I Appear in A Manner Becoming My Name and Lineage
Fortune smiling at parting upon Monsieur de Balibari, enabled him to win a handsome sum with his faro-bank.
At ten o’clock the next morning, the carriage of the Chevalier de Balibari drew up as usual at the door of his hotel; and the Chevalier, who was at his window, seeing the chariot arrive, came down the stairs in his usual stately manner.
‘Where is my rascal Ambrose?’ said he, looking around and not finding his servant to open the door.
‘I will let down the steps for your honour,’ said a gendarme, who was standing by the carriage; and no sooner had the Chevalier entered, than the officer jumped in after him, another mounted the box by the coachman, and the latter began to drive.
‘Good gracious!’ said the Chevalier, ‘what is this?’
‘You are going to drive to the frontier,’ said the gendarme, touching his hat.
‘It is shameful — infamous! I insist upon being put down at the Austrian Ambassador’s house!’
‘I have orders to gag your honour if you cry out,’ said the gendarme.
‘All Europe shall hear of this!’ said the Chevalier, in a fury.
‘As you please,’ answered the officer, and then both relapsed into silence.
The silence was not broken between Berlin and Potsdam, through which place the Chevalier passed as His Majesty was reviewing his guards there, and the regiments of Bulow, Zitwitz, and Henkel de Donnersmark. As the Chevalier passed His Majesty, the King raised his hat and said, ‘Qu’il ne descende pas: je lui souhaite un bon voyage.’ The Chevalier de Balibari acknowledged this courtesy by a profound bow.
They had not got far beyond Potsdam, when boom! the alarm cannon began to roar.
‘It is a deserter,’ said the officer.
‘Is it possible?’ said the Chevalier, and sank back into his carriage again.
Hearing the sound of the guns, the common people came out along the road with fowling-pieces and pitchforks, in hopes to catch the truant. The gendarmes seemed very anxious to be on the look-out for him too. The price of a deserter was fifty crowns to those who brought him in.
‘Confess, sir,’ said the Chevalier to the police officer in the carriage with him, ‘that you long to be rid of me, from whom you can get nothing, and to be on the look-out for the deserter who may bring you in fifty crowns? Why not tell the postilion to push on? You may land me at the frontier and get back to your hunt all the sooner.’ The officer told the postillion to get on; but the way seemed intolerably long to the Chevalier. Once or twice he thought he heard the noise of horse galloping behind: his own horses did not seem to go two miles an hour; but they DID go. The black and white barriers came in view at last, hard by Bruck, and opposite them the green and yellow of Saxony. The Saxon custom-house officers came out.
‘I have no luggage,’ said the Chevalier.
‘The gentleman has nothing contraband,’ said the Prussian officers, grinning, and took their leave of their prisoner with much respect.
The Chevalier de Balibari gave them a Frederic apiece.
‘Gentlemen,’ said he, ‘I wish you a good day. Will you please to go to the house whence we set out this morning, and tell my man there to send on my baggage to the “Three Kings” at Dresden?’
Then ordering fresh horses, the Chevalier set off on his journey for that capital. I need not tell you that I was the Chevalier.
‘From the Chevalier de Balibari to Redmond Barry, Esquire, Gentilhomme Anglais, a l’Hotel des 3 Couronnes, a Dresde en Saxe.
‘Nephew Redmond — This comes to you by a sure hand, no other than Mr. Lumpit of the English Mission, who is acquainted, as all Berlin will be directly, with our wonderful story. They only know half as yet; they only know that a deserter went off in my clothes, and all are in admiration of your cleverness and valour.
‘I confess that for two hours after your departure I lay in bed in no small trepidation, thinking whether His Majesty might have a fancy to send me to Spandau, for the freak of which we had both been guilty. But in that case I had taken my precautions: I had written a statement of the case to my chief, the Austrian Minister, with the full and true story how you had been set to spy upon me, how you turned out to be my very near relative, how you had been kidnapped yourself into the service, and how we both had determined to effect your escape. The laugh would have been so much against the King, that he never would have dared to lay a finger upon me. What would Monsieur de Voltaire have said to such an act of tyranny? But it was a lucky day, and everything has turned out to my wish. As I lay in my bed two and a half hours after your departure, in comes your ex-Captain Potzdorff. “Redmont!” says he, in his imperious High-Dutch way, “are you there?” No answer. “The rogue is gone out,” said he; and straightway makes for my red box where I keep my love-letters, my glass eye which I used to wear, my favourite lucky dice with which I threw the thirteen mains at Prague; my two sets of Paris teeth, and my other private matters that you know of.
‘He first tried a bunch of keys, but none of them would fit the little English lock. Then my gentleman takes out of his pocket a chisel and hammer, and falls to work like a professional burglar, actually bursting open my little box!
‘Now was my time to act. I advance towards him armed with an immense water-jug. I come noiselessly up to him just as he had broken the box, and with all my might I deal him such a blow over the head as smashes the water-jug to atoms, and sends my captain with a snort lifeless to the ground. I thought I had killed him.
‘Then I ring all the bells in the house; and shout and swear and scream, “Thieves! — thieves! — landlord! — murder! — fire!” until the whole household come tumbling up the stairs. “Where is my servant?” roar I. “Who dares to rob me in open day? Look at the villain whom I find in the act of breaking my chest open! Send for the police, send for his Excellency the Austrian Minister! all Europe shall know of this insult!”
‘“Dear Heaven!” says the landlord, “we saw you go away three hours ago!”
‘“ME!” says I; “why, man, I have been in bed all the morning. I am ill — I have taken physic — I have not left the house this morning! Where is that scoundrel Ambrose? But, stop! where are my clothes and wig?” for I was standing before them in my chamber-gown and stockings, with my nightcap on.
‘“I have it — I have it!” says a little chambermaid: “Ambrose is off in your honour’s dress.”
‘“And my money — my money!” says I; “where is my purse with forty-eight Frederics in it? But we have one of the villains left. Officers, seize him!”
‘“It’s the young Herr von Potzdorff!” says the landlord, more and more astonished.
‘“What! a gentleman breaking open my trunk with hammer and chisel — impossible!”
‘Herr von Potzdorff was returning to life by this time, with a swelling on his skull as big as a saucepan; and the officers carried him off, and the judge who was sent for dressed a proces verbal of the matter, and I demanded a copy of it, which I sent forthwith to my ambassador.
‘I was kept a prisoner to my room the next day, and a judge, a general, and a host of lawyers, officers, and officials, were set upon me to bully, perplex, threaten, and cajole me. I said it was true you had told me that you had been kidnapped into the service, that I thought you were released from it, and that I had you with the best recommendations. I appealed to my Minister, who was bound to come to my aid; and, to make a long story short, poor Potzdorff is now on his way to Spandau; and his uncle, the elder Potzdorff, has brought me five hundred louis, with a humble request that I would leave Berlin forthwith, and hush up this painful matter.
‘I shall be with you at the “Three Crowns” the day after you receive this. Ask Mr. Lumpit to dinner. Do not spare your money — you are my son. Everybody in Dresden knows your loving uncle,
‘THE CHEVALIER DE BALIBARI.’
And by these wonderful circumstances I was once more free again: and I kept my resolution then made, never to fall more into the hands of any recruiter, and henceforth and for ever to be a gentleman.
With this sum of money, and a good run of luck which ensued presently, we were enabled to make no ungenteel figure. My uncle speedily joined me at the inn at Dresden, where, under pretence of illness, I had kept quiet until his arrival; and, as the Chevalier de Balibari was in particular good odour at the Court of Dresden (having been an intimate acquaintance of the late monarch, the Elector, King of Poland, the most dissolute and agreeable of European princes), I was speedily in the very best society of the Saxon capital: where I may say that my own person and manners, and the singularity of the adventures in which I had been a hero, made me especially welcome. There was not a party of the nobility to which the two gentlemen of Balibari were not invited. I had the honour of kissing hands and being graciously received at Court by the Elector, and I wrote home to my mother such a flaming description of my prosperity, that the good soul very nearly forgot her celestial welfare and her confessor, the Reverend Joshua Jowls, in order to come after me to Germany; but travelling was very difficult in those days, and so we were spared the arrival of the good lady.
I think the soul of Harry Barry, my father, who was always so genteel in his turn of mind, must have rejoiced to see the position which I now occupied; all the women anxious to receive me, all the men in a fury; hobnobbing with dukes and counts at supper, dancing minuets with high-well-born baronesses (as they absurdly call themselves in Germany), with lovely excellencies, nay, with highnesses and transparencies themselves: who could compete with the gallant young Irish noble? who would suppose that seven weeks before I had been a common — bah! I am ashamed to think of it! One of the pleasantest moments of my life was at a grand gala at the Electoral Palace, where I had the honour of walking a polonaise with no other than the Margravine of Bayreuth, old Fritz’s own sister: old Fritz’s, whose hateful blue-baize livery I had worn, whose belts I had pipeclayed, and whose abominable rations of small beer and sauerkraut I had swallowed for five years.
Having won an English chariot from an Italian gentleman at play, my uncle had our arms painted on the panels in a more splendid way than ever, surmounted (as we were descended from the ancient kings) with an Irish crown of the most splendid size and gilding. I had this crown in lieu of a coronet engraved on a large amethyst signet-ring worn on my forefinger; and I don’t mind confessing that I used to say the jewel had been in my family for several thousand years, having originally belonged to my direct ancestor, his late Majesty King Brian Boru, or Barry. I warrant the legends of the Heralds’ College are not more authentic than mine was.
At first the Minister and the gentlemen at the English hotel used to be rather shy of us two Irish noblemen, and questioned our pretensions to rank. The Minister was a lord’s son, it is true, but he was likewise a grocer’s grandson; and so I told him at Count Lobkowitz’s masquerade. My uncle, like a noble gentleman as he was, knew the pedigree of every considerable family in Europe. He said it was the only knowledge befitting a gentleman; and when we were not at cards, we would pass hours over Gwillim or D’Hozier, reading the genealogies, learning the blazons, and making ourselves acquainted with the relationships of our class. Alas! the noble science is going into disrepute now: so are cards, without which studies and pastimes I can hardly conceive how a man of honour can exist.
My first affair of honour with a man of undoubted fashion was on the score of my nobility, with young Sir Rumford Bumford of the English embassy; my uncle at the same time sending a cartel to the Minister, who declined to come. I shot Sir Rumford in the leg, amidst the tears of joy of my uncle, who accompanied me to the ground; and I promise you that none of the young gentlemen questioned the authenticity of my pedigree, or laughed at my Irish crown again.
What a delightful life did we now lead! I knew I was born a gentleman, from the kindly way in which I took to the business: as business it certainly is. For though it SEEMS all pleasure, yet I assure any low-bred persons who may chance to read this, that we, their betters, have to work as well as they: though I did not rise until noon, yet had I not been up at play until long past midnight? Many a time have we come home to bed as the troops were marching out to early parade; and oh! it did my heart good to hear the bugles blowing the reveille before daybreak, or to see the regiments marching out to exercise, and think that I was no longer bound to that disgusting disc............