The Mysteries of New Orleans (The Longfellow Series of American Languages and Literatures)

by Baron Ludwigvon Reizenstein

  Today was to decide the Cocker’s future: was he to kneel under the gentle yoke of marriage, or would he remain a bachelor forever?

  In the first case it could only be Orleana, since only she caused him to feel what was proper to a married man.

  For this purpose a special outfit was spread on his table.

  Several days before he had washed and brushed the black frock coat that he had worn as a confirmand at the age of fifteen. It hung drying on the chair back.

  From time to time he touched it and tried to determine when it would be completely dry. He appeared unconcerned that the arms were a bit short, since he considered that his lovely starched cuffs would be all the easier to see, and, besides, he had read in a book somewhere that women paid particular attention to a man’s hands, so he believed this would light an unquenchable flame in Orleana’s heart.

  A letter he took to the Post Office had to convince Orleana all the more of his love.

  The letter read:

  Most Nobly Born Fräulein Orleana, resident in Toulouse Street, six Gschwärs* from the Office of the “German Society”! Yes, in deed and without exaggeration, Most Nobly Born Fräulein!

  If I might be so bold, Fräulein, as to send you a few lines, that does not mean that I have determined in advance to make a claim on your love. I am a German, and that should be sufficient for you. I am not one of those pushy Frenchmen who seek to pull you down into the abyss of vice and moral ruin through underhanded narrative. As your compatriot, I hold it to be my obligation, even more my duty, to warn you against this scum, and if you would be inclined to bind my hands with the rosy chains of marriage, then say it without restraint, right out, as befits a compatriot. I possess to a significant degree all those qualities that a decent maiden can demand, and if you look back into your past in a few years then you will have to confess that you embraced a compatriot who always meant well by you. So that you cannot accuse me later of cheating you by keeping my lack of money quiet, let me tell you, from my very liver, that I have no money. I know in advance, however, that a compatriot maiden as decent as yourself would never demand money from me in advance. Since I have so much education, you will be satisfied with a good heart. So far as my personality goes, you will note that I am not as such a lightweight as those miserable Frenchmen, who have bad intentions at the outset. If you will permit me to visit you tomorrow at the dinner hour, you will see that you are dealing with a decent man. So tomorrow I shall be free to visit you and receive your good judgment. During the first period after the wedding, we could live in your own home, and I will need only a little cabinet for my shotguns, rifles and pistols, which I ordered so long ago and which I have to repair now and then. Still, we can talk about that later. Once again, expect me tomorrow precisely at the dinner hour.

  Most humbly and respectfully,

  Your deeply dedicated compatriot,

  Kaspar Hahn

  As one could imagine, Orleana was deeply offended when she read this letter. If the letter was meant seriously, then it had flowed from the pen of a fool who had fallen in love with her. Or had someone dared to play a disgusting game with her? These questions set her virginal spirit into the most painful distress. After balancing these alternatives against each other, she thought it most prudent to wait until tomorrow, and, if the announced person did not appear, to take serious measures to chase down the author of this offensive letter. She hoped that her first assumption was true, since she felt competent to drive these ideas out of the head of a lovesick, block-headed fool. She thought that a disgusting conspiracy against her feminine virtue was more than simply perilous, however. The very idea that her name might come in this way before the filthy tribunal of a mob was intolerable.

  The Cocker applied all possible means his money was capable of supporting to make himself appear as much like a bridegroom as possible.

  His beaten-in Hecker hat yielded to a silk hat, and his cotton sackcloth with red stripes yielded to white batiste set with the finest lace.

  He had not purchased it: last Sunday he saw it lying in front of the Cathedral and took it.

  As he concentrated on his dressing, he was interrupted by a man who walked into the room and approached him without knocking.

  “Comment s’en va, Monsieur Kaspar?” were the first words.

  “Speak German, Herr Weber—I don’t understand French!” the Cocker responded with irritation.

  “I only wanted to see if you had learned any French, Monsieur Kaspar—you have been in the Saud* more than seven years. Look at the French children who already are speaking perfect French, and you are over thirty and don’t speak a word.”

  “That is an entirely different thing, one who has been to university must think of more important things than learning French—you don’t understand that, Herr Weber …”

  “À propos,” the Lorrainer, a man still in his thirties, interrupted him, “how is it with your rent? It has been two months since I’ve seen any—I have no desire to wait any longer—’tis bad times, and I need my money.”

  “But my dear Herr Weber, I have told you that—if—that I have good prospects—no, no, don’t look at me so dubiously, Herr Weber—no, no, you know I am about to marry a wealthy compatriot—and there will be an agreement from the outset how much pocket money I am to receive.”

  “Don’t make yourself a laughingstock, Monsieur Kaspar—sacre nom de dieu! You, you and the rich Creole married? What are you thinking about? There are others who are plotting for her—You? You? How could you object if I made a claim on her myself—I am a man worth at least twelve hundred dollars, and I have two lots besides in the neuf Besen,* and what do you have? You can’t even afford three dollars a month in rent. Don’t make yourself a laughingstock, Monsieur Kaspar—I want my money and nothing else!”

  “But my dear, esteemed Herr Weber, I am at your service, and that is enough said by a man who keeps his word of honor—it is all in order between us. Today I will have dinner with her—and she has already received a love letter from me.”

  “I’m telling you once more and for the last time, Monsieur Kaspar—I want my money. I want my six dollars—I want it now—then you can marry whomever and whenever you wish.”

  “How can you be so upset, Herr Weber, when you are at least half my compatriot, which means you have to overlook a few things? Give me your hand, Herr Weber, you will certainly never regret it. Look, today I promise you with a handshake—then you’re ‘set’—dear, finest Herr Weber, don’t trouble yourself any further, or else I won’t get to my dinner—and I have promised it with certainty.”

  The Lorrainer, who appeared not to be any great genius, half believed some of these assurances, feeling there might just be something in it, for now he sounded an entirely different tune: “Eh bien, Monsieur Kaspar! How long will it be before you get it all together?”

  “That will be agreed upon between the two of us at the very outset today, so perhaps you can get your rent tomorrow, certainly the day after tomorrow—Herr Weber, you’re not still mad at me, are you?”

  “You funny man, why should I be mad at you—but you will certainly not have anything to do with me once you have married the rich Creole?”

  “You don’t know me if you think that of me, Herr Weber—I will not forget you—we will be quite faithful to each other, Herr Weber!”

  “So adieu, I shall not trouble you any further, dress yourself nicely and do your duty well,” the Lorrainer called out to the Cocker, as he held the latch in his hand on his way out.

  “That damned Lorrainer shall not set his foot in my house once I’m married—he will be amazed—I shall pay him his six dollars rent—and that will be all. My compatriot would have a pretty reaction if I ever presented her with such a gross, coarse man—she would care little about his two lots on the New Basin. My compatriot is a decent, strong maiden and does not judge people by how many lots they have on the New Basin or anywhere else—she only asks for a loving heart, and I can offer her that from the ou
tset when we get together. Kaspar, Kaspar, what will your friends say when they hear that the former rake, the old party, the Cocker, has married such an innocent, fine maiden—they will turn yellow and green from envy and distress.”

  As one can see, this had become a fixed idea with the Cocker: he believed that Orleana would sacrifice her youth, beauty, riches, and even further advantages without protest and that she would count herself lucky to be entitled “Frau Cocker Hahn.”

  A man seized by such hallucinations is not far from insane.

  In the Cocker’s case, this fantasy was the result of an excess of youthful sins committed with the female sex, which unfortunately would reach its culmination in a tangled combination of ideas and a malignant obsession with the wealthy, beautiful German Creole maiden.

  We have already seen from his apotheosis of beautiful women that the Cocker was not without education.

  It seemed impossible to him that Orleana would not be his life’s companion—for, he still often said to himself when alone: “Even if I am not handsome, I am at least interesting, and how many examples are there that beautiful women choose ugly, interesting men over handsome and uninteresting ones?”

  If he often gloated over his self-convinced good fortune, it often also happened that he felt pangs of conscience over his earlier way of life. Then he would fall victim to anxieties when he considered whether the Creole would see that his sighs of love had received a willing hearing in other places besides.

  “I should not be concerned about that at all,” he remarked to himself. “It is not possible that my compatriot would even think of that—oh, she will and must believe that she is my first love, when I swear to her high and low by all the saints in heaven, when I fall at her feet in the first storm of passion and beseech her with dreamy eyes focused on her heavenly face, oh, she will and must give the Cocker the trust he needs.

  “Tomorrow, tomorrow, yes tomorrow, or the day after, at this very moment! What are the Lorrainer’s two lots in the New Basin against two freshly covered bays in a marriage bed?”

  At this point he interrupted himself laughing: “Cocker, by jingo, your good luck is making you witty—by God, how many authors of romances would envy this turn of phrase if it were printed in boldface, or in spread type—and this came to me out of nowhere, without my having to think much about it.”

  As he conversed with himself, the Cocker was searching for his moustache wax, which he discovered at last in an old boot.

  He had a rather large mustache of reddish color that he now wanted to wax black; then he took a little tallow and melded the wayward hairs together so that their ends turned back toward his nose.

  He placed his fine batiste handkerchief in the left pocket of his red satin vest, allowing the point to stick out.

  His frock coat, which had dried completely, was a bit narrow over his back, and the two frock tails stood too widely apart, showing his bottom to disadvantage.

  He cared not a whit about this, for he was convinced that his bride to be would only see the interior person and would not be bribed by external fripperies.

  After he had inspected himself in his broken mirror twenty times over, front and back, never forgetting the interior person, he departed his apartment.

  It was already nearly three in the afternoon, the hour when Orleana would be awaiting him.

  As was the case the night he had given his disastrous serenade to Orleana, he once again went too far down Toulouse Street. He first realized his error when he passed Victor’s Restaurant.

  “Well, since I have already gone so far in vain, I can take a small one on the way—can’t hurt—it goes all that much better from the heart, as Schiller says.”

  He was so preoccupied that he almost walked into Victor’s, but he saw his error at the last moment and went right across the street to the Rheinpfalz.

  The host of the Rheinpfalz, a tall, handsome man with a full beard and a truly military bearing, stood right by the door.

  “Why so dressed up, Kaspar? Are you getting married?” he asked.

  “Right on target, Herr Sch., and since you always have the best in stock, I want to take a small one along with me—I always like to come in here, and if all the hosts were as good as you, life in this damned New Orleans would be entirely different. There, Victor over there, he should remember me, if I have the time—alright—Barkeeper, there, there—I have to go right away—adieu, adieu, all of you!”

  The host of the Rheinpfalz smiled as he watched the Cocker carefully strutting with wide steps on down Toulouse Street, his stretched-out frock tails behind him. He excited considerable curiosity from passers-by.

  Let’s see what Orleana is doing.

  She was impatiently awaiting the appearance of the man who had so naively invited himself to dinner, and who intended to declare his limitless love and esteem.

  In truth there were two place settings on the table, usually set for one.

  She paced back and forth in her small but elegantly furnished reception room, now and then showing a slight smile on her face when she thought of the appearance of that lovesick, clumsy fool.

  Orleana had never been so beautiful: never had her skin been so white and clear, never had the hygron* ever swum in purer water than in her marvelous eyes.

  Her black hair, with bluish highlights, lay in warm fullness on the back of her neck, which, since it was more than half uncovered, would have been perilous to the virtue of the cherubim.

  This neck, which had not yet felt the hand or the lips of any man, was Orleana’s pride, and her fine classical sense had chosen clothing that would have allowed a worshiper of beauty and divinity in the female form, if he stood close to her, easily to immerse his eyes in the warmth of her entire back.

  Far from all prudery, Orleana held it to be her duty not to hide from anyone the most beautiful gifts that nature had bestowed on her.

  Betsy, Orleana’s slave, announced a gentleman.

  “His name, Betsy?”

  “Cäshbär Jahn, if I understood him, milady.”†

  “That certainly must be Kaspar Hahn,” Orleana thought to herself, then she commanded Betsy to lead the gentleman in.

  She herself stepped before a large mirror, adjusting the garlands of evergreens hanging over it. She did this in order to use the mirror to measure the man entering without his knowing he was being observed.

  Betsy pulled back the two wide doors, and the Cocker entered the reception room—or rather, he remained standing on the threshold.

  After leaving the Rheinpfalz, the Cocker had rushed straightaway to Orleana’s house, but, when he arrived, he suddenly lacked the courage to ring the bell, and he turned around.

  After taking a small one in every barroom he encountered, he suddenly felt his piddling courage growing at last to such a size that he finally rang the bell and in pathetic tones asked Betsy, who opened the door, whether he could speak with milady.

  But no sooner had Betsy returned with a positive answer than his courage fled a second time, and in such an astonishing manner that he felt totally sober, as if he had not had a single small one all day.

  When Betsy finally opened the double door, and he saw Orleana busy at the mirror, at that moment he wished himself thousands of miles away, in fact he would have snuck away if he did not think that his slightest movement would be detected.

  Orleana inspected the Cocker, frozen on the threshold, in the bright mirror.

  He took his hat in his left, then in his right hand, then he pressed it so firmly under his arm that it snapped and crackled, then he took it from under his arm and held it in both hands in front of him—naturally assuming that Orleana had not seen this.

  Once he finally believed that he had arranged himself sufficiently and brought himself into position, he wanted to take a step forward—when it suddenly occurred to him that he had not memorized a proper address to make him appear from the outset in a proper light.

  What was he to do? Time pressed—Orleana could turn
around any moment and see he was there.

  Orleana, who had seen everything in the mirror, and who only appeared to be adjusting the evergreen garlands, quietly gloated over the embarrassment, clumsiness, and insecurity of this man. Finally her patience was at an end, and, before the Cocker’s slow cogitations had reached the point of organizing a few words, Orleana turned about and approached the trembling Cocker with the entire grace of her being. The Cocker turned his eyes away from Orleana and sought someplace for his hat.

  “Sir, do I have the pleasure of meeting the man who is to be my guest this midday?” Orleana addressed him charmingly, and when the man addressed moved his lips in response but made no sound, she bade him come into the adjoining dining room, set for two persons.

  Nervously and with uncertain step, the Cocker followed her and seated himself on the chair Orleana offered him.

  He continued to be silent; even his eyes did not dare to set themselves on Orleana.

  “Sir,” Orleana interrupted the silence, which was beginning to bother her, “your worthy lines that came to me in the mail yesterday still leave me in doubt as the reason for your being here, despite many attempts at decipherment.”

  With these words, all the Cocker’s passion for Orleana returned.

  “What?” he responded with a stormy emphasis, “You have no idea that I intend at the outset to—”

  The Cocker did not complete this sentence, since his arm had struck a small crystal plate loaded with sweet potatoes, throwing it and its contents into Orleana’s lap.

  He grasped for them with hasty hands, and with such unrestrained confidence that Orleana stood up in shock and gave him no gentle slap.

  This rather overhasty action against the Cocker should not alienate us from her.