Part 19

My brother-in-law, the Dragoon, directly kindled his tinder-box, and put a heap of the burning matter on the Rat-catcher's pole; but the fellow stood it, as if it had been a mere picture of fire, and the two looked expectingly at one another; and the former smiled very foolishly, saying: "It was simply pleasant to him, like a good warming-plaster; for this was always the wintry region of his body."

Here the Dragoon groped a little on the naked scull, and cried with amazement, that "it was as cold as a knee-pan."

32. Our Age (by some called the Paper Age, as if it were made from the rags of some better dressed one) is improving in so far as it now tears, its rags rather into Bandages than into Papers; although, or because, the Rag-hacker (the Devil as they call it) will not altogether be at rest. Meanwhile, if Learned Heads transform themselves into Books, Crowned Heads transform and coin themselves into Government-paper. In Norway, according to the _Universal Indicator_, the people have even paper-houses; and in many good German States, the Exchequer Collegium (to say nothing of the Justice Collegium) keeps its own paper-mills, to furnish wrappage enough for the meal of its wind-mills. I could wish, however, that our Collegiums would take pattern from that Glass Manufactory at Madrid, in which (according to Baumgaertner) there were indeed nineteen clerks stationed, but also eleven workmen.

But now the fellow, to our horror, after some preparations, actually lifted off the quarter-skull and held it out to us, saying: "He had sawed it off a murderer, his own having accidentally been broken"; and withal explained, that the stabbing and arm-cutting he had talked of was to be understood as a jest, seeing he had merely done it in the character of Famulus at an Anatomical Theatre. However, the jester seemed to rise little in favor with any of us; and for my part, as he put his brain-lid and sham-skull on again, I thought to myself: "This dung-bed-bell has changed its place, indeed, but not the hemlock it was made to cover."

Further, I could not but reckon it a suspicious circumstance, that he as well as all the company (the Blind Passenger too) were making for this very Flaetz, to which I myself was bound. Much good I could not expect of this; and, in truth, turning home again would have been as pleasant to me as going on, had I not rather felt a pleasure in defying the future.

I come now to the red-mantled Blind Passenger; most probably an _Emigre_ or _Refugie_; for he speaks German not worse than he does French; and his name, I think, was _Jean Pierre_ or _Jean Paul_, or some such thing, if indeed he had any name. His red cloak, notwithstanding this his identity of color with the Hangman, would in itself have remained heartily indifferent to me; had it not been for this singular circumstance, that he had already five times, contrary to all expectation, come upon me in five different towns (in great Berlin, in little Hof, in Coburg, Meiningen, and Bayreuth), and, each of these times, had looked at me significantly enough, and then gone his ways. Whether this _Jean Pierre_ is dogging me with hostile intent or not, I cannot say; but to our fancy, at any rate, no object can be gratifying that thus, with corps of observation, or out of loop-holes, holds and aims at us with muskets, which for year after year it shall move to this side and that, without our knowing on whom it is to fire. Still more offensive did Redcloak become to me, when he began to talk about his soft mildness of soul; a thing which seemed either to betoken pumping you or undermining you.

I replied: "Sir, I am just come, with my brother-in-law here, from the field of battle (the last affair was at Pimpelstadt), and so perhaps am too much of a humor for fire, pluck, and war-fury; and to many a one, who happens to have a roaring waterspout of a heart, it may be well if his clerical character (which is mine) rather enjoins on him mildness than wildness. However, all mildness has its iron limit. If any thoughtless dog chance to anger me, in the first heat of rage I kick my foot through him; and after me, my good brother here will perhaps drive matters twice as far, for he is the man to do it. Perhaps it may be singular; but I confess, I regret to this day, that once when a boy I received three blows from another, without tightly returning them; and I often feel as if I must still pay them to his descendants. In sooth, if I but chance to see a child running off like a dastard from the weak attack of a child like himself, I cannot for my life understand his running, and can scarcely keep from interfering to save him by a decisive knock."

The Passenger meanwhile was smiling, not in the best fashion. He gave himself out for a Legations-Rath, and seemed fox enough for such a post; but a mad fox will, in the long run, bite me as rabidly as a mad wolf will. For the rest, I calmly went on with my eulogy on courage; only that, instead of ludicrous gasconading, which directly betrays the coward, I purposely expressed myself in words at once cool, clear, and firm.

"I am altogether for Montaigne's advice," said I: "'Fear nothing but fear.'"

"I again," replied the Legations-man, with useless wire-drawing, "I should fear again that I did not sufficiently fear fear, but continued too dastardly."

"To this fear also," replied I, coldly, "I set limits. A man, for instance, may not in the least believe in or be afraid of ghosts; and yet by night may bathe himself in cold sweat, and this purely out of terror at the dreadful fright he should be in (especially with what whiffs of epilepsies, falling-sicknesses, and so forth, he might be visited), in case simply his own too vivid fancy should create any wild fever-image, and hang it up in the air before him."

"One should not, therefore," added my brother-in-law the Dragoon, contrary to his custom, moralizing a little,--"one should not bamboozle the poor sheep, man, with any ghost-tricks; the henheart may die on the spot."

2. In his Prince, a soldier reverences and obeys at once his Prince and his Generalissimo; a Citizen, only his Prince.

A loud storm of thunder overtaking the stage-coach altered the discourse. You, my Friends, knowing me as a man not quite destitute of some tincture of Natural Philosophy, will easily guess my precautions against thunder. I place myself on a chair in the middle of the room (often, when suspicious clouds are out, I stay whole nights on it), and by careful removal of all conductors, rings, buckles, and so forth, I here sit thunder-proof, and listen with a cool spirit to this elemental music of the cloud-kettledrum. These precautions have never harmed me, for I am still alive at this date; and to the present hour I congratulate myself on once hurrying out of church, though I had confessed but the day previous; and running, without more ceremony, and before I had received the sacrament, into the charnel-house, because a heavy thunder-cloud (which did, in fact, strike the churchyard linden-tree) was hovering over it. So soon as the cloud had disloaded itself, I returned from the charnel-house into the church, and was happy enough to come in after the Hangman (usually the last), and so still participate in the Feast of Love.

45. Our present writers shrug their shoulders most at those on whose shoulders they stand; and exalt those most who crawl up along them.

Such, for my own part, is my manner of proceeding; but in the full stage-coach I met with men to whom Natural Philosophy was no philosophy at all. For when the clouds gathered dreadfully together over our coach-canopy, and sparkling, began to play through the air, like so many fireflies, and I at last could not but request that the sweating coach-conclave would at least bring out their watches, rings, money, and such like, and put them all into one of the carriage-pockets, that none of us might have a conductor on his body; not only would no one of them do it, but my own brother-in-law the Dragoon even sprang out, with naked drawn sword, to the coach-box, and swore that he would conduct the thunder all away himself. Nor do I know whether this desperate mortal was not acting prudently; for our position within was frightful, and any one of us might every moment be a dead man. At last, to crown all, I got into a half altercation with two of the rude members of our leathern household, the Poisoner and the Harlot; seeing, by their questions, they almost gave me to understand, that, in our conversational picnic, especially with the Blind Passenger, I had not always come off with the best share. Such an imputation wounds your honor to the quick; and in my breast there was a thunder louder than that above us. However, I was obliged to carry on the needful exchange of sharp words as quietly and slowly as possible; and I quarrelled softly, and in a low tone, lest in the end a whole coachful of people, set in arms against each other, might get into heat and perspiration; and so, by vapor steaming through the coach-roof, conduct the too near thunderbolt down into the midst of us. At last I laid before the company the whole theory of Electricity in clear words, but low and slow (striving to avoid all emission of vapor); and especially endeavored to frighten them away from fear. For, indeed, through fear, the stroke--nay, two strokes, the electric or the apoplectic--might hit any one of us; since in Erxleben and Reimarus it is sufficiently proved that violent fear, by the transpiration it causes, may attract the lightning. I accordingly, in some fear of my own and other people's fear, represented to the passengers that now, in a coach so hot and crowded, with a drawn sword on the coach-box piercing the very lightning, with the thunder-cloud hanging over us, and even with so many transpirations from incipient fear; in short, with such visible danger on every hand, they must absolutely fear nothing, if they would not, all and sundry, be smitten to death in a few minutes.

103. The Great perhaps take as good charge of their posterity as the Ants; the eggs once laid, the male and female Ants fly about their business, and confide them to the trusty _working-Ants_.

"O Heaven!" cried I, "Courage! only courage! No fear, not even fear of fear! Would you have Providence to shoot you here sitting, like so many hares hunted into a pinfold? Fear, if you like, when you are out of the coach; fear to your heart's content in other places, where there is less to be afraid of; only not here, not here!"

I shall not determine--since among millions scarcely one man dies by thunder-clouds, but millions perhaps by snow-clouds, and rain-clouds, and thin mist--whether my Coach-sermon could have made any claim to a prize for man-saving; however, at last, all uninjured, and driving towards a rainbow, we entered the town of Vierstaedten, where dwelt a Postmaster, in the only street which the place had.

_Second Stage; from Vierstaedten to Niederschoena_.

The Postmaster was a churl and a striker; a class of mortals whom I inexpressibly detest, as my fancy always whispers to me, in their presence, that by accident or dislike I might happen to put on a scornful or impertinent look, and hound these mastiffs on my own throat; and so, from the very first, I must incessantly watch them. Happily, in this case (supposing I even had made a wrong face), I could have shielded myself with the Dragoon; for whose giant force such matters are a tidbit. This brother-in-law of mine, for example, cannot pass any tavern where he hears a sound of battle, without entering, and, as he crosses the threshold, shouting, "Peace, dogs!"--and therewith, under show of a peace deputation, he directly snatches up the first chair-leg in his hand, as if it were an American peace-calumet, and cuts to the right and left among the belligerent powers, or he gnashes the hard heads of the parties together (he himself takes no side), catching each by the hind-lock. In such cases the rogue is in Heaven!

10. And does Life offer us, in regard to our ideal hopes and purposes, anything but a prosaic, unrhymed, unmetrical Translation?

78. Our German frame of Government, cased in its harness, had much difficulty in moving, for the same reason why Beetles cannot fly, when their _wings_ have _wing-shells_, of very sufficient strength, and--grown together.

I, for my part, rather avoid discrepant circles than seek them; as I likewise avoid all dead or killed people. The prudent man easily foresees what is to be got by them; either vexatious and injurious witnessing, or often even (when circumstances conspire) painful investigation, and suspicions of your being an accomplice.

In Vierstaedten nothing of importance presented itself, except--to my horror--a dog without tail, which came running along the town or street. In the first fire of passion at this sight, I pointed it out to the passengers, and then put the question, whether they could reckon a system of Medical Police well arranged, which, like this of Vierstaedten, allowed dogs openly to scour about, when their tails were wanting. "What am I to do," said I, "when this member is cut away, and any such beast comes running towards me, and I cannot, either by the tail being cocked up or being drawn in, since the whole is snipt off, come to any conclusion whether the vermin is mad or not? In this way, the most prudent man may be bit, and become rabid, and so make shipwreck purely for want of a tail compass."

8. Constitutions of Government are like highways; on a new and quite untrodden one, where every carriage helps in the process of bruising and smoothing, you are as much jolted and pitched, as an old worn-out one, full of holes. What is to be done then? Travel on.

The Blind Passenger (he now got himself inscribed as a Seeing one, God knows for what objects) had heard my observation; which he now spun out in my presence almost into ridicule, and at last awakened in me the suspicion, that, by an overdone flattery in imitating my style of speech, he meant to banter me. "The Dog-tail," said he, "is, in truth, an alarm-beacon, and finger-post for us, that we come not even into the outmost precincts of madness; cut away from Comets their tails, from Bashaws theirs, from Crabs theirs (outstretched it denotes that they are burst); and in the most dangerous predicaments of life, we are left without clew, without indicator, without hand _in margine_; and we perish not so much as knowing how."

For the rest, this stage passed over without quarreling or peril. About ten o'clock, the whole party, including even the Postilion, myself excepted, fell asleep. I indeed pretended to be sleeping, that I might observe whether some one, for his own good reasons, might not also be pretending it. But all continued snoring; the moon threw its brightening beams on nothing but downpressed eyelids.

I had now a glorious opportunity of following Lavater's counsel, to apply the physiognomical ellwand specially to sleepers, since sleep, like death, expresses the genuine form in coarser lines. Other sleepers not in stage-coaches I think it less advisable to mete with this ellwand; having always an apprehension lest some fellow, but pretending to be asleep, may, the instant I am near enough, start up as in a dream, and deceitfully plant such a knock on the physiognomical mensurator's own facial structure, as to exclude it forever from appearing in any Physiognomical Fragments (itself being reduced to one), either in the stippled or line style. Nay, might not the most honest sleeper in the world, just while you are in hand with his physiognomical dissection, lay about him, spurred on by honor in some cudgelling-scene he may be dreaming; and in a few instants of clapperclawing, and kicking, and trampling, lull you into a much more lasting sleep than that out of which he was awakened?

8. In Criminal Courts, murdered children are often represented as still-born; in Anticritiques, still-born as murdered.

In my _Adumbrating Magic-lantern_, as I have named the Work, the whole physiognomical contents of this same sleeping stage-coach will be given to the world. There I shall explain to you at large how the Poisoner, with the murder-cupola, appeared to me devil-like; the Dwarf old-child-like; the Harlot languidly shameless; my Brother-in-law peacefully satisfied, with revenge or food; and the Legations-Rath, _Jean Pierre_, Heaven only knows why, like a half angel,--though, perhaps, it might be because only the fair body, not the other half, the soul, which had passed away in sleep, was affecting me.

101. Not only were the Rhodians, from their Colossus, called Colossians; but also innumerable Germans are, from their Luther, called Lutherans.

I had almost forgotten to mention, that, in a little village, while my Brother-in-law and the Postilion were sitting at their liquor, I happily fronted a small terror, Destiny having twice been on my side. Not far from a Hunting Box, beside a pretty clump of trees, I noticed a white tablet, with a black inscription on it. This gave me hopes that perhaps some little monumental piece, some pillar of honor, some battle memento, might here be awaiting me. Over an untrodden flowery tangle I reach the black on white; and to my horror and amazement I decipher in the moonshine, _Beware of Spring-guns!_ Thus was I standing perhaps half a nail's breadth from the trigger, with which, if I but stirred my heel, I should shoot myself off, like a forgotten ramrod, into the other world, beyond the verge of Time! The first thing I did was to slutch down my toe-nails, to bite, and, as it were, eat myself into the ground with them; since I might, at least, continue in warm life so long as I pegged my body firmly in beside the Atropos-scissors and hangman's block, which lay beside me. Then I endeavored to recollect by what steps the Fiend had led me hither unshot, but in my agony I had perspired the whole of it, and could remember nothing. In the Devil's village, close at hand, there was no dog to be seen and called to, who might have plucked me from the water; and my Brother-in-law and the Postilion were both carousing with full can. However, I summoned my courage and determination; wrote down on a leaf of my pocket-book my last will, the accidental manner of my death, and my dying remembrance of Berga; and then, with full sails, flew helter-skelter through the midst of it the shortest way; expecting at every step to awaken the murderous engine, and thus to clap over my still long candle of life the bonsoir, or extinguisher, with my own hand. However, I got off without shot. In the tavern, indeed, there was more than one fool to laugh at me; because, forsooth, what none but a fool could know, this Notice had stood there for the last ten years without any gun, as guns often do without any notice. But so it is, my Friends, with our game-police, which warns against all things, only not against warnings.

88. Hitherto I have always regarded the Polemical writings of our present philosophic and aesthetic Idealist Logic-buffers,--in which, certainly, a few contumelies, and misconceptions, and misconclusions do make their appearance,--rather on the fair side; observing in it merely an imitation of classical Antiquity, in particular of the ancient Athletes, who (according to Schoettgen) besmeared their bodies with _mud_, that they might not be laid hold of; and filled their hands with _sand_, that they might lay hold of their antagonists.

For the rest, throughout the whole stage, I had a constant source of altercation with the coachman, because he grudged stopping perhaps once in the quarter of an hour, when I chose to come out for a natural purpose. Unhappily, in truth, one has little reason to expect water-doctors among the postilion class, since Physicians themselves have so seldom learned from Haller's large _Physiology_ that a postponement of the above operation will precipitate devilish stone-ware, and at last precipitate the proprietor himself; this stone-manufactory being generally concluded, not by the Lithotomist, but by Death. Had postilions read that Tycho Brahe died like a bombshell by bursting, they would rather pull up for a moment; with such unlooked-for knowledge, they would see it to be reasonable that a man, though expecting some time to carry his death-stone _on_ him, should not incline, for the time being, to carry it _in_ him. Nay, have I not often, at Weimar, in the longest concluding scenes of Schiller, run out with tears in my eyes; purely that, while his Minerva was melting me on the whole, I might not by the Gorgon's head on her breast be partially turned to stone? And did I not return to the weeping play-house, and fall into the general emotion so much the more briskly, as now I had nothing to give vent to but my heart?

103. Or are all Mosques, Episcopal-churches, Pagodas, Chapels-of-Ease, Tabernacles, and Pantheons, anything else than the Ethnic Forecourt of the Invisible Temple and its Holy of Holies?

Deep in the dark we arrived at Niederschoena.

_Third Stage; from Niederschoena to Flaetz_.

While I am standing at the Posthouse musing, with my eye fixed on my portmanteau, comes a beast of a watchman, and bellows and brays in his night-tube so close by my ear that I start back in trepidation, I whom even a too hasty accosting will vex. Is there no medical police, then, against such efflated hour-fulminators and alarm-cannon, by which notwithstanding no gunpowder cannon are saved? In my opinion nobody should be invested with the watchman-horn but some reasonable man, who had already blown himself into an asthma, and who would consequently be in case to sing out his hour-verse so low that you could not hear it.

40. The common man is copious only in narration, not in reasoning; the cultivated man is brief only in the former, not in the latter; because the common man's reasons are a sort of sensations, which, as well as things visible, he merely _looks at_; by the cultivated man, again, both reasons and things visible are rather _thought_ than looked at.

What I had long expected, and the Dwarf predicted, now took place; deeply stooping, through the high Posthouse door, issued the Giant, and raised in the open air a most unreasonably high figure, heightened by the ell-long bonnet and feather on his huge jobbernowl. My Brother-in-law, beside him, looked but like his son of fourteen years; the Dwarf like his lap-dog waiting for him on its two hind legs. "Good friend," said my bantering Brother-in-law, leading him towards me and the stagecoach, "just step softly in, we shall all be happy to make room for you. Fold yourself neatly together, lay your head on your knee, and it will do." The unseasonable banterer would willingly have seen the almost stupid Giant (of whom he had soon observed that his brain was no active substance, but in the inverse ratio of his trunk) squeezed in among us in the post-chest, and lying kneaded together like a sand-bag before him. "Won't do! Won't do!" said the Giant, looking in. "The gentleman perhaps does not know," said the Dwarf, "how big the Giant is; and so he thinks that because _I_ go in-- But that is another story; _I_ will creep into any hole, do but tell me where."