Part 12 (1/2)
”This discomfort is shared with so many famous men that I should be inclined to regard it as a distinction,” cried the young idealist, with much ardor and little logic, as usual.
”That's as much as to say you would like to be descended from a tailor because Goethe was,” said the general, dryly. Not thinking of any answer to this, the young man said ”Hem!” and pulled his moustache.
”And you would like to wear a hump, because aesop did,” smiled the general.
”My dear general,” put in the poet, ”what has a hump to do with low birth?”
”Nothing intrinsically, and yet these two things do meet at one point.
The first is an imaginary evil, while the other is a positive one; but they are alike in the bad influence which they may exert on the character.”
”Oh, general!” laughed the hostess.
”With your permission,” he went on, ”I will tell you a story to ill.u.s.trate my paradox, which I see you don't accept at present: a very simple story, of something which I witnessed myself.”
”We are all ears,” simpered the host, and pa.s.sed a fat hand over the two pomaded cupid's wings, which stuck up on either side his head.
”Very interesting, I am sure,” said the hostess, in the politely condescending manner of her great prototype. The poet and the poetess made satirical faces, the idealist craned his neck forward, eager to listen.
The general gazed thoughtfully before him for a while, then he began, speaking slowly:
”He went by the name of Zwilk: by rights it was Zwilch; but after he was promoted for some brilliant deed of arms or other, he never called himself anything but Zwilk von Zwilneck. He liked the t.i.tle so much that he wrote it on all his books, and bought books that he never read, in order to write it on them.
”No one knew anything about his origin. Sometimes he pa.s.sed for the son of a crowned head and a dancer. I think he set this story going himself. Sometimes he pa.s.sed for the son of a sacristan in Reichenhall.
He never mentioned his family; he never went home; he received no letters, excepting those which came from comrades in the regiment. Only once did a letter arrive for him, which was plainly not from a brother officer. It was a narrow, greenish, forlorn-looking missive, with the address written zigzag, and the sealing wax spattered all over the cover. They brought it to him in the coffeehouse, and he turned quite red when the waiter presented it 'Ah, yes,' he said, stiffly, through his nose. 'A letter from my old nurse.' Heaven knows why we didn't believe much in that old nurse.
”Whatever Zwilk's origin might have been, his tastes were severely aristocratic. He never would let himself be introduced to a woman unless she belonged in 'Society.'
”Others of the corps recognized his exclusiveness by nicknaming him the 'Countess's Zwilk,' 'the n.o.bl' Zwilk,' and 'Batiste.' These were not very good jokes, but they never lost their charm for us, and we laughed at them just as much the hundredth time as the first. Zwilk laughed with us: his laugh used to make me nervous; it sounded like a bleat, and seemed to come out of his nose and ears. He was undeniably a handsome man, tall, blonde, broad-shouldered, stiff and slender, with a regular profile and a thick blonde beard.
”He had great success with women: that is, with young widows and elderly pensioners, and the blowsy provincial beauties, to whom, as I said, he would never be presented, but with whom he danced, all the same, at b.a.l.l.s in the early morning hours.
”You might think these ladies would consider his pompous impertinence an insult. On the contrary they were greatly impressed by his 'exclusiveness,' and when he waltzed with one of them she talked about it for a fortnight afterward.
”He wore his uniforms too tight, and his cuffs too long, and he used to pull the latter down over his knuckles. Those hands of his were incurably coa.r.s.e, in spite of all the care they got, and he was always fussing with them. Sometimes he trimmed the flat, uneven nails in public; sometimes he crooked the little fingers with graceful ease. His manners were stiff, and his German was florid, but ungrammatical. He spoke like a dancing master, who, having 'had a great deal to do with society,' feels obliged, for that reason, to p.r.o.nounce the most teutonic words with a French accent.
”He was at home in danger. Not only did he distinguish himself by reckless bravery in the field, but he showed in duels a cold indifference, which gave him great advantage over those of his opponents, who, though his equals in courage and his superiors in skill, were yet unable wholly to control a certain sentimental nervousness. The superior officers all praised him, for he was able, and he knew how to obey as well as to command. But he was very unpopular with his subordinates, to whom he showed himself extremely harsh, and with whom he never exchanged a joke, or a bit of friendly chat about their families, as the rest of us liked to do.
”As much audacity as he showed in great matters, just so little did he possess in small ones. Nothing could have induced him to tell a prince who said a horse had five legs, that it only had four.
”I am aware that this manner of judging him is retrospective. In those days, while we were in service together it hardly occurred to us, with our Austrian good humor, easy going, and perhaps a little bit superficial, to examine critically him or his failings. If we found him uncongenial, we hardly confessed it among ourselves, still less would we have acknowledged it to a civilian.
”He had one p.r.o.nounced enemy in the corps, and that was little Toni Truyn, cousin of Count Erich Truyn, the Truyn von Rantschin. Poor Toni!
He was the black sheep, the Karl Moor of his distinguished family, and if he never got so far as to turn incendiary and robber-chief, that was from lack of energy and of genius. The requisite number of paternal letters were not wanting.
”His family had a right to lecture Toni, for he had cruelly disappointed all their hopes. Destined from infancy to the Church, he suddenly, in his eighteenth year, developed religious scruples. His family regarded these as a symptom of nervous derangement, arising from too rapid growth, and they sent him to Rome to be scared back into an orthodox frame of mind by the hierarchy. To help matters, they provided him with an Abbe as a traveling companion.
”In less than a month, Toni, having quarreled with his Abbe, was going up and down in Rome, proclaiming his contempt for Popish superst.i.tions, and raving about heathen G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses like a Renaissance Cardinal. He neither presented himself at the Austrian Emba.s.sy, nor sought the customary Papal blessing: he wandered about with mad artist-folk, ate in hostelries, danced extravagantly at models' b.a.l.l.s, where he gave the Italian females lessons in Austrian Ch.o.r.egraphy, which caused them to open their eyes, and ended by falling in love with a market-girl from the Trastevere. When he came home, he brought his Trasteverina along, with the nave intention of marrying her. His father, not unnaturally declined this connection, Toni had still less mind to the Church, so they put him in the army.
”Found fault with by his superiors, idolized by his subordinates, cordially liked by the rest of us, he remained to the end, a middling officer and a splendid comrade. He rode round-shouldered and was incurably careless about his accoutrements, and because of his harmless cynicism, and his easy-going, half rustic unmannerliness, we christened him the Peasant Count and Farmer Toni.
”There was a legend that his Majesty, one day at a hunt or a race, or some one of those occasions that serve to bring the monarch a little nearer to his subjects, condescended to ask Toni's father, old Count Hugo, 'How is your family, and what are your sons doing?' 'The eldest,'