"The child is but fourteen," she said; "he is your own nephew, and a candidate for holy orders:--father, it is a shame that you should thus speak of me, your daughter, or of one of his holy profession."I did not particularly admire this speech myself, but it had an effect on my uncle, and was the cause of the words with which this history commences.The old gentleman persuaded his brother that Imust be sent to Strasburg, and there kept until my studies for the church were concluded.I was furnished with a letter to my uncle's old college chum, Professor Schneider, who was to instruct me in theology and Greek.
I was not sorry to see Strasburg, of the wonders of which I had heard so much; but felt very loth as the time drew near when I must quit my pretty cousin, and my good old uncle.Mary and I managed, however, a parting walk, in which a number of tender things were said on both sides.I am told that you Englishmen consider it cowardly to cry; as for me, I wept and roared incessantly: when Mary squeezed me, for the last time, the tears came out of me as if I had been neither more nor less than a great wet sponge.My cousin's eyes were stoically dry; her ladyship had a part to play, and it would have been wrong for her to be in love with a young chit of fourteen--so she carried herself with perfect coolness, as if there was nothing the matter.I should not have known that she cared for me, had it not been for a letter which she wrote me a month afterwards--THEN, nobody was by, and the consequence was that the letter was half washed away with her weeping; if she had used a watering-pot the thing could not have been better done.
Well, I arrived at Strasburg--a dismal, old-fashioned, rickety town in those days--and straightway presented myself and letter at Schneider's door; over it was written--COMITE DE SALUT PUBLIC.
Would you believe it? I was so ignorant a young fellow, that I had no idea of the meaning of the words; however, I entered the citizen's room without fear, and sat down in his ante-chamber until I could be admitted to see him.
Here I found very few indications of his reverence's profession;the walls were hung round with portraits of Robespierre, Marat, and the like; a great bust of Mirabeau, mutilated, with the word Traitre underneath; lists and republican proclamations, tobacco-pipes and fire-arms.At a deal-table, stained with grease and wine, sat a gentleman, with a huge pigtail dangling down to that part of his person which immediately succeeds his back, and a red nightcap, containing a TRICOLOR cockade as large as a pancake.He was smoking a short pipe, reading a little book, and sobbing as if his heart would break.Every now and then he would make brief remarks upon the personages or the incidents of his book, by which I could judge that he was a man of the very keenest sensibilities--"Ah, brigand!" "O malheureuse!" "O Charlotte, Charlotte!" The work which this gentleman was perusing is called "The Sorrows of Werter;" it was all the rage, in those days, and my friend was only following the fashion.I asked him if I could see Father Schneider? he turned towards me a hideous, pimpled face, which Idream of now at forty years' distance.
"Father who?" said he."Do you imagine that citizen Schneider has not thrown off the absurd mummery of priesthood? If you were a little older you would go to prison for calling him Father Schneider--many a man has died for less;" and he pointed to a picture of a guillotine, which was hanging in the room.
I was in amazement.
"What is he? Is he not a teacher of Greek, an abbe, a monk, until monasteries were abolished, the learned editor of the songs of 'Anacreon?'""He WAS all this," replied my grim friend; "he is now a Member of the Committee of Public Safety, and would think no more of ordering your head off than of drinking this tumbler of beer."He swallowed, himself, the frothy liquid, and then proceeded to give me the history of the man to whom my uncle had sent me for instruction.
Schneider was born in 1756: was a student at Wurzburg, and afterwards entered a convent, where he remained nine years.He here became distinguished for his learning and his talents as a preacher, and became chaplain to Duke Charles of Wurtemberg.The doctrines of the Illuminati began about this time to spread in Germany, and Schneider speedily joined the sect.He had been a professor of Greek at Cologne; and being compelled, on account of his irregularity, to give up his chair, he came to Strasburg at the commencement of the French Revolution, and acted for some time a principal part as a revolutionary agent at Strasburg.
["Heaven knows what would have happened to me had I continued long under his tuition!" said the Captain."I owe the preservation of my morals entirely to my entering the army.A man, sir, who is a soldier, has very little time to be wicked; except in the case of a siege and the sack of a town, when a little license can offend nobody."]
By the time that my friend had concluded Schneider's biography, we had grown tolerably intimate, and I imparted to him (with that experience so remarkable in youth) my whole history--my course of studies, my pleasant country life, the names and qualities of my dear relations, and my occupations in the vestry before religion was abolished by order of the Republic.In the course of my speech I recurred so often to the name of my cousin Mary, that the gentleman could not fail to perceive what a tender place she had in my heart.
Then we reverted to "The Sorrows of Werter," and discussed the merits of that sublime performance.Although I had before felt some misgivings about my new acquaintance, my heart now quite yearned towards him.He talked about love and sentiment in a manner which made me recollect that I was in love myself; and you know that when a man is in that condition, his taste is not very refined, any maudlin trash of prose or verse appearing sublime to him, provided it correspond, in some degree, with his own situation.