Chapter IV: “a Flock of Sheep That Leisurely Pass By.” (1)

Several persons came in that evening from seven to nine. First appeared Mr. Coleman, a mild-looking, bald-headed man of an uncertain age. Isabel immediately absorbed him. Next followed a new-comer in Rome, on whose card was inscribed “Mr. Geo. Morton.” After having seen him once, the Signora was guilty of dubbing him Mr. Geometrical Morton. “He is ridiculous, but excellent,” she told her friends while describing him. “He never laughs, because he thinks there is nothing laughable in creation, every whim of nature, human or inanimate, being the result of a mathematical principle, and every disorder only order under an extraordinary form. Of course this is neither new nor peculiar; but he announces it as if it were new, and has a peculiar manner of clapping his measuring instruments on to everything. Not a bit of cirrus can pass over the sky nor your mind, but instantly he will tell you the philosophy of it. In fine, he strips everything to the skeleton, and cannot see that it is a bore, but calls it truth, as if the flesh and drapery were not truths also, as well as more graceful. I had a quarrel with him when he was here last—or rather, I got out of all patience, and scolded him almost rudely, and he listened and replied with the most irritating patience and politeness. I suppose he thought there was some mathematical reason for my being angry, and was studying it out with his great, solemn eyes. He’s kind and honest, I am sure, and as handsome as a picture. I pity the woman he will choose for a wife, though. If she should scold, he will bring out the barometer; if she weep, the rain-gauge; if she should be merry and affectionate, he will consult the thermometer. Ugh! he makes me feel all three-cornered.”

This gentleman made his salutations with the most perfect gravity and courtesy, and, after considering the situation a moment, seated himself by Bianca.

“Well, what conclusions have you arrived at concerning Rome?” he asked, after a few preliminary remarks.

“None,” she replied; “but I have made a good many beginnings; or I might say I have arrived at some fragmentary conclusions.”

“As what?” he persisted gently, desirous to make her talk; for she had shrunk so shyly from him that her father had come to her other side, which was _unique_. The young man had not often the opportunity to study a shy feminine specimen.

“Oh! well,” she said doubtingly, then laughed; “apropos of papa’s checked clothes, which distress me, I have discovered that the clergy are the only well-dressed men in Rome. The others do not look like gentlemen. But the long robe, whatever the color of it, and the cloak they are always arranging, are so graceful, the hat is so picturesque, and, above all, the buckles on the shoes please me.”

“Below all, you mean,” her father remarked.

The young man looked the least in the world disconcerted; for he wore every day a suit of the same objectionable check cloth. Besides, he was not prepared to take on himself the instruction of a young woman whose tall father chose to assist at the lessons, and put in his word in season and out of season.

At this moment Mr. Clive Bailey made his appearance. His bright, clever face lighted up at sight of the new-comers, whom he had been expecting with interest, having heard a great deal about them.

“I hope you intend to make Rome your home,” he said to Mr. Vane. “The Signora has suggested such a possibility.”

“You compliment me more than you do our country,” Mr. Vane replied. “I have been told that it would be unpatriotic for me to prefer any other country to America as a residence. People talk that way. At the same time I should like to stay, and I have an impression that North America, as a whole, will not be aware of my absence.”

“Oh! I don’t mean to disparage any country,” Mr. Bailey said promptly; “only the climate is so hard. Those northeast winds whistle through my button-holes. By the way, a friend of yours asked me to-day if you had arrived, and would have come up to-night to see, if he had not been engaged: John Adams. You recollect him?”

“John Adams? Of course I recollect him. But what brought him here? I never heard him speak of Italy but to abuse it.”

“Oh!” the young man said, lowering his voice a little, and glancing at the Signora, who was near them, “he was brought by the same reason that brought him before, and will keep him this winter—to wit, to woo.”

“To woo! To who?” retorted Mr. Vane.

“Not a whit of your to who!” replied the other with a laugh.

“What are you quoting Wordsworth for?” asked the Signora, overhearing the last part of their talk.

“Apropos of Mr. Adams, Signora,” Mr. Vane said, looking at her attentively.

She blushed and seemed annoyed, and, as if about to say something, finally turned away without speaking. It displeased her to have her name used in connection with that of any gentleman, and, besides, she did not mean to marry Mr. John Adams.

Here the door opened with a little breeze and three persons entered: a bright-eyed, beautiful young lady with a somewhat Jewish cast of face, who produced the impression that a bird had fluttered in, and, following her, a young girl of not more than sixteen, and an elderly woman, evidently a companion.

The Signora met the new-comer cordially.

“My dear countess, I do not know whether you are more welcome or unexpected.”

“I have but two minutes,” the young lady said in the prettiest breathless manner. “I am just on my way to dine out, and stop to ask a favor. But first let me introduce my friends.”

They were a young baroness from the Azores Islands, who had spent ten years in Egypt with her father, and was now on her way to her native country to join her husband, and her lady companion.

“She has to leave Rome the day after to-morrow,” her friend explained, “and wants an introduction to Monsignor M——. She wishes to take some things from him to a friend of hers; and you know one doesn’t often have an opportunity to send to the Azores direct. Now, dear Signora, if you would be so very kind as to introduce her to Monsignor. You know I am not acquainted with him.”

“I will take her to him to-morrow morning,” the Signora said. “But they need not go now, if you do.”

“I was going to ask your hospitality for them while the carriage takes me, for I have to call for cousin Anne. And now, will you do me the favor to make me acquainted with the friends who have come to live with you? I must apologize for my abrupt coming and going.”

She made her apologies in the most graceful and simple way, and looked at Bianca a little lingeringly in meeting her, as if struck by her face. “I meant to call on you first,” she said to the sisters, “and will come to-morrow, if you permit me.”

The Signora followed her out to the landing. “I want a glimpse of your dress,” she said. “You know I never go out after dark; and yet I do so like to see a lady dressed for the evening.”

The countess smilingly threw back the long white cloak that covered her from head to foot, and displayed a beautiful silk robe of so pale a blue as to be almost white. Pink roses fastened the rich lace in the square bosom and loose sleeves, and looped the braids of dark hair, and she wore no jewels but some large strung pearls on her neck and wrists.

“It is lovely!” the Signora exclaimed, and looked admiringly after the lady as she tripped down the stone stairs, holding her rustling robes up about her.

Going back, she found Mr. Coleman and Bianca trying to entertain the rather stupid lady companion, Isabel taking her first lesson in mathematics, and the girl baroness, a dark, plain, talkative little creature, chatting away in very good English to Mr. Vane.

“I never saw my husband but once,” she said. “We were always betrothed since we were babies, but his father, the old Baron of Santa Cruz, had him sent to school in Lisbon, and I was always in a convent. My mamma was dead, and I had no brothers nor sisters, and papa was in Egypt. He has a high office there. Then Pedro came home from Portugal, and I went to papa. Two years ago we met in Rome and were married, so that I could go to him later with my companion. Papa couldn’t leave to go to the Azores, and Pedro couldn’t come again for me.”

She told the story in a very childish, simple way, and seemed to regard her marriage as quite a business-like and proper arrangement.

“You think that you will like Fayal as well as Cairo?” Mr. Vane asked kindly, pitying this child-wife who seemed to have so little of family affection to surround her in the most important time of her life.

“I cannot think, I cannot remember it,” she said. “When I try, it is Paris or Rome that comes up, and I get confused. If I should not like it, I shall ask Pedro to take me somewhere else. He has written me that he will always do everything I wish him to do.”

Mr. Vane scarcely felt a disposition to smile at this perfect trust. He found it pathetic.

“But I would like to go to your country,” she resumed with animation. “Pedro’s sister Maria went there for a journey when she married, and she wrote me the most wonderful things. Perhaps she did not tell the truth. She may have been writing something only to make me laugh. You will not laugh if I tell you?”

Mr. Vane promised to maintain his gravity at all risks.

“Well,” she said confidentially, “Maria wrote me that the snow there is whiter than sea-foam on the rocks, and that one can walk in it and not be wet, and that carriages drive over and make a solid road of it, just as if the streets were paved with smooth, white marble, and that, at the sides, it piles up and stays in shape, like heaps of eider-down. It isn’t true, is it?”

She looked at him doubtfully and searchingly while he assured her of the correctness of the picture.

“And, more than that,” he said, “I have seen the snow so deep and solid that men would cut it in great blocks like Carrara marble, and, when they were standing in the place they had dug, you couldn’t see their heads over the top of the drifts. Did you ever see ice?”

“I saw some this morning, but it wasn’t white,” she said. “A carload of it went past the hotel. It was grayish and crumbly. The men had cut grass and weeds and piled over it to keep it from the sun.”

Mr. Vane, too, had seen this pitiful apology for the glorious crystal blocks of New England ice-cutters as he looked from his window that morning, and had indulged for the moment a feeling of scornful pride. “Fancy that mat of fresh grass and wild-flowers trembling over one of our ice-carts or snow-drifts!” he had said to Bianca. “Yes,” she had replied, but at the same moment had pointed out to him a lovely compensation for the absence of these frigid splendors in the land of the sun. Beneath their window passed two men, bearing each on his head a large basket, one flat, and covered with camellias laid singly, a pink by a white one, each flower glistening with freshness; the other deep, and heaped with pink roses and buds, among which might be seen yellow roses tied in large, nodding bunches. Yes, the snow of the tropics was a snow of flowers.

The Signora passed near enough to Isabel and her companion to catch a part of their conversation. “Since you entered this room,” the gentleman was saying, “you have doubtless, either consciously or unconsciously, gone through with a good deal of swift reasoning. Some people you have liked more, others less, and in both cases the feeling, as you would call it, has been the result of a certain calculation as exact as anything in mathematics could be. You have been pleased with one for certain manners, or looks, or for certain qualities which you believe him to possess; and there are also exact and mathematically calculable reasons why these things should please you.”

Isabel looked edified, but puzzled. “If, then,” she ventured, “there is so much more reason in us all than we are aware of, why need we correct ourselves? I should think we might be all the better satisfied with what goes on in our minds, and let them arrange their own processes without troubling ourselves.”

“No,” he said with earnest gravity. “There are good reasons and bad reasons; and by knowing why we may correct the bad reasons. For example, your tooth aches; the reason is because there is a defective spot in it. You go to the dentist, and the pain ceases. Or you do not fancy a person; the reason is because that person does not flatter you, and you are fond of flattery. You correct your inordinate love of praise, and thus appreciate the worth of one who tells you the truth, and also make it more easy for him to praise you sincerely.”

“But all this takes so much time,” she said, seeing that he waited for a response.

“It is for such uses that time was given us,” he replied.

She struggled for another objection, her mind rapidly becoming swamped in the conversation. “Then you think that we can arrange and order all our feelings, and make our hearts as regular as clocks; and if we lose a friend, by examining why he died, and why we grieve for him, we can reason ourselves into indifference.”

“No,” he said again. “We can undoubtedly subdue the violence of unreasonable grief by such examination, but there are deep and ineradicable reasons why we should grieve when we lose those dear to us.”

The girl’s eyes brightened. “Why,” she said, “it all seems to me only a difference of terms. You mean just what everybody means, only you say everything, and others haven’t time nor wit for that. It all amounts to the same thing in the end. We say, ‘Such and such a thing is natural,’ where you say it is mathematical, _voilà tout_.”

He began to say something about the natural including both good and bad, while his meaning was to exclude the bad; but the Signora took pity on his victim, and stopped his eloquence by offering him a cup of tea.

“He will take the tea,” she thought, pouring another cup, “because the beverage is agreeable to the palate and refreshing to the body, and, by consequence, enlivening to the mind, and he will see the whole subject worked out to its smallest part as he stirs in the sugar. He will put in sugar because—because—dear me! I wonder what is the good reason for putting sugar in tea! How uncomfortable it all is! I should go mad with such a man about me all the time. And yet how well-bred, and earnest, and handsome he is! If only it might happen that he would mellow with time, and learn to take subjects by their convenient handles, and not spread them out so! He makes me remember that I am a skeleton, with—pah! How glad I am I don’t know all about my bones!”

“What are you studying out, Signora?” asked Isabel at her elbow.

“I am trying not to see everything crumble at once into its elements,” she replied distressfully. “My dear, if you will make that man talk like a human being, I shall be thankful. Find out if he has a heart, or only a triangle instead; and just watch his fingers to see if there are little scales and figures marked along the insides of them. He is worth rescuing. I like him.”

The little baroness went, and more people came in. It was after _Ave Maria_, and they were obliged to light the candles, and close the windows and shutters on the street. But the great _sala_ needed not to be closed, for no one could see into it, and so the exquisite twilight was left free to enter, with only the soft light of a single hanging lamp to shame its tender radiance. This inner light, the steady, deep-hued flame of olive oil, burning in an antique bronze lamp, made the room softly visible, and, shining out into the garden, turned the yellow gold of the jasmine blossoms into red gold here and there, and made the snow-white of the orange-flowers look like a sun-lighted drift of the north.

TO BE CONTINUED.

A JOURNEY TO THE LAND OF MILLIARDS.[199]

There is much in a title. Many an insignificant if not objectionable individual is widely welcomed and sweetly smiled upon because he boasts a “handle to his name”; and that which is true as regards man is equally so of books. Many a shallow and worthless production, like the monstrosities produced in the floral world by fancy horticulturists, becomes “the rage” from its pretentious or, as the case may be, its unpronounceable name.

There is, then, much in the title of a book; and yet, had M. Victor Tissot sent into the world his _Voyage au Pays des Milliards_ under the sober superscription of “Travels in Germany,” although it might not so immediately have attracted the public eye, it must ultimately have secured the attention and interest it so justly merits, and which have necessitated the issue of nine editions in the course of a few weeks.

This interest is sustained throughout the book by the varied information it contains respecting facts connected with Prussianized Germany, which are related not only with that happy fluency of style which is the gift of most literary Frenchmen, but also with a justice of reasoning and fairness of appreciation of which one of his nation dealing with such a subject might not always be found capable.

The work professes to be simply _notes de voyage_ addressed to a friend; a series of sketches which introduce the reader in a familiar manner—“looking at everything, listening everywhere”—to this new Germany, such as she has sprung forth, sword in hand, from the brain of Herr von Bismarck.

The first part of the book relates to Southern and Central Germany.

France, before the time of her misfortunes, was wont to say with her old university professors, _Qui non vidit Coloniam non vidit Germaniam_,[200] but now the proverb is changed, and it must rather be said, “He who would see Germany must see Berlin.” In the vast Germanic body, Berlin has alike usurped the place of head and heart; she it is who conceives, meditates, contrives, commands; she who deprives and bestows, legislates and executes; and she who distributes glory. Towards her flow the life and warmth of that Germany which is now no more the land of picturesque and simple legends, sweet ballads, Gothic dreams, holy cathedrals, but the land of blood and iron. The knight Albrecht Dürer no more finds his steps arrested in the enchanted forest of poetry and art, but rides rough-shod over the high-roads of Europe, armed with a needle-gun, and with a spiked helmet on his head.

“Had we but known,” sighed France, after the war—“if we had only known!” Yes, often enough has it been repeated that her ignorance respecting her neighbors, of all that they were secretly designing and silently doing, was one chief cause of her disasters.

“Had we but known!” “Well, then,” writes M. Tissot, “for the future _let us know_! Let us be aware that the Germans ransack our country in every sense; that they study our language, manners, customs, and institutions; following us step by step, and spying us everywhere, until they know France more thoroughly than we know it ourselves. For thirty years past has their spyglass been busily scrutinizing every corner of our land.… Let us then learn to do among them what they do among us: the weak place in the breastplate of the German Colossus is not very difficult to discover.”

In going forth to repel invasion, Germany has suffered herself to be carried away by the spirit of conquest, and has returned home with a rear-guard of vices which before she knew not, and under a despotism which it had cost her the struggle of centuries to break. Having departed from the path of humanity and civilization, she has gone back to her wild forests despoiled of her studious leisure and with the tradition of her ancient domestic virtues well-nigh lost; while, a prey to all the material appetites, she forgets God, or else denies him, and no longer believes in anything except the supreme triumph of her cannon.

From fear of being attacked by the revolution, she enters into an alliance with it. In proof of this, we have but to observe with what gratified attention the socialists, not only in Germany but all over Europe, watch the moral decomposition which is going on in this atmosphere of materialism and of pride. They know very well that the day is sure to come, and is perhaps not far distant, when “they will make a descent into the arena with their knotted clubs; and that this argument will suffice to put to flight the gentlemen whose wisdom has discovered the soul to be composed of cellular tissue, and has shut up patriotism in a membrane.”

The Catholics also act with energy in the strength of their (for the most part passive) resistance to an oppressive and unjust power, whose hypocritical excuses render it as contemptible as its tyranny makes it odious in the eyes of every upright man, whether Catholic or Protestant.

“From a distance,” says M. Tissot, “it might be easy to deceive one’s self into a doubt as to the dangerous nature of so many alarming symptoms, but on the spot I know for a certainty that an attentive listener cannot fail to hear the pulsations of a nation disturbed to its very depths, and ill at ease. Is it,” he asks, “as a means of escape from impending dangers, and to prepare the minds of the people for a skilful diversion, that the parliamentary orators and the official Prussian press keep them in a continual ferment of warlike excitement, and appear to regret the milliards left behind on the banks of the Rhone and the Garonne? This is the opinion of thoughtful minds, for it is on the field of battle only that a reconciliation between the Catholics and their adversaries can be expected to take place.”

Before visiting the imperial capital, the traveller on whose work the present observations are principally based begins with the southern states, “being desirous of interrogating those ancient provinces which have sacrificed their autonomy to a gust of glory, and of asking if the mess of pottage is still savory, or whether, awakening from recent illusions, there is not some regret for the good old times.”

After visiting Ulm, with its enormously increased fortifications; Stuttgart, the sunny capital of Würtemberg; and the little university town of Heidelberg—respecting all which places M. Tissot has much to say—the impression resulting from his observations is that South Germany was duped and alarmed into submitting to Prussia. With regard to Frankfort, no longer the free city of past times, his conviction is that the real population, quite as much as that of Metz and Strassburg, detests the sight of the spiked helmets and the sound of the Prussian fifes and drums (the latter shaped like small saucepans), constantly passing through the streets.

The particulars of the Prussian occupation of this city in 1866 are still fresh in the memory of its inhabitants. “The history of those days,” M. Tissot tells us, “has never been written.” We will give in his own words the account he received from an eye-witness:

“On the 6th of July, the Senate announced to the townspeople
the impending entry of the Prussians, ‘whose good discipline
was a sure guarantee that no one would be exposed to
inconvenience.’

“In spite, however, of this ‘good discipline,’ all the
banking-houses hastened to place themselves under the
protection of the foreign consuls, and hoisted American,
English, French, or Swiss colors. The streets were as
deserted as a cemetery.

“The Prussians did not arrive until nine in the evening,
when they made a triumphal entry. At their head, with his
sword drawn, rode General Vogel von Falkenstein; music
played, drums beat; there was noise enough to wake the dead.
Billeting tickets had been prepared for this army of
invaders, who, however, preferred to select their own
quarters. The troops divided into squadrons of 50, 70, 100,
or 150 men, and, led by their officers, forced their way
into houses of good appearance. The inmates, who had, in
some cases, retired for the night, ran bewildered through
their rooms. The officers, finding ordinary candles on the
tables, held their pistols at the throats of the women, and
ordered them to bring wax-lights. But their first care was
to demand the keys of the cellar, after which they passed
the night in drinking the best wines, making especial havoc
among the champagne.

“Next day, General Vogel von Falkenstein, surnamed _Vogel
von Raubenstein_, or the bird of prey, caused to be read and
posted up in the streets a proclamation establishing the
state of siege. He suppressed all the newspapers, prohibited
all private _réunions_, and announced moreover a long list
of requisitions.

“On the 18th of July, General von Falkenstein, who the day
before had compelled the town of Frankfort to purchase from
the contractor of the Prussian army many thousands of
cigars, now demanded that there should be delivered to him
60,000 ‘good pairs of shoes,’ 300 ‘good saddle-horses,’ and
a year’s pay for his soldiers—promising, in return, to make
no other requisition upon the inhabitants.… On the 19th they
brought him six millions of florins; but as, in the course
of that same evening, General von Falkenstein was called to
command elsewhere, the Senate received anew, on the morning
of the 20th, a note expressed as follows:

“‘Messieurs the senators of the city of Frankfort are
informed that their town is laid under a contribution of war
for the amount of twenty-five millions of florins, payable
within twenty four hours.

“‘MANTEUFFEL.
“‘HEADQUARTERS, FRANKFORT, July 30, 1866.’”

“Three of the principal bankers of Frankfort were
immediately delegated to present themselves before General
Manteuffel, to remind him of the promises given by his
predecessor, and to entreat him to withdraw this fresh
imposition. All that they obtained was a delay of three
times twenty-four hours.

“‘I know,’ said Manteuffel to them, ‘that I shall be
compared to the Duke of Alva, but I am only here to execute
the orders of my superiors.’

“‘And what shall you do if, between now and Sunday, we have
not paid?’ asked a member of the deputation—‘you will
not——?’

“‘I read the word on your lips,’ rejoined the General;
‘alas! yes, I shall give up the town to pillage.’

“‘In that case, why do you not at once, like Nero, set fire
to the four corners of Frankfort?’

“To this sally General Manteuffel contented himself by
answering: ‘Rome arose only more fair from her ashes.’[201]

“Before quitting the General, the deputation asked whether
this imposition would be the last.

“‘On my part, yes; I give you my word of honor for it; but
another general may come and replace me, with orders of
which I know nothing.’

“The threat of the pillage and bombardment of the city
spread with the rapidity of lightning; the burghers and
bankers contributed together to pay the ransom.

“Five days later, General de Roeder sent for the President
of the Chamber of Commerce, to whom he read the following
telegram, which he had just received from M. von Bismarck:

“‘Since the measures hitherto taken have not been found
sufficient to obtain their object, close, from this evening,
all the telegraph and post-offices, the hotels, inns, and
all public establishments; prohibit the entry into the town
of any persons, and of every kind of merchandise.’

“These few facts, selected from innumerable others of a
similar kind, and which are of warranted authenticity, are
sufficiently edifying.”

We may add, that with memories like the foregoing we cannot wonder that Frankfort, once the free, is now the irreconcilable, city.

But we hasten on to glance at the capital, where, more plainly than anywhere else, may be seen the impress of events more recent still. Space fails us to do more than merely refer to the descriptions given of the material city, its public buildings, its homely palace, its long, monotonous lines of streets, “ruled straight by the cane of the corporal-king,” and built right and left of the pestiferous Spree; the colossal arsenal, piled with the captured arms of France, and which is to Berlin what their cathedral is to other European cities. Leaving all this, and much besides, we will briefly consider the effects of the late war and of the milliards of France upon the people of Germany.

On entering Berlin the visitor, as he leaves the railway carriage, is greeted by the sight of a large placard posted up at the four corners of the station, and bearing the appropriate warning, “_Beware of Thieves_.” This is a small indication of a momentous fact; for if, from her very beginning, Prussia has chosen Mars for her tutelar divinity, her worship of Mercury since the last war has left him but a divided throne.[202]

Like the arsenal, the _Bourse_ sums up the recent history of Prussia. The greed of gain has in fact taken entire possession of the people, and in no other European city is covetousness so ferocious or the thirst for gold so ardent as in the Prussian capital. Princes, ministers of state, and high functionaries of the crown meditate financial combinations, and launch into speculative investments, from which they intend to secure large profits; tradespeople and manufacturers invent skilful falsifications, whether in figures or in merchandise; students of the university arrange lotteries—all, great and small, rich and poor, are alike in search of prey.

In a pamhlet published by Herr Diest-Haber, under the characteristic title of _Plutocracy and Socialism_ (“Geldmacht und Socialismus”) are to be found revelations which are anything but edifying, and supported by proofs, respecting the more than questionable probity of certain ministers of high position in the state. Gustaf Freitag, also, wrote in 1872: “Great evils have resulted to us from victory. The honor and honesty of the capital have greatly suffered. Every one is possessed by a senseless passion for gain: princes, generals, men in high administrative positions, all are playing an unbridled game, preying on the confidence of small capitalists, and abusing their position to make large fortunes. The evil has spread like fire; and at the sight of this widely extended corruption it is impossible not to fear for the future.”

The army is also tainted. In 1873, an aid-de-camp of a small German prince, whose services in the war had brought him nothing, thought well to indemnify himself, and by forging his master’s signature pocketed the sum of 300,000 thalers from the coffers of the state.

But the example is set in high quarters, where in everything might is made to overrule right. Could it be expected that so many thrones confiscated, without a thought of justice; so many provinces seized, to form the lion’s share; so complete an overthrow of the most ordinary moral principles; treaties torn up like false bank-notes; a policy at the same time so crafty and audacious, could fail to find sedulous imitators in a people naturally prone to rapine?

The arrival of the five milliards upset the equilibrium of the German brain. Every form of speculation sprang from the ground like fungi after a shower; everything—breweries, grocery companies, streets, roads, canals—was parcelled out in shares. Houses were sold at the exchange, and in the course of two hours had five or six times changed their owner. In eight months, the price of tenements was doubled; fifty or sixty persons would dispute the possession of a garret. In 1872, the average number of persons inhabiting a house of three or four stories (the usual height in Berlin) was from fifty-five to sixty-five, or ten persons to a room. Masons made fortunes, worked ten hours, went in a cab from the stone-yard to the _restaurants_, and drank champagne in beer-glasses. A simple brick-and-mortar carrier earned five thalers a day; and small bankers’ clerks, at the present time out of situation and shoe-leather, paraded in white kid gloves in the first boxes of the theatre—not to speak of far worse extravagances still. Societies of share venders fiercely quarrelled with each other over the purchase of feudal castles in the neighborhood, which were to be transformed into _casinos_ on a large scale, with theatre in the open air, artificial lakes and mountains, Swiss dairies, and games for every taste. But this dream of the Thousand-and-one Nights did not last a year. The temples of pleasure are bankrupt, and “the police have seized Cupid’s quiver.” The whole of Germany—“the nation of thinkers,” as her philosophers love to call her—was dazzled by the deceitful mirage, and so fierce was the eagerness for gain that at one time it was scarcely prudent to go to the exchange without a revolver. Fights were of constant occurrence, and ardent speculators would collar each other like stable-boys.[203] Before the close of 1872, nearly eight hundred and fifty different shareholding investments had sprung up. The middle classes, the representatives of honest and laborious industry, have been the principal victims of these hollow speculations; and in a public report made by the Governor of the Bank of Prussia, January 1, 1873, it was stated that in the course of two years several millions of thalers had been extorted by unscrupulous adventurers from the credulous public.

In various ways it is evident that, if France paid dearly for her defeat, Germany is paying far more dearly for her glory, besides having so mismanaged matters that peace to her is more costly than war. Herr Schorlemer-Ast lately declared in the Reichstag that the financial burdens of the empire, from her system of complete and permanent armament, are crushing all classes. “The milliards,” he says, “that we have received are already converted into fortresses, ships-of-war, Mauser rifles, and cannon; the military budget has this year increased by nineteen millions of marks, … and into this budget we cast all our resources, all our reserves, all our savings, but never can we meet its demands; and thus the land becomes more and more impoverished.” There is another method, also, by which the “eminently moral” government of the Emperor seeks to increase its resources, and this is by lotteries. A Protestant minister observing to his majesty that these lotteries were a very bad example, the latter replied, “You are mistaken; they are instituted to punish already on earth the cupidity of my people: the great prize is never drawn.”

Fresh imposts are also created; but the time for these is scarcely the present, when, according to the testimony of Germans themselves, commerce languishes, the manufacturing interest is passing through a crisis of which it is impossible to foresee the end, and on all sides arise murmurs and complaints. And yet we hear of proposals like that of Herr Camphausen in the Reichstag, namely, to “demand more labor from the artisan and pay him less for it.” A profitable subject, truly, for communist declamation must this be; and well might Bebel, the notorious socialist of Leipzig, say, “Prussia is doing our work for us; we need but fold our arms and wait,” and his colleague, Liebknecht, declare that “M. de Bismarck has done more for the radical interest than five socialist ministers could have done. The people see with bitterness how little has been gained by sacrifices so great. The expense of living has doubled since the war, but the salaries have not increased in proportion.… In the manufacturing districts there is fearful distress.… Families of five or six persons obliged to starve on a thaler a week! See what the milliards have done for us! No wonder that month after month sees ten or fifteen thousand Germans emigrate to other lands.”

We pass over the dark portraiture of “misery and crime” in Berlin, and also the information respecting the reptile agency of the official press, the political dye-house of the empire, whose business it is to color all communications with the hue required by the prime minister. Nor have we space to dwell on the state of education in Prussia, which is far behind the rest of Germany,[204] nor the falsification of history and even geography in its educational books. We cannot, however, forbear producing the lesson with which the studies of the day begin in the primary schools.

The master holds up before his pupils the Emperor’s portrait, asking, “Who is this?”

Making a reverential bow, they answer, “His majesty the Emperor.”

“What do we owe to him?” resumes the teacher, in a grave and impressive tone.

“We owe him obedience, fidelity, and respect; we owe him all that we have and all that we possess.”

Would any child, unless a German or a Russian, find its loyalty increased after two or three weeks of this daily exercise? We doubt it.

The Catholic clergy proving a hindrance to the government in the application of its new catechism, the law on secular instruction was passed to force them out of the schools: the state, henceforth sole master, can form at the will of Cæsar, not Christians, but soldiers or slaves, which are more in accordance with its taste—all that is taught being made to converge to the one end of blind and absolute submission to secular power.

God being set aside to make way for the Emperor and his Church trampled under foot for the good pleasure of the prime minister, we or our children may see the fulfilment of the prediction written thirty or forty years ago by Heinrich Heine, in which, after announcing the reconstitution of the Germanic Empire, he says: “The Empire will hasten to its fall; and this catastrophe will be the result of a political and social revolution, brought about by German philosophers and thinkers. The Kantists have already torn up the last fibres of the past, the Fichteans will come in turn, whose fanaticism will be mastered neither by fear nor instinct. The most of all to be dreaded will be the philosophers of nature, the communists, who will place themselves in communication with the primitive forces of the earth, and evoke the traditions of the Germanic pantheism. Then will these three choirs intone a revolutionary chant at which the land will tremble, and there will be enacted in Germany a drama in comparison to which the French Revolution shall have been but an idyl.”

[199] _Voyage au Pays des Milliards._ V. Tissot. Paris: Dentu.

[200] He who has not seen Cologne, has not seen Germany.

[201] “I have this dialogue from one who was present.”—_M.
Tissot._

[202] M. Tissot’s book contains some painful pages having
relation to the votaries of Venus also, to which we
need do no more than allude.

[203] The _Tribune_ for August 1, 1872, has the following:
“Never has the liquidation been so quiet as to-day.
Not a single box on the ear was given in full
exchange, nor had the syndic to interfere on account
of abusive language.”

[204] “Prussia is of all Germany the country which contains
the largest number of persons unable to read and
write,” is the testimony of Herr Karl Vogt.

A QUAINT OLD STUDIO IN ROME, A QUEER OLD PAINTER, AND A LOVELY PICTURE

The exterior does not indicate the remotest relationship with a studio. I must have misunderstood the _père’s_ directions. I wish these artists would show some consideration for errant humanity, and number their quarters. Now, that wall which begins on the street and backs in behind the rubbish-pile might pass for a parapet but for the green door with a bell-rope dangling from the upper panel, which compromises its military character at once. It might pass for a convent wall. Indeed, the little church which seems to have been pushed entire right out of the farther end might be accepted as a very respectable declaration to that effect. But a more accurate observation of the premises is fraught with diffidence in the latter conjecture. A portion of an unpretentious dwelling-house, which is incorporated with that part of the wall abutting on the Via del Colosseo, and the appearance at one of the windows of a fossilized old woman who proceeds to hang out linen, dispel effectually the monastic probability intimated above. But why indulge in speculations? The most summary, and after all most rational, way of solving my doubts is to approach the green door, pull the bell-cord, enter, and, _si monumentum quæris_, _circumspice_. Pulling the bell-rope produced an inquiring bark from a dog within. Then the door opened slowly, and just wide enough to admit a visiting card, insinuated edgeways. But, as if not liking my appearance, it closed with a short but very decisive slam. I took a short survey of my person, with the view of assuring myself that there was nothing in my dress or carriage which would excite a suspicion bearing reference to burglary. I had just come to a conclusion very flattering to my integrity, when a shrill female voice screamed from across the way, “_Tira! spingi!_”—Pull! push! I turned my immediate attention to the practical application of these laconic instructions. Nothing to pull but the bell-rope, nothing to push but the door. Another tug at the hemp, a canine response from within, the door opened as before, I pushed, entered, and the slamming process was repeated. I turned around with the view of confronting the slammer—a rope, a pulley, and a weight. He has a taste for mechanics, thought I. At the top of a few steps I saw a friendly-looking house-dog, who sniffed apologetically, and then whisked himself about, as if expressing a hearty welcome. If I had not had positive reason afterwards to arrogate to myself this compliment, I should have gone away with the conviction that the dog sniffed with satisfaction because the mingled odor of lemon, of orange, and of a hundred fragrant flowers which floated on the air was inexpressibly gratifying. I found myself in a quadrangular enclosure not unlike the cloister of a convent. The central plot was planted with orange and lemon trees, and with every kind of vegetable. It only lacked the traditional well in the centre, with the iron-bound bucket resting on the edge, and the iron rods for pulley, wrought into the form of a cross, to make it a perfect little cloister. ‘Tis true that the resemblance might be impaired by the large chicken-coop in the corner, which emitted a chorus of cackling suggestive of a prosperous barnyard. But a flourishing coop is no contemptible accessory to the effects of a religious community; and as for its encumbering the cloister, that is very easily explained. The consideration of the civil power for religious communities has disencumbered them of all their property outside the walls, and even extended itself to everything within that is worth taking care of. A marble pavement of variegated pieces, formed into mosaics of no definable pattern, extends around the garden. The walls of the house are studded with fragments of sarcophagi and frieze-work—here the hand of a child, there a lion’s head, yonder a foot—while these are interspersed with lamps of terra-cotta, such as are found in the Catacombs; and, high above all, a row of Roman vases let into the wall as far as the neck gives it the appearance of a battery of cannon. The well, which, sunk in the centre of the garden, would have completed the picture of a cloister, is over against the wall. An attempt had been made to apply a fly-wheel and a crank, with some other complicated machinery of ropes and pulleys, to the process of drawing water, but evidently didn’t approach a success, as the crank is rusty and the rope frayed with age and exposure. On the other side of the garden stands a large cistern of water literally alive with gold-fish. The house itself is built around the garden, save the portion enclosed by the wall. It is but one story high generally. It seems, however, that the builder, some time after the completion of the lower story, wanted to try the effect of another story; so, with an utter disregard of architectural designs and proportions, he raised the four walls at the fenestral apertures of which the fossil appeared. I ascertained afterwards that this addition forms the “apartments” of her antiquity. On the corner diagonally opposite arises a similar portion, which is reached by stairs on the outside—evidently the residence of the lord of the premises. A railing extends around the roof, while vines on trailers and a great fig-tree, which towers out of the garden and up to the roof, give the establishment quite an Oriental aspect. We only want a patriarch taking his evening promenade on the roof, and we have Syria in the shadow of the Colosseum. While I was contemplating all this the dog barked impatiently, ran ahead to an open door underneath a pent roof, and then trotted back, giving me to understand that he was very impatient to usher me in there. A Maltese cat appeared on the scene, walked furtively around me, inspected me from head to foot, and finally came to a halt in front of me and fixed his great, amber eyes upon me with an inquiring look, as which should say, “Are your intentions peaceful?” My addressing him by the name of “puss” seemed to satisfy him, and he trotted on with the dog.

The first object which met my gaze as I entered the door caused me to start back with a shudder; for I was not prepared for such a sight. On a table, stretched at full length, lay a human skeleton, with the head turned towards the door. It seemed to have taken that position of itself, with a view of seeing who passed in and out. The floor was littered with cartoons and bits of old lumber. In a corner stood an ancient-looking painting of a skeleton seated in a meditative attitude—one bony leg crossed on the other, the elbow planted on the knee, and the chin resting on the hand. It had not the appearance of a caricature, for the lipless mouth and fleshless jaws wore a solemn and awful expression, which the most intemperate and frivolous fancy could not associate with the ridiculous. The walls, too, were covered with cartoons of different sizes, some of which were very beautiful. One especially struck me with admiration. It represented the Eternal Father gazing out into the chaotic darkness which preceded the great act of volition, “_Fiat lux_.” The perfection of the _actus purus_ and _existentia_, which are identical in God, was powerfully expressed in the intensely active expression of the eyes and forehead. While all this occurred to me, a consciousness of the spirit of love, which mellowed and softened the sternness of that face, affected me. Passing another door, I found myself in a large room painted a Pompeian red. My first impression was that I had walked into the laboratory of an alchemist—a very justifiable impression. A long table in the middle of the room was crowded with vials of all sizes and every variety of form, containing liquids of the strangest colors. Crucibles, mortars, glass tubes, bellows, scales, and spirit-lamps were scattered over the table confusedly. A row of shelves garnished one of the walls, and upon them were arranged, in something like order, busts of different sizes and casts in plaster of arms, legs, feet, and hands. From the beams of the ceiling dangled a number of little cherubs of Berninian propensities—that is to say, they were very plump, very short, and kicked and doubled themselves up into the most impossible attitudes for little fellows of their exaggerated proportions. These, coupled with several chunks of half-wrought clay tumbled promiscuously into one corner, and a number of modelling tools, a sponge, and an elevated stool, would perhaps incline the visitor to the belief that he was in the sanctum of a sculptor. The other three walls were covered with pictures representing a variety of subjects, sacred and profane. Here a muscular, sightless Samson coped with the pillars of the temple of the Philistines, to the seemingly intense interest of a demure cardinal on the opposite wall. There Justice poised her scales in front of a sketch, which the most unpractised eye would have no difficulty in recognizing as the work of Fra Angelico, portraying the Last Judgment. The activity of the devils as they scourged the damned into the bottomless pit is striking. Farther on a “Battle of the Centaurs” afforded an interesting anatomical study. But the sweetest picture of all was a little one not over a foot square, which represented with vivid simplicity the dispute between the two hermits, St. Paul and St. Anthony. The latter holds up one hand argumentatively, and points with the other to the untouched loaf, while his earnest face seems to say: “Paul, take up the loaf and break it.” Paul looks respectful, but not overcome. He leans upon his long staff with both hands, and contemplates the loaf with a face betokening his resolution not to touch it, at least until more conclusive arguments be adduced; and, after all, it is a quiet, domestic sort of a picture. Beside this was another of about the same dimensions—one that pleased the eye not so much as the heart. It was St. Jerome in the wilderness. The crucifix is suspended high upon a thin sapling, and the great doctor kneels off at a distance, and prays with his hands joined before his breast. It is one of those prayerful pictures which recall Fra Bartolomeo, but the coloring was Timoteo Vite’s, and none else’s. In the corner of the room nearest the window I observed a ladder, made of iron bars, fastened into the wall, which terminated in a trap-door in the ceiling. At the foot of this ladder, right under the window, stood what seemed to be a sedan-chair. It was covered on all sides with oilcloth turned wrongside out. Before this chair stood an easel, on the easel a small picture, which I perceived was being touched by a brush; and I observed, furthermore, that the brush was manipulated by a hand of powerful proportions, such a hand as would have been enough of itself to build up that strange old house from the foundation-stone. Then a man’s head, adorned with gray locks and an old cap with a pair of turned-up flaps, emerged from the darkness, and I saw a pair of dark, bright, benevolent eyes smiling up at me. The face was bronzed, the beard gray and not heavy, but growing in a heavy instalment around the mouth and chin, then light on the under jaws, and developing into a bushy abundance in the direction of the ears. It was a pleasant, happy face, still possessing the ingenuous expression of the happy boy. As he worked himself out of the nook in which he was ensconced, and stood up to welcome me, giving me at the same time a grip of that powerful hand which I associated above with the construction of the house, but which then referred me to a blacksmith-shop, I had an opportunity of surveying his figure.

I should have said, rather, I saw an old dressing-gown of brown stuff which buttoned closely at the chin, was tied around him with a rope, and terminated in a pair of heavy brogans. I introduced myself by stating that the _père_ had requested me to call and see how the picture was doing. “Ah! there it is,” said the old man, and a smile of happy excitement mantled upon his face as he looked at the little picture on the easel, _La Notte del Correggio_. He gazed more intently than before, and then sank down quietly on one knee and scanned the face of the kneeling Virgin Mother, in whose face is reflected that wonderful intense light which concentrated in the face of the Child, as if desirous of seeing underneath the coloring. “The spirit of Correggio is here,” continued he in a musing strain; “no man living possessed his secret of blending colors into one another. I will not touch the face of the Child.”

“Then you believe,” said I, “that this is an original?”