Page:The London Magazine, volume 7 (January–June 1823).djvu/669

 focated by rage, was overpowered by the swinish accompaniment. Some little attention was, however, drawn to the noise amongst those who slept near to the yard: but on the waiter’s assuring them that it was “only a great pig who would soon be quiet,” that the key could not be found, and no lock-smith was in the way at that time of night; the remonstrants were obliged to betake themselves to the same remedy of patience which by this time seemed to Mr. Jeremiah also the sole remedy left to himself.

Mr. Schnackenberger’s howling had (as the waiter predicted) gradually died away, and he was grimly meditating on his own miseries, to which he had now lost all hope of seeing an end before day-light, when the sudden rattling of a key at the yard door awakened flattering hopes in his breast. It proved to be the waiter, who came to make a gaol delivery—and on letting him out said, “I am commissioned by the gentlemen to secure your silence;” at the same time putting into his hand a piece of gold.

“The take your gold!” said Mr. Schnackenberger: “is this the practice at your house–first to abuse your guests, and then have the audacity to offer them money?”

“Lord protect us!” said the waiter, now examining his face, “is it you? but who would ever have looked for you in such a dress as this? The gentlemen took you for one of the police. Lord! to think what a trouble you’ll have had!”

And it now came out, that a party of foreigners had pitched upon Mr. Jeremiah’s room as a convenient one for playing at hazard and some other forbidden games; and to prevent all disturbance from the police, had posted their servants, who spoke not a word of German, as sentinels at the door.

“But how came you to let my room for such a purpose?”

“Because we never expected to see you to-night; we had heard that the gentleman in the dreadnought had been taken up at the theatre, and committed. But the gentlemen are all gone now; and the room’s quite at your service.”

Mr. Schnackenberger, however, who had lost the first part of the night’s sleep from suffering, was destined to lose the second from pleasure: for the waiter now put into his hands the following billet: “No doubt you must have waited for me to no purpose in the passages of the theatre: but alas! our firmest resolutions we have it not always in our power to execute; and on this occasion, I found it quite impossible consistently with decorum to separate myself from my attendants. Will you therefore attend the hunt to-morrow morning? there I hope a better opportunity will offer.”

It added to his happiness on this occasion that the Princess had manifestly not detected him as the man in the dreadnought.

Next morning, when the Provost-marshal came to fetch back the appointments of the military wig-maker, it struck our good-natured student that he had very probably brought the poor fellow into an unpleasant scrape. He felt, therefore, called upon as a gentleman, to wait upon the Mayor, and do his best to beg him off. In fact, he arrived just in time: for all the arrangements were complete for demonstrating to the poor wig-maker, by an à posteriori line of argument, the importance of valour in his new employment.

Mr. Schnackenberger entreated the Mayor to be lenient: courage, he said, was not every man’s business: as a wig-maker, the prisoner could have had little practice in that virtue: the best of wigs were often made by cowards: “and even as a soldier,” said he, “it’s odds if there should be such another alarm for the next hundred years.” But all in vain: his judge was too much incensed: “Such a scandalous dereliction of duty!” said