I succeeded better in natural history, for there we find fewer changes, and we always have standard engravings of apes, kangaroos, zebras, rhinoceroses, etc. And having many such pictures in my memory, it often happens that at first sight many mortals appear to me like old acquaintances.
I did well in mythology; I took real delight in the mob of gods and goddesses who ruled the world in joyous nakedness. I do not believe that there was a schoolboy in ancient Rome who knew the chief articles of his catechism—that is, the loves of Venus—better than I. To tell the truth, it seems to me that if we must learn all the heathen gods by heart, we might as well have kept them from the first, and we have not perhaps made so much out of our New Roman Trinity or even our Jewish monotheism. Perhaps that mythology was not in reality so immoral as we imagine, and it was, for example, a very decent thought of Homer's to give the much-loved Venus a husband.
But I succeeded best of all in the French class of the Abbé d'Aulnoi, a French emigré who had written a number of grammars, and wore a red wig, and jumped about very nervously when he recited his Art poétique, and his Histoire Allemande. He was the only one in the whole gymnasium who taught German history. Still French has its difficulties, and to learn it there must be much quartering of troops, much drumming in, much apprendre par cœur, and above all, no one should be a bête allemande. Thus many bitter words came in. I remember still, as though it happened yesterday, the scrapes I got into through la réligion. Six times came the question:—"Henry, what is the French for 'the faith?'" And six times, ever more tearfully, I replied, "It is called le crédit." And at the seventh question, with a deep cherry-red face, my furious examiner cried, "It is called la réligion"—and there was a rain of blows, and all my school-fellows laughed. Madame!—since that day I can never hear the word réligion but my back turns pale with terror, and my cheeks red with shame. And to speak truly, le crédit has during my life stood me in better stead than la réligion. It occurs to me at this moment that I still owe the landlord of the Lion, in Bologna, five thalers. And I pledge you my word of honour that I would owe him five thalers more if I could only be certain that I should never again hear that unlucky word, la réligion.
Parbleu, Madame! I have succeeded well in French! I understand not only patois, but even aristocratic nurse-maid French. Not long ago, when in noble society, I understood full one-half of the conversation of two German countesses, each of whom could count at least sixty-four years, and as many ancestors. Yes, in the Café Royal, at Berlin, I once heard Monsieur Hans Michel Martens talking French, and understood every word, though there was no understanding in it. We must know the spirit of a language, and this is best learned by drumming. Parbleu! how much do I not owe to the French Drummer who was so long quartered in our house, who looked like a Devil, and yet had the heart of an angel, and who drummed so excellently.
He was a little, nervous figure, with a terrible black moustache, beneath which the red lips turned suddenly outwards, while his fiery eyes glanced around.
I, a youngster, stuck to him like a burr, and helped him to rub his military buttons like mirrors, and to pipe-clay his vest—for Monsieur Le Grand liked to look well—and I followed him to the watch, to the roll-call, to the parade—in those times there was nothing but the gleam of weapons and merriment—les jours de fête sont passés! Monsieur Le Grand knew only a little broken German, only the chief expressions—"Bread," "Kiss," "Honour"—but he could make himself very intelligible with his drum. For instance, if I did not know what the word liberté meant, he drummed the Marseillaise—and I understood him. If I did not understand the word egalité, he drummed the march, "Ca ira, … les aristocrats à la lanterne!" and I understood him. If I did not know what bêtise meant, he drummed the Dessauer March, which we Germans, as Goethe also declares, have drummed in Champagne—and I understood him. He once wanted to explain to me the word l'Allemagne, and he drummed the all too simple primeval melody, which on market days is played to dancing dogs—namely, dum—dum—dum.[7] I was vexed, but I understood him.
In the same way he taught me modern history. I did not understand the words, it is true, but as he constantly drummed while speaking, I knew what he meant. At bottom this is the best method. The history of the storming of the Bastille, of the Tuilleries, and the like, we understand first when we know how the drumming was done. In our school compendiums of history we merely read: "Their excellencies, the Baron and Count, with the most noble spouses of the aforesaid, were beheaded. Their highnesses the Dukes, and Princes, with the most noble spouses of the aforesaid, were beheaded. His Majesty the King, with his most sublime spouse, the Queen, was beheaded." But when you hear the red guillotine march drummed, you understand it correctly, for the first time, and you know the how and the why. Madame, that is indeed a wonderful march! It thrilled through marrow and bone when I first heard it, and I was glad that I forgot it. One forgets so much as one grows older, and a young man has now-a-days so much other knowledge to keep in his head—whist, Boston, genealogical tables, parliamentary data, dramaturgy, the liturgy, carving—and yet, notwithstanding all jogging up of my brain, I could not for a long time recall that tremendous tune! But, only think, Madame! not long ago I sat at table with a whole menagerie of Counts, Princes, Princesses, Chamberlains, Court-marshallesses, Seneschals, Upper Court Mistresses, Court-keepers-of-the-royal-plate, Court-hunters' wives, and whatever else these aristocratic domestics are termed, and their under-domestics ran about behind their chairs and shoved full plates before their mouths—but I, who was passed by and neglected, sat without the least occupation for my jaws, and I kneaded little bread-balls, and drummed for ennui with my fingers—and, to my astonishment, I suddenly drummed the red, long-forgotten guillotine march!
"And what happened?" Madame, the good people were not disturbed in their eating, nor did they know that other people, when they have nothing to eat, suddenly begin to drum, and that, too, very queer marches, which people thought long forgotten.
Is drumming, now, an inborn talent, or was it early developed in me?—enough, it lies in my limbs, in my hands, in my feet, and often manifests itself involuntarily. I once sat at Berlin in the lecture-room of the Privy Councillor Schmaltz, a man who had saved the state by his book on the "Red and Black Coat Danger."—You remember, perhaps, Madame, out of Pausanias, that by the braying of an ass an equally dangerous plot was once discovered, and you also know from Livy, or from Becker's History of the World, that geese once saved the capitol, and you must certainly know from Sallust that a loquacious putain, the Lady Livia, brought the terrible conspiracy of Cataline to light. But to return to the mutton aforesaid. I listened to international law in the lecture-room of the Herr Privy Councillor Schmaltz, and it was a sleepy summer afternoon, and I sat on the bench and heard less and less—my head had gone to sleep—when all at once I was wakened by the noise of my own feet, which had stayed awake, and had probably observed that the exact opposite of international law and constitutional tendencies was being preached, and my feet which, with the little eyes of their corns, had seen more of how things go in the world than the Privy Councillor with his Juno-eyes—these poor dumb feet, incapable of expressing their immeasurable meaning by words, strove to make themselves intelligible by drumming, and they drummed so loudly, that I thereby nearly came to grief.
Cursed, unreflecting feet! They once played me a similar trick, when I on a time in Göttengen sponged without subscribing on the lectures of Professor Saalfeld, and as, with his angular activity, he jumped about here and there in his pulpit, and heated himself in order to curse the Emperor Napoleon in regular set style—no, my poor feet, I cannot blame you for drumming then; indeed, I would not have blamed you if in your dumb naïveté you had expressed yourselves by still more energetic movements. How could I, the scholar of Le Grand, hear the Emperor cursed? The Emperor! the Emperor! the great Emperor!
When I think of the great Emperor, my thoughts again grow summer-green and golden; a long avenue of lindens rises blooming around, on the leafy twigs sit singing nightingales, the water-fall rustles, flowers are growing from full round beds, dreamily nodding their fair heads—I was once wondrously intimate with them; the rouged tulips, proud as beggars, condescendingly greeted