When Tapeworm's doctor came, Doctor von Glauber, Body Physician to
H.S.H. the Duke, he speedily convinced Jos that the Pumpernickel
mineral springs and the Doctor's particular treatment would infallibly
restore the Bengalee to youth and slimness. "Dere came here last
year," he said, "Sheneral Bulkeley, an English Sheneral, tvice so pic
as you, sir. I sent him back qvite tin after tree months, and he
danced vid Baroness Glauber at the end of two."
Jos's mind was made up; the springs, the Doctor, the Court, and the
Charge d'Affaires convinced him, and he proposed to spend the autumn in
these delightful quarters. And punctual to his word, on the next day
the Charge d'Affaires presented Jos and the Major to Victor Aurelius
XVII, being conducted to their audience with that sovereign by the
Count de Schlusselback, Marshal of the Court.
They were straightway invited to dinner at Court, and their intention
of staying in the town being announced, the politest ladies of the
whole town instantly called upon Mrs. Osborne; and as not one of these,
however poor they might be, was under the rank of a Baroness, Jos's
delight was beyond expression. He wrote off to Chutney at the Club to
say that the Service was highly appreciated in Germany, that he was
going to show his friend, the Count de Schlusselback, how to stick a
pig in the Indian fashion, and that his august friends, the Duke and
Duchess, were everything that was kind and civil.
Emmy, too, was presented to the august family, and as mourning is not
admitted in Court on certain days, she appeared in a pink crape dress
with a diamond ornament in the corsage, presented to her by her
brother, and she looked so pretty in this costume that the Duke and
Court (putting out of the question the Major, who had scarcely ever
seen her before in an evening dress, and vowed that she did not look
five-and-twenty) all admired her excessively.
In this dress she walked a Polonaise with Major Dobbin at a Court ball,
in which easy dance Mr. Jos had the honour of leading out the Countess
of Schlusselback, an old lady with a hump back, but with sixteen good
quarters of nobility and related to half the royal houses of Germany.
Pumpernickel stands in the midst of a happy valley through which
sparkles--to mingle with the Rhine somewhere, but I have not the map at
hand to say exactly at what point--the fertilizing stream of the Pump.
In some places the river is big enough to support a ferry-boat, in
others to turn a mill; in Pumpernickel itself, the last Transparency
but three, the great and renowned Victor Aurelius XIV built a
magnificent bridge, on which his own statue rises, surrounded by
water-nymphs and emblems of victory, peace, and plenty; he has his foot
on the neck of a prostrate Turk--history says he engaged and ran a
Janissary through the body at the relief of Vienna by Sobieski--but,
quite undisturbed by the agonies of that prostrate Mahometan, who
writhes at his feet in the most ghastly manner, the Prince smiles
blandly and points with his truncheon in the direction of the Aurelius
Platz, where he began to erect a new palace that would have been the
wonder of his age had the great-souled Prince but had funds to
complete it. But the completion of Monplaisir (Monblaisir the honest
German folks call it) was stopped for lack of ready money, and it and
its park and garden are now in rather a faded condition, and not more
than ten times big enough to accommodate the Court of the reigning
Sovereign.