much in his more immediate prospects. I, as the only man known to me,
especially in the way of love (of the runaway Dragoon anon!), looked out
from the windows of the overflowing Inn, and down on the rushing sea of
marketers, and very soon began to reflect, that except Heaven and the
rascals and murderers, none knew how many of the latter two classes were
floating among the tide; purposing perhaps to lay hold of the most
innocent strangers, and in part cut their purses, in part their throats.
My situation had a special circumstance against it. My Brother-in-law,
who still comes plump out with everything, had mentioned that I was to
put up at the Tiger: O Heaven, when will such people learn to be secret,
and to cover even the meanest pettinesses of life under mantles and
veils, were it only that a silly mouse may as often give birth to a
mountain, as a mountain to a mouse! The whole rabble of the stage-coach
stopped at the Tiger; the Harlot, the Ratcatcher, _Jean Pierre_, the
Giant, who had dismounted at the Gate of the town, and carrying the huge
block-head of the Dwarf on his shoulders as his own (cloaking over the
deception by his cloak), had thus, like a ninny, exhibited himself
gratis by half a dwarf more gigantic than he could be seen for money.
[Note 158: Governments should not too often change the penny-trumps
and child's-drums of the Poets for the regimental trumpet and fire-drum:
on the other hand, good subjects should regard many a princely
drum-tendency simply as a disease, in which the patient, by air
insinuating under the skin, has got dreadfully swoln.]
[Note 89: In great towns, a stranger, for the first day or two
after his arrival, lives purely at his own expense in an inn;
afterwards, in the houses of his friends, without expense: on the other
hand, if you arrive at the Earth, as, for instance, I have done, you are
courteously maintained, precisely for the first few years, free of
charges; but in the next and longer series--for you often stay
sixty--you are actually obliged (I have the documents in my hands) to
pay for every drop and morsel, as if you were in the great Earth Inn,
which indeed you are.]
And now for each of the Passengers, the question was, how he could make
the Tiger, the heraldic emblem of the Inn, his prototype; and so, what
lamb he might suck the blood of, and tear in pieces, and devour. My
Brother-in-law too left me, having gone in quest of some horse-dealer;
but he retained the chamber next mine for his sister: this, it appeared,
was to denote attention on his part. I remained solitary, left to my own
intrepidity and force of purpose.
Yet among so many villains, encompassing if not even beleaguering me, I
thought warmly of one far distant, faithful soul, of my Berga in
Neusattel; a true heart of pith, which perhaps with many a weak
marriage-partner might have given protection rather than sought it.
"Appear, then, quickly tomorrow at noon, Berga," said my heart; "and if
possible before noon, that I may lengthen thy market paradise so many
hours as thou arrivest earlier!"
A clergyman, amid the tempests of the world, readily makes for a free
harbour, for the church: the church-wall is his casemate-wall and
fortification; and behind are to be found more peaceful and more
accordant souls than on the market-place: in short, I went into the High
Church. However, in the course of the psalm, I was somewhat disturbed by
a Heiduc, who came up to a well-dressed young gentleman sitting opposite
me, and tore the double opera-glass from his nose, it being against rule
in Flaetz, as it is in Dresden, to look at the Court with glasses which
diminish and approximate. I myself had on a pair of spectacles, but they
were magnifiers. It was impossible for me to resolve on taking them off;
and here again, I am afraid, I shall pass for a foolhardy person and a
desperado; so much only I reckoned fit, to look invariably into my
psalm-book; not once lifting my eyes while the Court was rustling and
entering, thereby to denote that my glasses were ground convex. For the
rest, the sermon was good, if not always finely conceived for a
Court-church; it admonished the hearers against innumerable vices, to
whose counterparts, the virtues, another preacher might so readily have
exhorted us. During the whole service, I made it my business to exhibit
true deep reverence, not only towards God, but also towards my
illustrious Prince. For the latter reverence I had my private reason: I
wished to stamp this sentiment strongly and openly as with raised
letters on my countenance, and so give the lie to any malicious imp
about Court, by whom my contravention of the _Panegyric on Nero_, and my
free German satire on this real tyrant himself, which I had inserted in
the _Flaetz Weekly Journal_, might have been perverted into a secret
characteristic portrait of my own Sovereign. We live in such times at
present, that scarcely can we compose a pasquinade on the Devil in Hell,
but some human Devil on Earth will apply it to an angel.
[Note 107: Germany is a long lofty mountain--under the sea.]
[Note 144: The Reviewer does not in reality employ his pen for
writing; but he burns it, to awaken weak people from their swoons, with
the smell; he tickles with it the throat of the plagiary, to make him
render back; and he picks with it his own teeth. He is the only
individual in the whole learned lexicon that can never exhaust himself,
never write himself out, let him sit before the ink-glass for centuries
or tens of centuries. For while the Scholar, the Philosopher, and the
Poet, produce their new book solely from new materials and growth, the
Reviewer merely lays his old gage of taste and knowledge on a thousand
new works; and his light, in the ever-passing, ever-differently-cut
glass-world which he _elucidates_, is still refracted into new colours.]
When the Court at last issued from church, and were getting into their
carriages, I kept at such a distance that my face could not possibly be
noticed, in case I had happened to assume no reverent look, but an
indifferent or even proud one. God knows, who has kneaded into me those
mad desperate fancies and crotchets, which perhaps would sit better on a
Hero Schabacker than on an Army-chaplain under him. I cannot here
forbear recording to you, my Friends, one of the maddest among them,
though at first it may throw too glaring a light on me. It was at my
ordination to be Army-chaplain, while about to participate in the
Sacrament, on the first day of Easter. Now, here while I was standing,
moved into softness, before the balustrade of the altar, in the middle
of the whole male congregation,--nay, I perhaps more deeply moved than
any among them, since, as a person going to war, I might consider myself
a half-dead man, that was now partaking in the last Feast of Souls, as
it were like a person to be hanged on the morrow,--here then, amid the
pathetic effects of the organ and singing, there rose something--were it
the first Easter-day which awoke in me what primitive Christians called
their Easter-laughter, or merely the contrast between the most devilish
predicaments and the most holy,--in short there rose something in me
(for which reason, I have ever since taken the part of every simple
person, who might ascribe such things to the Devil), and this something
started the question: "Now, could there be aught more diabolical than if
thou, just in receiving the Holy Supper, wert madly and blasphemously to
begin laughing?" Instantly I took to wrestling with this hell-dog of a
thought; neglected the most precious feelings, merely to keep the dog in
my eye, and scare him away; yet was forced to draw back from him,
exhausted and unsuccessful, and arrived at the step of the altar with
the mournful certainty that in a little while I should, without more
ado, begin laughing, let me weep and moan inwardly as I liked.
Accordingly, while I and a very worthy old Buergermeister were bowing
down together before the long parson, and the latter (perhaps kneeling
on the low cushion, I fancied him too long) put the wafer in my clenched
mouth, I felt all the muscles of laughter already beginning sardonically
to contract; and these had not long acted on the guiltless integument,
till an actual smile appeared there; and as we bowed the second time, I
was grinning like an ape. My companion the Buergermeister justly
expostulated with me, in a low voice, as we walked round behind the
altar: "In Heaven's name, are you an ordained Preacher of the Gospel, or
a Merry-Andrew? Is it Satan that is laughing out of you?"
[Note 71: The Youth is singular from caprice, and takes pleasure in
it; the Man is so from constraint, unintentionally, and feels pain in
it.]
[Note 198: The Populace and Cattle grow giddy on the edge of no
abyss; with the Man it is otherwise.]
"Ah, Heaven! who else?" said I; and this being over, I finished my
devotions in a more becoming fashion.
From the church (I now return to the Flaetz one), I proceeded to the
Tiger Inn, and dined at the _table-d'hote_, being at no time shy of
encountering men. Previous to the second course, a waiter handed me an
empty plate, on which, to my astonishment, I noticed a French verse
scratched-in with a fork, containing nothing less than a lampoon on the
Commandant of Flaetz. Without ceremony, I held out the plate to the
company; saying, I had just, as they saw, got this lampooning cover
presented to me, and must request them to bear witness that I had
nothing to do with the matter. An officer directly changed plates with
me. During the fifth course, I could not but admire the chemico-medical
ignorance of the company; for a hare, out of which a gentleman extracted
and exhibited several grains of shot, that is to say, therefore, of lead
alloyed with arsenic, and then cleaned by hot vinegar, did,
nevertheless, by the spectators (I excepted) continue to be pleasantly
eaten.
[Note 11: The Golden Calf of Self-love soon waxes to be a burning
Phalaris' Bull, which reduces its father and adorer to ashes.]
[Note 103: The male Beau-crop which surrounds the female Roses and
Lilies, must (if I rightly comprehend its flatteries) most probably
presuppose in the fair the manners of the Spaniards and Italians, who
offer any valuable, by way of present, to the man who praises it
excessively.]
In the course of our table-talk, one topic seized me keenly by my weak
side, I mean by my honour. The law custom of the city happened to be
mentioned, as it affects natural children; and I learned that here a
loose girl may convert any man she pleases to select into the father of
her brat, simply by her oath. "Horrible!" said I, and my hair stood on
end. "In this way may the worthiest head of a family, with a wife and
children, or a clergyman lodging in the Tiger, be stript of honour and
innocence, by any wicked chambermaid whom he may have seen, or who may
have seen him, in the course of her employment!"
An elderly officer observed: "But will the girl swear herself to the
Devil so readily?"
What logic! "Or suppose," continued I, without answer, "a man happened
to be travelling with that Vienna Locksmith, who afterwards became a
mother, and was brought to bed of a baby son; or with any disguised
Chevalier d'Eon, who often passes the night in his company, whereby the
Locksmith or the Chevalier can swear to their private interviews: no
delicate man of honour will in the end risk travelling with another;
seeing he knows not how soon the latter may pull off his boots, and pull
on his women's-pumps, and swear his companion into fatherhood, and
himself to the Devil!"
Some of the company, however, misunderstood my oratorical fire so much,
that they, sheep-wise, gave some insinuations as if I myself were not
strict in this point, but lax. By Heaven! I no longer knew what I was
eating or speaking. Happily, on the opposite side of the table, some
lying story of a French defeat was started: now, as I had read on the
street-corners that French and German Proclamation, calling before the
Court Martial any one who had heard war-rumours (disadvantageous,
namely), without giving notice of them,--I, as a man not willing ever to
forget himself, had nothing more prudent to do in this case, than to
withdraw with empty ears, telling none but the landlord why.
[Note 199: But not many existing Governments, I believe, do behead
under pretext of trepanning; or sew (in a more choice allegory) the
people's lips together, under pretence of sewing the harelips in them.]
[Note 67: Hospitable Entertainer, wouldst thou search into thy
guest? Accompany him to another Entertainer, and listen to him. Just so:
Wouldst thou become better acquainted with Mistress in an hour, than by
living with her for a month? Accompany her among her female friends and
female enemies (if that is no pleonasm), and look at her!]
It was no improper time; for I had previously determined to have my
beard shaven about half-past four, that so, towards five I might present
myself with a chin just polished by the razor smoothing-iron, and sleek
as wove-paper, without the smallest root-stump of a hair left on it. By
way of preparation, like Pitt before Parliamentary debates, I poured a
devilish deal of Pontac into my stomach, with true disgust, and contrary
to all sanitary rules; not so much for fronting the light stranger
Barber, as the Minister and General von Schabacker, with whom I had it
in view to exchange perhaps more than one fiery statement.
The common Hotel Barber was ushered in to me; but at first view you
noticed in his polygonal zigzag visage, more of a man that would finally
go mad, than of one growing wiser. Now, madmen are a class of persons
whom I hate incredibly; and nothing can take me to see any madhouse,
simply because the first maniac among them may clutch me in his giant
fists if he like; and because, owing to infection, I cannot be sure that
I shall ever get out again with the sense which I brought in. In a
general way, I sit (when once I am lathered) in such a posture on my
chair as to keep both my hands (the eyes I fix intently on the barbering
countenance) lying clenched along my sides, and pointed directly at the
midriff of the barber; that so, on the smallest ambiguity of movement, I
may dash in upon him, and overset him in a twinkling.
I scarce know rightly how it happened; but here, while I am anxiously
studying the foolish twisted visage of the shaver, and he just then
chanced to lay his long-whetted weapon a little too abruptly against my
bare throat, I gave him such a sudden bounce on the abdominal viscera,
that the silly varlet had well-nigh suicidally slit his own windpipe.
For me, truly, nothing remained but to indemnify the man; and then,
contrary to my usual principles, to tie round a broad stuffed cravat, by
way of cloak to what remained unshorn.
[Note 80: In the summer of life, men keep digging and filling
ice-pits as well as circumstances will admit; that so, in their Winter,
they may have something in store to give them coolness.]
[Note 28: It is impossible for me, amid the tendril-forest of
allusions (even this again is a tendril-twig), to state and declare on
the spot whether all the Courts or Heights, the (Bougouer) _Snowline_ of
Europe, have ever been mentioned in my Writings or not; but I could wish
for information on the subject, that if not, I may try to do it still.]
And now at last I sallied forth to the General, drinking out the remnant
of the Pontac, as I crossed the threshold. I hope, there were plans
lying ready within me for answering rightly, nay for asking. The
Petition I carried in my pocket, and in my right hand. In the left I had
a duplicate of it. My fire of spirit easily helped over the living fence
of ministerial obstructions; and soon I unexpectedly found myself in the
ante-chamber, among his most distinguished lackeys; persons, so far as I
could see, not inclined to change flour for bran with any one. Selecting
the most respectable individual of the number, I delivered him my paper
request, accompanied with the verbal one that he would hand it in. He
took it, but ungraciously: I waited in vain till far in the sixth hour,
at which season alone the gay General can safely be applied to. At last
I pitch upon another lackey, and repeat my request: he runs about
seeking his runaway brother, or my Petition; to no purpose, neither of
them could be found. How happy was it that in the midst of my Pontac,
before shaving, I had written out the duplicate of this paper; and
therefore--simply on the principle that you should always keep a second
wooden leg packed into your knapsack when you have the first on your
body--and out of fear that if the original petition chanced to drop from
me in the way between the Tiger and Schabacker's, my whole journey and
hope would melt into water--and therefore, I say, having stuck the
repeating work of that original paper into my pocket, I had, in any
case, something to hand in, and that something truly a Ditto. I handed
it in.
[Note 36: And so I should like, in all cases, to be the First,
especially in Begging. The first prisoner-of-war, the first cripple, the
first man ruined by burning (like him who brings the first fire-engine),
gains the head-subscription and the heart; the next-comer finds nothing
but Duty to address; and at last, in this melodious _mancando_ of
sympathy, matters sink so far, that the last (if the last but one may at
least have retired laden with a rich "God help you!") obtains from the
benignant hand nothing more than its fist. And as in Begging the first,
so in Giving I should like to be the last: one obliterates the other,
especially the last the first. So, however, is the world ordered.]
Unhappily six o'clock was already past. The lackey, however, did not
keep me long waiting; but returned with--I may say, the text of this
whole Circular--the almost rude answer (which you, my Friends, out of
regard for me and Schabacker, will not divulge) that: "In case I were
the Attila Schmelzle of Schabacker's Regiment, I might lift my
pigeon-liver flag again, and fly to the Devil, as I did at Pimpelstadt."
Another man would have dropt dead on the spot: I, however, walked quite
stoutly off, answering the fellow: "With great pleasure indeed, I fly to
the Devil; and so Devil a fly I care." On the road home I examined
myself whether it had not been the Pontac that spoke out of me (though
the very examination contradicted this, for Pontac never examines); but
I found that nothing but I, my heart, my courage perhaps, had spoken:
and why, after all, any whimpering? Does not the patrimony of my good
wife endow me better than ten Catechetical Professorships? And has she
not furnished all the corners of my book of Life with so many golden
clasps, that I can open it forever without wearing it? Let henhearts
cackle and pip; I flapped my pinions, and said: "Dash boldly through it,
come what may!" I felt myself excited and exalted; I fancied Republics,
in which I, as a hero, might be at home; I longed to be in that noble
Grecian time, when one hero readily put up with bastinadoes from
another, and said: "Strike, but hear!" and out of this ignoble one,
where men will scarcely put up with hard words, to say nothing of more.
I painted out to my mind how I should feel, if, in happier
circumstances, I were uprooting hollow Thrones, and before whole nations
mounting on mighty deeds as on the Temple-steps of Immortality; and in
gigantic ages, finding quite other men to outman and outstrip, than the
mite-populace about me, or, at the best, here and there a Vulcanello. I
thought and thought, and grew wilder and wilder, and intoxicated myself
(no Pontac intoxication therefore, which, you know, increases more by
continuance than cessation of drinking), and gesticulated openly, as I
put the question to myself: "Wilt thou be a mere state-lapdog? A
dog's-dog, a _pium desiderium_ of an _impium desiderium_, an Ex-Ex, a
Nothing's-Nothing?--Fire and Fury!" With this, however, I dashed down my
hat into the mud of the market. On lifting and cleaning this old
servant, I could not but perceive how worn and faded it was; and I
therefore determined instantly to purchase a new one, and carry the same
home in my hand.
[Note 136: If you mount too high above your time, your ears (on the
side of Fame) are little better off than if you sink too deep below it:
in truth, Charles up in his Balloon, and Halley down in his Diving-bell,
felt equally the same strange pain in their ears.]
I accomplished this; I bought one of the finest cut. Strangely enough,
by this hat, as if it had been a graduation-hat, was my head tried and
examined, in the Ziegengasse or Goat-gate of Flaetz. For as General
Schabacker came driving along that street in his carriage, and I (it
need not be said) was determined to avenge myself, not by vulgar
clownishness, but by courtesy, I had here got one of the most ticklish
problems imaginable to solve on the spur of the instant. You observe, if
I swung only the fine hat which I carried in my hand, and kept the faded
one on my head,--I might have the appearance of a perfect clown, who
does not doff at all: if, on the other hand, I pulled the old hat from
my head, and therewith did my reverence, then two hats, both in play at
once (let me swing the other at the same time or not), brought my salute
within the verge of ridicule. Now do you, my Friends, before reading
farther, bethink you how a man was to extricate himself from such a
plight, without losing head! I think, perhaps, by this means: by merely
losing hat. In one word, then, I simply dropped the new hat from my hand
into the mud, to put myself in a condition for taking off the old hat by
itself, and swaying it in needful courtesy, without any shade of
ridicule.
Arrived at the Tiger,--to avoid misconstructions, I first had the
glossy, fine and superfine hat cleaned, and some time afterwards the
mud-hat or rubbish-hat.
And now, weighing my momentous Past in the adjusting balance within me,
I walked in fiery mood to and fro. The Pontac must--I know that there is
no unadulterated liquor here below--have been more than usually
adulterated; so keenly did it chase my fancy out of one fire into the
other. I now looked forth into a wide glittering life, in which I lived
without post, merely on money; and which I beheld, as it were, sowed
with the Delphic caves, and Zenonic walks, and Muse-hills of all the
Sciences, which I might now cultivate at my ease. In particular, I
should have it in my power to apply more diligently to writing
Prize-essays for Academies; of which (that is to say, of the
Prize-essays) no author need ever be ashamed, since, in all cases, there
is a whole crowning Academy to stand and blush for the crownee. And even
if the Prize-marksman does not hit the crown, he still continues more
unknown and more anonymous (his Device not being unsealed) than any
other author, who indeed can publish some nameless Long-ear of a book,
but not hinder it from being, by a Literary Ass-burial (_sepultura
asinina_), publicly interred, in a short time, before half the world.
[Note 25: In youth, like a blind man just couched (and what is
birth but a couching of the sight?), you take the Distant for the Near,
the starry heaven for tangible room-furniture, pictures for objects;
and, to the young man, the whole world is sitting on his very nose, till
repeated bandaging and unbandaging have at last taught him, like the
blind patient, to estimate _Distance_ and _Appearance_.]
Only one thing grieved me by anticipation; the sorrow of my Berga, for
whom, dear tired wayfarer, I on the morrow must overcloud her arrival,
and her shortened market-spectacle, by my negatory intelligence. She
would so gladly (and who can take it ill of a rich farmer's daughter?)
have made herself somebody in Neusattel, and overshone many a female
dignitary! Every mortal longs for his parade-place, and some earlier
living honour than the last honours. Especially so good a lowly-born
housewife as my Berga, conscious perhaps rather of her metallic than of
her spiritual treasure, would still wish at banquets to be mistress of
some seat or other, and so in place to overtop this or that plucked
goose of the neighbourhood.