THE HUNTER WRITES TO HIS FRIEND
Now I may write about things that are pleasant. I cannot possibly tell
you how happy I am here in the solitude of this hill-girt Westphalian
plain, where I have been quartered for a week among people and cattle.
Among people and cattle is indeed literally the case, for the cows do
actually stand right in the house on both sides of the large
entrance-hall. There is, however, absolutely nothing unpleasant or
unclean about this; on the contrary it rather helps to increase the
impression of patriarchal house-management. In front of my window stand
rustling oak-trees, and beyond them I look out on long, long meadows and
waving cornfields, between which I see here and there a grove of oaks
and a lone farmstead. For here it is as it was in the time of Tacitus:
"_Colunt discreti ac diversi, ut_ _fons, ut campus, ut nemus placuit_."
Consequently even a single farm like this is a small State in itself,
complete and rounded off, and the lord of it is just as much a king in
his small domain as a real king on a throne.
My host is a splendid old fellow. He is called Justice, although he
certainly has another name too; for that name, you see, has reference
only to the ownership of his property. I hear, however, that this is the
custom around here everywhere. For the most part only the estate has a
name--the name of the owner sinks in that of the property; hence the
earth-born, tough and enduring character of the people here. My Justice
is a man of some sixty-odd years perhaps, but he carries a strong,
large, rugged body, as yet unbent by age. In his reddish-yellow face is
deposited the solar heat of the fifty harvests he has gathered in, his
large nose stands out on his face like a tower, and his white, bristly
eyebrows hang out over his glistening, blue eyes like a straw roof. He
reminds me of a patriarch, who erects a monument of unhewn stones to the
god of his ancestors and pours libations and oil upon it, rears his
colts, cuts his corn, and at the same time judges and rules his people
with unlimited authority. I have never come across a more compact
mixture of venerability and cunning, reason and obstinacy; he is a
genuine, old-time, free peasant in the full sense of the word. I believe
that this is the only place where people of this kind are still to be
found, here where precisely this living apart and this stubbornness
peculiar to the ancient Saxons, combined with the absence of large
cities, has perpetuated the original character of Germania. All
governments and powers have merely skimmed over the surface here; they
have perhaps been able to break off the tops of the various growths, but
not to destroy their roots, from which fresh shoots have ever sprouted
up again, even though they may no longer close together into leafy
crowns.
The region is not at all what one would call beautiful, for it consists
solely of billowy risings and fallings of the ground, and only in the
distance does one see the mountains; furthermore, the latter look more
like a dark hill-slope than a beautifully outlined mountain-range. But
just this absence of pretension, the fact that the mountains do not seem
to place themselves in dress parade directly in front of one's eyes and
say: "How do you like me?" but rather, like a dutiful stewardess, to
serve the tilth of human hands even down to the smallest detail--after
all makes me like them very much, and I have enjoyed many a pleasant
hour in my solitary rambles. Perhaps the fact has something to do with
it that my heart can once more swing out its pendulum undisturbed,
without having wise people tinkering and twisting at the clock-works.
I have even become poetic--what do you say to that, old Ernst? I have
jotted down something to which a divinely beautiful Sunday that I spent
some time ago in the wooded glens of the Spessart inspired me. I think
you will like it. It is called: "The Marvels of the Spessart."
What I like best is to sit up on the hill in a quiet spot between the
Justice's cornfields, which terminate there. In front of me there is a
large depression in the ground, grown over with weeds and blackberry
bushes, around which, in a circle, lie a lot of large stones. Over the
largest of these, directly opposite the field, the branches of three old
lindens spread out. Behind me rustles the forest. The spot is infinitely
lonesome, secluded and secret, especially now that the corn is grown up,
as tall as a man, behind it. I spend a great deal of time up there--not
always, to be sure, in sentimental contemplation of nature; it is my
usual evening watchpost, from which I shoot the stags and roes out of
the Justice's corn.
They call the place the "Freemen's Tribunal." Presumably, in days of
yore, the Fehme used to hatch out its sentences there in the darkness of
the night. When I praised the place to my Justice, an expression of
friendliness passed over his face. He made no reply, but after a time
conducted me, without any inducement on my part, to a room on the upper
floor of the house. There he opened an iron-bound trunk, showed me an
old, rusty sword which was lying in it, and said with great solemnity:
"That is a great curiosity; it is the sword of Charles the Great,
preserved for a thousand and more years in the Oberhof, and still in
full strength and power." Without adding any further explanations, he
clapped the cover down again. I wouldn't for anything have shaken his
belief in this sacred relic, although a fleeting glance convinced me
that the broad-sword could scarcely be more than a few hundred years
old. But he showed me too a formal attestation concerning the genuineness
of the weapon, made out for him by an obliging provincial scholar.
[Illustration: THE FREEMEN'S TRIBUNAL _By Benjamin Vautier_]
Well, then, I shall stay here among the peasants until old Jochem sends
me news of Schrimbs or Peppel. To be sure, in the course of my
eighty-mile journey I have cooled down a little, for it makes
considerable difference when two weeks intervene between a project and
its execution. Furthermore the question now is: What sort of revenge
shall I take on him? But all that will take care of itself later on.
Mentor, you shall soon hear more, I hope, from your Not-Telemachus.