United States or Malaysia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
'How lieutenant? asked the surgeon. 'I thought the lieutenant was' 'Upon my word, you do me great honour, cried I, laughing; 'you mistook me for the mad corporal upstairs. The fellow has once or twice pretended to be an officer, but my kind hostess here can answer which is which. 'Yesterday he fancied he was Prince Ferdinand, said Lischen; 'the day you came he said he was an Egyptian mummy.
But there were none that I could hear of; and so I calmly took my walks with Madame Lischen, dressed in the lieutenant's uniform, made inquiries as to a horse that I wanted to purchase, reported myself to the commandant of the place as Lieutenant Fakenham, of Gale's English regiment of foot, convalescent, and was asked to dine with the officers of the Prussian regiment at a very sorry mess they had.
'Oh! you'll know soon, sir, said I. The next time that I expected the doctor to come, instead of receiving him in a darkened room, with handkerchiefs muffled, I took care to be in the lower room, and was having a game at cards with Lischen as the surgeon entered.
Perhaps the good mistress did not know that Hannes had enjoyed himself out of doors hours before. He used to rise at four o'clock and begin his day with a bath in the river. Shortly after this the little girl, Lischen, would join him and they would spend a couple of hours rambling about, looking for bird's nests, hunting butterflies and picking wild flowers.
Lischen and I laughed at this error as at the most ridiculous thing in the world; and when the surgeon went up to examine his patient, I cautioned him not to talk to him about the subject of his malady, for he was in a very excited state. The reader will be able to gather from the above conversation what my design really was.
During the summer, when Carl Formes, then of Vienna, was making a sensation in Hamburg, Lischen got her father to secure places and take them. The opera was the "Marriage of Figaro." Hannes was almost beside himself with delight. "Lischen, listen to the music! there was never anything like it," he cried over and over again.
Nor was I the only person in the house to whom the worthy gentleman was uncivil. He ordered the fair Lischen hither and thither, made impertinent love to her, abused her soups, quarrelled with her omelettes, and grudged the money which was laid out for his maintenance; so that our hostess detested him as much as, I think, without vanity, she regarded me.
I had taken possession of a dressing-jacket of the lieutenant's, and some other articles of his wardrobe, which fitted me pretty well; and, I flatter myself, was no ungentlemanlike figure. 'Good-morrow, Corporal, said the doctor, rather gruffly, in reply to my smiling salute. 'Corporal! Lieutenant, if you please, answered I, giving an arch look at Lischen, whom I had instructed in my plot.
Out of the letters which formed Hans Gensfleisch, for instance, he could make the word fisch which is the German for fish lang, long schein, shine; and it was a great delight to his mother as well as to himself, when he found too that he could put together the letters of her name, Lischen, just as they were also written on the parchment register of his birth.
The delirium of Mr. Fakenham gave me a hint, and I determined forthwith to GO MAD. There was a poor fellow about Brady's Town called 'Wandering Billy, whose insane pranks I had often mimicked as a lad, and I again put them in practice. That night I made an attempt upon Lischen, saluting her with a yell and a grin which frightened her almost out of her wits; and when anybody came I was raving.
Word Of The Day