"If any one thing distresses my dear aunt," said Caspar, "more than myfondness for Sebaldus Dick's tavern, it is that there is an artist in thefamily!
"Dame Catherine would have been glad to see me an advocate, a priest, ora councillor. If I had become a councillor, like Monsieur Andreas VanBerghem; if I had snuffled out long and weary sentences, caressing mylace bands with dainty finger-tips, with what esteem and veneration wouldnot that worthy woman have regarded monsieur her nephew! She would havegreeted Monsieur le Conseiller Caspar with profound respect; she wouldhave 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 theyear XI. with--
"Pray take this, monsieur le conseiller; I have but two bottles left!"
Anything that monsieur my nephew Caspar, conseiller at the court ofjustice, could do would certainly have been perfectly right and suitable,and quite perfect in its way.
Alas for the vanity of human wishes! the poor woman's ambition was neverto be gratified. Her nephew is plain Caspar--Caspar Diderich; he has notitle, no wand of office, no big wig--he is just an artist! and DameCatherine has running in her head the old proverb, "Beggarly as anartist," which distresses her more than she can tell.
At first I used to try to make her understand that a true artist isworthy of great respect, that his works sometimes endure for ages, andare admired by many successive generations, and that, in point of fact,a good artist is quite as good as a councillor. Unhappily, I failed toconvince her; she merely shrugged her shoulders, clasped her hands indespair, and vouchsafed no answer.
I would have done anything to convert my aunt Catherine to myviews--anything; but I would rather die than sacrifice art and anartist's life, music, painting, and Sebaldus's tavern!
Sebaldus's tavern is delightful. It is the corner house between thenarrow Rue des Hallebardes and the little square De la Cigogne. As soonas you are through the archway you find within a spacious square court,with old carved wooden galleries all round it, and a wooden staircase toreach it; everywhere are scattered in disorder small windows of lastcentury with leaden sashes, skylights, and air-holes; old wooden postsare 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 theleft, a pigeon-cote forming the point of the gable end; then, again,beneath the galleries, other darkened windows in the same style, whereyou can see swillers and topers in three-cornered hats, distinguished bynoses red, purple, or crimson; little women of Hundsruck, in velvet capswith long fluttering ribbons, some grave, some laughing, others queer andgrotesque-looking; the hay-loft high up under the roof; stables,pigsties, cowsheds, all in picturesque confusion attract and confoundyour 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! Andwhen the glowing autumn sun, red as fire, showers golden rain upon thedecaying walls and timbers; when, as daylight fades into evening, theangular projections stand out more boldly, and the shadows deepen; whenall the tavern rings with songs, and shouts, and roars of laughter; whenfat Sebaldus, in leathern apron, runs to and from the cellar with the bigjug in his hand; when his wife Gredel throws up the kitchen window, andwith her long knife, well hacked along the edge, cleans the fish, or cutsthe necks of hens, ducks, or geese which struggle and gurgle in their ownblood; when pretty Fridoline, with her rosy little mouth and her longfair hair, leans out of her window to tend the honeysuckle, and over herhead the neighbour's tabby cat is gently swaying her tail and watching,with her cunning green eyes, the swallow circling in the deepeningpurple--I do assure you that a man must be utterly devoid of taste forthe picturesque not to stop and contemplate in ecstasy and listen to themurmuring sounds, or the louder din, or the falling whispers, and observewith an artist's eye the trembling lights, the flying shadows, andwhisper to himself, "Is not this beautiful?"
But you should see Maitre Sebaldus's tavern on a great occasion, when allthe jovial folks of Bergzabern crowd into the immense public room--someday 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 allsitting round the oaken table, between one and two o'clock in theafternoon; old Doctor Melchior, Eisenloffel the blacksmith, and his oldwife, old Berbel Rasimus, Johannes the capuchin monk, Borves Fritz theclarionet-player at the Pied de Boeuf, and half a hundred more, laughing,singing, drinking, playing at _youker_, draining jugs and glasses, eatingpuddings and _andouilles_.
Mother Gredel was coming and going; the pretty maid-servants, Heinrichenand Lotte, were flying up and down the kitchen stairs like squirrels, andoutside, under the broad archway, was the booming, and banging, andjingling of the big drum and the cymbals, while the exciting proclamationwas 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 buffalo fromCalabria, and the onagra of the desert! Walk in, walk in! Don't befrightened! All walk in!"
And they did come in, in crowds.
Sebaldus, barring the passage with his burly form, as Horatius guardedthe bridge in the brave days of old, shouted to all--
"Your five kreutzers, friends and neighbours! Five kreutzers foradmittance! Pay, or I'll throttle you!"
It was an awful confusion; people climbed over each other's backs to getin faster, until Bridget Kera lost a stocking and Anna Seiler half herpetticoat.
About two, the bear-leader, a tall, rough-looking fellow, with red raggedhair and beard, and mounting a high sugar-loafed hat, pushed the doorajar, and cried, looking in--
"Just going to begin the fight!"
In an instant all the tables were emptied, many an untasted glass beingleft upon it. I ran to the hay-loft, climbed up the ladder four steps at atime, and drew it up after me. There, seated all alone upon a bundle ofhay, just inside the little skylight, I had a capital view.
What a throng! The old galleries were bending under their weight, theroofs were visibly swaying. I shuddered to think of what might happen.It seemed inevitable that they would all come down together like grapesin the wine-press, heaped up in a sea of heads.
They were hanging in clusters on the wooden pillars; yet higher in thegutters along the roof; yet higher about the pigeon-cote; higher stillover the skylights in the roof of the _mairie_; yet higher in the spireof St. Christopher's; and all this multitude were howling and shouting--
"The bears! the bears!"
When I had sufficiently admired and wondered at the immense crowd,looking down I saw in the middle of the court a poor, wretched,depressed-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 tumult increased, impatience was waxinginto anger, when the great red scoundrel, with his immense sugar-loafhat, advanced carelessly into the middle of the open space, and criedsolemnly, with his fist upon his hips--
"The onagra of the desert against any dog in the town!"
There was a silence of astonishment. Daniel, the butcher, with staringeyes and gaping mouth, asks--
"Where is the onagra?"
"There she stands!"
"That! why, it's an ass!"
"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 theattack, he turned nimbly round, and launched out with the whole lengthof his leg--so well aimed a kick that the dog fell back as if struck bylightning, with his jaw fractured!
Loud laughter rang all round, while the poor dog fled with a piteous yellof pain.
The bear-leader smiled at the butcher, a
nd 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 hisshrill tones--
"Gentlemen! ladies! are you all afraid? afraid of the onagra? The dogs ofyour 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 sodangerous 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 notlikely to get any more customers, so, putting the beast up in the stable,he approached the pigsty, opened it, and drew out by his chain Baptiste,the Savoy bear, an old brute with a brown mangy-looking coat, as sulkyand ashamed as a sweep coming down a chimney. For all he was not handsomethe shouts of applause rang out, and the fighting dogs themselves, shutinto the tavern porch, smelling a wild beast, set up a tragic howl thatmade your hair stand on end. The miserable bear was led quietly enough toa stake firmly driven in the ground, to which he was chained, all thetime slowly surveying the excited crowd with a melancholy eye.
"Poor old traveller!" I cried to myself, "would anybody have told you tenyears ago, when grave, terrible, and solitary you were traversing fromside to side the high glaciers in Switzerland, in the gloomy glens of theUnterwald, and your deep growls made the old oaks tremble in everyleaf--who could have told you that the day would come when, sad andresigned, with an iron collar round your throat, you would be tied to apost and devoured by dogs to amuse a mob at Bergzabern? Alas! _Sictransit gloria mundi_!"
As these meditations were occupying my thoughts, noticing that everybodywas bending forward to see, I did like the rest, and I soon saw thepossibility of warm work.
A pair of boar-hounds, belonging to old Heinrich, were being led tothe other end of the court. Struggling in the chain, these ferociouscreatures were foaming with rage. One was of the large Danish breed,white, with large black spots, supple of limb, with muscles like steelsprings, jaws opening wide like an alligator's; the other a huge houndfrom the Tannewald, never disabled in one leg according to law, ribsbarely covered, the backbone hard and knotted like a bamboo cane. Theydid not bark, but they were straining against the chain with all theirmight, and there stood old Heinrich with his grey broad head flung back,his ruddy moustache bristling, his thin razorbacked nose hooked over hislips, and his long leather-gaitered legs firmly planted against thestones in his strenuous efforts to restrain with both hands the eagerappetite of his dogs for the fight, while he opposed to their attempts tobound forward the whole weight of his body.
"Back! back!" he shouted to the bear-leader, and the ruffian ran back tothe shelter of a faggot-stack.
Then every face bending over the galleries grew red and hot with theexcitement of the horrid fray, and starting eyes glanced from every nookand corner.
The bear sat on his haunches gathered together ready for action, his hugepaws uplifted. I could see how he quivered in his rough skin, and hismuzzle seemed to annoy him terribly. All at once the chain was slipped;at a single leap the hounds cleared the intervening space, and theirsharp fangs were in a moment fixed in both poor Baptiste's ears, whoseheavy paws and long sharp claws hugged each bitter enemy around the neck,slowly digging into their straining bodies till the blood spurted out instreams. But he, too, was bleeding, for his ears were suffering cruellacerations; the dogs held on, and his tawny eyes were raised to the skywith a pitiable look of appeal. Not a cry, not a sigh or a groan escapedfrom a single combatant; the three animals formed a group as motionlessas if they had been carved in wood.
I could feel the perspiration running down my face.
This went on for five minutes.
At length the Tannenthaler seemed to be relaxing slightly; the bearweighed more heavily on him with his heavy paw, his eye kindling with agleam of hope; then there was another brief pause. There was a horridgroan, a cracking; the hound's backbone was broken, and he fell back uponthe stones, his jaws reeking with blood.
Then Baptiste, with a tremor of delight, threw both paws round the Dane,who had not yet let go his hold, but his teeth were slipping from thetorn and bloody ear. Suddenly he shook himself and sprang backward; thebear made a rush at his flying foe, but the chain held him back. The dogfled, red with blood, and only stopped when he had got safe behind hismaster, who gave him a favourable reception, while casting a glance athis other dog, which lay motionless.
And here Baptiste placed his mighty paw upon the victim of his fury andhis valour; carrying his head high, he snuffed the carnage with distendednostrils and panting sides; the veteran warrior was himself again.Frantic applause rose from the galleries to the church spire. The bearseemed to understand. I have never seen a more proud and resolutebearing.
After this fight all the spectators were taking breath; the capuchinfriar Johannes, seated upon the banister facing the field of battle,shook his stick, smiling with satisfaction in his long brown beard.People wanted a little relief; pinches of snuff were offered andaccepted, and the voice of Doctor Melchior, discussing and explaining thedifferent phases of the conflict, was heard over the noise of manytalkers. But he had no time to finish his speech, for in a moment thebarn-door flew open, and more than five-and-twenty dogs, great and small,the very vagrants and scum of the town, offered up as a sacrifice to dohonour to the occasion, wallowed in a heap into the yard, howling andyelling, barking, snapping, and snarling; then, as if second thoughts hadrather modified their ideas about valour, they all retreated into a safecorner of the yard, the farthest from the bear, where they contentedthemselves with angry protests, making short runs at the enemy and quickretreats, making a very sorry pretence of war.
"Oh, those cowardly curs! the miserable little brutes!" cried thevalorous occupants in the gallery.
And the much wiser and discreeter dogs looked up in answer, and seemed tosay--
"Go yourselves!"
Still the bear was standing well on the defensive when, to the generalastonishment, Heinrich reappeared, holding his Danish hound by the chain.
I have since been informed that he had wagered fifty florins with JosephKilian, the gamekeeper, that the boar-hound would renew the attack. Headvanced slowly, patting the dog with his hand, and saying persuasively--
"Good dog, Blitz! good dog!"
And the noble animal, in spite of his bleeding wounds, rushed in; thenthe whole pack of mongrels, curs, puppies, lurchers, and turnspits ran intoo in a long string, till poor Baptiste was covered with the vile rabblerout; he did what he could, he rolled over and over as far as his chainwould let him, growling and grunting, crushing one, sending another awaywith a bite, struggling furiously. The brave Dane still showed thegreatest intrepidity; he had caught the bear between the ears, and rolledover with him, his fore-legs in the air, whilst the rest were biting,some his legs, and some his torn and bleeding ears. There seemed no endto this plague of dogs.
"Enough! enough!" was the cry in every direction.
Yet still some were not satisfied, and kept crying on the dogs.
Heinrich at that moment darted across the yard like a flash of lightning;he seized his clog by the ear, and pulling it away with all his strength,cried--
"Blitz, Blitz, let go!"
But this was of no use. At last the man succeeded in making him loose hishold by a tremendous cut with his whip across his body, and, dragging theanimal away, they both disappeared under the archway.
The mongrels had not waited for this event to give up the battle; four orfive only still hung upon Bruin's side; the rest, scared, limping,yelping, were trying to find a way out. Suddenly one of those heroes, acur belonging to Rasimus, caught sight of the kitchen window, and, firedby a noble enthusiasm for his safety, he crashed
through glass and all.All the rest of the yelling crew, struck by the ingenuity of this plan,followed in the same road without a moment's hesitation. Plates anddishes, glasses and bottles, saucepans and kettles were all heard makinga fearful clatter, while Mother Gredel rent the air with her piercingcries of "Help, help!"
This was the best joke of the day. Roars of laughter hailed thepropitious escape of the dogs, even at the cost of so much good crockery.They laughed till the tears came into their eyes, and rolled down theirred faces, and they panted for breath.
In a quarter of an hour there came a lull; then people began to think itwas time for the terrible bear from Asturias to make his appearance.
"The Asturian bear! the Spanish bear!" was the cry.
The bear-leader made signs to the people to be quiet, as he had somethingto say to them. It was impossible! The cries and the uproar redoubled.
"The bear of Asturias! the bear of Asturias!"
Then the fellow muttered a few unintelligible words, unfastened the brownbear, and took it back into its den; then with every appearance ofprecaution he loosened the door of the pigsty and took the end of a chainwhich was lying on the ground. A formidable growling was heard inside.The man quickly passed the chain through a ring in the wall and fled,crying--
"Now, you there, let the dogs go!"
Immediately a black bear, low, and almost stunted in its stature, with alow forehead, ears wide apart, eyes red as fire, and glowing with afierce sullen passion, hurled himself out into the open, and finding thechain fast in the wall, howled furiously. Evidently this was a bear ofthe most deplorably low moral character! Moreover, he had been roused tomadness by the noise of the preceding combats, and his master had goodreason for not trusting himself much to him.
"Let go the dogs!" cried the bear-leader, putting his head out of thegranary skylight; "let them loose!"
Then he added--
"If you are not satisfied this time it won't be my fault. There will be abattle now!"
At that moment Ludwig Karl's big mastiff and Fischer de Heischland's pairof wolf-hounds, with tails low, hair straight and smooth, heads advancedand ears erect, came into the court together.
The heavy-headed mastiff calmly yawned as he stretched his sinewy legsand caved in his long back. But after a long and leisurely yawn he slowlyturned round, and catching sight of the bear he stood immovable as ifstupefied. The bear, too, fixed his vicious glowing eyes upon him withears expanded and his huge claws indenting the ground under them.
The wolf-hounds drew up as reserves in the rear of the mastiff.
Then such silence fell upon all that excited multitude that a dead leafmight have been heard rustling to the ground; but there followed a deep,low, fierce growl, like a coming thunderstorm, which sent a shudderthrough the crowd.
Suddenly the mastiff sprang forward, the two others followed, and thenfor several seconds nothing was seen but a confused mass rolling roundthe chain, then blood and entrails mingled flowing over the stones, thenthe bear rising on his haunches hugging the mastiff between his terribleclaws, swaying to and fro his heavy head, for a moment and gaping widewith his crimson jaws, for the muzzle was gone; in the struggle it hadfallen off!
Then a low but rising cry of fear passed over the crowd in the galleries.No applause now, only a well-grounded alarm! The mastiff was in theagonies of death, with a rattling in his throat; the wolf-hounds lay tornand dead on the bloodstained earth; in the stables all round the courtlong agitated roaring and bellowing betrayed the terror of the cattle,whose kicking and plunging made the walls shake; but the bear neverstirred: he seemed to be enjoying the universal alarm.
But lo! in this predicament was heard a slight but unmistakable crackinglike timber giving way, then more cracks; the old rotten galleries werebeginning to yield under the heavy pressure of the crowd; and there wasin this noise, just heard in the midst of the dead silence of suspense,something so dreadful that I, in my place of safety, felt a cold shiverpass over me. Taking a rapid survey of the galleries before me, I sawevery face changed in colour, pale with a bluish, ashy paleness; someopen-mouthed, others with bristling hair, listening intently, holdingtheir breath. The capuchin friar Johannes seated on the banister hadturned from crimson to a greenish hue, and the big red nose of DoctorMelchior had turned from red to sallow the first time for twenty years;the poor little women trembled without stirring from their places,knowing that the least agitation would bring down the whole place.
I could have wished to fly too. I fancied I could see the thick oakenpillars of the gallery bowing to the ground. I cannot tell whether thiswas illusion or not, but in a moment the principal beam gave a loud crackand became depressed by three inches at the least. Then, my friends, itwas horrible to behold--the deep silence of a minute before was succeededby tumult, cries, screams, and ravings. That mass of human beings heapedup in the galleries, one above another, were some clutching the walls,the pillars, the banisters; others were fighting with fury, and evenbiting, to get away faster, and from the midst of this frightfulconfusion arose the plaintive voices of the suffering women. I shudder atthe remembrance. Oh, may I never see such a sight as this again!
But, most terrible circumstance of all, the bear was chained close by thestaircase that leads up to the galleries!
If I were to live a thousand years never should I forget the horror ofFriar Johannes, who had cleared a way for himself with his long staff,and was placing his foot on the last step when he discovered, just beforethe bottom of the staircase, Beppo seated calmly on his tail, his chaintightened, his eye expressive of joy, ready to snap him up first!
None can tell the muscular power which Maitre Johannes was obliged to putforth to stem the force that was driving him in from behind. Convulsivelygrasping the banister with both hands, his broad shoulders formed amighty buttress against the pressing flood. Like Atlas, I do believe hewould have borne the earth upon his back to save his precious skin.
In the midst of this confusion and tumult, and when there seemed noway to avert the threatening catastrophe, suddenly the door of thecattle-shed opened violently, and the redoubtable Horni, MaitreSebaldus's magnificent bull, rushed into the arena, his massive dewlapshaking loosely like an apron, his tail extended straight, his mouth andnostrils white with fleecy foam.
It was an inspiration of the master's. He had resolved to risk his bullto save human life. At the same moment the fat, round, rosy face of ourlandlord appeared through the skylight of the stable, crying to the crowdnot to be alarmed, for that he would open the inner door which abuts intothe old synagogue, and let out the crowd by the Jews' street, which wasdone in two or three minutes, to the immense relief and comfort of thepublic.
But now listen to the end of my story.
Scarcely had the bear caught sight of the bull when he made an ugly rushupon this new adversary with so terrible a shock that the chain burst.The bull retired, facing his foe, to a corner of the court near thepigeon-cote, and there, head well down between his short legs and hornspresented, he awaited the shock of war.
The bear made several feints, slipping along by the wall from rightto left; but the bull, with his forehead almost touching the ground,followed the enemy's movements with marvellous coolness.
In five minutes the galleries had been cleared; the noise of the crowdtaking refuge down the Jews' street was becoming more remote, and thismanoeuvring of the two huge brutes seemed as if they were meditatinga drawn battle, when suddenly the bull, losing patience, threw himselfupon the bear with the whole momentum of his monstrous bulk. The unhappybrute, pressed so closely, took refuge under the wood-shed, but the headand horns of his foe pursued him thither, and there no doubt he nailedhis adversary to the wall, for although I could only see the bull'shind-quarters, I could hear a dreadful shriek, followed by a crunching ofbones, and presently a pool of blood was flowing over the pavement.
I could only see the bull's hind-quarters and his tail waving aloft likea battle-flag. You would have thought he wanted to bring the w
alls downby the furious and violent pounding of his hind-feet. That silent scenein shadow was fearful. I did not wait to see the end. I came carefullydown my ladder, and slipped out of the court like a thief. You mayimagine with what pleasure I inhaled the pure open air; and passingthrough the crowd collected round the door where the bear-leader wastearing his hair in his wild despair, I ran off to my aunt's house.
I was just going round under the arcades when I was stopped by my olddrawing-master, Conrad Schmidt.
"Caspar!" he cried, "where are you going in such a hurry?"
"I am going to paint the great bear-fight!" I answered enthusiastically.
"Another tavern scene, I suppose," he remarked with a shrug.
"Why not, Master Conrad? Is not a tavern scene as good as one in theforum?"
I would have said a good deal, but we were standing at his door.
"Good night, Maitre Conrad," I cried, pressing his hand. "Don't bear agrudge against me for not going to study in Italy."
"Grudge! No," replied the old master, smiling. "You know that privatelyI am of your opinion. If I tell you now and then to go to Italy, it is tosatisfy Dame Catherine. But follow out your own idea, Caspar. Men whoonly follow other men's ideas never do any good."
Hugues-le-Loup. English Page 22
