MUNICH***


Transcribed from the 1864 Chapman and Hall “Tales of All Countries”
edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org





                 THE HOUSE OF HEINE BROTHERS, IN MUNICH.


THE house of Heine Brothers, in Munich, was of good repute at the time of
which I am about to tell,—a time not long ago; and is so still, I trust.
It was of good repute in its own way, seeing that no man doubted the word
or solvency of Heine Brothers; but they did not possess, as bankers, what
would in England be considered a large or profitable business.  The
operations of English bankers are bewildering in their magnitude.
Legions of clerks are employed.  The senior book-keepers, though only
salaried servants, are themselves great men; while the real partners are
inscrutable, mysterious, opulent beyond measure, and altogether unknown
to their customers.  Take any firm at random,—Brown, Jones, and Cox, let
us say,—the probability is that Jones has been dead these fifty years,
that Brown is a Cabinet Minister, and that Cox is master of a pack of
hounds in Leicestershire.  But it was by no means so with the house of
Heine Brothers, of Munich.  There they were, the two elderly men, daily
to be seen at their dingy office in the Schrannen Platz; and if any
business was to be transacted requiring the interchange of more than a
word or two, it was the younger brother with whom the customer was, as a
matter of course, brought into contact.  There were three clerks in the
establishment; an old man, namely, who sat with the elder brother and had
no personal dealings with the public; a young Englishman, of whom we
shall anon hear more; and a boy who ran messages, put the wood on to the
stoves, and swept out the bank.  Truly he house of Heine Brothers was of
no great importance; but nevertheless it was of good repute.

The office, I have said, was in the Schrannen Platz, or old Market-place.
Munich, as every one knows, is chiefly to be noted as a new town,—so new
that many of the streets and most of the palaces look as though they had
been sent home last night from the builders, and had only just been taken
out of their bandboxes It is angular, methodical, unfinished, and
palatial.  But there is an old town; and, though the old town be not of
surpassing interest, it is as dingy, crooked, intricate, and dark as
other old towns in Germany.  Here, in the old Market-place, up one long
broad staircase, were situated the two rooms in which was held the bank
of Heine Brothers.

Of the elder member of the firm we shall have something to say before
this story be completed.  He was an old bachelor, and was possessed of a
bachelor’s dwelling somewhere out in the suburbs of the city.  The junior
brother was a married man, with a wife some twenty years younger than
himself, with two daughters, the elder of whom was now one-and-twenty,
and one son.  His name was Ernest Heine, whereas the senior brother was
known as Uncle Hatto.  Ernest Heine and his wife inhabited a portion of
one of those new palatial residences at the further end of the Ludwigs
Strasse; but not because they thus lived must it be considered that they
were palatial people.  By no means let it be so thought, as such an idea
would altogether militate against whatever truth of character painting
there may be in this tale.  They were not palatial people, but the very
reverse, living in homely guise, pursuing homely duties, and satisfied
with homely pleasures.  Up two pairs of stairs, however, in that street
of palaces, they lived, having there a commodious suite of large rooms,
furnished, after the manner of the Germans, somewhat gaudily as regarded
their best salon, and with somewhat meagre comfort as regarded their
other rooms.  But, whether in respect of that which was meagre, or
whether in respect of that which was gaudy, they were as well off as
their neighbours; and this, as I take it, is the point of excellence
which is desirable.

Ernest Heine was at this time over sixty; his wife was past forty; and
his eldest daughter, as I have said, was twenty-one years of age.  His
second child, also a girl, was six years younger; and their third child,
a boy, had not been born till another similar interval had elapsed.  He
was named Hatto after his uncle, and the two girls had been christened
Isa and Agnes.  Such, in number and mode of life, was the family of the
Heines.

We English folk are apt to imagine that we are nearer akin to Germans
than to our other continental neighbours.  This may be so in blood, but,
nevertheless, the difference in manners is so striking, that it could
hardly be enhanced