University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.
A BEER-SCANDAL.

On their way homeward, Flemming and the
Baron passed through a narrow lane, in which was
a well-known Studenten-Kneipe. At the door
stood a young man, whom the Baron at once recognised
as his friend Von Kleist. He was a student;
and universally acknowledged, among his
young acquaintance, as a “devilish handsome fellow”;
notwithstanding a tremendous scar on his
cheek, and a cream-colored mustache, as soft as
the silk of Indian corn. In short he was a renowner,
and a duellist.

“What are you doing here, Von Kleist?”

“Ah, my dear Baron! Is it you? Come in;
come in. You shall see some sport. A Fox-Commerce
is on foot, and a regular Beer-Scandal.”

“Shall we go in, Flemming?”

“Certainly. I should like to see how these
things are managed in Heidelberg. You are a
Baron, and I am a stranger. It is of no consequence
what you and I do, as the king's fool Angeli
said to the poet Bautru, urging him to put on
his hat at the royal dinner-table.”

William Lilly, the Astrologer, says, in his Autobiography,
that, when he was committed to the
guard-room in White Hall, he thought himself in
hell; for “some were sleeping, others swearing,
others smoking tobacco; and in the chimney of
the room there were two bushels of broken tobacco-pipes,
and almost half a load of ashes.” What
he would have thought if he had peeped into this
Heidelberg Studenten-Kneipe, I know not. He
certainly would not have thought himself in heaven;
unless it were a Scandinavian heaven. The
windows were open; and yet so dense was the atmosphere
with the smoke of tobacco, and the
fumes of beer, that the tallow candles burnt but
dimly. A crowd of students were sitting at three
long tables, in the large hall; a medley of fellows,

known at German Universities under the cant
names of Old-Ones, Mossy-Heads, Princes of
Twilight, and Pomatum-Stallions. They were
smoking, drinking, singing, screaming, and discussing
the great Laws of the Broad-Stone and the
Gutter. They had a great deal to say, likewise,
about Besens, and Zobels, and Poussades; and, if
they had been charged for the noise they made, as
travellers used to be, in the old Dutch taverns,
they would have had a longer bill to pay for that,
than for their beer.

In a large arm-chair, upon the middle table,
sat one of those distinguished individuals, known
among German students as a Senior, or Leader of
a Landsmannschaft. He was booted and spurred,
and wore a very small crimson cap, and a very
tight blue jacket, and very long hair, and a very
dirty shirt. He was President of the night; and,
as Flemming entered the hall with the Baron and
his friend, striking upon the table with a mighty
broadsword, he cried in a loud voice;

“Silentium!”

At the same moment a door at the end of the
hall was thrown open, and a procession of newcomers,
or Nasty-Foxes, as they are called in the
college dialect, entered two by two, looking wild,
and green, and foolish. As they came forward,
they were obliged to pass under a pair of naked
swords, held cross-wise by two Old-Ones, who,
with pieces of burnt cork, made an enormous
pair of mustaches, on the smooth, rosy cheeks
of each, as he passed beneath this arch of triumph.
While the procession was entering the
hall, the President lifted up his voice again, and
began to sing the well-known Fox-song, in the
chorus of which all present joined lustily.

At length the song was finished. Meanwhile
large tufts and strips of paper had been twisted
into the hair of the Branders, as those are called
who have been already one semestre at the University,
and then at a given signal were set on fire,

and the Branders rode round the table on sticks,
amid roars of laughter. When this ceremony was
completed, the President rose from his chair, and
in a solemn voice pronounced a long discourse, in
which old college jokes were mingled with much
parental advice to young men on entering life, and
the whole was profusely garnished with select
passages from the Old Testament. Then they all
seated themselves at the table and the heavy beer-drinking
set in, as among the Gods and Heroes of
the old Northern mythology.

“Brander! Brander!” screamed a youth,
whose face was hot and flushed with supper and
with beer; “Brander, I say? Thou art a Doctor!
No,—a Pope;—thou art a Pope, by—”

These words were addressed to a pale, quiet-looking
person, who sat opposite, and was busy
in making a wretched, shaved poodle sit on his
hind legs in a chair, by his master's side, and hold
a short clay pipe in his mouth,—a performance
to which the poodle seemed no wise inclined.

“Thou art challenged!” replied the pale Student,

turning from his dog, who dropped the pipe
from his mouth and leaped under the table.

Seconds were chosen on the spot; and the arms
ordered; namely, six mighty goblets, or Bassgläser,
filled to the brim with foaming beer. Three were
placed before each duellist.

“Take your weapons!” cried one of the seconds,
and each of the combatants seized a goblet
in his hand.

“Strike!”

And the glasses rang, with a salutation like the
crossing of swords.

“Set to!”

Each set the goblet to his lips.

“Out!”

And each poured the contents down his throat,
as if he were pouring them through a tunnel into
a beer-barrel. The other two glasses followed in
quick succession, hardly a long breath drawn between.
The pale Student was victorious. He
was first to drain the third goblet. He held it for
a moment inverted, to let the last drops fall out,

and then placing it quietly on the table, looked his
antagonist in the face, and said;

“Hit!”

Then, with the greatest coolness, he looked under
the table and whistled for his dog. His antagonist
stopped midway in his third glass. Every
vein in his forehead seemed bursting; his eyes
were wild and bloodshot, his hand gradually loosened
its hold upon the table, and he sank and
rolled together like a sheet of lead. He was
drunk.

At this moment a majestic figure came stalking
down the table, ghost-like, through the dim, smoky
atmosphere. His coat was off, his neck bare, his
hair wild, his eyes wide open, and looking right
before him, as if he saw some beckoning hand in
the air, that others could not see. His left hand
was upon his hip, and in his right he held a drawn
sword extended, and pointing downward. Regardless
of every one, erect, and with a martial stride
he marched directly along the centre of the table,
crushing glasses and overthrowing bottles at every

step. The students shrunk back at his approach;
till at length one more drunk, or more courageous,
than the rest, dashed a glass full of beer into his
face. A general tumult ensued, and the student
with the sword leaped to the floor. It was Von
Kleist. He was renowning it. In the midst of the
uproar could be distinguished the offensive words;

“Arrogant! Absurd! Impertinent! Dummer
Junge!”

Von Kleist went home that night with no less
than six duels on his hands. He fought them all
out in as many days; and came off with only a
gash through his upper lip and another through his
right eyelid from a dexterous Suabian Schlaeger.