Tales of a Traveller — Bold Dragoon

THE BOLD DRAGOON; OR THE ADVENTURE OF MY GRANDFATHER.

My grandfather was a bold dragoon, for it’s a profession, d’ye see, that has run in the family.

All my forefathers have been dragoons and died upon the field of honor except myself, and I hope my posterity may be able to say the same; however, I don’t mean to be vainglorious.

Well, my grandfather, as I said, was a bold dragoon, and had served in the Low Countries.

In fact, he was one of that very army, which, according to my uncle Toby, “swore so terribly in Flanders.

” He could swear a good stick himself; and, moreover, was the very man that introduced the doctrine Corporal Trim mentions, of radical heat and radical moisture; or, in other words, the mode of keeping out the damps of ditch water by burnt brandy.

Be that as it may, it’s nothing to the purport of my story.

I only tell it to show you that my grandfather was a man not easily to be humbugged.

He had seen service; or, according to his own phrase, “he had seen the devil”—and that’s saying everything.

Well, gentlemen, my grandfather was on his way to England, for which he intended to embark at Ostend;—bad luck to the place for one where I was kept by storms and head winds for three long days, and the divil of a jolly companion or pretty face to comfort me.

Well, as I was saying, my grandfather was on his way to England, or rather to Ostend—no matter which, it’s all the same.

So one evening, towards nightfall, he rode jollily into Bruges.

Very like you all know Bruges, gentlemen, a queer, old-fashioned Flemish town, once they say a great place for trade and money-making, in old times, when the Mynheers were in their glory; but almost as large and as empty as an Irishman’s pocket at the present day.

Well, gentlemen, it was the time of the annual fair.

All Bruges was crowded; and the canals swarmed with Dutch boats, and the streets swarmed with Dutch merchants; and there was hardly any getting along for goods, wares, and merchandises, and peasants in big breeches, and women in half a score of petticoats.

My grandfather rode jollily along in his easy, slashing way, for he was a saucy, sunshiny fellow—staring about him at the motley crowd, and the old houses with gable ends to the street and storks’ nests on the chimneys; winking at the ya vrouws who showed their faces at the windows, and joking the women right and left in the street; all of whom laughed and took it in amazing good part; for though he did not know a word of their language, yet he always had a knack of making himself understood among the women.

Well, gentlemen, it being the time of the annual fair, all the town was crowded; every inn and tavern full, and my grandfather applied in vain from one to the other for admittance.

At length he rode up to an old rackety inn that looked ready to fall to pieces, and which all the rats would have run away from, if they could have found room in any other house to put their heads.

It was just such a queer building as you see in Dutch pictures, with a tall roof that reached up into the clouds; and as many garrets, one over the other, as the seven heavens of Mahomet.

Nothing had saved it from tumbling down but a stork’s nest on the chimney, which always brings good luck to a house in the Low Countries;

and at the very time of my grandfather’s arrival, there were two of these long-legged birds of grace, standing like ghosts on the chimney top.

Faith, but they’ve kept the house on its legs to this very day; for you may see it any time you pass through Bruges, as it stands there yet; only it is turned into a brewery—a brewery of strong Flemish beer; at least it was so when I came that way after the battle of Waterloo.

My grandfather eyed the house curiously as he approached.

It might Not altogether have struck his fancy, had he not seen in large letters over the door, HEER VERKOOPT MAN GOEDEN DRANK.

My grandfather had learnt enough of the language to know that the sign promised good liquor.

“This is the house for me,” said he, stopping short before the door.

The sudden appearance of a dashing dragoon was an event in an old inn, frequented only by the peaceful sons of traffic.

A rich burgher of Antwerp, a stately ample man, in a broad Flemish hat, and who was the great man and great patron of the establishment, sat smoking a clean long pipe on one side of the door; a fat little distiller of Geneva from Schiedam, sat smoking on the other, and the bottle-nosed host stood in the door, and the comely hostess, in crimped cap, beside him; and the hostess’ daughter, a plump Flanders lass, with long gold pendants in her ears, was at a side window.

“Humph!

” said the rich burgher of Antwerp, with a sulky glance at the stranger.

“Der duyvel!

” said the fat little distiller of Schiedam.

The landlord saw with the quick glance of a publican that the new guest was not at all, at all, to the taste of the old ones; and to tell the truth, he did not himself like my grandfather’s saucy eye.

He shook his head—“Not a garret in the house but was full.

” “Not a garret!

” echoed the landlady.

“Not a garret!

” echoed the daughter.

The burgher of Antwerp and the little distiller of Schiedam continued to smoke their pipes sullenly, eyed the enemy askance from under their broad hats, but said nothing.

My grandfather was not a man to be browbeaten.

He threw the reins on his horse’s neck, cocked his hat on one side, stuck one arm akimbo, slapped his broad thigh with the other hand— “Faith and troth!

” said he, “but I’ll sleep in this house this very night!

” My grandfather had on a tight pair of buckskins—the slap went to the landlady’s heart.

He followed up the vow by jumping off his horse, and making his way past the staring Mynheers into the public room.

May be you’ve been in the barroom of an old Flemish inn—faith, but a handsome chamber it was as you’d wish to see; with a brick floor, a great fire-place, with the whole Bible history in glazed tiles; and then the mantel-piece, pitching itself head foremost out of the wall, with a whole regiment of cracked tea-pots and earthen jugs paraded on it; not to mention half a dozen great Delft platters hung about the room by way of pictures; and the little bar in one corner, and the bouncing bar-maid inside of it with a red calico cap and yellow ear-drops.

My grandfather snapped his fingers over his head, as he cast an eye round the room: “Faith, this is the very house I’ve been looking after,” said he.

There was some farther show of resistance on the part of the garrison, but my grandfather was an old soldier, and an Irishman to boot, and not easily repulsed, especially after he had got into the fortress.

So he blarney’d the landlord, kissed the landlord’s wife, tickled the landlord’s daughter, chucked the bar-maid under the chin; and it was agreed on all hands that it would be a thousand pities, and a burning shame into the bargain, to turn such a bold dragoon into the streets.

So they laid their heads together, that is to say, my grandfather and the landlady, and it was at length agreed to accommodate him with an old chamber that had for some time been shut up.

“Some say it’s haunted!

” whispered the landlord’s daughter, “but you’re a bold dragoon, and I dare say you don’t fear ghosts.

” “The divil a bit!

” said my grandfather, pinching her plump cheek;

“but if I should be troubled by ghosts, I’ve been to the Red Sea in my time, and have a pleasant way of laying them, my darling!

” And then he whispered something to the girl which made her laugh, and give him a good-humored box on the ear.

In short, there was nobody knew better how to make his way among the petticoats than my grandfather.

In a little while, as was his usual way, he took complete possession of the house: swaggering all over it;—into the stable to look after his horse; into the kitchen to look after his supper.

He had something to say or do with every one; smoked with the Dutchmen; drank with the Germans; slapped the men on the shoulders, tickled the women under the ribs:-never since the days of Ally Croaker had such a rattling blade been seen.

The landlord stared at him with astonishment; the landlord’s daughter hung her head and giggled whenever he came near; and as he turned his back and swaggered along, his tight jacket setting off his broad shoulders and plump buckskins, and his long sword trailing by his side, the maids whispered to one another—“What a proper man!

” At supper my grandfather took command of the table d’hôte as though he had been at home; helped everybody, not forgetting himself; talked with every one, whether he understood their language or not; and made his way into the intimacy of the rich burgher of Antwerp, who had never been known to be sociable with any one during his life.

In fact, he revolutionized the whole establishment, and gave it such a rouse, that the very house reeled with it.

He outsat every one at table excepting the little fat distiller of Schiedam, who had sat soaking for a long time before he broke forth; but when he did, he was a very devil incarnate.

He took a violent affection for my grandfather; so they sat drinking, and smoking, and telling stories, and singing Dutch and Irish songs, without understanding a word each other said, until the little Hollander was fairly swampt with his own gin and water, and carried off to bed, whooping and hiccuping, and trolling the burthen of a Low Dutch love song.

Well, gentlemen, my grandfather was shown to his quarters, up a huge Staircase composed of loads of hewn timber; and through long rigmarole passages, hung with blackened paintings of fruit, and fish, and game, and country frollics, and huge kitchens, and portly burgomasters, such as you see about old-fashioned Flemish inns, till at length he arrived at his room.

An old-times chamber it was, sure enough, and crowded with all kinds of trumpery.

It looked like an infirmary for decayed and superannuated furniture; where everything diseased and disabled was sent to nurse, or to be forgotten.

Or rather, it might have been taken for a general congress of old legitimate moveables, where every kind and country had a representative.

No two chairs were alike: such high backs and low backs, and leather bottoms and worsted bottoms, and straw bottoms, and no bottoms; and cracked marble tables with curiously carved legs, holding balls in their claws, as though they were going to play at ninepins.

My grandfather made a bow to the motley assemblage as he entered, and having undressed himself, placed his light in the fire-place, asking pardon of the tongs, which seemed to be making love to the shovel in the chimney corner, and whispering soft nonsense in its ear.

The rest of the guests were by this time sound asleep; for your Mynheers are huge sleepers.

The house maids, one by one, crept up yawning to their attics, and not a female head in the inn was laid on a pillow that night without dreaming of the Bold Dragoon.

My grandfather, for his part, got into bed, and drew over him one of those great bags of down, under which they smother a man in the Low Countries; and there he lay, melting between, two feather beds, like an anchovy sandwich between two slices of toast and butter.

He was a warm-complexioned man, and this smothering played the very deuce with him.

So, sure enough, in a little while it seemed as if a legion of imps were twitching at him and all the blood in his veins was in fever heat.

He lay still, however, until all the house was quiet, excepting the snoring of the Mynheers from the different chambers; who answered one another in all kinds of tones and cadences, like so many bull-frogs in a swamp.

The quieter the house became, the more unquiet became my grandfather.

He waxed warmer and warmer, until at length the bed became too hot to hold him.

“May be the maid had warmed it too much?

” said the curious gentleman, inquiringly.

“I rather think the contrary,” replied the Irishman.

“But be that as it may, it grew too hot for my grandfather.

” “Faith there’s no standing this any longer,” says he; so he jumped out of bed and went strolling about the house.

“What for?

” said the inquisitive gentleman.

“Why, to cool himself to be sure,” replied the other, “or perhaps to find a more comfortable bed—or perhaps—but no matter what he went for—he never mentioned; and there’s no use in taking up our time in conjecturing.

” Well, my grandfather had been for some time absent from his room, and was returning, perfectly cool, when just as he reached the door he heard a strange noise within.

He paused and listened.

It seemed as if some one was trying to hum a tune in defiance of the asthma.

He recollected the report of the room’s being haunted;

but he was no believer in ghosts.

So he pushed the door gently ajar, and peeped in.

Egad, gentlemen, there was a gambol carrying on within enough to have astonished St. Anthony.

By the light of the fire he saw a pale weazen-faced fellow in a long Flannel gown and a tall white night-cap with a tassel to it, who sat by the fire, with a bellows under his arm by way of bagpipe, from which he forced the asthmatical music that had bothered my grandfather.

As he played, too, he kept twitching about with a thousand queer contortions; nodding his head and bobbing about his tasselled night-cap.

My grandfather thought this very odd, and mighty presumptuous, and was about to demand what business he had to play his wind instruments in another gentleman’s quarters, when a new cause of astonishment met his eye.

From the opposite side of the room a long-backed, bandy-legged chair, covered with leather, and studded all over in a coxcomical fashion with little brass nails, got suddenly into motion; thrust out first a claw foot, then a crooked arm, and at length, making a leg, slided gracefully up to an easy chair, of tarnished brocade, with a hole in its bottom, and led it gallantly out in a ghostly minuet about the floor.

The musician now played fiercer and fiercer, and bobbed his head and His nightcap about like mad.

By degrees the dancing mania seemed to seize upon all the other pieces of furniture.

The antique, long-bodied chairs paired off in couples and led down a country dance; a three-legged stool danced a hornpipe, though horribly puzzled by its supernumerary leg; while the amorous tongs seized the shovel round the waist, and whirled it about the room in a German waltz.

In short, all the moveables got in motion, capering about; pirouetting, hands across, right and left, like so many devils, all except a great clothes-press, which kept curtseying and curtseying, like a dowager, in one corner, in exquisite time to the music;—being either too corpulent to dance, or perhaps at a loss for a partner.

My grandfather concluded the latter to be the reason; so, being, like a true Irishman, devoted to the sex, and at all times ready for a frolic, he bounced into the room, calling to the musician to strike up “Paddy O’Rafferty,” capered up to the clothes-press and seized upon two handles to lead her out:—When, whizz!

—the whole revel was at an end.

The chairs, tables, tongs, and shovel slunk in an instant as quietly into their places as if nothing had happened; and the musician vanished up the chimney, leaving the bellows behind him in his hurry.

My grandfather found himself seated in the middle of the floor, with the clothes-press sprawling before him, and the two handles jerked off and in his hands.

“Then after all, this was a mere dream!

” said the inquisitive gentleman.

“The divil a bit of a dream!

” replied the Irishman: “there never was a truer fact in this world.

Faith, I should have liked to see any man tell my grandfather it was a dream.

” Well, gentlemen, as the clothes-press was a mighty heavy body, and my grandfather likewise, particularly in rear, you may easily suppose two such heavy bodies coming to the ground would make a bit of a noise.

Faith, the old mansion shook as though it had mistaken it for an earthquake.

The whole garrison was alarmed.

The landlord, who slept just below, hurried up with a candle to inquire the cause, but with all his haste his daughter had hurried to the scene of uproar before him.

The landlord was followed by the landlady, who was followed by the bouncing bar-maid, who was followed by the simpering chambermaids all holding together, as well as they could, such garments as they had first lain hands on; but all in a terrible hurry to see what the devil was to pay in the chamber of the bold dragoon.

My grandfather related the marvellous scene he had witnessed, and the prostrate clothes-press, and the broken handles, bore testimony to the fact.

There was no contesting such evidence;

particularly with a lad of my grandfather’s complexion, who seemed able to make good every word either with sword or shillelah.

So the landlord scratched his head and looked silly, as he was apt to do when puzzled.

The landlady scratched—no, she did not scratch her head,—but she knit her brow, and did not seem half pleased with the explanation.

But the landlady’s daughter corroborated it by recollecting that the last person who had dwelt in that chamber was a famous juggler who had died of St. Vitus’s dance, and no doubt had infected all the furniture.

This set all things to rights, particularly when the chambermaids declared that they had all witnessed strange carryings on in that room;—and as they declared this “upon their honors,” there could not remain a doubt upon the subject.

“And did your grandfather go to bed again in that room?

” said the inquisitive gentleman.

“That’s more than I can tell.

Where he passed the rest of the night was a secret he never disclosed.

In fact, though he had seen much service, he was but indifferently acquainted with geography, and apt to make blunders in his travels about inns at night, that it would have puzzled him sadly to account for in the morning.

” “Was he ever apt to walk in his sleep?

” said the knowing old gentleman.

“Never that I heard of.

” THE ADVENTURE OF THE GERMAN STUDENT

On a stormy night, in the tempestuous times of the French revolution, a young German was returning to his lodgings, at a late hour, across the old part of Paris.

The lightning gleamed, and the loud claps of thunder rattled through the lofty, narrow streets—but I should first tell you something about this young German.

Gottfried Wolfgang was a young man of good family.

He had studied for some time at Göttingen, but being of a visionary and enthusiastic character, he had wandered into those wild and speculative doctrines which have so often bewildered German students.

His secluded life, his intense application, and the singular nature of his studies, had an effect on both mind and body.

His health was impaired; his imagination diseased.

He had been indulging in fanciful speculations on spiritual essences until, like Swedenborg, he had an ideal world of his own around him.

He took up a notion, I do not know from what cause, that there was an evil influence hanging over him; an evil genius or spirit seeking to ensnare him and ensure his perdition.

Such an idea working on his melancholy temperament produced the most gloomy effects.

He became haggard and desponding.

His friends discovered the mental malady preying upon him, and determined that the best cure was a change of scene; he was sent, therefore, to finish his studies amidst the splendours and gaieties of Paris.

Wolfgang arrived at Paris at the breaking out of the revolution.

The popular delirium at first caught his enthusiastic mind, and he was captivated by the political and philosophical theories of the day: but the scenes of blood which followed shocked his sensitive nature;

disgusted him with society and the world, and made him more than ever a recluse.

He shut himself up in a solitary apartment in the _Pays Latin_, the quarter of students.

There in a gloomy street not far from the monastic walls of the Sorbonne, he pursued his favourite speculations.

Sometimes he spent hours together in the great libraries of Paris, those catacombs of departed authors, rummaging among their hoards of dusty and obsolete works in quest of food for his unhealthy appetite.

He was, in a manner, a literary goul, feeding in the charnel house of decayed literature.

Wolfgang, though solitary and recluse, was of an ardent temperament, but for a time it operated merely upon his imagination.

He was too shy and ignorant of the world to make any advances to the fair, but he was a passionate admirer of female beauty, and in his lonely chamber would often lose himself in reveries on forms and faces which he had seen, and his fancy would deck out images of loveliness far surpassing the reality.

While his mind was in this excited and sublimated state, a dream produced an extraordinary effect upon him.

It was of a female face of transcendent beauty.

So strong was the impression made, that he dreamt of it again and again.

It haunted his thoughts by day, his slumbers by night; in fine, he became passionately enamoured of this shadow of a dream.

This lasted so long, that it became one of those fixed ideas which haunt the minds of melancholy men, and are at times mistaken for madness.

Such was Gottfried Wolfgang, and such his situation at the time I mentioned.

He was returning home late one stormy night, through some of the old and gloomy streets of the _Marais_, the ancient part of Paris.

The loud claps of thunder rattled among the high houses of the narrow streets.

He came to the Place de Grève, the square where public executions are performed.

The lightning quivered about the pinnacles of the ancient Hôtel de Ville, and shed flickering gleams over the open space in front.

As Wolfgang was crossing the square, he shrank back with horror at finding himself close by the guillotine.

It was the height of the reign of terror, when this dreadful instrument of death stood ever ready, and its scaffold was continually running with the blood of the virtuous and the brave.

It had that very day been actively employed in the work of carnage, and there it stood in grim array amidst a silent and sleeping city, waiting for fresh victims.

Wolfgang’s heart sickened within him, and he was turning shuddering from the horrible engine, when he beheld a shadowy form cowering as it were at the foot of the steps which led up to the scaffold.

A

succession of vivid flashes of lightning revealed it more distinctly.

It was a female figure, dressed inblack.

She was seated on one of the lower steps of the scaffold, leaning forward, her face hid in her lap, and her long dishevelled tresses hanging to the ground, streaming with the rain which fell in torrents.

Wolfgang paused.

There was something awful in this solitary monument of wo.

The female had the appearance of being above the common order.

He knew the times to be full of vicissitude, and that many a fair head, which had once been pillowed on down, now wandered houseless.

Perhaps this was some poor mourner whom the dreadful axe had rendered desolate, and who sat here heartbroken on the strand of existence, from which all that was dear to her had been launched into eternity.

He approached, and addressed her in the accents of sympathy.

She raised her head and gazed wildly at him.

What was his astonishment at beholding, by the bright glare of the lightning, the very face which had haunted him in his dreams.

It was pale and disconsolate, but ravishingly beautiful.

Trembling with violent and conflicting emotions, Wolfgang again accosted her.

He spoke something of her being exposed at such an hour of the night, and to the fury of such a storm, and offered to conduct her to her friends.

She pointed to the guillotine with a gesture of dreadful signification.

“I have no friend on earth!

” said she.

“But you have a home,” said Wolfgang.

“Yes—in the grave!

” The heart of the student melted at the words.

“If a stranger dare make an offer,” said he, “without danger of being misunderstood, I would offer my humble dwelling as a shelter; myself as a devoted friend.

I am friendless myself in Paris, and a stranger in the land; but if my life could be of service, it is at your disposal, and should be sacrificed before harm or indignity should come to you.

” There was an honest earnestness in the young man’s manner that had its effect.

His foreign accent, too, was in his favour; it showed him not to be a hackneyed inhabitant of Paris.

Indeed there is an eloquence in true enthusiasm that is not to be doubted.

The homeless stranger confided herself implicitly to the protection of the student.

He supported her faltering steps across the Pont Neuf, and by the place where the statue of Henry the Fourth had been overthrown by the populace.

The storm had abated, and the thunder rumbled at a distance.

All Paris was quiet; that great volcano of human passion slumbered for a while, to gather fresh strength for the next day’s eruption.

The student conducted his charge through the ancient streets of the _Pays Latin_, and by the dusky walls of the Sorbonne to the great, dingy hotel which he inhabited.

The old portress who admitted them stared with surprise at the unusual sight of the melancholy Wolfgang with a female companion.

On entering his apartment, the student, for the first time, blushed at the scantiness and indifference of his dwelling.

He had but one chamber—an old fashioned saloon—heavily carved and fantastically furnished with the remains of former magnificence, for it was one of those hotels in the quarter of the Luxembourg palace which had once belonged to nobility.

It was lumbered with books and papers, and all the usual apparatus of a student, and his bed stood in a recess at one end.

When lights were brought, and Wolfgang had a better opportunity of contemplating the stranger, he was more than ever intoxicated by her beauty.

Her face was pale, but of a dazzling fairness, set off by a profusion of raven hair that hung clustering about it.

Her eyes were large and brilliant, with a singular expression approaching almost to wildness.

As far as her black dress permitted her shape to be seen, it was of perfect symmetry.

Her whole appearance was highly striking, though she was dressed in the simplest style.

The only thing approaching to an ornament which she wore was a broad, black band round her neck, clasped by diamonds.

The perplexity now commenced with the student how to dispose of the helpless being thus thrown upon his protection.

He thought of abandoning his chamber to her, and seeking shelter for himself elsewhere.

Still he was so fascinated by her charms, there seemed to be such a spell upon his thoughts and senses, that he could not tear himself from her presence.

Her manner, too, was singular and unaccountable.

She spoke no more of the guillotine.

Her grief had abated.

The attentions of the student had first won her confidence, and then, apparently, her heart.

She was evidently an enthusiast like himself, and enthusiasts soon understand each other.

In the infatuation of the moment Wolfgang avowed his passion for her.

He told her the story of his mysterious dream, and how she had possessed his heart before he had even seen her.

She was strangely affected by his recital, and acknowledged to have felt an impulse towards him equally unaccountable.

It was the time for wild theory and wild actions.

Old prejudices and superstitions were done away; every thing was under the sway of the “Goddess of Reason.

” Among other rubbish of the old times, the forms and ceremonies of marriage began to be considered superfluous bonds for honourable minds.

Social compacts were the vogue.

Wolfgang was too much of a theorist not to be tainted by the liberal doctrines of the day.

“Why should we separate?

” said he: “our hearts are united; in the eye of reason and honour we are as one.

What need is there of sordid forms to bind high souls together?

” The stranger listened with emotion: she had evidently received illumination at the same school.

“You have no home nor family,” continued he; “let me be every thing to you, or rather let us be every thing to one another.

If form is necessary, form shall be observed—there is my hand.

I pledge myself to you for ever.

” “For ever?

” said the stranger, solemnly.

“For ever!

” repeated Wolfgang.

The stranger clasped the hand extended to her: “Then I am yours,” murmured she, and sank upon his bosom.

The next morning the student left his bride sleeping, and sallied forth at an early hour to seek more spacious apartments, suitable to the change in his situation.

When he returned, he found the stranger lying with her head hanging over the bed, and one arm thrown over it.

He spoke to her, but received no reply.

He advanced to awaken her from her uneasy posture.

On taking her hand, it was cold—there was no pulsation—her face was pallid and ghastly.

—In a word—she was a corpse.

Horrified and frantic, he alarmed the house.

A scene of confusion ensued.

The police was summoned.

As the officer of police entered the room, he started back on beholding the corpse.

“Great heaven!

” cried he, “how did this woman come here?

” “Do you know any thing about her?

” said Wolfgang, eagerly.

“Do I?

” exclaimed the police officer: “she was guillotined yesterday!

” He stepped forward; undid the black collar round the neck of the corpse, and the head rolled on the floor!

The student burst into a frenzy.

“The fiend!

the fiend has gained possession of me!

” shrieked he: “I am lost for ever!

” They tried to soothe him, but in vain.

He was possessed with the frightful belief that an evil spirit had reanimated the dead body to ensnare him.

He went distracted, and died in a madhouse.

Here the old gentleman with the haunted head finished his narrative.

“And is this really a fact?

” said the inquisitive gentleman.

“A fact not to be doubted,” replied the other.

“I had it from the best authority.

The student told it me himself.

I saw him in a madhouse at Paris.

”