From this city our traveller made an excursion into Bohemia, the most
desert part of Germany, where the characteristics of the villages were
filth and poverty, scarcely furnishing clean straw and pure water, and
where the inns were so wretched that she preferred travelling all night
in the month of November to the idea of encountering the many unsavoury
smells which they abounded with. In this country, however, she made but
a short stay, but proceeded across the Erz Gebirge mountains into
Saxony. This part of the journey was performed by night. The moonlight
was sufficiently brilliant to discover the nature of the frightful
precipices over which the road lay, and which in many places was so
narrow that she could not discover an inch of space between the wheel
and the precipice, while the waters of the Elbe rolled along among the
rocks at an immeasurable depth below. Mr. Wortley, who possessed none of
the restless sensibility or curiosity of his wife, and preferred a
comfortable doze to the pleasure of gazing at moonlit crags throwing
their giant shadows over fathomless abysses, or of discussing the
chances of their being hurled into some of these gulfs, composed himself
to sleep, and left our traveller to her reflections. For some time she
resisted all temptation to disturb him; but observing that the
postillions had begun to follow his example, while the horses were
proceeding at full gallop, she thought it high time to make the whole
party sensible of their danger, and by calling out to the drivers,
awakened her husband. He was now alarmed at their critical situation,
and assured her that he had five times crossed the Alps by different
routes, without having ever seen so dangerous a road; but perhaps he had
not been awakened by his companions.
Escaping from the terrors of these mountain scenes, she was extremely
disposed to be pleased with even roads and the security of cities, and
in this mood of mind found Dresden, which is really an agreeable city,
wonderfully pleasing. She here picked up a story which, as it is
exceedingly illustrative of kingly notions of love, may be worth
repeating. The King of Poland (Elector of Saxony) having discovered that
the Count de Cozelle had a very beautiful wife, and understanding the
taste of his countrywomen, paid the lady a visit, “bringing in one hand
a bag of a hundred thousand crowns, and in the other a horse-shoe, which
he snapped asunder before her face, leaving her to draw the consequences
of such remarkable proofs of strength and liberality.” I know not, adds
our fair traveller, which charmed her most, but she consented to leave
her husband, and give herself up to him entirely.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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