"If any one thing my dear aunt," said Caspar, "more than my fondness for Sébaldus Dick's , it is that there is an artist in the family!
" Catherine would have been glad to see me an advocate, a priest, or a councillor. If I had become a councillor, like Monsieur Andreas Van Berghem; if I had snuffled out long and weary sentences, my lace bands with dainty finger-tips, with what and would not that woman have regarded monsieur her nephew! She would have greeted Monsieur le Conseiller Caspar with profound respect; she would have set before me her best preserves, she would have poured out for me, in the midst of her circle of gossips, just a drop of Muscadel of the year XI. with—
"Pray take this, monsieur le conseiller; I have but two bottles left!"
Anything that monsieur my nephew Caspar, conseiller at the court of justice, could do would certainly have been right and suitable, and quite perfect in its way.
for the vanity of human wishes! the poor woman's ambition was never to be gratified. Her nephew is plain Caspar—Caspar Diderich; he has no title, no wand of office, no big wig—he is just an artist! and Dame Catherine has running in her head the old proverb, "Beggarly as an artist," which distresses her more than she can tell.
At first I used to try to make her understand that a true artist is worthy of great respect, that his works sometimes endure for ages, and are admired by many successive generations, and that, in point of fact, a good artist is quite as good as a councillor. Unhappily, I failed to convince her; she merely her shoulders, clasped her hands in despair, and no answer.
I would have done anything to convert my aunt Catherine to my views—anything; but I would rather die than sacrifice art and an artist's life, music, painting, and Sébaldus's tavern!
Sébaldus's tavern is . It is the corner house between the narrow des Hallebardes and the little square De la Cigogne. As soon as you are through the archway you find within a square court, with old carved wooden galleries all round it, and a wooden staircase to reach it; everywhere are in small windows of last century with leaden sashes, skylights, and air-holes; old wooden posts are nearly yielding under the weight of a roof that threatens to sink in. The barn, the rows of casks piled up in a corner, the cellar door at the left, a pigeon-cote forming the point of the gable end; then, again, beneath the galleries, other darkened windows in the same style, where you can see swillers and topers in three-cornered hats, by noses red, purple, or ; little women of Hundsruck, in caps with long fluttering ribbons, some grave, some laughing, others queer and grotesque-looking; the hay-loft high up under the roof; stables, , cowsheds, all in confusion attract and confound your attention. It is a strange sight!
For fifty years not a hammer has been lifted against this venerable ruin. You would think it was left for the special accommodation of rats! And when the glowing autumn sun, red as fire, showers golden rain upon the decaying walls and timbers; when, as daylight fades into evening, the angular stand out more boldly, and the shadows deepen; when all the tavern rings with songs, and shouts, and roars of laughter; when fat Sébaldus, in leathern , runs to and from the cellar with the big in his hand; when his wife Gredel throws up the kitchen window, and with her long knife, well along the edge, cleans the fish, or cuts the necks of hens, ducks, or geese which struggle and gurgle in their own blood; when pretty Fridoline, with her little mouth and her long fair hair, leans out of her window to tend the honeysuckle, and over her head the neighbour's tabby cat is gently swaying her tail and watching, with her cunning green eyes, the swallow circling in the deepening purple—I do assure you that a man must be of taste for the picturesque not to stop and in and listen to the murmuring sounds, or the louder , or the falling whispers, and observe with an artist's eye the trembling lights, the flying shadows, and whisper to himself, "Is not this beautiful?"
But you should see Maître Sébaldus's tavern on a great occasion, when all the folks of Bergzabern crowd into the immense public room—some day when a cock-fight is going on, or a dog-fight, or a magic-lantern.
Last autumn, on a Saturday—and it was Michaelmas Day—we were all sitting round the oaken table, between one and two o'clock in the afternoon; old Doctor Melchior, Eisenloffel the blacksmith, and his old wife, old Berbel Rasimus, Johannes the capuchin , Borves Fritz the clarionet-player at the Pied de Boeuf, and half a hundred more, laughing, singing, drinking, playing at youker, draining and glasses, eating puddings and andouilles.
Mother Gredel was coming and going; the pretty maid-servants, Heinrichen and Lotté, were flying up and down the kitchen stairs like squirrels, and outside, under the broad archway, was the booming, and banging, and of the big drum and the , while the exciting proclamation was being made: "Ho! ho! hi! Great battle to come off! The Asturian bear, Beppo, and Baptist, the Savoyard bear, against all dogs that may come. Boom! boom! Walk in, ladies! Walk in, gentlemen! Here's the from Calabria, and the onagra of the desert! Walk in, walk in! Don't be frightened! All walk in!"
And they did come in, in crowds.
Sébaldus, barring the passage with his burly form, as Horatius guarded the bridge in the brave days of old, shouted to all—
"Your five kreutzers, friends and neighbours! Five kreutzers for admittance! Pay, or I'll you!"
It was an awful confusion; people climbed over each other's backs to get in faster, until Bridget Kéra lost a stocking and Anna Seiler half her petticoat.
About two, the bear-leader, a tall, rough-looking fellow, with red hair and beard, and mounting a high sugar-loafed hat, pushed the door ajar, and cried, looking in—
"Just going to begin the fight!"
In an instant all the tables were emptied, many an untasted glass being left upon it. I ran to the hay-loft, climbed up the ladder four steps at a time, and drew it up after me. There, seated all alone upon a bundle of hay, just inside the little skylight, I had a capital view.
What a ! The old galleries were bending under their weight, the roofs were visibly swaying. I to think of what might happen. It seemed that they would all come down together like grapes in the wine-press, heaped up in a sea of heads.
They were hanging in clusters on the wooden pillars; yet higher in the along the roof; yet higher about the pigeon-cote; higher still over the skylights in the roof of the mairie; yet higher in the of St. Christopher's; and all this multitude were howling and shouting—
"The bears! the bears!"
When I had admired and wondered at the immense crowd, looking down I saw in the middle of the court a poor, wretched, -looking donkey, lean and ragged, his sleepy eyes half-closed, his ears hanging down. This dreadful object was to open the sports.
"What fools some people are!" I thought.
Minutes were passing away, the increased, was waxing into anger, when the great red scoundrel, with his immense sugar-loaf hat, advanced carelessly into the middle of the open space, and cried solemnly, with his fist upon his hips—
"The onagra of the desert against any dog in the town!"
There was a silence of . Daniel, the butcher, with staring eyes and mouth, asks—
"Where is the onagra?"
"There she stands!"
"That! why, it's an !"
"It's an onagra."
"Well, let us see what it is," cried the butcher, laughing.
He whistled his dog to come, and, pointing to the ass, cried—
"Foux, catch him!"
But, strange to say, as soon as the ass saw the dog running to the attack, he turned nimbly round, and launched out with the whole length of his leg—so well aimed a kick that the dog fell back as if struck by lightning, with his fractured!
Loud laughter rang all round, while the poor dog fled with a piteous yell of pain.
The bear-leader smiled at the butcher, and asked—
"Well, what's your opinion? Is my onagra an ass?"
"No," said Daniel, rather ashamed, "it is an onagra."
"All right! all right! any more dogs coming to fight my desert-born, desert-bred onagra? Come on, the onagra is ready!"
But no one came forward; and the bear-leader shouted in vain in his tones—
"Gentlemen! ladies! are you all afraid? afraid of the onagra? The dogs of your town ought to be ashamed of themselves. Come on! courage, gentlemen! courage, ladies!"
But no one was inclined to risk his dog's life or limbs against so dangerous an animal, and the cries for the bears were beginning again.
"The bears! the bears! bring out the bears!"
After waiting a quarter of an hour the fellow saw that his onagra was not likely to get any more customers, so, putting the beast up in the stable, he approached the , opened it, and drew out by his chain Baptiste, the Savoy bear, an old with a brown mangy-looking coat, as sulky and ashamed as a sweep coming down a chimney. For all he was not handsome the shouts of applause rang out, and the fighting dogs themselves, shut into the tavern porch, smelling a wild beast, set up a howl that made your hair stand on end. The bear was led quietly enough to a stake firmly driven in the ground, to which he was chained, all the time slowly surveying the excited crowd with a eye.
"Poor old traveller!" I cried to myself, "would anybody have told you ten years ago, when grave, terrible, and you were traversing from side to side the high in Switzerland, in the gloomy glens of the Unterwald, and your deep made the old oaks tremble in every leaf—who could have told you that the day would come when, sad and resigned, with an iron collar round your throat, you would be tied to a post and by dogs to amuse a mob at Bergzabern? Alas! Sic gloria mundi!"
As these were occupying my thoughts, noticing that everybody was bending forward to see, I did like the rest, and I soon saw the possibility of warm work.
A pair of boar-hounds, belonging to old Heinrich, were being led to the other end of the court. Struggling in the chain, these creatures were with rage. One was of the large Danish breed, white, with large black spots, of limb, with muscles like steel springs, opening wide like an alligator's; the other a huge hound from the Tannewald, never disabled in one leg according to law, barely covered, the hard and knotted like a bamboo . They did not bark, but they were straining against the chain with all their might, and there stood old Heinrich with his grey broad head flung back, his ruddy moustache , his thin razorbacked nose hooked over his lips, and his long leather-gaitered legs firmly planted against the stones in his efforts to restrain with both hands the eager appetite of his dogs for the fight, while he opposed to their attempts to bound forward the whole weight of his body.
"Back! back!" he shouted to the bear-leader, and the ruffian ran back to the shelter of a faggot-stack.
Then every face bending over the galleries grew red and hot with the excitement of the , and starting eyes glanced from every nook and corner.
The bear sat on his haunches gathered together ready for action, his huge paws uplifted. I could see how he quivered in his rough skin, and his seemed to annoy him terribly. All at once the chain was slipped; at a single leap the hounds cleared the intervening space, and their sharp were in a moment in both poor Baptiste's ears, whose heavy paws and long sharp claws hugged each bitter enemy around the neck, slowly digging into their straining bodies till the blood out in streams. But he, too, was bleeding, for his ears were suffering cruel lacerations; the dogs held on, and his eyes were raised to the sky with a pitiable look of appeal. Not a cry, not a sigh or a escaped from a single combatant; the three animals formed a group as motionless as if they had been carved in wood.
I could feel the running down my face.
This went on for five minutes.
At length the Tannenthaler seemed to be relaxing slightly; the bear weighed more heavily on him with his heavy paw, his eye with a gleam of hope; then there was another brief pause. There was a horrid groan, a cracking; the hound's backbone was broken, and he fell back upon the stones, his jaws with blood.
Then Baptiste, with a of delight, threw both paws round the Dane, who had not yet let go his hold, but his teeth were slipping from the torn and ear. Suddenly he shook himself and sprang backward; the bear made a rush at his flying , but the chain held him back. ............