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The hotel at Sondrio, La Maddalena, was in carnival uproar of masquers, topers, and musicians all night through. It was as much as we could do to rouse the sleepy servants and get a cup of coffee ere we started in the frozen dawn. 'Verfluchte Maddalena! grumbled Christian as he shouldered our portmanteaus and bore them in hot haste to the post.
"Come back with us, you verfluchte Alsatz-Lothringer." The Englishmen from the Lord Summerville now began calling out, "Let him alone!" and "I say, give the lad fair play!" Some of them leaped down on the dock in a trice. "Who the hell let him out?" roared the mate. I stood on deck, holding my breath, and ready to bolt in case Franz betrayed me.
"Oh pardon aber meine Gnadigste tausendmal pardon " he protested the next minute in a voice of tremendous solicitude, having been pushed rather hard and suddenly against me by a little boy who had scrambled down off whatever it was he was hanging on to; and he turned on the little boy, who I believe had tumbled off rather than scrambled, with his hand flashing to his sword, ready to slash at whoever it was had dared push against him, an officer; and seeing it was a child and therefore not satisfactionsfahig as they say, he merely called him an infame and verfluchte Bengel and smacked his face so hard that he would have been knocked down if there had been room to fall in.
His thick carcass trembled on its legs that were like a pair of pillars; it trembled from head to foot. "That's what you English always make make a tam' fuss for any little thing, because I was not born in your tam' country. Take away my certificate. Take it. I don't want the certificate. A man like me don't want your verfluchte certificate. I shpit on it." He spat.
As a man of the world, you will realise that though our general public here do not know that the English have captured many Germans lately, and the fact is never mentioned in the communiques, we have had a hint from Headquarters that the British prisoners may one day balance ours, and that hardship for these verfluchte Englander may result in hardship for our men in England."
It has always been a source of legitimate pride to me to think that I should have been the tool selected by Providence to sharpen du Maurier's pencil; there must have been something in my "Verfluchte Physiognomie," as a very handsome young German, whom I used to chaff unmercifully, called it, to reveal to du Maurier hidden possibilities and to awaken in him those dormant capacities which had betrayed themselves in the eager glance above named.
Not a muscle moved in the faces around. "Know me," he stammered with wet lips. "Vat, funf year berfegtly acquaint grockery Verfluchte sponsher. Ich? Spy. Vat for spy? Vordamte English pedlars!" The door slammed. "Is that so?" asked a New England voice. "Why don't you let daylight into him?" "Oh, we can't do that here," murmured one of the players. "Your deal, Trench, let us get on."
Schilsky, persuaded by those next him to let the incident pass unnoticed, contented himself with a: "VERFLUCHTE SCHWEINEREI!" spat, after Furst's gurgled account of Maurice's previous insobriety, across the floor behind him, to express his contempt, and proceeded as dominatingly as before with the narration of his love-affairs.
Adolph Himmelheber, the present curator, I am permitted to transcribe a few, the imperfect German of the poet being preserved: November 18, 1889, 4:15 P.M. Giebt es kein Feuer in diese verfluchte Bierstube? Meine Füsse sind so kalt wie Eiszapfen! April 12, 1890, 5:20 P.M. Der Kerl is verrückt! May 22, 1890, 4:40 P.M. Sie sind so eselhaft wie ein Schauspieler!
In the evening they played cards, with interruptions such as "Der verfluchte Kerl," meaning "a boar that refused to be shot," or "I could easily have killed him if my gun," etc., till every one, sleepy and tired, had no more conversation to exchange, and the Duke left, as he said, to write letters, and we simpler mortals did not mind saying that we were dead beat and went to bed.
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