I look at the sub- ject as a prophet, from the stand-point of history and of abstract right. It is not natural that a man should always suffer himself to be bought and sold by another man. If one generation does not discover that there is an injustice in this, its sons or its grandsons wilL " But we have one advantage over you Americans. Our slavery is vaster than yours, but not so brutal. We do not separate families. We do not put a serf up at auction, like a horse. We never tear one of our peasants from his native village near Moscow ito sell him to some farmer in E^amtschatka. Why do you not begin your work, your inevitable duty, by prohib- iting the internal slave-trade?" " We can not," I confessed. " The owners will not permit it." " Ah ! so even your confident republic has its im- possibilities." One thing particularly surprised me in the conver- sation of these men, and that was a tendency toward Kepublican sentiments. They would have laughed at the idea of introducing Eepublicanism into Russia now ; but I am sure that they regarded democracy as the end and right of a highly enlightened people. I suspected them even of being dissatisfied with the present unlimited nature of the imperial authority, al- though it may be that I misunderstood their very cau- tious expressions of opinion on this subject. In order SPRING IN DIVO^NE. 133 to comprehend such a feeling in a Russian noble, it must be noted that the power and dignity of his class have diminished just in proportion to the increased prerogative of the czarship. It is in the position of the English aristocracy before Magna Charta : its great- est antagonist is not the people, but the monarch. The emperor holds it all the more easily in submission be- cause primogeniture is not allowed in Russia, so that the noble families can rarely increase, or even hold for a long time, their wealth and territoiy. All the sons, be they a dozen, inherit the title and their portion of the property of the father ; and thus Russia is full of poor aristocrats, most of whom are dependent upon the civil and military offices for support, and are, conse- quently, humble servants of his place-dispensing maj- esty. Then there are the new nobles, mostly rich tradesmen and bankers, who have been elevated by the imperial hand, and are, of course, ready to lick it at the &st signal. But the order feels its own degrada- tion, and nourishes within its breast the only enemies whom the Czar has to fear. Prince Georges talked, in a laughing way, about his ultrarRepublican sentiments of boyish days. " I was in a military school; and we children all read Plu- tarch, and raved about Timoleon and the two Brutuses. Sometimes we made resolutions that, when the em- peror next came to visit us, we would treat him with the coolness that such a Tarquin, such a Dionysiua deserved. Well, the day came, and the emperor ap- peared — a tall, magnificent man ; how we admired him, notwithstanding our Radicalism ! Still, for a m o- ment, there would be a silence. But when the em- 134 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE, peror put his hands on one boy's head, and caught up another and kissed him, there was no resisting it. We all burst into a hurrah, anjl tumbled over each other to get near him, and share in his fondlings and bene- dictions." STOET-TELLING IN DIVONNE. 135 CHAPTER XIV. STOET-TELLING IN DIVONNE. Peince Geoeges sometimes amused us with stories of his travels, for his nomadic performances by far out- passed those of any other memher of our circle. For instance, he had accomplished the gigantic journey from Moscow to Kamtschatka and back by land ; vis- iting the Polar Asiatic Sea, living under tents of seal- skin on the snow, and sledging for hundreds of miles after harnessed dogs. The doctor and his brother nar- rated their semi-martial experiences in Algeria, while I occasionally told the wonders of Syria, Greece, Con- stantinople, and Connecticut. One evening a series of ghost-stories arose from their graves in our memories, and walked slowly down a long, awful passage of the conversation. " It was in Berlin that I became witness of some mysterious cir- cumstances," said Prince Eugene. " I arrived there with only one servant, expecting to be followed in a few days by my family. My first business was to se- cure a spacious suite of rooms, consisting, in fact, of the two upper stories of a large building. The attic, however, was not only vacant, but unfurnished ; and I took it simply to keep other people out, as the floor below was quite enough for my purpose. I moved in immediately, and passed a few days there without oth- er society than that of my servant. Nothing unusual 136 EDEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. otcurred until evening, when the flow of people and vehicles died away, and the street in front of the house became quiet. Then I was surprised ty hearing strange noises in the building, various in sound, though generally resembling muffled peals of laughter ; but what struck me as most singular about them was that they seemed to come from the upper story, which I knew to be a desert unfiirnished with inhabitants. After listening half an hour, trying to persuade myself that my ears deceived me, I sent my valet up stairs to search out the cause of this curious uproar. He went, and returned saying that the attic was not only per- fectly vacant, but perfectly silent. The disturbance, however, still continued, becoming, as evening ad- vanced, louder, clearer, and more continuous. Long peals of laughter, indistinct words, a strange rolling noise, sometimes a sharp clash, and then new bursts of laughter, succeeded each other, untU, between perplex- ed curiosity and nervousness, I got out of all patience. I accused my valet of having been afraid to examine the floor thoroughly, and declared that he must have left some windows open, through which people entered from the adjoining houses. Taking a light, I went up myself; but when I reached the attic the noises had ceased. There was not a person, not a mouse even, not a window ajar, not a trap-door loose, noth- ing but dusty floors and utter silence. I came down very much perplexed, and almost got into a rage at hearing the clamor recommence the moment I reached the rooms below. I repeated the examination imme- diately, and several times afterward during the even- ing, now stealing up softly in the dark, now rushing STOKY-TELLING IN DIVONNE. 137 up with my candle, always thinking that I should catch somebody who had made an almost impossible escape before. But I constantly had the same ill luck, and finally went to bed, tired out with these chases after sounds without bodies. I noticed as a very sin- gular circumstance that the noises diminished toward eleven o'clock, and by midnight had ceased entirely. " The next evening repeated the comedy, with the same incomprehensible rolling, crashing, and laughter ; the same series of garret inquisitions, and the same absurd disappointments. On the third day I sent for the owner of the house, for the affair was getting to be a serious annoyance. He looked incredulity when I told my tale; but I requested him to come and hear for himself that evening. At eight o'clock he was in my parlor, listening with as much perplexi- ty as I to the rising flow of mysterious noises. He searched every room and closet, made various rapid forays up stairs, in hopes of surprising some dexter^ ous joker, but descended each time with a face of in^ creased stupefaction. ' It is perfectly unaccountable,' said he ; 'I have never believed in haunted houses, but this seems very much like one. If you wish it, 1 am ready to take back the rooms and release you from your bargain.' "I was puzzled what to do, for I felt ashamed to quit the house on the ground of ghosts, and yet these disturbances deprived me of all quiet in it. Suddenly my landlord rose and went to a door, which opened upon a narrow stairway leading to the story below. The passage was no longer used, and the door fasten- ed, but he contrived to open it. In a moment the 138 EUROPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. mystery was explained: the noises rushed up the stairway in a volume. There was a beer-room and a billiard-table below : it was the billiard-balls which I had heard crash and roll ; it was the players and beer- drinkers whom I had heard talk and laugh. But, in consequence of some remarkable acoustic peculiarity in the building, all these sounds, the moment that the door was shut, seemed to come from above. If that stairway had not been thought of, I should have been perplexed all mj life by a spectral mystery, while the house would probably have acquired a bad name, or even been deserted as a haunted edifice." "Exactly," said the doctor; "it is very probable. Well, I know a story to the same eflfect, although not so good a one by a degree. The incidents occurred to my father, who, as I have told you, was a surgeon in Napoleon's army, and held on firm to him down to Waterloo. At the second restoration he lost his com- mission, retired into the country, and set up for what practice he could find. Well, he contrived to get a wife, and a house to keep her in, or, rather, part of a house, for one half of it was occupied by a good citi- zen who held a corporalship in the National Gruard. The building was divided from front to rear by a long passage; my father occupied the lodgment on one side of it, and the corporal occupied on the other. It was a rambling, eccentric edifice, with its rooms lying about at loose ends, like a crazy man's ideas. The servant-girl's room, for example, was at the back end of this passage, a long distance from the rest of the family, and next door to being out of doors. Now Jeannette, being a mere peasant and unable to read, STOET-TELLING IN DIVONKE. 139 believed in ghosts of a necessity, and was a little timid about sleeping in such a solitude. But nothing hap- pened to her till a certain winter night, when there was a trifle of snow on the ground, and the winds were blowing like trumpeters. At some late hour she woke up in a fright, with the idea that something or some- body was scratching at her window. The sound had ceased before she quite got her senses, and although she stared hard at the glass she could see nothing. Presently she heard the scratching again ; there was no possible mistake about it this time ; it continued a little while, and then stopped — mysteriously. It was too modest a noise for a robber, and must necessarily be the work of some ghost who was trying to force an sntrance. It was awful; it made the goose-flesh come; it made her hair stand on tiptoe. Imagine, ladies and gentlemen, the horrible circumstances of the situation : a small chamber, at the end of a long passage, at midnight, with something scratching on the window I Can you wonder that my father's unso- phisticated servant-maid drew her head under the bed- clothes, and nearly had a nervous crisis? At last came a low, shrill cry, very much, I suppose, like the squeak of a ghost trying to crowd himself through a crack in a window-pane. Gathering all her strength into one sublime eflfort for safety, Jeannette leaped out of bed, burst open the door, ran along the passage, and fell with a scream just outeide of my father's bed- room. My mother started up at the noise, and awoke my father. ' What is the matter ?' he grumbled. '"That scream!' said my mother. 'Didst thou hear it?' 140 EUROPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. " ' No ; where was it?' '"In the hall. It was perfectly horrible. Is it possible that thou didst not hear it ?' "'No,' said my father, again; 'but I wiU go and see if any thing has happened.' " He got up, stepped into the passage, and of course stumbled over a half dead chambermaid. Taking her :>into the bed-room, he applied hydropathy, that is to say, threw a tumbler of cold water in her face, and brought her to her senses. As soon as she could speak she told her story, thereby horribly frightening mj moth- er, who, you must know, had not served under Napo- leon. 'Ghost!' said my father; 'go to the devil! What are you talking about ? It is a thief, if it is any thing.' " He took down the old sabre with which he had amputated heads under Napoleon, seized a candle, and set off for the chamber of mysterious scratchings. My mother caught hold of his shirt, declaring that she would not stay alone ; and Jeannette, equally gregari- ous, staggered after them both, holding fast to my mother's nightgown. In the passage they came upon the corporal of the National Guard, who had slid out of his room in deshabille to discover the cause of the screaming. My father explained the affair in a wink ; and the corporal, catching down his musket, joined the forlorn hope. His wife said that she would not re- main there alone, and, "grasping his linen, tagged after him, so that, in fine, the whole five trooped down the cold passage in their shifts. The costume was not exactly that of court ; but then time pressed, and the occasion was grave. At the door of the terrible cham- STOET-TELLING IN DIVONNE. 141 ber the women stopped, while the men charged in with arms presented. Nothing was to be seen, so they halted and listened. Presently every one heard dis- tinctly a faint scratching on the window. My father raised it cautiously, while the corporal stood ready to fire, when in jumped the cat. Yes, ladies and gentle- men, the old black cat — ^faal ha! ha! The old cat had got out in a cold winter night, and very naturally want- ed to get in again — ho ! ho ! ho !" Another story which I heard at Divonne was not only curious and mysterious, but rang eloquently on the ear with a jingling of filthy lucre. The count, Trocon, and I sat in the biUiard-room, talking over Califomian expeditions and specie-huntings of various species. " If I wanted money, I would go to California," said the count, with a sparkle of golden desire in his eye. "Ho! "responded Trocon, with a mysterious chuck- le, rising and turning his back to the fire. "There are treasures in France, too, which could be had for the digging." " What do you mean ?" asked the count, throwing up his head as if scenting a placer. "I know what I mean, but it is a secret," replied Trocon, digging his hands resolutely into his pockets. T'he count looked perplexed, and so did Trocon; the one fidgeted on his chair, and the other on his feet; the one was anxious to know, and the other equally anxious to tell. There was a brief silence, at the end of which Trocon resumed his seat, leaned forward, and said, in a reduced voice, " Will you promise never to speak of it without my permission ?" 142 EUKOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. "But yes, but certainly," asseverated the" count, lay-, ing his hands on his knees solemnly, as if he were placing them on an altar. " But certainly," echoed I. "Eh! well," continued Trocon, "you know my city, Mantry ? It lies about ten leagues from here, on the diligence-route between Geneva and Paris. You trav- ersed it, perhaps, in coming to Divonne ?" " Without doubt, certainly," said the count. " Certainly," repeated I. "Eh! well,noi quite a league from the city there is a great convent, very ancient, on a hiU close by a fine forest. This convent is deserted now, because the monks were chased out of France in 1793, and the government seized the property. The government has it still, but the land lies waste, and there is nobody in the building except a keeper, who cultivates the old garden. Eh! well, about five years ago a poor man in our town, who has done a devilish bad business in life, showed me a letter written from America by a monk, who said he was the last of that brotherhood. The letter declared that there was a treasure buried in an iron chest in one corner of the inclosure, under the foundation of a stairway which has been leveled." "What was the treasure?" asked fhe count, in a tone as secret as if he was locked inside of a money- safe. " All the convent plate, and all the money that the brotherhood had when it was dispersed." " Why didn't this monk come for the treasure him- self?" the count continued, as a slight shade of pain- ful doubt crossed his visage STORY-TELLING IN DIVONNE. 143 "Perhaps he was afraid," replied Trocon ; " but he said in the letter that he was old; — ^too old to enjoy so much money, if he could get it; but he thought it was a pity good silver should be lost, aud he want- ed his ancient friend to benefit by it. Eh ! well, gen- tlemen, I have held this letter in my own hands. The man who received it wanted me to help find the money, and go shares with him. He thought of climbing the wall by night, and digging; but one night might not have sufliced for that trick, and then he would have paid with his skin if he had been caught at it, for, as I tell you, the land is government prop- erty." "How much would the convent cost?" asked the count, with speculation in his eyes. "Not more than twenty or twenty-five thousand francs, I sup- pose." " No, not more ; but this poor fellow could not raise the quarter of that." "But why not interest other people in the project, and take half, if he could not have the whole ?" " Exactly ; that was what he wanted to do ; but he never dared go to rich men, for fear they would take the whole afiair out of his hands, and leave him noth- ing. He came to people like me, and we naturally hesitated to invest our small capitals in an old con- vent at the word of a letter. It would have been ru- inous to buy and not find a treasure ; worse than that, it would have been ridiculous. So the affair went on, until, in fine, I nea,rly forgot it. It is now two or three years, perhaps more, since I have heard speak of the. convent treasure." 144 EUROPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. The count was evidently somewhat fascinated Iby the romantic bubble which had been blown for him. He wondered how large the treasure might be, and ob- served that it woidd be a pious action to restore it, or Q,ve:apart of it, to the Church. He put a variety of questions to Trocon concerning the situation and qual- ity of the building, the possibility of changing it into a water-cure establishment, the value of its lands for agricultural purposes, and the supposed price set upon the whole demesne by government. The other prom- ised to obtain him all needful information to commence the enterprise ; he would guide him to the convent, show him the metalliferous spot, and get him a sight of the letter. "Good," said the count. "We will go there to- gether some day, after we have finished our cures. By the way, it would be well to obtain the services of a mesmeric medium. I have an immense confidence in mesmerism ; I have known some cases of the most extraordinary. I will look up a subject in Paris, and see what he can reveal. You will come to see me at my rooms in the Faubourg St. Germain. If you can not come, write where you will meet me ; we will go to the spot in company." There the matter rested. The count left, and we heard no news from him except that he was in Paris, and well. Very likely he had lost his interest in the gilded mystery. Three weeks or more after his de- parture, the conversation at table happened to float into the confused eddies of a discussion concerning mes- merism. " I can relate a rather curious circumstance connected with that subject," said the doctor. " I was STOEY-TELLING IN DIVONNE. 145 driving in my caleche near Mantry, atout two years ago, when I overtook a woman walking alone. She was a decent-looking person of about tliirty, and I in- vited her to take a seat beside me. She accepted, mounted, talked away heartily, and soon managed to give me a pretty full account of herself. She said that she and her husband were public officials, after a fash- ion, having been iired to take care of a deserted con- vent about a league from Mantry, which was govern- ment property. She added that there had been re- ports of a treasure hidden somewhere in the precincts, but that no attempt had been made to discover it un- til a few nights before our meeting. They were then awakened after midnight by noises about the building, and heard them continue some time, but dared not go out to discover the cause of them for fear of being at- tacked by robbers. The next morning they found a deep excavation freshly made under the foundations of a ruined stairway in one corner of the inclosure. During the day her husband went down to the city on some errand, and mentioned to his acquaintances the fright that he had just experienced. In exchange, he learned that a gentleman from Lyons, accompanied by a well-known mesmeric medium, had visited Man- try, with the supposed intention of discovering the convent treasure ; that they had been absent from thp hotel all the night previous, and had returned to it in the morning only to take a piivate carriage and set out immediately on the road to Lyons. That was all that any one knew certainly, but the woman fully be- lieved that these people had carried off the treasure. It was a curious story." G 146 EUEOPBAN ACQUAINTASCE. While the doctor was thus narrating,- 1 saw that Trocon listened in anxious silence. "Mj God!" he broke out at the conclusion, "there goes the count's money." MESMERISM IN DIVONNE. 1'47 CHAPTER XV. MESMEEISM IN DIVONNE. One of the pe&diarities of us hydropaths at Divonne, at least while I remained, was to talk a great deal about animal magnetism.. The fanaticism of table- turnings, indeed, had not yet reached France, so that we attempted no waltzes with the doctor's mahogany, and used our hats only to hang on nails or to cover our craniums. Still, wonders were enacted among us, and there were so many other wonders told of, that I have been able to fill a whole chapter with somnam- bulism, mesmerism, and their sister mysteries. Re- freshing be the dumber into which it lulls thee, O reader I Among our patients was a joUy, kindly, talkative man called Robson, or some such name, a native of the north of Ireland, but very Scotchy in his accent, as well as in his high cheek-bones, sandy hair, and dry, red complexion. Trocon hated him because he was an Englishman, and believed, without the slightest provocation, that he abused his sick wife ; for it is a matter of feith with common Frenchmen that all John BuUs are abominable, shameless Bluebeards ; that they beat their better halves, put halters around their necks, and sell them for a shilling apiece. One day, after dinner, we were all gathered in the parlor, talking as sensibly as we could talk on such 148 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. an absurd subject as mesmerism, when Kobson pro- duced from his pocket a zinc button with a bit of cop- per let into the centre of one of its faces, and declared that by means of this magic circlet he could magnetize any person at all susceptible to magnetic influences. Advancing with a bow and a smile to the wife of Prince Georges L , he said, ""Madame, I think you would be an excellent'subject ; will you allow me to experiment on you ?", The princess started from her chair as if he had offered to bite her, and retreated several steps, mur- muring excitedly, " No, no, I have a horror of mes- merism." As Eobson seemed slightly mortified by this repulse, my socialistic friend Jolivet politely stepped forward and offered to undergo the trial. The Irishman sur- veyed his cool, philosophical visage somewhat dubi- ously, but accepted the challenge with a proud confi- dence in the metal of his button. He made Jolivet sit down, put the bit of zinc in the palm of his right hand, and directed him to fix his eyes steadily on the glittering yellow spot in the centre. The whole com- pany gathered round with a mingled interest of fun and curiosity. Doctor Vidart showed his small white teeth, and glanced alternately from his countryman to perfide Albion, evidently wondering what gull or canard was to be hatched now. The Princess Georges L watched with real alarm the intentness of Jol- ivet's gaze, and drew nervously away from him, as if she feared to find herself within the circle of some mysterious fascination. Her husband leaned against a pillar, crossed his grenadier arms on his large chest, MESMERISM IN DIVONNE. 149 and looked on as albsorbedly as if he were studying his favorite author, the political economist Bastiat. Eobson stood by his victim, regarding him attentive- ly, agitated but confident. At the end of five minutes or so he seemed to think that his magic had worked effectually. Kem'oving the button with anxious cau- tiousness, so as not to bireak the spell, he proceeded to draw his fingejs over Jolivet's eyes in such a manner as to close them, followed this up with a' few passes, and then shouted, in a voice of necromantic command, "Fbws nepouvez pas ouvrir vos yeusc" (You can not open your eyes). , Jolivet made, to all appearance, a neck-breaking effort ; his eyelids quivered, and, so to speak, stood ajar. " Tou can not," vociferated . Robson ; " no, you can not ; I tell you you can not — ^you can not open them." The little lean man worked like a thrashing machine ; his arms flew, and the potent passes fell in swift suc- cession ; he grew scarlet in the face, and capered as if he were performing a scalp-dance. Jolivet appeared to sink, in spite of himself, under the supernatural in- fluence; his eyelashes drooped again, and his head fell back like the nerveless iead of a swooning man. " He is one of the best subjects that I ever saw ; I never magnetized any one so' easily before," gasped Eobson, in a perspiration, as he prepared for another trial of his power. He made some fresh passes down the arms, the body, and the legs of his captive. "Now you can not get up," he exclaimed ; "no, you can not — ^you can not stir. I tell you that you can 150 EUROPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. not stir. Tou are my prisoner. You can not move hand nor foot." All this he rattled off with astonishing vehemence, in an accent that came from at' least as far as the north of Ireland, pawing, sputtering, and dancing about like an angry cat, his face as flushed and fleiy as that of a pumpkin jack-o'-lantern. Jolivet put forth his whole strength to rise ; -his arms and legs moved almost con- vulsively ; he very nearly attained a staggering equi- librium, but the pitiless passes rained upon him like a shower of brickbats, and vanquished, exhausted, he sank slowly back into a lethargic movelessness. Rob- son, not a little tired himself, wiped his forehead and looked around with an air of triumph. "Ladies and gentlemen," said he, "I have subjected this man's physique to my will. I shall now subject his intel- lect, or at least his imagination, to it." Turning to his victim, he gave him permission to rise, and at once, as if relieved of a mighty weight, Jolivet resumed his perpendicular. " Why, you are out of doors," continued Robson, in a bamboozling tone, very much as nurses talk to children. " Do you not see that we are out of doors ?" Jolivet nodded cheerfully, as if pleasantly conscious of his extra-mural condition. "Yes, you are out of doors, in a beautiful garden," proceeded the humbugging Irishman. ' ' What a beau- tiful garden this is all around you!" Jolivet looked at the tables, the chairs, and the car- petless floor with an aspect of horticultural admira- tion. " Why do you not pick some of these lovely flowers MESMERISM IN DITONNE, 151 at your feet ?" inquired Eobson, as seductive as Satan in Paradise. «'Tou need not be afraid. I give you liberty to do so. Pick a fine bouquet for one of the ladies." The Frenchman stooped, and began to gather imag- inary posies with an air of infantine delight. " Stop, my friend," called the necromancer. " Do you not see th/jit elegant butterfly, with gold wings ? Catch it — ^run after it — quick, before it is too high !" Away went Jolivet down the saloon, knocking the chairs right and left, and jumping over the sofas in an uproarious steeple-chase after the fabulous insect. " There, you have caught it," interposed Eobson. " Now bring it here, and show it to the ladies," he added, with true Irish gallantry. Back trotted Joli- vet, b^athless, but with a smirk of babyish delight on his philosophical phiz as he carefully handled the as- sumed prize, and made the motions of showing it around the company. There was by this time a great sensation. The doctor's skeptical smile had changed to an expression of curiosity and grave professional in- terest. Prince Geoiges had started firom his pillar, and was talking rapidly with his brother in Eussian. His wife had retreated to the other end of the room, and thrown herself on a sofa, covering her face with her white fingers. " Oh, I am fiightened," she said, when I asked her what was the matter. " It is shock- ing to see one man so completely under the influence of another. It is insanity, and perhaps worse. Oh, but I have known such horrible things of magnetism ! I will teU you them some time." The next thing that started up Jolivet was a bear. 152 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. which made him dodge ahout the saloon in a state of intense terror, until Robson was kind enough to call the animal off. But now came the explanation of these mysteries, the disentanglement of this supernat- ural drama. As the frenchman passed me in one of his desperate doubles to avoid the fictitious Bruin, a faint smile on his mouth broadened to a grin, and he whispered rapidly, " Do you understand ?" It was all a trick, then — a hoax of Jolivet's on jper- fide Albion ! Yet even now, so admirable was his acting that I could scarcely believe in the jest, and won- dered whether, iafter all, he were not really magnetized without being conscious of it. Still, I whispered the joke to some of, the others, and quiet grins of com- prehension began to steal from visage to visage.' Hob- son, in the mean time, saw nothing, suspected nothing; he sent the solemn jester on one wild goose chase after another ; he shouted himself hoarse with commands, as his subject sometimes got fractious and riefused to obey ; in short, for more than half an hour he kept Jolivet and himself in a perspiration, and us in smoth- ered laughter. . Once in a while, when by chance he detected a smile on the Frenchman's face, he made new passes at him to bring hiiri back,' as he said, to a state of perfect somnolency. At last, after they were both tired out, he willed his subject to sit, and removed the magnfetic influence, in the most scientific manner, by a series of reversed passes. It was wonderful to see how naturally Jolivet came to, how dreamingly he opened his eyes, how he rubbed and stretched himself, and what difficulty he had in discovering where he was. Every body was satisfied with him, and none MESMEEISM IN DIVONNE. 153 more so than the stultified Irishman. We waited with many sidelong smiles until Kobson left the room, and then we poured congratulations of laughter on our ad- mirable comedian. " But you deceived all of us," said Prince Georges ; " that poor man was not your only victim." " And was it all pretense. Monsieur Jolivet ?" asked his princess. . " Did you feel nothing all the time that you were doing all those things ?" " Nothing, Madame, except, indeed, a slight blind- ness or dizziness at first, produced, I suppose, by look- ing so long at one object." " And so there is no power in the button ?" "None at all. It is an absurdity. The idea of any power in it is ridiculous." We kept the joke a secret from Robson, and had more fun in the evening. Trocon was magnetized then, and put the saloon into confusion with his out- rageous struggles to escape the Irishman's bulls and bears, or to overtake his butterflies. We laughed our- selves tired ; laughed till the jest began to seem stale, flat, and unprofitable ; but, laugh as we might, the in- fatuated Eobson suspected no deceit. The next day," that Anglophobian Trocon flatly told him of the hoax, and made it a matter of much public stentorian merri- ment. Even yet the man would believe nothing ; even yet he put faith in the wonders that his button had seemed to work ; and he turned away from Trocon's mocking tale with contemptuous, angry incredulity. "They may giggle as much as they like," he said to me, "but they are mistaken. That man was really magnetized; but, you see, the sleep was imperfect; he G2 154 EUEOPEAN ACQUAINTANCE. partially remembers what he did, and he thinks, con- sequently, that he was not in a state of somnolency ; but I know better. I know that he was not perfectly himself. Don't you think so, now ?" I hemmed and hahed a kind of assent ; a hypocritical policy, indeed, but still a charitable one, for it was cer- tainly kindest to break the man's misfortune to T