Barry Lyndon

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A dish of fried eggs-and-bacon was ordered from a hideous old wench
that came to serve us, in place of the lovely creature I had
expected to see; and the Captain, laughing, said, 'Well, our meal is
a frugal one, but a soldier has many a time a worse:' and, taking
off his hat, sword-belt, and gloves, with great ceremony, he sat
down to eat. I would not be behindhand with him in politeness, and
put my weapon securely on the old chest of drawers where his was
laid.

The hideous old woman before mentioned brought us in a pot of very
sour wine, at which and at her ugliness I felt a considerable ill-
humour.

'Where's the beauty you promised me?' said I, as soon as the old hag
had left the room.

'Bah!' said he, laughing, and looking hard at me: 'it was my joke. I
was tired, and did not care to go farther. There's no prettier woman
here than that. If she won't suit your fancy, my friend, you must
wait a while.'

This increased my ill-humour.

'Upon my word, sir,' said I sternly, 'I think you have acted very
coolly!'

'I have acted as I think fit!' replied the captain.

'Sir,' said I, 'I'm a British officer!'

'It's a lie!' roared the other, 'you're a DESERTER! You're an
impostor, sir; I have known you for such these three hours. I
suspected you yesterday. My men heard of a man escaping from
Warburg, and I thought you were the man. Your lies and folly have
confirmed me. You pretend to carry despatches to a general who has
been dead these ten months: you have an uncle who is an ambassador,
and whose name forsooth you don't know. Will you join and take the
bounty, sir; or will you be given up?'

'Neither!' said I, springing at him like a tiger. But, agile as I
was, he was equally on his guard. He took two pistols out of his
pocket, fired one off, and said, from the other end of the table
where he stood dodging me, as it were,--

'Advance a step, and I send this bullet into your brains!' In
another minute the door was flung open, and the two sergeants
entered, armed with musket and bayonet to aid their comrade.

The game was up. I flung down a knife with which I had armed myself;
for the old hag on bringing in the wine had removed my sword.

'I volunteer,' said I.

'That's my good fellow. What name shall I put on my list?'

'Write Redmond Barry of Bally Barry,' said I haughtily; 'a
descendant of the Irish kings!'

'I was once with the Irish brigade, Roche's,' said the recruiter,
sneering, 'trying if I could get any likely fellows among the few
countrymen of yours that are in the brigade, and there was scarcely
one of them that was not descended from the kings of Ireland.'

'Sir,' said I, 'king or not, I am a gentleman, as you can see.'

'Oh! you will find plenty more in our corps,' answered the Captain,
still in the sneering mood. 'Give up your papers, Mr. Gentleman, and
let us see who you really are.'

As my pocket-book contained some bank-notes as well as papers of Mr.
Fakenham's, I was not willing to give up my property; suspecting
very rightly that it was but a scheme on the part of the Captain to
get and keep it.

'It can matter very little to you,' said I, 'what my private papers
are: I am enlisted under the name of Redmond Barry.'

'Give it up, sirrah!' said the Captain, seizing his cane.

'I will not give it up!' answered I.

'HOUND! do you mutiny?' screamed he, and, at the same time, gave me
a lash across the face with the cane, which had the anticipated
effect of producing a struggle. I dashed forward to grapple with
him, the two sergeants flung themselves on me, I was thrown to the
ground and stunned again; being hit on my former wound in the head.
It was bleeding severely when I came to myself, my laced coat was
already torn off my back, my purse and papers gone, and my hands
tied behind my back.

The great and illustrious Frederick had scores of these white slave-
dealers all round the frontiers of his kingdom, debauching troops or
kidnapping peasants, and hesitating at no crime to supply those
brilliant regiments of his with food for powder; and I cannot help
telling here, with some satisfaction, the fate which ultimately
befell the atrocious scoundrel who, violating all the rights of
friendship and good-fellowship, had just succeeded in entrapping me.
This individual was a person of high family and known talents and
courage, but who had a propensity to gambling and extravagance, and
found his calling as a recruit-decoy far more profitable to him than
his pay of second captain in the line. The sovereign, too, probably
found his services more useful in the former capacity. His name was
Monsieur de Galgenstein, and he was one of the most successful of
the practisers of his rascally trade. He spoke all languages, and
knew all countries, and hence had no difficulty in finding out the
simple braggadocio of a young lad like me.

About 1765, however, he came to his justly merited end. He was at
this time living at Kehl, opposite Strasburg, and used to take his
walk upon the bridge there, and get into conversation with the
French advanced sentinels; to whom he was in the habit of promising
'mountains and marvels,' as the French say, if they would take
service in Prussia. One day there was on the bridge a superb
grenadier, whom Galgenstein accosted, and to whom he promised a
company, at least, if he would enlist under Frederick.

'Ask my comrade yonder,' said the grenadier; 'I can do nothing
without him. We were born and bred together, we are of the same
company, sleep in the same room, and always go in pairs. If he will
go and you will give him a captaincy, I will go too.'

'Bring your comrade over to Kehl,' said Galgenstein, delighted. 'I
will give you the best of dinners, and can promise to satisfy both
of you.'

'Had you not better speak to him on the bridge?' said the grenadier.
'I dare not leave my post; but you have but to pass, and talk over
the matter.'

Galgenstein, after a little parley, passed the sentinel; but
presently a panic took him, and he retraced his steps. But the
grenadier brought his bayonet to the Prussian's breast and bade him
stand: that he was his prisoner.

The Prussian, however, seeing his danger, made a bound across the
bridge and into the Rhine; whither, flinging aside his musket, the
intrepid sentry followed him. The Frenchman was the better swimmer
of the two, seized upon the recruiter, and bore him to the Strasburg
side of the stream, where he gave him up.

'You deserve to be shot,' said the general to him, 'for abandoning
your post and arms; but you merit reward for an act of courage and
daring. The King prefers to reward you,' and the man received money
and promotion.

As for Galgenstein, he declared his quality as a nobleman and a
captain in the Prussian service, and applications were made to
Berlin to know if his representations were true. But the King,
though he employed men of this stamp (officers to seduce the
subjects of his allies) could not acknowledge his own shame. Letters
were written back from Berlin to say that such a family existed in
the kingdom, but that the person representing himself to belong to
it must be an impostor, for every officer of the name was at his
regiment and his post. It was Galgenstein's death-warrant, and he
was hanged as a spy in Strasburg.

'Turn him into the cart with the rest,' said he, as soon as I awoke
from my trance.

CHAPTER VI

THE CRIMP WAGGON--MILITARY EPISODES

The covered waggon to which I was ordered to march was standing, as
I have said, in the courtyard of the farm, with another dismal
vehicle of the same kind hard by it. Each was pretty well filled
with a crew of men, whom the atrocious crimp who had seized upon me,
had enlisted under the banners of the glorious Frederick; and I
could see by the lanterns of the sentinels, as they thrust me into
the straw, a dozen dark figures huddled together in the horrible
moving prison where I was now to be confined. A scream and a curse
from my opposite neighbour showed me that he was most likely
wounded, as I myself was; and, during the whole of the wretched
night, the moans and sobs of the poor fellows in similar captivity
kept up a continual painful chorus, which effectually prevented my
getting any relief from my ills in sleep. At midnight (as far as I
could judge) the horses were put to the waggons, and the creaking
lumbering machines were put in motion. A couple of soldiers,
strongly armed, sat on the outer bench of the cart, and their grim
faces peered in with their lanterns every now and then through the
canvas curtains, that they might count the number of their
prisoners. The brutes were half-drunk, and were singing love and war
songs, such as 'O Gretchen mein Taubchen, mein Herzenstrompet, Mein
Kanon, mein Heerpauk und meine Musket,' 'Prinz Eugen der edle
Ritter.' and the like; their wild whoops and jodels making doleful
discord with the groans of us captives within the waggons. Many a
time afterwards have I heard these ditties sung on the march, or in
the barrack-room, or round the fires as we lay out at night.

I was not near so unhappy, in spite of all, as I had been on my
first enlisting in Ireland. At least, thought I, if I am degraded to
be a private soldier there will be no one of my acquaintance who
will witness my shame; and that is the point which I have always
cared for most. There will be no one to say, 'There is young Redmond
Barry, the descendant or the Barrys, the fashionable young blood of
Dublin, pipeclaying his belt and carrying his brown Bess.' Indeed,
but for that opinion of the world, with which it is necessary that
every man of spirit should keep upon equal terms, I, for my part,
would have always been contented with the humblest portion. Now
here, to all intents and purposes, one was as far removed from the
world as in the wilds of Siberia, or in Robinson Crusoe's Island.
And I reasoned with myself thus:--'Now you are caught, there is no
use in repining: make the best of your situation, and get all the
pleasure you can out of it. There are a thousand opportunities of
plunder, &c., offered to the soldier in war-time, out of which he
can get both pleasure and profit: make use of these, and be happy.
Besides, you are extraordinarily brave, handsome, and clever: and
who knows but you may procure advancement in your new service?'

In this philosophical way I looked at my misfortunes, determining
not to be cast down by them; and bore woes and my broken head with
perfect magnanimity. The latter was, for the moment, an evil against
which it required no small powers of endurance to contend; for the
jolts of the waggon were dreadful, and every shake caused a throb in
my brain which I thought would have split my skull. As the morning
dawned, I saw that the man next me, a gaunt yellow-haired creature,
in black, had a cushion of straw under his head.

'Are you wounded, comrade?' said I.

'Praised be the Lord,' said he, 'I am sore hurt in spirit and body,
and bruised in many members; wounded, however, am I not. And you,
poor youth?'

'I am wounded in the head,' said I, 'and I want your pillow: give it
me--I've a clasp-knife in my pocket!' and with this I gave him a
terrible look, meaning to say (and mean it I did, for look you, A LA
GUERRE C'EST A LA GUERRE, and I am none of your milksops) that,
unless he yielded me the accommodation, I would give him a taste of
my steel.

'I would give it thee without any threat, friend,' said the yellow-
haired man meekly, and handed me over his little sack of straw.

He then leaned himself back as comfortably as he could against the
cart, and began repeating, 'Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott,' by
which I concluded that I had got into the company of a parson. With
the jolts of the waggon, and accidents of the journey, various more
exclamations and movements of the passengers showed what a motley
company we were. Every now and then a countryman would burst into
tears; a French voice would be heard to say, 'O mon Dieu!--mon
Dieu!' a couple more of the same nation were jabbering oaths and
chattering incessantly; and a certain allusion to his own and
everybody else's eyes, which came from a stalwart figure at the far
corner, told me that there was certainly an Englishman in our crew.

But I was spared soon the tedium and discomforts of the journey. In
spite of the clergyman's cushion, my head, which was throbbing with
pain, was brought abruptly in contact with the side of the waggon;
it began to bleed afresh: I became almost light-headed. I only
recollect having a draught of water here and there; once stopping at
a fortified town, where an officer counted us:--all the rest of the
journey was passed in a drowsy stupor, from which, when I awoke, I
found myself lying in a hospital bed, with a nun in a white hood
watching over me.

'They are in sad spiritual darkness,' said a voice from the bed next
to me, when the nun had finished her kind offices and retired: 'they
are in the night of error, and yet there is the light of faith in
those poor creatures.'

It was my comrade of the crimp waggon, his huge broad face looming
out from under a white nightcap, and ensconced in the bed beside.

'What! you there, Herr Pastor?' said I.

'Only a candidate, sir,' answered the white nightcap. 'But, praised
be Heaven! you have come to. You have had a wild time of it. You
have been talking in the English language (with which I am
acquainted) of Ireland, and a young lady, and Mick, and of another
young lady, and of a house on fire, and of the British Grenadiers,
concerning whom you sung us parts of a ballad, and of a number of
other matters appertaining, no doubt, to your personal history.'

'It has been a very strange one,' said I; 'and, perhaps, there is no
man in the world, of my birth, whose misfortunes can at all be
compared to mine.'

I do not object to own that I am disposed to brag of my birth and
other acquirements; for I have always found that if a man does not
give himself a good word, his friends will not do it for him.

'Well,' said my fellow-patient, 'I have no doubt yours is a strange
tale, and shall be glad to hear it anon; but at present you must not
be permitted to speak much, for your fever has been long, and your
exhaustion great.'

'Where are we?' I asked; and the candidate informed me that we were
in the bishopric and town of Fulda, at present occupied by Prince
Henry's troops. There had been a skirmish with an out-party of
French near the town, in which a shot entering the waggon, the poor
candidate had been wounded.

As the reader knows already my history, I will not take the trouble
to repeat it here, or to give the additions with which I favoured my
comrade in misfortune. But I confess that I told him ours was the
greatest family and finest palace in Ireland, that we were
enormously wealthy, related to all the peerage descended from the
ancient kings, &c.; and, to my surprise, in the course of our
conversation, I found that my interlocutor knew a great deal more
about Ireland than I did. When, for instance, I spoke of my
descent,--

'From which race of kings?' said he.

'Oh!' said I (for my memory for dates was never very accurate),
'from the old ancient kings of all.'

'What! can you trace your origin to the sons Japhet?' said he.

''Faith, I can,' answered I, 'and farther too,--Nebuchadnezzar, if
you like.'

'I see,' said the candidate, smiling, 'that you look upon those
legends with incredulity. These Partholans and Nemedians, of whom
your writers fondly make mention, cannot be authentically vouched
for in history. Nor do I believe that we have any more foundation
for the tales concerning them, than for the legends relative to
Joseph of Arimathea and King Bruce which prevailed two centuries
back in the sister island.

And then he began a discourse about the Phoenicians, the Scyths or
Goths, the Tuath de Danans, Tacitus, and King MacNeil; which was, to
say the truth, the very first news I had heard of those personages.
As for English, he spoke it as well as I, and had seven more
languages, he said, equally at his command; for, on my quoting the
only Latin line that I knew, that out of the poet Homer, which
says,--

'As in praesenti perfectum fumat in avi,'

he began to speak to me in the Roman tongue; on which I was fain to
tell him that we pronounced it in a different way in Ireland, and so
got off the conversation.

My honest friend's history was a curious one, and it may be told
here in order to show of what motley materials our levies were
composed:--

'I am,' said he, 'a Saxon by birth, my father being pastor of the
village of Pfannkuchen, where I imbibed the first rudiments of
knowledge. At sixteen (I am now twenty-three), having mastered the
Greek and Latin tongues, with the French, English, Arabic, and
Hebrew; and having come into possession of a legacy of a hundred
rixdalers, a sum amply sufficient to defray my University courses, I
went to the famous academy of Gottingen, where I devoted four years
to the exact sciences and theology. Also, I learned what worldly
accomplishments I could command; taking a dancing-tutor at the
expense of a groschen a lesson, a course of fencing from a French
practitioner, and attending lectures on the great horse and the
equestrian science at the hippodrome of a celebrated cavalry
professor. My opinion is, that a man should know everything as far
as in his power lies: that he should complete his cycle of
experience; and, one science being as necessary as another, it
behoves him.

'I am not of a saving turn, hence my little fortune of a hundred
rixdalers, which has served to keep many a prudent man for a score
of years, barely sufficed for five years' studies; after which my
studies were interrupted, my pupils fell off, and I was obliged to
devote much time to shoe-binding in order to save money, and, at a
future period, resume my academic course. During this period I
contracted an attachment' (here the candidate sighed a little) 'with
a person, who, though not beautiful, and forty years of age, is yet
likely to sympathise with my existence; and, a month since, my kind
friend and patron, University Prorector Doctor Nasenbrumm, having
informed me that the Pfarrer of Rumpelwitz was dead, asked whether I
would like to have my name placed upon the candidate list, and if I
were minded to preach a trial sermon? As the gaining of this living
would further my union with my Amalia, I joyously consented, and
prepared a discourse.

'If you like I will recite it to you--No?--Well, I will give you
extracts from it upon our line of march. To proceed, then, with my
biographical sketch, which is now very near a conclusion; or, as I
should more correctly say, which has very nearly brought me to the
present period of time: I preached that sermon at Rumpelwitz, in
which I hope that the Babylonian question was pretty satisfactorily
set at rest. I preached it before the Herr Baron and his noble
family, and some officers of distinction who were staying at his
castle. Mr. Doctor Moser of Halle followed me in the evening
discourse; but, though his exercise was learned, and he disposed of
a passage of Ignatius, which he proved to be a manifest
interpolation, I do not think his sermon had the effect which mine
produced, and that the Rumpelwitzers much relished it. After the
sermon, all the candidates walked out of church together, and supped
lovingly at the "Blue Stag" in Rumpelwitz.

'While so occupied, a waiter came in and said that a person without
wished to speak to one of the reverend candidates, "the tall one."
This could only mean me, for I was a head and shoulders higher than
any other reverend gentleman present. I issued out to see who was
the person desiring to hold converse with me, and found a man whom I
had no difficulty in recognising as one of the Jewish persuasion.

'"Sir," said this Hebrew, "I have heard from a friend, who was in
your church to-day, the heads of the admirable discourse you
pronounced there. It has affected me deeply, most deeply. There are
only one or two points on which I am yet in doubt, and if your
honour could but condescend to enlighten me on these, I think--I
think Solomon Hirsch would be a convert to your eloquence."

'"What are these points, my good friend?" said I; and I pointed out
to him the twenty-four heads of my sermon, asking him in which of
these his doubts lay.

'We had been walking up and down before the inn while our
conversation took place, but the windows being open, and my comrades
having heard the discourse in the morning, requested me, rather
peevishly, not to resume it at that period. I, therefore, moved on
with my disciple, and, at his request, began at once the sermon; for
my memory is good for anything, and I can repeat any book I have
read thrice.

'I poured out, then, under the trees, and in the calm moonlight,
that discourse which I had pronounced under the blazing sun of noon.
My Israelite only interrupted me by exclamations indicative of
surprise, assent, admiration, and increasing conviction.
"Prodigious!" said he;--"Wunderschon!" would he remark at the
conclusion of some eloquent passage; in a word, he exhausted the
complimentary interjections of our language: and to compliments what
man is averse? I think we must have walked two miles when I got to
my third head and my companion begged I would enter his house, which
we now neared, and partake of a glass of beer; to which I was never
averse.

'That house, sir, was the inn at which you, too, if I judge aright,
were taken. No sooner was I in the place, than three crimps rushed
upon me, told me I was a deserter, and their prisoner, and called
upon me to deliver up my money and papers; which I did with a solemn
protest as to my sacred character. They consisted of my sermon in
MS., Prorector Nasenbrumm's recommendatory letter, proving my
identity, and three groschen four pfennigs in bullion. I had already
been in the cart twenty hours when you reached the house. The French
officer, who lay opposite you (he who screamed when you trod on his
foot, for he was wounded), was brought in shortly before your
arrival. He had been taken with his epaulets and regimentals, and
declared his quality and rank; but he was alone (I believe it was
some affair of love with a Hessian lady which caused him to be
unattended); and as the persons into whose hands he fell will make
more profit of him as a recruit than as a prisoner, he is made to
share our fate. He is not the first by many scores so captured. One
of M. de Soubise's cooks, and three actors out of a troop in the
French camp, several deserters from your English troops (the men are
led away by being told that there is no flogging in the Prussian
service), and three Dutchmen were taken besides.'

'And you,' said I--'you who were just on the point of getting a
valuable living,--you who have so much learning, are you not
indignant at the outrage?'

'I am a Saxon,' said the candidate, 'and there is no use in
indignation. Our government is crushed under Frederick's heel these
five years, and I might as well hope for mercy from the Grand Mogul.
Nor am I, in truth, discontented with my lot; I have lived on a
penny bread for so many years, that a soldier's rations will be a
luxury to me. I do not care about more or less blows of a cane; all
such evils are passing, and therefore endurable. I will never, God
willing, slay a man in combat; but I am not unanxious to experience
on myself the effect of the war-passion, which has had so great an
influence on the human race. It was for the same reason that I
determined to marry Amalia, for a man is not a complete Mensch until
he is the father of a family; to be which is a condition of his
existence, and therefore a duty of his education. Amalia must wait;
she is out of the reach of want, being, indeed, cook to the Frau
Prorectorinn Nasenbrumm, my worthy patron's lady. I have one or two
books with me, which no one is likely to take from me, and one in my
heart which is the best of all. If it shall please Heaven to finish
my existence here, before I can prosecute my studies further, what
cause have I to repine? I pray God I may not be mistaken, but I
think I have wronged no man, and committed no mortal sin. If I have,
I know where to look for forgiveness; and if I die, as I have said,
without knowing all that I would desire to learn, shall I not be in
a situation to learn EVERYTHING, and what can human soul ask for
more?

'Pardon me for putting so many _I_'s in my discourse,' said the
candidate, 'but when a man is talking of himself, 'tis the briefest
and simplest way of talking.'

In which, perhaps, though I hate egotism, I think my friend was
right. Although he acknowledged himself to be a mean-spirited
fellow, with no more ambition than to know the contents of a few
musty books, I think the man had some good in him; especially in the
resolution with which he bore his calamities. Many a gallant man of
the highest honour is often not proof against these, and has been
known to despair over a bad dinner, or to be cast down at a ragged-
elbowed coat. MY maxim is to bear all, to put up with water if you
cannot get Burgundy, and if you have no velvet to be content with
frieze. But Burgundy and velvet are the best, bien entendu, and the
man is a fool who will not seize the best when the scramble is open.

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