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     TALES FROM "BLACKWOOD"


     Contents of this Volume

     _My Friend the Dutchman. By Frederick Hardman, Esq._

     _My College Friends. No. II. Horace Leicester._

     _The Emerald Studs. By Professor Aytoun._

     _My College Friends. No. III. Mr W. Wellington Hurst._

     _Christine: a Dutch Story. By Frederick Hardman, Esq._

     _The Man in the Bell._


     WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
     EDINBURGH AND LONDON




TALES FROM "BLACKWOOD."




MY FRIEND THE DUTCHMAN.

BY FREDERICK HARDMAN.

[_MAGA._ OCTOBER 1847.]


"And you will positively marry her, if she will have you?"

"Not a doubt of either. Before this day fortnight she shall be Madame
Van Haubitz."

"You will make her your wife without acquainting her with your true
position?"

"Indeed will I. My very position requires it. There's no room for a
scruple. She expects to live on my fortune; thinks to make a great catch
of the rich Dutchman. Instead of that I shall spend her salary. The old
story; going out for wool and returning shorn."

The conversation of which this is the concluding fragment, occurred in
the public room of the Hotel de Hesse, in the village of Homburg on the
Hill--then an insignificant handful of houses, officiating as capital
of the important landgravate of Hesse-Homburg. The table-d'hote had been
over some time; the guests had departed to repose in their apartments
until the hour of evening promenade should summon them to the excellent
band of music, provided by the calculating liberality of the
gaming-house keepers, and to loiter round the _brunnen_ of more or less
nauseous flavour, the pretext of resort to this rendezvous of idlers and
gamblers. The waiters had disappeared to batten on the broken meats from
the public table, and to doze away the time till the approach of supper
renewed their activity. My interlocutor, with whom I was alone in the
deserted apartment, was a man of about thirty years of age, whose dark
hair and mustaches, marked features, spare person, and complexion
bronzed by a tropical sun, entitled him to pass for a native of southern
Europe, or even of some more ardent clime. Nevertheless he answered to
the very Dutch patronymic of Van Haubitz, and was a native of Holland,
in whose principal city his father was a banker of considerable wealth
and financial influence.

It was towards the close of a glorious August, and for two months I had
been wandering in Rhine-land. Not after the fashion of deluded Cockneys,
who fancy they have seen the Rhine when they have careered from Cologne
to Mannheim astride of a steam-engine, gaping at objects passed as soon
as perceived; drinking and paying for indifferent vinegar as
Steinberger-Cabinet, eating vile dinners on the decks of steamers, and
excellent ones in the capital hotels which British cash and patronage
have raised upon the banks of the most renowned of German streams. On
the contrary, I had early dispensed with the aid of steam, to wander on
foot, with the occasional assistance of a lazy country diligence or
rickety _einspaenner_, through the many beautiful districts that lie upon
either bank of the river; pedestrianising in Rhenish Bavaria, losing
myself in the Odenwald, and pausing, when occasion offered, to pick a
trout out of the numerous streamlets that dash and meander through dell
and ravine, on their way to swell the waters of old Father Rhine. At
last, weary of solitude--scarcely broken by an occasional gossip with a
heavy German boor, village priest, or strolling student--I thirsted
after the haunts of civilisation, and found myself, within a day of the
appearance of the symptom, installed in a luxurious hotel in the free
city of Frankfort on the Maine. But Frankfort at that season is
deserted, save by passing tourists, who escape as fast as possible from
its lifeless streets and sun-baked pavements; so, after glancing over an
English newspaper at the Casino, taking one stroll in the beautiful
garden surrounding the city, and another through the Jew-quarter--always
interesting and curious, although anything but savoury at that warm
season--I gathered together my baggage and was off to Homburg. There I
could not complain of solitude, of deserted streets and shuttered
windows. It seemed impossible that the multitude of gaily dressed belles
and cavaliers, English, French, German, and Russ, who, from six in the
morning until sunset, lounged and flirted on the walks, watered
themselves at the fountains, and perilled their complexions in the
golden sunbeams, could ever bestow themselves in the two or three
middling hotels and few score shabby lodging-houses composing the town
of Homburg. Manage it they did, however; crept into their narrow cells
at night, to emerge next morning, like butterflies from the chrysalis,
gay, bright, and brilliant, and to recommence the never-varying but
pleasant round of eating, sauntering, love-making, and gambling. Homburg
was not then what it has since become. That great house of cards, the
new Cursaal, had not yet arisen; and its table-d'hote, reading-room, and
profane mysteries of roulette and rouge-et-noir, found temporary
domicile in a narrow, disreputable-looking den in the main street, where
accommodation of all kinds, but especially for dinner, was scanty in the
extreme. The public tables at the hotels were consequently