And now that I have it again, my earliest infancy shall bloom into memory again—and I am again a child, and play with other children in the Castle Court at Düsseldorf on the Rhine.
CHAPTER VI.
Yes, Madame, there was I born, and I am particular in calling attention to the fact, lest after my death seven cities—those of Schilda, Krähwinkel, Polkwitz, Bockum, Dülken, Göttingen, and Schöppenstadt[6]—should contend for the honour of being my birthplace. Düsseldorf is a town on the Rhine; sixteen thousand people live there, and many hundred thousands besides are buried there. And among them are many of whom my mother says it were better if they were still alive—for example, my grand-father and my uncle, the old Herr von Geldern, and the young Herr von Geldern, who were both such celebrated doctors, and saved the lives of so many men, and yet must both die themselves. And pious Ursula, who carried me as a child in her arms, also lies buried there, and a rose-bush grows over her grave—she loved rose-perfume so much in her life, and her heart was all rose-perfume and goodness. And the shrewd old Canonicus also lies there buried. Lord, how miserable he looked when I last saw him! He consisted of nothing but soul and plasters, and yet he studied night and day as though he feared lest the worms might find a few ideas missing in his head. Little William also lies there—and that is my fault. We were schoolmates in the Franciscan cloister, and were one day playing on that side of the building where the Düssel flows between stone walls, and I said, "William, do get the kitten out, which has just fallen in!" and he cheerfully climbed out on the board which stretched over the brook, and pulled the cat out of the water, but fell in himself, and when they took him out he was cold and dead. The kitten lived to a good old age.
The town of Düsseldorf is very beautiful, and if you think of it when in foreign lands, and happen at the same time to have been born there, strange feelings come over the soul. I was born there, and feel as if I must go directly home. And when I say home, I mean the Volkerstrasse and the house where I was born. This house will be some day very remarkable, and I have sent word to the old lady who owns it, that she must not for her life sell it. For the whole house she would now hardly get as much as the present which the green-veiled distinguished English ladies will give the servant when she shows them the room where I was born, and the hen-house wherein my father generally imprisoned me for stealing grapes, and also the brown door on which my mother taught me to write with chalk. Ah me! should I ever become a famous author, it has cost my poor mother trouble enough.
But my fame still slumbers in the marble quarries of Carrara; the waste paper laurel with which they have bedecked my brow has not yet spread its perfume through the wide world, and when the green-veiled distinguished English ladies visit Düsseldorf, they leave the celebrated house unvisited, and go direct to the Market Place, and there gaze on the colossal black equestrian statue which stands in its midst. This represents the Prince Elector, Jan Wilhelm. He wears black armour and a long, hanging wig. When a boy, I was told that the artist who made this statue observed with terror while it was being cast that he had not metal enough, and then all the citizens of the town came running with all their silver spoons, and threw them in to fill the mould; and I often stood for hours before the statue puzzling my head as to how many spoons were sticking in it, and how many apple-tarts all that silver would buy. Apple-tarts were then my passion—now it is love, truth, freedom, and crab-soup—and not far from the statue of the Prince Elector, at the theatre corner, generally stood a curiously constructed sabre-legged rascal with a white apron, and a basket girt around him full of smoking apple-tarts, which he knew how to praise with an irresistible treble voice. "Apple tarts! quite fresh! so delicious!" Truly, whenever in my later years the Evil One sought to win me, he always cried in just such an enticing treble, and I should certainly have never remained twelve hours by the Signora Giulietta, if she had not thrilled me with her sweet, fragrant, apple-tart-tones. And, in fact, the apple-tarts would never have so enticed me, if the crooked Hermann had not covered them up so mysteriously with his white apron—and it is aprons, you know, which—but I wander from the subject. I was speaking of the equestrian statue which has so many silver spoons in its body and no soup, and which represents the Prince Elector, Jan Wilhelm.
He must have been a brave gentleman, very fond of art, and skilful himself. He founded the picture gallery in Düsseldorf, and in the observatory there they show a very artistic piece of woodwork, which he, himself, had carved in his leisure hours, of which latter he had every day four-and-twenty.
In those days princes were not the persecuted wretches which they now are; the crowns grew firmly on their heads, and at night they drew their night-caps over it and slept peacefully, and their people slumbered peacefully at their feet, and when they awoke in the morning they said, "Good morning, father!" and he replied, "Good morning, dear children!"
But there came a sudden change over all this. One morning when we awoke in Düsseldorf and would say, "Good morning, father!" the father had travelled away, and in the whole town there was nothing but dumb sorrow. Everywhere there was a funeral-like expression, and people slipped silently to the market and read the long paper on the door of the Town Hall. It was bad weather, yet the lean tailor Kilian stood in his nankeen jacket, which he generally wore only at home, and his blue woollen stockings hung down so that his little bare legs peeped out in a troubled way, and his thin lips quivered as he murmured the placard. An old invalid soldier from the Palatine read it rather louder, and at some words a clear tear ran down his white honourable old moustache. I stood near him, crying too, and asked why we were crying? And he replied "The Prince Elector has abdicated." And then he read further, and at the words, "for the long manifested fidelity of my subjects," "and hereby release you from allegiance," he wept still more. It is a strange sight to see, when an old man, in faded uniform, and scarred veteran's face, suddenly bursts into tears. While we read, the Princely Electoral coat of arms was being taken down from the Town Hall, and everything began to appear as anxiously dreary as though we were waiting for an eclipse of the sun. The town councillors went about at an abdicating, wearisome gait; even the omnipotent beadle looked as though he had no more commands to give, and stood calmly indifferent, although the crazy Aloysius stood upon one leg and chattered the names of French generals with foolish grimaces, while the tipsy, crooked Gumpertz rolled around in the gutter, singing ça ira! ça ira!
But I went home crying and lamenting, "The Prince Elector has abdicated." My mother might do what she would, I knew what I knew, and went crying to bed, and in the night dreamed that the world had come to an end—the fair flower gardens and green meadows of the world were taken up and rolled away like carpets from the floor, the beadle climbed up on a high ladder and took down the sun, and the tailor Kilian stood by and said to himself, "I must go home and dress myself neatly, for I am dead and am to be buried this afternoon." And it grew darker and darker—a few stars glimmered on high, and even these fell down like yellow leaves in autumn, men gradually vanished, and I, poor child, wandered in anguish around, until before the willow fence of a deserted farm-house I saw a man digging up the earth with a spade, and near him an ugly, spiteful-looking woman, who held something in her apron like a human head, but it was the moon, and she laid it carefully in the open grave—and behind me stood the Palatine soldier sobbing, and spelling, "The Prince Elector has abdicated."
When I awoke the sun shone as usual through the window, there was a sound of drums in the street, and as I entered our sitting-room and wished my father—who sat in his white dressing-gown—good morning, I heard the little light-footed barber, as he made up his hair, narrate very minutely that homage would that morning be offered at the Town Hall to the Arch Duke Joachim. I heard, too, that the new ruler was of excellent family, that he had married the sister of the Emperor Napoleon, and was really a very respectable man, that he wore his beautiful black hair in curls, that he would shortly enter the town, and would certainly please all the ladies. Meanwhile, the drumming in the streets continued, and I stood before the house-door and looked at the French troops marching, those joyous and famous people who swept over the world, singing and playing, the merry, serious faces of the grenadiers, the bearskin shakoes, the tri-coloured cockades, the glittering bayonets, the voltigeurs full of vivacity and point d'honneur, and the giant-like silver-laced Tambour Major, who cast