The Red Inn | Page 4

separated only by trees, gardens, and flowers. Then he admired for
a moment the pointed roofs with their projecting eaves, the wooden
staircases, the galleries of a thousand peaceful dwellings, and the
vessels swaying to the waves in the port.
[At the moment when Monsieur Hermann uttered the name of Prosper
Magnan, my opposite neighbor seized the decanter, poured out a glass
of water, and emptied it at a draught. This movement having attracted
my attention, I thought I noticed a slight trembling of the hand and a
moisture on the brow of the capitalist.
"What is that man's name?" I asked my neighbor.
"Taillefer," she replied.
"Do you feel ill?" I said to him, observing that this strange personage
was turning pale.
"Not at all," he said with a polite gesture of thanks. "I am listening," he
added, with a nod to the guests, who were all simultaneously looking at
him.
"I have forgotten," said Monsieur Hermann, "the name of the other
young man. But the confidences which Prosper Magnan subsequently
made to me enabled me to know that his companion was dark, rather
thin, and jovial. I will, if you please, call him Wilhelm, to give greater
clearness to the tale I am about to tell you."

The worthy German resumed his narrative after having, without the
smallest regard for romanticism and local color, baptized the young
French surgeon with a Teutonic name.]
By the time the two young men reached Andernach the night was dark.
Presuming that they would lose much time in looking for their chiefs
and obtaining from them a military billet in a town already full of
soldiers, they resolved to spend their last night of freedom at an inn
standing some two or three hundred feet from Andernach, the rich color
of which, embellished by the fires of the setting sun, they had greatly
admired from the summit of the hill above the town. Painted entirely
red, this inn produced a most piquant effect in the landscape, whether
by detaching itself from the general background of the town, or by
contrasting its scarlet sides with the verdure of the surrounding foliage,
and the gray-blue tints of the water. This house owed its name, the Red
Inn, to this external decoration, imposed upon it, no doubt from time
immemorial by the caprice of its founder. A mercantile superstition,
natural enough to the different possessors of the building, far-famed
among the sailors of the Rhine, had made them scrupulous to preserve
the title.
Hearing the sound of horses' hoofs, the master of the Red Inn came out
upon the threshold of his door.
"By heavens! gentlemen," he cried, "a little later and you'd have had to
sleep beneath the stars, like a good many more of your compatriots
who are bivouacking on the other side of Andernach. Here every room
is occupied. If you want to sleep in a good bed I have only my own
room to offer you. As for your horses I can litter them down in a corner
of the courtyard. The stable is full of people. Do these gentlemen come
from France?" he added after a slight pause.
"From Bonn," cried Prosper, "and we have eaten nothing since
morning."
"Oh! as to provisions," said the innkeeper, nodding his head, "people
come to the Red Inn for their wedding feast from thirty miles round.
You shall have a princely meal, a Rhine fish! More, I need not say."

After confiding their weary steeds to the care of the landlord, who
vainly called to his hostler, the two young men entered the public room
of the inn. Thick white clouds exhaled by a numerous company of
smokers prevented them from at first recognizing the persons with
whom they were thrown; but after sitting awhile near the table, with the
patience practised by philosophical travellers who know the inutility of
making a fuss, they distinguished through the vapors of tobacco the
inevitable accessories of a German inn: the stove, the clock, the pots of
beer, the long pipes, and here and there the eccentric physiognomies of
Jews, or Germans, and the weather-beaten faces of mariners. The
epaulets of several French officers were glittering through the mist, and
the clank of spurs and sabres echoed incessantly from the brick floor.
Some were playing cards, others argued, or held their tongues and ate,
drank, or walked about. One stout little woman, wearing a black velvet
cap, blue and silver stomacher, pincushion, bunch of keys, silver
buckles, braided hair,--all distinctive signs of the mistress of a German
inn (a costume which has been so often depicted in colored prints that it
is too common to describe here), --well, this wife of the innkeeper kept
the two friends alternately patient and impatient with remarkable
ability.
Little by little the