field of battle (the last affair was at Pimpelstadt), and so perhaps am
too much of a humour for fire, pluck and war-fury; and to many a one,
who happens to have a roaring waterspout of a heart, it may be well if
his clerical character (which is mine) rather enjoins on him mildness
than wildness. However, all mildness has its iron limit. If any
thoughtless dog chance to anger me, in the first heat of rage I kick my
foot through him; and after me, my good brother here will perhaps drive
matters twice as far, for he is the man to do it. Perhaps it may be
singular; but I confess I regret to this day, that once when a boy I
received three blows from another, without tightly returning them; and
I often feel as if I must still pay them to his descendants. In sooth,
if I but chance to see a child running off like a dastard from the weak
attack of a child like himself, I cannot for my life understand his
running, and can scarcely keep from interfering to save him by a
decisive knock."
[Note 2: In his Prince, a soldier reverences and obeys at once his
Prince and his Generalissimo; a Citizen only his Prince.]
The Passenger meanwhile was smiling, not in the best fashion. He gave
himself out for a Legations-Rath, and seemed fox enough for such a post;
but a mad fox will, in the long-run, bite me as rabidly as a mad wolf
will. For the rest, I calmly went on with my eulogy on courage; only
that, instead of ludicrous gasconading, which directly betrays the
coward, I purposely expressed myself in words at once cool, clear and
firm.
"I am altogether for Montaigne's advice," said I: "Fear nothing but
fear."
"I again," replied the Legations-man, with useless wire-drawing, "I
should fear again that I did not sufficiently fear fear, but continued
too dastardly."
"To this fear also," replied I coldly, "I set limits. A man, for
instance, may not in the least believe in, or be afraid of ghosts; and
yet by night may bathe himself in cold sweat, and this purely out of
terror at the dreadful fright he should be in (especially with what
whiffs of apoplexies, falling-sicknesses and so forth, he might be
visited), in case simply his own too vivid fancy should create any wild
fever-image, and hang it up in the air before him."
"One should not, therefore," added my brother-in-law the Dragoon,
contrary to his custom, moralising a little, "one should not bamboozle
the poor sheep, man, with any ghost-tricks; the hen-heart may die on the
spot."
A loud storm of thunder, overtaking the stage-coach, altered the
discourse. You, my Friends, knowing me as a man not quite destitute of
some tincture of Natural Philosophy, will easily guess my precautions
against thunder. I place myself on a chair in the middle of the room
(often, when suspicious clouds are out, I stay whole nights on it), and
by careful removal of all conductors, rings, buckles, and so forth, I
here sit thunder-proof, and listen with a cool spirit to this elemental
music of the cloud-kettledrum. These precautions have never harmed me,
for I am still alive at this date; and to the present hour I
congratulate myself on once hurrying out of church, though I had
confessed but the day previous; and running, without more ceremony, and
before I had received the sacrament, into the charnel-house, because a
heavy thunder-cloud (which did, in fact, strike the churchyard
linden-tree) was hovering over it. So soon as the cloud had disloaded
itself, I returned from the charnel-house into the church, and was happy
enough to come in after the Hangman (usually the last), and so still
participate in the Feast of Love.
[Note 45: Our present writers shrug their shoulders most at those
on whose shoulders they stand; and exalt those most who crawl up along
them.]
Such, for my own part, is my manner of proceeding: but in the full
stage-coach I met with men to whom Natural Philosophy was no philosophy
at all. For when the clouds gathered dreadfully together over our
coach-canopy, and sparkling, began to play through the air like so many
fire-flies, and I at last could not but request that the sweating
coach-conclave would at least bring out their watches, rings, money and
suchlike, and put them all into one of the carriage-pockets, that none
of us might have a conductor on his body; not only would no one of them
do it, but my own brother-in-law the Dragoon even sprang out, with naked
drawn sword, to the coach-box, and swore that he would conduct the
thunder all away himself. Nor do I know whether this desperate mortal
was not acting prudently; for our position within was frightful, and any
one of us might every moment be a dead man. At last, to crown all, I got
into a half altercation with two of the rude members of our leathern
household, the Poisoner and the Harlot; seeing, by their questions, they
almost gave me to understand that, in our conversational picnic,
especially with the Blind Passenger, I had not always come off with the
best share. Such an imputation wounds your honour to the quick; and in
my breast there was a thunder louder than that above us: however, I was
obliged to carry on the needful exchange of sharp words as quietly and
slowly as possible; and I quarrelled softly, and in a low tone, lest in
the end a whole coachful of people, set in arms against each other,
might get into heat and perspiration; and so, by vapour steaming through
the coach-roof, conduct the too-near thunderbolt down into the midst of
us. At last, I laid before the company the whole theory of Electricity,
in clear words, but low and slow (striving to avoid all emission of
vapour); and especially endeavoured to frighten them away from fear. For
indeed, through fear, the stroke--nay two strokes, the electric or the
apoplectic--might hit any one of us; since in Erxleben and Reimarus, it
is sufficiently proved, that violent fear, by the transpiration it
causes, may attract the lightning. I accordingly, in some fear of my own
and other people's fear, represented to the passengers that now, in a
coach so hot and crowded, with a drawn sword on the coach-box piercing
the very lightning, with the thunder-cloud hanging over us, and even
with so many transpirations from incipient fear; in short, with such
visible danger on every hand, they must absolutely fear nothing, if they
would not, all and sundry, be smitten to death in a few minutes.
[Note 103: The Great perhaps take as good charge of their posterity
as the Ants: the eggs once laid, the male and female Ants fly about
their business, and confide them to the trusty _working-Ants_.]
[Note 10: And does Life offer us, in regard to our ideal hopes and
purposes, anything but a prosaic, unrhymed, unmetrical Translation?]
"O Heaven!" cried I, "Courage! only courage! No fear, not even fear of
fear! Would you have Providence to shoot you here sitting, like so many
hares hunted into a pinfold? Fear, if you like, when you are out of the
coach; fear to your heart's content in other places, where there is less
to be afraid of; only not here, not here!"
I shall not determine--since among millions scarcely one man dies by
thunder-clouds, but millions perhaps by snow-clouds, and rain-clouds,
and thin mist--whether my Coach-sermon could have made any claim to a
prize for man-saving; however, at last, all uninjured, and driving
towards a rainbow, we entered the town of Vierstaedten, where dwelt a
Postmaster, in the only street which the place had.
_Second Stage; from Vierstaedten to Niederschoena._
The Postmaster was a churl and a striker; a class of mortals whom I
inexpressibly detest, as my fancy always whispers to me, in their
presence, that by accident or dislike I might happen to put on a
scornful or impertinent look, and hound these mastiffs on my own throat;
and so, from the very first, I must incessantly watch them. Happily, in
this case (supposing I even had made a wrong face), I could have
shielded myself with the Dragoon; for whose giant force such matter are
a tidbit. This brother-in-law of mine, for example, cannot pass any
tavern where he hears a sound of battle, without entering, and, as he
crosses the threshold, shouting: "Peace, dogs!"--and therewith, under
show of a peace-deputation, he directly snatches up the first chair-leg
in his hand, as if it were an American peace-calumet, and cuts to the
right and left among the belligerent powers, or he gnashes the hard
heads of the parties together (he himself takes no side), catching each
by the hind-lock; in such cases the rogue is in Heaven!
[Note 78: Our German frame of Government, cased in its harness, had
much difficulty in moving, for the same reason why Beetles cannot fly,
when their _wings_ have _wing-shells_, of very sufficient strength,
and--grown together.]
[Note 8: Constitutions of Government are like highways: on a new
and quite untrodden one, where every carriage helps in the process of
bruising and smoothing, you are as much jolted and pitched as on an old
worn-out one, full of holes? What is to be done then? Travel on.]
I, for my part, rather avoid discrepant circles than seek them; as I
likewise avoid all dead or killed people: the prudent man easily
foresees what is to be got by them; either vexatious and injurious
witnessing, or often even (when circumstances conspire) painful
investigation, and suspicions of your being an accomplice.
In Vierstaedten, nothing of importance presented itself, except--to my
horror--a dog without tail, which came running along the town or street.
In the first fire of passion at this sight, I pointed it out to the
passengers, and then put the question, Whether they could reckon a
system of Medical Police well arranged, which, like this of Vierstaedten,
allowed dogs openly to scour about, when their tails were wanting? "What
am I to do," said I, "when this member is cut away, and any such beast
comes running towards me, and I cannot, either by the tail being cocked
up or being drawn in, since the whole is snipt off, come to any
conclusion whether the vermin is mad or not? In this way, the most
prudent man may be bit, and become rabid, and so make shipwreck purely
for want of a tail-compass."
The Blind Passenger (he now got himself inscribed as a Seeing one, God
knows for what objects) had heard my observation; which he now spun out
in my presence almost into ridicule, and at last awakened in me the
suspicion, that by an overdone flattery in imitating my style of speech,
he meant to banter me. "The Dog-tail," said he, "is, in truth, an
alarm-beacon, and finger-post for us, that we come not even into the
outmost precincts of madness: cut away from Comets their tails, from
Bashaws theirs, from Crabs theirs (outstretched it denotes that they are
burst); and in the most dangerous predicaments of life we are left
without clew, without indicator, without hand _in margine_; and we
perish, not so much as knowing how."
[Note 3: In Criminal Courts, murdered children are often
represented as still-born; in Anticritiques, still-born as murdered.]
[Note 101: Not only were the Rhodians, from their Colossus, called
Colossians; but also innumerable Germans are, from their Luther, called
Lutherans.]
For the rest, this stage passed over without quarrelling or peril. About
ten o'clock, the whole party, including even the Postillion, myself
excepted, fell asleep. I indeed pretended to be sleeping, that I might
observe whether some one, for his own good reasons, might not also be
pretending it; but all continued snoring; the moon threw its brightening
beams on nothing but down-pressed eyelids.
I had now a glorious opportunity of following Lavater's counsel, to
apply the physiognomical ellwand specially to sleepers, since sleep,
like death, expresses the genuine form in coarser lines. Other sleepers
not in stage-coaches I think it less advisable to mete with this
ellwand; having always an apprehension lest some fellow, but pretending
to be asleep, may, the instant I am near enough, start up as in a dream,
and deceitfully plant such a knock on the physiognomical mensurator's
own facial structure, as to exclude it forever from appearing in any
Physiognomical Fragments (itself being reduced to one), either in the
stippled or line style. Nay, might not the most honest sleeper in the
world, just while you are in hand with his physiognomical dissection,
lay about him, spurred on by honour in some cudgelling-scene he may be
dreaming; and in a few instants of clapper-clawing, and kicking, and
trampling, lull you into a much more lasting sleep than that out of
which he was awakened?
In my _Adumbrating Magic-lantern_, as I have named the Work, the whole
physiognomical contents of this same sleeping stage-coach will be given
to the world: there I shall explain to you at large how the Poisoner,
with the murder-cupola, appeared to me devil-like; the Dwarf
old-childlike; the Harlot languidly shameless; my Brother-in-law
peacefully satisfied, with revenge or food; and the Legations-Rath,
_Jean Pierre_, Heaven only knows why, like a half angel,--though,
perhaps, it might be because only the fair body, not the other half, the
soul, which had passed away in sleep, was affecting me.
[Note 88: Hitherto I have always regarded the Polemical writings of
our present philosophic and aesthetic Idealist Logic-buffers,--in which,
certainly, a few contumelies, and misconceptions, and misconclusions do
make their appearance,--rather on the fair side; observing in it merely
an imitation of classical Antiquity, in particular of the ancient
Athletes, who (according to Schottgen) besmeared their bodies with
_mud_, that they might not be laid hold of; and filled their hands with
_sand_, that they might lay hold of their antagonists.]
I had almost forgotten to mention, that in a little village, while my
Brother-in-law and the Postillion were sitting at their liquor, I
happily fronted a small terror, Destiny having twice been on my side.
Not far from a Hunting Box, beside a pretty clump of trees, I noticed a
white tablet, with a black inscription on it. This gave me hopes that
perhaps some little monumental piece, some pillar of honour, some battle
memento, might here be awaiting me. Over an untrodden flowery tangle, I
reach the black on white; and to my horror and amazement, I decipher in
the moonshine: _Beware of Spring-guns_! Thus was I standing perhaps half
a nail's breadth from the trigger, with which, if I but stirred my heel,
I should shoot myself off like a forgotten ramrod, into the other world,
beyond the verge of Time! The first thing I did was to cramp-down my
toe-nails, to bite, and, as it were, eat myself into the ground with
them; since I might at least continue in warm life so long as I pegged
my body firmly in beside the Atropos-scissors and hangman's block, which
lay beside me; then I endeavoured to recollect by what steps the fiend
had let me hither unshot, but in my agony I had perspired the whole of
it, and could remember nothing. In the Devil's village close at hand,
there was no dog to be seen and called to, who might have plucked me
from the water; and my Brother-in-law and the Postillion were both
carousing with full can. However, I summoned my courage and
determination; wrote down on a leaf of my pocket-book my last will, the
accidental manner of my death, and my dying remembrance of Berga; and
then, with full sails, flew helterskelter through the midst of it the
shortest way; expecting at every step to awaken the murderous engine,
and thus to clap over my still long candle of life the _bonsoir_, or
extinguisher, with my own hand. However, I got off without shot. In the
tavern, indeed, there was more than one fool to laugh at me; because,
forsooth, what none but a fool could know, this Notice had stood there
for the last ten years, without any gun, as guns often do without any
notice. But so it is, my Friends, with our game-police, which warns
against all things, only not against warnings.
[Note 103: Or are all Mosques, Episcopal-churches, Pagodas,
Chapels-of-Ease, Tabernacles and Pantheons, anything else than the
Ethnic Forecourt of the Invisible Temple and its Holy of Holies?]
[Note 40: The common man is copious only in narration, not in
reasoning; the cultivated man is brief only in the former, not in the
latter: because the common man's reasons are a sort of sensations,
which, as well as things visible, he merely _looks at_; by the
cultivated man, again, both reasons and things visible are rather
_thought_ than looked at.]
For the rest, throughout the whole stage, I had a constant source of
altercation with the coachman, because he grudged stopping perhaps once
in the quarter of an hour, when I chose to come out for a natural
purpose. Unhappily, in truth, one has little reason to expect
water-doctors among the postillion class, since Physicians themselves
have so seldom learned from Haller's large _Physiology_, that a
postponement of the above operation will precipitate devilish stoneware,
and at last precipitate the proprietor himself; this stone-manufactory
being generally concluded, not by the Lithotomist, but by Death. Had
postillions read that Tycho Brahe died like a bombshell by bursting,
they would rather pull up for a moment; with such unlooked-for
knowledge, they would see it to be reasonable that a man, though
expecting some time to carry his death-stone _on_ him, should not
incline, for the time being, to carry it _in_ him. Nay, have I not
often, at Weimar, in the longest concluding scenes of Schiller, run out
with tears in my eyes; purely that, while his Minerva was melting me on
the whole, I might not by the Gorgon's head on her breast be partially
turned to stone? And did I not return to the weeping playhouse, and fall
into the general emotion so much the more briskly, as now I had nothing
to give vent to but my heart?
Deep in the dark we arrived at Niederschoena.
_Third Stage; from Niederschoena to Flaetz._
While I am standing at the Posthouse musing, with my eye fixed on my
portmanteau, comes a beast of a watchman, and bellows and brays in his
night-tube so close by my ear, that I start back in trepidation, I whom
even a too hasty accosting will vex. Is there no medical police, then,
against such efflated hour fulminators and alarm-cannon, by which
notwithstanding no gunpowder cannon are saved? In my opinion, nobody
should be invested with the watchman-horn but some reasonable man, who
had already blown himself into an asthma, and who would consequently be
in case to sing out his hour-verse so low, that you could not hear it.
[Note 9: In any national calamity, the ancient Egyptians took
revenge on the god Typhon, whom they blamed for it, by hurling his
favourites, the Asses, down over rocks. In similar wise have countries
of a different religion now and then taken their revenge.]
What I had long expected, and the Dwarf predicted, now took place:
deeply stooping, through the high Posthouse door, issued the Giant, and
raised, in the open air, a most unreasonably high figure, heightened by
the ell-long bonnet and feather on his huge jobber-nowl. My
Brother-in-law, beside him, looked but like his son of fourteen years;
the Dwarf like his lap-dog waiting for him on its two hind legs. "Good
friend," said my bantering Brother-in-law, leading him towards me and
the stage-coach, "just step softly in, we shall all be happy to make
room for you. Fold yourself neatly together, lay your head on your knee,
and it will do." The unseasonable banterer would willingly have seen the
almost stupid Giant (of whom he had soon observed that his brain was no
active substance, but in the inverse ratio of his trunk) squeezed in
among us in the post-chest, and lying kneaded together like a sand-bag
before him. "Won't do! Won't do!" said the Giant, looking in. "The
gentleman perhaps does not know," said the Dwarf, "how big the Giant is;
and so he thinks that because _I_ go in--But that is another story; _I_
will creep into any hole, do but tell me where."
In short, there was no resource for the Postmaster and the Giant, but
that the latter should plant himself behind, in the character of
luggage, and there lie bending down like a weeping willow over the whole
vehicle. To me such a back-wall and rear-guard could not be particularly
gratifying: and I may refer it, I hope, to any one of you, ye Friends,
if with such ware at your back, you would not, as clearly and earnestly
as I, have considered what manifold murderous projects a knave of a
Giant behind you, a _pursuer_ in all senses, might not maliciously
attempt; say, that he broke in and assailed you by the back-window, or
with Titanian strength laid hold of the coach-roof and demolished the
whole party in a lump. However, this Elephant (who indeed seemed to owe
the similarity more to his overpowering mass than to his quick light of
inward faculty), crossing his arms over the top of the vehicle, soon
began to sleep and snore above us; an Elephant, of whom, as I more and
more joyfully observed, my Brother-in-law the Dragoon could easily be
the tamer and bridle-holder, nay had already been so.
[Note 70: Let Poetry veil itself in Philosophy, but only as the
latter does in the former. Philosophy in poetised Prose resembles those
tavern drinking-glasses, encircled with parti-coloured wreaths of
figures, which disturb your enjoyment both of the drink, and (often
awkwardly eclipsing and covering each other) of the carving also.]
As more than one person now felt inclined to sleep, but I, on the
contrary, as was proper, to wake, I freely offered my seat of honour,
the front place in the coach (meaning thereby to abolish many little
flaws of envy in my fellow-passengers), to such persons as wished to
take a nap thereon. The Legations-man accepted the offer with eagerness,
and soon fell asleep there sitting, under the Titan.[4] To me this sort
of coach-sleeping of a diplomatic _charge d'affaires_ remained a thing
incomprehensible. A man that, in the middle of a stranger and often
barbarously-minded company, permits himself to slumber, may easily,
supposing him to talk in his sleep and coach (think of the Saxon
minister[5] before the Seven-Years War!), blab out a thousand secrets,
and crimes, some of which, perhaps, he has not committed. Should not
every minister, ambassador, or other man of honour and rank, really
shudder at the thought of insanity or violent fevers; seeing no mortal
can be his surety that he shall not in such cases publish the greatest
scandals, of which, it may be, the half are lies?
[Note 4: _Titan_ is also the title of this Legations-Rath Jean
Pierre or Jean Paul (Friedrich Richter)'s chief novel.--ED.]
[Note 5: Bruehl, I suppose; but the historical edition of the matter
is, that Bruehl's treasonable secrets were come at by the more ordinary
means of wax impressions of his keys.--ED.]
At last, after the long July night, we passengers, together with Aurora,
arrived in the precincts of Flaetz, I looked with a sharp yet moistened
eye at the steeples: I believe, every man who has anything decisive to
seek in a town, and to whom it is either to be a judgment-seat of his
hopes, or their anchoring-station, either a battle-field or a
sugar-field, first and longest directs his eye on the steeples of the
town, as upon the indexes and balance-tongues of his future destiny;
these artificial peaks, which, like natural ones, are the thrones of our
Future. As I happened to express myself on this point perhaps too
poetically to _Jean Pierre_, he answered, with sufficient want of taste:
"The steeples of such towns are indeed the Swiss Alpine peaks, on which
we milk and manufacture the Swiss cheese of our Future." Did the
Legations-Peter mean with this style to make me ridiculous, or only
himself? Determine!
"Here is the place, the town," said I in secret, "where today much and
for many years is to be determined; where thou, this evening, about five
o'clock, art to present thy petition and thyself: May it prosper! May it
be successful! Let Flaetz, this arena of thy little efforts among the
rest, become a building-space for fair castles and air-castles to two
hearts, thy own and thy Berga's!"
At the Tiger Inn I alighted.
_First Day in Flaetz._