 | CHAPTER II. The headsman, or, The Abbaye des Vignerons |  |
2. CHAPTER II.
Ay, marry; now unmuzzle your wisdom.
Rosalind
The hour of noon was past, when the stage was
a second time filled with the privileged. The multitude
was again disposed around the area of the
square, and the bailiff and his friends once more
occupied the seats of honor in the centre of the
long estrade. Procession after procession now
began to reappear, for all had made the circuit of
the city, and each had repeated its mummeries so
often that the actors grew weary of their sports.
Still, as the several groups came again into the
high presence of the bailiff and the élite not only
of their own country but of so many others, pride
overcame fatigue, and the songs and dances were
renewed with the necessary appearance of good
will and zeal. Peter Hofmeister and divers others
of the magnates of the canton, were particularly
loud in their plaudits on this repetition of the games,
for, by a process that will be easily understood,
they, who had been revelling and taking their
potations in the marquees and booths while the
mummers were absent, were more than qualified
to supply the deficiencies of the actors by the
imaginations. The bailiff, in particular, as became
his high office and determined character, was unusually
talkative and decided, both as respects the
criticisms and encomiums he uttered on the various
performances, making as light of his own peculiar
qualifications to deal with the subject, as if he were
a common hack-reviewer of our own times, who
is known to keep in view the quantity rather than
the quality of his remarks, and the stipulated price
he is to receive per line. Indeed the parallel would
hold good in more respects than that of knowledge,
for his language was unusually captious and supercilious,
his tone authoritative, and his motive the
desire to exhibit his own endowments, rather than
the wish he affected to manifest of setting forth the
excellences of others. His speeches were more
frequently than ever directed to the Signor Grimaldi,
for whom there had suddenly arisen in his
mind a still stronger gusto than that he had so liberally
manifested, and which had already drawn so
much attention to the deportment of this pleasing
but modest stranger. Still he never failed to compel
all, within reach of a reasonable exercise of his
voice, to listen to his oracles.
“Those that have passed, brother Melchior,”
said the bailiff, addressing the Baron de Willading
in the fraternal style of the bürgerschaft, while his
eye was directed to the Genoese, in whom in reality
he wished to excite admiration for his readiness in
Heathen lore, “are no more than shepherds and
shepherdesses of our mountains, and none of your
gods and demigods, the former of which are to be
known in this ceremony from all others by the fact
that they are carried on men's shoulders, and the
latter that they ride on asses, or have other conveniences
natural to their wants. Ah! here we
have the higher orders of the mummers in person
of this country, as strapping a wench as there
is in Vaud, and as impudent—but no matter! She
is now the Priestess of Flora, and I'll warrant you
there is not a horn in all our valleys that will bring
a louder echo out of the rocks than this very priestess
will raise with her single throat! That yonder
on the throne is Flora herself, represented by a
comely young woman, the daughter of a warm
citizen here in Vévey, and one able to give her all
the equipments she bears, without taxing the abbaye
a doit. I warrant you that every flower
about her was culled from their own garden!”
“Thou treatest the poetry of the ceremonies
with so little respect, good Peterchen, that the
goddess and her train dwindle into little more than
vine-dressers and milk-maids beneath thy tongue.”
“Of Heaven's sake, friend Melchior,” interrupted
the amused Genoese, “do not rob us of the
advantage of the worthy bailiff's graphic remarks.
Your Heathen may be well enough in his way, but
surely he is none the worse for a few notes and
illustrations, that would do credit to a Doctor of
Padova. I entreat you to continue, learned Peter,
that we strangers may lose none of the niceties of
the exhibition.”
“Thou seest, baron,” returned the well-warmed
bailiff, with a look of triumph, “a little explanation
can never injure a good thing, though it were even
the law itself. Ah! yon is Ceres and her company,
and a goodly train they appear! These are the
harvest-men and harvest-women, who represent
the abundance of our country of Vaud, Signor
Grimaldi, which, truth to say, is a fat land, and
worthy of the allegory. These knaves, with the
stools strapped to their nether parts, and carrying
tubs, are cowherds, and all the others are more or
less concerned with the dairy. Ceres was a personage
dispute, as may be seen by the manner in which
she is backed by the landed interest. There is no
solid respectability, Herr von Willading, that is
not fairly bottomed on broad lands. Ye perceive
that the goddess sits on a throne whose ornaments
are all taken from the earth; a sheaf of wheat
tops the canopy; rich ears of generous grain are
her jewels, and her sceptre is the sickle. These
are but allegories, Signor Grimaldi, but they are
allusions that give birth to wholesome thoughts in
the prudent. There is no science that may not
catch a hint from our games; politics, religion, or
law—'t is all the same for the well-disposed and
cunning.”
“An ingenious scholar might even find an argument
for the bürgerschaft in an allegory that is
less clear;” returned the amused Genoese. “But
you have overlooked, Signor Bailiff, the instrument
that Ceres carries in the other hand, and
which is full to overflowing with the fruits of the
earth;—that which so much resembles a bullock's
horn, I mean.”
“That is, out of question, some of the utensils
of the ancients; perhaps a milking vessel in use
among the gods and goddesses, for your deities of
old were no bad housewives, and made a merit of
their economy; and Ceres here, as is seen, is not
ashamed of a useful occupation. By my faith, but
this affair has been gotten up with a very creditable
attention to the moral! But our dairy-people
are about to give us some of their airs.”
Peterchen now put a stop to his classic lore,
while the followers of Ceres arranged themselves
in order, and began to sing. The contagious and
wild melody of the Ranz des Vaches rose in the
square, and soon drew the absorbed and delighted
attention of all within hearing, which, to say the
limits of the town, for, the crowd chiming in with
the more regular artists, a sort of musical enthusiasm
seized upon all present who came of Vaud
and her valleys. The dogmatical, but well-meaning
bailiff, though usually jealous of his Bernese
origin, and alive on system to the necessity of
preserving the superiority of the great canton by
all the common observances of dignity and reserve,
yielded to the general movement, and shouted
with the rest, under favor of a pair of lungs
that nature had admirably fitted to sustain the
chorus of a mountain song. This condescension
in the deputy of Berne was often spoken of afterwards
with admiration, the simple-minded and
credulous ascribing the exaltation of Peterchen to
a generous warmth in their happiness and interests,
while the more wary and observant were apt
to impute the musical excess to a previous excess
of another character, in which the wines of the
neighboring côtes were fairly entitled to come in
for a full share of the merit. Those who were
nearest the bailiff were secretly much diverted
with his awkward attempts at graciousness, which
one fair and witty Vaudoise likened to the antics
of one of the celebrated animals that are still fostered
in the city which ruled so much of Switzerland,
and from whom, indeed, the town and canton
are both vulgarly supposed to have derived their
common name; for, while the authority of Berne
weighed so imperiously and heavily on its subsidiary
countries, as is usual in such cases, the people
of the latter were much addicted to taking an impotent
revenge, by whispering the pleasantest sarcasms
they could invent against their masters.
Notwithstanding this and many more criticisms on
his performance, the bailiff enacted his part in the
representation to his own entire satisfaction; and
at least merited the applause of the people, for
having entered with so much spirit into their
games, and with the hope that this act of grace
might be the means of causing them to forget
some fifty, or a hundred, of his other acts, which
certainly had not possessed the same melodious
and companionable features.
After this achievement the bailiff was reasonably
quiet, until Bacchus and his train again entered
the square. At the appearance of the laughing
urchin who bestrode the cask, he resumed his dissertations
with a confidence that all are apt to feel
who are about to treat on a subject with which
they have had occasion to be familiar.
“This is the god of good liquor,” said Peterchen,
always speaking to any who would listen,
although, by an instinct of respect, he chiefly preferred
favoring the Signor Grimaldi with his
remarks, “as may plainly be seen by his seat; and
these are dancing attendants to show that wine
gladdens the heart;—yonder is the press at work,
extracting the juices, and that huge cluster is to
represent the grapes which the messengers of
Joshua brought back from Canaan when sent to
spy out the land, a history which I make no doubt
you Signore, in Italy, have at your fingers' ends.”
Gaetano Grimaldi looked embarrassed, for,
although well skilled in the lore of the heathen
mythology, his learning as a male papist and a laic
was not particularly rich in the story of the Christian
faith. At first he supposed that the bailiff had
merely blundered in his account of the mythology,
but, by taxing his memory a little, he recovered
some faint glimpses of the truth, a redemption of
his character as a book-man for which he was materially
indebted to having seen some celebrated
pictures on this very subject, a species of instruction
those who inhabit the Catholic countries of the
other hemisphere.
“Thou surely hast not overlooked the history of
the gigantic cluster of grapes, Signore!” exclaimed
Peterchen, astonished at the apparent hesitation
of the Italian. “'Tis the most beautiful of all the
legends of the holy book. Ha! as I live, there is
the ass without his rider;—what has become of
the blackguard Antoine Giraud? The rogue has
alighted to swallow a fresh draught from some
booth, after draining his own skin to the bottom.
This comes of neglect; a sober man, or at least
one of a harder head, should have been put to the
part;—for, look you, 'tis a character that need
stand at least a gallon, since the rehearsals alone
are enough to take a common drinker off his
centre.”
The tongue of the bailiff ran on in accompaniment,
during the time that the followers of Bacchus
were going through with their songs and
pageants, and when they disappeared, it gained a
louder key, like the “rolling river that murmuring
flows and flows for ever,” rising again on the ear,
after the din of any adventitious noise has ceased.
“Now we may expect the pretty bride and her
maids,” continued Peterchen, winking at his companions,
as the ancient gallant is wont to make a
parade of his admiration of the fair; “the solemn
ceremony is to be pronounced here, before the
authorities, as a suitable termination to this happy
day. Ah! my good old friend Melchior, neither
of us is the man he was, or these skipping hoydens
would not go through their pirouettes without some
aid from our arms! Now, dispose of yourselves,
friends; for this is to be no acting, but a downright
marriage, and it is meet that we keep a graver
the officers?”
Peterchen had interrupted himself, for just at
that moment the thief-takers entered the square in
a body, inclosing in their centre a group, who had
the mien of captives too evidently to be mistaken
for honest men. The bailiff was peculiarly an
executive officer; one of that class who believe
that the enactment of a law is a point of far less
interest than its due fulfilment. Indeed, so far did
he push his favorite principle, that he did not hesitate
sometimes to suppose shades of meaning in
the different ordinances of the great council that
existed only in his own brain, but which were, to
do him justice, sufficiently convenient to himself in
carrying out the constructions which he saw fit to
put on his own duties. The appearance of an
affair of justice was unfortunate for the progress
of the ceremonies, Peterchen having some such
relish for the punishment of rogues, and more especially
for such as seemed to be an eternal
reproach to the action of the Bernese system by
their incorrigible misery and poverty, as an old
coachman is proverbially said to retain for the
crack of the whip. All his judicial sympathies
were not fully awakened, on the present occasion,
however; the criminals, though far from belonging
to the more lucky of their fellow-creatures, not
being quite miserable enough in appearance to
awaken all those powers of magisterial reproach
and severity that lay dormant in the bailiff's moral
temperament, ready, at any time, to vindicate the
right of the strong against the innovations of the
feeble and unhappy. The reader will at once
have anticipated that the prisoners were Maso and
his companions, who had been more successful in
escaping from their keepers, than fortunate in evading
time.
“Who are these that dare affront the ruling
powers on this day of general good-will and rejoicing?”
sternly demanded the bailiff, when the minions
of the law and their captives stood fairly before
him. “Do ye not know, knaves, that this is a
solemn, almost a religious ceremony at Vévey—for
so it would be considered by the ancients at least—
and that a crime is doubly a crime when committed
either in an honorable presence, on a solemn
and dignified occasion, like this, or against the
authorities;—this last being always the gravest
and greatest of all?”
“We are but indifferent scholars, worshipful
bailiff, as you may easily perceive by our outward
appearance, and are to be judged leniently,” answered
Maso. “Our whole offence was a hot but
short quarrel touching a dog, in which hands were
made to play the part of reason, and which would
have done little harm to any but ourselves, had it
been the pleasure of the town authorities to have
left us to decide the dispute in our own way. As
you well say, this is a joyous occasion, and we
esteem it hard that we of all Vévey should be shut
up on account of so light an affair, and cut off from
the merriment of the rest.”
“There is reason in this fellow, after all,” said
Peterchen, in a low voice. “What is a dog more
or less to Berne, and a public rejoicing to produce
its end should go deep into the community. Let
the men go, of God's name! and look to it, that
all the dogs be beaten out of the square, that we
have no more folly.”
“Please you, these are the men that have escaped
from the authorities, after knocking down their
keeper;” the officer humbly observed.
“How is this! Didst thou not say, fellow, that
it was all about a dog?”
“I spoke of the reason of our being shut up. It
is true that, wearied with breathing pent air, and a
little heated with wine, we left the prison without
permission; but we hope this little sally of spirit
will be overlooked on account of the extraordinary
occasion.”
“Rogue, thy plea augments the offence. A
crime committed on an extraordinary occasion
becomes an extraordinary crime, and requires
an extraordinary punishment, which I intend to
see inflicted, forthwith. You have insulted the
authorities, and that is the unpardonable sin in
all communities. Draw nearer, friends, for I
love to let my reasons be felt and understood by
those who are to be affected by my decisions, and
this is a happy moment, to give a short lesson to
the Vévaisans—let the bride and bridegroom wait
—draw nearer all, that ye may better hear what
I have to say.”
The crowd pressed more closely around the
foot of the stage, and Peterchen, assuming a didactic
air, resumed his discourse.
“The object of all authority is to find the means of
its own support,” continued the bailiff; “for unless
it can exist, it must fall to the ground; and you all
are sufficiently schooled to know that when a thing
becomes of indifferent value, it loses most of its
consideration. Thus government is established in
order that it may protect itself; since without this
power it could not remain a government, and there
is not a man existing who is not ready to admi
that even a bad government is better than none.
But ours is particularly a good government, its
greatest care on all occasions being to make itself
respected, and he who respects himself is certain to
have esteem in the eyes of others. Without this
steed, or the victims of anarchy and confusion, ay,
and damnable heresies in religion. Thus you see,
my friends, your choice lies between the government
of Berne, or no government at all; for when
only two things exist, by taking one away the number
is reduced half, and as the great canton will
keep its own share of the institutions, by taking
half away, Vaud is left as naked as my hand.
Ask yourselves if you have any government but
this? You know you have not. Were you quit
of Berne, therefore, you clearly would have none
at all. Officer, you have a sword at your side,
which is a good type of our authority; draw it
and hold it up, that all may see it. You perceive,
my friends, that the officer hath a sword; but that
he hath only one sword. Lay it at thy feet, officer.
You perceive, friends, that having but one sword,
and laying that sword aside, he no longer hath a
sword at all! That weapon represents our authority,
which laid aside becomes no authority, leaving
us with an unarmed hand.”
This happy comparison drew a murmur of applause;
the proposition of Peterchen having most
of the properties of a popular theory, being deficient
in neither a bold assertion, a brief exposition,
nor a practical illustration. The latter in particular
was long afterwards spoken of in Vaud, as an
exposition little short of the well-known judgment
of Solomon, who had resorted to the same keen-edged
weapon in order to solve a point almost as
knotty as this settled by the bailiff. When the
approbation had a little subsided, the warmed Peterchen
continued his discourse, which possessed
the random and generalized logic of most of the
dissertations that are uttered in the interests of
things as they are, without paying any particular
deference to things as they should be.
“What is the use of teaching the multitude to
read and write?” he asked. “Had not Franz
Kauffman known how to write, could he have
imitated his master's hand, and would he have lost
his head for mistaking another man's name for his
own? a little reflection shows us he would not.
Now, as for the other art, could the people read
bad books had they never learned the alphabet?
If there is a man present who can say to the contrary,
I absolve him from his respect, and invite
him to speak boldly, for there is no Inquisition in
Vaud, but we invite argument. This is a free
government, and a fatherly government, and a
mild government, as ye all know; but it is not a
government that likes reading and writing; reading
that leads to the perusal of bad books, and
writing that causes false signatures. Fellow-citizens,
for we are all equal, with the exception
of certain differences that need not now be named,
it is a government for your good, and therefore it
is a government that likes itself, and whose first
duty it is to protect itself and its officers at all
hazards, even though it might by accident commit
some seeming injustice. Fellow, canst thou read?”
“Indifferently, worshipful bailiff,” returned Maso.
“There are those who get through a book with
less trouble than myself.”
“I warrant you, now, he means a good book;
but, as for a bad one, I'll engage the varlet goes
through it like a wild boar! This comes of education
among the ignorant! There is no more
certain method to corrupt a community, and to
rivet it in beastly practices, than to educate the ignorant.
The enlightened can bear knowledge, for
rich food does not harm the stomach that is used
to it, but it is hellebore to the ill-fed. Education
is an arm, for knowledge is power, and the ignorant
man is but an infant, and to give him knowledge
hands of a child. What can an ignorant man do
with knowledge? He is as likely to use it wrong
end uppermost as in any other manner. Learning
is a ticklish thing; it was said by Festus to have
maddened even the wise and experienced Paul,
and what may we not expect it to do with your
downright ignoramus? What is thy name, prisoner?”
“Tommaso Santi; sometimes known among my
friends as San Tommaso; called by my enemies,
Il Maledetto, and by my familiars, Maso.”
“Thou hast a formidable number of aliases, the
certain sign of a rogue. Thou hast confessed that
thou canst read—.”
“Nay, Signor Bailiff, I would not be taken to
have said—”
“By the faith of Calvin, thou didst confess it,
before all this goodly company! Wilt thou deny
thine own words, knave, in the very face of justice?
Thou canst read—thou hast it in thy countenance,
and I would go nigh to swear, too, that
thou hast some inkling of the quill, were the truth
honestly said. Signor Grimaldi, I know not how
you find this affair on the other side of the Alps,
but with us, our greatest troubles come from these
well-taught knaves, who, picking up knowledge
fraudulently, use it with felonious intent, without
thought of the wants and rights of the public.”
“We have our difficulties, as is the fact wherever
man is found with his selfishness and passions,
Signor Bailiff; but are we not doing an ungallant
act towards yonder fair bride, by giving the precedency
to men of this cast? Would it not be
better to dismiss the modest Christine, happy in
Hymen's chains, before we enter more deeply into
the question of the manacles of these prisoners?”
To the amazement of all who knew the bailiff's
natural obstinacy, which was wont to increase
Peterchen assented to this proposition with a complaisance
and apparent good-will, that he rarely
manifested towards any opinion of which he did
not think himself legitimately the father; though,
like many others who bear that honorable title, he
was sometimes made to yield the privileges of paternity
to other men's children. He had shown
an unusual deference to the Italian, however,
throughout the whole of their short intercourse,
and on no occasion was it less equivocal, than in
the promptness with which he received the present
hint. The prisoners and officers were commanded
to stand aside, but so near as to remain beneath
his eye, while some of the officials of the abbaye
were ordered to give notice to the train, which
awaited these arrangements in silent wonder, that
it might now approach.
| CHAPTER II. The headsman, or, The Abbaye des Vignerons | |