Volume I Part 3 (1/2)
”You will then fight us all. We are forty-eight in number, and Prussians. Adieu.”
Having said this with the most provoking nonchalance, he withdrew, and the door closed after him, leaving me with an unfinished abjuration of groceries upon my lips.
Ere the following day closed my Prussian friend again visited me to say that Vaust, having complied with the demand made upon him, was no longer under ban.
And now that I have shown you the dark side of the picture, let me a.s.sure you that there is a better one. For firm adherence to each other, for true brotherhood, the German student is above any other I ever met with; and although the principle of honour is overstrained, yet in many respects the consequences are good, and the chivalrous feeling thus inculcated renders him incapable of a mean or unworthy action. There is in everything they do at this period a mixture of highly wrought romantic feeling which strangely contrasts with the drudging, plodding habits which distinguish them in after days.
As I have all along preferred to give instances and facts rather than to indulge in mere speculation, I shall relate an occurrence which made too strong an impression on me ever to be forgotten.
I had been about a month in Gottingen, when I was sitting alone one evening in that species of indolent humour in which we hail a friend's approach without possessing energy sufficient to seek for society abroad, when my friend Eisendaller entered. He resisted all my entreaties to remain, and briefly informed me that he came to request me to accompany him the following morning to Meissner, a distance of about five leagues, where he was to fight a duel. He told me that to avoid suspicion in town the horses should wait at my door, which was outside the ramparts, as early as five o'clock. Having thus acquainted me with the object of his visit, and having cautioned me not to forget that he would breakfast with me before starting, he wished me good-night and departed.
I remained awake the greater part of the night conjecturing what might be the reason for this extraordinary caution, for I well knew that several duels took place every day within the precincts of the University without mention being made of them, or any inquiry being inst.i.tuted by the prorector or consul.
Towards morning I fell into a kind of disturbed sleep, from which I was awakened by my friend entering and halloing ”Auf, auf! die Sonne sheint h.e.l.l” (Up, up! the sun s.h.i.+nes bright)--the first line of a well-known student ”catch.”
I rose and dressed myself, and, having breakfasted, we mounted our nags and set off at a sharp pace to the place of meeting. For the first few miles not a word was spoken on either side: my companion was apparently wrapped up in his own thoughts, and I did not wish to intrude upon his feelings at such a moment. At last he broke silence, and informed me that the duel was to be fought with pistols, as he and his adversary had vainly endeavoured to decide this quarrel in several meetings with swords. The cause of this deadly animosity--for such it must have been to require a course rarely if ever pursued by a student of resorting to pistols--he did not clearly explain, but merely gave me to understand that it originated concerning a relative of his opponent,--a very lovely girl, whom he had met at the Court of Hanover.
Having given this brief explanation he again relapsed into silence, and we rode on for miles without a word.
The morning was delightful, the country through which we pa.s.sed highly picturesque, and there was an appearance of happy content and cheerfulness on the faces of the peasants--who all saluted us as they went forth to their morning labour--that stood in awful contrast to our feelings, hurrying forward, as we were, on the mission of death.
At length we arrived at Meissner, where several of my friend's party were expecting him, and, having stabled our horses, we left the town and took a narrow path across the fields, which led to a mill about half a mile off. This was the place of rendezvous. On our way we overtook the other party, who had all pa.s.sed the preceding night at Meissner,--and guess my surprise and horror to find that my friend's antagonist was one of my own intimate acquaintances, and the very student who had been the first to show me any attention on my arriving at Gottingen! He was a young Prussian named Hanstell, whose mild manners and gentlemanlike deportment had acquired for him the sobriquet of ”der Zahm” (the Gentle). After saluting each other the parties proceeded to the ground together. There was little time spent in arranging the preliminaries.
It was agreed, as both were well-known marksmen, to throw dice for the first fire. The seconds then came forward, and Hanstel's friends announced that Eisendaller had won. There was an instantaneous falling back of all but the two princ.i.p.als, who now took their positions about fifteen yards from each other. I watched them both closely, and never did I see men more apparently unmoved than they were at that moment. Not a muscle of their features betrayed the least emotion or any concern of the awful situation in which they were placed.
The pistol was handed to Eisendaller with directions to fire before the lapse of a minute. He immediately levelled it, and remained in the att.i.tude of covering his antagonist for some seconds; but at length, finding his hand becoming unsteady, he deliberately lowered his arm to his side, stiffening and stretching it to its utmost length, and remaining thus for an instant, he appeared to be summoning resolution for his deadly purpose. It was a moment of awful suspense. I felt my heart sicken at the bloodthirsty coolness of the whole proceeding, and had to turn away my head in disgust. When I again looked round he had raised his pistol, and was taking a long and steady aim. At length he fired. The ball whizzed through Hanstel's hair, and, as it grazed his cheek, he wheeled half round by an involuntary motion and raised his hand to feel if there was blood. I was looking anxiously at Eisendaller, but he still stood firm and motionless as a statue. I thought at one moment I saw his lip curl, and a half scowl, as if of disappointment and impatience, cross his features, but in an instant it pa.s.sed away, and he was as calm and pa.s.sionless as before.
It was now Hanstel's turn. He lost no time in presenting his weapon.
There was a small red spot burning on his cheek that had been grazed which seemed to bespeak the fiery rage that had taken possession of his soul, for he felt that his antagonist had done his best to take away his life. I shuddered to think that I was looking on my friend for the last time, for from the position in which I stood I could distinctly see that his heart was covered, and the moment Hanstell pulled the trigger would be his last.
Maddened with an agonising thrill of horror, I felt an almost irresistible impulse to rush forward and arrest the arm that was about to deprive Eisendaller of his life; but while a sense of what was due to the established customs of society on such occasions restrained me, I stood breathless with expectation of the fatal flash, Hanstell, to my amazement, suddenly raising his pistol to a vertical position, fired straight over his head, flung his weapon into the air, and rus.h.i.+ng forward, threw his arms round Eisendaller, and bursting into tears, exclaimed, ”Mein Brader!”
We were wholly unprepared for such a scene, and although not easily unmanned, the overwrought feelings of all sought vent in a pa.s.sion of tears. We soon left the ground, and, mounting our horses, returned to Gottingen.
On our way homeward there was little said. It happened that once, and only once, I found myself at the side of Hanstell. He conversed with me for a short time in an undertone, and on my asking him how he had felt at the moment of his adversary's missing him, he answered me that it was then his determined purpose to shoot him, and up to the last moment this determination remained unaltered, but at the instant of placing his fingers on the trigger he thought he saw an expression about his face that reminded him of careless and happier days when they had studied and played together and had but one heart. ”And I felt,” said he, ”as if I were about to become the murderer of my brother. I could have then more easily turned the pistol against my own breast.”*
I was not long a resident in Gottingen ere I became considerably enamoured of many of the Burschen inst.i.tutions. I had already begun to think that students were a very superior order of people,** that duelling was an agreeable after-dinner amus.e.m.e.nt, and that nothing could be more becoming or appropriate than a black frock-coat braided with a fur collar even in the month of July.
* Lever introduces the story of this duel into ”The Loiterings of Arthur Cleary.”--E. D.
** One of Lever's intimates at Gottingen was a young German count Later the Irish student discovered that his college chum--he calls him ”Fattorini” in one of his letters, and he referred to him in conversation (according to Dr Fitzpatrick) as ”Morony”--was no other than Louis Napoleon, the future Emperor of the French.--E. D.
Having made this avowal, you will perhaps readily believe that I was soon a favourite among my fellow-students; and a circ.u.mstance which at that time added not a little to their goodwill and applause was the fact of my translating the English song, ”The King, G.o.d bless him!” into German verse for a dinner to celebrate the anniversary of Waterloo.
My life now, although somewhat monotonous, was by no means an uninteresting or tiresome one. The mornings were usually occupied at lectures, and then I dined, as do all students, at one, after which we generally adjourned in parties to one another's lodgings, where we drank coffee and smoked till about three o'clock. After this we again heard lectures till we met together at Blumenbach's in the Botanical Gardens in the evening, when we listened to the venerable professor explaining the mysteries of calyx and corolla, some half-dozen young ladies by far the most attentive of his pupils. The evening was usually concluded by a drive to Geismar or some other little village five or six miles from Gottingen, when, having supped on sour milk thickened with brown bread and brown sugar (a beverage which, notwithstanding my Burschen prejudices, I must confess neither cheers nor inebriates), we returned home about eleven. And although I wished much that university restrictions had not forbade our having a theatre in the town, and also that professors were relieved from their dread of the students misbehaving, and would permit us to a.s.sociate with their daughters (for I was as completely secluded from the society of ladies as ever St Kevin was), yet I was happy and content withal.
Such was the even tenor of my way when the news reached us that a rebellion had broken out among the students of Heidelberg, in consequence, it was said, of some act of oppression on the part of the professors. Nothing could exceed the interest excited in Gottingen when the information arrived. There was but one subject of conversation: lecture-rooms were deserted, the streets were crowded with groups of students conversing in conclave on the one subject of paramount interest; and at last it was unanimously resolved to show the Heidelbergers our high sense of their praiseworthy firmness by inviting them to Gottingen, when news arrived that they had already put the University of Heidelberg in _verschiess_--that is, ”in Coventry,”--and were actually at the moment on their way to us.
III. WANDERINGS, 1829-1830