Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873

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• Publié par: mephang
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 57
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873, by Various This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 Author: Various Release Date: January 7, 2008 [EBook #24203] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE *** Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Josephine Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE OF POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. NOVEMBER, 1873. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT , & Co., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected. Table of Contents has been created for the HTML version. CONTENTS THE NEW HYPERION. AUTUMN VOICES. SKETCHES OF EASTERN TRAVEL. LONDON BALLS THE LIVELIES. A STRAYED SINGER. HARVEST. ORCO. IN THE ISLE OF WIGHT. SOLACE. A PRINCESS OF THULE. LAKESHORE RELICS. OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP. LITERATURE OF THE DAY Books Received. THE NEW HYPERION. FROM PARIS TO MARLY BY WAY OF THE RHINE. V.—IN PURSUIT OF A PASSPORT. [Pg 497] THE SIGN OF THE "STORK". "The Strasburgers have a legend—" We were rolling along very comfortably in the engineer's coach. From pavement to bridge, and from bridge to pavement, we effected the long step which bestrides the Rhine. "I knew you would prick your ears up at the word. Well, I have found a legend among the people here about the original acquisition of Strasburg by the French. You know Louis XIV. bagged the city quite unwarrantably in 1681, in a time of peace." I was much delighted with this beginning, and told my friend that to cross the storied Rhine and simultaneously listen to a legend made me feel as if I were Frithiof the Viking entertained on his voyage by a Skald. "The Alsatians will have it," said my canal-digger, "that the Grand Monarch was a bit of a magician. The depth of what I may call his High-Church sentiment, which at last proved so edifying to the Maintenon, has never convinced them that he wasn't a trifle in league with the devil. At the foot of his praying-chair was always chained a little casket of ebony, bound with iron. In this he imprisoned a little yellow man, a demon of the most concentrated structure, hardly a foot long. This goblin ran through the air, on an errand or with a letter, about as fast as a stroke of lightning, and admirably filled the place of the modern telegraph. For each meal he took three seeds of hemp, which he loved to receive from the king's hand. By and by the little yellow man became more of a gourmand. He demanded seed-pearls, and the king was obliged to rob the queen's jewel-boxes. Then the yellow dwarf's appetite changed, and he required stars, orders and garters: one by one the obedient monarch gave him the decorations of count, marquis, duke. The demon's name was Chamillo. "One day the small devil-duke of a Chamillo hovered over the imperial free city of Strasburg. Entering by key-holes and doors ajar, he stole into the [Pg 498] presence of the principal magistrates, and shortly after the impregnable capital of Alsace opened its gates at a show of French investment. "For this important service Louis XIV. fancied that Chamillo would require the letters patent constituting him a prince. Not at all. Chamillo was tired of secular honors: he had A GRAND MONARCH AND A LITTLE YELLOW seen the bishop of IMP. Strasburg officiating in scarlet, and he insisted on being made cardinal. The king could not make cardinals, and he doubted whether he could induce the pope to receive a devil among the upper clergy. He refused absolutely. Chamillo left him in dudgeon and went over to Prussia. Apparently he has remained there. At any rate, the French king's fortunes commenced at that epoch to decline, and the Peace of Ryswick almost deprived him of Strasburg, which the little yellow man wanted to get back for Germany." We had quitted Strasburg by the gate of Austerlitz. While listening to my friend I kept an eye open, and examined the present state of the fortress, the incidents of the road to Kehl, and that fairy Ile des Épis, a perfect little Eden in the Rhine, where the tall trees and nodding flowers bury the tomb of Dessaix, with its inscription, "À Dessaix, l'Armée du Rhin, 1800." This bright morning-ride enchanted me, seasoned as it was with a goblin-story. "Behind this tale, now, there must be a fact," I said. "There is some bit of history concealed there. The common people never invent: they distort." "It is possible," he answered. "I tell you the story as it was told me by one of my theodolitebearers. You may find out the rest: it is in your line." Kehl has been bombarded or razed a dozen times by French armies crossing the Rhine. The last occasion when the French ruined it, however, was not in vain-glory, but in impotent malice. They fired it on August 19, 1870, during the horrors of the Strasburg bombardment. It is a town formed of a single street—But I will enter no further into topographic details. [Pg 499] [Pg 500] ILE DES ÉPIS. BEGGARS AT BÂLE. I entered this town or street in haste, leaving my engineering acquaintance talking to a Prussian general. The idea had seized me of writing a line to Hohenfels at Marly, actually dated from the grand duchy of Baden. Undoubtedly I should reach Marly before my letter, but the postal mark would be a good proof of the actuality of my wanderings. Clinging, then, to my childishness, as we do to most of our follies, with a fidelity which it would be well to imitate in our grave affairs, and feeling pressed for time, I looked eagerly around for a resting-place where I could procure ink and paper, and entered at the sign of the "Stork." I found a smoky crowd, peasants and military, sucking German pipes and drinking from a variety of glasses, pots, syphons and jugs. I had taken up my pen when an individual by my side, at the next table, said to his opposite neighbor, "The French will hardly take Strasburg again by surprise, as they did two centuries ago." "It was not the French who took Strasburg," replied the vis-à-vis , evidently a native: "it was the little urchin in yellow." The expression, joined to what I had just heard in the carriage, was sufficient to attract my attention. My neighbor, a Belgian by his accent, opened his eyes. The man opposite, perceiving that he had more than one auditor, narrated at length, in substance and detail, not the fairy legend of the Alsatians, but accurately and to my amusement, the historical anecdote which I had imagined to be wrapped up in that tale. So then, while he spoke, I wrote—no longer to Hohenfels, but to my own consciousness and memory —these little notes on Chamillo, or rather Chamilly, and obtained a trifling contribution to the back[Pg 501] HOW THINGS FELL OUT. stairs history of the Grand Nation. "The marquis of Chamilly, afterward marshal of France, was often promised a good place for a young nephew he had by the powerful Minister de Louvois. Each time, however, that the youth presented himself the experienced minister said, 'Bide your time, young man: I see nothing yet on the horizon worthy of you.' The boy sulked in the tortures of hope deferred. One day in September, 1681, Louvois said, 'Young man, post yourself at Bâle on the 18th day of this month, from noon to four o'clock: stand on the bridge; take a note of all you see, without the least omission; come back and report to me; and as you acquit yourself so your future shall be.' The young chevalier found himself on the bridge at Bâle at high noon. He expected to meet some deputation from the Swiss cantons, with the great landamman at the head. What he really saw were carts, villagers, flocks of sheep, children who chased each other, mendicants who, with Swiss independence, demanded alms rather than begged it. He gave to each, imagining in each a mysterious agent. An old woman crossing the bridge on a bucking donkey, who threw her, he picked up obsequiously, not knowing but this fall might be a man[oe]uvre of state, and the precipitate take the form of the landamman in disguise: he had even the idea of running after the donkey, but the animal was already galloping with great relish outside the assigned limits to his diplomacy. When tired of the sun, the dust and the triviality of the panorama, Chamilly prepared to go. It was nearing the hour fixed for his departure, and the absence of all significant events vexed him. As if to put a crown on his discomfiture, toward the close of the last hour an odd little urchin, grotesquely dressed in a yellow coat, came to beat old blankets over the parapet, and flirted the dirt and fluff into the young man's eyes. Already angered, he was about to hang the young imp for a minute or two over the bridge, when four o'clock sounded, his duty came to his mind, and he departed. "In the middle of the third night, tired and humiliated, he reappeared before the minister and recounted his failure. When he came to the little page in yellow, Louvois fell on his neck and kissed him. Chamilly was dragged incontinently before the king. Louis XIV., who was snoring with his royal nose in the air, was waked for the purpose, and heard with attention the story of the beggars, the donkey and the little monkey in yellow livery. At the apparition of the Yellow Jacket, Louis XIV. leaped over the ruelle and danced a saraband in his nightgown. Chamilly might perhaps have considered himself sufficiently THE LITTLE IMP IN YELLOW rewarded in being the only man who ever saw rewarded in being the only man who ever saw the superb king dancing with bare legs i