Some kind critic who peruses these writings will, doubtless, have the goodness to point out that the simile of the Mediterranean heath is applied to two personages in this chapter--to Ottilia and Dorothea, and say, Psha! the fellow is but a poor unimaginative creature not to be able to find a simile apiece at least for the girls; how much better would WE have done the business!
Well, it is a very pretty simile. The girls were rivals, were beautiful, I loved them both,--which should have the sprig of heath? Mr. Cruikshank (who has taken to serious painting) is getting ready for the exhibition a fine piece, representing Fitz-Boodle on the Urrisbeg Mountain, county Galway, Ireland, with a sprig of heath in his hand, hesitating, like Paris, on which of the beauties he should bestow it. In the background is a certain animal between two bundles of hay; but that I take to represent the critic, puzzled to which of my young beauties to assign the choice.
If Dorothea had been as rich as Miss Coutts, and had come to me the next day after the accident at the ball and said, "George, will you marry me?" it must not be supposed I would have done any such thing. THAT dream had vanished for ever: rage and pride took the place of love; and the only chance I had of recovering from my dreadful discomfiture was by bearing it bravely, and trying, if possible, to awaken a little compassion in my favor. I limped home (arranging my scheme with great presence of mind, as I actually sat spinning there on the ground)--I limped home, sent for Pflastersticken, the court-surgeon, and addressed him to the following effect: "Pflastersticken," says I, "there has been an accident at court of which you will hear. You will send in leeches, pills, and the deuce knows what, and you will say that I have dislocated my leg: for some days you will state that I am in considerable danger. You are a good fellow and a man of courage I know, for which very reason you can appreciate those qualities in another; so mind, if you breathe a word of my secret, either you or I must lose a life."
Away went the surgeon, and the next day all Kalbsbraten knew that I was on the point of death: I had been delirious all night, had had eighty leeches, besides I don't know how much medicine; but the Kalbsbrateners knew to a scruple. Whenever anybody was ill, this little kind society knew what medicines were prescribed. Everybody in the town knew what everybody had for dinner. If Madame Rumpel had her satin dyed ever so quietly, the whole society was on the qui vive; if Countess Pultuski sent to Berlin for a new set of teeth, not a person in Kalbsbraten but what was ready to compliment her as she put them on; if Potzdorff paid his tailor's bill, or Muffinstein bought a piece of black wax for his moustaches, it was the talk of the little city. And so, of course, was my accident.
In their sorrow for my misfortune, Dorothea's was quite forgotten, and those eighty leeches saved me. I became interesting; I had cards left at my door; and I kept my room for a fortnight, during which time I read every one of M. Kotzebue's plays.
At the end of that period I was convalescent, though still a little lame. I called at old Speck's house and apologized for my clumsiness, with the most admirable coolness; I appeared at court, and stated calmly that I did not intend to dance any more; and when Klingenspohr grinned, I told that young gentleman such a piece of my mind as led to his wearing a large sticking-plaster patch on his nose: which was split as neatly down the middle as you would split an orange at dessert. In a word what man could do to repair my defeat, I did.
There is but one thing now of which I am ashamed--of those killing epigrams which I wrote (mon Dieu! must I own it?--but even the fury of my anger proves the extent of my love!) against the Speck family. They were handed about in confidence at court, and made a frightful sensation:
"IS IT POSSIBLE?"
"There happened at Schloss P-mp-rn-ckel, A strange mishap our sides to tickle, And set the people in a roar;--A strange caprice of Fortune fickle:
I never thought at Pumpernickel To see a SPECK UPON THE FLOOR)"
LA PERFIDE ALBION; OR, A CAUTION TO WALTZERS.
"'Come to the dance,' the Briton said, And forward D-r-th-a led, Fair, fresh, and three-and-twenty!
Ah, girls; beware of Britons red!
What wonder that it TURNED HER HEAD?
SAT VERBUM SAPIENTI."
"REASONS FOR NOT MARRYING.
"'The lovely Miss S.
Will surely say "yes,"
You've only to ask and try;'
'That subject we'll quit;'
Says Georgy the wit, 'I'VE A MUCH BETTER SPEC IN MY EYE!'"
This last epigram especially was voted so killing that it flew like wildfire; and I know for a fact that our Charge-d'Affaires at Kalbsbraten sent a courier express with it to the Foreign Office in England, whence, through our amiable Foreign Secretary, Lord P-lm-rston, it made its way into every fashionable circle: nay, I have reason to believe caused a smile on the cheek of R-y-lty itself. Now that Time has taken away the sting of these epigrams, there can be no harm in giving them; and 'twas well enough then to endeavor to hide under the lash of wit the bitter pangs of humiliation: but my heart bleeds now to think that I should have ever brought a tear on the gentle cheek of Dorothea.
Not content with this--with humiliating her by satire, and with wounding her accepted lover across the nose--I determined to carry my revenge still farther, and to fall in love with somebody else.
This person was Ottilia v. Schlippenschlopp.