Part 31

"Then, thou art nothing yet?" inquired she.

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

"But before Saturday night?" said she.

"Not quite," said I.

"Then am I sore stricken, and could leap out of the window," said she, and turned away her rosy face, to hide its wet eyes, and was silent very long. Then, with painfully quivering voice, she began: "Good Christ stand by me at Neusattel on Sunday, when these high-prancing prideful dames look at me in church, and I grow scarlet for shame!"

Here in sympathetic woe I sprang out of bed to the dear soul, over whose brightly blooming cheeks warm tears were rolling, and cried: "Thou true heart, do not tear me in pieces so! May I die, if yet in these dog-days I become not all and everything that thou wishest! Speak, wilt thou be Mining-raethin, Build-raethin, Court-raethin, War-raethin, Chamber-raethin, Commerce-raethin, Legations-raethin, or Devil and his Dam's raethin: I am here, and will buy it, and be it. Tomorrow I send riding posts to Saxony and Hessia, to Prussia and Russia, to Friesland and Katzenellenbogen, and demand patents. Nay, I will carry matters farther than another, and be all things at once, Flachsenfingen Court-rath, Scheerau Excise-rath, Haarhaar Building-rath, Pestitz[6] Chamber-rath (for we have the cash); and thus, alone and single-handed, represent with one _podex_ and _corpus_ a whole Rath-session of select Raths; and stand, a complete Legion of Honour, on one single pair of legs: the like no man ever did."

[Note 63: To apprehend danger from the Education of the People, is like fearing lest the thunderbolt strike into the house because it has _windows_; whereas the lightning never comes through these, but through their _lead_ framing, or down by the _smoke_ of the chimney.]

[Note 6: Cities of Richter's romance kingdom. Flachsenfingen he sometimes calls _Klein-Wien_, Little Vienna.--ED.]

"O! now thou art angel-good!" said she, and gladder tears rolled down; "thou shalt counsel me thyself which are the finest Raths, and these we will be."

"No," continued I, in the fire of the moment, "neither shall this serve us: to me it is not enough that to Mrs. Chaplain thou canst announce thyself as Building-raethin, to Mrs. Town-parson as Legations-raethin, to Mrs. Buergermeister as Court-raethin, to Mrs. Road-and-toll-surveyor as Commerce-raethin, or how and where thou pleasest----"

"Ah! my own too good Attelchen!" said she.

"--But," continued I, "I shall likewise become corresponding member of the several Learned Societies in the several best capital cities (among which I have only to choose); and truly no common actual member, but a whole honorary member; then thee, as another honorary member, growing out of my honorary membership, I uplift and exalt."

Pardon me, my Friends, this warm cataplasm, or deception-balsam for a wounded breast, whose blood is so pure and precious, that one may be permitted to endeavour, with all possible stanching-lints and spider-webs, to drive it back into the fair heart, its home.

But now came bright and brightest hours. I had conquered Time, I had conquered myself and Berga: seldom does a conqueror, as I did, bless both the victorious and the vanquished party. Berga called back her former Heaven, and pulled off her dusty boots, and on her flowery shoes. Precious morning beverage, intoxicating to a heart that loves! I felt (if the low figure may be permitted) a double-beer of courage in me, now that I had one being more to protect. In general it is my nature--which the honourable Premier seems not to be fully aware of--to grow bolder not among the bold, but fastest among poltroons, the bad example acting on me by the rule of contraries. Little touches may in this case shadow forth man and wife, without casting them into the shade: When the trim waiter with his green silk apron brought up cracknels for breakfast, and I told him: "Johann, for two!" Berga said: "He would oblige her very much," and called him Herr Johann.

[Note 76: Your economical, preaching Poetry, apparently supposes that a surgical Stone-cutter is an Artistical one; and a Pulpit or a Sinai a Hill of the Muses.]

Bergelchen, more familiar with rural burghs than capital cities, felt a good deal amazed and alarmed at the coffee-trays, dressing-tables, paper-hangings, sconces, alabaster inkholders, with Egyptian emblems, as well as at the gilt bell-handle, lying ready for any one to pull out or to push in. Accordingly, she had not courage to walk through the hall, with its lustres, purely because a whistling, whiffling Cap-and-feather was gesturing up and down in it. Nay, her poor heart was like to fail when she peeped out of the window at so many gay promenading town's-people (I was briskly whistling a Gascon air down over them); and thought that in a little while, at my side, she must break into the middle of this dazzling courtly throng. In a case like this, reasons are of less avail than examples. I tried to elevate my Bergelchen, by reciting some of my nocturnal dream-feats; for example, how, riding on a whale's back, with a three-pronged fork, I had pierced and eaten three eagles; and by more of the like sort: but I produced no effect; perhaps, because to the timid female heart the battle-field was presented rather than the conqueror, the abyss rather than the overleaper of it.

At this time a sheaf of newspapers was brought me, full of gallant decisive victories. And though these happen only on one side, and on the other are just so many defeats, yet the former somehow assimilate more with my blood than the latter, and inspire me (as Schiller's _Robbers_ used to do) with a strange inclination to lay hold of some one, and thrash and curry him on the spot. Unluckily for the waiter, he had chanced, even now, like a military host, to stand a triple bell-order for march, before he would leave his ground and come up. "Sir," began I, my head full of battle-fields, and my arm of inclination to baste him; and Berga feared the very worst, as I gave her the well-known anger and alarm signal, namely, shoved up my cap to my hindhead--"Sir, is this your way of treating guests? Why don't you come promptly? Don't come so again; and now be going, friend!" Although his retreat was my victory, I still kept briskly cannonading on the field of action, and fired the louder (to let him hear it), the more steps he descended in his flight. Bergelchen,--who felt quite horrorstruck at my fury, particularly in a quite strange house, and at a quality waiter with silk apron,--mustered all her soft words against the wild ones of a man-of-war, and spoke of dangers that might follow. "Dangers," answered I, "are just what I seek; but for a man there are none; in all cases he will either conquer or evade them, either show them front or back."

[Note 115: According to Smith, the universal measure of economical value is _Labour_. This fact, at least in regard to spiritual and poetical value, we Germans had discovered before Smith; and to my knowledge we have always preferred the learned poet to the poet of genius, and the heavy book full of labour to the light one full of sport.]

I could scarcely lay aside this indignant mood, so sweet was it to me, and so much did I feel refreshed by the fire of rage, and quickened in my breast as by a benignant stimulant. It belongs certainly to the class of Unrecognised Mercies (on which, in ancient times, special sermons were preached), that one is never more completely in his Heaven and _Monplaisir_ (a pleasure-palace) than while in the midst of right hearty storming and indignation. Heavens! what might not a man of weight accomplish in this new walk of charity! The gall-bladder is for us the chief swimming-bladder and Montgolfier; and the filling of it costs us nothing but a contumelious word or two from some bystander. And does not the whirlwind Luther, with whom I nowise compare myself, confess, in his _Table-talk_, that he never preached, sung, or prayed so well, as while in a rage? Truly, he was a man sufficient of himself to rouse many others into rage.

The whole morning till noon now passed in viewing sights, and trafficking for wares; and indeed, for the greatest part, in the broad street of our Hotel. Berga needed but to press along with me into the market throng; needed but to look, and see that she was decorated more according to the fashion than hundreds like her. But soon, in her care for household gear, she forgot that of dress, and in the potter-market the toilette-table faded from her thoughts.

I, for my share, full of true tedium, while gliding after her through her various marts, with their long cheapenings and chafferings, merely acted the Philosopher hid within me: I weighed this empty Life, and the heavy value which is put upon it, and the daily anxiety of man lest it, this lightest down-feather of the Earth, fly off, and feather him, and take him with it. These thoughts, perhaps, I owe to the street-fry of boys, who were turning their market-freedom to account, by throwing stones at one another all round me: for, in the midst of this tumult, I vividly figured myself to be a man who had never seen war; and who, therefore, never having experienced, that often of a thousand bullets not one will hit, feels apprehensive of these few silly stones lest they beat-in his nose and eyes. O! it is the battle-field alone that sows, manures and nourishes true courage, courage even for daily, domestic and smallest perils. For not till he comes from the battle-field can a man both sing and cannonade; like the canary-bird, which, though so melodious, so timid, so small, so tender, so solitary, so soft-feathered, can yet be trained to fire off cannon, though cannon of smaller calibre.

[Note 4: The Hypocrite does not imitate the old practice, of cutting fruit by a knife poisoned only on the one side, and giving the poisoned side to the victim, the cutter eating the sound side himself; on the contrary, he so disinterestedly inverts this practice, that to others he shows and gives the sound moral half, or side, and retains for himself the poisoned one. Heavens! compared with such a man, how wicked does the Devil seem!]

After dinner (in our room), we issued from the Purgatory of the market-tumult,--where Berga, at every booth, had something to order, and load her attendant maid with,--into Heaven, into the Dog Inn, as the best Flaetz public and pleasure-house without the gates is named, where, in market-time, hundreds turn in, and see thousands going by. On the way thither, my little wife, my elbow-tendril, as it were, had extracted from me such a measure of courage, that, while going through the Gate (where I, aware of the military order that you must not pass _near_ the sentry, threw myself over to the other side), she quietly glided on, close by the very guns and fixed bayonets of the City Guard. Outside the wall, I could direct her with my finger, to the bechained, begrated, gigantic Schabacker-Palace, mounting up even externally on stairs, where I last night had called and (it may be) stormed: "I had rather take a peep at the Giant," said she, "and the Dwarf: why else are we under one roof with them?"

In the pleasure-house itself we found sufficient pleasure; encircled, as we were, with blooming faces and meadows. In my secret heart, I all along kept looking down, with success, on Schabacker's refusal; and till midnight made myself a happy day of it: I had deserved it, Berga still more. Nevertheless, about one in the morning, I was destined to find a windmill to tilt with; a windmill, which truly lays about it with somewhat longer, stronger and more numerous arms than a giant, for which Don Quixote might readily enough have taken it. On the market-place, for reasons more easily fancied than specified in words, I let Berga go along some twenty paces before me; and I myself, for these foresaid reasons, retire without malice behind a covered booth, the tent most probably of some rude trader; and linger there a moment according to circumstances: lo! steering hither with dart and spear, comes the Booth-watcher, and coins and stamps me, on the spot, into a filcher and housebreaker of his Booth-street; though the simpleton sees nothing but that I am standing in the corner, and doing anything but--taking. A sense of honour without callosity is never blunted for such attacks. But how in the dead of night was a man of this kind, who had nothing in his head--at the utmost beer, instead of brains--to be enlightened on the truth of the matter?

[Note 67: Individual Minds, nay Political Bodies, are like organic bodies: extract the _interior_ air from them, the atmosphere crushes them together; pump off under the bell the _exterior_ resisting air, the interior inflates and bursts them. Therefore, let every State keep up its internal and its external resistance both at once.]

I shall not conceal my perilous resource: I seized the fox by the tail, as we say; in other words, I made as if I had been muddled, and knew not rightly, in my liquor, what I was about: I therefore mimicked everything I was master of in this department; staggered hither and thither; splayed out my feet like a dancing-master; got into zigzag in spite of all efforts at the straight line; nay, I knocked my good head (perhaps one of the clearest and emptiest of the night), like a full one, against real posts.

However, the Booth-bailiff, who probably had been oftener drunk than I, and knew the symptoms better, or even felt them in himself at this moment, looked upon the whole exhibition as mere craft, and shouted dreadfully: "Stop, rascal; thou art no more drunk than I! I know thee of old. Stand, I say, till I speak to thee! Wouldst have thy long finger in the market, too? Stand, dog, or I'll make thee!"

You see the whole _nodus_ of the matter: I whisked away zigzag among the booths as fast as possible, from the claws of this rude Tosspot; yet he still hobbled after me. But my Teutoberga, who had heard somewhat of it, came running back; clutched the tipsy market-warder by the collar, and said (shrieking, it is true, in village-wise): "Stupid sot, go sleep the drink out of thy head, or I'll teach thee! Dost know, then, whom thou art speaking to? My husband, Army-chaplain Schmelzle under General and Minister von Schabacker at Pimpelstadt, thou blockhead!--Fye! Take shame, fellow!" The watchman mumbled: "Meant no harm," and reeled about his business. "O thou Lioness!" said I, in the transport of love, "why hast thou never been in any deadly peril, that I might show thee the Lion in thy husband?"

[Note 8: In great Saloons, the real stove is masked into a pretty ornamented sham stove; so likewise, it is fit and pretty that a virgin _Love_ should always hide itself in an interesting virgin _Friendship_.]

[Note 12: Nations--unlike rivers, which precipitate their impurities in level places and when at rest--drop their baseness just whilst in the most violent motion; and become the dirtier the farther they flow along through lazy flats.]

Thus lovingly we both reached home; and perhaps in the sequel of this Fair day might still have enjoyed a glorious after-midnight, had not the Devil led my eye to the ninth volume of Lichtenberg's Works, and the 206th page, where this passage occurs: "It is not impossible that at a future period, our Chemists may light on some means of suddenly decomposing the Atmosphere by a sort of Ferment. In this way the world may be destroyed." Ah! true indeed! Since the Earth-ball is lapped up in the larger Atmospheric ball, let but any chemical scoundrel, in the remotest scoundrel-island, say in New Holland, devise some decomposing substance for the Atmosphere, like what a spark of fire would be for a powder-wagon: in a few seconds, the monstrous devouring world-storm catches me and you in Flaetz by the throat; my breathing, and the like, in this choke-air is over, and the whole game ended! The Earth becomes a boundless gallows, where the very cattle are hanged: worm-powder, and bug-liquor, Bradly ant-ploughs, and rat-poison, and wolf-traps are, in this universal world-trap and world-poison, no longer specially needful; and the Devil takes the whole, in the Bartholomew-night, when this cursed "Ferment" is invented.

From the true soul, however, I concealed these deadly Night Thoughts; seeing she would either painfully have sympathised in them, or else mirthfully laughed at them. I merely gave orders that next morning (Saturday) she was to be standing booted and ready, at the outset of the returning coach; if so were she would have me speedily fulfil her wishes in regard to that stock of Rathships which lay so near her heart. She rejoiced in my purpose, gladly surrendering the market for such prospects. I too slept sound, my great toe tied to her finger, the whole night through.

[Note 28: When Nature takes the huge old Earth-round, the Earth-loaf, and kneads it up again, for the purpose of introducing under this pie-crust new stuffing and Dwarfs,--she then, for most part, as a mother when baking will do to her daughters, gives in jest a little fraction of the dough (two or three thousand square leagues of such dough are enough for a child) to some Poetical or Philosophical, or Legislative polisher, that so the little elf may have something to be shaping and manufacturing beside its mother. And when the other young ones get a taste of sisterkin's baking, they all clap hands, and cry: "Aha, Mother! canst; bake, like _Suky_ here?"]

The Dragoon, next morning, twitched me by the ear, and secretly whispered into it that he had a pleasant fairing to give his sister; and so would ride off somewhat early, on the nag he had yesterday purchased of the horse-dealer. I thanked him beforehand.

At the appointed hour, all gaily started from the Staple, I excepted; for I still retained, even in the fairest daylight, that nocturnal Devil's-Ferment and Decomposition (of my cerebral globe as well as of the Earth-globe) fermenting in my head; a proof that the night had not affected me, or exaggerated my fear. The Blind Passenger, whom I liked so ill, also mounted along with us, and looked at me as usual, but without effect; for on this occasion, when the destruction not of myself only, but of worlds, was occupying my thoughts, the Passenger was nothing to me but a joke and a show: as a man, while his leg is being sawed off, does not feel the throbbing of his heart; or amid the humming of cannon, does not guard himself from that of wasps; so to me any Passenger, with all the fire-brands he might throw into my near or distant Future, could appear but ludicrous, at a time when I was reflecting that the "Ferment" might, even in my journey between Flaetz and Neusattel, be, by some American or European man of science, quite guiltlessly experimenting and decomposing, hit upon by accident and let loose. The question, nay prize-question now, however, were this: "In how far, since Lichtenberg's threatening, it may not appear world-murderous and self-murderous, if enlightened Potentates of chemical nations do not enjoin it on their chemical subjects, who in their decompositions and separations may so easily separate the soul from their body, and unite Heaven with Earth,--not in future to make any other chemical experiments than those already made, which hitherto have profited the State rather than harmed it?"

Unfortunately, I continued sunk in this Domsday of the Ferment with all my thoughts and meditations, without, in the whole course of our return from Flaetz to Neusattel, suffering or observing anything, except that I actually arrived there, and at the same time saw the Blind Passenger once more go his ways.

My Bergelchen alone had I constantly looked at by the road, partly that I might still see her, so long as life and eyes endured; partly that, even at the smallest danger to her, be it a great, or even all-over-sweeping Deluge and World's-doom, I might die, if not _for_ her, at least _by_ her, and so united with that stanch true heart, cast away a plagued and plaguing life, in which, at any rate, not half of my wishes for her have been fulfilled.

So then were my Journey over,--crowned with some _Historiolae_; and in time coming, perhaps, still more rewarded through you, ye Friends about Flaetz, if in these pages you shall find any well-ground pruning-knives, whereby you may more readily out-root the weedy tangle of Lies, which for the present excludes me from the gallant Schabacker:--Only this cursed Ferment still sits in my head. Farewell then, so long as there are Atmospheres left us to breathe. I wish I had that Ferment out of my head.

Yours always,

ATTILA SCHMELZLE.

P.S.--My Brother-in-law has kept his promise well, and Berga is dancing. Particulars in my next!

LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN,

DOWN TO OUR OWN TIMES;

EXTRACTED FROM

FIFTEEN LETTER-BOXES BY JEAN PAUL.

LETTER TO MY FRIENDS,

INSTEAD OF PREFACE.

Merchants, Authors, young Ladies and Quakers, call all persons, with whom they have any business, Friends; and my readers accordingly are my table and college Friends. Now, at this time, I am about presenting so many hundred Friends with just as many hundred gratis copies; and my Bookseller has orders to supply each on request, after the Fair, with his copy--in return for a trifling consideration and _don gratuit_ to printers, pressmen and other such persons. But as I could not, like the French authors, send the whole Edition to the binder, the blank leaf in front was necessarily wanting; and thus to write a complimentary word or two upon it was out of my power. I have therefore caused a few white leaves to be inserted directly after the title-page: on these we are now printing.

My Book contains the Life of a Schoolmaster, extracted and compiled from various public and private documents. With this Biography, dear Friends, it is the purpose of the Author not so much to procure you a pleasure, as to teach you how to enjoy one. In truth, King Xerxes should have offered his prize-medals not for the invention of new pleasures, but for a good methodology and directory to use the old ones.

Of ways for becoming happier (not happy) I could never inquire out more than three. The first, rather an elevated road, is this: To soar away so far above the clouds of life, that you see the whole external world, with its wolf-dens, charnel-houses and thunder-rods, lying far down beneath you, shrunk into a little child's garden. The second is: Simply to sink down into this little garden; and there to nestle yourself so snugly, so homewise, in some furrow, that in looking out from your warm lark-nest, you likewise can discern no wolf-dens, charnel-houses or thunder-rods, but only blades and ears, every one of which, for the nest-bird, is a tree, and a sun-screen, and rain-screen. The third, finally, which I look upon as the hardest and cunningest, is that of alternating between the other two.

This I shall now satisfactorily expound to men at large.

The Hero, the Reformer, your Brutus, your Howard, your Republican, he whom civic storm, or genius, poetic storm, impels; in short, every mortal with a great Purpose, or even a perennial Passion (were it but that of writing the largest folios), all these men fence themselves in by their internal world against the frosts and heats of the external, as the madman in a worse sense does: every _fixed_ idea, such as rules every genius, every enthusiast, at least periodically, separates and elevates a man above the bed and board of this Earth, above its Dog's-grottoes, buckthorns and Devil's-walls; like the Bird of Paradise, he slumbers flying; and on his outspread pinions, oversleeps unconsciously the earthquakes and conflagrations of Life, in his long fair dream of his ideal Motherland,--Alas! to few is this dream granted; and these few are so often awakened by Flying Dogs![30]

[30] So are the Vampires called.