And yet from the ruined castle of the Weibertreue Kerner pointed out to us a man walking along the road, and that man was the very incarnation of all that was sober, rational, and undream-like; for it was David Strauss, author of the "Life of Jesus." And at him too I gazed with the awe due to a great man whose name is known to all the cultured world; and to me much more than the name; for I had read, as before mentioned, his "Life of Jesus" when I first went to Princeton.
Dr. Kerner took to me greatly, and said that I very much reminded him, in appearance and conversation, of what his most intimate friend, Ludwig Uhland, had been at my age; and as he repeated this several times, and spoke of it long after to friends, I think it must have been true, although I am compelled to admit that people who pride themselves on looking like this or that celebrity never resemble him in the least, mentally or spiritually, and are generally only mere caricatures at best.
On our return we climbed into an old Gothic church-tower, in which I found a fifteenth-century bell, bearing the words, _Vivas voco_, _mortuos plango_, _fulgura_ _frango_, and much more--
"The dead I knell, the living wake, And the power of lightning break!"
which caused me to reflect on the vast degree to which all the minor uses and observances of the Church--which are nine-tenths of all their religion to the mult.i.tude--were only old heathen superst.i.tious in new dresses. The bell was a spell against the demons of lightning in old Etrurian days; to this time the Tuscan peasant bears one in the darkening twilight-tide to drive away the witches flitting round: in him and them "those evening bells" inspired a deeper sentiment than poetry.
In a village, Rucker, finding the beer very good, bought a cask of it, which was put on board the little Neckar steamboat on which we returned to Heidelberg. And thus provided, the next evening he gave a "barty" up in the old castle, among the ruins by moonlight, where I "a.s.sisted," and the _lager_ was devoured, even to the last drop.
I soon grew tired of the family dinners with the Frau Inspectorinn and the Herr Inspector with the _one_ tumbler of Neckar wine, which I was expected not to exceed; so I removed my dining to the "Court of Holland,"
a first-cla.s.s hotel, where O. and the other Americans met, and where the expectation was not that a man should by any means limit himself to one gla.s.s, but that, taking at least one to begin with, he should considerably exceed it. This hotel was kept by a man named Spitz, who looked his name to perfection.
"Er spitzt betrubt die Nase,"
as Scheffel wrote of him in his poem, _Numero Acht_, the scene of which is laid in the "Court of Holland." Here a word about Scheffel. During the following semester he was for months a daily table-companion of mine at the Bremer-Eck, where a small circle of students--_quorum pars fui_--met every evening to sup and _kneip_, or to drink beer and smoke and sing until eleven. Little did I dream in those days that he would become the great popular poet of his time, or that I should ever translate his _Gaudeamus_. I owe the "Court of Holland" to this day for a dinner and a bottle of wine. It is the only debt I owe, to my knowledge, to anybody on earth.
It was resolved among the Americans that we should all make a foot-excursion with knapsacks down the Rhine to Cologne. It was done. So we went gaily from town to town, visiting everything, making excursions inland now and then. We had a bottle or two of the best Johannisberg in the very Schloss itself--_omne c.u.m praetio_--and meeting with such adventures as befell all wandering students in those old-fashioned, merry times. The Rhine was wild as yet, and not paved, swept, garnished and full of modern villas and adornment, as now. I had made, while in America, a ma.n.u.script book of the places and legends of and on the Rhine, with many drawings. This, and a small volume of Snow"s and Planche"s "Legends of the Rhine," I carried with me. I was already well informed as to every village and old ruin or tower on the banks.
So we arrived at Cologne, and saw all the sights. The cathedral was not then finished, and the town still boasted its two-and-seventy stinks, as counted by Coleridge. Then we returned by steamer to Mainz, and thence footed it home.
Little by little I rather fell away from my American friends, and began to take to German or English a.s.sociates, and especially to the company of two Englishmen. One was named Leonard Field, who is now a lawyer in Lincoln"s Inn Fields; the other was Ewan P. Colquhoun, a younger brother of Sir Patrick Colquhoun, whom I knew well, and as friend, in after years, until his recent death. I always, however, maintained a great intimacy with George Ward, of Boston, who became long after a banker and Baring"s agent in America. In one way and another these two twined into my life in after years, and led to my making many acquaintances or friends.
I walked a great deal all about Heidelberg to many very picturesque places, maintaining deep interest in all I saw by much loving reading of _Des Knaben Wunderhorn_ and Uhland"s collection of old German songs--his own poems I knew long before--the _Nibelungen_ and _Hero-Book_, and a great variety of other works. I had dropped the Occulta, and for a year or two read nothing of the kind except casually the works of Eckhartshausen and Justinus Kerner. I can now see that, as I became healthy and strong, owing to the easy, pleasant existence which I led, it was best for me after all. "Grappling with life" and earnestly studying a profession then might have extinguished me. My mental spring, though not broken, was badly bent, and it required a long time to straighten it.
Colquhoun was only eighteen, but far beyond his years in dissipation, and well-nigh advanced to cool cynicism. With him I made many an excursion all about the country. Wherever a _Kirclweih_ or peasants" ball was to be held, he always knew of it, and there we went. One morning early he came to my rooms. There was to be a really stunning duel fought early between a Senior and some very ill.u.s.trious _Schlager_, and he had two English friends named Burnett who would go with us. So we went, and meeting with Rucker at the _Pawkboden_, it was proposed that we should go on together to Baden-Baden. To which I objected that I had only twenty florins in my pocket, and had no time to return home for more. "Never mind," said Colquhoun; "Rucker has plenty of money; we can borrow from him."
We went to Baden and to the first hotel, and had a fine dinner, and saw the Burnetts off. Then, of course, to the gaming-table, where Colquhoun speedily lost all his money, and I so much that I had but ten florins left. "Never mind; we"ll pump on Rucker," said Colquhoun.
We went up to visit the old castle. While there, Rucker took off his overcoat, in which he had his pocket-book, and laid it over a chair. When we returned to the hotel the pocket-book was gone! There we were, with a hotel-bill to pay and never a cent wherewith to pay it. I had, however, still ten florins. Colquhoun suddenly remembered that he had seen something in the town, price ten florins, which he _must_ buy. It was something which he had promised to buy for a relative in England. It was a very serious case of necessity.
I doubted my dear friend, but having sworn him by all his G.o.ds that he would _not_ gamble with the money, I gave it to him. So he, of course, went straight to the gaming-table, and, having luck, won enough to pay our debt and take us home.
I should mention that Rucker went up to the castle and found his pocket- book with all the money. "For not only doth Fortune favour the bold," as is written in my great unpublished romance of "Flaxius the Immortal,"
"but, while her hand is in, also helps their friends with no unsparing measure, as is marvellously confirmed by Machiavelli."
Vacation came. My friends scattered far and wide. I joined with three German friends and one Frenchman, and we strapped on our knapsacks for a foot-journey into Switzerland. First we went to Freiburg in Baden, and saw the old Cathedral, and so on, singing, and stopping to drink, and meeting with other students from other universities, and resting in forests, amid mountains, by roaring streams, and entering cottages and chatting with girls. _Hurra_! _frei ist der bursch_!
One afternoon we walked sixteen miles through a rain which was like a waterfall. I was so drenched that it was with difficulty I kept my pa.s.sport and letter of exchange from being ruined. When we came out of the storm there were _six_ of us! Another student had, unseen, joined our party in the rain, and I had never noticed it!
We came to a tavern at the foot of the Rigiberg. My pack was soaked. One friend lent me a shirt, another a pair of drawers, and we wrapped ourselves in sheets from the beds and called for brandy and water hot--a pleasing novelty to the Germans--and so went to bed. The next day we ascended the Rigi; found many students there; did not see the sun rise in the morning, but still a mighty panorama, wondrous fair, and so walked down again. And receiving my carpet-bag at Lucerne, whither I had had the precaution to send one, I dressed myself again in clean linen and went back to Germany. I meant to travel more in Switzerland, but it was very rainy that year, and, as it proved, I did wisely.
I returned to Spitz, but his house was full of English, and he informed me, rather exultantly and foolishly, that he had no room for me, and could not tell me where to go, "every place was full." As I had spent money freely with him I did not like it. The head-waiter followed me out and recommended the Black Eagle, kept by Herr Lehr. There I went, got a good room, and for months after dined daily at its _table-d"hote_. I sent friends there, and returned to the house with my wife twenty years later. My brother also went there long after, and endeared himself to all, helping Herr Lehr to plant his vines. In after years Herr Lehr had forgotten me, but not my brother. Lehr"s son was a gentlemanly young fellow, well educated. He became a captain, and was the first officer killed in the Franco-German war.
Vacation pa.s.sed, and the students returned and lectures were resumed.
There was a grand _Commers_ or students" supper meeting at which I was present; and again the duelling-ground rang with the sound of blades, and all was merry as before. Herr Zimmer, the University dancing-master, gave lessons and cotillion or waltzing-parties thrice a week, and these I regularly attended. Those who came to them were the daughters of the humbler professors and respectable shopkeepers. During the previous session I had taken lessons from a little old Frenchman, who brought his fiddle and a pretty daughter twice a week to my room, where, with Ward, we formed a cla.s.s of three.
This gentleman was a perfect type--fit to be staged without a touch of change--of the old _emigre_, who has now vanished, even from among the French. His bows, his wit--_la grace extra"ordinaire_--the intonations of his voice, and his vivacity, were beyond the art of any actor now living. There were many more peculiar and marked types of character in the last generation than now exist, when Everybody is becoming Everybody else with such fearful rapidity.
There were four great masked b.a.l.l.s held in Heidelberg during the winter, each corresponding to a special state of society. That at the Museum or great University Club was patronised by the _elite_ of n.o.bility and the professors and their families. Then came the _Harmonie_--respectable, but not aristocratic. Then another in a hotel, which was rather more rowdy than reputable; not really outrageous, yet where the gentlemen students "whooped it up" in grand style with congenial grisettes; and, finally, there was a fancy ball at the Waldhorn, or some such place, or several of them, over the river, where peasants and students with maids to match could waltz once round the vast hall for a penny till stopped by a cordon of robust rustics. We thought it great fun with our partners to waltz impetuously and b.u.mp with such force against the barrier as to break through, in which case we were not only greatly admired, but got another waltz gratis. We had wild peasant-dancing in abundance, and the consumption of wine and beer was something awful.
One morning a German student named Gruner, who had been at Jena, came to my room with a brilliant proposition. We should go to Frankfort and hear Jenny Lind sing in her great _role_ of Norma. I had already heard her sing in concert in Heidelberg--where, by the way, the students rushed into her room as soon as she had left, and tore to strips the bed in which she had slept, and carried them away for souvenirs, to the great amazement of an old Englishman who had just been put into the room.
(_N.B._--I was not in the party.) I objected that it was getting to the end of the month, and that I had not money enough for such an outing. To which he replied, that we could go on to Homburg, and make money enough at _rouge-et-noir_ to cover all expenses. This obvious and admirable method of raising funds had not occurred to me, so I agreed to go.
We went to Frankfort, and heard the greatly overrated Jenny Lind, and the next day proceeded to Hamburg, and at once to the green table. Here I lost a little, but Gruner made so much, that on returning to the table I took from it a sufficient sum to cover all our expenses, and told him that, come what might, it must remain untouched, and gave him the remainder. That afternoon I played for five-franc pieces, and at one time had both my side-pockets so full that they weighed very heavily. And these again I lost. Then Gruner lost all his, and came imploring me for more, but I would not give him a _kreutzer_. Matters were beginning to look serious. I had a reserved fund of perhaps fifty napoleons, which I kept for dire need or accidents. That evening I observed a man who had great luck, winning twice out of three times. I watched his play, and as soon as he lost I set a napoleon--by which I won enough to clear my expenses, and buy me, moreover, a silver-headed cane, a gold watch-chain, and two Swiss watches. I may mention by the way, that since that day I have never played at anything, save losing a ten-franc piece in after years at Wiesbaden.
There dined very often at our _table-d"hote_ in the Adler an old German lady named Helmine von Chezy, who had a reputation as a poetess. With her I sometimes conversed. One day she narrated in full what she declared was the true story of Caspar Hauser. Unto her Heine had addressed the epigram--
"Helmine von Chezy, Geborene Klencke, Ich bitte Sie, geh" Sie Mit ihrer Poesie, Sonst kriegt Sie die Kranke!"
"Helmine von Chezy, Born Klencke, I pray With your pestilent poems You"ll hasten away."
There was also an elderly and very pleasant Englishman, with whom I became rather intimate, and who was very kind to me. This was the well- known Captain Medwin, who had known so well Byron, Sh.e.l.ley, Trelawny, and their compeers. He was full of anecdotes, which I now wish that I had recorded. He introduced me to Lady Caroline de Crespigny, who was then living permanently in Heidelberg. This lady, who was said to be then fifty years of age, was still so young-looking and beautiful, that I cannot remember in all my life to have ever seen such an instance of time arrested. I also made the acquaintance of Professor Creutzer, author of the _Symbolik_, a work of vast learning. {156} And I went to b.a.l.l.s, one at Professor Gervinus"s.
I entered myself with the great Leopold Gmelin for a course of lectures on chemistry, and worked away every morning with the test-tubes at a.n.a.lytical chemistry under Professor Posselt, at which I one day nearly poisoned myself by tasting oxalic acid, which I did not recognise under its German name of _Kleesaure_. I read broad and wide in German literature, as I think may be found by examining my notes to my translation of Heine"s works, and went with Field several times to Frankfort, to attend the theatre, and otherwise amuse ourselves. There I once made the acquaintance of the very famous comic actor Ha.s.selt. He was a grave, almost melancholy man when off the stage, very fond of archaeology and antiquities.
The winter drew to an end. I had long felt a deep desire to visit Munich, to study art, and to investigate fundamentally the wonderful and mysterious science of AEsthetics, of which I had heard so much. So I packed up and paid my bills, and pa.s.sing through one town where there was in the hotel where I stopped, the last wolf ever killed in Germany, and freshly killed (I believe he has been slain two or three times since), and at another where I was invited to see a criminal beheaded by the sword--which sight I missed by over-sleeping myself--I came through Stuttgart, Ulm, and Augsburg to the German Athens.
I went to the Hotel Maulick, where I stayed a week. Opposite to me at table every day sat the famous Saphir, the great Vienna wit and licensed joker. Of course I soon became acquainted with some students, and was entered at the University, and got the card which exempted me from being arrested by any save the University beadles. I believe that we even had our own hangman, but as none of my friends ever had occasion for his services I did not inquire. The same ticket also ent.i.tled me to attend the opera at half-price, and if it had only included tobacco and beer gratis, it would have been the means of vast economies.
I entered myself for a course of lectures by Professor Friedrich Thiersch on AEsthetics. He it was who had trained Heine to art, and I venture to say that in my case the seed fell on good ground. I took in every thought. His system agreed, on the whole, perfectly with that advanced in after years by Taine, and marvellously well with that set forth in the "Essays, Speculative and Suggestive," of J. A. Symonds--that is, it was eclectic and deductive from historical periods, and not at all "rhapsodical" or merely subjective. I bought the best works, such as Kugler"s, for guides, and studied hard, and frequented the Pinacothek and Glyptothek, and I may say really educated myself well in the history of art and different schools of aesthetics. My previous reading, travel, and tastes fitted me in every way to easily master such knowledge. I also followed Becker"s course on Sch.e.l.ling, but my heart was not in it, as it would have been two years before. The lectures of Professor Henry and Gmelin and true Science had caused in me a distrust of metaphysics and psychological systems and theories. I began to see that they were all only very ingenious shufflings and combinations and phases of the same old cards of Pantheism, which could be made into Theism, Pietism, Atheism, or Materialism to suit any taste. I was advancing rapidly to pure science, though Evolution was as yet unknown by the name, albeit the Okenites and others with their _Natur-philosophie_ were coming closely to it.
In fact, I think it may be truly said that, as regarded deducing man and all things from a _prima materia_ or protoplasm by means of natural selection and vast study of differentiation, they were exactly where Darwin, and Wallace, and Huxley were when we began to know the latter. I do not agree with Max Muller in his very German and very artfully disguised and defended theory that the religious idea originated in a vague sense of the Infinite in the minds of savages; for I believe it began with the bogeys and nightmares of obscure terror, hunger, disease, and death; but the Professor is quite right in declaring that Evolution was first created or developed in the German _Natur-philosophie_, the true beginning of which was with the Italian naturalists, such as Bruno and De Cusa. What is to be observed is this, yet few understand it, nor has even Symonds cleared the last barrier--that when a Pantheist has got so far as to conceive an ident.i.ty between matter and spirit, while on the other hand a scientific materialist rises to the unity of spirit and matter, there is nothing to choose between them. Only this is true, that the English Evolutionists, by abandoning reasoning based on Pantheistic poetic bases, as in Sch.e.l.ling"s case, or purely logical, as in Hegel"s, and by proceeding on plainly prosaic, merely material, simply scientific grounds after the example of Bacon, swept away so much rubbish that people no longer recognised the old temple of Truth, and really thought it was a brand new workshop or laboratory. But I can remember very distinctly that to me Evolution did _not_ come as if I had received a new soul, or even a new body, but had merely had a bath, and put on new garments. And as I became an English Evolutionist in due time, I had this great advantage, that by beginning so young I succeeded in doing very thoroughly what Symonds and Maudsley and many more clearly understand is _most_ difficult--that is, not merely to accept the truth, but to get rid of the old _a.s.sociations_ of the puzzle of a difference between spirit and matter, which thing caused even the former to muddle about "G.o.d," and express disgust at "Materialism," and declare that there is "an insoluble problem," which is all in flat contradiction to pure Evolution, which does not meddle with "the Unknowable."
There was a Jewish professor named Karl Friedrich Neumann, who was about as many-sided a man as could be found even in a German university. He was a great Chinese scholar--had been in China, and also read on mathematics and modern history. I attended these lectures (not the mathematics) and liked them: so we became acquainted. I found that he had written a very interesting little work on the visit recorded in the Chinese annals of certain Buddhist monks to Fusang--probably Mexico--in the fifth century. I proposed to translate it, and did so, he making emendations and adding fresh matter to the English version.
Professor Neumann was a vigorous reader, but he soon found that I was of the same kind. One day he lent me a large work on some Indian subject, and the next I brought it back. He said that I could not have read it in the time. I begged him to examine me on it, which he did, and expressed his amazement, for he declared that he had never met with anything like it in all his life. This from him was praise indeed. Long after, in America, George Boker in closer fashion tested me on this without my knowing it, and published the result in an article.
I became acquainted with a learned writer on art named Foerster, who had married a daughter of Jean Paul Richter, and dined once or twice at his house. I also saw him twenty years later in Munich. George Ward came in from Berlin to stay some weeks in Munich. I saw Taglioni several times at the opera, but did not make her acquaintance till 1870. The great, tremendous celebrity at that time in Munich was also an opera-dancer, though not on the stage. This was Lola Montez, the King"s last favourite. He had had all his mistresses painted, one by one, and the gallery was open to the public. Lola"s was the last, and there was a blank s.p.a.ce still left _for a few more_. I thought that about twenty- five would complete the collection.
Lola Montez had a small palace, and was raised to be the Countess of Landsfeldt, but this was not enough. She wished to run the whole kingdom and government, and kick out the Jesuits, and kick up the devil, generally speaking. But the Jesuits and the mob were too much for her. I knew her very well in later years in America, when she deeply regretted that I had not called on her in Munich. I must have had a great moral influence on her, for, so far as I am aware, I am the only friend whom she ever had at whom she never threw a plate or book, or attacked with a dagger, poker, broom, chair, or other deadly weapon. We were both born at the same time in the same year, and I find by the rules of sorcery that she is the first person who will meet me when I go to heaven. I always had a great and strange respect for her singular talents; there were very few indeed, if any there were, who really knew the depths of that wild Irish soul. Men generally were madly fascinated with her, then as suddenly disenchanted, and then detracted from her in every way.
There were many adventuresses in later years who pa.s.sed themselves about the world for Lola Montez. I have met with two friends, whom I am sure were honest gentlemen, who told me they had known her intimately. Both described her as a large, powerful, or robust woman. Lola was in reality very small, pale, and thin, or _frele_, with beautiful blue eyes and curly black hair. She was a typical beauty, with a face full of character, and a person of remarkably great and varied reading. One of her most intimate friends was wont to tell her that she and I had many very strange characteristics in common, which we shared with no one else, while we differed utterly in other respects. It was very like both of us, for Lola, when defending the existence of the soul against an atheist, to tumble over a great trunk of books of the most varied kind, till she came to an old vellum-bound copy of Apuleius, and proceed to establish her views according to his subtle Neo-Platonism. But she romanced and embroidered so much in conversation that she did not get credit for what she really knew.
I once met with a literary man in New York who told me he had long desired to make my acquaintance, because he had heard her praise me so immeasurably beyond anybody else she had ever known, that he wanted to see what manner of man I could be. I heard the same from another, in another place long after. Once she proposed to me to make a bolt with her to Europe, which I declined. The secret of my influence was that I always treated her with respect, and never made love or flirted.
An intimate of both of us who was present when this friendly proposal was made remarked with some astonishment, "But, Madame, by what means can you two _live_?" "Oh," replied Lola innocently and confidingly, "people like us" (or "who know as much as we") "can get a living anywhere." And she rolled us each a cigarette, with one for herself. I could tell a number of amusing tales of this Queen of Bohemia, but s.p.a.ce, the Kantean G.o.d, forbids me more. But I may say that I never had more really congenial and wide-embracing conversations with any human being in my life than with Her Majesty. There was certainly no topic, within my range, at least, on which she could not converse with some substance of personal experience and reading. She had a mania for meeting and knowing all kinds of peculiar people.
I lived in the main street near the Karlsthor, opposite a tavern called the Ober-Pollinger, which was a mediaeval tavern in those days. My landlady was a nice old soul, and she had two daughters, one of whom was a beauty, and as gentle and Germanly good as a girl could be. Her face still lives in a great picture by a great artist. We lived on the third floor; on the ground was a shop, in which cutlery and some fireworks were sold. It befell that George Ward and I were very early in the morning sitting on a bench before the Ober-Pollinger, waiting for a stage-coach, which would take us to some place out of town; when bang! bang! crack! I heard a noise in the firework shop, and saw explosions puffing smoke out of the bursting windows. Great G.o.d! the front shop was on fire; it was full of fireworks, such as rockets and crackers, and I knew there was a barrel of gunpowder in the back-shop! I had found it out a few days before, when I went there to buy some for my pistols. And the family were asleep. In an instant I tore across the street, rushed screaming upstairs, roused them all out of bed, howling, "It burns!--there"s gunpowder!" Yet, hurried as I was, I caught up a small hand-bag, which contained my money, as I got the girls and their mother downstairs. I was just in time to see a gigantic butcher burst open the two-inch door with an axe, and roll out the barrel containing two hundred pounds of gunpowder, as the flames were licking it. I saw them distinctly.
It was the awful row which I made which had brought the people out betimes, including the butcher and his axe. But for that, there would have been a fearful blow-up. But the butcher showed himself a man of gold on this occasion, for he it was who really saved us all. A day or two after, when I was jesting about myself as a knightly rescuer of forlorn damsels, in reply to some remark on the event, George Ward called me to order. There was, as he kindly said, too much that he respected in that event to make fun of it.
George Ward is deeply impressed on my memory. He was a sedate young fellow, with a gift of dry humour, now and then expressed in quaint remarks, a gentleman in every instinct, much given to reading and reflecting. When he said anything, he meant it, and this remark of his struck me more than the event itself had done.
And to think that I quite forgot, in narrating my Princeton experiences, to tell of something very much like this incident. It was in my last year, and my landlady had just moved into a new house, when, owing to some defect in the building, it caught fire, but was luckily saved after it had received some damage. I awoke in the night, flames bursting into my room, and much smoke. It happened that the day before a friend in Alabama had sent me eleven hundred dollars wherewith to pay for him certain debts. My first thought was for this money, so I hurried to get the key of the secretary in which it was--keys never can be found in a hurry--and when found, I could not find the right one in the bunch. And then it stuck in the lock and would not open it, till finally I succeeded and got the money out. And then, not finding myself quite dead, I in a hurry turned the contents of three drawers in my bureau and my linen on to the bed, threw on it my coats and trousers, tied the four corners of a sheet together in one bundle, caught up my boots, fencing-foils, &c., to make another, and so rescued all I had. I verily believe I did it all in one minute. That day the President, old Dr. Carnahan, when I plead "not prepared" for failing at recitation, excused me with a grim smile. I had really that time some excuse for it. During the Munich incident I thought of the sheets. But I had gunpowder and two girls to look after in the latter place, and time and tide--or gunpowder and girls--wait for no man.
And so, with study and art and friends, and much terrible drinking of beer and smoking of Varinas-Kanaster, and roaming at times in gay greenwoods with pretty maids alway, and music and dancing, the Munich semester came to an end. I proposed to travel with an English friend named Pottinger to Vienna, and thence by some adventurous route or other through Germany to Paris; which was a great deal more to undertake in those days than it now is, entailing several hundred per cent. more pain and sorrow, fasting, want of sleep and washing, than any man would encounter in these days in going round the world and achieving _la grande route_; or the common European tour, to boot. For it befell me ere I reached my journey"s end to pa.s.s eighteen nights in one month in Eilwagen or waggons, the latter being sometimes without springs. And once or twice or thrice I was so utterly worn and wearied that I slept all night, though I was so tossed about that I awoke in the morning literally bruised from head to foot, with my chimney-pot hat under my feet; which was worse than even a forced march on short commons--as I found in after years--or driving in a Russian _telega_, or jacka.s.sing in Egypt, or any other of the trifles over which pampered tourists make such heart-rending howls now-a-days.