Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

"Give that one up to me," she said to the ruthless fellow who was carelessly was carelessly burying the living with the dead. The rough assurance, that if the youth were not already dead, he would soon be so, did not content her. She insisted,"Give that one up to me." She prevailed where another would not. A young man, faintly breathing, was drawn up from the bloody heap. She bore him away; her booty from the field of Waterloo. Her cares restored him to life and health. He was then twenty-five years of age; when I heard the story, twenty years had passed from the day of the Battle of Waterloo, and twenty anniversaries of that day the officer who had bled, and apparently died and been buried on that field, had spent with the nun who restored him to life from the grave. Often as that day came round, be he where he might, that officer visited the Beguine, and spent the anniversary of a day when he had lain "in garments rolled in blood," amid the prancing of the war-horses and shouting of the captains, in the peaceful retreat of the sister whose simple words, "Give that one up to me," had, it may be, delivered both his body and soul from death.

Adieu now to the Beguines, and the Beguin

age. All human beings have their work to do, if they would do it-if they would work, and not hinder workers, not talk of workers. There is a work for a Wife of Charity, as well as a Sister of Charity; for a Mother of Mercy, as well as a Sister of Mercy.

22

CHAPTER III.

HAMBURG,-rich, busy, yet gay and cheerful Hamburg,-lies beneath me; literally so, for, from my attic in the mighty Hotel de l'Europe, answering well to its extensive name, I can look down on the scene below. To me it is not at all disagreeable to find even such a vast house as this so full that I myself become a small microscopic object which waiters, commissionaires, and such things, cannot be supposed to see in the distance. I am not at all displeased to be put, like some "Mr. John Smith," in England, into No. 576, which is the precise date on the door of my room, and to be left there to marvel how it is that people who like to

make some noise in the world, are gratified by causing a commotion even in an Hotel de l'Europe.

The air is now intensely hot, one of the alternations to which this cold, wet summer suddenly subjects us. No one is abroad, except for business; heated clerks, weary porters, and women walking or working much more actively than men; the pretty, picturesque, but coquettish-looking flowergirls are always out, with petticoats reaching to the knees, and curious round hats, with inverted crowns, made of straw plaited in the manner of what we call bee-hive chairs; and hardy peasant women from the neighbourhood are about also, with flat, wide waists, coloured and very thick petticoats, and bodices rivalling in variety the coat which the patriarch made for his pet son. In one bodice, I counted eighteen very different pieces of eighteen very different patterns or colours, and that without reckoning the great white sleeves. But what a refreshment it is to see any style of national costume preserved, instead of the paltry mimicry of fashion so prevalent among the English people, and rapidly progressing everywhere.

I cannot go out while the sun is so hot. While waiting for its withdrawal, as I would do for that

of an importunate visitor, I will tell you a little story about my journey on the railway from Cologne to Hamburg.

First, then, I had to encounter the preliminary horrors of weighing luggage and taking tickets, which in Germany is, I think, above all other places most deeply experienced by a traveller not possessed of much physical strength and resolution. My own opinion (of course, a private one) is, that the German people are the most unpolite fellowtravellers one can meet with, although the olderfashioned ones among them do take off their hats if you are surprised into a sneeze in their company. I travelled once in the Eil wagon, with a bad cold in the head, and really I began to fear I ought, as a matter of conscientiousness, to buy the good gentleman opposite to me a new hat at the end of our journey, so continually did I cause his hand to pluck hastily at its rim. But I think railways have not anywhere mended manners. Certainly, the selfish rudeness, and consequent confusion of Prussian, and even Belgian railway-stations, at the awful process of weighing baggage, surpasses anything to be seen in England, although its good folks have not the highest reputation for courtesy, or taking off hats. You know, the native papers

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »