Chapter 1 - Page 2

arrangement, however, was
necessary to the convenience and even to the security of the bark, having
been made by the patron with a view to posting each individual by his
particular wallet, in a manner to prevent confusion in the crowd, and to
leave the crew space and opportunity to discharge the necessary duties 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