A Day's Ride Part 47

"Who is Rigges? Is that your question?" said he, slowly.

"Yes, sir; that was my question."

He turned over several pages of his voluminous report, and proceeded to search for the pa.s.sage he wanted.

"Here it is," said he, at last; and he read out: "'The so-called Rigges, being a well-born and not-the-less-from-a-mercantile-object-engaging pursuit highly-placed and much-honored subject of her Majesty the Queen of England, of the age of forty-two years and eight months, unmarried, and professing the Protestant religion.' Is that sufficient?"

"Quite so; and now, will you, with equal urbanity, inform me who is Harpar?"

"Who is Harpar? Who is Harpar? You surely do not ask me that?"

"I do; such is my question."

"I must confess that you surprise me. You ask me for information about yourself!"

"Oh, indeed! So that I am Harpar?"

"You can, of course, deny it We are in a measure prepared for that. The proofs of your ident.i.ty will be, however, forthcoming; not to add that it will be difficult to disprove the offence."

"Ha, the offence! I 'm really curious about that. What is the offence with which I am charged?"

"What I have been reading these two hours. What I have recited with all the clearness, brevity, and perspicuity that characterize our imperial and royal legislation, making our code at once the envy and admiration of all Europe."

"I 'm sure of that But what have I done?"

"With what for a dulness-charged and much-beclouded intellect are you afflicted," cried he, "not to have followed the greatly-by- circ.u.mstances-corroborated, and in-various-ways-by-proofs-brought-home narrative that I have already read out."

"I have not heard one word of it!"

"What a deplorable and all-the-more-therefore-hopeless intelligence is yours! I will begin it once more." And with a heavy sigh he turned over the first pages of his ma.n.u.script.

"Nay, Herr Procurator," interposed I, hastily. "I have the less claim to exact this sacrifice on your part, that even when you have rendered it, it will be all fruitless and unprofitable. I am just recovering from a severe illness. I am, as you have very acutely remarked, a man of very narrow and limited faculties in my best of moments, and I am now still lower in the scale of intelligence. Were you to read that lucid doc.u.ment till we were both gray-headed, it would leave me just as uninformed as to imputed crime as I now am."

"I perceive," said he, gravely. Then, turning to his clerk, he bade him write down, "'And the so-called Harpar, having duly heard and with decorously-lent attention listened to the foregoing act, did thereupon enter his plea of mental incapacity and derangement."

"Nay, Herr Procurator, I would simply record that, however open to follow some plain narrative, the forms and subtleties of a legal doc.u.ment only bewilder me."

"What for an ingeniously-worded and with-artifice-cunningly-conceived excuse have we here?" exclaimed he, indignantly. "Is it from England, with her seventeen hundred and odd volumes of an incomplete code, that the Imperial and Royal Government is to learn legislation? You are charged with offences that are known to every state of civilization: highway a.s.sault and molestation; attack with arms and deadly implements, stimulated by base and long heretofore and with-bitterness-imagined plans of vengeance on your countryman and former a.s.sociate, the so-named Rigges. From him, too, proceeds the information as to your political character, and the ever-to-be deplored and only-with-blood-expiated error of republicanism by which you are actuated. This brief, but not-the-less-on-that-account lucid exposition, it is my duty first to read out, and then leave with you. With all your from-a-wrong- impulse-proceeding and a-spirit-of-opposition-suggested objections, I have no wish nor duty to meddle. The benign and ever paternal rule under which we live gives even to the most-with-accusation-surrounded, and with-strong-presumption-implicated prisoner, every facility of defence.

Having read and matured this indictment, you will, after a week, make choice of an advocate."

"Am I to be confronted with my accuser?"

"I sincerely hope that the indecent spectacle of insulting attack and offensive rejoinder thus suggested is unknown to the administration of our law."

"How, then, can you be certain that I am the man he accuses of having molested him?"

"You are not here to a.s.sail, nor I to defend, the with-ages-consolidated and by-much-tact-acc.u.mulated wisdom of our Imperial and Royal Code."

"Might he not say, when he saw me, 'I never set eyes on this man before'?"

He turned again to his clerk, and dictated something of which I could but catch the concluding words, "And thereby imputing perjury to the so-called Rigges."

It was all I could do to repress an outburst of anger at this unjustifiable system of inference, but I did restrain myself, and merely said, "I impute nothing, Herr Procurator; I simply suggest a possible case, that everything suffered by Rigges was inflicted by some other than I."

"If you had accomplices, name them," said he, solemnly.

This overcame all my prudent resolves. I was nowise prepared for such a perversity of misconception, and, losing all patience and all respect for his authority, I burst out into a most intemperate attack on Austria, her code, her system, her ignorant indifference to all European enlightenment, her bigoted adherence to forms either unmeaning or pernicious, winding up all with a pleasant prediction that in a few short years the world would have seen the last of this stolid and unteachable empire.

Instead of deigning a reply, he merely bent down to the table, and I saw by the movement of his lips, and the rapid course of the clerk's pen, that my statement was being reduced to writing.

"When you have completed that," said I, gravely, "I have some further observations to record."

"In a moment,--in a moment," patiently responded the procurator; "we have only got to 'the besotted stupidity of her pretentious officials.'"

The calm quietude of his manner, as he said this, threw me into a fit of laughter which lasted several minutes.

"There, there," said I, "that will do; I will keep the remainder of my remarks for another time and place."

"'Reserving to himself,'" dictated he, "'the right of uttering still more bitter and untruthful comments on a future occasion.'" And the clerk wrote the words as he spoke them.

"You will sign this here," said he, presenting me with the pen.

"Nothing of the kind, Herr Procurator. I will not lend myself to any, even the most ordinary, form of your stupid system."

"'And refuses to sign the foregoing,'" dictated he, in the same unmoved voice. This done, he arose, and proceeded to draw on his gloves. "The act of allegation I now commit to your hands," said he, calmly, "and you will have a week to reflect upon the course you desire to adopt."

"One question before you go: Is the person called Rigges here at this moment, and can I see him?"

He consulted for a few seconds with his subordinate, and then replied, "These questions we are of opinion are irrelevant to the defence, and need not be answered."

"I only ask you, as a favor, Herr Procurator," said I.

"The law recognizes no favors, nor accepts courtesies."

"Does it also reject common sense?--is it deaf to all intelligence?--is it indifferent to every appeal to reason?--is it dead to--"

But he would not wait for more, and having saluted me thrice profoundly, retired from the gallery and left me alone with my indignation.

The great pile of paper still lay on the table next me, and in my anger I hurled it from me to the middle of the room, venting I know not what pa.s.sionate wrath at the same time on everything German. "This the land of primitive simplicity and patriarchal virtues, forsooth! This the country of elevated tastes and generous instincts! Why, it is all Bureau and Barrack!" I went on for a long time in this strain, and I felt the better for it. The operative surgeons tell us that no men recover so certainly or so speedily after great operations as the fellows who scream out and make a terrible uproar. It is your patient, self-controlling creature who sinks under the suffering he will not confess; and I am confident that it is a wise practice to blow off the steam of one's indignation, and say all the most bitter things one can think of in moments of disappointment, and, so to say, prepare the chambers of your mind for the reception of better company.

After a while I got up, gathered the papers together, and prepared to read them. Legal amplifications and circ.u.mlocutions are of all lands and peoples; but for the triumph of this diffusiveness commend me to the Germans. To such an extent was this the case, that I reached the eighth page of the precious paper before I got finally out of the t.i.tular description of the vice-governor in whose district the event was laid.

Armed, however, with heroic resolution, I persevered, and read on through the entire night,--I will not say without occasional refreshers in the shape of short naps; but the day was already breaking when I turned over the last page, and read the concluding little blessing on the Emperor, under whose benign reign all the good was encouraged, all evil punished, and the Hoch-gelehrter--Hoch wohl-geborner Herr der Hofrath, Ober Procurators-fiscal-Secretar, charged with the due execution of the present decree.

In the language of _precis_ writing, the event might be stated thus: "A certain Englishman named Rigges, travelling by post, arrived at the torrent of Dornbirn a short time before noon, and while waiting there for the arrival of some peasants to accompany his carriage through the stream, was joined by a foot-traveller, by whom he was speedily recognized. Whatever the nature of the relations previously subsisting between them,--and it may be presumed they were not of the most amiable,--no sooner had they exchanged glances than they engaged in deadly conflict. Rigges was well armed; the stranger had no weapon whatever, but was a man of surpa.s.sing strength, for he tore the door of the carriage from its hinges, and dragged Rigges out upon the road before the other could offer any resistance. The postilion, who had gone to summon the peasants, was speedily recalled by the report of firearms; three shots were fired in rapid succession, and when he reached the spot it was to see two men struggling violently in the torrent, the stranger dragging Rigges with all his might towards the middle of the stream, and the other screaming wildly for succor. The conflict was a terrible one, for the foot-traveller seemed determined on self-destruction, if he could only involve the other in his own fate. At last Rigges' strength gave way, and the other threw himself upon him, and they both went down beneath the water.

"The stranger emerged in an instant, but one of the peasants on the bank struck him a violent blow with his ash pole, and he fell back into the stream. Meanwhile the others had rescued Rigges, who lay panting, but unconscious, on the ground. They were yet ministering to his recovery, when they heard a wild shout of derisive triumph, and now saw that the other, though carried away by the torrent, had gained a small s.h.i.+ngly bank in the middle of the Rhine, and was waving his hat in mockery of them. They were too much occupied with the care of the wounded man, however, to bestow more attention on him. One of Rigges' arms was badly fractured, and his jaw also broken, while he complained still more of the pain of some internal injuries; so severe, indeed, were his sufferings, that he had to be carried on a litter to Feldkirch. His first care on arriving was to denounce the a.s.sailant, whose name he gave as Harpar, declaring him to be a most notorious member of a 'Rouge'

society, and one whose capture was an object of European interest. In fact, Rigges went so far as to pretend that he had himself perilled life in the attempt to secure him.