Part 35

For while the Quintus, in his vapoury chamber, was thus running over the sounding-board of his early years, the Rathsdiener, or City-officer, entered with a lantern and the Presentation; and behind him the courier of the Frau von Aufhammer with a note and a table-clock. The Rittmeisterinn had transformed her payment for the Dog-days sickbed-exhortation into a Christmas present; which consisted, _first_, of a table-clock, with a wooden ape thereon, starting out when the hours struck, and drumming along with every stroke; _secondly_, of the Conrectorate, which she had procured for him.

As in the public this appointment from the private Flachsenfingen Council has not been judged of as it deserved, I consider it my duty to offer a defence for the body corporate; and that rather here, than in the _Reichsanzeiger_, or _Imperial Indicator_.--I have already mentioned, in the Second Letter-Box, that the Town-Syndic drove a trade in Hamburg candles; and the then Buergermeister in coffee-beans, which he sold as well whole as ground. Their joint traffic, however, which they carried on exclusively, was in the eight School-offices of Flachsenfingen: the other members of the Council acting only as bale-wrappers, shopmen and accountants in the Council wareroom. A Council-house, indeed, is like an India-house, where not only resolutions or appointments, but also shoes and cloth, are exposed to sale. Properly speaking, the Councillor derives his freedom of office-trading from that principle of the Roman law: _Cui jus est donandi, eidem et vendendi jus est_, that is to say, He who has the right of giving anything away, has also a right to dispose of it for money, if he can. Now as the Council-members have palpably the right of conferring offices gratis, the right of selling them must follow of course.

_Short Extra-word on Appointment-brokers in general._

My chief anxiety is lest the Academy-product-sale-Commission[46] of the State carry on its office-trade too slackly. And what but the commonweal must suffer in the long-run, if important posts are distributed, not according to the current cash, which is laid down for them, but according to connexions, relationships, party recommendations, and bowings and cringings? Is it not a contradiction, to charge titulary offices dearer than real ones? Should not one rather expect that the real Hofrath would pay higher by the _alterum tantum_ than the mere titulary Hofrath?--Money, among European nations, is now the equivalent and representative of value in all things, and consequently in understanding; the rather as a _head_ is stamped on it: to pay down the purchase-money of an office is therefore neither more nor less than to stand an _examen rigorosum_, which is held by a good _schema examinandi_. To invert this, to pretend exhibiting your qualifications, in place of these their surrogates, and assignates and _monnoie de confiance_, is simply to resemble the crazy philosophers in _Gulliver's Travels_, who, for social converse, instead of names of things, brought the things themselves tied up in a bag; it is, indeed, plainly as much as trying to fall back into the barbarous times of trade by barter, when the Romans, instead of the figured cattle on their leather money, drove forth the beeves themselves.

[46] Borrowed from the "Imperial Mine-product-sale-Commission," in Vienna: in their very names these Vienna people show taste.

From all such injudicious notions I myself am so far removed, that often when I used to read that the King of France was devising new offices, to stand and sell them under the booth of his Baldaquin, I have set myself to do something of the like. This I shall now at least calmly propose; not vexing my heart whether Governments choose to adopt it or not. As our Sovereign will not allow us to multiply offices purely for sale, nay, on the contrary, is day and night (like managers of strolling companies) meditating how to give more parts to one State-actor; and thus to the Three Stage Unities to add a Fourth, that of Players; as the above French method, therefore, will not apply, could not we at least contrive to invent some Virtues harmonising with the offices, along with which they might be sold as titles? Might we not, for instance, with the office of a Referendary, put off at the same time a titular Incorruptibility, for a fair consideration; and so that this virtue, as not belonging to the office, must be separately paid for by the candidate? Such a market-title and patent of nobility could not but be ornamental to a Referendary. We forget that in former times such high titles were appended to all posts whatsoever: the scholastic Professor then wrote himself (besides his official designation) "The Seraphic," "The Incontrovertible," "The Penetrating;" the King wrote himself "The Great," "The Bald," "The Bold," and so also did the Rabbins. Could it be unpleasant to gentlemen in the higher stations of Justice, if the titles of Impartiality, Rapidity, &c. might be conferred on them by sale, as well as the posts themselves? Thus with the appointment of a Kammerrath, or Councillor of Revenue, the virtue of Patriotism might fitly be conjoined; and I believe, few Advocates would grudge purchasing the title of Integrity (as well as their common one of Government-advocacy), were it to be had in the market. If, however, any candidate chose to take his post without the virtues, then it would stand with himself to do so, and in the adoption of this reflex morality, Government should not constrain him.

It might be that, as, according to Tristram Shandy, clothes; according to Walter Shandy and Lavater, proper names exert an influence on men, appellatives would do so still more; since, on us, as on testaceous animals, _the foam so often hardens into shell_: but such internal morality is not a thing the State can have an eye to; for, as in the fine arts, it is not this, but the _representation_ of it, which forms her true aim.

I have found it rather difficult to devise for our different offices different verbal-virtues; but I should think there might many such divisions of Virtue (at this moment, Love of Freedom, Public-spirit, Sincerity and Uprightness occur to me) be hunted out; were but some well-disposed minister of state to appoint a Virtue-board or Moral Address Department, with some half dozen secretaries, who, for a small salary, might devise various virtues for the various posts. Were I in their place, I should hold a good prism before the white ray of Virtue, and divide it completely. Pity that it were not crimes we wanted--their subdivision I mean;--our country Judges might then be selected for this purpose. For in their tribunals, where only inferior jurisdiction, and no penalty above five florins Frankish, is admitted, they have a daily training how out of every mischief to make several small ones, none of which they ever punish to a greater amount than their five florins. This is a precious moral _Rolfinkenism_, which our Jurists have learned from the great Sin-cutters, St. Augustin and his Sorbonne, who together have carved more sins on Adam's Sin-apple than ever Rolfinken did faces on a cherry-stone. How different one of our Judges from a Papal Casuist, who, by side-scrapings, will rasp you down the best deadly sin into a venial!--

School-offices (to come to these) are a small branch of traffic certainly; yet still they are monarchies,--school-monarchies, to wit,--resembling the Polish crown, which, according to Pope's verse, is twice exposed to sale in the century; a statement, I need hardly say, arithmetically false, Newton having settled the average duration of a reign at twenty-two years. For the rest, whether the city Council bring the young of the community a Hameln _Rat_-and-Child-_catcher_; or a Weisse's _Child's-friend_,--this to the Council can make no difference; seeing the Schoolmaster is not a horse, for whose secret defects the horse-dealer is to be responsible. It is enough if Town-Syndic and Co. cannot reproach themselves with having picked out any fellow of genius; for a genius, as he is useless to the State, except for recreation and ornament, would at the very least exclude the duller, cooler head, who properly forms the true care and profit of the State; as your costly carat-pearl is good for show alone, but coarse grain-pearls for medicine. On the whole, if a schoolmaster be adequate to flog his scholars, it should suffice; and I cannot but blame our Commission of Inspectors when they go examining schools, that they do not make the schoolmaster go through the duty of firking one or two young persons of his class in their presence, by way of trial, to see what is in him.

_End of the Extra-word on Appointment-brokers in general._

Now again to our history! The Councillor Heads of the Firm had conferred the Conrectorate on my hero, not only with a view to the continued consumpt of candles and beans, but also on the strength of a quite mad notion: they believed, the Quintus would very soon die.

--And here I have reached a most important circumstance in this History, and one into which I have yet let no mortal look: now, however, it no longer depends on my will whether I shall shove aside the folding-screen from it or not; but I must positively lay it open, nay hang a reverberating-lamp over it.

In medical history, it is a well-known fact that in certain families the people all die precisely at the same age, just as in these families they are all born at the same age (of nine months); nay, from Voltaire, I recollect one family, the members of which at the same age all killed themselves. Now, in the Fixleinic lineage, it was the custom that the male ascendants uniformly on Cantata-Sunday, in their thirty-second year, took to bed and died: every one of my readers would do well to insert in his copy of the _Thirty-Years War_, Schiller having entirely omitted it, the fact, that in the course thereof, one Fixlein died of the plague, another of hunger, another of a musket-bullet; all in their thirty-second year. True Philosophy explains the matter thus: "The first two or three times, it happened purely by accident; and the other times, the people died of sheer fright: if not so, the whole fact is rather to be questioned."

But what did Fixlein make of the affair? Little or nothing: the only thing he did was, that he took little or no pains to fall in love with Thiennette; that so no other might have cause for fear on his account. He himself, however, for five reasons, minded it so little, that he hoped to be older than Senior Astmann before he died: First, because three Gipsies, in three different places and at three different times, had each shown him the same long vista of years in her magic mirror. Secondly, because he had a sound constitution. Thirdly, because his own brother had formed an exception, and perished before the thirties. Fourthly, on this ground: When a boy he had fallen sick of sorrow, on the very Cantata-Sunday when his father was lying in the winding-sheet, and only been saved from death by his playthings; and with this Cantata-sickness, he conceived that he had given the murderous Genius of his race the slip. Fifthly, the church-books being destroyed, and with them the certainty of his age, he could never fall into a right definite deadly fear: "It may be," said he, "that I have got whisked away over this whoreson year, and no one the wiser." I will not deny that last year he had fancied he was two-and-thirty: "however," said he, "if I am not to be so till, God willing, the next (1792), it may run away as smoothly as the last; am I not always in _His_ keeping? And were it unjust if the pretty years that were broken off from the life of my brother should be added to mine?"--Thus, under the cold snow of the Present, does poor man strive to warm himself, or to mould out of it a fair snow-man.

The Councillor Oligarchy, however, built upon the opposite opinion; and, like a Divinity, elevated our Quintus all at once from the Quintusship to the Conrectorate; swearing to themselves, that he would soon vacate it again. Properly speaking, by school-seniority, this holy chair should have belonged to the Subrector Hans von Fuechslein; but he wished it not; being minded to become Hukelum Parson; especially, as Astmann's Death-angel, according to sure intelligence, was opening more and more widely the door of this spiritual sheepfold. "If the fellow weather another year, 'tis more than I expect," said Hans.

This Hans was such a churl, that it is pity he had not been a Hanoverian Postboy; that so, by the Mandate of the Hanoverian Government, enjoining on all its Post-officers an elegant style of manners, he might have somewhat refined himself. To our poor Quintus, whom no mortal disliked, and who again could hate no mortal, he alone bore a grudge; simply because _Fixlein_ did not write himself _Fuechslein_, and had not chosen along with him to purchase a Patent of Nobility. The Subrector, on this his Patent triumphal chariot, drawn by a team of four specified ancestors, was obliged to see the Quintus, who was related to him, clutching by the lackey-straps behind the carriage; and to hear him, in the most despicable raiment, saying to the train: "He that rides there is my cousin, and a mortal, and I always remind him of it." The mild compliant Quintus never noticed this large wasp-poisonbag in the Subrector, but took it for a honeybag; nay, by his brotherly warmness, which the nobleman regarded as mere show, he concreted these venomous juices into still feller consistency. The Quintus, in his simplicity, took Fuechslein's contempt for envy of his pedagogic talents.

A Catherinenhof, an Annenhof, an Elizabethhof, Stralenhof and Petershof, all these Russian pleasure palaces, a man can dispense with (if not despise), who has a room, in which on Christmas-eve he walks about with a Presentation in his hand. The new Conrector now longed for nothing but--daylight: joys always (cares never) nibbled from him, like sparrows, his sleep-grains; and tonight, moreover, the registrator of his glad time, the clock-ape, drummed out every hour to him, which, accordingly, he spent in gay dreaming, rather than in sound snoring.

On Christmas-morn, he looked at his Class-prodromus, and thought but little of it; he scarcely knew what to make of his last night's foolish inflation about his Quintusship: "the Quintus-post," said he to himself, "is not to be named in the same day with the Conrectorate; I wonder how I could parade so last night before my promotion; at present, I had more reason." Today he ate, as on all Sundays and holydays, with the Master-Butcher Steinberger, his former Guardian. To this man, Fixlein was, what common people are _always_, but polished philosophical and sentimental people very _seldom_ are,--_thankful_: a man thanks you the less for presents, the more inclined he is to give presents of his own; and the beneficent is rarely a grateful person. Meister Steinberger, in the character of store-master, had introduced into the wire-cage of a garret, where Fixlein, while a Student at Leipzig, was suspended, many a well-filled trough with good canary-meat, of hung-beef, of household bread and _Sauerkraut_. Money indeed was never to be wrung from him: it is well known that he often sent the best calfskins gratis to the tanner, to be boots for our Quintus; but the tanning-charges the Ward himself had to bear.--On Fixlein's entrance, as was at all times customary, a smaller damask table-cloth was laid upon the large coarser one; the armchair; silver implements, and a wine-stoup were handed him; mere waste, which, as the Guardian used to say, suited well enough for a Scholar; but for a Flesher not at all. Fixlein first took his victuals, and then signified that he was made Conrector. "Ward," said Steinberger, "if you are made that, it is well.--Seest thou, Eva, I cannot buy a tail of thy cows now; I must have smelt it beforehand." He was hereby informing his daughter that the cash set apart for the fatted cattle must now be applied to the Conrectorate; for he was in the habit of advancing all instalment-dues to his ward, at an interest of four and a half per cent. Fifty gulden he had already lent the Quintus on his advancement to the Quintusship: of these the interest had to be duly paid; yet, on the day of payment, the Quintus always got some abatement; being wont every Sunday after dinner to instruct his guardian's daughter in arithmetic, writing and geography. Steinberger with justice required of his own grown-up daughter that she should know all the towns, where he in his wanderings as a journeyman had slain fat oxen; and if she slipped, or wrote crookedly, or subtracted wrong, he himself, as Academical Senate and Justiciary, was standing behind her chair, ready, so to speak, with the forge-hammer of his fist to beat out the dross from her brain, and at a few strokes hammer it into right ductility. The soft Quintus, for his part, had never struck her. On this account she had perhaps, with a few glances, appointed him executor and assignee of her heart. The old Flesher--simply because his wife was dead--had constantly been in the habit of searching with mine-lamps and pokers into all the corners of Eva's heart; and had in consequence long ago observed--what the Quintus never did--that she had a mind for the said Quintus. Young women conceal their sorrows more easily than their joys: today at the mention of this Conrectorate, Eva had become unusually _red_.

When she went after breakfast to bring in coffee, which the Ward had to drink down to the grounds: "I beat Eva to death if she but look at him," said he. Then addressing Fixlein: "Hear you, Ward, did you never cast an eye on my Eva? She can suffer you, and if you want her, you get her; but _we_ have done with one another: for a learned man needs quite another sort of thing."

"Herr Regiments-Quartermaster," said Fixlein (for this post Steinberger filled in the provincial Militia), "such a match were far too rich, at any rate, for a Schoolman." The Quartermaster nodded fifty times; and then said to Eva, as she returned,--at the same time taking down from the shelf a wooden crook, on which he used to rack out and suspend his slain calves: "Stop!--Hark, dost wish the present Herr Conrector here for thy husband?"

"Ah, good Heaven!" said Eva.

"Mayst wish him or not," continued the Flesher; "with this crook, thy father knocks thy brains out, if thou but think of a learned man. Now make his coffee." And so by the dissevering stroke of this wooden crook was a love easily smitten asunder, which in a higher rank, by such cutting through it with the sword, would only have foamed and hissed the keenlier.

Fixlein might now, at any hour he liked, lay hold of fifty florins Frankish, and clutch the pedagogic sceptre, and become coadjutor of the Rector, that is, Conrector. We may assert, that it is with debts, as with proportions in Architecture; of which Wolf has shown that those are the best, which can be expressed in the smallest numbers. Nevertheless, the Quartermaster cheerfully took learned men under his arm: for the notion that his debtor would decease in his thirty-second year, and that so Death, as creditor in the first rank, must be paid his Debt of Nature, before the other creditors could come forward with their debts--this notion he named stuff and oldwifery; he was neither superstitious nor fanatical, and he walked by firm principles of action, such as the common man much oftener has than your vapouring man of letters, or your empty dainty man of rank.

* * * * *

As it is but a few clear Ladydays, warm Mayday-nights, at the most a few odorous Rose-weeks, which I am digging from this Fixleinic Life, embedded in the dross of week-day cares; and as if they were so many veins of silver, am separating, stamping, smelting and burnishing for the reader,--I must now travel on with the stream of his history to Cantata-Sunday, 1792, before I can gather a few handfuls of this gold-dust, to carry in and wash in my biographical gold-hut. That Sunday, on the contrary, is very metalliferous: do but consider that Fixlein is yet uncertain (the ashes of the Church-books not being legible) whether it is conducting him into his thirty-second or his thirty-third year.

From Christmas till then he did nothing, but simply became Conrector. The new chair of office was a Sun-altar, on which, from his Quintus-ashes, a young Phoenix combined itself together. Great changes--in offices, marriages, travels--make us younger; we always date our history from the last revolution, as the French have done from theirs. A colonel, who first set foot on the ladder of seniority as corporal, is five times younger than a king, who in his whole life has never been aught else except a--crown-prince.

FIFTH LETTER-BOX.

_Cantata-Sunday. Two Testaments. Pontac; Blood; Love._

The Spring months clothe the earth in new variegated hues; but man they usually dress in black. Just when our icy regions are becoming fruitful, and the flower-waves of the meadows are rolling together over our quarter of the globe, we on all hands meet with men in sables, the beginning of whose Spring is full of tears. But, on the other hand, this very upblooming of the renovated earth is itself the best balm for sorrow over those who lie under it; and graves are better hid by blossoms than by snow.

In April, which is no less deadly than it is fickle, old Senior Astmann, our Conrector's teacher, was overtaken by death. His departure it was meant to hide from the Rittmeisterinn; but the unusual ringing of funereal peals carried his swan-song to her heart; and gradually set the curfew-bell of her life into similar movement. Age and sufferings had already marked out the first incisions for Death, so that he required but little effort to cut her down; for it is with men as with trees, they are notched long before felling, that their life-sap may exude. The second stroke of apoplexy was soon followed by the last: it is strange that Death, like criminal courts, cites the apoplectic thrice.

Men are apt to postpone their _last_ will as long as their _better_ one: the Rittmeisterinn would perhaps have let all her hours, till the speechless and deaf one, roll away without testament, had not Thiennette, during the last night, before from sick-nurse she became corpse-watcher, reminded the patient of the poor Conrector, and of his meagre hunger-bitten existence, and of the scanty aliment and board-wages which Fortune had thrown him, and of his empty Future, where, like a drooping yellow plant in the parched deal-box of the schoolroom between scholars and creditors, he must languish to the end. Her own poverty offered her a model of his; and her inward tears were the fluid tints with which she coloured her picture. As the Rittmeisterinn's testament related solely to domestics and dependents, and as she began with the male ones, Fixlein stood at the top; and Death, who must have been a special friend of the Conrector's, did not lift his scythe and give the last stroke till his protegee had been with audible voice declared testamentary heir; then he cut all away, life, testament and hopes.