DESAGA:

A FANTASTIC TALE, AFTER THE MANNER OF HOFFMANN.

BY CAPTAIN MEDWIN.

No people are so fond of the good things of this world, or eat and drink so much, or so much in public, as the Germans. To be sure, the French frequent their restaurants-though this habit daily grows more and more obsolete—but the table-d'hôte is out of fashion in Paris, and confined for the most part to strangers and travellers, whilst that remnant of barbarism flourishes as much as ever on this side the Rhine. The very mixed society, the elbowing crowd, the bustle, and hurry, and confusion inevitable from a paucity of waiters, and an earnestness on the part of the guests, to obtain each his share of the favourite viands-the reeking of all sorts of dishes-not forgetting sour crout; the blasende musik, consisting of ten or twelve wind instruments, each performer trying to be heard above his fellows, are to me quite overpowering, and would of themselves be fatal even if the hour of day, twelve o'clock (they have no other name for dinner but mittag essen), were not a bar to such substantial proceedings. But the Tisch constitutes the summum bonum of the German, and is the resort of all persons in easy circumstances, who can here, at a comparatively small expense, indulge their incomparable appetites. As to society-whatever drinking may lead to-eating is certainly a selfish occupation. But every rule has its exceptions, and it does so happen, occasionally, that a party who have met together for some time, and consequently got to the top of the table, form a petit comité of their own, become communicative, and enter into interesting topics of conversation.

This I remember to have been particularly the case at one of the principal hotels at Leipsic, the name of which I now forget, where I had been a lodger during the fair, that brings into a focus people from all parts of Europe, and an habitue of the house, and belonging to some public office, as I imagine, after our ears had somewhat recovered from the effects of one of Strauss's most noisy waltzes, said,

"Gentlemen and ladies-not ladies and gentlemen-the English are undoubtedly the most polite nation under the sun. About five years ago put up at this hotel a person of the name of Vilde,-von Vilde he was called, but whether by assumption on his part, or courtesy on ours, I cannot positively affirm. He drove up, a few minutes before we sat down to table, in an old-fashioned, though handsome, berlin, with four posters, quite alone, to the amazement of the landlord, who had never before seen a single gentleman travel in a carriage built for eight, without attendants-almost without luggage.

"The postboys, however, called him ein güter-a good one-and he took two of the best rooms in the inn, without asking the price, and when our bell rung, entered the saloon, and took his place right oppo

site to me. Strange to say, a thing that never occurred to me before ;I could not eat for looking at the new arrival.

"Baron Vilde, beyond any man I have ever seen, had peculiarly the air noble stamped in his deportment. His face was handsome in spite of its being deadly pale. There was something highly aristocratic in those exquisitely-chiselled features, that seemed to have come at once from the hand of the Creator.

"He reminded me strongly of Paganini, who, if he was not the evil one himself, was strongly suspected of having dealings with him-at least he was said to be divested of all human feelings, and to have stood aloof from his kind, wrapt up, as it were, in a mantle of scorn, and selfishness, and pride.

"You are aware that the priests of Nice refused to bury him—and who should know what he was, better than they?

"I have mentioned the Prince of Fiddlers, because when he played here, I could have sworn that he and Vilde were one and the same person-both had the same height and figure-the same keen, wickedlooking eyes, hair, whisker, and mustache of the same shining black; and teeth of ivory whiteness, frequently displayed by the lifting of their finely-moulded upper lips. Paganini never smiled, and Vilde did so quite after a manner of his own. His smile might be traced from its birth to its extinction-from its beginning at the corner of his mouth, till it gradually reached his nose, eyes, and forehead-as a ripple spreads itself over a pool.

"Was he old or young? Sometimes when a cloud was on his brow, one might think him a man advanced in years; but the moment it was dissipated, a casual observer would not have judged him to be more than thirty; to me, however, he seemed, by great study of his toilette, to have contrived, like the actor in Wilhelm Meister,' to cheat Time of his ravages, and to be, what the French call, très bien conservé.

"Every feature of a countenance, every limb of a body, from a certain unity--harmonize one with the other; and the plainest person would rather lose than gain by the substitution of eyes or nose, however classical, for his own. However that may be, certainly that head of Baron Vilde's could only have become one set of shoulders. It was the crown of a tall, slender, very slender-built form, that seemed in intimate magnetic association, to hold an instinctive and intuitive sympathy with his mind, or rather to be another and only less subtle sort of mind; and by a certain erethism of the nerves, to convey to all parts of his body, with the speed of thought, its lightest movements and

affections.

---

If

"What this convulsion must have been in a storm of passion, may be imagined, but not easily expressed. It must have been terrible to witness-but of this there was little chance-for he never for a moment lost his perfect self-possession and imperturbable sang froid, offended, all his reply was a look-but it was a look-withering; on such occasion, I took good care to avoid the glance of his eye-you have heard of the Evil Eye-like that of Medusa, there would have been death in it.

"His hands-a good portrait is always known by the hands-were particularly white, the fingers long and curved, as is the case with all

persons of great sensibility; and on the middle one, contrary to our usual custom, he wore, set very massively in gold, and resembling it in shape, a ring that had been dug out of the ruins of ancient Thebes, in the possession of the great Egyptian traveller, Belzoni :-not that it was the setting which attracted the most-but the gem which it enclosed-the bird's claw held. That gem was indeed unique; for as he told us, it was the production of another planet. How obtained he did not say; but as I suppose, had fallen into this, as the lunar stones are said to do. On breathing on it as desired, a spirit seemed to awaken from within, and characters, unlike any I ever beheld, probably in the language of the very planet whence it came, showed themselves.

"This invaluable jewel surpassed in brilliance a ruby of the finest water. Its hue was sanguineous; and, on examining with my magnifying glass the texture of the stone, it seemed composed of separate drops of crystallized blood. One thing more, and I have done. He was dressed in a suit of black that fitted him without a wrinkle-the coat much resembling in cut those worn by chamberlains. In short, a more elegant, high-bred, finished, intellectual gentleman, it would be difficult to meet with at any court; and as Hoffmann drew for his friend Chamisso a fancy likeness of the Grey Man in Peter Schlemihl," so a poet of yours who has made a hero of Satan, could not do better in another edition of his work than to have this real sketch worked out into a frontispiece.

"Such was Baron Vilde-and there was a fascination about him—a charm in his converse and manners, whose magic influence bound our party together by a spell, and prevented it from being broken up for many days after the fair was over. Not but that opinions were widely at variance as to his character and profession. Some took him for an ambassador proceeding to, or returning from a foreign mission; others thought no one but a maître de langues could be such a proficient in languages for he spoke all the modern ones with equal purity-and there were not wanting those who considered him a stage-player, a Russian spy, or a political exile. His name, too, was a subject of animadversion. Was he a German or a Frenchman? If the former, it would have been spelt with a W-if the latter, consists of only one syllable. The pronunciation of Byron' was never a matter of greater controversy. Immense pains were taken to clear up our doubts, but the Baron cautiously avoided naming himself, and seemed highly amused with our curiosity-impertinence I might say.

66

Scarcely were there any of our little knot but would have it, that if not his face and figure, his voice was quite familiar to them-pretending that he used several disguises-talked of the devil's elixir and the elixir vitæ, and tried to convince us that he had as many aliases as the celebrated Cartouche, and that they had known him under the disguises of personages Greek, French, English, German, and Jew, and they related anecdotes by no means to their credit. The ladies smiled at them as pure inventions, and proceeding from envy, spite, or jealousy. They took Vilde's part one and all, and this very circumstance gave fresh impulse to the scandal, and increased the whispers and innuendoes that circulated at his expense.

66

In the midst of these, the Baron, who was thought to be very far

off, would noiselessly enter with a sardonic grin, that marked his knowledge of these machinations, and a thorough contempt for his calumniators.

"One day, as Vilde had kept every one riveted to the table till a late hour, by the history of his remarkable adventures in all parts of the globe, and the piquancy of his observations on men and things, the landlord of the hotel suddenly came up to us and said—

"Gentlemen, I have some pleasant news to announce to you. The Herr Geheim-ober-appellations-rath Desaga has just driven out of town, and will return to-morrow.'

"Geheim-ober-appellations-rath-driven out-return,' inquired one of another, repeating the words; and an old, grayheaded and mustached captain on half-pay, who presided at the board, and had done so by right of seniority for many years, explained the host's meaning thus:

"Over the way dwells an old ci-devant Geheim-und-ober-appellationsrath, on a retired pension, who is supposed to be possessed of enor mous wealth. He has neither chick nor child, and lives entirely alone. He is quite a character-an original; and to give you some idea of his singular habits, I will name one of them-par example. He gives great dinner parties, of a noble sort. Covers are laid for thirteen, and the dishes supplied by the hotel. As to the wines, his cellar contains the best in Leipsic. You naturally suppose that he sits down to table in company with twelve guests, prepared to do ample justice to his entertainment-by no means. They are represented by twelve dingy escutcheons, stuck at the backs of the vacant chairs. The old rogue is, however, as gay and jovial as if he was surrounded by the choicest spirits of the town. He talks, and laughs, and jokes with them each in his turn, and in a way so grim and ghastly, that none of the waiters will serve him a second time. Yesterday he gave one of these sumptuous feasts, and Frantz, our new kellner, swears by heaven and earth, nothing shall ever induce him to set foot again in the Ober-appellationsrath's mansion.'

"I am glad to find,' said an Englishman, who made one of the party, interrupting the captain, that we have not monopolized all eccentricity. I have a pendant for your Ober-appellations-rath in the person of one of England's richest sons.' It was his habit when he came to town for the spring, to order at the Clarendon a dinner for twenty persons, to which he also sat down alone. Whether he had invited this number of guests, and they declined to come, or his imagination peopled the vacant chairs with their shadows-or rather, if like a new sort of Amphitryon, pure vanity and ostentation motived the feast -I cannot say--such, however, was the fact.'

"Quite as great a miser," resumed the captain, and much more of a sonderbar is the Ober-appellations-rath; but I will not spoil your sport by detailing the peculiar trait of eccentricity to which the landlord alluded. Suffice it to say, that whenever he drives out of town, on his return he does not go at once to his own house, which he has carefully locked, but is set down at this hotel, when he first dines, and thenvous verrez,'

"The next day we assembled rather earlier than usual in the Salle à

manger, anxiously on the look out for the expected addition to the table. We had not long to wait; for our ears were soon saluted with the sounds of The Geheim-rath-the Ober-appellations-rath.'

"We rushed to the windows, and perceived an antiquated, rickety calash, drawn by a pair of miserable, half-starved dog-horses, rattle down the street, and then stop at the inn door. The stranger's bell rang, and out rushed our host and his waiters to greet the new comer. The carriage-door being ceremoniously opened, behold there issued forth a little old man, en ailles de pigeon, well powdered, with a tail set off by a huge rosette, a puce-coloured coat, with great cut steel-buttons, a flowered satin waistcoat, a cocked-hat of huge dimensions under his left arm, and leaning on a clouded cane as tall as himself. Such was the personage that the master of the hotel ushered into our pre

sence.

"We sat down immediately to table. The Geheim-rath neither bowed nor spoke to any one, though there were several present whom he had seen and inet for years. His pomposity was highly amusing-but the farce was yet to come. When the dessert had been removed, and Herr Desaga rose, we all rose too, and then it was that I of a sudden missed the Baron.

"Just as I was about to inquire of his next neighbour when he had made his escape, the captain whispered, Now for the afterpiece,' and as he was speaking, the Geheim-ober-appellations-rath posted himself at an open window.

"We all followed his example and observed him narrowly. His eyes were fixed upon a house, indeed well worthy of remark. It was a brick building which dated from the year 1526, and much resembled one in the High-street of Heidelberg, coeval with the chapel in the castle, and which house, by the by, is the only one that escaped the great fire, attributed by the pious to the circumstance of its having inscribed on it, Si Jehovah non ædificat domum, frustra laborant, ædificantes eam.' Like that memorial of ancient days, Desaga's habitation had in the centre four projecting bay-windows, two on each story, and was ornamented with the signs of the planets and relievos of kings and warriors burnished with gold. The façade contained three gables, the highest being surmounted by a bust of Minerva, whilst a little lower down shone in golden characters, Soli Deo, whether meaning the Sole God,' or 'God, the Sun,' the strange admixture, mythological and scriptural, rendering very doubtful.

"There stood that fantastic pile in the town of Leipsic, seeming as if it had no business there, and like its owner disdained all fellowship with its neighbours. Here and there long grass and weeds trailed from the dilapidated cornices, whilst a tree had found room for its roots in the interstices of the mouldering masonry. The windows were closed, and defended outside partly by shutters, and partly by Venetians, through which appeared hay and straw, where accumulated colony after colony of sparrows, who had built their nests for some generations undisturbed. Every one to look at the place, would have deemed it long deserted and uninhabited.

with a

"A handsome house that over the way,' said the old man, voice that whistled in the sound, to the host, who was standing behind him, in expectation of what was coming, Who is its owner?"