Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/651

 28, 1863.] and Donizetti. I approached the restaurant, where I heard hundreds of voices shouting in every variety, not only of language, but of patois, for wines which they never got. I neared the gaming-tables with a hope of making some moral reflections, or speculating on the advantages of a private vice as applied to great public benefits: in other words, as to whether the profits of the tables were robbed of their sting by the erection of vast edifices, health-giving springs, and charitable distributions. I saw an enormous and heterogeneous mass of people all hustling and pushing for a place, miserable outsiders waiting with longing eyes for the moment when the front rank should be cleaned out, and a vacant seat left for a trial of their own system. For everybody has a system, of course. I saw reckless joviality, thoughtless levity, and careless indifference; I heard a curse or two in French, and English, and some feminine ill-humour at the caprices of fortune; but I saw no horrible features of that despair so graphically described by those whose imagination supplies the place of experience. As to the repose of this charming little watering-place, and the relaxation so peculiarly associated with its distractions, the bare notion of such a thing was an obvious insult to the genius of the place.

“Baden seems to be very much increased in the last few years,” said I to a portly Frenchman, with a hand full of napoleons, evidently waiting to prove his newly-discovered martingale.

“No,” answered he, eyeing the croupier, and sticking a pin once more through the pink card he held in his hand, “no, not much; though there are a great many persons here, just now. It is the race-week.”

Oh, the race-week! thought I: the race-week at Baden-Baden, which, to my uninitiated mind, represented something like half-a-dozen donkeys on Hampstead Heath or the sands at Brighton. After all, they can only last a day or two. So, about dinner-time, I returned to my hotel, feeling that, for the present, I was not much better off than at Interlachen or Lucerne, where some thousand excursion-tickets were manifestly in circulation, and where, by the appearance of some of the company, they had been evidently treated for at a reduced rate of so much per hundred. I determined, however, upon informing myself unmistakably on the point; so I inquired of the waiter how long they were to last.

“Ten days,” was the reply.

With a callous indifference I received the intelligence.

“Yes,” added he, with a frightful gaiety which portrayed a lively sense of the almighty dollar, “that is the 2nd, the 5th, the 7th, and the 10th; and on the last day is the grand steeplechase for 10,750 francs,—gentlemen-riders.”

If I have a weakness it is to see a foreigner ride a steeplechase; and here was an opportunity. I at once made up my mind, no inconsiderable parcel, and determined to see the thing out. This must be a great satisfaction to your readers, Mr. Editor.

After an excellent dinner, and some fine old Stein-wein, which has since produced a fit of the gout, in a society more remarkable for the frankness of its manner and the variety of its toilettes than for its decorum or morality, one of the most beautiful theatres in Europe opened its doors to receive me. “Le Misanthrope,” by M. Bressant and Madame Arnould Plessy, gave me unqualified satisfaction.

“Music hath charms,” &c. &c. I knew this; and, having a savage breast to soothe, I thought I would try its effect. Again I was enchanted. The whole place was redolent of magnificence and luxury. The rooms through which I passed were of every variety of French taste, from the Renaissance to our own times. No article of luxury or comfort was wanting. I listened to Madame Lablache de Meric (a daughter of our great basso), to M. Delle-Sedia, and to the exquisite violin of M. Alard, in a magnificent apartment decorated with the finest paintings and furniture that can be conceived; and here, again, I saw the first nobility of Prussia, Austria, and France, enslaved by charms which have grown too notorious for English gallantry. I sighed to think that, without prudery, however safe an English matron might have found herself in such proximity, the lovely scenery and the exquisite refinements of Baden-Baden could not well be participated in by the daughters of an English home. But this is not a pleasant subject; let us leave it.

And who has done this?—to whose taste and enterprise does Baden owe so much? Benazet, Benazet, Benazet, is on every lip. M. Benazet built the theatre, decorated the rooms; is proprietor of the baths; engages singers; supplies the charities, and establishes the races. M. Benazet cures the sick, amuses the ennuyés, clothes the naked, and feeds the poor. The concert for twenty francs, places reservées, was for the benefit of the hospital! Truly, M. Benazet is a great man, and charity will have us say, a good man too. And M. Benazet is neither more nor less than the lessee of the gaming tables. Of course I went to the races—races in the Black Forest! Could I resist? Along the flat road lying between lines of apple, plum, and lime trees, through endless gardens of potatoes, Indian corn, strips of turnips, and rank grass of the banks of the Oos, I was drawn by two remarkably well-fed quadrupeds, driven by a boy in yellow coat, with a professional bugle, and a long whip which was not permitted to rust in its socket. The slopes of the Black Forest, clothed in dark-coloured verdure, rose from the plains in various shapes, enclosing the valley with its dark shadows, and relieving an otherwise monotonous drive. Arrived at Iffetzheim, an unpretending village of uneven pavement and dingy old houses, we turned short round to the course. The whole was a scene of fairyland. The grand stand, and royal stand, and the Jockey Club stand, were hung with festoons of gay flowers, and sweetly-scented creepers stole up the pillars and along the gaily-decorated balconies. It required the payment of a napoleon for my ticket, to convince me that I was not in the private grounds of some philanthropist, who was enhancing the pleasures of a déjeûner by a little racing. So quiet, so refined, so un-English was everything connected with the sport itself. There was no ring; no turbulent layer of the odds