sample-sheet of the Wednesday. Persons who on account of dress could not
be present at the great school-festival, especially ladies, made their
appearance on Tuesday, during the six proof-orations. No one can be
readier than I to subordinate the proof-Actus to the Wednesday-Actus;
and I do anything but need being stimulated suitably to estimate the
solemn feast of a School; but on the other hand I am equally convinced
that no one, who did not go to the real Actus of Wednesday, could
possibly figure anything more splendid than the proof-day preceding;
because he could have no object wherewith to compare the pomp in which
the Primate of the festival drove in with his triumphal chariot and
six--to call the six brethren-speakers coach-horses--next morning in
presence of ladies and Councillor gentlemen. Smile away, Fixlein, at
this astonishment over thy today's _Ovation_, which is leading on
tomorrow's _Triumph_: on thy dissolving countenance quivers happy Self,
feeding on these incense-fumes; but a vanity like thine, and that only,
which enjoys without comparing or despising, can one tolerate, will one
foster. But what flowed over all his heart, like a melting sunbeam over
wax, was his mother, who after much persuasion had ventured in her
Sunday clothes humbly to place herself quite low down, beside the door
of the Prima class-room. It were difficult to say who is happier, the
mother, beholding how he whom she has borne under her heart can direct
such noble young gentlemen, and hearing how he along with them can talk
of these really high things and understand them too;--or the son, who,
like some of the heroes of Antiquity, has the felicity of triumphing in
the lifetime of his mother. I have never in my writings or doings cast a
stone upon the late Burchardt Grossmann, who under the initial letters
of the stanzas in his song, "_Brich an, du liebe Morgenroethe_," inserted
the letters of his own name; and still less have I ever censured any
poor herbwoman for smoothing out her winding-sheet, while still living,
and making herself one-twelfth of a dozen of grave-shifts. Nor do I
regard the man as wise--though indeed as very clever and pedantic--who
can fret his gall-bladder full because every one of us leaf-miners views
the leaf whereon he is mining as a park-garden, as a fifth Quarter of
the World (so near and rich is it); the leaf-pores as so many Valleys of
Tempe, the leaf-skeleton as a Liberty-tree, a Bread-tree and Life-tree,
and the dew-drops as the Ocean. We poor day-moths, evening-moths and
night-moths, fall universally into the same error, only on different
leaves; and whosoever (as I do) laughs at the important airs with which
the schoolmaster issues his programs, the dramaturgist his playbills,
the classical variation-alms-gatherer his alphabetic letters,--does it,
if he is wise (as is the case here), with the consciousness of his own
_similar_ folly; and laughs in regard to his neighbour, at nothing but
mankind and himself.
The mother was not to be detained; she must off, this very night, to
Hukelum, to give the Fraeulein Thiennette at least some tidings of this
glorious business.--
And now the World will bet a hundred to one, that I forthwith take
biographical wax, and emboss such a wax-figure cabinet of the Actus
itself as shall be single of its kind.
But on Wednesday morning, while the hope-intoxicated Conrector was just
about putting on his fine raiment, something knocked.----
It was the well-known servant of the Rittmeister, carrying the Hukelum
Presentation for the Subrector _Fuechs_lein in his pocket. To the
last-named gentleman he had been sent with this call to the parsonage:
but he had distinguished ill betwixt _Sub_ and _Con_rector; and had
besides his own good reasons for directing his steps to the latter; for
he thought: "Who can it be that gets it, but the parson that preached
last Sunday, and that comes from the village, and is engaged to our
Fraeulein Thiennette, and to whom I brought a clock and a roll of ducats
already?" That his Lordship could pass over his own godson, never
entered the man's head.
Fixlein read the address of the Appointment: "To the Reverend the Parson
_Fixlein_ of Hukelum." He naturally enough made the same mistake as the
lackey; and broke up the Presentation as his own: and finding moreover
in the body of the paper no special mention of persons, but only of a
_Schul-unter-befehlslaber_ or School-undergovernor (instead of
Subrector), he could not but persist in his error. Before I properly
explain why the Rittmeister's Lawyer, the framer of the Presentation,
had so designated a Subrector--we two, the reader and myself, will keep
an eye for a moment on Fixlein's joyful saltations--on his
gratefully-streaming eyes--on his full hands so laden with bounty--on
the present of two ducats, which he drops into the hands of the
mitre-bearer, as willingly as he will soon drop his own pedagogic
office. Could he tell what to think (of the Rittmeister), or to write
(to the same), or to table (for the lackey)? Did he not ask tidings of
the noble health of his benefactor over and over, though the servant
answered him with all distinctness at the very first? And was not this
same man, who belonged to the nose-upturning, shoulder-shrugging,
shoulder-knotted, toad-eating species of men, at last so moved by the
joy which he had imparted, that he determined on the spot, to bestow his
presence on the new clergyman's School-Actus, though no person of
quality whatever was to be there? Fixlein, in the first place, sealed
his letter of thanks; and courteously invited this messenger of good
news to visit him frequently in the Parsonage; and to call this evening
in passing at his mother's, and give her a lecture for not staying last
night, when she might have seen the Presentation from his Lordship
arrive today.
The lackey being gone, Fixlein for joy began to grow sceptical--and
timorous (wherefore, to prevent filching, he stowed his Presentation
securely in his coffer, under keeping of two padlocks); and devout and
softened, since he thanked God without scruple for all good that
happened to him, and never wrote this Eternal Name but in pulpit
characters and with coloured ink, as the Jewish copyists never wrote it
except in ornamental letters and when newly washed;[52]--and deaf also
did the parson grow, so that he scarcely heard the soft wooing-hour of
the Actus--for a still softer one beside Thiennette, with its
rose-bushes and rose-honey, would not leave his thoughts. He who of old,
when Fortune made a wry face at him, was wont, like children in their
sport at one another, to laugh at her so long till she herself was
obliged to begin smiling,--he was now flying as on a huge seesaw higher
and higher, quicker and quicker aloft.
[52] Eichhorn's _Einleit. ins A. T._ (Introduction to the Old
Testament), vol. ii.
But before the Actus, let us examine the Schadeck Lawyer. _Fixlein_
instead of _Fuechslein_[53] he had written from uncertainty about the
spelling of the name; the more naturally as in transcribing the
Rittmeisterinn's will, the former had occurred so often. _Von_, this
triumphal arch he durst not set up before Fuechslein's new name, because
Aufhammer forbade it, considering Hans Fuechslein as a mushroom who had
no right to _vons_ and titles of nobility, for all his patents. In fine,
the Presentation-writer was possessed with Campe's[54] whim of
Germanising everything, minding little though when Germanised it should
cease to be intelligible;--as if a word needed any better act of
naturalisation than that which universal intelligibility imparts to it.
In itself it is the same--the rather as all languages, like all men, are
cognate, intermarried and intermixed--whether a word was invented by a
savage or a foreigner; whether it grew up like moss amid the German
forests, or like street-grass, in the pavement of the Roman forum. The
Lawyer, on the other hand, contended that it was different; and
accordingly he hid not from any of his clients that _Tagefarth_
(Day-turn) meant _Term_, and that _Appealing_ was _Berufen_ (Becalling).
On this principle he dressed the word _Subrector_ in the new livery of
_School-undergovernor_. And this version farther converted the
Schoolmaster into Parson: to such a degree does our _civic_ fortune--not
our _personal_ well-being, which supports itself on our own internal
soil and resources--grow merely on the _drift-mould_ of accidents,
connexions, acquaintances, and Heaven or the Devil knows what!--
[53] Both have the same sound. _Fuechslein_ means Foxling,
Foxwhelp.--ED.
[54] Campe, a German philologist, who, along with several others of
that class, has really proposed, as represented in the Text, to
substitute for all Greek or Latin derivatives corresponding German
terms of the like import. _Geography_, which may be
_Erdbeschreibung_ (Earth-description), was thenceforth to be
nothing else; a _Geometer_ became an _Earthmeasurer_, &c. &c.
_School-undergovernor_, instead of _Subrector_, is by no means the
happiest example of the system, and seems due rather to the
Schadeck Lawyer than to Campe, whom our Author has elsewhere more
than once eulogised for his project in similar style.--ED.
By the by, from a Lawyer, at the same time a Country Judge, I should
certainly have looked for more sense; I should (I may be mistaken) have
presumed he knew that the _Acts_ or Reports, which in former times (see
Hoffmann's _German or un-German Law-practice_) were written in Latin, as
before the times of Joseph the Hungarian,--are now, if we may say so
without offence, perhaps written fully more in the German dialect than
in the Latin; and in support of this opinion, I can point to whole lines
of German language, to be found in these Imperial-Court-Confessions.
However, I will not believe that the Jurist is endeavouring, because
Imhofer declares the Roman tongue to be the mother tongue in the other
world, to disengage himself from a language, by means of which, like the
Roman _Eagle_, or later, like the Roman _Fish-heron_ (Pope), he has
clutched such abundant booty in his talons.----
Toll, toll your bell for the Actus; stream in, in to the ceremony: who
cares for it? Neither I nor the Ex-Conrector. The six pigmy Ciceros will
in vain set forth before us in sumptuous dress their thoughts and
bodies. The draught-wind of Chance has blown away from the Actus its
powder-nimbus of glory; and the Conrector that was has discovered how
small a matter a cathedra is, and how great a one a pulpit: "I should
not have thought," thought he now, "when I became Conrector, that there
could he anything grander, I mean a Parson." Man, behind his everlasting
blind, which he only colours differently, and makes no thinner, carries
his pride with him from one step to another; and, on the higher step,
blames only the pride of the lower.
The best of the Actus was, that the Regiments-Quartermaster, and Master
Butcher, Steinberg, attended there, embaled in a long woollen shag.
During the solemnity, the Subrector Hans von Fuechslein cast several
gratified and inquiring glances on the Schadeck servant, who did not
once look at him: Hans would have staked his head, that after the Actus,
the fellow would wait upon him. When at last the sextuple cockerel-brood
had on their dunghill done crowing, that is to say, had perorated, the
scholastic cocker, over whom a higher banner was now waving, himself
came upon the stage; and delivered to the School-Inspectorships, to the
Subrectorship, to the Guardianship and the Lackeyship, his most grateful
thanks for their attendance; shortly announcing to them at the same
time, "that Providence had now called him from his post to another; and
committed to him, unworthy as he was, the cure of souls in the Hukelum
parish, as well as in the Schadeck chapel of ease."
This little address, to appearance, well-nigh blew up the then Subrector
Hans von Fuechslein from his chair; and his face looked of a mingled
colour, like red bole, green chalk, tinsel-yellow and _vomissement de la
reine_.
The tall Quartermaster erected himself considerably in his shag, and
hummed loud enough in happy forgetfulness: "The Dickens!--Parson?"----
The Subrector dashed by like a comet before the lackey: ordered him to
call and take a letter for his master; strode home, and prepared for his
patron, who at Schadeck was waiting for a long thanksgiving psalm, a
short satirical epistle, as nervous as haste would permit, and mingled a
few nicknames and verbal injuries along with it.
The courier handed in, to his master, Fixlein's song of gratitude, and
Fuechslein's invectives, with the same hand. The Dragoon Rittmeister,
incensed at the ill-mannered churl, and bound to his word, which Fixlein
had publicly announced in his Actus, forthwith wrote back to the new
Parson an acceptance and ratification; and Fixlein is and remains, to
the joy of us all, incontestable ordained parson of Hukelum.
His disappointed rival has still this consolation, that he holds a seat
in the wasp-nest of the _Neue Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek_.[55]
Should the Parson ever chrysalise himself into an author, the watch-wasp
may then buzz out, and dart its sting into the chrysalis, and put its
own brood in the room of the murdered butterfly. As the Subrector
everywhere went about, and threatened in plain terms that he would
review his colleague, let not the public be surprised that Fixlein's
_Errata_, and his Masoretic _Exercitationes_, are to this hour withheld
from it.
[55] _New Universal German Library_, a reviewing periodical; in
those days conducted by Nicolai, a sworn enemy to what has since
been called the New School. (See Tieck, _ante_)--ED.
In spring, the widowed church receives her new husband; and how it will
be, when Fixlein, under a canopy of flower-trees, takes the _Sponsa
Christi_ in one hand, and his own _Sponsa_ in the other,--this, without
an Eighth Letter-Box, which, in the present case, may be a true
jewel-box and rainbow-key,[56] can no mortal figure, except the
_Sponsus_ himself.
[56] Superstition declares, that on the spot where the rainbow
rises, a golden key is left.
EIGHTH LETTER-BOX.
_Instalment in the Parsonage._
On the 15th of April 1793, the reader may observe, far down in the
hollow, three baggage-wagons groaning along. These baggage-wagons are
transporting the house-gear of the new Parson to Hukelum: the proprietor
himself, with a little escort of his parishioners, is marching at their
side, that of his china sets and household furniture there may be
nothing broken in the eighteenth century, as the whole came down to him
unbroken from the seventeenth. Fixlein hears the School-bell ringing
behind him; but this chime now sings to him, like a curfew, the songs of
future rest: he is now escaped from the Death-valley of the Gymnasium,
and admitted into the abodes of the Blessed. Here dwells no envy, no
colleague, no Subrector; here in the heavenly country, no man works in
the _New Universal German Library_; here, in the heavenly Hukelumic
Jerusalem, they do nothing but sing praises in the church; and here the
Perfected requires no more increase of knowledge.... Here too one need
not sorrow that Sunday and Saint's day so often fall together into one.
Truth to tell, the Parson goes too far: but it was his way from of old
never to paint out the whole and half shadows of a situation, till he
was got into a new one; the beauties of which he could then enhance by
contrast with the former. For it requires little reflection to discover
that the torments of a schoolmaster are nothing so extraordinary; but,
on the contrary, as in the Gymnasium, he mounts from one degree to
another, not very dissimilar to the common torments of Hell, which, in
spite of their eternity, grow weaker from century to century. Moreover,
since, according to the saying of a Frenchman, _deux afflictions mises
ensemble peuvent devenir une consolation_, a man gets afflictions enow
in a school to console him; seeing out of eight combined afflictions--I
reckon only one for every teacher--certainly more comfort is to be
extracted than out of two. The only pity is, that school-people will
never act towards each other as court-people do: none but polished men
and polished glasses will readily cohere. In addition to all this, in
schools--and in offices generally--one is always recompensed: for, as in
the second life, a greater virtue is the recompense of an earthly one,
so, in the Schoolmaster's case, his merits are always rewarded by more
opportunities for new merits; and often enough he is not dismissed from
his post at all.--
Eight Gymnasiasts are trotting about in the Parsonage, setting up,
nailing to, hauling in. I think, as a scholar of Plutarch, I am right to
introduce such seeming _minutiae_. A man whom grown-up people love,
children love still more. The whole school had smiled on the smiling
Fixlein, and liked him in their hearts, because he did not thunder, but
sport with them; because he said _Sie_ (They) to the Secundaners, and
the Subrector said _Ihr_ (Ye); because his uprearing forefinger was his
only sceptre and baculus; because in the Secunda he had interchanged
Latin epistles with his scholars; and in the Quinta, had taught not with
Napier's Rods (or rods of a sharper description), but with sticks of
barley-sugar.
Today his churchyard appeared to him so solemn and festive, that he
wondered (though it was Monday) why his parishioners were not in their
holiday, but merely in their weekday drapery. Under the door of the
Parsonage stood a weeping woman; for she was too happy, and he was
her--son. Yet the mother, in the height of her emotion, contrives quite
readily to call upon the carriers, while disloading, not to twist off
the four corner globes from the old Frankish chest of drawers. Her son
now appeared to her as venerable, as if he had sat for one of the
copperplates in her pictured Bible; and that simply, because he had cast
off his pedagogue hair-cue, as the ripening tadpole does its tail; and
was now standing in a clerical periwig before her: he was now a Comet,
soaring away from the profane Earth, and had accordingly changed from a
_stella caudata_ into a _stella crinita_.
His bride also had, on former days, given sedulous assistance in this
new improved edition of his house, and laboured faithfully among the
other furnishers and furbishers. But today she kept aloof; for she was
too good to forget the maiden in the bride. Love, like men, dies oftener
of excess than of hunger; it lives on love, but it resembles those
Alpine flowers, which feed themselves by _suction_ from the wet clouds,
and die if you _besprinkle_ them.--
At length the Parson is settled, and of course he must--for I know my
fair readers, who are bent on it as if they were bridemaids--without
delay get married. But he may not: before Ascension-day there can
nothing be done, and till then are full four weeks and a half. The
matter was this: He wished in the first place to have the murder-Sunday,
the Cantata, behind him; not indeed because he doubted of his earthly
continuance, but because he would not (even for the bride's sake) that
the slightest apprehension should mingle with these weeks of glory.
The main reason was, He did not wish to marry till he were betrothed:
which latter ceremony was appointed, with the Introduction Sermon, to
take place next Sunday. It is the Cantata-Sunday. Let not the reader
afflict himself with fears. Indeed, I should not have molested an
enlightened century with this Sunday-_Wauwau_ at all, were it not that I
delineate with such extreme fidelity. Fixlein himself--especially as the
Quartermaster asked him if he was a baby--at last grew so sensible, that
he saw the folly of it; nay, he went so far, that he committed a greater
folly. For as dreaming that you die signifies, according to the exegetic
_rule of false_, nothing else than long life and welfare, so did Fixlein
easily infer that his death-imagination was just such a lucky dream;
the rather as it was precisely on this Cantata-Sunday that Fortune had
turned up her cornucopia over him, and at once showered down out of it a
bride, a presentation and a roll of ducats. Thus can Superstition imp
its wings, let Chance favour it or not.
A Secretary of State, a Peace-treaty writer, a Notary, any such
incarcerated Slave of the Desk, feels excellently well how far he is
beneath a Parson composing his inaugural sermon. The latter (do but look
at my Fixlein) lays himself heartily over the paper--injects the venous
system of his sermon-preparation with coloured ink--has a
Text-Concordance on the right side, and a Song-Concordance on the left;
is there digging out a marrowy sentence, here clipping off a
song-blossom, with both to garnish his homiletic pastry;--sketches out
the finest plan of operations, not, like a man of the world, to subdue
the heart of one woman, but the hearts of all women that hear him, and
of their husbands to boot;--draws every peasant passing by his window
into some niche of his discourse, to cooeperate with the result;--and,
finally, scoops out the butter of the smooth soft hymn-book, and
therewith exquisitely fattens the black broth of his sermon, which is to
feed five thousand men.----
At last, in the evening, as the red sun is dazzling him at the desk, he
can rise with heart free from guilt; and, amid twittering sparrows and
finches, over the cherry-trees encircling the parsonage, look toward the
west, till there is nothing more in the sky but a faint gleam among the
clouds. And then when Fixlein, amid the tolling of the evening
prayer-bell, _slowly_ descends the stair to his cooking mother, there
must be some miracle in the case, if for him whatever has been done or
baked, or served up in the lower regions, is not right and good.... A
bound, after supper, into the Castle; a look into a pure loving eye; a
word without falseness to a bride without falseness; and then under the
coverlid, a soft-breathing breast, in which there is nothing but
Paradise, a sermon and evening prayer.... I swear, with this I will
satisfy a Mythic God, who has left his Heaven, and is seeking a new one
among us here below!
Can a mortal, can a Me in the wet clay of Earth, which Death will soon
dry into dust, ask more in one week than Fixlein is gathering into his
heart? I see not how: At least I should suppose, if such a dust-framed
being, after such a twenty-thousand prize from the Lottery of Chance,
could require aught more, it would at most be the twenty-one-thousand
prize, namely, the inaugural discourse itself.