therefore resolved to purchase for myself, and consequently for her, one
of the best of those titles, which our Courts in Germany (as in a
Leipzig sale-room) stand offering to buyers, in all sizes and sorts,
from Noble and Half-noble down to Rath or Councillor; and once invested
therewith, to reflect from my own Quarter-nobility such an
Eighth-part-nobility on this true soul, that many a Neusattelitess (I
hope) shall half burst with envy, and say and cry: "Pooh, the stupid
farmer thing! See how it wabbles and bridles! It has forgot how matters
stood when it had no money-bag, and no Hofrath!" For to the Hofrathship
I shall before this have attained.
But in the cold solitude of my room, and the fire of my remembrances, I
longed unspeakably for my Bergelchen: I and my heart were wearied with
the foreign busy day; no one here said a kind word to me, which he did
not hope to put in the bill. Friends! I languished for my friend, whose
heart would pour out its blood as a balsam for a second heart; I cursed
my over-prudent regulations, and wished that, to have the good Berga at
my side, I had given up the stupid houseware to all thieves and fires
whatsoever: as I walked to and fro, it seemed to me easier and easier to
become all things, an Exchequer-Rath, an Excise-Rath, any Rath in the
world, and whatever she required when she came.
[Note 125: In the long-run, out of mere fear and necessity, we
shall become the warmest cosmopolites I know of; so rapidly do ships
shoot to and fro, and, like shuttles, weave Islands and Quarters of the
World together. For, let but the political weatherglass fall today in
South America, tomorrow we in Europe have storm and thunder.]
"See thou take thy pleasure in the town!" had Bergelchen kept saying the
whole week through. But how, without her, can I take any? Our tears of
sorrow friends dry up, and accompany with their own: but our tears of
joy we find most readily repeated in the eyes of our wives. Pardon me,
good Friends, these libations of my sensibility; I am but showing you my
heart and my Berga. If I need an Absolution-merchant, the
Pontac-merchant is the man.
_First Night in Flaetz._
Yet the wine did not take from me the good sense to look under the bed,
before going into it, and examine whether any one was lurking there; for
example, the Dwarf, or the Ratcatcher, or the Legations-Rath; also to
shove the key under the latch (which I reckon the best bolting
arrangement of all), and then, by way of farther assurance, to bore my
night-screws into the door, and pile all the chairs in a heap behind it;
and, lastly, to keep on my breeches and shoes, wishing absolutely to
have no care upon my mind.
But I had still other precautions to take in regard to sleepwalking. To
me it has always been incomprehensible how so many men can go to bed,
and lie down at their ease there, without reflecting that perhaps, in
the first sleep, they may get up again as Somnambulists, and crawl over
the tops of roofs and the like; awakening in some spot where they may
fall in a moment and break their necks. While at home, there is little
risk in my sleep: because, my right toe being fastened every night with
three ells of tape (I call it in jest our marriage-tie) to my wife's
left hand, I feel a certainty that, in case I should start up from this
bed-arrest, I must with the tether infallibly awaken her, and so by my
Berga, as by my living bridle, be again led back to bed. But here in the
Inn, I had nothing for it but to knot myself once or twice to the
bed-foot, that I might not wander; though in this way, an irruption of
villains would have brought double peril with it.--Alas! so dangerous is
sleep at all times, that every man, who is not lying on his back a
corpse, must be on his guard lest with the general system some limb or
other also fall asleep; in which case the sleeping limb (there are not
wanting examples of it in Medical History) may next morning be lying
ripe for amputation. For this reason, I have myself frequently awakened,
that no part of me fall asleep.
[Note 19: It is easier, they say, to climb a hill when you ascend
back foremost. This, perhaps, might admit of application to political
eminences; if you still turned towards them that part of the body on
which you sit, and kept your face directed down to the people; all the
while, however, removing and mounting.]
[Note 26: Few German writers are not original, if we may ascribe
originality (as is at least the conversational practice of all people)
to a man, who merely dishes out his own thoughts without foreign
admixture. For as, between their Memory, where their reading or foreign
matter dwells, and their Imagination or Productive Power, where their
writing or own peculiar matter originates, a sufficient space
intervenes, and the boundary-stones are fixed-in so conscientiously and
firmly that nothing foreign may pass over into their own, or inversely,
so that they may really read a hundred works without losing their own
primitive flavour, or even altering it,--their individuality may, I
believe, be considered as secured; and their spiritual nourishment,
their pancakes, loaves, fritters, caviare and meat-balls, are not
assimilated to their system, but given back pure and unaltered. Often in
my own mind I figure such writers as living but thousandfold more
artificial Ducklings from Vaucanson's Artificial Duck of Wood. For in
fact they are not less cunningly put together than this timber Duck,
which will gobble meat, and apparently void it again, under show of
having digested it, and derived from it blood and juices; though the
secret of the business is, the artist has merely introduced an ingenious
compound ejective matter behind, with which concoction and nourishment
have nothing to do, but which the Duck illusorily gives forth and
publishes to the world.]
Having properly tied myself to the bed-posts, and at length got under
the coverlid, I now began to be dubious about my Pontac Fire-bath, and
apprehensive of the valorous and tumultuous dreams too likely to ensue;
which, alas, did actually prove to be nothing better than heroic and
monarchic feats, castle-stormings, rock-throwings, and the like. This
point also I am sorry to see so little attended to in medicine. Medical
gentlemen, as well as their customers, all stretch themselves quietly in
their beds, without one among them considering whether a furious rage
(supposing him also directly after to drink cold water in his dream), or
a heart-devouring grief, all which he may undergo in vision, does harm
to life or not.
Shortly before midnight, I awoke from a heavy dream, to encounter a
ghost-trick much too ghostly for my fancy. My Brother-in-law, who
manufactured it, deserves for such vapid cookery to be named before you
without reserve, as the malt-master of this washy brewage. Had suspicion
been more compatible with intrepidity, I might perhaps, by his moral
maxim about this matter, on the road, as well as by his taking up the
side-room, at the middle door of which stood my couch, have easily
divined the whole. But now, on awakening, I felt myself blown upon by a
cold ghost-breath, which I could nowise deduce from the distant bolted
window; a point I had rightly decided, for the Dragoon was producing the
phenomenon, through the keyhole, by a pair of bellows. Every sort of
coldness, in the night-season, reminds you of clay-coldness and
spectre-coldness. I summoned my resolution, however, and abode the
issue: but now the very coverlid began to get in motion; I pulled it
towards me; it would not stay; sharply I sit upright in my bed, and cry:
"What is that?" No answer; everywhere silence in the Inn; the whole room
full of moonshine. And now my drawing-plaster, my coverlid, actually
rose up, and let in the air; at which I felt like a wounded man whose
cataplasm you suddenly pull off. In this crisis, I made a bold leap from
this Devil's-torus, and, leaping, snapped asunder my somnambulist
tether. "Where is the silly human fool," cried I, "that dares to ape the
unseen sublime world of Spirits, which may, in the instant, open before
him?" But on, above, under the bed, there was nothing to be heard or
seen. I looked out of the window: everywhere spectral moonlight and
street-stillness; nothing moving except (probably from the wind), on the
distant Gallows-hill, a person lately hanged.
Any man would have taken it for self-deception as well as I: therefore I
again wrapped myself in my passive _lit de justice_ and air-bed, and
waited with calmness to see whether my fright would subside or not.
[Note 15: After the manner of the fine polished English
folding-knives, there are now also folding-war-swords, or in other
words--Treaties of Peace.]
[Note 13: _Omnibus una_ SALUS _Sanctis, sed_ GLORIA _dispar:_ that
is to say (as Divines once taught) according to Saint Paul, we have all
the same Beatitude in Heaven, but different degrees of Honour. Here, on
Earth, we find a shadow of this in the writing world; for the Beatitude
of authors once beatified by Criticism, whether they be genial, good,
mediocre, or poor, is the same throughout; they all obtain the same
pecuniary Felicity, the same slender profit. But, Heavens! in regard to
the degrees of Fame, again, how far (in spite of the same emolument and
sale) will a Dunce, even in his lifetime, be put below a Genius! Is not
a shallow writer frequently forgotten in a single Fair, while a deep
writer, or even a writer of genius, will blossom through fifty Fairs,
and so may celebrate his Twenty-five Years' Jubilee, before, late
forgotten, he is lowered into the German Temple of Fame; a Temple
imitating the peculiarity of the _Padri Luichesi_ churches in Naples,
which (according to Volkmann) permit _burials_ under their roofs, but no
_tombstone_.]
In a few minutes, the coverlid, the infernal Faust's-mantle, again began
flying and towing; also, by way of change, the invisible bed-maker again
lifted me up. Accursed hour!--I should beg to know whether, in the whole
of cultivated Europe, there is one cultivated or uncultivated man, who,
in a case of this kind, would not have lighted on ghost-devilry? I
lighted on it, under my piece of (self) movable property, my coverlid:
and thought Berga had died suddenly, and was now, in spirit, laying hold
of my bed. However, I could not speak to her, nor as little to the
Devil, who might well be supposed to have a hand in the game; but I
turned myself solely to Heaven, and prayed aloud: "To thee I commit
myself; thou alone heretofore hast cared for thy weak servant; and I
swear that I will turn a new leaf,"--a promise which shall be kept
nevertheless, though the whole was but stupid treachery and trick.
My prayer had no effect with the unchristian Dragoon, who now, once for
all, had got me prisoner in the dragnet of a coverlid; and heeded little
whether a guest's bed were, by his means, made a state-bed and death-bed
or not. He span out my nerves, like gold-wire through smaller and
smaller holes, to utter inanition and evanition; for the bed-clothes at
last literally marched off to the door of the room.
Now was the moment to rise into the sublime; and to trouble myself no
longer about aught here below, but softly to devote myself to death.
"Snatch me away," cried I, and, without thinking, cut three crosses;
"quick, dispatch me, ye ghosts: I die more innocent than thousands of
tyrants and blasphemers, to whom ye yet appear not, but to unpolluted
me." Here I heard a sort of laugh, either on the street or in the
side-room: at this warm human tone, I suddenly bloomed up again, as at
the coming of a new Spring, in every twig and leaf. Wholly despising the
winged coverlid, which was not now to be picked from the door, I laid
myself down uncovered, but warm and perspiring from other causes, and
soon fell asleep. For the rest, I am not the least ashamed, in the face
of all refined capital cities,--though they were standing here at my
hand,--that by this Devil-belief and Devil-address I have attained some
likeness to our great German Lion, to Luther.
_Second Day in Flaetz._
Early in the morning, I felt myself awakened by the well-known coverlid;
it had laid itself on me like a nightmare: I gaped up; quiet, in a
corner of the room, sat a red, round, blooming, decorated girl, like a
full-blown tulip in the freshness of life, and gently rustling with gay
ribbons as with leaves.
"Who's there--how came you in?" cried I, half-blind.
"I covered thee softly, and thought to let thee sleep," said Bergelchen;
"I have walked all night to be here early; do but look!"
She showed me her boots, the only remnant of her travelling-gear, which,
in the moulting process of the toilette, she had not stript at the gate
of Flaetz.
"Is there," said I, alarmed at her coming six hours sooner, and the
more, as I had been alarmed all night and was still so, at her
mysterious entrance,--"is there some fresh woe come over us, fire,
murder, robbery?"
She answered: "The old Rat thou hast chased so long died yesterday;
farther, there was nothing of importance."
"And all has been managed rightly, and according to my Letter of
Instructions, at home?" inquired I.
"Yes, truly," answered she; "only I did not see the Letter; it is lost;
thou hast packed it among thy clothes."
Well, I could not but forgive the blooming brave pedestrian all
omissions. Her eye, then her heart was bringing fresh cool morning air
and morning red into my sultry hours. And yet, for this kind soul,
looking into life with such love and hope, I must in a little while
overcloud the merited Heaven of today, with tidings of my failure in the
Catechetical Professorship! I dallied and postponed to the utmost. I
asked how she had got in, as the whole _chevaux-de-frise_ barricado of
chairs was still standing fast at the door. She laughed heartily,
curtseying in village fashion, and said, she had planned it with her
brother the day before yesterday, knowing my precautions in locking,
that he should admit her into my room, that so she might cunningly
awaken me. And now bolted the Dragoon with loud laughter into the
apartment, and cried: "Slept well, brother?"
[Note 79: Weak and wrong heads are the hardest to change; and their
inward man acquires a scanty covering: thus capons never moult.]
[Note 89: In times of misfortune, the Ancients supported themselves
with Philosophy or Christianity; the moderns again (for example, in the
reign of Terror), take to Pleasure; as the wounded Buffalo, for bandage
and salve, rolls himself in the mire.]
In this wise truly the whole ghost-story was now solved and expounded,
as if by the pen of a Biester or a Hennings; I instantly saw through the
entire ghost-scheme, which our Dragoon had executed. With some
bitterness I told him my conjecture, and his sister my story. But he
lied and laughed; nay, attempted shamelessly enough to palm
spectre-notions on me a second time, in open day. I answered coldly,
that in me he had found the wrong man, granting even that I had some
similarity with Luther, with Hobbes, with Brutus, all of whom had seen
and dreaded ghosts. He replied, tearing the facts away from their
originating causes: "All he could say was, that last night he had heard
some poor sinner creaking and lamenting dolefully enough; and from this
he had inferred, it must be an unhappy brother set upon by goblins."
In the end, his sister's eyes also were opened to the low character
which he had tried to act with me: she sharply flew at him, pushed him
with both hands out of his and my door, and called after him: "Wait,
thou villain, I will mind it!"
Then hastily turning round, she fell on my neck, and (at the wrong
place) into laughter, and said: "The wild fool! But I could not keep my
laugh another minute, and he was not to see it. Forgive the ninny, thou
a learned man, his ass pranks: what can one expect?"
I inquired whether she, in her nocturnal travelling, had not met with
any spectral persons; though I knew that to her, a wild beast, a river,
a half abyss, are nothing. No, she had not; but the gay-dressed
town's-people, she said, had scared her in the morning. O! how I do
love these soft Harmonica-quiverings of female fright!
[Note 181: God be thanked that we live nowhere forever except in
Hell or Heaven; on Earth otherwise we should grow to be the veriest
rascals, and the World a House of Incurables, for want of the dog-doctor
(the Hangman), and the issue-cord (on the Gallows), and the sulphur and
chalybeate medicines (on Battlefields). So that we too find our gigantic
moral force dependent on the _Debt of Nature_ which we have to pay,
exactly as your politicians (for example, the Author of the _New
Leviathan_) demonstrate that the English have their _National Debt_ to
thank for their superiority.]
At last, however, I was forced to bite or cut the coloquinta-apple, and
give her the half of it; I mean the news of my rejected petition for the
Catechetical Professorship. Wishing to spare this joyful heart the
rudeness of the whole truth, and to subtract something from a heavy
burden, more fit for the shoulders of a man, I began: "Bergelchen, the
Professorship affair is taking another, though still a good enough
course: the General, whom may the Devil and his Grandmother teach sense,
will not be taken except by storm; and storm he shall have, as certainly
as I have on my nightcap."
"Then, thou art nothing yet?" inquired she.
"For the moment, indeed, not!" answered I.
"But before Saturday night?" said she.
"Not quite," said I.
"Then am I sore stricken, and could leap out of the window," said she,
and turned away her rosy face, to hide its wet eyes, and was silent very
long. Then, with painfully quivering voice, she began: "Good Christ
stand by me at Neusattel on Sunday, when these high-prancing prideful
dames look at me in church, and I grow scarlet for shame!"
Here in sympathetic woe I sprang out of bed to the dear soul, over whose
brightly blooming cheeks warm tears were rolling, and cried: "Thou true
heart, do not tear me in pieces so! May I die, if yet in these dog-days
I become not all and everything that thou wishest! Speak, wilt thou be
Mining-raethin, Build-raethin, Court-raethin, War-raethin, Chamber-raethin,
Commerce-raethin, Legations-raethin, or Devil and his Dam's raethin: I am
here, and will buy it, and be it. Tomorrow I send riding posts to Saxony
and Hessia, to Prussia and Russia, to Friesland and Katzenellenbogen,
and demand patents. Nay, I will carry matters farther than another, and
be all things at once, Flachsenfingen Court-rath, Scheerau Excise-rath,
Haarhaar Building-rath, Pestitz[6] Chamber-rath (for we have the cash);
and thus, alone and single-handed, represent with one _podex_ and
_corpus_ a whole Rath-session of select Raths; and stand, a complete
Legion of Honour, on one single pair of legs: the like no man ever did."
[Note 63: To apprehend danger from the Education of the People, is
like fearing lest the thunderbolt strike into the house because it has
_windows_; whereas the lightning never comes through these, but through
their _lead_ framing, or down by the _smoke_ of the chimney.]
[Note 6: Cities of Richter's romance kingdom. Flachsenfingen he
sometimes calls _Klein-Wien_, Little Vienna.--ED.]
"O! now thou art angel-good!" said she, and gladder tears rolled down;
"thou shalt counsel me thyself which are the finest Raths, and these we
will be."
"No," continued I, in the fire of the moment, "neither shall this serve
us: to me it is not enough that to Mrs. Chaplain thou canst announce
thyself as Building-raethin, to Mrs. Town-parson as Legations-raethin, to
Mrs. Buergermeister as Court-raethin, to Mrs. Road-and-toll-surveyor as
Commerce-raethin, or how and where thou pleasest----"
"Ah! my own too good Attelchen!" said she.
"--But," continued I, "I shall likewise become corresponding member of
the several Learned Societies in the several best capital cities (among
which I have only to choose); and truly no common actual member, but a
whole honorary member; then thee, as another honorary member, growing
out of my honorary membership, I uplift and exalt."
Pardon me, my Friends, this warm cataplasm, or deception-balsam for a
wounded breast, whose blood is so pure and precious, that one may be
permitted to endeavour, with all possible stanching-lints and
spider-webs, to drive it back into the fair heart, its home.
But now came bright and brightest hours. I had conquered Time, I had
conquered myself and Berga: seldom does a conqueror, as I did, bless
both the victorious and the vanquished party. Berga called back her
former Heaven, and pulled off her dusty boots, and on her flowery shoes.
Precious morning beverage, intoxicating to a heart that loves! I felt
(if the low figure may be permitted) a double-beer of courage in me, now
that I had one being more to protect. In general it is my nature--which
the honourable Premier seems not to be fully aware of--to grow bolder
not among the bold, but fastest among poltroons, the bad example acting
on me by the rule of contraries. Little touches may in this case shadow
forth man and wife, without casting them into the shade: When the trim
waiter with his green silk apron brought up cracknels for breakfast,
and I told him: "Johann, for two!" Berga said: "He would oblige her very
much," and called him Herr Johann.
[Note 76: Your economical, preaching Poetry, apparently supposes
that a surgical Stone-cutter is an Artistical one; and a Pulpit or a
Sinai a Hill of the Muses.]
Bergelchen, more familiar with rural burghs than capital cities, felt a
good deal amazed and alarmed at the coffee-trays, dressing-tables,
paper-hangings, sconces, alabaster inkholders, with Egyptian emblems, as
well as at the gilt bell-handle, lying ready for any one to pull out or
to push in. Accordingly, she had not courage to walk through the hall,
with its lustres, purely because a whistling, whiffling Cap-and-feather
was gesturing up and down in it. Nay, her poor heart was like to fail
when she peeped out of the window at so many gay promenading
town's-people (I was briskly whistling a Gascon air down over them); and
thought that in a little while, at my side, she must break into the
middle of this dazzling courtly throng. In a case like this, reasons are
of less avail than examples. I tried to elevate my Bergelchen, by
reciting some of my nocturnal dream-feats; for example, how, riding on a
whale's back, with a three-pronged fork, I had pierced and eaten three
eagles; and by more of the like sort: but I produced no effect; perhaps,
because to the timid female heart the battle-field was presented rather
than the conqueror, the abyss rather than the overleaper of it.
At this time a sheaf of newspapers was brought me, full of gallant
decisive victories. And though these happen only on one side, and on the
other are just so many defeats, yet the former somehow assimilate more
with my blood than the latter, and inspire me (as Schiller's _Robbers_
used to do) with a strange inclination to lay hold of some one, and
thrash and curry him on the spot. Unluckily for the waiter, he had
chanced, even now, like a military host, to stand a triple bell-order
for march, before he would leave his ground and come up. "Sir," began I,
my head full of battle-fields, and my arm of inclination to baste him;
and Berga feared the very worst, as I gave her the well-known anger and
alarm signal, namely, shoved up my cap to my hindhead--"Sir, is this
your way of treating guests? Why don't you come promptly? Don't come so
again; and now be going, friend!" Although his retreat was my victory,
I still kept briskly cannonading on the field of action, and fired the
louder (to let him hear it), the more steps he descended in his flight.
Bergelchen,--who felt quite horrorstruck at my fury, particularly in a
quite strange house, and at a quality waiter with silk apron,--mustered
all her soft words against the wild ones of a man-of-war, and spoke of
dangers that might follow. "Dangers," answered I, "are just what I seek;
but for a man there are none; in all cases he will either conquer or
evade them, either show them front or back."