FITZ-BOODLE'S CONFESSIONS.

MISS LÖWE.

"

It has twice been my lot to leave Minna Löwe under the vine-leaves; on one occasion to break off into a dissertation about marriage, and, secondly, Minna was obliged to give place to that great essay on professions, and which enables me, as the Kelso Warder observes, to take my place among the proudest and wisest of England's literary men. This praise is, to be sure, rather qualified; and I beg leave to say once more that I am not a literary character in the least, but simply a younger brother of a good house wanting money.

Well, twice has Minna Löwe been left. I was very nearly being off from her in the above sentence, but luckily paused in time; for if any thing were to occur in this paragraph, calling me away from her yet a third time, I should think it a solemn warning to discontinue her history, which is, I confess, neither very romantic in its details, nor very creditable. to myself.

Let us take her where we left her gazing through a sunny cluster of vine-leaves upon a young and handsome stranger, of noble face and exquisite proportions, who was trying to find the door of her father's bank. That entrance being through her amiable directions discovered, I entered and found Messrs. Löwe in the counting-house. That I was cheated in

my little matter of exchange stands to reason.

A banker (or such as I have had the honour to know) cannot forego the privilege of cheating; no, if it be but for a shilling. What do I say, a shilling?-a penny! He will cheat you, in the first place, in the exchanging your note; he will then cheat you in giving gold for your silver; and though very likely he will invite you to a splendid repast afterwards that shall have cost him a score of thalers to procure, he will have had the satisfaction of robbing you of your groschen, as no doubt he would rob his own father or

son.

Herr Löwe Senior must have been a very sharp man of business, indeed, to rob Herr Löwe junior or vice versa. The poor fellows are both in prison for a matter of forgery, as I heard last year when passing through Bonn; and I confess it was not without a little palpitation of the heart (it is a sausage-merchant's now) that I went and took one look at the house where I had first beheld the bright eyes of Minna Löwe.

For let them say as they will, that woman whom a man has once loved cannot be the same to him as another. Whenever one of my passions comes into a room, my cheeks flush, -my knees tremble,-I look at her with pleased tenderness and (for the objects of my adoration do not once in forty times know their good fortune) with melancholy secret wonder. There they are, the same women, and yet not the same; it is the same nose and eyes, if you will, but not the same looks; the same voice, but not the same sweet words as of old. The figure moves, and looks, and talks to you; you know how dear and how different its speech and actions once were; 'tis the hall with all the lights put out and the garlands dead (as I have said in one of my poems). Did you ever have a pocket-book, that once contained five thousand pounds? Did you ever look at that pocket-book with the money lying in it? Do you remember how you respected and admired that pocket-book, investing it with a secret awe, imagining it had a superiority to other pocket-books? I have such a pocket-book; I keep it now, and often look at it ra

ther tenderly. It cannot be as other portfolios to me. I remember that it once held five thousand pounds.

Thus it is with love. I have empty pocket-books scattered all over Europe of this kind; and I always go and look at them just for a moment, and the spirit flies back to days gone by, kind eyes look at me as of yore, and echoes of old gentle voices fall tenderly upon the ear. Away! to the true heart the past never is past; and some day when Death has cleared our dull faculties, and past and future shall be rolled into one, we shall

*

Well, you were quite right, my good sir, to interrupt me, I can't help it, I am too apt to grow sentimental, and always on the most absurd pretexts. I never know when the fit will come on me, or apropos of what. I never was so jolly in my whole life as one day coming home from a funeral; and once went to a masked ball at Paris, the gaiety of which made me so profoundly miserable, that, egad! I wept like Xerxes (wasn't that the fellow's name?), and was sick-sick at heart. This premised, permit me, my friend, to indulge in sentiment àpropos of Minna Löwe; for, corbleu !: for three weeks, at least, I adored the wench; and could give any person curious that way a complete psychological history of the passion's rise, progress, and decay;-decay, indeed, why do I say decay? A man does not decay when he tumbles

down a well, he drowns there; so is love choked sometimes by abrupt conclusions, falls down wells, and, oh, the dismal truth at the bottom of them !

If, my lord, said Herr Löwe, counting out the gold fredericks to me, you intend to stay in our town, I hope my daughter and I shall have sometimes de pleasure of your high vell-born sosiety? »

The town is a most delightful one, Mr. Löwe, answered I. I am myself an Oxford man, and exceedingly interested about-ahem about the Byzantine historians, of which I see the university is producing an edition; and I shall make, I think, a considerable stay." Heaven bless us! 'twas Miss Minna's eyes that had done the business. But for them I should have slept at Coblentz that very night; where, by the

VOL. IV.

51

way the Hôtel de la Poste is one of the very best inns in Europe.

n

A friend had accompanied me to Bonn, -a jolly dragoon, who was quite versed in the German language, having spent some time in the Austrian service before he joined us; or in the Awthwian thervith, as he would call it, with a doubledistilled gentility of accent, very difficult to be acquired out of Regent Street. We had quarelled already thrice on the passage from England-viz. at Rotterdam, at Cologne, and once here; so that when he said he intended to go to Mayence, I at once proclaimed that I intended to stay where I was; and with Miss Minna Löwe's image in my heart, went out and selected lodgings for myself as near as possible to her father's house. Wilder said I might go to any place I liked; he remained in his quarters at the hotel, as I found a couple of days afterwards, when I saw the fellow smoking at the gateway in the company of a score of Prussian officers, with whom he had made acquaintance.

I for my part have never been famous for that habit of extemporaneous friendship-making, which some lucky fellows possess. Like most of my countrymen, when I enter a room I always take care to look about with an air as if I heartily despised every one, and wanted to know what the d-l they did there! Among foreigners I feel this especially; for the truth is, right or wrong, I can't help despising the rogues, and feeling manifestly my own superiority. In consequence of this amiable quality, then (in this particular instance of my life), I gave up the table d'hôte dinner at the Star as something low and ungentlemanlike, made a point of staring and not answering when people spoke to me, and thus I have no doubt impressed all the world with a sense of my dignity. Instead of dining at the public place, then, I took my repasts alone; though, as Wilder said with some justice, though with a good deal too much laisser-aller of tongue, You gweat fool, if it'th only becauth you want to be thilent, why don't you thtill dine with uth? You'll get a wegular good dinner inthtead of a bad one; and ath for thpeaking to you,

W

depend on it every man in the room will thee you hanged futht!"

Pray allow me to dine in my own way, Wilder,» says I, in the most dignified way.

Dine and be d-d!» said the lieutenant, and so I lived solitary and had my own way.

I proposed to take some German lessons; and for this purpose asked the banker, Mr. Löwe, to introduce me to a master. He procured one, and further, had the kindness to say that his clerk, Mr. Hirsch, should come and sit with me every morning and perfect me in the tongue; so that, with the master, I had and the society I kept, I might look to acquire a very decent German pronunciation.

་་

This Hirsch was a little Albino of a creature with pinkish eyes, white hair, flame-coloured whiskers, and earrings. His eyes jutted out enormously from his countenance, as did his two large swollen red lips. He was always, after a short time, in and out of my apartments. He brought a dozen messages and ran as many errands for me in the course of the day. My way of addressing him was, Hirsch, you scoundrel, get my boots!. Hirsch, brush my coat for me! » Run, you stag, and put this letter in the post! and with many similar compliments. The little rascal was, to do him justice, as willing as possible, never minded by what name I called him, and, above all,-came from Minna. He was not the rose; no, indeed, nor anything like it; but, as the poet says, he had lived beside it; and was there in all Sharon such a rose as Minna Löwe ?

"

If I did not write with a moral purpose, and because my unfortunate example may act wholesomely upon other young men of fashion, and induce them to learn wisdom, I should not say a single syllable about Minna Löwe, nor all the blunders I committed, nor the humiliation I suffered. There is about a young Englishman of twenty a degree of easy selfconfidence, hardly possessed even by a Frenchman. The latter swaggers and bullies about his superiority, taking all opportunities to shriek it into your ears, and to proclaim the infinite merits of himself and his nation; but, upon my word,