Answering done, there comes no verdict, much less any acquittal;the captain and twelve musketeers, three of them with fixed bayonets in one's very bedroom, continue. One evening, 21st July, 1738, glorious news from the seat of War--not TILL evening, as the Imperial Majesty was out hunting--enters Vienna; blowing trumpets;shaking flags: "Grand Victory over the Turks!" so we call some poor skirmish there has been; and Vienna bursting all into three-times-three, the populace get very high. Populace rush to the Kohlmarkt: break the Seckendorf windows; intent to massacre the Seckendorf; had not fresh military come, who were obliged to fire and kill one or two. "The house captain and his twelve musketeers, of themselves, did wonders; Seckendorf and all his domestics were in arms:" "JARNI-BLEU" for the last time!--This is while the Crown-Prince is at Wesel; sound asleep, most likely; Loo, and the Masonic adventure, perhaps twinkling prophetically in his dreams.
At two next morning, an Official Gentleman informs Seckendorf, That he, for his part, must awaken, and go to Gratz. And in one hour more (3 A.M.), the Official Gentleman rolls off with him;drives all day; and delivers his Prisoner at Gratz:--"Not so much as a room ready there; Prisoner had to wait an hour in the carriage," till some summary preparation were made. Wall-neighbors of the poor Feldmarschall, in his Fortress here, were "a GOLD-COOK(swindling Alchemist), who had gone crazy; and an Irish Lieutenant, confined thirty-two years for some love-adventure, likewise pretty crazy; their noises in the night-time much disturbed the Feldmarschall." [ Seckendorfs Leben, ii. 170-277. See Schmettau,
pp. 27-59.] One human thing there still is in his lot, the Feldmarschall's old Grafinn. True old Dame, she, both in the Kohlmarkt and at Gratz, stands by him, "imprisoned along with him"if it must be so; ministering, comforting, as only a true Wife can;--and hope has not quite taken wing.
Rough old Feldmarschall; now turned of sixty: never made such a Campaign before, as this of 1737 followed by 1738! There sits he;and will not trouble us any more during the present Kaiser's lifetime. Friedrich Wilhelm is amazed at these sudden cantings of Fortune's wheel, and grieves honestly as for an old friend:
even the Crown-Prince finds Seckendorf punished unjustly; and is almost, sorry for him, after all that has come and gone.
THE EAR OF JENKINS RE-EMERGES.
We must add the following, distilled from the English Newspapers, though it is now almost four months after date:--"LONDON, 1st APRIL, 1738. In the English House of Commons, much more in the English Public, there has been furious debating for a fortnight past: Committee of the whole House, examining witnesses, hearing counsel; subject, the Termagant of Spain, and her West-Indian procedures;--she, by her procedures somewhere, is always cutting out work for mankind! How English and other strangers, fallen-in with in those seas, are treated by the Spaniards, readers have heard, nay have chanced to see; and it is a fact painfully known to all nations. Fact which England, for one nation, can no longer put up with. Walpole and the Official Persons would fain smooth the matter; but the West-India Interest, the City, all Mercantile and Navigation Interests are in dead earnest: Committee of the whole House, 'Presided by Alderman Perry,' has not ears enough to hear the immensities of evidence offered; slow Public is gradually kindling to some sense of it.
This had gone on for two weeks, when--what shall we say?--the EAR OF JENKINS re-emerged for the second time; and produced important effects!
"Where Jenkins had been all this while,--steadfastly navigating to and fro, steadfastly eating tough junk with a wetting of rum;not thinking too much of past labors, yet privately 'always keeping his lost Ear in cotton' (with a kind of ursine piety, or other dumb feeling),--no mortal now knows. But to all mortals it is evident he was home in London at this time; no doubt a noted member of Wapping society, the much-enduring Jenkins.
And witnesses, probably not one but many, had mentioned him to this Committee, as a case eminently in point. Committee, as can still be read in its Rhadamanthine Journals, orders: 'DIE JOVIS, 16* MARTII 1737-1738, That Captain Robert Jenkins do attend this House immediately;' and then more specially, '17* MARTII" captious objections having risen in Official quarters, as we guess,--'That Captain Robert Jenkins do attend upon Tuesday morning next.'
[ Commons Journals, xxiii. (in diebus).]
Tuesday next is 2lst March,--1st of April, 1738, by our modern Calendar;--and on that day, not adoubt, Jenkins does attend;narrates that tremendous passage we already heard of, seven years ago, in the entrance of the Gulf of Florida; and produces his Ear wrapt in cotton:--setting all on flame (except the Official persons) at sight of it."Official persons, as their wont is in the pressure of debate, endeavored to deny, to insinuate in their vile Newspapers, That Jenkins lost his Ear nearer home and not for nothing; as one still reads in the History Books. [Tindal (xx. 372). Coxe, &c.] Sheer calumnies, we now find. Jenkins's account was doubtless abundantly emphatic; but there is no ground to question the substantial truth of him and it. And so, after seven years of unnoticeable burning upon the thick skin of the English Public, the case of Jenkins accidentally burns through, and sets England bellowing; such a smart is there of it,--not to be soothed by Official wet-cloths;but getting worse and worse, for the nineteen months ensuing.
And in short--But we will not anticipate!
Chapter VI.
LAST YEAR OF REINSBERG; JOURNEY TO PREUSSEN.