3 books to know Anti-heroes. Уильям Мейкпис Теккерей

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ had not got far beyond Potsdam, when boom! the alarm cannon began to roar.

      ‘It is a deserter,’ said the officer.

      ‘Is it possible?’ said the Chevalier, and sank back into his carriage again.

      Hearing the sound of the guns, the common people came out along the road with fowling-pieces and pitchforks, in hopes to catch the truant. The gendarmes seemed very anxious to be on the look-out for him too. The price of a deserter was fifty crowns to those who brought him in.

      ‘Confess, sir,’ said the Chevalier to the police officer in the carriage with him, ‘that you long to be rid of me, from whom you can get nothing, and to be on the look-out for the deserter who may bring you in fifty crowns? Why not tell the postilion to push on? You may land me at the frontier and get back to your hunt all the sooner.’ The officer told the postillion to get on; but the way seemed intolerably long to the Chevalier. Once or twice he thought he heard the noise of horse galloping behind: his own horses did not seem to go two miles an hour; but they DID go. The black and white barriers came in view at last, hard by Bruck, and opposite them the green and yellow of Saxony. The Saxon custom-house officers came out.

      ‘I have no luggage,’ said the Chevalier.

      ‘The gentleman has nothing contraband,’ said the Prussian officers, grinning, and took their leave of their prisoner with much respect.

      The Chevalier de Balibari gave them a Frederic apiece.

      ‘Gentlemen,’ said he, ‘I wish you a good day. Will you please to go to the house whence we set out this morning, and tell my man there to send on my baggage to the “Three Kings” at Dresden?’

      Then ordering fresh horses, the Chevalier set off on his journey for that capital. I need not tell you that I was the Chevalier.

      ‘From the Chevalier de Balibari to Redmond Barry, Esquire, Gentilhomme Anglais, a l’Hotel des 3 Couronnes, a Dresde en Saxe.

      ‘Nephew Redmond,—This comes to you by a sure hand, no other than Mr. Lumpit of the English Mission, who is acquainted, as all Berlin will be directly, with our wonderful story. They only know half as yet; they only know that a deserter went off in my clothes, and all are in admiration of your cleverness and valour.

      ‘I confess that for two hours after your departure I lay in bed in no small trepidation, thinking whether His Majesty might have a fancy to send me to Spandau, for the freak of which we had both been guilty. But in that case I had taken my precautions: I had written a statement of the case to my chief, the Austrian Minister, with the full and true story how you had been set to spy upon me, how you turned out to be my very near relative, how you had been kidnapped yourself into the service, and how we both had determined to effect your escape. The laugh would have been so much against the King, that he never would have dared to lay a finger upon me. What would Monsieur de Voltaire have said to such an act of tyranny? But it was a lucky day, and everything has turned out to my wish. As I lay in my bed two and a half hours after your departure, in comes your ex-Captain Potzdorff. “Redmont!” says he, in his imperious High-Dutch way, “are you there?” No answer. “The rogue is gone out,” said he; and straightway makes for my red box where I keep my love-letters, my glass eye which I used to wear, my favourite lucky dice with which I threw the thirteen mains at Prague; my two sets of Paris teeth, and my other private matters that you know of.

      ‘He first tried a bunch of keys, but none of them would fit the little English lock. Then my gentleman takes out of his pocket a chisel and hammer, and falls to work like a professional burglar, actually bursting open my little box!

      ‘Now was my time to act. I advance towards him armed with an immense water-jug. I come noiselessly up to him just as he had broken the box, and with all my might I deal him such a blow over the head as smashes the water-jug to atoms, and sends my captain with a snort lifeless to the ground. I thought I had killed him.

      ‘Then I ring all the bells in the house; and shout and swear and scream, “Thieves!—thieves!—landlord!—murder!—fire!” until the whole household come tumbling up the stairs. “Where is my servant?” roar I. “Who dares to rob me in open day? Look at the villain whom I find in the act of breaking my chest open! Send for the police, send for his Excellency the Austrian Minister! all Europe shall know of this insult!”

      ‘“Dear Heaven!” says the landlord, “we saw you go away three hours ago!”

      ‘“ME!” says I; “why, man, I have been in bed all the morning. I am ill—I have taken physic—I have not left the house this morning! Where is that scoundrel Ambrose? But, stop! where are my clothes and wig?” for I was standing before them in my chamber-gown and stockings, with my nightcap on.

      ‘“I have it—I have it!” says a little chambermaid: “Ambrose is off in your honour’s dress.”

      ‘“And my money—my money!” says I; “where is my purse with forty-eight Frederics in it? But we have one of the villains left. Officers, seize him!”

      ‘“It’s the young Herr von Potzdorff!” says the landlord, more and more astonished.

      ‘“What! a gentleman breaking open my trunk with hammer and chisel—impossible!”

      ‘Herr von Potzdorff was returning to life by this time, with a swelling on his skull as big as a saucepan; and the officers carried him off, and the judge who was sent for dressed a proces verbal of the matter, and I demanded a copy of it, which I sent forthwith to my ambassador.

      ‘I was kept a prisoner to my room the next day, and a judge, a general, and a host of lawyers, officers, and officials, were set upon me to bully, perplex, threaten, and cajole me. I said it was true you had told me that you had been kidnapped into the service, that I thought you were released from it, and that I had you with the best recommendations. I appealed to my Minister, who was bound to come to my aid; and, to make a long story short, poor Potzdorff is now on his way to Spandau; and his uncle, the elder Potzdorff, has brought me five hundred louis, with a humble request that I would leave Berlin forthwith, and hush up this painful matter.

      ‘I shall be with you at the “Three Crowns” the day after you receive this. Ask Mr. Lumpit to dinner. Do not spare your money—you are my son. Everybody in Dresden knows your loving uncle,

      ‘THE CHEVALIER DE BALIBARI.’

      And by these wonderful circumstances I was once more free again: and I kept my resolution then made, never to fall more into the hands of any recruiter, and henceforth and for ever to be a gentleman.

      With this sum of money, and a good run of luck which ensued presently, we were enabled to make no ungenteel figure. My uncle speedily joined me at the inn at Dresden, where, under pretence of illness, I had kept quiet until his arrival; and, as the Chevalier de Balibari was in particular good odour at the Court of Dresden (having been an intimate acquaintance of the late monarch, the Elector, King of Poland, the most dissolute and agreeable of European princes), I was speedily in the very best society of the Saxon capital: where I may say that my own person and manners, and the singularity of the adventures in which I had been a hero, made me especially welcome. There was not a party of the nobility to which the two gentlemen of Balibari were not invited. I had the honour of kissing hands and being graciously received at Court by the Elector, and I wrote home to my mother such a flaming description of my prosperity, that the good soul very nearly forgot her celestial welfare and her confessor, the Reverend Joshua Jowls, in order to come after me to Germany; but travelling was very difficult in those days, and so we were spared the arrival СКАЧАТЬ