[Illustration: Decorative E]
verybody said it was an extraordinary affair altogether, and for once
everybody was right. Baron Humpfelhimmel himself would say nothing about
it for two reasons. The first reason was that nobody dared ask him what
he thought about it, and the second was that he was too proud to speak
to anybody concerning any subject whatsoever, unless questioned. That he
always laughed, no matter what happened, was the melancholy fact, and
had been a melancholy fact from his childhood's earliest hour. He was
born laughing. He laughed in church, he laughed at home. When his father
spanked him he roared with laughter, and when he suffered from the
measles he could not begin to restrain his mirth.
The situation seemed all the more singular when it was remembered that
Rudolf von Pepperpotz, the previous Baron Humpfelhimmel, and father of
the Laughing Baron, as he was called, was never known to smile from his
childhood's earliest hour to his dying day, and, strangest of all, was a
far more amiable person, despite his solemnity, than the present Baron
for all his laughter.
"What does it mean, do you suppose?" Frau Ehrenbreitstein once asked of
Hans Pumpernickel, her husband's private secretary, of whom you have
already had some account.
"I cannot tell," Hans had answered, "and I have my reason for saying
that I cannot tell," he added, significantly.
"What is that reason, Hans?" asked the good lady, her curiosity aroused
by the boy's manner.
"It is this," said Hans, his voice sinking to a whisper. "I cannot tell,
because--because I do not know!"
And this, let me say in passing, was why Hans Pumpernickel was thought
by all to be so wise. He had a reason always for what he did, and was
ever willing to give it.
"They say," the good Lady Ehrenbreitstein went on--"they do say that
when last winter the Baron while hunting boars was thrown from his
horse, breaking his leg and two of his ribs, they could not be set
because of his convulsions of laughter, though for my part I cannot see
wherein having one's leg and ribs broken is provocative of merriment."
"Nor I," quoth Hans. "I have an eye for jokes. In most things I can see
the fun, but in the breaking of one's bones I see more cause for tears
than smiles."
And it was true. As Frau Ehrenbreitstein had heard, the Baron
Humpfelhimmel had broken one leg and two ribs--only it was while hunting
wolves and not in a boar chase--and when the Emperor's physician, who
was one of the party, came to where the suffering man lay he found him
roaring with laughter.
"Good!" cried the physician, leaning over his prostrate form. "I am glad
to see that you are not hurt. I feared you were injured."
"I am injured," the Baron replied, with a loud laugh. "My left
leg--ha-ha-ha!--is nearly killing me--hee-hee!--with p-pain, and
if I mistake not, either my heart--ha-ha-ha-ha!--or my
ribs--hee-hee-hee!--are broken in nineteen places."
Then he went off into such an explosion of mirth as not only appeared
unseemly, but also deprived him of the power of speech for five or six
minutes.
"I fail to see the joke," said the physician, as the Baron's laughter
echoed and reechoed throughout the forest.
"Th-there--hee-hee!--there isn't a-any joke," the Baron answered,
smiling. "Confound you--ha-ha-ha-ha!--oho-ho-ho!--can't you see I'm
suffering?"
"I see you are laughing," the physician replied--"laughing as if you
were reading a comic paper full of real jokes. What are you laughing
at?"
"Ha-ha! I--I d-dud-don't know," stammered the Baron, vainly endeavoring
to suppress his mirth. "I--I don't feel like laughing--hee-hee!--but I
can't help it." And off he went into another gale. Nor did he stop
there. The physician tried vainly to quiet him down so that he could set
the fractured bones, but in spite of all he could do for him the Baron
either would not or could not stop laughing. When he was able to move
about again it was only with a limp, and even that appeared to have its
humorous side, for whenever the Baron appeared on the public streets he
was always smiling, and when the Mayor ventured to express his sympathy
with him over his misfortune the Baron laughed again, and mirthfully
requested him to mind his own business.
Then it was recalled how that ten years before, when the famous Von
Pepperpotz Castle was destroyed by fire, the Baron was found writing in
his study by the messenger who brought the news.
"Baron," the messenger cried--"Baron, the chateau is burning. The flames
have already destroyed the armory, and are now eating their way through
the corridors to the state banquet-hall."
The Baron looked the messenger in the eye for an instant, and then his
face wreathed with smiles.
[Illustration: "MY CASTLE'S BURNING, EH? HA-HA!"]
"My castle's burning, eh? Ha-ha-ha!" was what he said; and then, rising
hurriedly from his desk, he hastened, shouting with laughter, to the
scene, where no one worked harder than he to stay the devastating
course of the flames.
"You seem to be pleased," said one who noticed his merriment.
The Baron's answer was a blow which knocked the fellow down, and then,
striking him across the shoulders with his staff, he walked away,
muttering to himself:
"Pleased! Ha-ha-ha! Does ruin please anybody--tee-hee-hee! If the churls
only--tee-hee!--only knew--ha-ha-ha-ha!"
That was it! If they only knew! And no one did know until after the
Baron had died without children--for he had never married--and all
his possessions and papers became the property of the state. Through
these papers the secret of the Baron's laughter became known to the
good people of Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz, and through them
it became known to me. Hans Pumpernickel himself told me the tale,
and as he has risen to the exalted position of Mayor of
Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz, an honor conferred only on the
truly good and worthy, I have no reason to doubt that the story is in
every way truthful.
"When Baron Humpfelhimmel died," said Hans, as he and I walked together
along the beautiful sylvan path that runs by the side of the Zugvitz
River, "I am sorry to say there were few mourners. A man who laughs, as
a rule, is popular, but the man who laughs always, without regard to
circumstances, makes enemies. One learns to love a person who laughs at
one's jests, but one who laughs at funerals, at conflagrations, at
beggars, at the needy and the distressed, does not become universally
beloved. Such was the habit of Fritz von Pepperpotz, last of the Barons
Humpfelhimmel. If you were to go to him with a funny story, none would
laugh more heartily than he; but equally loud would he laugh were you to
say to him that you had a racking headache, and should it chance that
you were to inform him you had been desperately ill, his mirth would
know no bounds. Even in his greatest frenzies of rage he would smirk and
laugh, and so it happened that the popularity which you would expect
would go with a mirthful disposition was the last thing in the world he
could hope for. I do not exaggerate when I say that Baron Humpfelhimmel
could not have been elected office-boy to the Mayor on a popular vote,
even if there were no opposing candidate. Now that it is all over,
however, and we know the truth, we have changed our minds about it, and
already several hundred of our citizens have raised a fund of twenty
marks to go towards putting up a monument to the memory of the Laughing
Baron.
"Fritz von Pepperpotz, my friend," said Hans to me, in explanation of
the situation, "laughed because he could not help it, as a statement
found among his papers after he died showed. The statement contained the
whole story, and in some of its details it is a sad one. It was all the
fault of the grandfather of the late Baron that he could do nothing but
laugh all his days, that he died unmarried, and that the name of Von
Pepperpotz has died off the face of the earth forever, unless some one
else chooses to assume that name, which, I imagine, no one is crazy
enough to do. The only thing that could reconcile me to such a name
would be the estates that formerly went with it, but now that they have
become the property of the government the house has lost all of its
attractions, retaining, however, every bit of its homeliness.
Pumpernickel is bad enough, but it is beautiful beside Von Pepperpotz."
Here Hans sighed, and to comfort him, rather than to say anything I
really meant, I observed that I thought Pumpernickel was a good strong
name.
"Yes," Hans said, with a pleased smile. "It certainly is strong. I have
had mine twenty-five years now, and it doesn't show the slightest sign
of wear. It's as good as the day it was made. But to return to the Von
Pepperpotz family and its mysterious affliction.
"According to the Baron's statement, while he himself could not restrain
his mirth, no matter how badly he felt, his father, Rupert von
Pepperpotz, could never smile, although he was a man of most genial
disposition. Just as Fritz was ushered into the world, grinning like a
Cheshire cheese--"
"Cat," I suggested, noting Hans's error.
"Cat, is it?" he said. "Well, now, do you know I am glad to hear that?
I always supposed the term used was cheese, and positively I have lain
awake night after night trying to comprehend how a cheese could grin,
and finally I gave it up, setting it down as one of the peculiarities of
the English language. If it's Cheshire cat, and not Cheshire cheese,
why, it's all clear as a pikestaff. But, as I was saying, just as Fritz
was born grinning like a Cheshire cat, his father Rupert was born
frowning apparently with rage. He was the most ill-natured-looking baby
you ever saw, according to the chronicles. Nothing seemed to please him.
When you or I would have cooed, Rupert von Pepperpotz would wrinkle up
his forehead until the furrows, if his nurse tells the truth, were deep
enough to hide letters in.
[Illustration: "RUPERT WAS ALWAYS MERRY"]
"And yet he was rarely cross, and never disobedient. It was the
strangest thing in the world. Here was a being who always frowned and
never laughed, and yet who was as obliging in his actions as could be.
As he grew older his active amiability increased, but his frown grew
more terrible than ever. He became a great wit. As he walked through
the streets of Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz he was always merry,
though none would have guessed it to look at him. He had a pleasant
voice, and his neighbors all said it was a most startling thing to hear
in the distance a jolly, roistering song, and then to walk along a
little way and see that it was this forbidding-looking person who was
doing the singing.
"How Rupert got Wilhelmina de Grootzenburg to become his wife,
considering his seeming solemnity, which made him appear to be
positively ugly, nobody ever knew. It is probable, however, that it was
sympathy which moved her to like him, unless it was that his ugliness
fascinated her. Rupert himself said that it was not sympathy for his
inability to laugh or smile, because he did not want sympathy for that.
He didn't feel badly about it himself. He never had smiled, and so did
not know the pleasure of it. Consequently he didn't miss it. Smiling was
an idiotic way of expressing pleasure anyhow, he said. Why just because
a man thought of a funny idea he should stretch his mouth he couldn't
see. No more could he understand why it was necessary to show one's
appreciation of a funny story by shaking one's stomach and saying Ha-ha!
On the whole, he said that he was satisfied. He could talk and could
tell people he enjoyed their stories without having to shake himself or
disturb the corners of his mouth. When little Fritz was born, and did
nothing but laugh even when he had the colic, the solemn-looking Rupert
observed that the baby simply proved the truth of what he said.
"'What a donkey the child is,' he cried, 'to spoil his pretty face by
stretching his mouth so that you almost fear his ears will drop into it!
And those wild whoops, which you call laughter, what earthly use are
they? I can't see why, if he is glad about something, he can't just say,
"I'm glad about so and so," mildly, instead of making me deaf with his
roars. Truly, laughter is not what it is cracked up to be.'
"'Ah, my dear Rupert,' Wilhelmina, his wife, had said, 'you do not
really know what you are talking about! If you could enjoy the sensation
of laughing once you would never wish to be without it.'
"'Nonsense!' replied the Baron. 'My father never laughed, so why should
I wish to?'
"Now, then," continued Hans, "according to Fritz von Pepperpotz's
statement, there was where Rupert was wrong. Siegfried von Pepperpotz
had known what it was to laugh, but he had not known when to laugh,
which was why the family of Von Pepperpotz was afflicted with a curse,
which only the final dying out of the family could remove, and there lay
the solution of the mystery. It seems that Siegfried von Pepperpotz,
grandfather of Fritz and father of Rupert, had been a wild sort of a
youth, who smiled when he wished and frowned when he wished, no matter
what the occasion may have been, and he smiled once too often. A
miserable-looking figure of a man once passed through the village of
Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz, selling sugar dolls and other
sweets. To Siegfried and his comrades it seemed good to play a prank on
the old fellow. They sent him two miles off into the country, where,
they said, was a rich countess, who would buy his whole stock, when in
reality there was no rich countess there at all, so that the old man
had his trouble for his pains.
"That he was a magician they did not know, but so he was, and in those
days magicians could do everything. Of course he was angry at the
deception, and on his return to Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz he
sent for the young men, and got all of them to apologize and buy his
wares except Siegfried. Siegfried not only refused to apologize and buy
the old man's candies, but had the audacity to laugh in his face, and
tell him about a wealthy old duke who lived two miles out on the other
side of the village, which the magician immediately recognized as
another attempt to play a practical joke upon him.
"'Enough, Siegfried von Pepperpotz!' he cried, in his rage. 'Laugh away
while you can. After to-day may you never smile, and may your son never
smile, and may your son's son, willing or unwilling, smile smiles that
you two would have smiled, and so may it ever go! May every third
generation get the laughter that the preceding two shall lose, according
to my curse!'
"This made Siegfried laugh all the harder, for, not knowing, as I have
said, that the old man was a magician, he had no fear of him. Next day,
however, he changed his mind. He found that he could not laugh. He could
not even smile. Try as he would, his lips refused to do his bidding.
[Illustration: "SIEGFRIED VON PEPPERPOTZ GREW ILL OF IT"]
"It ruined his disposition. Siegfried von Pepperpotz grew ill over it.
The greatest doctors in the world were summoned to his aid, but to no
avail. If the curse had ended with him he might not have minded it so
much, but after the discovery that from the day of his birth his son
Rupert was no more able to laugh than himself he began to brood over the
affliction, and shortly died of it; and when Fritz found out from a
paper he discovered in a secret drawer in the old chest in the chateau
what the curse was--for Siegfried never told his son, and alone knew
from what it was he suffered, and that it was perpetual--he resolved
that there should be no further posterity to whom it should be handed
down.
"That," said Hans, "is the story of Baron Humpfelhimmel's affliction."
"And a strange story it is," said I. "Though I don't know that it has
any particular moral."
"Oh yes, it has!" said Hans. "It has a good moral."
"And what is that?" I asked.
"Don't laugh at your own jokes," he replied. "If Siegfried von
Pepperpotz had not laughed when the magician came back, he never would
have been cursed, and this story never would have been told."