chapter i.
“i am perfectly at my wits’ ends!”
as madame doppeldick said this, she thrust both her fat hands into the pockets of her scarlet cotton apron, at the same time giving her head a gentle shake, as if implying that it was a case in which heads and hands could be of no possible avail. she was standing in a little dormitory, exactly equidistant from two beds, between which her eyes and her thoughts had been alternating some ten minutes past. they were small beds,—pallets,—cots,—cribs, troughs upon four legs, such as the old painters represent the manger in their pictures of the nativity. our german beds are not intended to carry double, and in such an obscure out-of-the way village as kleinewinkel, who would think of finding any thing better in the way of a couch than a sort of box just too little for a bed, and just too large for a coffin? it was between two such bedlings, then, that madame doppeldick was standing, when she broke out into the aforesaid exclamation—“i am perfectly at my wits’ ends!”
now, the wits’ ends of madame doppeldick scarcely extended farther from her scull than the horns of a snail. they seldom protruded far beyond her nose, and that was a short one; and moreover they were apt to recede and draw in from the first obstacle they encountered, leaving their proprietor to feel her own way, as if she had no wits’ ends at all. thus, having satisfied themselves that there were only two beds in the rooms, they left the poor lady in the lurch, and absolutely
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at a nonplus, as to how she was to provide for the accommodation of a third sleeper, who was expected to arrive the same evening. there was only one best bed-room in the house, and it happened to be the worst bed-room also; all for gretchen, the maid-servant, went home nightly to sleep at her mother’s. to be sure a shake-down might be spread in the parlour; but to be sure the parlour was also a shop of all sorts; and to be sure the young officer would object to such accommodations; and to be very sure, mr. doppeldick would object equally to the shake-down, and giving up the two beds overhead to his wife and the young officer.
“god forgive me,” said the perplexed madame doppeldick as she went slowly down the stairs;—“but i wish captain schenk had been killed at the battle of leipzig, or had got a bed of glory anywhere else, before he came to be billeted on us!”
“i’ll take a bed with you.”
chapter ii.
in extenuation of so unchristian-like an aspiration as the one which escaped from the lips of madame doppeldick at the end of the last chapter, it must be remembered that she was a woman
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of great delicacy for her size. she was so corpulent, that she might safely have gone to court without a hoop, her arms were too big for legs; and as for her legs, it passed for a miracle of industry, even amongst the laborious hard-working inhabitants of kleinewinkel, that she knitted her own stockings. it must be confessed, that she ate heartily, drank heartily, and slept heartily; and all she ate, drank, and slept, seemed to do her good, for she never ceased growing, at least horizontally, till she did ample justice to the name which became her own by marriage. still, as the bulk of her body increased, the native shrinking, unobtrusive modesty of her mind remained the same; or rather it became even more tremulously sensitive. in spite of her huge dimensions, she seemed to entertain the utopian desire of being seen by no eyes save those of her husband; of passing through life unnoticed and unknown; in short she was a globe-peony with the feelings of a violet. judge then what a shock her blushing sensibilities received from the mere idea of the strange captain intruding on the shadiest haunts of domestic privacy! although by birth, education, and disposition, as loyal
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as the sunflower to the sun, in the first rash transports of her trepidation and vexation she wished anything but well to her liege sovereign the king of prussia—wondering bitterly why his majesty could not contrive to have his reviews and sham-fights in berlin itself; or at least in posen, where there were spare beds to be had, and lodgings to let for single men. then again, if the quarter-master had but condescended to give a quarter’s notice, why, mr. doppeldick might have run up an extra room, or they might have parted off a portion of their own chamber with lath and plaster—or they might have done a thousand things; for instance, they might have sold their house and left the country, instead of being thus taken unawares in their own sanctorum by a strange gentleman, as suddenly as if he had tumbled through the roof. “it was too bad—it was really too bad—and she wondered what mr. doppeldick would say to it when he came home.”
“i wish i was well through it.”
chapter iii.
mr. doppeldick did come home—and he said nothing to it at all. he only pulled his tobacco-bag out of one coat-pocket, and his tobacco-pipe out of the other, and then he struck a light, and fell to smoking, as complacently as if there had been no captain schenk in the world. the truth was, he had none of that nervous nicety of feeling, which his partner possessed so eminently, and, accordingly, he took no more interest in her domestic dilemma, than the walnut-wood chair that he sat upon. moreover, when he once had in his mouth his favourite pipe, with a portrait of kant on the bowl of it, he sucked through its tube a sort of transcendental philosophy which elevated him above all the ills of human life, to say nothing of such little domestic inconveniences as the present. if the house had been as big as the hotel de nassau, at schlangenbad, with as many chambers and
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spare beds in it—or a barrack, with quarters for the captain and his company to boot—he could not have puffed on more contentedly. the very talk about beds and bedding appeared to lull him into a sort of sleep with his eyes open; and even when the voice and words of his helpmate grew a little sharp and querulous in detailing all her doubts, and difficulties, and disagreeables, they could not raise even a ripple in the calm placid expanse of his forehead. how should they? his equable german good humour might well be invulnerable to all outward attacks, which had so long withstood every internal one,—ay, in temper’s very citadel, the stomach. for instance, the better part of his daily diet was of sours. he ate “sauer-kraut,” and “sauer-braten,” with sour sauce and “sauer-ampfer” by way of salad, and pickled plums by way of dessert, and “sauer-milch” with sourish brown bread—and then, to wash these down, he
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drank sourish “essigberger” wine, and “sauer-wasser,” of which the village of kleinewinkel had its own peculiar brunnen. still, i say, by all these sours, and many others not mentioned besides, his temper was never soured—nor could they turn one drop of the milk of human kindness that flowed in his bosom. instead, therefore, of his round features being ever rumpled and crumpled, and furrowed up by the plough-share of passion, you never saw any thing on his face but the same everlasting sub-smile of phlegmatic philanthropy. in spite of the stream of complaint that kept pouring into his ear, he forgave captain schenk from the bottom of his soul for being billeted on him; and entertained no more spleen towards the king of prussia and the quarter-master, than he did towards the gnat that bit him last year. at length, his pipe wanting replenishing, he dropped a few comfortable words to his wife, meanwhile he refilled the bowl, and brought the engine again into play:—
“we all smoke in germany.”
“the last in bed to put out the light.”
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“as for undressing, malchen—before the strange man—puff—why can’t we go to bed,—puff—before he does,—puff—puff and so put an end to the matter—puff—puff—puff!”
“as i live upon damsons and bullases!” (for it was the plum season,) exclaimed madame doppeldick, clapping her fat hands with delight, “i never thought of that! gretchen, my lass, get the supper ready immediately, for your good master is mortal hungry, and so am i!—and then, my own dietrich dear, we’ll bundle off to bed as fast as we can!”
chapter iv.
travellers seeing the “lions.”
the best of plots may come to the worst of ends. it was no fault, however, of gretchen’s; for being in a hurry of her own to meet ludwig liedeback, she clapped the supper upon the table in no time at all. the transcendental pipe, with the head of kant upon it, instantly found itself deposited in a by
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corner; for mr. doppeldick, like his better half, was a person of substance, keeping a good running account with messer and gabel. besides, amongst other delicacies, the board actually displayed those rarest of all inland rarities, oysters,—a bag of which the warm-hearted adam kloot had sent, by way of a token of remembrance, to his old friend dietrich; forgetting utterly that it was full a hundred leagues from the nearest high water-mark of the sea to the village of kleinewinkel. of course they came like other travellers, with their mouths wide agape, to see the wonders of the place,—but, then, so much the easier they were to open; and as the worthy couple did not contemplate any such superfluous nicety as shaving them before they swallowed them, there was a fair chance that the delicious morsels would all be devoured before the inauspicious arrival of captain schenk. some such speculation seemed to glimmer in the eyes of both mr. and mrs. doppeldick—when, lo! just as the sixth dead oyster had been body-snatched out of its shell, and was being flavoured up with lemon and vinegar, the door opened, and in walked a blue cap with a red band, a pair of mustachios, and a grey cloak without any arms in its sleeves. had madame doppeldick held any thing but an oyster in her mouth at that moment it would infallibly have choked her, the flutter of her heart in her throat was so violent.
“holy virgin!—captain schenk!”
“at your service, madame,” answered a voice through the mustachios.
“you are welcome, captain!” said the worthy master of the house, at the same time rising, and placing a chair for his guest at that side of the table which was farthest from the oysters. the officer, without any ceremony, threw himself into the seat, and then, resting his elbows upon the table, and his cheeks between his palms, he fixed his dark eyes on the blushing face of madame doppeldick in a long and steady stare. it is true that
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he was only mentally reviewing the review; or, possibly, calculating the chances he had made in favour of an application he had lately forwarded to berlin, to be exchanged into the royal guards; but the circumstance sufficed to set every nerve of madame doppeldick a-vibrating, and in two minutes from his arrival, she had made up her mind that he was a very bold, forward, and presuming young man.
“o ham—what a falling off was there.”
it is astonishing, when we have once conceived a prejudice, how rapidly it grows, and how plentifully it finds nutriment! like the sea polypus, it extends its thousand feelers on every side, for anything they can lay hold of, and the smallest particle afloat in the ocean of conjecture cannot escape from the tenacity of their grasp. so it was with madame doppeldick. from mistrusting the captain’s eyes, she came to suspect his nose, his mustachios, his mouth, his chin, and even the slight furrow of a
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sabre cut that scarred his forehead just over the left eyebrow. she felt morally sure that he had received it in no battle-field, but in some scandalous duel. luckily she had never seen mozart’s celebrated opera, or she would inevitably have set down captain schenk as its libertine masquerading hero, don giovanni himself!
“a piping bullfinch.”
“you will be sharp-set for supper, captain,” said the hospitable host, pushing towards his guest a dish of lean home-made bacon; but the captain took no more notice of the invitation than if he had been stunned stone-deaf by the artillery at the sham-fight in the morning. possibly he did not like bacon, or, at any rate, such bacon as was set before him; for to put the naked truth on her bare oath, the kleinewinkel pigs always looked as if they got their living, like cockroaches, by creeping through cracks. however, he never changed his posture, but kept his dark intolerable eyes still fixed on his hostess’s full and flushed face. he might just as well have stared,—if he must stare—at the shelves-full of old family china (some of it elaborately mended and riveted) in the corner cupboard, the door of
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which she had left open on purpose; but he had, apparently, no such considerate respect for female modesty.
“saint ursula and the eleven thousand be near us!” said the disquieted madame doppeldick to herself. “it is hard enough for people of our years and bulk to be obliged to lie double;—but to have a strange, wild, rakish, staring young fellow in the same chamber—i do wish that dietrich would make more haste with his supper, that we may get into bed first!”
chapter v.
honest dietrich was in no such hurry. a rational, moral, pious man, with a due grateful sense of the sapidity of certain gifts of the creator, ought not to swallow them with the post-haste indifference of a sow swilling her wash; and as dietrich doppeldick did not taste oysters once in ten years, it was a sort of religious obligation, as well as a positive secular temptation, that the relish of each particular fish should be prolonged as far as possible on the palate by an orderly, decorous, and deliberate deglutition. accordingly, instead of bolting the oysters as if he had been swallowing them for a wager, he sate soberly, with his eyes fixed on the two plumpest, as if only awaiting the “good-night” of his guest to do ample and christian-like justice to the edible forget-me-nots of his good friend adam kloot. in vain his wife looked hard at him, and trod on his toes as long as she could reach them, besides being seized with a short hectic cough that was any thing but constitutional—
“lord, help me!” said mrs. doppeldick in her soul, too fluttered to attend to the correctness of her metaphors—
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“it’s as easy to catch the eye of a post!—he minds me no more than if i trod on the toes of a stock-fish! i might as well cough into the ears of a stone wall.”
in fact, honest dietrich had totally forgotten the domestic dilemma.
“kissing goes by favour.”
“he will never take his eyes off,” thought madame doppeldick, stealing a glance across the table; “i was never so stared at, never since i was a girl and wore pigtails! i expect every moment he will jump and embrace me.” whereas nothing could be further from the captain’s thought. the second battalion had joined that very morning, and accordingly he had kissed, or been kissed by, all its eight-and-twenty officers, tall or short, fat or lean, fair or swarthy,—which was quite kissing enough for a reasonable day’s ration. the truth is, he was staring at himself. he had just, mentally, put on a new uniform, and was looking with the back of his eyes at his own brilliant figure, as a captain in the royal guards. it was, however, a stare, outwardly, at madame doppeldick, who took
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everything to herself, frogs, lace, bullion, buttons, cuffs, collars, epaulettes, and the deuce knows what besides.
“i would to heaven!” she wished, “he had never thought of going into the army,—or at least that the quarter-master had never taken it into his stupid head to quarter him on us. young gay captains are very well to flirt with, or to waltz with, but at my years and bulk waltzing is quite out of the question!”
waltzing to a new air.
chapter vi.
at last captain schenk changed his posture, and averted his familiar eyes from the face of madame doppeldick; but it was only to give her a fresh alarm with his free-and-easy mouth. first of all he clenched his fists—then he raised his arms at full stretch
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above his head, as if he wanted to be crucified, and then turning his face upwards towards the ceiling, with his eyes shut, and his jaws open—he yawned such a yawn, as panther never yawned after prowling all day without prey, in a ten-foot cage—
“auw-yauw-au-ya-augh-auwayawauwghf!”
