The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey Volume II Part 9

'The same.'

'Then I can tell you this--not a greater villain walks the earth. He is a Jew from Portugal; he has betrayed many a man, and will many another, unless he gets his own neck stretched, which might happen, if I told all I know.'

'But what was it probable that this man meditated? Or how could it profit him to betray us?'

'That's more than I can tell. He wants to get your money, and that he doesn't know how to bring about without doing his part. But that's what he never _will_ do, take my word for it. That would cut him out of all chance for the head-jailer's place.' He mused a little, and then told us that he could himself put us outside the prison-walls, and _would_ do it without fee or reward. 'But we must be quiet, or that devil will bethink him of me. I'll wager something he thought that I was out merry-making like the rest; and if he should chance to light upon the truth, he'll be back in no time.' Ratcliffe then removed an old fire-grate, at the back of which was an iron plate, that swung round into a similar fireplace in the contiguous cell. From that, by a removal of a few slight obstacles, we pa.s.sed, by a long avenue, into the chapel. Then he left us, whilst he went out alone to reconnoitre his ground. Agnes was now in so pitiable a condition of weakness, as we stood on the very brink of our final effort, that we placed her in a pew, where she could rest as upon a sofa. Previously we had stood upon graves, and with monuments more or less conspicuous all around us: some raised by friends to the memory of friends--some by subscriptions in the prison--some by children, who had risen into prosperity, to the memory of a father, brother, or other relative, who had died in captivity. I was grieved that these sad memorials should meet the eye of my wife at this moment of awe and terrific anxiety. Pierpoint and I were well armed, and all of us determined not to suffer a recapture, now that we were free of the crowds that made resistance hopeless. This Agnes easily perceived; and _that_, by suggesting a b.l.o.o.d.y arbitration, did not lessen her agitation. I hoped therefore that, by placing her in the pew, I might at least liberate her for the moment from the besetting memorials of sorrow and calamity. But, as if in the very teeth of my purpose, one of the large columns which supported the roof of the chapel had its basis and lower part of the shaft in this very pew. On the side of it, and just facing her as she lay reclining on the cushions, appeared a mural tablet, with a bas-relief in white marble, to the memory of two children, twins, who had lived and died at the same time, and in this prison--children who had never breathed another air than that of captivity, their parents having pa.s.sed many years within these walls, under confinement for debt. The sculptures were not remarkable, being a trite, but not the less affecting, representation of angels descending to receive the infants; but the hallowed words of the inscription, distinct and legible--'Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of G.o.d'--met her eye, and, by the thoughts they awakened, made me fear that she would become unequal to the exertions which yet awaited her. At this moment Ratcliffe returned, and informed us that all was right; and that, from the ruinous state of all the buildings which surrounded the chapel, no difficulty remained for us, who were, in fact, beyond the strong part of the prison, excepting at a single door, which we should be obliged to break down. But had we any means arranged for pursuing our flight, and turning this escape to account when out of confinement? All that, I a.s.sured him, was provided for long ago. We proceeded, and soon reached the door. We had one crow-bar amongst us, but beyond that had no better weapons than the loose stones found about some new-made graves in the chapel.

Ratcliffe and Pierpoint, both powerful men, applied themselves by turns to the door, whilst Hannah and I supported Agnes. The door did not yield, being of enormous strength; but the wall did, and a large ma.s.s of stone-work fell outwards, twisting the door aside; so that, by afterwards working with our hands, we removed stones many enough to admit of our egress. Unfortunately this aperture was high above the ground, and it was necessary to climb over a huge heap of loose rubbish in order to profit by it. My brother-in-law pa.s.sed first in order to receive my wife, quite helpless at surmounting the obstacle by her own efforts, out of my arms. He had gone through the opening, and, turning, round so as to face me, he naturally could see something that I did _not_ see. 'Look behind!' he called out rapidly. I did so, and saw the murderous villain Mana.s.seh with his arm uplifted and in the act of cutting at my wife, nearly insensible as she was, with a cutla.s.s. The blow was not for me, but for her, as the fugitive prisoner; and the law would have borne him out in the act. I saw, I comprehended the whole. I groped, as far as I could without letting my wife drop, for my pistols; but all that I could do would have been unavailing, and too late--she would have been murdered in my arms. But--and that was what none of us saw--neither I, nor Pierpoint, nor the hound Mana.s.seh--one person stood back in the shade; one person had seen, but had not uttered a word on seeing Mana.s.seh advancing through the shades; one person only had forecast the exact succession of all that was coming; me she saw embarra.s.sed and my hands preoccupied--Pierpoint and Ratcliffe useless by position--and the gleam of the dog's eye directed her to his aim. The crow-bar was leaning against the shattered wall. This she had silently seized. One blow knocked up the sword; a second laid the villain prostrate. At this moment appeared another of the turnkeys advancing from the rear, for the noise of our a.s.sault upon the door had drawn attention in the interior of the prison, from which, however, no great number of a.s.sistants could on this dangerous night venture to absent themselves. What followed for the next few minutes hurried onwards, incident crowding upon incident, like the motions of a dream:--Mana.s.seh, lying on the ground, yelled out 'The bell! the bell!' to him who followed. The man understood, and made for the belfry-door attached to the chapel; upon which Pierpoint drew a pistol, and sent the bullet whizzing past his ear so truly, that fear made the man obedient to the counter-orders of Pierpoint for the moment. He paused and awaited the issue.--In a moment had all cleared the wall, traversed the waste ground beyond it, lifted Agnes over the low railing, shaken hands with our benefactor Ratcliffe and pushed onwards as rapidly as we were able to the little dark lane, a quarter of a mile distant, where had stood waiting for the last two hours a chaise-and-four.

[Ratcliffe, before my story closes, I will pursue to the last of my acquaintance with him, according to the just claims of his services. He had privately whispered to me, as we went along, that he could speak to the innocence of that lady, pointing to my wife, better than anybody. He was the person whom (as then holding an office in the prison) Barratt had attempted to employ as agent in conveying any messages that he found it safe to send--obscurely hinting the terms on which he would desist from prosecution. Ratcliffe had at first undertaken the negotiation from mere levity of character. But when the story and the public interest spread, and after himself becoming deeply struck by the prisoner's affliction, beauty, and reputed innocence, he had pursued it only as a means of entrapping Barratt into such written communications and such private confessions of the truth as might have served Agnes effectually.

He wanted the art, however, to disguise his purposes: Barratt came to suspect him violently, and feared his evidence so far, even for those imperfect and merely oral overtures which he had really sent through Ratcliffe--that on the very day of the trial he, as was believed, though by another nominally, contrived that Ratcliffe should be arrested for debt; and, after hara.s.sing him with intricate forms of business, had finally caused him to be conveyed to prison. Ratcliffe was thus involved in his own troubles at the time; and afterwards supposed that, without written doc.u.ments to support his evidence, he could not be of much service to the re-establishment of my wife's reputation. Six months after his services in the night-escape from the prison, I saw him, and pressed him to take the money so justly forfeited to him by Mana.s.seh's perfidy. He would, however, be persuaded to take no more than paid his debts. A second and a third time his debts were paid by myself and Pierpoint. But the same habits of intemperance and dissolute pleasure which led him into these debts, finally ruined his const.i.tution; and he died, though otherwise of a fine generous manly nature, a martyr to dissipation at the early age of twenty-nine. With respect to his prison confinement, it was so frequently recurring in his life, and was alleviated by so many indulgences, that he scarcely viewed it as a hardship: having once been an officer of the prison, and having thus formed connections with the whole official establishment, and done services to many of them, and being of so convivial a turn, he was, even as a prisoner, treated with distinction, and considered as a privileged son of the house.]

It was just striking twelve o'clock as we entered the lane where the carriage was drawn up. Rain, about the profoundest I had ever witnessed, was falling. Though near to midsummer, the night had been unusually dark to begin with, and from the increasing rain had become much more so. We could see nothing; and at first we feared that some mistake had occurred as to the station of the carriage--in which case we might have sought for it vainly through the intricate labyrinth of the streets in that quarter. I first descried it by the light of a torch, reflected powerfully from the large eyes of the leaders. All was ready.

Horse-keepers were at the horses' heads. The postilions were mounted; each door had the steps let down: Agnes was lifted in: Hannah and I followed: Pierpoint mounted his horse; and at the word--Oh! how strange a word!--'_All's right_,' the horses sprang off like leopards, a manner ill suited to the slippery pavement of a narrow street. At that moment, but we valued it little indeed, we heard the prison-bell ringing out loud and clear. Thrice within the first three minutes we had to pull up suddenly, on the brink of formidable accidents, from the dangerous speed we maintained, and which, nevertheless, the driver had orders to maintain, as essential to our plan. All the stoppages and hinderances of every kind along the road had been antic.i.p.ated previously, and met by contrivance, of one kind or other; and Pierpoint was constantly a little ahead of us to attend to anything that had been neglected. The consequence of these arrangements was--- that no person along the road could possibly have a.s.sisted to trace us by anything in our appearance: for we pa.s.sed all objects at too flying a pace, and through darkness too profound, to allow of any one feature in our equipage being distinctly noticed. Ten miles out of town, a s.p.a.ce which we traversed in forty-four minutes, a second relay of horses was ready; but we carried on the same postilions throughout. Six miles a-head of this distance we had a second relay; and with this set of horses, after pushing two miles further along the road, we crossed by a miserable lane five miles long, scarcely even a bridge road, into another of the great roads from the capital; and by thus crossing the country, we came back upon the city at a point far distant from that at which we left it. We had performed a distance of forty-two miles in three hours, and lost a fourth hour upon the wretched five miles of cross-road. It was therefore four o'clock, and broad daylight, when we drew near the suburbs of the city; but a most happy accident now favoured us; a fog the most intense now prevailed; n.o.body could see an object six feet distant; we alighted in an uninhabited new-built street, plunged into the fog, thus confounding our traces to any observer. We then stepped into a hackney-coach which had been stationed at a little distance. Thence, according to our plan, we drove to a miserable quarter of the town, whither the poor only and the wretched resorted; mounted a gloomy dirty staircase, and, befriended by the fog, still growing thicker and thicker, and by the early hour of the morning, reached a house previously hired, which, if shocking to the eye and the imagination from its squalid appearance and its gloom, still was a home--a sanctuary--an asylum from treachery, from captivity, from persecution. Here Pierpoint for the present quitted us: and once more Agnes, Hannah, and I, the shattered members of a shattered family, were thus gathered together in a house of our own.

Yes: once again, daughter of the hills, thou sleptst as heretofore in my encircling arms; but not again in that peace which crowned thy innocence in those days, and should have crowned it now. Through the whole of our flying journey, in some circ.u.mstances at its outset strikingly recalling to me that blessed one which followed our marriage, Agnes slept away unconscious of our movements. She slept through all that day and the following night; and I watched over her with as much jealousy of all that might disturb her, as a mother watches over her new-born baby; for I hoped, I fancied, that a long--long rest, a rest, a halcyon calm, a deep, deep Sabbath of security, might prove healing and medicinal. I thought wrong; her breathing became more disturbed, and sleep was now haunted by dreams; all of us, indeed, were agitated by dreams; the past pursued me, and the present, for high rewards had been advertised by Government to those who traced us; and though for the moment we were secure, because we never went abroad, and could not have been naturally sought in such a neighbourhood, still that very circ.u.mstance would eventually operate against us. At length, every night I dreamed of our insecurity under a thousand forms; but more often by far my dreams turned upon our wrongs; wrath moved me rather than fear. Every night, for the greater part, I lay painfully and elaborately involved, by deep sense of wrong,

'----in long orations, which I pleaded Before unjust tribunals.'[20]

And for poor Agnes, her also did the remembrance of mighty wrongs occupy through vast worlds of sleep in the same way--though coloured by that tenderness which belonged to her gentler nature. One dream in particular--a dream of sublime circ.u.mstances--she repeated to me so movingly, with a pathos so thrilling, that by some profound sympathy it transplanted itself to my own sleep, settled itself there, and is to this hour a part of the fixed dream-scenery which revolves at intervals through my sleeping life. This it was:--She would hear a trumpet sound--though perhaps as having been the prelude to the solemn entry of the judges at a town which she had once visited in her childhood; other preparations would follow, and at last all the solemnities of a great trial would shape themselves and fall into settled images. The audience was a.s.sembled, the judges were arrayed, the court was set. The prisoner was cited. Inquest was made, witnesses were called; and false witnesses came tumultuously to the bar. Then again a trumpet was heard, but the trumpet of a mighty archangel; and then would roll away thick clouds and vapours. Again the audience, but another audience, was a.s.sembled; again the tribunal was established; again the court was set; but a tribunal and a court--how different to her! _That_ had been composed of men seeking indeed for truth, but themselves erring and fallible creatures; the witnesses had been full of lies, the judges of darkness. But here was a court composed of heavenly witnesses--here was a righteous tribunal--and then at last a judge that could not be deceived. The judge smote with his eye a person who sought to hide himself in the crowd; the guilty man stepped forward; the poor prisoner was called up to the presence of the mighty judge; suddenly the voice of a little child was heard ascending before her. Then the trumpet sounded once again; and then there were new heavens and a new earth; and her tears and her agitation (for she had seen her little Francis) awoke the poor palpitating dreamer.

[20] From a MS. poem of a great living Poet. [Written in January 1838.

The lines occur in Wordsworth's _Prelude_, Book Tenth, line 410. The pa.s.sage stands thus:--

----------'the unbroken dream entangled me In long orations, which I strove to plead Before unjust tribunals,--with a voice Labouring, a brain confounded, and a sense, Death-like, of treacherous desertion, felt In the last place of refuge--my own soul.'--H.]

Two months pa.s.sed on: nothing could possibly be done materially to raise the standard of those wretched accommodations which the house offered.

The dilapidated walls, the mouldering plaster, the blackened mantel-pieces, the stained and polluted wainscots--what could be attempted to hide or to repair all this by those who durst not venture abroad? Yet whatever could be done, Hannah did, and, in the meantime, very soon indeed my Agnes ceased to see or to be offended by these objects. First of all her sight went from her; and nothing which appealed to that sense could ever more offend her. It is to me the one only consolation I have, that my presence and that of Hannah, with such innocent frauds as we concerted together, made her latter days pa.s.s in a heavenly calm, by persuading her that our security was absolute, and that all search after us had ceased, under a belief on the part of Government that we had gained the shelter of a foreign land. All this was a delusion; but it was a delusion--blessed be Heaven!--which lasted exactly as long as her life, and was just commensurate with its necessity. I hurry over the final circ.u.mstances.

There was fortunately now, even for me, no fear that the hand of any policeman or emissary of justice could effectually disturb the latter days of my wife; for, besides pistols always lying loaded in an inner room, there happened to be a long narrow pa.s.sage on entering the house, which, by means of a blunderbuss, I could have swept effectually, and cleared many times over; and I know what to do in a last extremity. Just two months it was, to a day, since we had entered the house; and it happened that the medical attendant upon Agnes, who awakened no suspicion by his visits, had prescribed some opiate or anodyne which had not come; being dark early, for it was now September, I had ventured out to fetch it. In this I conceived there could be no danger. On my return I saw a man examining the fastenings of the door. He made no opposition to my entrance, nor seemed much to observe it--but I was disturbed. Two hours after, both Hannah and I heard a noise about the door, and voices in low conversation. It is remarkable that Agnes heard this also--so quick had grown her hearing. She was agitated, but was easily calmed; and at ten o'clock we were all in bed. The hand of Agnes was in mine; so only she felt herself in security. She had been restless for an hour, and talking at intervals in sleep. Once she certainly wakened, for she pressed her lips to mine. Two minutes after, I heard something in her breathing which did not please me. I rose hastily--brought a light--raised her head--two long, long gentle sighs, that scarcely moved the lips, were all that could be perceived. At that moment, at that very moment, Hannah called out to me that the door was surrounded. 'Open it!'

I said; six men entered; Agnes it was they sought; I pointed to the bed; they advanced, gazed, and walked away in silence.

After this I wandered about, caring little for life or its affairs, and roused only at times to think of vengeance upon all who had contributed to lay waste my happiness. In this pursuit, however, I was confounded as much by my own thoughts as by the difficulties of accomplishing my purpose. To a.s.sault and murder either of the two princ.i.p.al agents in this tragedy, what would it be, what other effect could it have, than to invest them with the character of injured and suffering people, and thus to attract a pity or a forgiveness at least to their persons which never otherwise could have ill.u.s.trated their deaths? I remembered, indeed, the words of a sea-captain who had taken such vengeance as had offered at the moment upon his bitter enemy and persecutor (a young pa.s.senger on board his ship), who had informed against him at the Custom-house on his arrival in port, and had thus effected the confiscation of his ship, and the ruin of the captain's family. The vengeance, and it was all that circ.u.mstances allowed, consisted in coming behind the young man clandestinely and pushing him into the deep waters of the dock, when, being unable to swim, he perished by drowning. 'And the like,' said the captain, when musing on his trivial vengeance, 'and the like happens to many an honest sailor.' Yes, thought I, the captain was right. The momentary shock of a pistol-bullet--what is it? Perhaps it may save the wretch after all from the pangs of some lingering disease; and then again I shall have the character of a murderer, if known to have shot him; he will with many people have no such character, but at worst the character of a man too harsh (they will say), and possibly mistaken in protecting his property. And then, if not known as the man who shot him, where is the shadow even of vengeance? Strange, it seemed to me, and pa.s.sing strange, that I should be the person to urge arguments in behalf of letting this man escape. For at one time I had as certainly, as inexorably, doomed him as ever I took any resolution in my life. But the fact is, and I began to see it upon closer view, it is not easy by any means to take an adequate vengeance for any injury beyond a very trivial standard; and that with common magnanimity one does not care to avenge.

Whilst I was in this mood of mind, still debating with myself whether I should or should not contaminate my hands with the blood of this monster, and still unable to shut my eyes upon one fact, viz. that my buried Agnes could above all things have urged me to abstain from such acts of violence, too evidently useless, listlessly and scarcely knowing what I was in quest of, I strayed by accident into a church where a venerable old man was preaching at the very moment I entered; he was either delivering as a text, or repeating in the course of his sermon, these words--'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.' By some accident also he fixed his eyes upon me at the moment; and this concurrence with the subject then occupying my thoughts so much impressed me, that I determined very seriously to review my half-formed purposes of revenge; and well it was that I did so: for in that same week an explosion of popular fury brought the life of this wretched Barratt to a shocking termination, pretty much resembling the fate of the De Witts in Holland. And the consequences to me were such, and so full of all the consolation and indemnification which this world could give me, that I have often shuddered since then at the narrow escape I had had from myself intercepting this remarkable retribution. The villain had again been attempting to play off the same h.e.l.lish scheme with a beautiful young rustic which had succeeded in the case of my ill-fated Agnes. But the young woman in this instance had a high, and, in fact, termagant spirit. Rustic as she was, she had been warned of the character of the man; everybody, in fact, was familiar with the recent tragedy. Either her lover or her brother happened to be waiting for her outside the window. He saw in part the very tricks in the act of perpetration by which some article or other, meant to be claimed as stolen property, was conveyed into a parcel she had incautiously laid down. He heard the charge against her made by Barratt, and seconded by his creatures--heard her appeal--sprang to her aid--dragged the ruffian into the street, when in less time than the tale could be told, and before the police (though tolerably alert) could effectually interpose for his rescue, the mob had so used or so abused the opportunity they had long wished for, that he remained the mere disfigured wreck of what had once been a man, rather than a creature with any resemblance to humanity. I myself heard the uproar at a distance, and the shouts and yells of savage exultation; they were sounds I shall never forget, though I did not at that time know them for what they were, or understood their meaning. The result, however, to me was something beyond this, and worthy to have been purchased with my heart's blood.

Barratt still breathed; spite of his mutilations he could speak; he was rational. One only thing he demanded--it was that his dying confession might be taken. Two magistrates and a clergyman attended. He gave a list of those whom he had trepanned, and had failed to trepan, by his artifices and threats, into the sacrifice of their honour. He expired before the record was closed, but not before he had placed my wife's name in the latter list as the one whose injuries in his dying moments most appalled him. This confession on the following day went into the hands of the hostile minister, and my revenge was perfect.

MR. SCHNACKENBERGER;

OR,

TWO MASTERS FOR ONE DOG.

FROM THE GERMAN.

CHAPTER I.

IN WHAT MANNER MR. SCHNACKENBERGER MADE HIS ENTRY INTO B----.

The sun had just set, and all the invalids at the baths of B---- had retired to their lodgings, when the harsh tones of welcome from the steeple announced the arrival of a new guest. Forthwith all the windows were garrisoned with young faces and old faces, pretty faces and ugly faces; and scarce one but was overspread with instantaneous merriment--a _feu-de-joie_ of laughter, that travelled up the street in company with the very extraordinary object that now advanced from the city gates.

Upon a little, meagre, scare-crow of a horse, sate a tall, broad-shouldered young fellow, in a great-coat of bright pea-green, whose variegated lights and shades, from soaking rains and partial dryings, bore sullen testimony to the changeable state of the weather for the last week. Out of this great-coat shot up, to a monstrous height, a head surmounted by a huge c.o.c.ked hat, one end of which hung over the stem, the other over the stern of the horse: the legs belonging to this head were sheathed in a pair of monstrous boots, technically called 'field-pieces,' which, descending rather too low, were well plaistered with flesh-coloured mud. More, perhaps, in compliance with the established rule, than for any visible use, a switch was in the rider's hand; for to attribute to such a horse, under such a load, any power to have quitted a pace that must have satisfied the most rigorous police in Poland, was obviously too romantic. Depending from his side, and almost touching the ground, rattled an enormous back-sword, which suggested to the thinking mind a salutary hint to allow free pa.s.sage, without let or unseasonable jesting, to Mr. Jeremiah Schnackenberger, student at the University of X----. He, that might be disposed to overlook this hint, would certainly pay attention to a second, which crept close behind the other in the shape of a monstrous dog, somewhat bigger than the horse, and presenting on every side a double tier of most respectable teeth. Observing the general muster of the natives, which his appearance had called to the windows, the rider had unslung and mounted a pipe, under whose moving canopy of clouds and vapours he might advance in greater tranquillity: and during this operation, his very thoughtful and serious horse had struck up a by-street--and made a dead stop, before his rider was aware, at the sign of the Golden Sow.

Although the gold had long since vanished from the stone beast, and, to say the truth, every part of the house seemed to sympathise admirably with the unclean habits of its patron image, nevertheless, Mr. Jeremiah thought proper to comply with the instincts of his horse; and, as n.o.body in the street, or in the yard, came forward to answer his call, he gave himself no further trouble, but rode on through the open door right forwards into the bar.

CHAPTER II.

HOW MR. JEREMIAH CAME TO TAKE UP HIS QUARTERS AT THE GOLDEN SOW.

'The Lord, and his angels, protect us!--As I live, here comes the late governor!' e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the hostess, Mrs. Bridget Sweetbread; suddenly startled out of her afternoon's nap by the horse's hoofs--and seeing right before her what she took for the apparition of Don Juan; whom, as it afterwards appeared, she had seen in a pantomime the night before.

'Thunder and lightning! my good woman,' said the student laughing, 'would you dispute the reality of my flesh and blood?'

Mrs. Bridget, however, on perceiving her mistake, cared neither for the sword nor for the dog, but exclaimed, 'Why then, let me tell you, Sir, it's not the custom in this country to ride into parlours, and disturb honest folks when they're taking their rest. Innkeeping's not the trade it has been to me, G.o.d he knows: but, for all that, I'll not put up with such work from n.o.body.'

'Good, my dear creature; what you say is good--very good: but let me tell you, it's _not_ good that I must be kept waiting in the street, and no soul in attendance to take my horse and feed him.'

'Oh, that base villain of a hostler!' said the landlady, immediately begging pardon, and taking hold of the bridle, whilst Mr.

Schnackenberger dismounted.

'That's a good creature,' said he; 'I love you for this: and I don't care if I take up my quarters here, which at first was not my intention.

Have you room for me?'

'Room!' answered Mrs. Sweetbread; 'ah! now there's just the whole Golden Sow at your service; the more's the pity.'

On Mr. Jeremiah's asking the reason for this superfluity of room, she poured out a torrent of abuse against the landlord of _The Double-barrelled Gun_, who--not content with having at all times done justice to his sign--had latterly succeeded, with the help of vicious coachmen and unprincipled postilions, in drawing away her whole business, and had at length utterly ruined the once famous inn of _The Golden Sow_. And true it was that the apartment, into which she now introduced her guest, showed some vestiges of ancient splendour, in the pictures of six gigantic sows. The late landlord had been a butcher, and had christened his inn from his practice of slaughtering a pig every week; and the six swine, as large as life, and each bearing a separate name, were designed to record his eminent skill in the art of fattening.

His widow, who was still in mourning for him, must certainly have understood Mr. Schnackenberger's words, '_I love you for this_,' in a sense very little intended by the student. For she brought up supper herself; and, with her own hand, unarmed with spoon or other implement, dived after and secured a little insect which was floundering about in the soup. So much the greater was her surprise on observing, that, after such flattering proofs of attention, her guest left the soup untouched; and made no particular application to the other dishes--so well harmonising with the general character of the Golden Sow. At last, however, she explained his want of appet.i.te into the excess of his pa.s.sion for herself; and, on that consideration, failed not to lay before him a statement of her flourishing circ.u.mstances, and placed in a proper light the benefits of a marriage with a woman somewhat older than himself.

Mr. Schnackenberger, whose good-nature was infinite, occasionally interrupted his own conversation with Juno, the great dog, who meantime was dispatching the supper without any of her master's scruples, to throw in a 'Yes,' or a 'No,'--a, 'Well,' or a 'So, so.' But at length his patience gave way, and he started up--saying, 'Well: _Sufficit_: Now--march, old witch!' This harmless expression she took in such ill part, that, for mere peace' sake, he was obliged to lead her to the door and shut her out: and then, undressing himself, he stepped into bed; and, in defiance of the straw which everywhere stuck out, and a quilt of a hundred-weight,[21] he sunk into a deep slumber under the agreeable serenade of those clamorous outcries which Mrs. Sweetbread still kept up on the outside of the door.

[21] The custom in North Germany is to sleep _under_ a bed as well as _upon_ one; consequently, when this happens to be a cheap one, it cannot be stuffed with feathers, down, &c., but with some heavier material.

CHAPTER III.

IN WHICH OUR HERO POLISHES A ROUGH-RIDER.