Mathieu Ropars: et cetera Part 14

But am I too late in bringing forward my last and happiest idea?--though for that matter, when the tale of Mazeppa was concluded, "the King had been an hour asleep," and yet Mazeppa's story was told out ne'ertheless.

For your immediate purpose therefore, or for use on your next sleepless night, I entrust you with the crowning opiate. Recollect that you are dreaming; and dream that all your intimates and relatives, all of whom you have ever heard or read with interest, men and women and children, people of every age and clime--imagine them, I say, all seated before you at a round table. How any table is to accommodate so vast a mult.i.tude, is their affair, and yours; the dreamer is never baulked by technical impediments. Have your eye upon them all at once--another little difficulty, to be overcome only by mortals in the incipient stage of somnolency. Or, if your mind's eye obstinately refuses to enlarge its...o...b..t in this direction, so as to embrace such a vast and heterogeneous a.s.semblage, gather, I beseech you, into one focus any such crowd as you habitually see. The Sunday audience of the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher will answer the purpose; or you may fancy yourself at one of the old Tammany Hall Meetings; or at the Opera, on a fashionable night; or in the Senate at Washington during the impeachment of Mr. Johnson. It matters not when and where; but the proceedings strike you as insufferably dull, and you give vent to your feelings in a yawn that may neither be suppressed nor concealed. Suddenly, moved by the same impulse and unable also to control or hide its effect, the jaw of every soul present is dropped to the lowermost, and all mouths are open in a universal yawn. It is not catching; it is caught. Beecher gapes, and the elect are gaping round him. Isaiah Rynders the same, and the same with his "unterrified" hearers. Parepa-Rosa stands open-mouthed in dumb show of singing, while humming-birds perched on chignons vibrate, as they vainly try to resist the irresistible. Gape the Republicans, and gape the Democrats, in response to the gaping Butler on his legs. There is, in Shakespeare's words--though his ignorant editors have transformed it into a "gap"--there is, I say, "a gape in Nature." Will you alone hold out: I can't believe it. You have yawned in concert, I am morally certain. Indeed, if, as these long-drawn prescriptions come to an end, you be not far on the road to forgetfulness, I can give you but one parting counsel. Nothing else can serve and save you--you must incontinently take morphine.

DOCTOR PABLO'S PREDICTION.

Doctor Pablo went back a lonely man, to his old mother, in France, after having pa.s.sed twenty years in the Philippines.--

He did so. We can vouch thus much for the correctness of _Household Words_ of the 6th inst., whence the above-named quotation is copied. And as the subject of it is a remarkable personage, and this unexpected meeting with him in print has revived in us not a few pleasant recollections, we will take the liberty of informing our readers how we came to have personal knowledge of Don Pablo--for this, and not Doctor Pablo, was his cognomen, at least amongst his friends.

Embarking at Bombay, many a long year since, in the East India Company's steamer _Atalanta_, for pa.s.sage up the Red Sea, we soon fell into acquaintance with a party of foreigners, partially isolated as they were from the crowd of Anglo-Indians--men, women, and children--returning by the over-land route to their native country. They (the foreigners) were five in number, two Frenchmen, two Dutchmen, and a Spaniard. Of the three last-mentioned we have small recollection. Of the Frenchmen, one was Don Pablo.

The other, who headed the whole party, was Monsieur Adolphe Barrot, a brother of Odilon and Ferdinand Barrot, whose names are familiar to those conversant with recent French history. He was at the time bound to Paris, on leave, from his post of Consul-General at Manilla. At an early period of his career he had been attached to the French Legation at Washington, or at least had travelled through this country.

Subsequently, when Consul at Carthagena, he distinguished himself by his resolute and humane interposition on occasion of a certain revolutionary outbreak. After his return from the East, he served as French Minister to Naples and to Lisbon, and now, we believe, holds the same appointment at Brussels. Between this man of cultivated mind, polished manners, and companionable qualities, and Don Pablo, whose exterior smacked but little of intercourse with "the world," there was evidently a bond of no common sort. Blunt, earnest, truthful, with quick perceptions and impulses of the kindest nature, there was something very fresh and irresistibly attractive in the character of Don Pablo. We did not wonder at the intimacy. Opposites are drawn together. In friendly and social intercourse the time sped away.

At that period, the steamers bound from Bombay to Suez touched at Cosseir, a port two days' sail South of Suez, and about 150 miles East of Thebes on the Nile. The object was to land pa.s.sengers who cared to cross the intervening Desert, as the quickest mode of gaining Upper Egypt. To Cosseir we were ourselves destined; our new friends being on their way direct to France, _via_ Suez, Cairo, and the Mediterranean, and having made none of the ordinary provision for the less-frequented route. But we plied them strongly with argument and entreaty, to divert them from their intended limited course; not forgetting the threat of ridicule in a Parisian drawing-room, where a man who had missed such a chance would never be able to hold up his head. Finally, they consented.

After a voyage of sixteen days, the coaling process at Aden included, three groups of travellers landed at Cosseir. We had dealings with two of them.

For although we had persuaded Mr. Barrot, Don Pablo and their a.s.sociates, to take our route, we could not precisely undertake to accompany them. We were to travel over the same ground, but not together; for we had engaged, ere we left Bombay, to join fortunes with a small party of veterans and valetudinarians who had made elaborate preparations for the journey, and were not sorry to have the aid of one who did not belong to either cla.s.s, but who was perhaps for that very reason more competent than they themselves to take charge of their caravan. And then there was a lady, and a lady's maid, and a valet, and the thousand and one enc.u.mbrances that are incidental to such appendages. What scenes we had with the camel-drivers! What tons of baggage to be loaded! what irritations! what drollery! what delay!

Landing early in the morning, the preparations for a start occupied us till a late hour in the afternoon; nor had we ever a more laboursome time of it. Lightly c.u.mbered, and with only a twentieth part of the fuss, Don Pablo and the others had preceded us; but as the same camping-places in this five days' journey are generally frequented, we hoped to see them from time to time. Fortune kindly ordained that we should join them permanently.

It was on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon that we started from Cosseir, with a train "too numerous to mention." Night had fallen, ere we pitched our tents--the writer sharing that of Sir C. M. At day-light on the following morning, we strolled off to the French encampment; were again pressed to join its occupants; were again compelled reluctantly to refuse. Away they went. We returned to our own quarters, where to our horror, in place of hearing "boot and saddle" sounded, the edict was issued from my lady's tent, that there was to be no marching that day.

Bah! how provoking! we could not ask for an honourable discharge; but how we longed to desert! Matters fell out, however, more pleasantly then we had a right to expect. Breakfast was served, with the elaborateness of a _fete champetre_, at eleven o'clock; and as the hostess gracefully poured out the coffee, the talk turned upon those who had sped onward.

Presently, by a lucky chance, it occured to her, or to the nominal head of the party, that dawdling away a Sunday on a barren speck of Mahommedan sand was not in itself the essential duty of a plain Christian, nor specially agreeable to a man whose thoughts were keenly set upon the marvels of Luxor and Karnac. In short, it was mildly suggested to us that, as the organization and first move of the caravan--the real and only difficulties--were accomplished, there would be nothing ungallant in leaving the party to its more orthodox or more leisurely progress. Our coyness may be imagined; but we consented at length to take this view of the matter, and at noon called up our camels. Soon were our trunks and slender stock of kettles and sauce-pans slung upon one; ourselves astride of a second; and on a third, the Arab driver, with whom there was no communicating but by signs. A twelve hours' ride brought us at midnight to the tent of our friends--they having luckily found one available at Cosseir. We raised the canvas from the pegs, and saluted Don Pablo with a "Here I am!" Many years have elapsed since that night, but we can fancy now that we hear his genial rejoinder, "I knew you'd come!" In less time than it takes to tell it, we had edged in our bedding upon the sand, and were one of the Seven--no, six--Sleepers.

Had not a _Howadji_ of this Western hemisphere made the Desert and the Nile so peculiarly his own, that it is presumption for a common pen to follow in his track, we might be tempted still further to ransack our memory for pleasant recollections of Don Pablo. Let it suffice to say, that with these pleasant companions we roughed it across the camel-track, in a style of discomfort and good humour rarely surpa.s.sed; explored the wonders of Thebes and the Tombs of the Kings; floated down to Cairo; clambered the Great Pyramid; smoked pipes with Pashas; and finally embarked at Alexandria, on the blue waters of the Mediterranean. The farewell was said at Syra, one of the islands of the aegean. The "five we supped with yesternight" were bound to Malta and Ma.r.s.eilles--we to Athens and Constantinople. As we shook hands at parting with Don Pablo, he quietly remarked, with that cheerful gravity that so well became him, and in allusion to a young lady who had been our three days' acquaintance on board the steamer--"_Adieu, mon cher; vous epouserez Mademoiselle._"

We never saw Don Pablo, but once afterwards. Several months had elapsed.

His prophecy had been fulfilled. The lady in question was on our arm, as in sauntering under the arcades of the Palais Royale in Paris, we met our old a.s.sociate. There was a hearty greeting; but when we reminded him of his prediction and formally introduced him, we remember that he cut the colloquy abruptly short (as it then seemed to us), and turned away with an expression of face for which we were at a loss to account, being ignorant of all the details of his history. Did the memory of the Peninsula of Iala-Iala, and of the loving wife whom he had buried there, fall too suddenly and too sadly upon his sensitive and affectionate spirit?--We cannot say; but this was the beginning and the ending of our knowledge of Doctor Pablo, until we unexpectedly met him in print.

THE NEW HAMPSHIRE ALPS.

It is not very much of a walk from the Glen House up the Eastern face of Mount Washington--less than three hours at a leisurely pace will accomplish it; and on a fine day it would be next to impossible to lose one's-self, if alone. Half the distance or thereabouts, your track lies through a wood, acceptable enough as offering shelter from a July sun, but curtailing your views annoyingly. However, all things end; and if your range of sight be somewhat "cabined, cribbed, confined," at the start, you have no cause for complaint on that score after once emerging from covert, for the rocks, bleak, bare, and irregular, that are scattered all around, though large enough to compel a careful picking of the way between them by no means limit the vision. But the approach has been a hundred times described, and I will only say of it, at the risk of repet.i.tion, that he who comes up from the Glen House, and fails to turn his eye continually over his right shoulder, to dwell lovingly upon the near and n.o.ble outlines of Mounts Jefferson, Adams, and Madison, has no appreciation of this sort of scenery.

The morning had been superlatively fine, and troops of mounted dames and damsels and cavaliers made the various pathways lively with their glee. But caprice is the rule of these high regions; and when I was within ten minutes of the summit, clouds of misty vapour came suddenly scudding up, whence I knew not, but shutting out a peep here and a vista there, as they caracolled in fantastic evolutions. Presently, to these kaleidoscopic effects succeeded a slight hailstorm--it was rain visibly beneath us, attended with thunder and lightning--but anon all was comparatively clear again, and from the congregated spectators went up many a genuine burst of enthusiastic admiration, as point after point opened out or was shut in by the scud.

The two rough stone buildings upon the small plateau that crowns the mountain, built for the accommodation of travellers, are called respectively the "Summit" and the "Tip-top" House. Once rivals, they now form a single establishment--one being used as a restaurant, the other as a dormitory. On this particular day, nearly a hundred persons must have refreshed themselves in the former--a dozen or fifteen in the latter; and I must own, it was not without a sense of relief that I saw the last of the descending parties set forth about 2 P. M., being myself of the select few about to take the chance of sunset and sunrise.

For the afternoon, then--for the interval of time was to be occupied--a guide was summoned, to show half-a-dozen of us the wonders of Tuckerman's Ravine, a _cul-de-sac_ between two great b.u.t.tresses of Mount Washington, that prop it up towards the South and West. The sides of this ravine are very precipitous the head of it being formed of layers of rock, at an angle of about ninety-five degrees, over which a cascade precipitates itself, fed by the springs and melted snows above.

In the bed of this hollow, to which the descent is sufficiently sharp to gratify the keenest amateur pedestrian, the acc.u.mulated snow of the winter, blown over from the impending heights, lies packed in such enormous ma.s.ses that it seldom entirely disappears until the latter part of August. At the period of my visit, on Friday, the 29th of July, a huge portion thereof remained, and the famous "Snow-Arch" was not only visible but practicable. This natural curiosity is a cave channelled out from the vast snow bank as a pa.s.sage for the descending waters, the roof of which, gradually melting away, leaves height and s.p.a.ce for walking along this gallery as it were in the very bed of the torrent. You enter perforce, be it observed, where the stream emerges. The length was certainly not less than two hundred feet, the breadth of the tunnel perhaps forty or fifty. Of the thickness of the roof I cannot speak, not having essayed it; but the little knot of adventurers trusted that it would not cave-in whilst they were groping their difficult way, one after the other, wet-footed and in semi-obscurity, up-stream, from end to end of the arched way. The object of the exploration it would be difficult to define. It certainly was not scientific; it offered no rare beauties; it might have been very well imagined, without the trouble and subsequent risk--but it was an adventure, and it had its charm. Day-light appeared as we neared the waterfall--luckily not very full--which, as I have already said, comes down the head of the ravine and is the origin of the "Arch" itself. What next? The snow had separated bodily from the face of the rocks to the width of two or three feet, as you see ice fields in a thaw detach themselves from the land whereto they have been joined. We could therefore emerge, and clamber up the abrupt face of the rocks, though the first start was not inviting, inasmuch as we had to hoist ourselves up by unequal pressure upon soft snow on one side and hard rock on the other. The alternative was a return. This would have been inglorious; up we went. It was a rough business. The guide had been over the ground once before, this season--so he said, at least--but he "harked back" occasionally, as though not quite certain of his way. It seemed impossible to diverge either to the right or left, and so gain the comparatively easier slope.

We were doomed to mount, in the hope of finding successive steps, inasmuch as a retracing of those taken was not for a moment to be thought of; descent in such cases is always far more dangerous and troublesome. It was fortunate that in crossing twice or thrice the waterfall itself, we were not pumped on to any serious extent. I was moistened only, being garnished with a Macintosh; and I have only two scars now left on my shins, the result of sc.r.a.ping too close an acquaintance with sundry rocks. The whole affair lasted between three and four hours. I cannot recommend it, save to very enthusiastic mountaineers, or to _ci-devant jeunes hommes_ anxious to test the effects of Time upon their powers of walking and of endurance.

Regaining the hurricane-deck of the Tip-top House--for the roof is the princ.i.p.al promenade, and often times a.s.suredly deserves the name I give it, how gratefully, as the sun went down, stole the sense of ineffable grandeur over the somewhat wearied frame! It was a superb evening; and though it would not suit me to cull a leaf from the Guide-book, and tell all that is therein narrated, I must mention one particular wherein this locality is notable, if not quite unique. I think I remember something of the kind, but not so marked, at sunrise as seen from the summit of Etna; but not thus, on the Righi and Faulhorn in Switzerland, on the Pic du Midi de Bigorre in the Pyrenees, or on other peaks that I have climbed in the days of long ago, to salute the coming or speed the parting day. The nearest approach to it that I have seen, was at the Great Pyramid of Ghizeh. I allude to the wonderful distinctness and regularity with which the shadow of the great cone itself is traced, at sunset, striding over heights and lowlands, mound and lake--all the intervening surface, in fact, between the spectator and the far distant horizon--until it contracts almost to a point where earth and sky merge into one. The sharpness of these converging parallel lines of shadow in that luminous atmosphere absolutely astounded me. They were as crisp, as clearly defined, as those that you may see in antique pictures of Jacob's Dream, leading ladder-wise from Heaven to the head of the slumbering Patriarch. Sunrise, next morning--for I was again favoured with clear weather and only sufficient frost to render the roof of the restaurant slightly slippery--sunrise, I say, reserved all this. The narrow lines, now on the Western horizon, broadened out and came upwards and forwards, as in the evening they had elongated and gone down. It was in truth a rare spectacle, not to be forgotten, and individualizes this natural observatory.

As for the view itself, it has been described _ad nauseam_, and I have only a few words to say about it. It happened, as it often does happen, that I fell in with an untravelled admirer of the prospect spread out before us, not charmed however with it more than I was myself. But he would persist in drawing from me an answer to the common question--"how does this compare with some of the famous points of view in the Swiss Alps?" Such tests I hold to be absurd, thanking my stars that I can unreservedly enjoy all fair things that are good of their kind. And so I told the inquirer this simple fact. If, in a mountainous country, varied, broken, studded with lakes, and rife with all the elements of the picturesque, you ascend some such superior elevation as this, you have, _looking down__wards_, a striking panoramic scene, like this in its general features--more striking perhaps than beautiful, though this is all matter of taste. The difference lies herein. Here, you plunge your look downward, or sweep it over surrounding objects--and that's the end of it. In those other Alps, you add to the four or five or six thousand feet, below you, as much above--and it is that _upward_ glance which takes in the marvels of glacier and snow-field and inaccessible peaks. My new acquaintance asked for no more comparisons, but let me enjoy myself in my own quiet way.

The walk down Mount Washington to Crawford's at the Great Notch, as I believe it is called, is rather a long affair. It must be ten miles, and parts of it are of the roughest. It took me four hours, in company with two intelligent and companionable young students of Harvard College, travelling (in the true way) a-foot, with knapsacks on their backs. But we hurried it too much, especially as the ridge over and along Mount Pleasant, and some of its fellows bearing Presidential names, abound in points of view worth dwelling on. Moreover I was foot-galled; and this reminds me that, inasmuch as I cannot to-day conclude my rambling reminiscences, I may as well wind up with a touch of information and of advice. The one is intended for the benefit of pedestrians who make excursions of this sort; the other for stay-at-homes in flat countries, who have no definite notion whatever of the ups and downs of hilly regions.

In the first place, then, you who walk are painfully aware that a sore foot is almost a calamity, if it befall you whilst _en route_. Remedy there is none; be thankful that there is an infallible preventive, of whose unfailing excellence I can speak with unreserved commendation. On its simple merits I once averaged in Switzerland twenty-five miles a day, for thirty successive days; and this without gall or blister. Fool that I was, to neglect it, two or three weeks ago. Nothing is easier.

Ere you start in the morning, soap or grease the naked foot thoroughly, and then draw the stocking over it. Wash off, with a dash of brandy in the water, on finishing your day's work. The play of the foot is the preservative against abrasion--a certain one, I a.s.sure you.

In the second place, if--pa.s.sing your life amid prairies or savannahs--you are sometimes puzzled to comprehend allusions to b.u.t.tresses, shoulders, ridges, peaks, cones, ravines, and the various terms in use among enthusiastic mountaineers, I think I can put you on a very simple explanatory track. Next time you lie in bed, with a few spare moments for reflection upon this grave topic, just turn on to your back and elevate one knee or both knees. The coverlid or sheet will immediately a.s.sume--I am serious in saying--a curiously correct semblance, I might almost term it a model in relief, of the face of any mountainous country. Laugh not, but try it. A slight movement on your part varies the form and outline and relative bearing of hill and vale, raises a pinnacle here, or there sinks a gorge precipitously steep. If I had the misfortune to be confined to bed by sickness--excluding gout, which might render the process impossible--I could thus, with the aid of a map and some tables of distances, design a pa.s.sable fac-simile of the leading White Mountains themselves. Why Yankee ingenuity should not long ago have manufactured _papier-mache_ plans thereof, in relief, altogether pa.s.ses my comprehension. They would sell well as souvenirs of travel.

SLIDING SCALE OF THE INCONSOLABLES.

_From the French._

How rapid is the progress of oblivion, with respect to those who are no more! How many a quadrille shall we see, this winter, exclusively made up from the ranks of inconsolable widows! Widows of this order exist only in the literature of the tombstone. In the world, and after the lapse of a certain period, there is but one sort of widows inconsolable--those who refuse to be comforted, because they can't get married again!

One of our most distinguished sculptors was summoned, a short time since, to the house of a young lady, connected by birth with a family of the highest grade in the aristocracy of wealth, and united in marriage to the heir of a t.i.tle ill.u.s.trious in the military annals of the Empire.

The union, formed under the happiest auspices, had been, alas! of short duration. Death, unpitying death, had ruptured it, by prematurely carrying off the young husband. The sculptor was summoned by the widow.

He traversed apartments silent and deserted, until he was introduced into a bed-room, and found himself in presence of a lady, young and beautiful, but habited in the deepest mourning, and with a face furrowed by tears.

"You are aware," said she, with a painful effort and a voice half choked by sobs, "You are aware of the blow which I have received?"

The artist bowed, with an air of respectful condolence.

"Sir," continued the widow, "I am anxious to have a funeral monument erected, in honour of the husband whom I have lost."

The artist bowed again.

"I wish that the monument should be superb, worthy of the man whose loss I weep, proportioned to the unending grief into which his loss has plunged me. I care not what it costs. I am rich, and I will willingly sacrifice all my fortune to do honour to the memory of an adored husband. I must have a temple--with columns--in marble--and in the middle--on a pedestal--his statue."

"I will do my best to fulfill your wishes, Madam," replied the artist; "but I had not the honour of acquaintance with the deceased, and a likeness of him is indispensable for the due execution of my work.

Without doubt, you have his portrait?"

The widow raised her arm, and pointed despairingly to a splendid likeness by Amaury Duval.

"A most admirable picture!" observed the artist; "and the painter's name is sufficient guarantee for its striking resemblance to the original."

"Those are his very features, Sir; it is himself. It wants but life. Ah!

Would that I could restore it to him at the cost of all my blood!"

"I will have this portrait carried to my studio, Madam, and I promise you that the marble shall reproduce it exactly."

The widow, at these words, sprung up, and at a single bound throwing herself towards the picture, with arms stretched out as though to defend it, exclaimed: