Part 21

Unhappily six o'clock was already past. The lackey, however, did not keep me long waiting; but returned with--I may say, the text of this whole Circular--the almost rude answer (which you, my Friends, out of regard for me and Schabacker, will not divulge), that: "In case I were the Attila Schmelzle of Schabacker's Regiment, might lift my pigeon-liver flag again, and fly to the Devil, as I did at Pimpelstadt." Another man would have dropt dead on the spot; I, however, walked quite stoutly off, answering the fellow: "With great pleasure indeed, I fly to the Devil; and so Devil a fly I care." On the road home, I examined myself, whether it had not been the Pontac that spoke out of me (though the very examination contradicted this, for Pontac never examines); but I found that nothing but I, my heart, my courage perhaps, had spoken; and why, after all, any whimpering? Does not the patrimony of my good wife endow me better than ten Catechetical Professorships? And has she not furnished all the corners of my book of Life with so many golden clasps, that I can open it forever without wearing it? Let henhearts cackle and pip; I flapped my pinions, and said: "Dash boldly through it, come what may!" I felt myself excited and exalted; I fancied Republics, in which I, as a hero, might be at home; I longed to be in that noble Grecian time, when one hero readily put up with bastinadoes from another, and said, "Strike, but hear!" and out of this ignoble one, where men will scarcely put up with hard words, to say nothing of more. I painted out to my mind how I should feel, if, in happier circumstances, I were uprooting hollow Thrones, and before whole nations mounting on mighty deeds as on the Temple-steps of Immortality; and, in gigantic ages, finding quite other men to outman and outstrip, than the mite-populace about me, or, at the best, here and there a Vulcanello. I thought and thought, and grew wilder and wilder, and intoxicated myself (no Pontac intoxication therefore, which, you know, increases more by continuance than cessation of drinking), and gesticulated openly, as I put the question to myself: "Wilt thou be a mere state-lapdog? A dog's-dog, a _pium desiderium_ of an _impium desiderium_, an Ex-Ex, a Nothing's-Nothing?--Fire and Fury!" With this, however, I dashed down my hat into the mud of the market. On lifting and cleaning this old servant, I could not but perceive how worn and faded it was; and I therefore determined instantly to purchase a new one, and carry the same home in my hand.

25. In youth, like a blind man just couched (and what is birth but a couching of the sight?), you take the Distant for the Near, the starry heaven for tangible room-furniture, pictures for objects; and, to the young man, the whole world is sitting on his very nose, till repeating bandaging and unbandaging have at last taught him, like the blind patient, to estimate _Distance_ and _Appearance_.

I accomplished this. I bought one of the finest cut. Strangely enough, by this hat, as if it had been a Graduation-hat, was my head tried and examined in the Ziegengasse or Goat-gate of Flaetz. For as General Schabacker came driving along that street in his carriage, and I (it need not be said) was determined to avenge myself, not by vulgar clownishness, but by courtesy, I had here got one of the most ticklish problems imaginable to solve on the spur of the instant. You observe, if I swung only the fine hat which I carried in my hand, and kept the faded one on my head,--I might have the appearance of a perfect clown, who does not doff at all; if, on the other hand, I pulled the old hat from my head, and therewith did my reverence, then two hats, both in play at once (let me swing the other at the same time or not), brought my salute within the verge of ridicule. Now do you, my Friends, before reading further, bethink you how a man was to extricate himself from such a plight, without losing his presence of mind! I think, perhaps, by this means; by merely losing his hat. In one word, then, I simply dropped the new hat from my hand into the mud, to put myself in a condition for taking off the old hat by itself, and swaying it in needful courtesy, without any shade of ridicule.

Arrived at the Tiger,--to avoid misconstructions, I first had the glossy, fine, and superfine hat cleaned, and some time afterwards the mud-hat or rubbis-hat.

And now, weighing my momentous Past in the adjusting balance within me, I walked in fiery mood to and fro. The Pontac must--I know that there is no unadulterated liquor here below--have been more than usually adulterated; so keenly did it chase my fancy out of one fire into the other. I now looked forth into a wide, glittering life, in which I lived without post, merely on money; and which I beheld, as it were, sowed with the Delphic caves, and Zenonic walks, and Muse-hills of all the Sciences, which I might now cultivate at my ease. In particular, I should have it in my power to apply more diligently to writing Prize-essays for Academies; of which (that is to say, of the Prize-essays) no author need ever be ashamed, since, in all cases, there is a whole crowning Academy to stand and blush for the crownee. And even if the Prize-marksman does not hit the crown, he still continues more unknown and more anonymous (his Device not being unsealed) than any other author, who indeed can publish some nameless Long-ear of a book, but not hinder it from being, by a Literary Ass-burial (_sepultura asinina_), publicly interred, in a short time, before half the world.

126. In the long run, out of mere fear and necessity, we shall become the warmest cosmopolites I know of; so rapidly do ships shoot to and fro, and, like shuttles, weave Islands and Quarters of the World together. For let but the political weather-glass fall to-day in South America, to-morrow we in Europe have storm and thunder.

19. It is easier, they say, to climb a hill when you ascend back foremost. This, perhaps, might admit of application to political eminences; if you still turned towards them that part of the body on which you sit, and kept your face directed down to the people; all the while, however, removing and mounting.

Only one thing grieved me by anticipation; the sorrow of my Berga, for whom, dear tired wayfarer, I on the morrow must overcloud her arrival, and her shortened market-spectacle, by my negatory intelligence. She would so gladly (and who can take it ill of a rich farmer's Daughter?) have made herself somebody in Neusattel, and overshone many a female dignitary! Every mortal longs for his parade-place, and some earlier living honor than the last honors. Especially so good a lowly-born housewife as my Berga, conscious perhaps rather of her metallic than of her spiritual treasure, would still wish at banquets to be mistress of some seat or other, and so in place to overtop this or that plucked goose of the neighborhood.

26. Few German writers are not original, if we may ascribe originality (as is at least the conversational practice of all people) to a man who merely dishes out his own thoughts without foreign admixture. For as, between their Memory, where their reading or foreign matter dwells, and their Imagination or Productive Power, where their writing or own peculiar matter originates, a sufficient space intervenes, and the boundary-stones are fixed in so conscientiously and firmly that nothing foreign may pass over into their own, or inversely, so that they may really read a hundred works without losing their own primitive flavor, or even altering it,--their individuality may, I believe, be considered as secured; and their spiritual nourishment, their pancakes, loaves, fritters, caviare, and meat-balls, are not assimilated to their system, but given back pure and unaltered. Often in my own mind, I figure such writers as living but thousand-fold more artificial Ducklings from Vaucasson's Artificial Duck of Wood. For in fact they are not less cunningly put together than this timber Duck, which will gobble meat and apparently void it again, under show of having digested it, and derived from it blood and juices; though the secret of the business is, the artist has merely introduced an ingenious compound ejective matter behind, with which concoction and nourishment have nothing to do, but which the Duck illusorily gives forth and publishes to the world.

It is in this point of view that husbands are so indispensable. I therefore resolved to purchase for myself, and consequently for her, one of the best of those titles which our Courts in Germany (as in a Leipzig saleroom) stand offering to buyers, in all sizes and sorts, from Noble and Half-noble down to Rath or Councillor; and once invested therewith, to reflect from my own Quarter-nobility such an Eighth-part-nobility on this true soul, that many a Neusattelitess (I hope) shall half burst with envy, and say and cry: "Pooh, the stupid farmer thing! See how it wabbles and bridles! It has forgot how matters stood when it had no money-bag and no Hofrath!" For to the Hofrathship I shall before this have attained.

But in the cold solitude of my room, and the fire of my remembrances, I longed unspeakably for my Bergelchen; I and my heart were wearied with the foreign busy day; no one here said a kind word to me, which he did not hope to put in the bill. Friends! I languished for my friend, whose heart would pour out its blood as a balsam for a second heart; I cursed my over-prudent regulations, and wished, that, to have the good Berga at my side, I had given up the stupid houseware to all thieves and fires whatsoever. As I walked to and fro, it seemed to me easier and easier to become all things, an Exchequer-Rath, an Excise-Rath, any Rath in the world, and whatever she required when she came.

"See thou take thy pleasure in the town!" had Bergelchen kept saying the whole week through. But how, without her, can I take any? Our tears of sorrow friends dry up, and accompany with their own; but our tears of joy we find most readily repeated in the eyes of our wives. Pardon me, good Friends, these libations of my sensibility; I am but showing you my heart and my Berga. If I need an Absolution-merchant, the Pontac-merchant is the man.

_First Night in Flaetz_.

Yet the wine did not take from me the good sense to look under the bed, before going into it, and examine whether any one was lurking there; for example, the Dwarf, or the Rat-catcher, or the Legations-Rath; also to shove the key under the latch (which I reckon the best bolting arrangement of all), and then, by way of further assurance, to bore my night-screws into the door, and pile all the chairs in a heap behind it; and, lastly, to keep on my breeches and shoes, wishing absolutely to have no care upon my mind.

But I had still other precautions to take in regard to sleep-walking. To me it has always been incomprehensible how so many men can go to bed, and lie down at their ease there, without reflecting that perhaps, in the first sleep, they may get up again as Somnambulists, and crawl over the tops of roofs and the like; awakening in some spot where they may fall in a moment and break their necks. While at home, there is little risk in my sleep; because, my right toe being fastened every night with three ells of tape (I call it in jest our marriage tie) to my wife's left hand, I feel a certainty that, in case I should start up from this bed-arrest, I must with the tether infallibly awaken her, and so by my Berga, as by my living bridle, be again led back to bed. But here in the Inn, I had nothing for it but to knot myself once or twice to the bed-foot, that I might not wander; though in this way, an irruption of villains would have brought double peril with it.--Alas! so dangerous is sleep at all times, that every man, who is not lying on his back a corpse, must be on his guard lest with the general system some limb or other also fall asleep; in which case the sleeping limb (there are not wanting examples of it in Medical History) may next morning be lying ripe for amputation. For this reason, I have myself frequently awakened, that no part of me fall asleep.

Having properly tied myself to the bed-posts, and at length got under the coverlid, I now began to be dubious about my Pontac Fire-bath, and apprehensive of the valorous and tumultuous dreams too likely to ensue; which, alas, did actually prove to be nothing better than heroic and monarchic feats, castle-stormings, rock-throwings, and the like. This point also I am sorry to see so little attended to in medicine. Medical gentlemen, as well as their customers, all stretch themselves quietly in their beds, without one among them considering whether a furious rage (supposing him also directly after to drink cold water in his dream), or a heart-devouring grief, all which he may undergo in vision, does harm to life or not.

Shortly before midnight, I awoke from a heavy dream, to encounter a ghost-trick much too ghostly for my fancy. My brother-in-law, who manufactured it, deserves for such vapid cookery to be named before you without reserve, as the maltmaster of this washy brewage. Had suspicion been more compatible with intrepidity, I might perhaps, by his moral maxim about this matter, on the road, as well as by his taking up the side-room, at the middle door of which stood my couch, have easily divined the whole. But now, on awakening, I felt myself blown upon by a cold ghost-breath, which I could nowise deduce from the distant bolted window; a point I had rightly decided, for the Dragoon was producing the phenomenon through the key-hole by a pair of bellows. Every sort of coldness in the night-season reminds you of clay-coldness and spectre-coldness. I summoned my resolution, however, and abode the issue; but now the very coverlid began to get in motion; I pulled it towards me; it would not stay; sharply I sit upright in my bed, and cry, "What is that?" No answer; everywhere silence in the Inn; the whole room full of moonshine. And now my drawing-plaster, my coverlid, actually rose up, and let in the air; at which I felt like a wounded man whose cataplasm you suddenly pull off. In this crisis, I made a bold leap from this Devil's-torus, and leaping, snapped asunder my somnambulist tether. "Where is the silly human fool," cried I, "that dares to ape the unseen sublime him?" But on, above, under the bed, there was nothing to be heard or seen, I looked out of the window; everywhere spectral moonlight and street-stillness; nothing moving except (probably from the wind), on the distant Gallows-hill, a person lately hanged.

15. After the manner of the fine polished English folding-knives, there are now also folding-war-swords, or, in other words--Treaties of Peace.

Any man would have taken it for self-deception as well as I; therefore I again wrapped myself in my passive _lit de justice_ and air-bed, and waited with calmness to see whether my fright would subside or not.

In a few minutes the coverlid, the infernal Faust's-mantle, again began flying and towing; also, by way of change, the invisible bed-maker again lifted me up. Accursed hour!--I should beg to know whether, in the whole of cultivated Europe, there is one cultivated or uncultivated man, who, in a case of this kind, would not have lighted on ghost-devilry? I lighted on it, under my piece of (self) movable property, my coverlid; and thought Berga had died suddenly, and was now, in spirit, laying hold of my bed. However, I could not speak to her, nor as little to the Devil, who might well be supposed to have a hand in the game; but I turned myself solely to Heaven, and prayed aloud: "To thee I commit myself; thou alone heretofore hast cared for thy weak servant; and I swear that I will turn a new leaf,"--a promise which shall be kept nevertheless, though the whole was but stupid treachery and trick.

13. _Omnibus una_ salus _Sanctis, sed_ gloria _dispar_; that is to say (as Divines once taught), according to Saint Paul, we have all the same Beatitude in Heaven, but different degrees of Honor. Here, on Earth, we find a shadow of this in the writing world; for the Beatitude of authors once beatified by Criticism, whether they be genial, good, mediocre, or poor, is the same throughout; they all obtain the same pecuniary Felicity, the same slender profit. But, Heavens! in regard to the degrees of Fame, again, how far (in spite of the same emolument and sale) will a Dunce, even in his lifetime, be put below a Genius! Is not a shallow writer frequently forgotten in a single Fair? while a deep writer, or even a writer of genius, will blossom through fifty Fairs, and so may celebrate his Twenty-five Years' Jubilee, before, late forgotten, he is lowered into the German Temple of Fame; a Temple imitating the peculiarity of the _Padri Lucchesi_ churches in Naples, which (according to Volkmann) permit _burials_ under their roofs, but no _tombstone_.

My prayer had no effect with the unchristian Dragoon, who now, once for all, had got me prisoner in the dragnet of a coverlid; and heeded little whether a guest's bed were, by his means, made a state-bed and death-bed or not. He span out my nerves, like gold-wire through smaller and smaller holes, to utter inanition and evanition, for the bed-clothes at last literally marched off to the door of the room.

Now was the moment to rise into the sublime, and to trouble myself no longer about aught here below, but softly to devote myself to death. "Snatch me away," cried I, and, without thinking, cut three crosses; "quick, dispatch me, ye ghosts; I die more innocent than thousands of tyrants and blasphemers, to whom ye yet appear not, but to unpolluted me." Here I heard a sort of laugh, either on the street or in the side-room. At this warm human tone, I suddenly bloomed up again, as at the coming of a new Spring, in every twig and leaf. Wholly despising the winged coverlid, which was not now to be picked from the door, I laid myself down uncovered, but warm and perspiring from other causes, and soon fell asleep. For the rest, I am not the least ashamed, in the face of all refined capital cities,--though they were standing here at my hand,--that, by this Devil-belief and Devil-address, I have attained some likeness to our great German Lion, to Luther.

_Second Day in Flaetz_.

Early in the morning, I felt myself awakened by the well-known coverlid; it had laid itself on me like a nightmare; I gaped up; quiet, in a corner of the room, sat a red, round, blooming, decorated girl, like a full-blown tulip in the freshness of life, and gently rustling with gay ribbons as with leaves.

"Who's there--how came you in?" cried I, half-blind.

"I covered thee softly, and thought to let thee sleep," said Bergelchen; "I have walked all night to be here early; do but look!"

She showed me her boots, the only remnant of her travelling-gear which, in the moulting process of the toilette, she had not stript at the gate of Flaetz.

"Is there," said I, alarmed at her coming six hours sooner, and the more, as I had been alarmed all night and was still so, at her mysterious entrance; "is there some fresh woe come over us, fire, murder, robbery?"

She answered: "The old Rat thou hast chased so long, died yesterday; further there was nothing of importance."

"And all has been managed rightly, and according to my Letter of Instructions, at home?" inquired I.

"Yes, truly," answered she; "only I did not see the Letter; it is lost; thou hast packed it among thy clothes."

Well, I could not but forgive the blooming, brave pedestrian all omissions. Her eye, then her heart was bringing fresh cool morning air and morning red into my sultry hours. And yet, for this kind soul, looking into life with such love and hope, I must in a little while overcloud the merited Heaven of to-day, with tidings of my failure in the Catechetical Professorship! I dallied and postponed to the utmost. I asked how she had got in, as the whole _chevaux-de-frise_ barricado of chairs was still standing fast at the door. She laughed heartily, courtesying in village fashion, and said, she had planned it with her brother the day before yesterday, knowing my precautions in locking, that he should admit her into my room, that so she might cunningly awaken me. And now bolted the Dragoon with loud laughter into the apartment, and cried: "Slept well, brother?"

In this wise truly the whole ghost-story was now solved and expounded, as if by the pen of a Biester or a Hennings. I instantly saw through the entire ghost-scheme which our Dragoon had executed. With some bitterness I told him my conjecture, and his sister my story. But he lied and laughed; nay, attempted shamelessly enough to palm spectre-notions on me a second time, in open day. I answered coldly, that in me he had found the wrong man, granting even that I had some similarity with Luther, with Hobbes, with Brutus, all of whom had seen and dreaded ghosts. He replied, tearing the facts away from their originating causes: "All he could say was, that last night he had heard some poor sinner creaking and lamenting dolefully enough; and from this he had inferred it must be an unhappy brother set upon by goblins."

79. Weak and wrong heads are the hardest to change; and their inward man acquires a scanty covering; thus capons never moult.

In the end, his sister's eyes also were opened to the low character which he had tried to act with me; she sharply flew at him, pushed him with both hands out of his and my door, and called after him: "Wait, thou villain, I will mind it!"

Then hastily turning round, she fell on my neck, and (at the wrong place) into laughter, and said: "The wild fool! But I could not keep my laugh another minute, and he was not to see it. Forgive the ninny, thou a learned man, his ass-pranks; what can one expect?"

I inquired whether she, in her nocturnal travelling, had not met any spectral persons; though I knew that to her a wild beast, a river, a half abyss, are nothing. No, she had not; but the gay-dressed town's-people, she said, had scared her in the morning. O, how I do love these soft Harmonica-quiverings of female fright!

At last, however, I was forced to bite or cut the coloquinta-apple, and give her the half of it; I mean the news of my rejected petition for the Catechetical Professorship. Wishing to spare this joyful heart the rudeness of the whole truth, and to subtract something from a heavy burden, more fit for the shoulders of a man, I began: "Bergelchen, the Professorship affair is taking another, though still a good enough course; the General, whom may the Devil and his Grandmother teach sense, will not be taken except by storm; and storm he shall have, as certainly as I have on my nightcap."

"Then thou art nothing yet?" inquired she.

"For the moment, indeed, not!" answered I.

89. In times of misfortune, the Ancients supported themselves with Philosophy or Christianity; the moderns again (for example, in the reign of Terror) take to Pleasure; as the wounded Buffalo, for bandage and salve, rolls himself in the mire.