A Rollmops Consists Of A Large Dilled
Cucumber, With A Pickled Herring Coiled Round It Ready To Strike,
In The Design Of The Rattlesnake-And-Pinetree Flag Of The Revolution,
The Motto In Both Instances Being In Effect:
"Don't monkey with
the buzz saw!" He carried his rollmops in his pocket and frequently,
in art galleries or elsewhere, would draw it out and nibble it,
while disseminating inaccuracies touching on pictures and statues
and things.
Among other places, he took us to the oldest church in Vienna.
As I now recollect it was six hundred years old. No; on second
thought I will say it must have been older than that. No church
could possibly become so moldy and mangy looking as that church
in only six hundred years. The object in this church that interested
me most was contained in an ornate glass case placed near the altar
and alongside the relics held to be sacred. It did not exactly
please me to gaze at this article; but the thing had a fascination
for me; I will not deny that.
It seems that a couple of centuries ago there was an officer in
Vienna, a captain in rank and a Frenchman by birth, who, in the
midst of disorders and licentiousness, lived so godly and so
sanctified a life that his soldiers took it into their heads that
he was really a saint, or at least had the making of a first-rate
saint in him, and, therefore, must lead a charmed life. So - thus
runs the tale - some of them laid a wager with certain Doubting
Thomases, also soldiers, that neither by fire nor water, neither
by rope nor poison, could he take harm to himself. Finally they
decided on fire for the test. So they waited until he slept - those
simple, honest, chuckle-headed chaps - and then they slipped in
with a lighted torch and touched him off.
Well, sir, the joke certainly was on those soldiers. He burned
up with all the spontaneous enthusiasm of a celluloid comb. For
qualities of instantaneous combustion he must have been the equal
of any small-town theater that ever was built - with one exit. He
was practically a total loss and there was no insurance.
They still have him, or what is left of him, in that glass case.
He did not exactly suffer martyrdom - though probably he personally
did not notice any very great difference - and so he has not been
canonized; nevertheless, they have him there in that church. In
all Europe I only saw one sight to match him, and that was down
in the crypt under the Church of the Capuchins, in Rome, where the
dissected cadavers of four thousand dead - but not gone - monks are
worked up into decorations. There are altars made of their skulls,
and chandeliers made of their thigh bones; frescoes of their spines;
mosaics of their teeth and dried muscles; cozy corners of their
femurs and pelves and tibiae. There are two classes of travelers
I would strongly advise not to visit the crypt of the Capuchins'
Church - those who are just about to have dinner and want to have
it, and those who have just had dinner and want to keep on having
it.
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