Our hotel DIE WILDE MAN, (the sign of which was no bad likeness of the
landlord, who had ingrafted on a very grim face a restless grin, that
was at every man’s service, and which indeed, like an actor rehearsing
to himself, he kept playing in expectation of an occasion for
it)--neither our hotel, I say, nor its landlord were of the genteelest
class. But it has one great advantage for a stranger, by being in the
market place, and the next neighbour of the huge church of St. Nicholas:
a church with shops and houses built up against it, out of which wens
and warts its high massy steeple rises, necklaced near the top with a
round of large gilt balls. A better pole-star could scarcely be desired.
Long shall I retain the impression made on my mind by the awful echo,
so loud and long and tremulous, of the deep-toned clock within this
church, which awoke me at two in the morning from a distressful dream,
occasioned, I believe, by the feather bed, which is used here instead
of bed-clothes. I will rather carry my blanket about with me like a wild
Indian, than submit to this abominable custom. Our emigrant acquaintance
was, we found, an intimate friend of the celebrated Abbe de Lisle:
and from the large fortune which he possessed under the monarchy, had
rescued sufficient not only for independence, but for respectability. He
had offended some of his fellow-emigrants in London, whom he had obliged
with considerable sums, by a refusal to make further advances, and
in consequence of their intrigues had received an order to quit the
kingdom. I thought it one proof of his innocence, that he attached no
blame either to the alien act, or to the minister who had exerted it
against him; and a still greater, that he spoke of London with rapture,
and of his favourite niece, who had married and settled in England, with
all the fervour and all the pride of a fond parent. A man sent by force
out of a country, obliged to sell out of the stocks at a great loss, and
exiled from those pleasures and that style of society which habit had
rendered essential to his happiness, whose predominant feelings were yet
all of a private nature, resentment for friendship outraged, and anguish
for domestic affections interrupted--such a man, I think, I could dare
warrant guiltless of espionnage in any service, most of all in that of
the present French Directory. He spoke with ecstasy of Paris under the
Monarchy: and yet the particular facts, which made up his description,
left as deep a conviction on my mind, of French worthlessness, as his
own tale had done of emigrant ingratitude. Since my arrival in
Germany, I have not met a single person, even among those who abhor
the Revolution, that spoke with favour, or even charity of the French
emigrants. Though the belief of their influence in the organization
of this disastrous war (from the horrors of which, North Germany deems
itself only reprieved, not secured,) may have some share in the general
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