A LENTEN ANECDOTE, FROM THE GERMAN OF PROFESSOR SPASS.

BY MICHAEL ANGELO TITMARSH.

"I think," said Rebecca, flinging down her beautiful eyes to the ground, and heaving a great sigh—"I think, Signor Lorenzo, I could eat a bit of—sausage."

"Of what?" said Lorenzo, bouncing up and forgetting all sense of politeness in the strange demand. "My dearest madam, you eat a sausage?"

"Ha, ha, I'm blesht," shouted Abednego, the banker, Rebecca's papa, "I'm blesht, if Signor Lorenz does not think you want to eat the unclean animal, Rebecca, my soul's darling. These shtudents are dull fellows, look you, and only know what's in their books. Why, there are in dis vicked vorld no less than four hundred kindsh of shausages, Signor Lorenz, of which Herr BÜrcke, the court-butcher, will show you the resheipts.—Confess now, you thought my darling wanted to eat pig—faugh!"

Rebecca's countenance, at the very idea, assumed an expression of the most intolerable disgust, and she gazed reproachfully at Lorenzo. That young man blushed, and looked particularly foolish, as he said: "Pardon me, dearest madam, for entertaining a thought so unworthy. I did, I confess, think of pork-sausages, when you spoke, and although pretty learned on most subjects, am indeed quite ignorant upon the matter of which Herr Abednego has just been speaking."

"I told you so," says Abednego. "Why, my goot sir, dere is mutton-sausages, and veal-sausages, and beef-sausages, and—"

"Silence, papa," said Rebecca, sharply: "for what has Signor Lorenz to do with such things? I'm very sorry that I—that I offended him by asking for any dish of the kind, and pray let him serve us with what he has."

Rebecca sunk down in a chair looking very faint; but Lorenzo started up, and swore that he would have himself cut up into little pieces, stuffed into a bladder, and made sausage-meat of, rather than that the lovely Israelite should go without the meat that she loved. And, indeed, such was the infatuated passion which this young man entertained for the Jewess, that I have not the least doubt but that he would have been ready to do as he said. "I will send down immediately into the town," continued he, "and in ten minutes, my messenger will be back again."

"He must run very fast," said the lady, appeased, "but I thought you said, Signor Lorenz, that you kept but one servant, and that your old housekeeper was too ill to move?"

"Madam, make your mind quite easy.—I have the best little messenger in the world."

"Is it a fairy," said the Jewess, "or a household demon? They say that you great students have many such at your orders, and I should like to see one of all things."

"You shall see him, dearest lady," replied the student, who took from a shelf a basket and a napkin, put a piece of money into the basket (I believe the poor devil had not many of them), and wrote a few words on a paper which he set by the side of the coin. "Mr. BÜrcke," wrote he, "Herr Hofmetzler, (that is, Mr. Court-butcher,) have the goodness to send, per bearer, a rixdollar's worth of the best sausages—not pork." And then Lorenz opened his window, looked into his little garden, whistled, and shouted out, "Hallo! Spitz!"

"Now," said he, "you shall see my familiar;" and a great scratching and whining was presently heard at the door, which made Rebecca wonder, and poor old fat Abednego turn as yellow as a parsnip. I warrant the old wretch thought that a demon with horns and a tail was coming into the room.

The familiar spirit which now made its appearance had a tail certainly, and a very long one for such a little animal; but there was nothing terrible about him. The fact is, it was Lorenz's little turnspit-dog, that used to do many such commissions for the student, who lived half a mile out of the city of KrÄhwinkel, where the little dog was perfectly well known. He was a very sagacious, faithful, ugly little dog, as ever was seen. He had a long black back and tail, and very little yellow legs; but he ran excessively fast on those little legs, and regularly fetched his master's meat and rolls from the city, and brought them to that lovely cottage which the student, for quiet's sake, occupied at a short distance from town.

"When I give him white money," said Lorenz, caressing the little faithful beast, that wagged his tail between the calves of his master's legs, and looked up fondly in his face, "when I give him white money, he goes to the butcher's; when I give him copper, he runs to the baker's,—and was never yet known to fail. Go, my little Spitz, as fast as legs will carry thee. Go, my dog, and bring with thee the best of sausages for the breakfast of the peerless Rebecca Abednego." With this gallant speech, which pleased the lady greatly, and caused her to try to blush as much as possible, the little dog took the basket in his mouth, and trotted down stairs, and went off on his errand. While he is on the way to KrÄhwinkel and back, I may as well mention briefly who his master was, how he came to be possessed of this little animal, and how the fair Jewess had found her way to a Christian student's house.

Lorenz's parents lived at Polkwitz, which everybody knows is a hundred leagues from KrÄhwinkel. They were the most pious, orderly, excellent people ever known, and their son bade fair to equal them in all respects. He had come to KrÄhwinkel to study at the famous university there; but he never frequented the place except for the lectures; never made one at the noisy students' drinking bouts; and was called, for his piety and solitary life, the hermit.

The first year of his residence, he was to be seen not only at lectures, but at church regularly. He never ate meat on a Friday; he fasted all through Lent; he confessed twice in a month; and was a model for all young students, not merely at KrÄhwinkel, Bonn, Jena, Halle, and other German universities; but those of Salamanca and the rest in Spain, of Bologna and other places of learning in Italy, nay, of Oxford and Cambridge in the island of England, would do well to take example by him, and lead the godly life which he led.

But I am sorry to say that learning oftentimes begets pride, and Lorenzo Tisch, seeing how superior he was to all his companions, ay, and to most of the professors of the university, and plunging deeper and deeper daily into books, began to neglect his religious duties at first a little, then a great deal, then to take no note of them at all; for though, when the circumstances of this true history occurred, it was the season of Lent, Lorenzo Tisch had not the slightest recollection of the fact, not having been at church, or looked into an almanack or a prayer-book, for many months before.

Lorenzo was allowed a handsome income of a hundred rixdollars per year by his parents, and used to draw this at the house of Mr. Abednego, the banker. One day, when he went to cash a draft for five dollars, the lovely Miss Rebecca Abednego chanced to be in the room. Ah, Lorenzo, Lorenzo! better for you to have remained at home studying the Pons Asinorum; better still for you to have been at church, listening to the soul-stirring discourses of Father Windbeutel; better for you to have been less learned and more pious: then you would not have been so likely to go astray, or allow your fancy to be inflamed by the charms of wicked Jewesses, that all Christian men should shun like poison.

Here it was Lent season—a holiday in Lent, and Lorenzo Von Tisch knew nothing about the matter, and Rebecca Abednego, and her father, were absolutely come to breakfast with him!

But though Lorenzo had forgotten Lent, the citizens of KrÄhwinkel had not, and especially one Herr BÜrcke, the court butcher, to whom Tisch had just despatched Spitz for a dollar's worth of sausage-meat.

The visits of Tisch to the Jew's house had indeed caused not a little scandal. The student's odd, lonely ways, his neglect of church, his queer little dog that ran of errands for him, had all been talked of by the town's-people, who had come at last to believe that Lorenzo was no less than a magician, and his dog, as he himself said in joke, his familiar spirit. Poor Spitz!—no familiar spirit wert thou; only a little, faithful, ugly dog—a little dog that Tisch's aunt Konisgunda gave to him, who was equally fond of it and him.

Those who know KrÄhwinkel (and who, I should like to know, is not acquainted with that famous city?) are aware that Mr. BÜrcke, the court butcher, has his handsome shop in the Schnapps-Gasse, only a very few doors from Abednego's banking-house. Mrs. BÜrcke is, or used to be, a lady that was very fond of knowing the doings of her neighbours, and passed many hours staring out of her windows, of which the front row gave her a command of the whole of that beautiful street, the Schnapps-Gasse, while from the back the eye ranged over the gardens and summer-houses without the gates of the town, and the great road that goes to Bolkum. Herr Lorenzo's cottage was on this road; and it was by the Bolkum-gate that little Spitz the dog entered with his basket, when he went on his master's errands.

Now, on this day in Lent, it happened that Frau BÜrcke was looking out of her windows instead of listening at church to Father Windbeutel, and she saw at eleven o'clock Mr. Israel LÖwe, Herr Abednego's valet, porter, coachman, gardener, and cashier, bring round a certain chaise that the banker had taken for a bad debt, into which he stepped in his best snuff-coloured coat, and silk stockings, handing in Miss Rachael in a neat dress of yellow silk, a blue hat and pink feathers, and a pair of red morocco slippers that set off her beautiful ankle to advantage.

"Odious people!" said Mrs. BÜrcke, looking at the pair whom Mr. LÖwe was driving, "odious, vulgar horse!" (Herr BÜrcke kept only that one on which his lad rode;) "Roman-nosed beast! I shouldn't wonder but that the horse is a Jew too!"—and she saw the party turn down to the left into Bolkum-Strasse, towards the gate which I have spoken of before.

When Madame BÜrcke saw this, she instantly flew from her front window to her back window, and there had a full view of the Bolkum road, and the Abednego chaise jingling up the same. Mr. LÖwe, when they came to the hill, got off the box and walked, Mr. Abednego sat inside and smoked his pipe.

"Ey du lieber Himmel!" screamed out Mrs. BÜrcke, "they have stopped at the necromancer's door!"

It was so that she called the worthy Tisch: and she was perfectly right in saying that the Israelitish cavalcade had stopped at the gate of his cottage; where also appeared Lorenzo, bowing, in his best coat, and offering his arm to lead Miss Rebecca in. Mrs. BÜrcke could not see how he trembled as he performed this work of politeness, or what glances Miss Rebecca shot forth from her great wicked black eyes. Having set down his load, Mr. Israel again mounted his box, and incontinently drove away.

"Here comes that horrid little dog with the basket," continued Mrs. BÜrcke, after a few minutes' more looking out of the window:—and now is not everything explained relative to Herr Lorenzo Tisch, Miss Rebecca Abednego, and the little dog?

Mrs. BÜrcke hated Spitz: the fact is, he once bit a hole in one of her great, round, mottled arms, which had thrust itself into the basket that Spitz carried for his masters provisions; for Mrs. B. was very anxious to know what there was under the napkin. In consequence, therefore, of this misunderstanding between her and the dog, whenever she saw the animal, it was Mrs. B.'s wicked custom to salute him with many foul words and curses, and to compass how to do him harm; for the Frau Hofmetzlerinn, as she was called in KrÄhwinkel, was a lady of great energy and perseverance, and nobody could ever accuse her of forgetting an injury.

The little dog, as she sat meditating evil against him, came trotting down the road, entered as usual by the Bolkum-gate, turned to the right, and by the time Madame BÜrcke had descended to the shop, there he was at the door, sure enough, and entered it wagging his tail. It was holiday Lent, and the butcher-boys were absent; Mr. BÜrcke himself was abroad; there was not a single joint of meat in the shop, nor ought there to be at such a season, when all good men eat fish. But how was poor Spitz to know what the season was, or tell what his master himself had forgotten?

He looked a little shy when he saw only Madame BÜrcke in the shop, doubtless remembering his former disagreement with her; but a sense of duty at last prevailed with him, and he jumped up on his usual place on the counter, laid his basket down, whined, and began flapping the place on which he sat with his tail.

Mrs. BÜrcke advanced, and held out her great mottled arm rather fearfully; he growled, and made her start a little, but did her no harm. She took the paper out of the basket, and read what we have before imparted to the public, viz.:—"Mr. Court Butcher, have the goodness to send per bearer a rixdollar's worth of best sausage meat, not pork.—Lorenz Tisch." As she read, the dog wagged his tail more violently than ever.

A horrible thought entered the bosom of Mrs. BÜrcke, as she looked at the dog, and from the dog glanced at her husband's cleaver, that hung idling on the wall.

"Sausages in Lent!" said Mrs. BÜrcke: "sausages to be fetched by a dog for that heathen necromancer and that accursed Jew! He shall have sausages with a vengeance." Mrs. BÜrcke took down the cleaver, and

About twenty minutes afterwards Herr Lorenzo Tisch opened his garden gate, whither he had been summoned by the whining and scratching of his little faithful messenger. Spitz staggered in, laid the basket at his master's feet, licked his hand, and fell down.

"Blesh us, dere'sh something red all along the road!" cried Mr. Abednego.

"Pshaw! papa, never mind that, let's look at the sausages," said his daughter Rebecca—a sad gormandizer for so young a woman.

Tisch opened the basket, staggered back, and turned quite sick.—In the basket which Spitz had carried so faithfully lay the poor little dog's OWN TAIL!

What took place during the rest of the entertainment, I have never been able or anxious to learn; but this I know, that there is a single gentleman now living with Madame Konisgunda Von Speck, in the beautiful town of Polkwitz, a gentleman, who, if he has one prejudice in the world, has that of hating the Jewish nation—a gentleman who goes to church regularly, and, above all, never eats meat in Lent.

He is followed about by a little dog—a little ugly dog—of which he and Madame Von Speck are outrageously fond; although, between ourselves, the animal's back is provided with no more tail than a cannon-ball.