The Headsman | Page 4

of the
navigation.
With a vessel stowed, sails ready to drop, the wind fair, and the day
drawing on apace, the patron of the Winkelried, who was also her
owner, felt a very natural wish to depart. But an unlooked-for obstacle
had just presented itself at the water-gate, where the officer charged
with the duty of looking into the characters of all who went and came
was posted, and around whom some fifty representatives of half as
many nations were now clustered in a clamorous throng, filling the air
with a confusion of tongues that had some probable affinity to the
noises which deranged the workmen of Babel. It appeared, by parts of
sentences and broken remonstrances, equally addressed to the patron,
whose name was Baptiste, and to the guardian of the Genevese laws, a
rumor was rife among these truculent travellers, that Balthazar, the
headsman, or executioner, of the powerful and aristocratical canton of
Berne, was about to be smuggled into their company by the cupidity of
the former, contrary, not only to what was due to the feelings and rights
of men of more creditable callings, but, as it was vehemently and
plausibly insisted, to the very safety of those who were about to trust
their fortunes to the vicissitudes of the elements.
Chance and the ingenuity of Baptiste had collected, on this occasion, as
party-colored and heterogeneous an assemblage of human passions,
interests, dialects, wishes, and opinions, as any admirer of diversity of
character could desire. There were several small traders, some returning
from adventures in Germany and France, and some bound southward,
with their scanty stock of wares; a few poor scholars, bent on a literary
pilgrimage to Rome; an artist or two, better provided with enthusiasm
than with either knowledge or taste, journeying with poetical longings
towards skies and tints of Italy; a troupe of street jugglers, who had
been turning their Neapolitan buffoonery to account among the duller

and less sophisticated inhabitants of Swabia; divers lacqueys out of
place; some six or eight capitalists who lived on their wits, and a
nameless herd of that set which the French call bad "subjects;" a title
that is just now, oddly enough, disputed between the dregs of society
and a class that would fain become its exclusive leaders and lords.
These with some slight qualifications that it is not yet necessary to
particularise, composed that essential requisite of all fair
representation--the majority. Those who remained were of a different
caste. Near the noisy crowd of tossing heads and brandished arms, in
and around the gate, was a party containing the venerable and still fine
figure of a man in the travelling dress of one of superior condition, and
who did not need the testimony of the two or three liveried menials that
stood near his person, to give an assurance of his belonging to the more
fortunate of his fellow-creatures, as good and evil are usually estimated
in calculating the chances of life. On his arm leaned a female, so young,
and yet so lovely, as to cause regret in all who observed her fading
color, the sweet but melancholy smile that occasionally lighted her
mild and pleasing features, at some of the more marked exuberances of
folly among the crowd, and a form which, notwithstanding her lessened
bloom, was nearly perfect. If these symptoms of delicate health, did not
prevent this fair girl from being amused at the volubility and arguments
of the different orators, she oftener manifested apprehension at finding
herself the companion of creatures so untrained, so violent, so exacting,
and so grossly ignorant. A young man, wearing the roquelaure and
other similar appendages of a Swiss in foreign military service, a
character to excite neither observation nor comment in that age, stood
at her elbow, answering the questions that from time to time were
addressed to him by the others, in a manner to show he was an intimate
acquaintance, though there were signs about his travelling equipage to
prove he was not exactly of their ordinary society. Of all who were not
immediately engaged in the boisterous discussion at the gate, this
young soldier, who was commonly addressed by those near him as
Monsieur Sigismund, was much the most interested in its progress.
Though of herculean frame, and evidently of unusual physical force, he
was singularly agitated. His cheek, which had not yet lost the freshness
due to the mountain air, would, at times, become pale as that of the

wilting flower near him; while at others, the blood rushed across his
brow in a torrent that seemed to threaten a rupture of the starting
vessels in which it so tumultuously flowed. Unless addressed, however,
he said nothing; his distress gradually subsiding, until it was merely
betrayed by the convulsive writhings of his