The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2

'Very good!' said Mr. Schnackenberger, as the warrior in the dreadnought, after mounting his round hat, again shouldered his musket:—'Now, good-night;' and so saying, he hastened off to the residence of the Mayor.

CHAPTER XVII.

MR. JEREMIAH'S NIGHT INTERVIEW WITH THE MAYOR UPON STATE AFFAIRS

'Saints in heaven! is this the messenger of the last day?' screamed out a female voice, as the doorbell rang out a furious alarum—peal upon peal—under that able performer, Mr. Jeremiah Schnackenberger. She hastened to open the door; but, when she beheld a soldier in the state uniform, she assured him it was all over with him; for his worship was gone to bed; and, when that was the case, he never allowed of any disturbance without making an example.

'Aye, but I come upon state business.'

'No matter,' said the old woman, 'it's all one: when his worship sleeps, business must sleep: that's the law, I'll assure you, and has been any time since I can think on. He always commits, at the least.'

'Very likely; but I must speak to him.'

'Well, then, take the consequences on yourself,' said she: 'recollect, you're a state soldier; you'll be brought to a court-martial; you'll be shot.'

'Ah! well: that's my concern.'

'Mighty well,' said the old woman: 'one may as well speak to the wind. However, I'll get out the way: I'll not come near the hurricane. And don't you say, I didn't warn you.'

So saying, she let him up to her master's bed-room door, and then trotted off as fast and as far as she could.

At this moment Mr. Mayor, already wakened and discomposed by the violent tintinnabulation, rushed out: 'What!' said he, 'am I awake? Is it a guardsman that has this audacity?'

'No guardsman, Mr. Mayor,' said our hero; in whose face his worship was vainly poring with the lamp to spell out the features of some one amongst the twelve members of the state-guard; 'no guardsman, but a gentleman that was apprehended last night at the theatre.'

'Ah!' said the Mayor, trembling in every limb, 'a prisoner, and escaped? And perhaps has murdered the guard?—What would you have of me—me, a poor, helpless, unfortunate man?'

And, at every word he spoke, he continued to step back towards a bell that lay upon the table.

'Basta,' said Mr. Schnackenberger, taking the bell out of his hands. 'Mr. Mayor, I'm just the man in the dreadnought. And I've a question to ask you, Mr. Mayor; and I thought it was rather long to wait until morning; so I took the liberty of coming for an answer to-night; and I'd think myself particularly obliged to you for it now:—Upon what authority do you conceive yourself entitled to commit me, an innocent man, and without a hearing, to an abominable hole of a dungeon? I have not murdered the guard, Mr. Mayor: but I troubled him for his regimental coat, that I might gain admittance to your worship: and I left him the dreadnought in exchange.'

'The dreadnought?' said the Mayor. 'Aye: now this very dreadnought it was, Sir, that compelled me (making a low bow) to issue my warrant for your apprehension.' And it then came out, that in a list of stolen goods recently lodged with the magistrates, a dreadnought was particularly noticed: and Mr. Mayor having seen a man enter the theatre in an article answering to the description, and easily identified by a black cross embroidered upon the back, was obliged by his duty to have him arrested; more especially as the wearer had increased the suspicion against himself by concealing his face.

This explanation naturally reconciled Mr. Schnackenberger to the arrest: and as to the filthy dungeon, that admitted of a still simpler apology, as it seemed that the town afforded no better.

'Why then, Mr. Mayor,—as things stand, it seems to me that in the point of honour I ought to be satisfied: and in that case I still consider myself your prisoner, and shall take up my quarters for this night in your respectable mansion.'

'But no!' thought Mr. Mayor: 'better let a rogue escape, than keep a man within my doors that may commit a murder on my body.' So he assured Mr. Schnackenberger—that he had accounted in the most satisfactory manner for being found in possession of the dreadnought; took down the name of the old clothesman from whom it was hired; and lighting down his now discharged prisoner, he declared, with a rueful attempt at smiling, that it gave him the liveliest gratification on so disagreeable an occasion to have made so very agreeable an acquaintance.

CHAPTER XVIII.

MISERY ACQUAINTS MR. SCHNACKENBERGER WITH STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

When Mr. Schnackenberger returned home from his persecutions, he found the door of the Double-barrelled Gun standing wide open: and, as he had observed a light in his own room, he walked right up-stairs without disturbing the sleeping waiter. But to his great astonishment, two gigantic fellows were posted outside the door; who, upon his affirming that he must be allowed to enter his own room, seemed in some foreign and unintelligible language to support the negative of that proposition. Without further scruple or regard to their menacing gestures, he pressed forwards to the chamber door; but immediately after felt himself laid hold of by the two fellows—one at his legs, the other at his head—and, spite of his most indignant protests, carried down-stairs into the yard. There he was tumbled into a little dépôt for certain four-footed animals—with whose golden representative he had so recently formed an acquaintance no less intimate;—and, the height of the building not allowing of his standing upright, he was disposed to look back with sorrow to the paradise lost of his station upon the back of the quiet animal whom he had ridden on the preceding day. Even the dungeon appeared an elysium in comparison with his present lodgings, where he felt the truth of the proverb brought home to him—that it is better to be alone than in bad company.

Unfortunately, the door being fastened on the outside, there remained nothing else for him to do than to draw people to the spot by a vehement howling. But the swine being disturbed by this unusual outcry, and a general uproar taking place among the inhabitants of the stye, Mr. Schnackenberger's single voice, suffocated by rage, was over-powered by the swinish accompaniment. Some little attention was, however, drawn to the noise amongst those who slept near to the yard: but on the waiter's assuring them that it was 'only a great pig who would soon be quiet,' that the key could not be found, and no locksmith was in the way at that time of night, the remonstrants were obliged to betake themselves to the same remedy of patience, which by this time seemed to Mr. Jeremiah also the sole remedy left to himself.

CHAPTER XIX.

WHOSE END RECONCILES OUR HERO WITH ITS BEGINNING

Mr. Schnackenberger's howling had (as the waiter predicted) gradually died away, and he was grimly meditating on his own miseries, to which he had now lost all hope of seeing an end before daylight, when the sudden rattling of a key at the yard door awakened flattering hopes in his breast. It proved to be the waiter, who came to make a gaol delivery—and on letting him out said, 'I am commissioned by the gentlemen to secure your silence;' at the same time putting into his hand a piece of gold.

'The d–l take your gold!' said Mr. Schnackenberger: 'is this the practice at your house—first to abuse your guests, and then have the audacity to offer them money?'

'Lord, protect us!' said the waiter, now examining his face, 'is it you? but who would ever have looked for you in such a dress as this? The gentlemen took you for one of the police. Lord! to think what a trouble you'll have had!'

And it now came out, that a party of foreigners had pitched upon Mr. Jeremiah's room as a convenient one for playing at hazard and some other forbidden games; and to prevent all disturbance from the police, had posted their servants, who spoke not a word of German, as sentinels at the door.

'But how came you to let my room for such a purpose?'

'Because we never expected to see you to-night; we had heard that the gentleman in the dreadnought had been taken up at the theatre, and committed. But the gentlemen are all gone now; and the room's quite at your service.'

Mr. Schnackenberger, however, who had lost the first part of the night's sleep from suffering, was destined to lose the second from pleasure: for the waiter now put into his hands the following billet: 'No doubt you must have waited for me to no purpose in the passages of the theatre: but alas! our firmest resolutions we have it not always in our power to execute; and on this occasion, I found it quite impossible consistently with decorum to separate myself from my attendants. Will you therefore attend the hunt to-morrow morning? there I hope a better opportunity will offer.'

It added to his happiness on this occasion that the princess had manifestly not detected him as the man in the dreadnought.

CHAPTER XX.

IN WHICH MR. SCHNACKENBERGER ACTS UPON THE AMBITIOUS FEELINGS OF A MAN IN OFFICE FOR AN AMIABLE PURPOSE

Next morning, when the Provost-marshal came to fetch back the appointments of the military wig-maker, it struck our good-natured student that he had very probably brought the poor fellow into an unpleasant scrape. He felt, therefore, called upon as a gentleman, to wait upon the Mayor, and do his best to beg him off. In fact, he arrived just in time: for all the arrangements were complete for demonstrating to the poor wig-maker, by an à posteriori line of argument, the importance of valour in his new employment.

Mr. Schnackenberger entreated the Mayor to be lenient: courage, he said, was not every man's business: as a wig-maker, the prisoner could have had little practice in that virtue: the best of wigs were often made by cowards: 'and even as a soldier,' said he, 'it's odds if there should be such another alarm for the next hundred years.' But all in vain: his judge was too much incensed: 'Such a scandalous dereliction of duty!' said he; 'No, no: I must make an example of him.'

Hereupon, Mr. Jeremiah observed, that wig-makers were not the only people who sometimes failed in the point of courage: 'Nay,' said he, 'I have known even mayors who by no means shone in that department of duty: and in particular, I am acquainted with some who would look exceedingly blue, aye d–lish blue indeed, if a student whom I have the honour to know should take it into his head to bring before the public a little incident in which they figured, embellished with wood-cuts, representing a retreat by forced marches towards a bell in the background.'

Mr. Mayor changed colour; and pausing a little to think, at length he said—'Sir, you are in the right; every man has his weak moments. But it would be unhandsome to expose them to the scoffs of the public.'

'Why, yes, upon certain conditions.'

'Which conditions I comply with,' said his worship; and forthwith he commuted the punishment for a reprimand and a short confinement.

On these terms Mr. Schnackenberger assured him of his entire silence with respect to all that had passed.

CHAPTER XXI.

IN WHICH THE HOPES OF TWO LOVERS ARE WRECKED AT ONCE

'Beg your pardon, Sir, are you Mr. Schnackenberger?' said a young man to our hero, as he was riding out of the city gate.

'Yes, Sir, I'm the man; what would you have with me?' and, at the same time looking earnestly at him, he remembered his face amongst the footmen on the birth-night.

'At the Forester's house—about eleven o'clock,' whispered the man mysteriously.

'Very good,' said Mr. Schnackenberger, nodding significantly; and forthwith, upon the wings of rapturous anticipation, he flew to the place of rendezvous.

On riding into the Forester's court-yard, among several other open carriages, he observed one lined with celestial blue, which, with a strange grossness of taste, exhibited upon the cushions a medley of hams, sausages, &c. On entering the house, he was at no loss to discover the owner of the carriage; for in a window-seat of the bar sate the landlady of the Golden Sow, no longer in widow's weeds, but arrayed in colours brighter than a bed of tulips.