His sorites, as long as he lived, was the following: "He had come into
the world, not feet foremost, but head foremost, and, accordingly,
carried his head and nose high and lofty,[102] because he could not help
it. Now he knew of no more genuine freedom than health;--every malady
shuts up and warps the soul, and the earth is, merely for that
reason, a universal block-house, _la salpetrière_ and house of
bruises;[103]--whoso made use of an oyster-snail-viper medicine was
himself a slimy, snaky, sticking viper, oyster, snail, and therefore the
ever-free savages killed their invalids, and the vigorous Spartans gave
no patient an office, least of all the crown;--and strength was
especially necessary, in our degenerate days, in order to maul qualified
subjects, because, to his certain knowledge, the fist with some
substance in it was the best plaintiff's plea and _actio ex lege
diffamari_ which a citizen could institute."
Therefore he bathed summer and winter in ice-cold water, just as he, for
the same reason, kept himself temperate in all things.
Now, then, in this odious May-weather, he had merely, in his gray
hussar-cloak,--at home, his night-gown,--and with shoes down at the
heel, gone to the water-side; he had previously stripped himself at the
house so as to be ready as soon as he should arrive at the bank. The
mourning-company, who saw him go at his swift pace down to the water,
and at last throw off everything and leap in, could not but believe the
man meant to drown himself, and ran in a body to his bathing-place, not
to let him do it. "Do not drown himself!" cried the mourning-company of
blacks, while yet afar off. He just let them come on till he could
discourse the matter to them somewhat nearer, in the following wise:--"I
am yet open to conviction; I can hear reason, good folk, though I am
already standing up to my neck in the water; but suffer yourselves to be
correctly informed in this case, dear _Cherstens_ generally, for so
Christians were called in the time of Charles. I am a poor
Sacramentarian, and can hardly recollect what I have hitherto lived on,
it was so bloody-desperate little. Whatever I have undertaken in this
world, no blessing went with it, but it was all crab's-track backwards
and forward. I set up, in Vienna, a neat little magazine of snipes'
dung, but I made nothing out of it for want of snipes. I took hold on
the other end, and hawked about in Carlsbad, for the lords and great
ones, who are accustomed to set a picture upon every old stool and piece
of trumpery, fine engravings for waste-paper and privy purposes, in
order that, instead of the mere printed paper, they might have something
tasty for consumption; but the whole set was left, a dead loss, on my
hands, because the manner was too hard and not ideal enough. In London I
prepared ready-made speeches (for I am a _litterateur_) to be used by
men who are hanged, and yet would fain have something to say for
themselves: I offered them to the richest parliamentary orators, and
even knaves of booksellers, but came near having to use the speeches for
myself. I would gladly have got my living by vomiting,[104] but that
requires funds. I tried once to get a settlement as note-stand to a
count's regiment, because it looks stupid enough on drill- and
parade-days to see every one with a musical flap hanging on his
shoulder, from which his next neighbor behind plays. I offered for a
trifle to wear all the musicalia on my own person, and stand before them
with the notes; but the first-lieutenant (who is at once in the regency
and in the treasury) thought it would make the fifers laugh when they
came to blow. Thus has it fared with me from time immemorial, dear
Cherstens--but don't trample about on my precious cloak there! As ill
luck would have it, I entered into wedlock with a lady of Vienna, who
was endowed with melted seals;[105] her name was _Prænumerantia
Elementaria Philanthropia_;[106] you don't know what this means in
German,--a real hell-broom, who chased me, all heated, like a hunted
stag, into the reeds here. Cherstens, I should defame myself in the
water, were I to come out plainly with the whole story of our woful
condition;[107] ... in short, my Philanthropia before marriage was soft
as the spines of a new-born hedge-hog, but in the nuptial state, when
the foliage was off, I saw, as on trees in winter, one raven's- and
devil's-nest after another. She was all the time dressing herself and
dressing herself, till it was time to undress; when a fault in me or the
children had been removed, she would still continue to scold a little,
as one continues to vomit, when the emetic and everything is out; she
indulged me preciously little, and had I had a Fontanel[108] she would
have reproached me for the fresh pea which I should have been obliged
every day to put into it; in short, we two pulled opposite ways,--the
linch-pin of love came out in the struggle, and I came with the
forward-wheels down into the water here, and my Prænumerantia stays with
the hind-wheels at home. See, my women, this is why I do violence to
myself--besides, the gnawing-man[109] would have, at any rate, caught me
by the throat; but behold yourselves in me as in a mirror! For when a
man who is a _litterateur_, and therefore, as you yet know by the case
of Fichte, goes about as instituted overseer, schoolmaster, and mentor
of the human race, leaps overboard before his wife's face, and lets his
Ephorie and tutorship go, you may conclude from this of what your own
husbands, who cannot measure themselves with me at all in learning, are
capable, in case you are such Prænumerantias, Elementarias, and
Philanthropias as unfortunately you have the appearance of being. But,"
he concluded suddenly, as he saw Albano and the Doctor, "clear
yourselves away; I am going to drown myself!"
"Ah, dear Schoppe!" said Albano. Schoppe blushed at his situation. "It
must be a clown," said the retiring funeral retinue. "What child's
foolery is this, then?" asked Sphex, resenting Albano's former passion
and the anatomical misshot, and derived satisfaction from telling the
story of the latter's rage. Schoppe knew how heartily the noble youth
loved him, and he would not say anything, because he was ashamed, but he
swore to himself (in the grotesque style to which he was accustomed even
in soliloquy) very shortly to let him into his breast-cavern, and show
him hanging therein a whole, wild heart full of love.