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

by Baron Ludwigvon Reizenstein

  The one is a tall but gaunt figure, the other has a compact build of less than average height.

  Both of them spoke French, but the accents were different.

  As they spoke, they often glanced at the man loaded down with chains, who still had not spoken a word, although he was able to speak—the mask did not cover his mouth.

  “Your Lydia appears to tire already,” the tall figure said to the other man.

  “She was tired even when I harnessed her,” was the answer.

  “That might be—it was no trifle. A struggle for three hours straight without letup—if we had not had to deal with the Hungarian count, it would have been much quicker.”

  “It was only good that the count was not carrying a weapon, or my Lydia would not be alive now.”

  “Even if he had had weapons with him, they would have done him no good. I stood at her side.”

  “He already had his fist in her mouth, he probably wanted to rip her tongue out—”

  “He intended to do that, but she crushed his wrist at the right moment.”

  “The chains and handcuffs must hurt him terribly—but he doesn’t want to show it—I want to watch carefully how he acts when he sees that he is to die.”

  The long, gaunt figure shrugged his shoulders at this remark from the other man. Then he asked: “Well, monsieur Cleveland, how do you like the young Count Emil?”

  “I like him a lot—I have never seen a more handsome man in my entire life. Whatever crime he committed that caused you to lead his parents into such a situation as punishment is beyond my comprehension. He looks so innocent and good that if I met him in the course of my travels I would take him to be an angel the Lord had sent me.”

  “Do you believe that his reunion with his parents and siblings broke his heart?”

  “You know, I could not remain in that tenement any longer. His cry of pain on seeing his dead mother, and then—oh, it sends a cold shudder over me even now, when I think of it.”

  “Do you believe that his reunion with his parents and siblings broke his heart?” he asked a second time.

  “I believe it,” was the answer, “although I did not see him after that evening—how could it be otherwise?”

  “I hardened his heart at the instant that it wanted to break. Emil—and Lucy, of whom I have told you—have to remain alive until their child, to be born next month, reaches his eighteenth year, in the year 1871. They are perhaps to experience what I shall never experience—the rise of a new dawn that will break over the South of the United States.

  “If you are to experience it, monsieur Cleveland, then don’t forget the year 1871 and the young Toussaint L’Ouverture.

  “When I die, Diana Robert will rush to Lucy and Emil and provide them personally with money only for the basic necessities, since their frivolity is limitless—they would squander everything despite all their experiences, and they would neglect the child.”

  The peddler Cleveland extended to Hiram his right hand, browned by the Louisiana sun, and said: “If I am to experience it, rely on me, for I am an enthusiastic reader of Uncle Tom’s Cabin,16 the gospel of the modern age.”

  Hiram suppressed an ironic smile that played on his thin lips at the peddler’s words. He did not criticize this clumsy comparison, since he could see that the man at least was showing good will. There was also a question about whether the peddler would even experience the birth of the yellow savior.

  The Carondelet Canal has a remarkable appearance during the months of July and August. Its water is so thickly covered with water plants that,* if lake-killers weren’t located here and there,† one could easily mistake it for a long, narrow greensward. Many a stranger has lost his life here by trying to cross this betraying meadow on foot, perhaps not noticing the ships or happening upon it when none were there. No year passes without twenty to fifty corpses being fished out; no one ever learns who they were or whether they found their grave here by accident or were pushed in by criminal hand.

  The hearse slowly squealed along the canal; it had arrived in the vicinity of the Tivoli Gardens.

  “Command the Hotooh to stop here,” Hiram told the peddler Cleveland. “We are there.”

  Without responding in words, the peddler stretched his head out of the hearse and tapped the Hotooh on the leg.

  The Hotooh brought the horse to a halt and called into the wagon.

  “Are we to throw him in?”

  He received no answer.

  The Hungarian—for that was the man encumbered with chains and iron balls—made a short but powerful move at the instant the wagon stopped, causing his fetters to fall to the floor and pull his arms downward suddenly. Then he stood up and looked out of the wagon with a bent back. When he saw the canal, he asked in a cuttingly cold tone, turning so that he could see Hiram and the peddler: “Am I supposed to take a walk there?”

  There was no answer to his question—that is, no positive or negative movements of the head, since the Hungarian could not have understood any other response.

  Hiram said to the peddler: “Be very careful when we get out, the man has something up his sleeve.”

  Tivoli Gardens had been closed for an hour. Because of the few guests who visited in these times, the innkeeper did not think it worth his time to keep his gardens open after midnight. There was a lake-killer moored nearby, right at the bank of the canal. It was an old, mastless schooner that was being kept here in expectation of repairs. Until three days ago, three sailors had been living on it. They were all seized by the sickness at the same time, and, unable to get help there, they fell in the canal in the middle of their fevers. The corpses had floated up quickly and were now lying, grotesquely postured, on the green surface of the canal right next to the bowsprit.

  The Hotooh had come down from the driver’s box and stood by the hearse doorway.

  Hiram got out. The peddler wanted to follow at once.

  Then the Hungarian gathered up all his strength and hurled an iron ball, striking Cleveland on the back of his head. The peddler dropped out of the opening of the carriage with a hollow cry, falling to the ground. He was dead.

  “I told him,” Hiram said to the Hotooh driver, “that the Hungarian had something up his sleeve. It is his fault.”

  At the same instant, Lydia broke out of her harness and rushed to her master, whose cry she had heard. As if she wanted to bed him down on the pasture, she gripped his clothing with her teeth and carried him—into the canal. Lydia would not have sunk, but she caught her master in her reins so that he pulled her into the depths with him. Hiram held back the Hotooh, who wanted to go to her aid. He said: “It was his own fault—I warned him in advance. When one is traveling to a place of execution, obedience is obligatory.”

  The Hotooh bowed as if he were expecting a command.

  Hiram pushed him to the side. “I do not need you anymore,” he said.

  The Hotooh paid his respects and ran back toward the city. He was overjoyed that Hiram had not commanded him to haul the hearse back.

  The Hungarian was still sitting in the wagon. After he had hurled the ball into the back of the peddler’s head, he had set himself quietly in the corner as if nothing had happened. Now Hiram approached him and reached for his face. The Hungarian did not move. He sat there as if all the life had flowed out of him. His hands, his feet, and even his face were ice-cold. Hiram reached again at his face, and when the Hungarian would not move, Hiram removed the mask.

  “Count, get out of the wagon. The moon will perform its office as executioner.”

  “Just to show you that I do not fear you,” the cold, living man responded, “I will get out.”

  Hiram stepped a bit to one side and drew out a small container. From the container he withdrew a piece of glass, about the size of a lens. He held this in front of the Hungarian’s face.

  The Hungarian wobbled back and forth several times, then he fell to the ground.

  Hiram held out the glass once more, and when the Hungarian began
to convulse he opened his handcuffs and removed the chains.

  “Get up, Count, and follow me on board that schooner.”

  The Hungarian slowly rose and looked at Hiram, then at the canal, then up at the moon.

  Now he felt as weak as a child. His usually muscular arms had withered like those of an old woman. His knees buckled.

  “What have you done to me?” he asked Hiram as he followed him onto the schooner without protest.

  “Tell me, what have you done to me? What is your intention? Do you want to throw me in?” the Hungarian said repeatedly in a soft, weak tone, which sounded more dreadful than the curses he had earlier expelled.

  Hiram was silent.

  The Hungarian lay with his back to a ruined sail, as Hiram had commanded him. He lay still and peacefully, as if he expected a gentle slumber to come over him at any moment. Only when he tried to raise himself did he suddenly sense an unbearable pain in his temples. He sank down again at once.

  Now, in this instant, the Hungarian’s face took on a marvelous clarity. His eyes gleamed in heavenly joy, and a mild, almost childish smile played on his lips.

  He folded his hands and looked up at the full disk of the moon.

  “How beautiful you are, moon!” he prayed, “oh, let me lie in your light here forever!”

  Then the moon sent down a ray at him that looked like a bolt of lightning bathed in water.

  This bolt struck the Hungarian on the forehead.

  His entire face crumbled, deformed, and changed. By the time Hiram grabbed him by his long hair to drop him in the water, the face of the Hungarian had turned coal-black.

  He was dead of moonstroke.

  EPILOGUE

  The summer of terror of that ever-memorable year, 1853, had passed. Our poets dipped their pens in the fluid gold of the stars and sank, intoxicated, into the magnolia bosom of her majesty, the Queen of the South. And where earlier only the hearse was to be found, now the troubadour once more stood and played sensuous songs to the loving heart of his lady. The lyre-player once more crept under the window of his returning darling, and he was not averse to taking a small donation at Negro cafés. Every night Columbia’s naiads, the tireless levee ladies, dance again and mix with the ant swarm of sleepless sailors doing their best to forget God. They weave them crowns of gumboes and Spanish peppers, and they treat them to kisses and turtle soup. In between, there is the rattle of the tambourine, the chatter and bang of the castanets the whole night through. The same old inns have been revived—no sooner had the gravedigger thrown away his spade, no sooner had the avenging angel of plague disposed of his last victim, than they all filled their cup once more. Still, these are harmless amusements, and death would not have such a lovable little people sorrow on his account.

  But Mene, Tekel, Upharsin!1 As if nothing had happened, as if they had forgotten that Hiram the Freemason ever walked the earth, as if they did not know why the dreadful epidemic had murdered half the city, the wholesalers in human flesh continue to drive black gangs to market, and the mercenaries of the South sit once more on horseback, the whips of cattle traders in their hands.

  And so it happened at Mardi Gras time in 1854,2 when a stately brig entered the harbor of New Orleans over whose cabin portholes was written in gold letters the name “Toussant L’Ouverture.” No tugboat brought the brig to our riverbank. It flew upstream with trimmed sails, to the astonishment of sailors watching. And the commander of the brig, a native of Haiti, sent a messenger into the city with a note. In it were the words:

  We, Faustinus I, Emperor of Haiti, send the Count Emil R* and his consort, Lucy Wilson, our greetings.

  Both of them should come aboard the brig “Toussaint L’Ouverture” without the least delay, leaving their son in New Orleans in the care of Diana Robert. This is according to the codicil of the testament of Hiram, which was sent to our capital by Diana Robert at the specific command of Hiram. We shall not withhold what is in store for both of you in that testament once you have arrived in our land. Many greetings to Count Emil from the prince of Württemberg, who has been under our protection as interim protector of the imperial jewels since summer 1853. In the same way, many and hearty greetings to Count Emil from his old friend the Cocker, who came to our shores from New Orleans on a tour of the Antilles, and who has been made Supreme Court Staff Trumpeter, out of our regard for his nation.

  Faustinus

  Just as unexpectedly as the brig “Toussaint L’Ouverture” had appeared in New Orleans harbor, it now flew downstream—with Lucy and Emil on board.

  On the same day, as the result of a strange series of events, Cousin Karl, the good-hearted man with solid German eyes, was named chief hostler by the lesbian ladies of New Basin. Orleana had already passed to a better world two weeks before. The sudden disappearance of her bosom-friend Claudine de Lesuire, who had not returned to the Holy Grail since Hiram’s night, was the cause of her unexpected death. Ever since that time, pansies have not bloomed in New Orleans.

  Ruin awaits him who does not take heed!

  NOTES

  Preface

  1. J. Hanno Deiler, in Robert E. Cazden, A Social History of the German Book Trade in America Before the Civil War (Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1984), 393.

  2. Florence M. Jumonville, Bibliography of New Orleans Imprints 1764–1864 (New Orleans: The Historic New Orleans Collection, 1989).

  Introduction

  1. J. Hanno Deiler, Geschichte der New Orleanser deutschen Presse (New Orleans, 1901), esp. 15–17, reprinted in Karl J. R. Arndt and May E. Olson, eds., The German Language Press of the Americas, vol. 3, Press/Research (Munich: K. G. Sauer, 1980), 620–59.

  2. Munich, Stadtarchiv, PMB 138, Familien-Bogen, Alexander Freiherr von Reitzenstein, fol. 2r. Our author always used the spelling “Reizenstein” in America, though his family came to use “Reitzenstein.” I have preserved the author’s preference in this edition.

  3. A list of these generals was compiled by Lt. Gen. Wilhelm Freiherr von Reitzenstein, Die Generale von und Freiherrn von Reitzenstein (completed 1928), typescript kept at Schloss Reitzenstein.

  4. Biographical sketch of Christoph Ludwig Freiherr von Reitzenstein (of the Schwarzenstein junior line), Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (Leipzig, 1875–1912), 28, 172. Christoph, who rose from major to colonel with the auxiliaries leased to the British by Margrave Alexander of Ansbach-Bayreuth, served along the Delaware Valley as well as at Yorktown. Friedrich Ernst Georg Ferdinand Freiherr von Reitzenstein (1755–1793) also served in America, marrying a German-American wife, Catharina Elisabetha Schenkmayer (1766–1844) of Fredericktown, Maryland, according to genealogical materials at Schloss Reitzenstein. The novelist David Christoph Seybold incidentally composed a scathing attack on the German mercenary trade entitled Reizenstein. Die Geschichte eines deutschen Offiziers, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1778–79), see Harold Jantz, “German Views of the American Revolution: Some Recovered Sources,” Amerikastudien 23, no. 1 (1978): 14 (reference from Don Heinrich Tolzmann).

  5. Helene Freifrau von Reitzenstein, ed., Ein Mann und seine Zeit 1797–1890. Erinnerungen von Alexander Freiherr von Reitzenstein-Hartungs (Eggstätt: Helene Freifrau von Reitzenstein, 1990), 58. Deiler incorrectly gives 1829 as the birth year of Ludwig von Reizenstein (Deiler, Geschichte, 16). His given names were Ludwig Maximilian Christoph; see Almanach de Gotha, Freiherrliche Häuser (Gotha, 1856), 543.

  6. For the arms of the baronial family of Reitzenstein, see Johann Siebmacher, J. Siebmacher’s Grosses und allgemeines Wappenbuch, ed. Otto Titan von Hefner, vol. 2, pt. 1, Der Adel des Königreiches Bayern (Nuremberg: Baser und Raspe, 1856), 53, plate 55; for a sketch of the Barons von Reitzenstein, see Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels, vol. 21, Freiherrliche Häuser, part A, vol. 3, ed. Hans Friedrich von Ehrenbrook (Marburg an der Lahn: Stark, 1959), 355–86; see also Genealogisches Handbuch des in Bayern immatrikulierten Adels, vol. 17 (Neustadt an der Aisch, 1988), 529–35.

  7. Reitzenstein, Ein Mann, 25, 29.

  8. Hof-und St
aatshandbuch des Königreichs Bayern 1846 (Munich, ca. 1846), 69–86; Alexander von Reitzenstein-Hartungs is on 76.

  9. Ibid., 60; Hof-und Staatshandbuch des Königreichs Bayern 1856 (Munich, ca. 1856), 37.

  10. Heinz Gollwitzer, Ludwig I. von Bayern. Königtum im Vormärz. Eine politische Biographie (Munich: Süddeutscher Verlag, 1987), 585: “Without exception crown officials and highest courtiers under Ludwig I were Catholic, just as was the case with the heads of court agencies.”

  11. Reitzenstein, Ein Mann, 90.

  12. Munich, Hauptstaatsarchiv, MF 33832, petition of General-Zoll-Administrator Bever to King Ludwig I, 1 December 1843, fol. Ir–v, and petition of Alexander Freiherr von Reitzenstein to King Ludwig I, 28 September 1845, fol. IV.

  13. Munich, Hauptstaatsarchiv, MF 33832, petition of General-Zoll-Administrator Bever to King Ludwig I, 1 December 1843, fol. IV-2r, and petition of Alexander Freiherr von Reitzenstein to King Ludwig I, 28 September 1845, fol. IV.

  14. The precise date and place of her death is recorded in the Stammbuch of Lt. Gen. Wilhelm Freiherr von Reitzenstein, kept at Schloss Reitzenstein, 57.

  15. Ernst Heinrich Kneschke, Neues Allgemeines Deutsches Adels-Lexicon (Leipzig, 1860), 2:8; Reitzenstein, Ein Mann, 38; Munich, Stadtarchiv, PMB 138, Familien-Bogen, Alexander Freiherr von Reitzenstein, fol. ir.

  16. Reitzenstein, Ein Mann, 102–3.

  17. Ibid., 106–9.

  18. Munich, Stadtarchiv, PMB 138, Familien-Bogen, under Alexander Freiherr von Reitzenstein, fol. ir, dated 1863, there are twenty-one addresses listed between 1845 and 1863.

  19. Reitzenstein, Ein Mann, III; for Ludwig von Reizenstein’s registration as a student, see Munich, Universitätsarchiv, Verzeichniss des Lehrer-Personals u. der sämmtlichen Studirenden an der königl. Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität München in Sommer-Semester des Studienjahres 1846/47 (Munich, 1847), 35, “Ludwig von Reizenstein, Bar., [Heimath] München; Karlsplatz 29, 3. Etage, Philos.”; and Verzeichniss des Lehrer-Personals u. der sämmtlichen Studirenden an der königl. Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität München in Winter-Semester des Studienjahres 1847/48 (Munich, 1847), same entry, save that Reizenstein has become a student of the theology faculty. There was no teaching in the summer semester, 1847–48, and he is not in the directory for the winter semester, 1848–49.