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  CHARLES AUCHESTER

  VOLUME II.

  [Illustration: MENDELSSOHN
    FROM A SKETCH MADE IN HIS YOUTH.]




  CHARLES AUCHESTER

  BY
  ELIZABETH SHEPPARD

  _WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES_
  By GEORGE P. UPTON

  AUTHOR OF "THE STANDARD OPERAS," "STANDARD ORATORIOS," "STANDARD
  CANTATAS," "STANDARD SYMPHONIES," "WOMAN IN MUSIC," ETC.

  In Two Volumes

  VOLUME II.
  A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY
  CHICAGO
  1891




  COPYRIGHT,
  BY A. C. MCCLURG AND CO.
  A. D. 1891.




CHARLES AUCHESTER.




CHAPTER I.


Well, as if but yesterday, do I remember the morning I set out from
Lorbeerstadt for Cecilia. I had no friends yet with whom to
reconnoitre novel ground; I was quite solitary in my intentions, and
rather troubled with a vague melancholy, the sun being under cloud,
and I not having wished Aronach good-day. He was out in the town
fulfilling the duties of his scholastic pre-eminence, and I had vainly
sought him for an audience. He had surrendered me my violin when he
gave me the paper in his writing, and I also carried my certificate in
my hand. Of all my personal effects I took these only,--my bed and
bedding, my clothes and books having preceded me; or, at least, having
taken another form of flight. Iskar was to come also that time, but
did not intend to present himself until the evening. Aronach had also
forewarned me to take a coach, but I rather chose to walk, having
divine reminiscences upon that earthly road.

With Starwood I had a grievous parting, not unallayed by hope on my
part, and I left him wiping his eyes,--an attention which deeply
affected me, though I did not cry myself.

I shall never forget the singularly material aspect of things when I
arrived. Conventionalism is not so rampant in Germany as in England,
and courtesy is taught another creed. I think it would be impossible
to be anywhere more free, and yet this sudden liberty (like a sudden
light) did but at first serve to dazzle and distress me. Only half the
students had returned, and they, all knowing each other, or seeming to
do so, were standing in self-interested fraternities, broken by groups
and greeters, in one immense hall, or what appeared to me immense, and
therefore desolate. I came in through the open gates to the open
court; through the open court into the open entry and from that region
was drawn to the door of that very hall by the hollow multitudinous
echo that crept upon the stony solitude. It was as real to me a
solitude to enter that noble space; and I was more abashed than ever,
when, on looking round, I perceived none but males in all the company.
There was not even a picture of the patron saintess; but there _was_ a
picture, a dark empannelled portrait, high over the long
dining-tables. I concluded from the style that it was a representation
of one Gratianos, the Bachist, of whom I had once heard speak.

The gentlemen in the hall were none of them full grown, and none
wonderfully handsome at first sight. But the manner of their
entertainment was truly edifying to me, who had not long been "out" in
any sense. They every one either had been smoking, were smoking, or
were about to smoke,--that is, most of them had pipes in their mouths,
or those who had them not in their mouths had just plucked them
therefrom, and were holding them in their hands, or those who had not
yet begun were preparing the apparatus.

In a corner of the hall, which looked dismally devoid of furniture to
an English eye, there was a great exhibition of benches. There were
some upright, others kicking their feet in the air, but all packed so
as to take little space, and these were over and above the benches
that ran all round the hall. In this corner a cluster of individuals
had collected after a fashion that took my fancy in an instant, for
they had established themselves without reference to the primary use
and endowment of benches at all. Some sat on the legs thereof,
upturned, with their own feet at the reversed bottoms, and more than a
few were lying inside those reversed bottoms, with distended veins and
excited complexions, suggesting the notion that they were in the
enjoyment of plethoric slumber. To make a still further variation, one
bench was set on end and supported by the leaning figures of two
contemporaneous medalists; and on the summit of this bench, which also
rested against the wall, a third medalist was sitting, like an ape
upon the ledge of Gibraltar,--unlike an ape in this respect, that he
was talking with great solemnity, and also that he wore gloves, which
had once on a time been white. The rest were bareheaded, but all were
fitted out with mustachios, either real or fictitious, for I had my
doubts of the soft, dark tassels of the Stylites, as his own pate was
covered with hemp,--it cannot have been hair. Despite its
grotesqueness, this group, as I have said, attracted me, for there was
something in every one of the faces that set me at my ease, because
they appeared in earnest at their fun.

I came up to them as I made out their composition, and they one and
all regarded me with calm, not malicious, indifference. They were very
boyish for young men, and very manly for young boys, certainly; and
remained, as to their respective ages, a mystery. The gentleman on the
pedestal did not even pause until he came to a proper climax,--for he
was delivering an oration,--and I arrived in time to hear the
sentence so significant: "So that all who in verity apply themselves
to science will find themselves as much at a loss without a body as
without a soul, for the animal property nourisheth and illustrateth
the spiritual, and the spiritual would be of no service without the
animal, any more than should the flame that eateth the wood burn in an
empty stove, or than the soup we have eaten for dinner should be soup
without the water that dissolved the component nutritives."

Here he came to a full stop, and gazed upon me through sharp-shaped
orbs. Meantime I had drawn out my certificate and handed it up to him.
He took it between those streaky gloves, and having fixed a horn-set
glass into his one eye, shut up the other and perused the paper. I
don't know why I gave it to him in particular, except that he was very
high up, and had been speaking. But I had not done wrong, for he
finished by bowing to me with exceeding patronage.

"One of us, I presume?"

"Credentials!" groaned one who was, as I had supposed, asleep. But my
patron handed me very politely my envelope, and gravely returned to
the treatment of his theme,--whatever that might have been. Nobody
appeared to listen except his twain supporters, and they only seemed
attentive because they were thoroughly fumigated, and had their senses
under a spell. The rest began to yawn, to sneer, and to lift their
eyes, or rather the lids of them. I need scarcely say I felt very
absurd, and at last, on the utterance of an exceedingly ridiculous
peroration from the orator, I yielded at once to the impulse of
timidity, and began to laugh. The effect was of sympathetic magnetism.
Everybody whose lips were disengaged began to laugh too; and finally,
those very somnolent machines, that the benches propped, began to
stir, to open misty glances, and to grin like purgatorial saints. This
laugh grew a murmur, the murmur a roar, and finally the supporters
themselves, fairly shaking, became exhausted, staggered, and let the
pedestal glide slowly forwards. The theorist must certainly have
anticipated such a crisis, for he spread his arms and took a flying
jump from that summit, descending elegantly and conveniently as a cat
from a wall upon the boarded floor.

"Schurke!"[1] said he to me, and held me up a threatening hand; but,
seized with a gleeful intention, I caught at it, and