Part 61 (1/2)
It was only a few waiters, who carried a well-spread table, in the midst of which a splendid pheasant stretched its brownish, s.h.i.+ning limbs, and filled the whole room with the odor of the truffles with which it was stuffed. By its side shone, in crystal bottles, the most precious Rhine wine, looking like liquid gold, and a silent, still undisclosed pie gave a presentiment of a piquant enjoyment.
The traveller sipped the several odors with smiling comfort, and took his place at the table with the full confidence that he would be able to fill the next half hour of his life with enjoyment and to advantage.
In this confidence he was not disappointed, and when he finally rose from the table, on which nothing but bones had remained of the pheasant, and nothing but the bare crust of the pie, his countenance beamed with satisfaction and delight.
The waiters made haste to remove the table, and the head waiter made his appearance with the large hotel register, in which he asked the traveller to enter his name.
He was ready for it, and already took the pen to write his name, when suddenly he uttered a cry of surprise, and excitedly pointed with his finger to the last written line of the book.
”Is this gentleman still in your hotel, or has he already left?” he asked, hastily.
”No, your honor, this gentleman arrived only an hour ago, and he will stay here to-night.” said the head waiter.
”Oh, what a surprise,” said the traveller, starting up. ”Come, please to conduct me at once to this gentleman.”
And, with impatient haste, he ran to the door, which the head waiter opened to him. But upon the threshold he suddenly stopped and seemed to pause.
”Pray wait for me here in this hall; I shall follow you immediately,” he said, as he returned to his room, closed its door, and hastened to the table in order to put his gold and his papers into the casket and to lock it.
In the mean while, the traveller in the small room of the second floor had finished his frugal meal, and was now occupied with making up his account and entering the little travelling expenses of the last few days into his diary.
”It is after all an expensive journey,” he muttered to himself; ”I shall hardly have a few hundred florins left on my arrival at Berlin. It is true the first quarter of my salary will at once be paid to me, but one-half of it I have already a.s.signed to my creditors, and the other half will scarcely suffice to furnish decently a few rooms. Oh, how much are those to be envied, the freedom and cheerfulness of whose minds are never disturbed by financial troubles!”
A loud knock at the door interrupted him; he hastened to put back his money into his pocket-book, when the door was hastily opened and the stranger of the first story appeared in it with a smiling countenance.
”Frederick Gentz!” exclaimed the owner of the room, in joyful surprise.
”Johannes Muller!” smilingly exclaimed the other, running up to him with outstretched arms, and tenderly embracing the little man, the great historian. ”What good fortune for me, my friend, that I put up at this hotel, where I was to have the pleasure of meeting you! Accidentally I found in the hotel register your name, and at once I rushed to welcome you.”
”And by coming you afford to my heart a true joy,” tenderly said Johannes Muller, ”for nothing can afford a greater joy than the unexpected meeting with a beloved and esteemed friend, and you know you are both to me.”
”I only know that you are both to me!” exclaimed Gentz. ”I only know that during my present journey I am indebted to you for the most precious hours, for the most sublime enjoyments. I had taken along for my reading your work on the 'Furstenbund' ('Alliance of Princes').
I wished to see whether this book which, on its first appearance, so powerfully affected me, would still have the same effect upon me after an interval of twenty years. The world since then has been transformed and changed, I myself not less; and I was well aware how far my views on many most important topics would differ from yours. This, indeed, I found to be the case, and yet the whole reading was for me an uninterrupted current of delight and admiration. For four weeks I read in my leisure hours nothing but this book, and I felt my mind consecrated, strengthened, and nerved again for every thing great and good.”
”If you say this,” exclaimed Muller, ”I have not labored in vain, although a German author feels sometimes tempted to believe that all his labors, all his writing and thinking were useless efforts, and nothing but seed scattered upon barren and sterile soil, and unable to bear fruit. Oh, my friend, what unfortunate days of humiliation and disgrace are still in store for Germany! But let us not talk of this now, but of you. Come, let us seat ourselves side by side upon this divan. And now tell me of your successes and your glory. The report of it has reached me, and I have learned with unenvying delight with what enthusiasm the whole literary and political world of England has received you, and how the court, the ministers, and the aristocracy of Loudon have celebrated the great German writer and politician.”
”It is true I have met in Loudon with much kindness and a flattering reception,” said Gentz, smilingly. ”You know a German writer must go abroad if he lays claim to recognition and reward, for, as the proverb says, 'The prophet is not without honor, save in his own country.' I had, therefore, to go to England in order to secure for my voice, which until then was little heeded, some authority even in Germany.”
”And now, when you have so eminently succeeded in this, you return I hope forever to Germany?”
”It almost seems so. I follow a call of the Austrian minister, Cobenzl, and have been appointed in Vienna as Aulic councillor, with a salary of four thousand florins.”
”And in which ministry will you work?”
”Not in any particular one. I have been engaged for extraordinary services exclusively, with no other obligation than, as Minister von Cobenzl expressly writes, to work by my writings for the maintenance of the government, of morals, and order.”
A smile stole over the delicate features of Muller.
”Exactly the same words which the Minister von Thugut said to me two years ago. And you have had the courage to accept the position?”
”Yes, I have accepted it, because I hope thus to render a service to the fatherland, and to be of advantage to it. I have forever east off my Prussianism, and shall henceforth become an Austrian with body and soul.”