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From The King of the Mountains, by Edmond About, Translated from the French; with a Critical Introduction by Andrew Lang; a Frontispiece and Numerous Other Portraits with Descriptive Notes by Octave Uzanne; The French Classical Romances Complete in Twenty Crown Octavo Volumes, Editor-in-Chief Edmund Gosse, LL.D; New York : P. F. Collier & Son; 1902; pp. 1-2.
CHAPTER I
MR. HERMANN SCHULTZ
AT about six in the morning of July 3, 1860, while I was watering my petunias, and thinking of nothing in particular, I perceived coming towards me a tall, beardless, fair-haired young fellow, wearing a German cap and gold-rimmed spectacles. A loose alpaca overcoat hung limply about his body like a sail round a mast after the wind has suddenly died down. He wore no gloves, and his coarse leather shoes had such wide soles that each foot seemed to rest on a little flagstone all to itself.
A large porcelain pipe peeped out of his side-pocket, its shape being clearly discernible under the light, shiny material. It did not even occur to me to ask this stranger if he ever had studied at a German university, and I set down my watering-pot and welcomed him with a solemn “Guten Morgen.”
4“Monsieur,” he replied in villainous French, “my name is Hermann Schultz; I have been passing some months in Greece, and your famous book has been my constant companion.”
I was greatly flattered by this agreeable prelude to the conversation. The young man’s voice seemed to me more melodious than Mozart’s music, and I cast a look of beaming gratitude up at his gold-rimmed glasses.
Reader, mine! You cannot imagine how fond we authors are of those who take the trouble to peruse and study our effusions. As for me, if ever I wished to be rich, it has been in order to assure an income to all who have read my works. I took the excellent youth by the hand and pushed him gently into the best of our two garden-chairs. He told me he was a botanist, and in the employ of the Botanical Society of Hamburg. While in Greece, whither he had been sent on a trial trip, he had, besides filling his herbarium, carefully studied the country, its people, and even its zoology. The simplicity of his descriptions, his concise yet just remarks, reminded me not a little of old Herodotus. He expressed himself rather awkwardly, but with a frankness that distinctly inspired confidence, and he emphasized his words like a person deeply convinced of 5 the veracity of his assertions. He was able to give me news, if not of every one in Athens, at least of the principal people mentioned in my work. In the course of conversation he let fall certain general ideas that appeared to me all the more judicious because I had been myself the first to conceive them. In short, at the end of an hour’s chat we became fast friends.
I do not know which of us was the first to mention the word brigandage. Travellers who know Italy talk of painting; those who have visited England, of commerce — in a word, each country has its specialty, and Greece is essentially the happy hunting-ground of the brigand.
“My dear sir,” I asked this excellent incognito, “did you fall in with brigands? Is it true, as people declare, that they still exist in Greece?”
“Only too true,” he answered gravely, “I can speak from experience, since I passed a fortnight in the power of the terrible Hadji Stavros, called ‘the King of the Mountains.’ If you are at leisure, and have no objection to listen to a long yarn, I am quite ready to relate to you the details of my adventure. You may make what use you like out of the material — a romance, a short story, or rather, since it is a true history, an 6 additional chapter to the remarkable volume in which you have gathered together so many curious facts.”
“You are really too good,” said I, “and I promise you I shall pay the utmost attention to your narrative. Let us go into my study, it will be cooler than in the garden, and we shall not miss the scent of the mignonette or of the sweet peas.”
He followed me willingly enough, humming a folk song to himself as we went along :
“ Down to the plain came the black-eyed Klepht,
His burnished gun hung by his side ;
To the vultures he cried, ‘Oh ! stay ye with me,
For a pasha of Athens your feast soon shall be ! ’ ”
My friend sat down on the divan with his legs folded tailor-fashion, under him, like an Arab story-teller. He took off his overcoat the better to cool himself, lighted his pipe, and forthwith began his talk, I at my desk, stenographed his dictation.
I always have been of a confiding nature, especially with those who pay me compliments. Nevertheless, the amiable stranger told me such astonishing things that I frequently asked myself if he were not making game of me. But no! He spoke so sincerely, his blue eyes gazed at me so 7 frankly, that scepticism, disarmed, soon faded away. He talked on till half-past twelve, only interrupting himself twice or thrice to relight his pipe. He smoked away as mechanically as the chimney of a steam-engine, and appeared as reposeful and beaming amid his clouds of smoke as Jupiter in the fifth act of Amphitryon. Then breakfast was announced; Hermann took his place opposite mine, and any slight suspicion I might have entertained disappeared before his appetite. I said to myself, a good digestion rarely accompanies a bad conscience. The young German was too genial a guest to be an unfaithful narrator, and his appetite was distinctly his brevet of veracity. Under this agreeable impression, while offering him some strawberries, I frankly told him that for an instant or so I had doubted him. His answer was merely an angelic smile.
I passed the whole day closeted with my new friend, and yet the time never seemed to hang heavily on my hands. At five in the evening he extinguished his pipe, put on his overcoat, and, pressing my hand, wished me good-bye. I answered him by a cheerful Au revoir.
“No!” said he, shaking his head; “I leave to-day by the seven o’clock train, and dare not hope ever to see you again.”
8“Send me your address. I have not yet given up the pleasure of travelling, and I may go to Hamburg.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t know myself where I shall pitch my tent. Germany is a big country, and it is by no means certain that I shall long remain a citizen of Hamburg.”
“But if I publish your story I must at least send you a copy.”
“Don’t give yourself that trouble. As soon as the book appears it will be pirated at Leipzig, at Wolfgang Gerhard’s, and I shall read it. Adieu!”
After he left I carefully went over the narrative he had dictated. Some of the details were improbable, but nothing contradicted absolutely what I had seen and heard during my own visit to Greece.
Yet I had some scruples ere I gave the manuscript to the printers. Supposing some errors had crept into Hermann’s story? As editor, was I not to a certain degree responsible? If I published without revision the history of the King of the Mountains, should I not expose myself to the paternal reprimands of the Journals des Débats, to the contradictions of Athenian journalists, to the protests of the Spectator of the East ? That 9 last-named, far-seeing paper already had informed its readers that I was hump-backed : was I to offer it the opportunity of declaring me to be blind as well?
In the midst of my perplexity, I decided to make two copies of the manuscript. One I sent to a trustworthy man, an Athenian, Mr. Patriotis Pseptis. I begged him to point out to me without hesitation, and with Greek sincerity, all the pitfalls my young friend might have led me into, and moreover promised to insert his answer at the end of the volume.
Meanwhile, I deliver up to public curiosity the exact text of Hermann’s story. Not a word will I change. The most glaring improbabilities, on the contrary, will be respected. The mere fact of constituting myself the apologist of the young German would render me his collaborator. I therefore retire discreetly from the scene, leaving all honours to him. My responsibility is discharged. It is Hermann who now speaks to you. Imagine him, therefore, reader, seated before you, smoking his porcelain pipe, and beaming at you from behind his gold-rimmed glasses.
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