University of Virginia Library

Fast and rebukingly rang the matins from the
towers of St. Etienne, and, though unused to wake,
much less to pray, at that sunrise hour, I felt a compunctious
visiting as my postillion cracked his whip
and flew past the sacred threshold, over which tripped,
as if every stroke would be the last, the tardy

yet light-footed mass-goers of Vienna. It was my
first entrance into this Paris of Germany, and I
stretched my head from the window to look back
with delight upon the fretted gothic pile, so cumbered
with ornament, yet so light and airy—so vast in the
area it covered, yet so crusted in every part with
delicate device and sculpture. On sped the merciless
postillion, and the next moment we rattled into
the court-yard of the hotel.

I gave my keys to the most faithful and intelligent
of valets—an English boy of sixteen, promoted from
white top-boots and a cabriolet in London, to a plain
coat and almost his master's friendship upon the
continent—and leaving him to find rooms to my
taste, make them habitable and get breakfast, I retraced
my way to ramble a half hour through the
aisles of St. Etienne.

The lingering bell was still beating its quick and
monotonous call, and just before me, followed closely
by a female domestic, a veiled and slightly-formed
lady stepped over the threshold of the cathedral,
and took her way by the least-frequented aisle to the
altar. I gave a passing glance of admiration at the
small ankle and dainty chaussure betrayed by her
hurried step; but remembering with a slight effort
that I had sought the church with at least some feeble
intentions of religious worship, I crossed the
broad nave to the opposite side, and was soon leaning

against a pillar, and listening to the heavenly-breathed
music of the voluntary, with a confused,
but I trust, not altogether unprofitable feeling of devotion.

The peasants, with their baskets standing beside
them on the tesselated floor, counted their beads upon
their knees; the murmur, low-toned and universal,
rose through the vibrations of the anthem with
an accompaniment upon which I have always
thought the great composers calculated, no less than
upon the echoing arches, and atmosphere thickened
with incense; and the deep-throated priest muttered
his Latin prayer, more edifying to me that it left my
thoughts to their own impulses of worship, undemeaned
by the irresistible littleness of criticism, and
unchecked by the narrow bounds of another's comprehension
of the Divinity. Without being in any
leaning of opinion a son of the church of Rome, I
confess my soul gets nearer to heaven; and my religious
tendencies, dulled and diverted from improvement
by a life of travel and excitement, are more
gratefully ministered to, in the in distinct worship of
the catholics. It seems to me that no man can pray
well through the hesitating lips of another. The
inflated style or rhetorical efforts of many, addressing
heaven with difficult grammar and embarrassed
logic—and the weary monotony of others, repeating
without interest and apparently without

thought, the most solemn appeals to the mercy of
the Almighty—are imperfect vehicles, at least to
me, for a fresh and apprehensive spirit of worship.
The religious architecture of the catholics favors the
solitary prayer of the heart. The vast floor of the
cathedral, the far receding aisles with their solemn
light, to which penetrate only the indistinct murmur
of priest and penitent, and the affecting wail or triumphant
hallelujah of the choir; the touching attitudes
and utter abandonment of all around to their
unarticulated devotions; the freedom to enter and
depart, unquestioned and unnoticed, and the wonderful
impressiveness of the lofty architecture, clustered
with mementos of death, and presenting
through every sense, some unobtrusive persuasion
to the duties of the spot—all these, I cannot but
think, are aids, not unimportant to devout feeling,
nor to the most careless keeper of his creed and
conscience, entirely without salutary use.

My eye had been resting unconsciously on the
drapery of a statue, upon which the light of a painted
oriel window threw the mingled dyes of a peacock.
It was the figure of an apostle; and curious
at last to see whence the colours came which turned
the saintly garb into a mantle of shot silk, I strayed
towards the eastern window, and was studying
the georgeous dyes and grotesque drawing of an art
lost to the world, when I discovered that I was in

the neighbourhood of the pretty figure that had tripped
into church so lightly before me. She knelt
near the altar, a little forward from one of the heavy
gothic pillars, with her maid beside her, and,
close behind knelt a gentleman, who I observed at
a second glance, was paying his devotions exclusively
to the small foot that peeped from the edge of
a snowy peignoir, the dishabille of which was covered
and betrayed by a lace-veil and mantle. As I
stood thinking what a graceful study her figure
would make for a sculptor, and what an irreligious
impertinence was visible in the air of the gentleman
behind, he leaned forward as if to prostrate his face
upon the pavement, and pressed his lips upon the
slender sole of (I have no doubt) the prettiest shoe
in Vienna. The natural aversion which all men
have for each other as strangers, was quickened in
my bosom by a feeling much more vivid, and said
to be quite as natural—resentment at any demonstration
by another of preference for the woman one
has admired. If I have not mistaken human nature,
there is a sort of imaginary property which every
man feels in a woman he has looked upon with even
the most transient regard, which is violated malgré
lui, by a similar feeling on the part of any other individual.

Not sure that the gentleman, who had so suddenly
become my enemy, had any warrant in the lady's

connivance for his attentions, I retreated to the shelter
of the pillar, and was presently satisfied that he
was as much a stranger to her as myself, and was
decidedly annoying her. A slight advance in her
position to eseape his contact gave me the opportunity
I wished, and stepping upon the small space between
the skirt of her dress and the outpost of his
ebony cane, I began to study the architecture of the
roof with great seriousness. The gothic order, it is
said, sprang from the first attempts at constructing
roofs from the branches of trees, and is more perfect
as it imitates more closely the natural wilderness
with its tall tree-shafts and interlacing limbs.
With my eyes half shut I endeavoured to transport
myself to an Ameriean forest, and convert the
beams and angles of this vast gothic structure into a
primitive temple of pines, with the sunshine coming
brokingly through; but the delusion, otherwise easy
enough, was destroyed by the cherubs roosting on
the cornices, and the apostles and saints perched as
it were in the branches; and, spite of myself, I
thought it represented best Shylock's “wilderness
of monkeys.”

“S'il vous plait, monsieur!” said the gentleman,
pulling me by the pantaloons as I was losing myself
in these ill-timed speculations.

I looked down.

“Vous me gênez, monsiêur!”

“J'en suis bien sure, monsieur!”—and I resumed
my study of the roof, turning gradually round till my
heels were against his knees, and backing peu-à-peu.

It has often occurred to me as a defect in the system
of civil justice, that the time of the day at which
a crime is committed is never taken into account by
judge or jury. The humours of an empty stomach
act so energetically on the judgment and temper of
a man, and the same act appears so differently to
him, fasting and full, that I presume an inquiry into
the subject would prove that few offences against
law and human pity were ever perpetrated by villains
who had dined. In the adventure before us,
the best-disposed reader will condemn my interference
in a stranger's gallantries as impertinent and
quixotick. Later in the day, I should as soon have
thought of ordering water-cresses for the gentleman's
dindon aux truffes.

I was calling myself to account something after
the above fashion, the gentleman in question standing
near me, drumming on his boot with his ebony
cane, when the lady rose, threw her rosary over her
neck, and turning to me with a grateful smile, courtesied
slightly and disappeared. I was struck so
exceedingly with the intense melancholy in the expression
of the face—an expression so totally at
variance with the elasticity of the step, and the promise
of the slight and riante figure and air—that I

quite forgot I had drawn a quarrel on myself, and
was loitering slowly toward the door of the church,
when the gentleman I had offended touched me on
the arm, and in the politest manner possible requested
my address. We exchanged cards, and I hastened
home to breakfast, musing on the facility with which
the current of our daily life may be thickened. I
fancied I had a new love on my hands, and I was
telerably sure of a quarrel—yet I had been in Vienna
but fifty-four minutes by Bréguet.

My breakfast was waiting, and Percie had found
time to turn a comb through his brown curls, and
get the dust off his gaiters. He was tall for his age,
and, (unaware to himself, poor boy!) every word and
action reflected upon the handsome seamstress in
Cranbourne Alley, whom he called his mother—for
he showed blood. His father was a gentleman, or
there is no truth in thorough-breeding. As I looked
at him a difficulty vanished from my mind.

“Percie!”

“Sir!”

“Get into your best suit of plain clothes, and if a
foreigner calls on me this morning, come in and forget
that you are a valet. I have occasion to use you
for a gentleman.”

“Yes, sir!”

“My pistols are clean, I presume?”

“Yes, sir!”

I wrote a letter or two, read a volume of “Ni
jamais, ni toujours,” and about noon a captain of
dragoons was announced, bringing me the expected
cartel. Percie came in, treading gingerly in a pair
of tight French boots, but behaving exceedingly
like a gentleman, and after a little conversation,
managed on his part strictly according my instructions,
he took his cane and walked off with his friend
of the steel scabbard to become acquainted with the
ground.

The gray of a heavenly summer morning was
brightening above the chimneys of the fair city of
Vienna as I stepped into a caléche, followed by Percie.
With a special passport (procured by the
politeness of my antagonist) we made our sortie at that
early hour from the gates, and crossing the glacis,
took the road to the banks of the Danube. It was
but a mile from the city, and the mist lay low on the
face of the troubled current of the river, while the
towers and pinnacles of the silent capital cut the sky
in clear and sharp lines—as if tranquillity and purity,
those immaculate hand-maidens of nature, had
tired of innocence and their mistress—and slept in
town!

I had taken some coffee and broiled chicken before
starting, and (removed thus from the category of
the savage unbreakfasted) I was in one of those
moods of universal benevolence, said (erroneously)

to be produced only by a clean breast and milk diet.
I could have wept, with Wordsworth, over a violet.

My opponent was there with his dragoon, and Percie,
cool and gentlemanlike, like a man who “had served,”
looked on at the loading of the pistols, and gave
me mine with a very firm hand, but with a moisture
and anxiety in his eye which I have remembered
since. We were to fire any time after the counting
of three, and having no malice against my friend,
whose impertinence to a lady was (really!) no business
of mine, I intended, of course, to throw away my
fire.

The first word was given and I looked at my antagonist,
who, I saw at a glance, had no such gentle
intentions. He was taking deliberate aim, and in the
four seconds that elapsed between the remaining two
words, I changed my mind (one thinks so fast when
his leisure is limited!) at least twenty times whether
I should fire at him or no.

“Trois!” pronounced the dragoon, from a throat
like a trombone, and with the last thought, up flew
my hand, and as my pistol discharged in the air,
my friend's shot struck upon a large turquoise which
I wore on my third finger, and drew a slight pencil-line
across my left organ of causality. It was well
aimed for my temple, but the ring had saved me.

Friend of those days, regretted and unforgotten!
days of the deepest sadness and heart-heaviness, yet

somehow dearer in remembrance than all the joys
I can recall—there was a talisman in thy parting gift
thou didst not think would be, one day, my angel!

“You will be able to wear your hair over the
scar, sir!” said Percie, coming up and putting his
finger on the wound.

“Monsieur!” said the dragoon, advancing to Percie
after a short conference with his principal, and
looking twice as fierce as before.

“Monsieur!” said Percie, wheeling short upon
him.

“My friend is not satisfied. He presumes that
monsieur l' Anglais wishes to trifle with him.”

“Then let your friend take care of himself,” said I,
roused by the unprovoked murderousness of the
feeling. Load the pistols, Percie! In my country,”
I continued, turning to the dragoon, “a man is disgraced
who fires twice upon an antagonist who has
spared him! Your friend is a ruffian, and the consequences
be on his own hand!”

We took our places and the first word was given,
when a man dashed between us on horseback at
top-speed. The violence with which he drew rein
brought his horse upon his haunches, and he was on
his feet in half a breath.

The idea that he was an officer of the police was
immediately dissipated by his step and air. Of the
finest athletic form I had ever seen, agile, graceful

and dressed pointedly well, there was still an indefinable
something about him, either above or below
a gentleman—which, it was difficult to say. His
features were slight, fair, and, except a brow too
heavy for them and a lip of singular and (I thought)
habitual defiance, almost feminine. His hair grew
long and had been soigné, probably by more caressing
fingers than his own, and his rather silken moustache
was glossy with some odorent oil. As he
approached me and took my hand, with a clasp like
a smith's vice, I observed these circumstances, and
could have drawn his portrait without ever seeing
him again—so marked a man was he, in every point
and feature.

His business was soon explained. He was the
husband of the lady my opponent had insulted,
and that pleasant gentleman could, of course, make
no objection to taking my place. I officiated as
tèmoin and, as they took their positions, I anticipated
for the dragoon and myself the trouble of carrying
them both off the field. I had a practical assurance
of my friend's pistol, and the stranger was not the
looking man to miss a hair's breadth of his aim.

The word was not fairly off my lips when both
pistols cracked like one discharge, and high into the
air sprang my revengeful opponent, and dropped
like a clod upon the grass. The stranger opened
his waistcoat, thrust his fore-finger into a wound in

his left breast, and slightly closing his teeth, pushed
a bullet through, which had been checked by the
bone and lodged in the flesh near the skin. The
surgeon who had accompanied my unfortunate antagonist,
left the body, which he had found beyond
his art, and readily gave his assistance to stanch
the blood of my preserver; and jumping with the
latter into my calèche, I put Percie upon the stranger's
horse, and we drove back to Vienna.

The market people were crowding in at the gate,
the merry peasant girls glanced at us with their blue,
German eyes, the shopmen laid out their gay wares
to the street, and the tide of life ran on as busily and
as gaily, though a drop had been extracted, within
scarce ten minutes, from its quickest vein. I felt a
revulsion at my heart, and grew faint and sick. Is a
human life—is my life worth anything, even a thought,
to my fellow-creatures? was the bitter question
forced upon my soul. How icily and keenly the
unconscious indifference of the world penetrates to
the nerve and marrow of him who suddenly realizes
it.

We dashed through the kohl-market, and driving
into the porte-cochére of a dark-looking house in one
of the cross streets of that quarter, were ushered
into apartments of extraordinary magnificence.