pilgrimed to his old sporting-places, and to the common where he had so
often driven his snails to pasture; visited the peasant, who, from
school-times upwards, had been wont, to the amazement of the rest, to
_thou_[43] him; went, an Academic Tutor, to the Schoolmaster; then to
the Senior; then to the Episcopal-barn or church. This last no mortal
understands, till I explain it. The case was this: some three-and-forty
years ago, a fire had destroyed the church (not the steeple), the
parsonage, and--what was not to be replaced--the church-records. (For
this reason, it was only the smallest portion of the Hukelum people that
knew exactly how old they were; and the memory of our Quintus himself
vibrated between adopting the thirty-third year and the thirty-second.)
In consequence, the preaching had now to be carried on where formerly
there had been thrashing; and the seed of the divine word to be turned
over on the same threshing-floor with natural corn-seed. The Chanter and
the Schoolboys took up the threshing-floor; the female
mother-church-people stood on the one sheaves-loft, the Schadeck
womankind on the other; and their husbands clustered pyramidically, like
groschen and farthing-gallery men, about the barn-stairs; and far up on
the straw-loft, mixed souls stood listening. A little flute was their
organ, an upturned beer-cask their altar, round which they had to walk.
I confess, I myself could have preached in such a place, not without
humour. The Senior (at that time still a Junior), while the parsonage
was building, dwelt and taught in the Castle: it was here, accordingly,
that Fixlein had learned the _Irregular Verbs_ with Thiennette.
[43] In German, as in some other languages, the common mode of
address is by the _third_ person: plural, it indicates respect;
singular, command: the _second_ person is also used; plural, it
generally denotes indifference; singular, great familiarity, and
sometimes its product, contempt. _Dutzenfreund, Thouing-friend_, is
the strictest term of intimacy; and among the wild _Burschen_
(Students) many a duel (happily, however, often ending like the
_Polemo-Midinia_ in _one_ drop of blood) has been fought, in
consequence of saying _Du_ (thou) and _Sie_ (they) in the wrong
place.--ED.
These voyages of discovery completed, our Hukelum voyager could still,
after evening prayers, pick leaf-insects, with Thiennette, from the
roses; worms from the beds, and a Heaven of joy from every minute. Every
dew-drop was coloured as with oil of cloves and oil of gladness; every
star was a sparkle from the sun of happiness; and in the closed heart of
the maiden, there lay near to him, behind a little wall of separation
(as near to the Righteous man behind the thin wall of Life), an
outstretched blooming Paradise.... I mean, she loved him a little.
He might have known it, perhaps. But to his compressed delight he gave
freer vent, as he went to bed, by early recollections on the stair. For
in his childhood he had been accustomed, by way of evening-prayer, to go
over, under his coverlid, as it were, a rosary, including fourteen Bible
Proverbs, the first verse of the Psalm, "All people that on Earth," the
Tenth Commandment, and, lastly, a long blessing. To get the sooner done
with it, he had used to begin his devotion, not only on the stair, but
before leaving that place where Alexander studied men, and Semler stupid
books. Moored in the haven of the down-waves, he was already over with
his evening supplication; and could now, without farther exertion, shut
his eyes and plump into sleep.----Thus does there lurk, in the smallest
_homunculus_, the model of--the Catholic Church.
So far the Dog-days of Quintus Zebedaeus Egidius Fixlein.--I, for the
second time, close a Chapter of this _Life_, as Life itself is closed,
with a sleep.
THIRD LETTER-BOX.
_Christmas Recollections. New Occurrence._
For all of us the passage to the grave is, alas! a string of empty
insipid days, as of glass pearls, only here and there divided by an
orient one of price. But you die murmuring, unless, like the Quintus,
you regard your existence as a drum: this has only one single _tone_,
but variety of _time_ gives the sound of it cheerfulness enough. Our
Quintus taught in the Fourth Class; vicariated in the Second; wrote at
his desk by night; and so lived on in the usual monotonous fashion--all
the time from the Holidays--till Christmas-eve, 1791; and nothing was
remarkable in his history except this same eve, which I am now about to
paint.
But I shall still have time to paint it, after, in the first place,
explaining shortly how, like birds of passage, he had contrived to soar
away over the dim cloudy Harvest. The secret was, he set upon the
_Hamburg Political Journal_, with which the lackeys of Schadeck had been
for papering their buttons. He could now calmly, with his back at the
stove, accompany the winter campaigns of the foregoing year; and fly
after every battle, as the ravens did after that of Pharsalia. On the
printed paper he could still, with joy and admiration, walk round our
German triumphal arches and scaffoldings for fireworks: while to the
people in the town, who got only the newest newspapers, the very
fragments of these our trophies, maliciously torn down by the French,
were scarcely discernible; nay, with old plans he could drive back and
discomfit the enemy, while later readers in vain tried to resist them
with new ones.
Moreover, not only did the facility of conquering the French prepossess
him in favour of this journal; but also the circumstance that it--cost
him nothing. His attachment to gratis reading was decided. And does not
this throw light on the fact, that he, as Morhof advised, was wont
sedulously to collect the separate leaves of waste-paper books as they
came from the grocer, and to rake among the same, as Virgil did in
Ennius? Nay, for him the grocer was a Fortius (the scholar), or a
Frederick (the king), both which persons were in the habit of simply
cutting from complete books such leaves as contained anything. It was
also this respect for all waste-paper that inspired him with such esteem
for the aprons of French cooks, which it is well known consist of
printed paper; and he often wished some German would translate these
aprons: indeed I am willing to believe that a good version of more than
one of such paper aprons might contribute to elevate our Literature
(this Muse _a belles fesses_), and serve her in place of drivel-bib.--On
many things a man puts a _pretium affectionis_, simply because he hopes
he may have half stolen them: on this principle, combined with the
former, our Quintus adopted into his belief anything he could snap away
from an open Lecture, or as a visitor in class-rooms; opinions only for
which the Professor must be paid, he rigorously examined.--I return to
the Christmas-eve.
At the very first, Egidius was glad, because out of doors millers and
bakers were at fisty-cuffs (as we say of drifting snow in large flakes),
and the ice-flowers of the window were blossoming; for external frost,
with a snug warm room, was what he liked. He could now put fir-wood into
his stove, and Mocha coffee into his stomach; and shove his right foot
(not into the slipper, but) under the warm side of his Shock, and also
on the left keep swinging his pet Starling, which was pecking at the
snout of old Schil; and then with the right hand--with the left he was
holding his pipe--proceed, so undisturbed, so intrenched, so cloud-capt,
without the smallest breath of frost, to the highest enterprise which a
Quintus can attempt,--to writing the Class-prodromus of the
Flachsenfingen Gymnasium, namely, the eighth part thereof. I hold the
_first printing_ in the history of a literary man to be more important
than the _first printing_ in the history of Letters: Fixlein could not
sate himself with specifying what he purposed, God willing, in the
following year, to treat of; and accordingly, more for the sake of
printing than of use, he farther inserted three or four pedagogic
glances at the plan of operations to be followed by his schoolmaster
colleagues as a body.
He lastly introduced a few dashes, by way of hooking his thoughts
together; and then laid aside the _Opus_, and would no longer look at
it, that so, when printed, he might stand astonished at his own
thoughts. And now he could take the Leipzig Fair Catalogue, which he
purchased yearly, instead of the books therein, and open it without a
sigh: he too was in print, as well as I am.
The happy fool, while writing, had shaken his head, rubbed his hands,
hitched about on his chair, puckered his face, and sucked the end of his
cue.--He could now spring up about five o'clock in the evening, to
recreate himself; and across the magic vapour of his pipe, like a
new-caught bird, move up and down in his cage. On the warm smoke, the
long galaxy of street-lamps was gleaming; and red on his bed-curtains
lay the fitful reflection of the blazing windows, and illuminated trees
in the neighbourhood. And now he shook away the snow of Time from the
winter-green of Memory; and beheld the fair years of his childhood,
uncovered, fresh, green and balmy, standing afar off before him. From
his distance of twenty years, he looked into the quiet cottage of his
parents, where his father and his brother had not yet been reaped away
by the sickle of Death. He said to himself: "I will go through the whole
Christmas-eve from the very dawn, as I had it of old."
At his very rising he finds spangles on the table; sacred spangles from
the gold-leaf and silver-leaf, with which the Christ-child[44] has been
emblazoning and coating his apples and nuts, the presents of the
night.--On the mint-balance of joy, this metallic foam pulls heavier
than the golden calves, and golden Pythagoras'-legs, and golden
Philistine-mice of wealthier capitalists.--Then came his mother,
bringing him both Christianity and clothes: for in drawing on his
trousers, she easily recapitulated the Ten Commandments, and, in tying
his garters, the Apostles' Creed. So soon as candle-light was over, and
day-light come, he clambers to the arm of the settle, and then measures
the nocturnal growth of the yellow wiry grove of Christmas-Birch; and
devotes far less attention than usual to the little white
winter-flowerage, which the seeds shaken from the bird-cage are sending
forth in the wet joints of the window-panes.--I nowise grudge J. J.
Rousseau his _Flora Petrinsularis_;[45] but let him also allow our
Quintus his _Window-flora_.--There was no such thing as school all day;
so he had time enough to seek his Butcher (his brother), and commence
(when could there be finer frost for it?) the slaughtering of their
winter-meat. Some days before, the brother, at the peril of his life and
of a cudgelling, had caught their stalled-beast--so they called the
sparrow--under a window-sill in the Castle. Their slaughtering wants not
an axe (of wood), nor puddings, nor potted meat.--About three o'clock
the old Gardener, whom neighbours have to call the Professor of
Gardening, takes his place on his large chair, with his Cologne
tobacco-pipe; and after this no mortal shall work a stroke. He tells
nothing but lies; of the aeronautic Christ-child, and the jingling
Ruprecht with his bells. In the dusk, our little Quintus takes an apple;
divides it into all the figures of stereometry, and spreads the
fragments in two heaps on the table: then as the lighted candle enters,
he starts up in amazement at the unexpected present, and says to his
brother: "Look what the good Christ-child has given thee and me; and I
saw one of his wings glittering." And for this same glittering he
himself lies in wait the whole evening.
[44] These antique Christmas festivities Richter describes with
equal _gusto_ in another work (_Briefe und Zukuenftige Lebenslemf_);
where the Christ-child (falsely reported to the young ones, to have
been seen flying through the air, with gold wings); the Birch-bough
fixed in a corner of the room, and by him made to grow; the fruit,
of gilt sweetmeats, apples, nuts, which (for good boys) it suddenly
produces, &c. &c. are specified with the same fidelity as
here.--ED.
[45] Which he purposed to make for his Island of St. Pierre in the
Bienne Lake.
About eight o'clock,--here he walks chiefly by the chronicle of his
letter-drawer,--both of them, with necks almost excoriated with washing,
and in clean linen, and in universal anxiety lest the Holy Christ-child
find them up, are put to bed. What a magic night!--What tumult of
dreaming hopes!--The populous, motley, glittering cave of Fancy opens
itself, in the length of the night, and in the exhaustion of dreamy
effort, still darker and darker, fuller and more grotesque; but the
awakening gives back to the thirsty heart its hopes. All accidental
tones, the cries of animals, of watchmen, are, for the timidly devout
Fancy, sounds out of Heaven; singing voices of Angels in the air,
church-music of the morning worship.
Ah! it was not the mere Lubberland of sweetmeats and playthings which
then, with its perspective, stormed like a river of joy against the
chambers of our hearts; and which yet, in the moonlight of memory, with
its dusky landscapes, melts our souls in sweetness. Ah! this was it,
that then for our boundless wishes there were still boundless hopes: but
now reality is round us, and the wishes are all that we have left!
At last came rapid lights from the neighbourhood playing through the
window on the walls, and the Christmas trumpets, and the crowing from
the steeple, hurries both the boys from their bed. With their clothes in
their hands, without fear for the darkness, without feeling for the
morning-frost, rushing, intoxicated, shouting, they hurry down-stairs
into the dark room. Fancy riots in the pastry and fruit-perfume of the
still eclipsed treasures, and paints her air-castles by the glimmering
of the Hesperides-fruit with which the Birch-tree is loaded. While their
mother strikes a light, the falling sparks sportfully open and shroud
the dainties on the table, and the many-coloured grove on the wall; and
a single atom of that fire bears on it a hanging garden of Eden.----
--On a sudden all grew light; and the Quintus got--the Conrectorship,
and a table-clock.
FOURTH LETTER-BOX.
_Office-brokage. Discovery of the promised Secret. Hans van Fuechslein._
For while the Quintus, in his vapoury chamber, was thus running over the
sounding-board of his early years, the Rathsdiener, or City-officer,
entered with a lantern and the Presentation; and behind him the courier
of the Frau von Aufhammer with a note and a table-clock. The
Rittmeisterinn had transformed her payment for the Dog-days
sickbed-exhortation into a Christmas present; which consisted, _first_,
of a table-clock, with a wooden ape thereon, starting out when the hours
struck, and drumming along with every stroke; _secondly_, of the
Conrectorate, which she had procured for him.
As in the public this appointment from the private Flachsenfingen
Council has not been judged of as it deserved, I consider it my duty to
offer a defence for the body corporate; and that rather here, than in
the _Reichsanzeiger_, or _Imperial Indicator_.--I have already
mentioned, in the Second Letter-Box, that the Town-Syndic drove a trade
in Hamburg candles; and the then Buergermeister in coffee-beans, which he
sold as well whole as ground. Their joint traffic, however, which they
carried on exclusively, was in the eight School-offices of
Flachsenfingen: the other members of the Council acting only as
bale-wrappers, shopmen and accountants in the Council wareroom. A
Council-house, indeed, is like an India-house, where not only
resolutions or appointments, but also shoes and cloth, are exposed to
sale. Properly speaking, the Councillor derives his freedom of
office-trading from that principle of the Roman law: _Cui jus est
donandi, eidem et vendendi jus est_, that is to say, He who has the
right of giving anything away, has also a right to dispose of it for
money, if he can. Now as the Council-members have palpably the right of
conferring offices gratis, the right of selling them must follow of
course.
_Short Extra-word on Appointment-brokers in general._
My chief anxiety is lest the Academy-product-sale-Commission[46] of the
State carry on its office-trade too slackly. And what but the commonweal
must suffer in the long-run, if important posts are distributed, not
according to the current cash, which is laid down for them, but
according to connexions, relationships, party recommendations, and
bowings and cringings? Is it not a contradiction, to charge titulary
offices dearer than real ones? Should not one rather expect that the
real Hofrath would pay higher by the _alterum tantum_ than the mere
titulary Hofrath?--Money, among European nations, is now the equivalent
and representative of value in all things, and consequently in
understanding; the rather as a _head_ is stamped on it: to pay down the
purchase-money of an office is therefore neither more nor less than to
stand an _examen rigorosum_, which is held by a good _schema
examinandi_. To invert this, to pretend exhibiting your qualifications,
in place of these their surrogates, and assignates and _monnoie de
confiance_, is simply to resemble the crazy philosophers in _Gulliver's
Travels_, who, for social converse, instead of names of things, brought
the things themselves tied up in a bag; it is, indeed, plainly as much
as trying to fall back into the barbarous times of trade by barter, when
the Romans, instead of the figured cattle on their leather money, drove
forth the beeves themselves.
[46] Borrowed from the "Imperial Mine-product-sale-Commission," in
Vienna: in their very names these Vienna people show taste.
From all such injudicious notions I myself am so far removed, that often
when I used to read that the King of France was devising new offices, to
stand and sell them under the booth of his Baldaquin, I have set myself
to do something of the like. This I shall now at least calmly propose;
not vexing my heart whether Governments choose to adopt it or not. As
our Sovereign will not allow us to multiply offices purely for sale,
nay, on the contrary, is day and night (like managers of strolling
companies) meditating how to give more parts to one State-actor; and
thus to the Three Stage Unities to add a Fourth, that of Players; as the
above French method, therefore, will not apply, could not we at least
contrive to invent some Virtues harmonising with the offices, along with
which they might be sold as titles? Might we not, for instance, with the
office of a Referendary, put off at the same time a titular
Incorruptibility, for a fair consideration; and so that this virtue, as
not belonging to the office, must be separately paid for by the
candidate? Such a market-title and patent of nobility could not but be
ornamental to a Referendary. We forget that in former times such high
titles were appended to all posts whatsoever: the scholastic Professor
then wrote himself (besides his official designation) "The Seraphic,"
"The Incontrovertible," "The Penetrating;" the King wrote himself "The
Great," "The Bald," "The Bold," and so also did the Rabbins. Could it be
unpleasant to gentlemen in the higher stations of Justice, if the titles
of Impartiality, Rapidity, &c. might be conferred on them by sale, as
well as the posts themselves? Thus with the appointment of a Kammerrath,
or Councillor of Revenue, the virtue of Patriotism might fitly be
conjoined; and I believe, few Advocates would grudge purchasing the
title of Integrity (as well as their common one of Government-advocacy),
were it to be had in the market. If, however, any candidate chose to
take his post without the virtues, then it would stand with himself to
do so, and in the adoption of this reflex morality, Government should
not constrain him.
It might be that, as, according to Tristram Shandy, clothes; according
to Walter Shandy and Lavater, proper names exert an influence on men,
appellatives would do so still more; since, on us, as on testaceous
animals, _the foam so often hardens into shell_: but such internal
morality is not a thing the State can have an eye to; for, as in the
fine arts, it is not this, but the _representation_ of it, which forms
her true aim.
I have found it rather difficult to devise for our different offices
different verbal-virtues; but I should think there might many such
divisions of Virtue (at this moment, Love of Freedom, Public-spirit,
Sincerity and Uprightness occur to me) be hunted out; were but some
well-disposed minister of state to appoint a Virtue-board or Moral
Address Department, with some half dozen secretaries, who, for a small
salary, might devise various virtues for the various posts. Were I in
their place, I should hold a good prism before the white ray of Virtue,
and divide it completely. Pity that it were not crimes we wanted--their
subdivision I mean;--our country Judges might then be selected for this
purpose. For in their tribunals, where only inferior jurisdiction, and
no penalty above five florins Frankish, is admitted, they have a daily
training how out of every mischief to make several small ones, none of
which they ever punish to a greater amount than their five florins. This
is a precious moral _Rolfinkenism_, which our Jurists have learned from
the great Sin-cutters, St. Augustin and his Sorbonne, who together have
carved more sins on Adam's Sin-apple than ever Rolfinken did faces on a
cherry-stone. How different one of our Judges from a Papal Casuist, who,
by side-scrapings, will rasp you down the best deadly sin into a
venial!--
School-offices (to come to these) are a small branch of traffic
certainly; yet still they are monarchies,--school-monarchies, to
wit,--resembling the Polish crown, which, according to Pope's verse, is
twice exposed to sale in the century; a statement, I need hardly say,
arithmetically false, Newton having settled the average duration of a
reign at twenty-two years. For the rest, whether the city Council bring
the young of the community a Hameln _Rat_-and-Child-_catcher_; or a
Weisse's _Child's-friend_,--this to the Council can make no difference;
seeing the Schoolmaster is not a horse, for whose secret defects the
horse-dealer is to be responsible. It is enough if Town-Syndic and Co.
cannot reproach themselves with having picked out any fellow of genius;
for a genius, as he is useless to the State, except for recreation and
ornament, would at the very least exclude the duller, cooler head, who
properly forms the true care and profit of the State; as your costly
carat-pearl is good for show alone, but coarse grain-pearls for
medicine. On the whole, if a schoolmaster be adequate to flog his
scholars, it should suffice; and I cannot but blame our Commission of
Inspectors when they go examining schools, that they do not make the
schoolmaster go through the duty of firking one or two young persons of
his class in their presence, by way of trial, to see what is in him.
_End of the Extra-word on Appointment-brokers in general._
Now again to our history! The Councillor Heads of the Firm had conferred
the Conrectorate on my hero, not only with a view to the continued
consumpt of candles and beans, but also on the strength of a quite mad
notion: they believed, the Quintus would very soon die.
--And here I have reached a most important circumstance in this History,
and one into which I have yet let no mortal look: now, however, it no
longer depends on my will whether I shall shove aside the folding-screen
from it or not; but I must positively lay it open, nay hang a
reverberating-lamp over it.
In medical history, it is a well-known fact that in certain families the
people all die precisely at the same age, just as in these families they
are all born at the same age (of nine months); nay, from Voltaire, I
recollect one family, the members of which at the same age all killed
themselves. Now, in the Fixleinic lineage, it was the custom that the
male ascendants uniformly on Cantata-Sunday, in their thirty-second
year, took to bed and died: every one of my readers would do well to
insert in his copy of the _Thirty-Years War_, Schiller having entirely
omitted it, the fact, that in the course thereof, one Fixlein died of
the plague, another of hunger, another of a musket-bullet; all in their
thirty-second year. True Philosophy explains the matter thus: "The first
two or three times, it happened purely by accident; and the other times,
the people died of sheer fright: if not so, the whole fact is rather to
be questioned."