# Knight's Quarterly Magazine/Series 1/Volume 3/The Somnambulist

Translation of "Die Nachtwandlerin" from Seifenblasen volume 2 (1810).
THE SOMNAMBULIST.
I.—ECHO.
Of four-and-twenty windows in the house of Mr. Mule, all but one were glittering in the moonlight; and, for any thing that could be seen in these twenty-three, every soul about the house might be dead: but, in the twenty-fourth, matters looked different. It was open, and there were symptoms of life; for in the foreground stood a rose-tree in a flower-pot. Secondly, behind the rose of the flower-pot stood another and more lovely rose—viz. Miss Fanny Blumauer. This latter rose was about sixteen years old, and just now in high spirits. And for what? For very odd reasons indeed—first, because she heard a certain obstinate old uncle of her’s with whom she lived, viz., the aforesaid Mr. Mule, at this moment groaning or moaning in a peculiar way which announced that he was fast asleep; secondly, because she heard a certain old female dragon, a maiden aunt of her’s (who had been called in to the aid of Mr. Mule, by way of ‘relief-guard’ in watching his young treasure), at high words with some ideal Fanny in her dreams. The amiable employment of her waking hours this good lady was accustomed to pursue in her sleep; and the theme upon which she was now opening, viz., the intense wickedness of the male sex, was at all times too faithful to admit of any abrupt peroration. Upon the whole, therefore, it might be assumed that the dragons of the house—all and some—were profoundly asleep.
But of what consequence was that to Fanny?—Most inquisitive reader! it was of the greatest: for she was going to try an experiment. She coughed gently once or twice, and then paused to listen for an echo. Echoes are of various kinds, sorts, and sizes. In particular all readers must remember that courteous Irish echo, in a celebrated treatise on Irish Bulls, which, on being summoned by the words—“How do you, Pat?” would reply—“Pretty well, I thank you.” But this echo was still more accomplished; it was an echo that could be seen as well as heard; and not only repeated Fanny’s cough [as the most churlish echo would have done], but absolutely leaped over a wall in the person of a young cornet, and advanced hastily to the window. If any townsman had met this echo by day-light, he would certainly have called it Mr. Ferdinand Lawler; and even by moonlight it was very clear that this echo wore a handsome hussar uniform.
II.—ILLUMINATION.
But now, considering that Mr. Ferdinand Lawler lived at the very next door,—what in heaven induced these young people ​(unless they fancied themselves Romeo and Juliet) to meet under such difficult circumstances? Simply this—that Mr. Mule could not be brought to look upon Mr. Lawler with exactly the same eyes as his niece; and, therefore, did not encourage his visits by day. And why so? every body else thought him a most amiable person. True. But Mr. Mule had taken an early dislike to him; and Mr. Mule was an obstinate man. In fact, this pique against the cornet dated from the day of that young gentleman’s birth; for exactly on that day it was that Mr. Ferdinand Lawler opened his long battery of annoyances against the worthy gentleman with his infantine crying; the Lawlers happening to occupy the adjoining house. This offence, however, on the part of Mr. Ferdinand ceased in his seventh year; and even a Mule might have been brought in the course of our generation to overlook it. But, precisely as this nuisance ceased, another nuisance, incident to the frail state of boy, viz., orchard-robbing, commenced; and, being naturally of an ambitious turn, Mr. Ferdinand did not confine his attacks to orchards, but waged unrelenting war with Mr. Mule’s grapes and peaches. Even this, however, might have been palliated by a steady course of contrition and penitence; for, after all, boys are boys, and grapes are grapes. But the climax of Mr. Ferdinand’s atrocities was yet to come: nemo repenti fuit turpissimus; and it was not until his ninth year that Mr. Ferdinand perpetrated that act, which, as Mr. Mule insisted, left no room for any rational hopes of reformation.—Mr. Mule had a certain Pomeranian dog, called Juba, universally admired for the brilliant whiteness of his coat. In those days people did not talk so much of taste and virtu as at present; nevertheless Mr. Ferdinand had his private opinions and his favourite theories on such topics. The whiteness of Juba he conceived to be rather the basis of a future excellence, than any actual or existing excellence. As a work of nature, Juba was very well; but he had yet to receive his last polish from the hand of art. His white coat was, in fact, Mr. Locke’s sheet of white paper, a pure carte blanche, on which Mr. Ferdinand felt it his duty to inscribe certain brilliant ideas which he had bought of a house painter. Seducing poor Juba, therefore, by means of a bone, into his own bed-room, he there painted him in oils. In his father’s library he had often been shewn fine missals, and early-printed books, in which the initial capitals of chapters, or other divisions, had been purposely omitted by the printer and afterwards supplied by a splendid device in colours—technically called an “illumination;” and such books or MSS. were said to be “illuminated.” Sometimes it happened, as he knew, that the spaces left for the illuminated letter were never filled up. This was universally held to be a defect in a book: why not in a dog? Nature undoubtedly had meant ​Juba to be illuminated; and he determined to spare no cost in illuminating him. His head, therefore, he painted celestial blue; legs in cinnamon colour, with scarlet feet; pea-green tail; body a sort of Mosaic of saffron and rose colour; and, by way of finish to the whole, the ears and tip of the nose he thought proper to gild. Having finished this great work of art, Mr. Ferdinand turned him out for public exhibition. As a point of duty to his master, Juba naturally presented himself first of all in Mr. Mule’s library. That gentleman had just been reading, in the ‘Curiosities’ of Happalius, the part which treats of basilisks; and, as Juba came suddenly bounding in, he fled from him in consternation, under the notion that he was attacked by some hybrid production of a basilisk and a dragon, such as no heraldry has yet attempted to emblazon. Not until the creature barked did he recognise his outraged Juba; and, at the same moment that his eye took in the whole enormity of the guilt, his sagacious wrath detected the hand of the artist.
Such were the steps by which Mr. Ferdinand Lawler, as yet not nine years old, had ascended to the acme of guilt,—and obtained for himself in one house, at least, the title of ‘young malefactor.’ Being already debited in Mr. Mule’s books with all possible crimes, it may be readily supposed that all actual crimes against Mr. Mule—his peace or dignity, were regularly set down to Mr. Ferdinand’s black account. Never was seen such an awful arrear of guilt, so interminable a bill of offences, as Mr. Mule had in his own study filed against the young malefactor. Centuries of virtue would seem insufficient to expiate it. Not a window could be broken in the town, but “of course” it was broken by Mr. Ferdinand; not a snow-ball could be flung at Mr. Mule from behind a wall, but it bore the impress of Mr. Ferdinand’s hands. If Mr. Mule slipped in frosty weather, he felt assured that Mr. Ferdinand had been cultivating and nursing the infant lubricity of that particular path with a view to that particular result. And if Mr. Mule happened in the dark to be tripped up by a string stretched across the street, he affirmed peremptorily that the bare idea of such a diabolic device—the mere elementary conception of so infernal a stratagem—could not possibly have entered into the brain of any European young gentleman, except that of Mr. Ferdinand, since the Christian era, or that of Catiline before it. And he always concluded by saying, “And, sir, you will see that I shall live to see him hanged.”
In this point, however, Mr. Mule appeared to be taking a view too flattering to his own preconceptions; at least his anticipations seemed as yet, in newspaper phrase, to be “premature.” For twice seven years had passed since he had first bespoke young Mr. Ferdinand for the gallows, and as yet Mr. Ferdinand was ​neither hanged, nor apparently making any preparations to be hanged. In his tenth year he had been sent to a great public school at Mannheim; and very singular it was to observe the different impressions which that event had produced in two adjoining houses. In the one house was heard the mother of Mr. Ferdinand, weeping day after day for the loss of “her brave—her beautiful!” whose gaiety and radiant spirit of youthful frolic had filled her house with laughter and with involuntary gladness like that of birds in spring. In the other was heard Mr. Mule, chuckling for at least three weeks that the “young malefactor” was sent to a distance; and sent to a place moreover where he might chance to learn, experimentally, what it was to have a snow-ball lodged under the ear; where his own feet, as well as other persons’, might chance to be tripped up on a lubricated path; and where his own shins, as well as those of elderly gentlemen, might happen to be broken over a string in the dusk. Under what different angles was Mr. Ferdinand’s character contemplated from these two contiguous stations; seen from his mother’s drawing room, it wore the very happiest aspect of hope and vernal promise; seen from Mr. Mule’s library, it seemed a character that belonged to the mere scape-goat of Europe. Truth compels us to add that the mother’s view was the more correct. Mr. Ferdinand had gone through the school with applause; and, spite of his unconquerable spirit of frolic and mischief, had borne the character of the most good-natured boy in Mannheim. From Mannheim he was transformed to the university of Jena, where he had supported his character as a scholar; and had since served two campaigns in the Prussian cavalry with distinguished reputation, and latterly with some special marks of royal favour. In consequence he was spoken of in his native town with universal respect; the gallows, if it must come, seemed at least to be postponed to an indefinite distance; and even Mr. Mule began to doubt—if not whether Mr. Ferdinand would be hanged—yet whether he himself should live to see Mr. Ferdinand hanged. In general, at least; but there was one case in which he did not doubt. Whenever he looked into Happilius, whenever he reflected upon basilisks, whenever he meditated upon illuminations, he was sure to cry out in conclusion “And, sir, I shall live to see him hanged.”
III.—HERMES TRISMEGISTUS.
Time, however, and change, at length brought Mr. Mule to milder sentiments; all about him began to be proud of their young townsman. Mrs. Lawler was still next-door-neighbour, and had it in her power to do many neighbourly offices; patriotism and gratitude, therefore, alike appealed to him for some modifica​tion of his harsh sentence against Mr. Ferdinand; and finally, the illuminated Juba, the original materia litis and perpetual memento to his wrath, departed this life. And thus it came about, that, even upon those days when he read Happelius upon Basilisks, Mr. Mule was now accustomed to commute his original anathema for the gentler doom of—“Sir, I shall live to see him banished.”
This sentence, in one sense, Mr. Mule lived in fact to accomplish. After the battle of Leipsic, Mr. Ferdinand, having been severely wounded, had received leave of absence, and had returned to his native place. No sooner was he tolerably convalescent than parties innumerable were formed to welcome him home; at which parties he sometimes met Miss Fanny, who inflicted deeper wounds than those which he had received at Leipsic. It was evident from all writers on the subject that there was but one cause; and this he laboured to obtain through a series of tender epistles to the young lady. One of these, a booby of a servant lad delivered by mistake to Mr. Mule himself, who read it; and, in the first moment of his anger, recurred to the old sentence of hanging; and, as to banishment from Miss Fanny’s society through any possible channel, personal or by letter, that he decreed extempore; to enforce which sentence, the old aunt was summoned to his assistance. Now, as this interdict was little short of Mr. Mule’s worst and original malediction to Mr. Ferdinand, he resolved to countermine the old lady—or, to speak freely, the two old ladies; and, for this purpose, he addressed himself to Hermes Trismegistus.
“Hermes Trismegistus,” as he was called by the literati of the town,—“Slippery Dick,” as he was called by every body else,—demands a few words of special notice, both because he was a great man, and because we rely upon him as our Deus ex machinû for the catastrophe of our tale. In gratitude for this assistance, we dedicate this paragraph to his biography. Slippery Dick was, at this time, a sort of runner to the “German Mercury,” a newspaper published twice a week; he held the office also of “wonder-maker” to that journal, and personally distributed it within the limits of the town. Hence it was that he had gained the honour of his classical designation. He had, however, other titles to that honour: for he was a forensic person, and had been much connected with courts of justice in his early days; he was an eloquent person; and, finally, he was a thief. At least, he had been a thief; that was the calling in which he commenced the business of life; and, being then resident in a great city, a very lucrative calling it was. Still, he found that many inconveniences arose from being a rogue; and in great cities it is astonishing with what ease a man of talents may emerge into a ​more reputable character. The realms of honesty and dishonesty, like those of great wits and madness, have thin partitions. As a thief, he was the best man in the world to catch a thief. So he became chief spy or informer to the police, and thus obtained a footing on the twilight frontiers or neutral ground of good and bad repute. Some indeed said that this was worse than being a thief; but others said—“No: an informer was a prop to the laws, and an indispensable limb of the police-office.” This last word suggested to him another change; he obtained the situation of a regular police-officer, and was now decidedly within the pale of reputable life. Some hankering, however, he still retained for his first calling: he was glad to detect a roguery; he was glad to assist in one: of the two, he perhaps gave the preference to the latter; but merely, as he protested, because he found that it required greater talents. Tempting opportunities offered; suspicions arose; and, at length, Slippery Dick was requested to make himself scarce at the police-office, which he did; and, after many ups-and-downs, many flittings, backwards and forwards on both sides of the neutral frontier above-mentioned, he settled at last on the reputable side, in character of agent and correspondent to the German Mercury, professing himself a true penitent, and a decided convert to the primitive faith, that honesty is the best policy. Every Saturday, as he was taking his tenth glass of punch, he wept much for his past life. But still, as all flesh is frail, he manifested on Monday morning a constant propensity to engage in any tricks, plots, or knaveries which kept on the right side of the law. To feel that he was abetting something not quite justifiable, was necessary as a seasoning or pleasant condiment to Dick’s exertions; but being old, as he observed, and having no son to succeed him, he begged to decline all business of a dangerous character. He would invariably ask a high price for his services; but, if a man positively would not give it, then, Mr. Dick positively would insist in giving his services for nothing, rather than miss any luxurious piece of mischief. In short, he settled down into the regular Scapin of the place; and in that ancient part he become a “fourbe fourbissime.”
To him then, to Slippery Dick, with an entrance-fee of five guineas, (which, by the way, was wholly unnecessary) Mr. Ferdinand addressed himself. Dick liked the service immensely; for, at first sight, it seemed, sufficiently wrong to be stimulating. Yet, again he doubted, on further consideration, whether it were not an act of virtue to deceive so obstinate an old gentleman as Mr. Mule; and Dick began to have scruples of conscience. These, however, Mr. Ferdinand found means to overrule. But then again Dick murmured at the easiness of the service; “simply to cheat two old women—it was really below a man of ​genius!” And on this notion he laboured to embroil and perplex the plain course of his duties, until he sometimes brought himself and his client into much unnecessary peril of discovery. However, as yet no discovery had been made. The ease of a man of genius is delightful. As the distributor of the “Mercury,” Slippery Dick had the privilege of the entré to Mr. Mule’s breakfast-room; but as the disburser of infinite private news, which never found its way into the Mercury, Slippery Dick was indispensable. Philosophically speaking, he was one of the “conditions of the possibility” of breakfast; not the urn, or the coffee-pot, more so. With what ineffable impudence did he deliver his ineffable budget of lies! How, like Cæsar, or an Indian juggler, did he play with three balls at once; weaving a political lie for Mr. Mule, and interweaving it at the same time with the cross threads of two scandalous lies for the use of the old aunt!—How, like the knave that he was, how, like Slippery Dick in his best days, did he carry on a collateral stream of pantomime communication with Miss Fanny, terminating (as a matter of course) in the dexterous insinuation into her hand of some fresh pleading on the part of his client!—In this way had a long “suit” been conducted between the lovers; but, in all processes, whether in courts of law or of love, it is well known that many questions will arise which cannot be discussed in writing; oral depositions must be had; oaths must be administered; the book must be kissed. For some such purposes, and as the result of the correspondence, Miss Fanny at length granted to Mr. Ferdinand a series of nocturnal interviews at the window; of which the tenth was granted this very evening. Genius of youthful love protect it from detection! And now, having unfolded three-fourths of our little drama by stretching the characters and situation of the chief persons on the stage, let the rest unfold itself as rapidly as possible; and, if possible, in three pages, and in time for this Number of the Quarterly Magazine.
IV.—GHOSTS.
Fanny, the loveliest of roses, was standing (as we have said) at the window; and the cornet was outside on the lawn. Now it happened naturally enough, whether it were for the purpose of whispering, or of impressing something or other with particular emphasis upon the cornet’s attention, or for any other purpose which it does not become a gentleman to look into too narrowly, that Miss Fanny bent her head downwards in answer to some supplicating tones of Mr. Ferdinand. But, good heavens! to see the absurdity and limited views of master-builders! Solely intent upon the very subordinate consideration of preventing robbers from stepping into the windows, the poor ignorant man, who ​had taken upon him to build Mr. Mule’s house, had totally overlooked the paramount occasions on which young ladies might wish to step out of them. A great architect should think of such things; for surely it must trouble his repose, when he comes look back coolly upon his past life, to recollect that he only and his cursed plans have stepped between many a pair of lovers and the tenderest meetings. It is impossible to calculate the amount of human suffering which such master-builders may have caused. And, with regard to Mr. Mule’s master-builder in particular, be it hereby made known to the whole literary world, that he only was the cause that, in bending out too far, Miss Fanny Blumaner lost her balance and fell out. It is true that the cornet caught her in his arms, but that was a mere accident; and the whole case is a warning to master-builders how they can attempt to build houses in which young ladies are to live, any more than to build epic poems, without first solemnly asking themselves (as Horace directs)
Quid valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent.
But, to leave master-builders to their own sad reflections, let us attend to Miss Fanny, who uttered a slight scream on finding herself standing upon the lawn; whether from joy at her unexpected liberation, or from terror at the mode of it, we do not pretend to be certain. A faint echo of this scream penetrated through the dreams of the two dragons; and both awoke simultaneously. Mr. Mule was dreaming at the moment of a basilisk; the basilisk turned into a dragon, and the dragon into a Prussian dragoon, who seemed to be in the act of throwing his arms about some fair marble statue that stood upon the lawn before his house. The statue screamed, and Mr. Mule awoke. On the other hand, Mrs. Tabitha having been reading before bed-time of some Turk who absolutely maintained a harem in London during the reign of Queen Anne, was dreaming that this wicked Turk insisted on adding herself to his female museum; which vile design however, we are happy to assure the public and the lovers of virtue in particular, she was resisting in the most determined manner. Waking at this particular moment, Mrs. Tabitha saw nothing but what was very natural in the circumstance of the scream; she felt herself fully warranted in appropriating the scream as the natural expression of her own. An English poet has recorded, in two striking lines, that he was awoke under circumstances not very dissimilar—viz. at the very moment when he was charging the enemy, and had his victory torn from him in ​like manner by a scream. So far Mrs. Tabitha saw nothing to wonder at; nothing in fact but what was to be expected from her own very superior description of virtue. But it seemed to her that immediately on the heels of the scream she heard a faint—no! upon second thought, not very faint—reverberation of a kiss. Now this she took upon herself utterly to disclaim; fifty years’ experience of her own rigorous principles authorised her in declaring, that on no consideration whatever could she have granted such an impious indulgence to any man; much less to a Turk animated by those base intentions which she had so fully detected, and was so determined to resist. “But whose then was the kiss?” said Mrs. Tabitha; and “whose then was the scream?” said Mr. Mule at the very same moment. Here let it be explained that Mr. Mule and Mrs. Tabitha were both afraid of ghosts; and, for mutual protection, always left open the doors at both ends of a long corridor which connected their two rooms. “Was that Fanny that screamed?” cried Mr. Mule. “Was it you, Fanny, that ——?” and here Mrs. Tabitha drew aside her curtain, and looked towards Fanny’s bed. But receiving no answer, and seeing every thing quiet in the moonlight, she concluded that Fanny was asleep: this obliged her to charge the kiss upon some ghost of unusual levity, and very hastily she shrank over head in the bed-clothes. Mr. Mule, upon similar considerations, retreated in a similar direction; and, for a pretty long interval, there was silence in both rooms.
V.—MORE GHOSTS.
Meantime Miss Fanny’s alarms had been soothed by the cornet. Great was her trepidation at first; but, hearing all quiet above, and being assured by her lover that he would easily devise some means for restoring her to her bed-room, she consented to take a few turns up and down the lawn. To any reasonable man, who considers that excepting at a window, or by a letter, or through Slippery Dick, these young lovers had not, in a proper sense, met or exchanged any confidential communications for weeks, it will not seem matter of complaint that “a few turns up and down the lawn” should occupy the space of one hour and a half. Even thou, most philosophic reader! must pardon them; for it was moonlight; and it was the month of May; and it was the May of their young lives; and Mr. Ferdinand was tender and devoted; and to Miss Fanny he looked like a hero; and Miss Fanny was tender and confiding; and to Mr. Ferdinand she looked like a sylph.
A sylph? Aye; but there’s the rub. Every creature that lives has its appropriate annoyance and its peculiar enemy. The Whale, for instance, has its Thresher (if we remember our Ichthyo​logy); Mr. Mule was haunted for some years by Anti-Mule in the person of the “young malefactor;” we ourselves, who communicate this excellent story, are not without our Anti-We; and Sylphs, as all the world is aware, have their counteracting Gnomes. One of these it must have been, scowling askance at youthful happiness, that now summoned an accursed wind from the South-east. Oh Miss Fanny! Miss Fanny! what are you thinking of that never look up to that same open window through which the wind is now pouring in with the current and the music of a Levanter. Oh! Mr. Ferdinand! what can you be thinking of, who seem unaware that any wind is abroad. One rose has fallen from the window already; by good luck, that fell outwards. Another we fear is destined to fall; and, considering the direction of the wind, it cannot but fall inwards. Thrice the flower-pot reeled; thrice the South wind heaved it from its basis; and thrice did some gentle power that honoureth true love, with a touch as delicate as the breathing of a sigh, turn the tremulous balance in favour of poor absent Fanny. But, when the fourth resounding blast butted with its horns against the rose-tree, and fate hung suspended as upon the edge of a razor,—then came the accursed gnome, gave it a kick on the windward quarter, and, in one instant, the shrub, with all its pottery, fell like Jove’s thunderbolt to the ground; crashed into a tempest of ruins on the wide area of the chamber-floor; and, spreading like a sea beneath Mrs. Tabitha’s bed, there forced much other pottery into the universal wreck.
Lyric poetry in the hands of Filicaja may,—prose from a bourgeois gentilhomme is absolutely impotent to, expound the frenzy of alarm which seized upon both the dragons. Extremity of panic tore away all the frail draperies of bed-clothes under which their terrors had hitherto lurked. Each shot upwards like a rocket or a pyramid of fire: each, with a heart that was beating audibly, stood bolt upright in bed: each had been stunned beneath the bed-clothes by the ruinous crash: each on shooting upwards came to hear the monsoon which was setting in through the window; and each had a momentary vision of its possible cause. True to their separate dreams, Mr. Mule conceived that ten thousand basilisks were coming down the chimney; Mrs. Tabitha conceived that ten thousand Turks, in search of ten thousand harems, were entering the window at the pas de charge. There was silence between the two dragons for three minutes. At length, upon a pause in the wind, Mr. Mule groaned out in a sepulchral tone, “What’s that?” In a tremulous whisper, between a whistle and a sob, Mrs. Tabitha replied, “God knows.” At this moment a long stream of air ran through the corridor, and burst in upon Mr. Mule’s bed hangings. Mr. Mule’s teeth chattered with alarm; ​or, according to an idle hypothesis of his own, with cold. But, after the agitation of the curtains had continued for some time, a breeze of refreshing hope sprung up in his mind: and, in a noble transport of courage, he exclaimed, “Why this is the wind, Mrs. Tabitha: there’s a window open in your room, Mrs. Tabitha.” “I beg your pardon, that’s impossible,” replied Mrs. Tabitha; “I fastened all the windows the very last thing, I did: a window may be open, Mr. Mule; but, if so, the window must be in your room, Mr. Mule.”—Mr. Mule, was not a man to be put down in that way: none of the Mules was ever known to give up a thesis to such shallow grounds of opposition. “If I were not in a considerable state of perspiration, Mrs. Tabitha, I would just now come into your room, and detect you in your gross absurdities.”
“And, if I had not the rheumatism in my neck, I would step out of bed and expose you, Mr. Mule, by shutting down that window which at this moment I hear dithering about in your room.”
This gave the coup-de-grace to Mr. Mule’s expiring patience. Aristotle, in examining the different species of spurious courage, (which, as we remember, he makes out to be five,) reckons as one amongst them, the courage inspired by anger. Who minds what Aristotle says? At this moment it enabled Mr. Mule to do what his whole stock of genuine courage would never have compassed, viz., to get out of bed, put on his dressing-gown, and advance softly to Mrs. Tabitha’s room. Yet Aristotle may be right after all: for that is certainly spurious courage which breaks down without a moment’s warning, as now happened to the courage of Mr. Mule. Having no knowledge of his approach,—Mrs. Tabitha naturally took the white lining of his dressing-gown, as it fell within the moonlight, for a ghost. She shrieked out to that effect; and Mr. Mule exclaiming, “Where, where?” rushed back, and dived into bed. The proximity of his voice, however, undeceived Mrs. Tabitha, who hastened to undeceive Mr. Mule. He was naturally incensed at finding himself made a handle of for frightening himself: there were things enough in this world to frighten Mr. Mule without adding Mr. Mule to the number: his anger returned in all its strength; and consequently his spurious courage. He marched with the heart of a lion, back into Mrs. Tabitha’s quarters, and there exposed, as she deserved, her “gross absurdities.” Two negatives make one affirmative; but it has not yet been ascertained that two cowards make one hero. However, Mrs. Tabitha drew thus much confidence from the presence of Mr. Mule, that she ventured to put her head out of the curtains; and subscribed to the undeniable fact that the window was open: though how, or by whose machinations, she conceived to be past all solution, except on the hypothesis of ghosts. ​That was not a doctrine which in general Mr. Mule felt any disposition to question; though at the present moment he was not sorry to find that the prostrate rose-tree explained one part of his recent terrors upon less alarming principles. Without making any further comments, however, he now closed the window; bolted it securely against any second attempt to open it; and then retired again to his bed under considerable alleviations of his panic.
VI.—THIEVES AND GHOSTS.
And now let us quit these old gnomes, and the agitations of fear, for the lovely sylph, Miss Fanny, and the nobler agitations of love!—Miss Fanny! ah, poor thing, what’s to become of her? She’s bolted out now, and has no more chance of getting to her own bed than the rose inside has of rising up from the place where it lies floored, or of making amends to Mrs. Tabitha for the mischief it has done under her bed. Now, we suppose, there are people in this world depraved enough to laugh at this young creature and her distress; we, on the contrary, could find in our hearts to drop a tear or two, if we had time, in sympathy with her’s, especially when we see her, as she advances gaily up the lawn, suddenly stop, look up to the window, start back, clasp her hands, and then burst into tears. Poor thing, how her innocent heart beats! This is the third heart now out of one house that has palpitated almost to bursting within one half hour, and the reader’s heart must be made of mere stone if he pities none of them. As to Miss Fanny’s, however, we are glad to see her drying her tears, for her lover has most fortunately discovered that one of the library windows is a little open, and may be pushed up from the outside. Ay, Mr. Ferdinand, if you can get at it; but how is that to be done? The library windows are twenty feet from the ground. True, they are so; but Miss Fanny remembers a ladder which is kept at the gardener’s cottage; and the gardener’s cottage, by good luck, stands in the shrubbery.
Thither they bent their steps, and not a little surprised they were to find the door open: without scruple, however, they walked in, and the next minute they heard the door pulled to, and locked upon them by somebody from without. Here let us moralize upon the capricious misery of this human life of our’s; but two minutes ago we had a young lady before us weeping and refusing to be comforted because she is locked out, and now this same young lady is weeping because she is locked in. But how happened it? Thus: the gardener was at this time absent from home, and the gardener’s wife was kept waking not by ghosts but by thieves. Several little articles had recently disappeared ​from the premises, and the gardener’s wife insisted that they had been purloined; Mrs. Tabitha, on the contrary, charged the losses upon the carelessness of the gardener’s family. It naturally happened, therefore, that this evening, upon hearing the steps of the two lovers repeatedly passing on the gravel walk beneath her window, the gardener’s wife should be on the alert. Here, no doubt, were the robbers. She dressed herself, slipped down stairs, unlocked the door, and leaving it open to secure her own retreat in case of need, but carrying the key with her to provide against the worse case of the enemy’s intercepting her, and throwing a detachment into the fortress, she placed herself in ambuscade amongst the bushes. No long time elapsed before two people were heard advancing: who they were the good woman could not make out from the deep shades of the shrubs, but she observed that they talked in low tones. The few words she caught were, “Sure that it is at the gardener’s;” “Easily take it away;” “Think it will be possible to raise the window without being heard?” Ay, thought the gardener’s wife, here are the robbers, and they are now planning a burglary. She watched them into her own house, silently crept after them, locked the door, and with the key in her pocket went off to alarm Mr. Mule’s family, to proclaim the capture of the robbers, and to rear a lasting monument to her own courage and innocence upon the basis of Mrs. Tabitha’s final confusion and mortification.
Ah, well-a-day, poor Mr. Mule, I see another storm brewing against your peace. Just sinking again into slumber, with his head under the bed-clothes, Mr. Mule was entering upon a region of milder dreams. Happelius was vanishing, basilisks were growing scarce, when all at once the ghost of the giant Thor appeared to him playing with his sledge-hammer upon his chamber-door. In direful confusion he awoke, and too surely he found there was something in it. The dream was so far wrong that it was not the door which was played upon but the window. Whether Thor were the performer could not yet be ascertained; but certainly the clatter, which now assailed the glass of Mr. Mule’s window, was quite worthy of Thor; and if not Thor, at least it might be said of the performer (according to the polite reply of the Frenchman to Dr. Moore in a different case), “Qu’il méritoit bien l’étre.” Mr. Mule kept his position under the bed-clothes, and determined to keep it, let what would happen. Frequent meditation upon the case of nocturnal panics had satisfied him that the best position which could be taken up in such circumstances was to cower under the bed-clothes—the worst ghost he had yet met with had not gone the length of pulling off his blankets. Besides, it was clearly the place of honour: in bad times, as Mr. Addison correctly observes, “the post of honour ​is a private station;” and where is there one so private as that of a diver under the bed-clothes? Mr. Mule was well and scientifically tucked in upon three sides: as to the head, which certainly was the Achilles’s heel of his position, he had done his best to complete the lines of circumvallation by screwing down the clothes with both hands, and by doubling them under the weight of his head, which, he trusted, might resist Thor’s hammer as long as any part about him. On the whole, he felt himself entitled to say, that come would what come might, he positively would not be dislodged.
We shall see. Mr. Mule was positive, certainly; but the strongest positions have been forced, and the resolutions of the most restive persons have been baffled. At this moment he heard another storm driving at the windows, accompanied by shrill screams and feminine ululations. “God bless my soul,” said Mr. Mule, “here are all the ghosts from the Red Sea; and now one finds what comes of shutting a window in a ghost’s face.” Yes, the rationale of the assault was but too clear. Mule it was that had shut down the window which the ghosts had opened; he could not deny it; and Mule it is that must suffer for it. Bare poetical justice demanded that his window should be made the next object of attack. Mule saw all this, and Mule groaned; but Mule kept his position for all that. If he could get Mrs. Tabitha to take to the shutting down of the window, or to divide the blame with him, something might be done. But, lord! what’s the use of deliberating when the enemy are at the gates? Even whilst he yet deliberated, another clattering storm assailed the window; another peal of feminine ululation ascended, the panes began to crash, something or other rattled along the floor; in spite of all which, we are proud to state that Mr. Mule kept his position; and, lastly, something or other hit Mr. Mule in a region far more “practicable” than his head. If it was Thor’s hammer—at least it appeared that Thor’s hammer was no ghost; in consequence, Mule’s resolution, however mulish, gave way. Upwards he soared like a barrel of gunpowder, or like the fiend when touched by Ithuriel’s spear, or, according to our former comparison, like a rocket. At this moment Mule must have been a good study to the lovers of the picturesque, and still more at the next moment when he received a second rap over the shins. What passed in his mind during this ghostly agony it would be difficult even for Professor Kant to have assigned: thus much, however, is certain, that by the “association of ideas,” as Miss Hamilton would still be saying, the “tangible idea” of his own shins (to speak with David Hartley) suggested the “audible idea” of the young malefactor, whom, upon a certain night in former years, he had heard giggling behind a wall at a certain ​device for throwing Mr. Mule upon those shins. Hereafter, when Mule comes coolly to collate the two cases in point of torment, he will see the absurdity of having entered Mr. Ferdinand’s villany into his black day-book, with a Latin notula annexed, implying that Furcifer iste Ferdinandus Lawler was a greater plague to him than the fiend and all his imps ever had been or would be. The result shewed how wrong he was. Mr. Ferdinand’s assaults upon his shins left Mr. Mule courage enough to rise and run after him, and at one time really with some chance of overtaking him, and bringing him to condign punishment; whereas at present, after sky-rocketing, he immediately collapsed upon the centre of the bed,—and lay in a sort of round heap (rudis indigestaque moles), without a thought of avenging his shins. So lying, however, and now totally denuded of all bed-clothes, he heard the better; and it struck him in the next course of ululations, that he distinguished the voice of his own gardener’s wife; “Beyond a doubt,” said he, “it is Nelly Hagedorn;” and the very next moment brought to his ears the cry of “Thieves! Thieves!”
“Thieves!” said Mr. Mule exultingly, “God be praised! Thieves are better than ghosts any how.” And he rose with alacrity: again he grew “spuriously courageous,” according to the Stagyrite; for he was in an immense passion. And now, indeed, there was some ground for a parallel between his present mood and that in which he had pursued the young malefactor: the same passion possessed him—vengeance; and for the same wrongs—violated shins. He strode to the window, and roundly charged Nelly Hagedorn with burglarious attempts on his house, and murderous attempts on himself; all which, however, ranked lower in the scale of guilt than another offence, which he was obliged to suppress, of having swindled him into unutterable panic by personating a ghost from the Red Sea. Nelly defended herself on the charges of burglary and murder, by stating the case; she had the thieves under lock and key; they might break prison; she had done what she could to rouse the family by “audible ideas:” those failing, what remained but “tangible ideas?” And what mattered a few panes of glass in comparison of liberating the premises from nightly intrusions of thieves?
There was something certainly in this statement: these thieves might be the very people who had opened Mrs. Tabitha’s window; in which case, three sets of ghosts would have evanesced (or rather consolidated) into a rose-tree, Nelly Hagedorn, and a couple of thieves. Mr. Mule was mollified; roused his household; and went down stairs to admit Mrs. Hagedorn.
VII.—MORE THIEVES AND MORE GHOSTS.
All the world was below stairs; for half the neighbourhood had been roused by Mrs. Hagedorn’s outcries: amongst them, by the way, was slippery Dick; which is very well, as we shall want him for the catastrophe; and we desire that he will not leave the premises till that is effected. Though Dick, however, and other extra persons were there, one essential limb of the family was not: in the general muster every body perceived that Miss Fanny was absent.
“Fanny, my love!” cried Mr. Mule, all the way up stairs to her bed-room: “Fan, Fan, my love!” But no “Fan, Fan,” answered. He advanced to her bed, and gazed upon it with horror: no soft swelling or fine undulations of the bed-clothes expressed the beautiful outlines of a young woman’s person: no quiet heaving betrayed the corresponding breathings of Miss Fanny, or the gentle pulsations of Miss Fanny’s heart. Miss Fanny was gone. But when, and whither, and how? If thieves had opened the window, thieves could hardly have stolen Miss Fanny. No: there was something in it more than all that. Mr. Mule was alone, and Mr. Mule again began to quake. The rose-tree, the thieves, and even Nelly Hagedorn, all became apocryphal in his eyes; and it seemed to him that there was nothing certain under the sun, but his own shins and other people’s ghosts.
Down stairs he posted, and stated the facts. All present were alarmed, except Mrs. Tabitha, who contemplated the case exclusively in relation to virtue; and, as her virtue was chiefly manufactured by Cant and Co., from extra superfine particular humbug, Miss Fanny’s character was likely to suffer some damage in her hands. But Mr. Mule saw this, and hastily took it out of them: he called her an old cat: swore that he had done wrong to torment his niece by putting her under such a duenna: if Fanny had gone off voluntarily, no doubt it was to drown herself; in which case they would be both haunted by her ghost; and justly, as he must acknowledge. However he would take his horse and ride all over the country in search of her.
So saying he mounted up stairs to equip himself, whilst most of the others accompanied Mrs. Nelly to the spectacle of the little gaol delivery which she promised.
“Now we shall see,” cried Mrs. Nelly, triumphantly, as she unlocked the door, “whether my warnings are always to be set at nought.” So saying, she threw the door open with the air of one who is exposing to the public some great exhibition of lions: the company, however, were so ceremonious, that none chose to ​claim precedency of entrance. At length, however, Hermes Trismigistus, as the person who might be supposed most familiar with the genus ‘Thief,’ stepped forward and held up a light to examine the two specimens of that genus so recently caught. “But how is this, Mrs. Nelly? The birds are flown: the cage is empty. Or rather had there ever been any birds?” This was the second question; and, after a fruitless search, it was decided in the negative. It passed, nem. con. that Mrs. Nelly Hagedorn had been guilty of a hoax,—of a hum—of a flam: the whole was too palpably a Mississippi scheme for raising credit; a pure swindling South Sea bubble. And a doubt was moved by Slippery Dick, whether it were not actionable to disappoint people’s curiosity in this shocking way: nay, some held it to be a sort of petty treason to excite the passions of the public, and then baulk them; since every individual in respect to the collective body of the public stands in some such relative of fealty as a wife to a husband, or a servant to his master.
What then had become of the poor prisoners? Had Jove, in compassion to their misfortunes, taken them aloft and made them into some new constellation for the encouragement of future lovers, and the confusion of the present, Mr. Pond?—No: the case was this:—Mr. Ferdinand had been too much engaged in war to have much faith in the absolute impregnability of any fortress,—the gardener’s cottage, he was satisfied, must have its weak points, as well as Gibraltar and Bergen-op-zoom; and wherever an enemy could break in, it was clear that a prisoner might break out. Such a place he found in a little back-window; it was strengthened, indeed, by an apricot tree, which had been trained over it upon an espalier: but a saw, which lay in the window-seat, enabled him to prune a neat quadrangular section out of the espalier, through which he first elaborated his own person; next some unworthy ladder which had been the means of seducing them into the enemy’s quarters; and, finally, Miss Fanny. Like Nisus and Euryalus, they were just returning from their night adventure, and, like Nisus and Euryalus, with the spoils of the enemy’s camp; when suddenly, like Nisus and Euryalus, they heard the enemy advancing directly in their path; and, therefore, like Nisus and Euryalus, they plunged into a gloomy thicket to avoid them.—Here, by the way, an absurd friend of ours, (an attorney,) who is now looking over our shoulder, objects that this comparison is ‘defeated’ and ‘avoided’ (as he calls it in his law jargon), by the sex of one of the parties. The ‘party’ he means is Miss Fanny, whom he pretends that we must not liken to Euryalus. “Nisus”, says he, “may do very well for the cornet, but who the d—l is to do for Miss Fanny? She is a young lady,—whereas Euryalus is a young gentleman.” ​What of that? We didn’t make Euryalus a young gentleman; it’s no fault of ours. Look here: to make the cases tally and dovetail, there must be a man and a woman in both. Very well, then; we bring our man and our woman; if Virgil does not bring his, whose fault is that, you know? But this shews what comes of meddling with criticism, when people “should engross.” We shake off the dust of our feet against the attorney, and we return to the young cornet and his enemy. Happier in this point than Nisus and Euryalus, they were detected by no Volscens; they arrived happily under the window; Mr. Ferdinand applied the ladder—steadied it, and prepared to hold it. From what womanly scruples it is not for us to say, but so it was, that upon this last service of the cornet’s—however respectfully tendered, Miss Fanny laid her interdict. On some rare occasions the gentlest of young women are peremptory; and, after vainly remonstrating, Mr. Ferdinand retired to a distance, and Miss Fanny began her ascent.
Meanwhile, old Mule was roaming about in unspeakable agitation, at the thought of being left alone in the house; much also he suffered from disinterested fear at the thoughts of Miss Fanny’s death; much also from selfish fear, on considering that he had thereby added another ghost to his list; and that (God knows!) was not at all necessary. Just at this moment, he came to his library window, and flung it up to see if the party were returning from Nelly’s. Ah! Mule! ah! persecuted Mule! ἔ! ἔ! (to borrow the voice of Greek Tragedy) ὀτοτοτοτο͂ι! There stood the bust of Miss Fanny, resting (as it seemed) in mid air, looking in at Mr. Mule, and manifestly meditating an eruption into Mr. Mule’s premises. Mule absolutely brayed and whinnied at this insufferable fright: he shyed, threw up his heels, curvetted, plunged, and finally bolted at full stretch out of the room. Miss Fanny was startled at this mode of reception; but what was to be done? In she must; and let us tell her, that if she frightens other people in this way, she must expect to be frightened in her turn: and so it was that, as she was getting in at the window, her face naturally turned round to the latter; on which (ἔ, ἔ, ἔ, ἔ,! ὀτοτοτοτο͂ι! παπᾶι!), occupying her own recent station, and presenting his bust precisely as she had presented hers to Mr. Mule, stood a man, who popped this question to her—“Who the devil are you?” Miss Fanny staid not upon any scruples of form, but pirouetted and fled like a fawn after old Mule. Mule heard the ​ghost in pursuit of him, and began to plunge again, and never ceased plunging until he plunged into the cellar; and there finding an empty sack, he jumped in, pulled it up about him like a pillow-case about a pillow, ducked over-head, and prayed devoutly that his pursuer might prove to be some Johnny Raw of a ghost that would be hoaxed into taking him for a sack of mealy potatoes: whilst the innocent cause of his terror, poor “Fan—Fan,” trembling and palpitating, like a hunted hare, finally recovered her own ‘form’ in bed.
Poor throbbing “Fan—Fan!” we must pity thee, at the same time that we cannot help laughing a little. If “Fan—Fan” had frightened other people, was that any reason why a brute of a fellow should frighten her so confoundedly with his horrid—“Who the devil are you?” No, surely: and a just judgment it was upon this brute—that, as he turned round with his face to the ladder, he saw (ἔ, ἔ, ἔ, ἔ, ἔ, ἔ! ὀτοτοτοτο͂ι πόποι!) another fellow, standing just where he had stood on the ladder, who forthwith popped his own question to him—“Who the devil are you?” To which, however, he replied, not by plunging like a mule, or running like a fawn, but simply by retorting—“Why, if you come to that, who the devil are you?”.
Well, here are questions as plenty as blackberries: now let us have some answers.
“I am,” said the man on the ladder, “Mr. Ferdinand Lawler.”
“Ah! Mr. Ferdinand, how do you do?” said the man within: “for my part, I am Slippery Dick.”
“So! and how came you here, Mr. Dick?”
“Why, the truth is, sir, Nelly had just hoaxed us all with a cock-and-a-bull story of two thieves she pretended to have caught. A mere swindling trick, Mr. Ferdinand! I protest I respect the woman highly; for she swindled us all. I never thought she had so much talent. However, it’s not pleasant to be bilked of one’s sport; and so I wasn’t sorry that, as I came away from Nelly’s, I started some game for myself. Up this very ladder I saw a young boy in white trowsers mounting as fast as ever his legs could carry him; and, says I to myself—‘That’s a thief: I’ll go after him.”
“So! well now, that’s just my case with regard to you, Dick, for I saw you mounting the ladder, and said I to myself—‘that’s a thief; I’ll go after him.’ And, by the way, Dick, I think I was not so far out in my notion as you were in yours; for your thief in white trowsers was Miss Fanny Blumauer in white petticoats.”
Dick was a wit, and he took all such things in good part: wits, he knew, must give and take; so he contented himself with re​plying—that he believed Miss Fanny and he played their cards pretty much alike; if he once stole diamonds, she stole hearts every day of her life. And thus sparring, the two thief-takers descended the ladder together.
At the foot of it, the cornet asked Dick if any thing could be done to repair the mischief of this night: did he think matters desperate?
“Desperate!” said Dick, “they never were in better train; leave Mr. Mule to me, sir, I’ll hoax him; precisely in nine minutes from this time I’ll have him well hoaxed.”
VIII.—FINALE.
Dick went in search of Mr. Mule: not finding him above stairs, he knew whereabouts Mr. Mule must be; though not in what precise corner, or what precise sack. Seeing one, however, more corpulent than the rest, he determined to satisfy his own doubts, whether this were a sack of mealy potatoes, by turning it upside down and shooting out the contents. As, however, he necessarily satisfied Mr. Mule at the same time that he himself was neither that ghost, nor that Johnny Raw he was looking for, that gentleman thankfully pocketed the affront.
In this piece of impertinence, which was the mere gratuitous overflow of Dick’s infamous love of fun, he lost precisely one minute and a half, so that he had but seven minutes and a half for his main villainy; which, however, he accomplished within the time, without at all distressing himself, and had three-quarters of a minute to spare.
He briefly revealed to Mr. Mule that Miss Fanny was a Somnambulist; this master-key unlocked all the mysteries of the night. She had walked out of her chamber-window, mounted the garden-wall, two coach-houses, three stables, six dwelling-houses, two churches, and was on the point of scaling the church-steeple——”
——“You don’t say so?”
“I do; I saw her scaling the church-steeple, when Mr. Lawler, thinking she might sprain her ancle in coming down, went up with a ladder—brought her down—and with the same ladder put her into the library-window.”
“This must be kept secret,” said Mr. Mule.
“It must, sir; it’s no recommendation to a wife. Amongst Miss Fanny’s many excellent qualifications for that character, somnambulism will never be counted one. I know it by myself; I should not like a wife myself, that got up from my side of nights to walk up the church-steeple. Mr. Lawler must be thanked.”
“He must, sir.” For both purposes Mr. Lawler was sent for. ​That gentleman did not clearly understand for what Mr. Mule was thanking him; but as it procured him a footing in the family, a large share of Mr. Mule’s favour, and, finally, the hand of his lovely sylph;—he asked no questions, but was thankful that in any way he had overcome the mulishness of Mr. Mule.
In conclusion, we add the following as the latest intelligence we have received, on the present condition of our principal characters.
Mr. Mule, now that he is supported by the close proximity of the arm of flesh in the person of a young officer, makes a stouter resistance than heretofore to the world of ghosts; though he still occasionally retreats to Mr. Addison’s “post of honour.”
Mrs. Tabitha, it gives us pleasure to say, continues to display a very superior description of virtue in all her—dreams: night after night she sets the vile Turk at defiance; shews him clearly that she sees through all his designs upon her virtue; and sometimes the length of scratching his whiskers.
The young Mrs. Lawler is so thoroughly cured of her somnambulism, that she has never, since that first attack, got as far even as the garden wall on her road to the church-steeple.
Mr. Ferdinand continues to make the most shocking discoveries throughout Mr. Mule’s library respecting his own youthful atrocities. Every book, on its blank pages, exhibits so many memoranda of his offences [all beginning—“Furcifer iste Ferdinandus Lawler”], that his own hair stands on end with wonder that Mr. M. did not live to see him hanged.
Finally, for our main hero—wicked Dick, witty Dick, dear Dick, Sixteen-string Dick, Slippery Dick,—in his old age he has forsaken all sorts of downright rogueries. But, as the doctors think that his health suffers by such severe abstinence from stimu lants, they advise him to hoax—as a pleasant and wholesome substitute for knavery. Hoaxing, therefore, he now practises in all its branches: and he has recently sent us a most excellent hoax with which we design to hoax all our dear brother contri butors to the Quarterly Magazine.
[The basis of this story is to be found in the ‘Seifenblasen’ of Dr Schulz: Tübingen, 1810].
* ↑ “My own shout of onset, as the armies advance, How oft it awakes me from visions of glory!”                      Coleridge.
* ↑ Some purists in Grecian ejaculation pretend to patronize the trisyllabic form ὀτοτοῖ, which is clearly a shabby concern. Besides, as the learned Bishop of C—— hints, if Aristophanes may discharge his five-barrelled ποποποποπο͂ι upon us [in which there are four pops and an oi] why may not Tragedy reply with as many guns?
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