How Witte's pint-pot was always running over; why the Town of
Stemhagen had raised a fir-plantation; why neighbour Rickert rang
the alarm-bell; and why the portrait of Julius Caesar always
reminds me of my uncle Herse.
Rather less than half an hour afterwards, two waggons drove out of the
Treptow Gate of Brandenburg towards Stemhagen. In the first were the
elders, the Herr Rathsherr and the baker and the Miller, and, as a mark
of respect, the valet-de-chambre; in the second sat, on the foremost
sack, Fritz Besserdich and Luth, and on the hind sack, Fieka and
Heinrich. Friedrich lay behind in the straw. After they had gone along
some way, my uncle Herse began to talk:
"So we are out of his claws at last," said he.
"Yes, Herr Rathsherr," answered the Baker, "and we have to thank the
Herr Amtshauptmann and our Burmeister and, above all, the Miller's
Friedrich for it."
"That's according as you look at it, Witte," said my uncle. "For my
part I have nothing to say against those three, and there is no doubt
the Chasseur's being brought there did us good service, but it by no
means set us free. Did you not notice how the French Colonel talked to
me aside before the door of the Inn?"
"Yes, Herr Rathsherr."
"Well, then, let me tell you, that, if he had not employed me to take a
secret message for him, we might have left Brandenburg by a very
different gate from this."
"The Devil we might!" cried the old Baker, and he looked at the
Rathsherr out of the corner of his eye.
My uncle said nothing; he only opened and shut his eyes importantly,
and then turned away, and looked over the cornfields, as if he meant to
let his words have due effect on the Baker. But this did not succeed.
Old Baker Witte's head was like the pint measure in which he sold milk;
when it was full to the brim, it would hold no more, and whatever more
was poured in, ran over into the room. And, just now, his head was
brimming full of all he had gone through, so that the Rathsherr's words
made it run over, and he said nothing.
"I wish I was in Stemhagen," said the Rathsherr, after a while.
These drops went into the baker's pint measure, he said, therefore: "So
do I, for it will be a precious long time before we get there."
"I don't mean that," said the Herr Rathsherr. "I mean as to our
reception."
The baker's pint measure was running over again: "What?" he asked.
"Our reception with a triumphal arch."
The contents of the pint measure were now running over very
fast:--"Reception! Triumphal arch! What? Is our Duke coming then?"
"No, Witte, _he_ is not coming, but _we_ are coming."
It was now just as if some one had given Witte's arm a jerk, while he
was pouring the milk into the measure, so that half of it went on to
the floor. This was lucky, for now there was room for the Herr
Rathsherr's explanation.
"I say, Witte, that _we_ are coming. Ought not the burghers of a town
like ours to erect a triumphal arch for their fellow-burghers and
officers of state, who have suffered for the Fatherland, just as much
as for a Duke?--But who is to do it? The old Amtshauptmann? The
Burmeister? They won't be thinking of such a thing. Or do you think the
old Rector, because he once made a thing of a '_transparency_?' That
was a fine thing!--Or old Metz? There's as much sense in his talk,
baker Witte, as in a squirrel's tail.--Or old Zoch? He can blow his
horn on the watch tower, nothing else.--Ah! if _I_ were there!"
"But, at this time of year, Herr Rathsherr," said the Baker, "where
could you get flowers and evergreens from?"
"Flowers? What do old Heimann Kasper, and Leip, and the other Jews,
sell red and yellow ribbons for? Evergreens! For what purpose has the
town of Stemhagen raised a fir plantation in the State Forest?"
"That's true," said old Witte, for the pint measure was now full again.
"What do you say, Miller Voss?" asked the Herr Rathsherr.
"I say nothing, Herr Rathsherr," said the Miller, turning towards him a
face so full of wrinkles that it looked like a puckered tobacco-pouch
rising above his shoulder, "I say nothing; I only think: yesterday when
I was driving towards Brandenburg I didn't feel exactly comfortable,
and now to-day, when I am driving away from it, I feel as if I had got
a stomach-ache in my head."
"How's that?" asked my uncle Herse; and the Miller told him his
difficulties with Itzig.--"Hm!" said my uncle, and he passed his hand
slowly down his face as far as his chin where it remained fast caught
in the stubbly beard. With his chin in his hand and his mouth wide
open, he gazed fixedly for a while into vacancy. He tried the same
thing over again once or twice, but his hand never got over his beard.
Now, though my uncle Herse had a bristly beard, he had a tender soul;
and if his mouth opened wide, his heart opened wider still; and, as he
was taking a last look into the grey sky, his eyes fell on a blue
place, and a ray from the blue sky passed through his eyes into his
open heart. He must do a good work.
"Baker Witte," said he, "let the Miller come and sit here, and you take
his place on the front seat,--I have something to say to him."
This was done, and Baker Witte talked on the front seat to the
valet-de-chambre in a very loud voice, and the Herr Rathsherr talked on
the hind seat with the Miller in a very low one.
"Miller Voss," said my uncle, "I will help you out of the bog. I will
send for Itzig to-morrow--and then observe how servile he will be, for
I know something about him,--a secret!--that does not concern anybody
else;--but it's nothing very good you may be sure.--The fellow shall
give you time till Easter, and I will be surety for you; and I'll come
out to-morrow, and look through all your papers and take the matter
into my own hands. For, look here," and as he spoke he drew out the
seal at the end of his watch-chain, "I am appointed to do such things.
Here it stands. Perhaps you can't easily read Latin backwards?" The
Miller said he could not read it either backwards or forwards.--"Well,
it does not matter. Here it stands: _Not. Pub. Im. Caes_., that's to
say, I'm Notarius Publicus, and _Im. Caes_. means--I can be consulted in
every lawsuit. So, Miller, I'll help you.--But upon one condition
only: that you tell no one of my being surety for you, or of our
agreement,--above all not the Herr Amtshauptmann. The affair must
remain a profound secret."
The Miller promised.
In one way things were going on in the second waggon in the same manner
as in the first. On the front sack the voices were very loud, and on
the hind sack, on which Heinrich and Fieka were sitting, they were very
low. I need not tell what they were saying to each other, for
Friedrich, you know, was lying close behind them in the straw, and
heard every word they said, and he will come out with it in good time.
About three hours after this, that young rascal Fritz Sahlmann
was running through the streets of the good town of Stemhagen,
shouting--"They are coming! They are coming!"--He had been watching for
a couple of hours on the Windmill-hill, and, during that time, the Herr
Amtshauptmann had rung his bell seven times for him, and had, at last,
come down to my mother out of sheer vexation.
"They are coming!" cried the young wretch.
"Is it true, boy?" asked old Rickert the bell-ringer.
"Yes, neighbour Rickert, they are just at the bridge."
And old Rickert said to himself: "It can't be helped: I must do my
duty;" went to the bell-tower, and as he could not manage the whole
peal, rang the alarm bell. At that sound all were on foot, and at their
house-doors. "They are coming!"--"Who is coming?"--"The Rathsherr, and
baker Witte, and the Miller, and all the others."
"Hurrah!" shouted Shoemaker Bank waving his arm in the air,--forgetting
he had got a boot on it.
"Hurrah!" cried Locksmith Troepner, rushing into the street with his
leathern apron on. "But let us have everything quiet and orderly, good
people"--and he knocked the jug out of Frau Stahl's hand, which she was
carrying down from the Schloss.
"Hurrah!" cried Herr Droi, running out into the street with his
bearskin on, but otherwise in plain clothes; and behind him trooped his
little French children and shouted "Vive l'Empereur!" as the Rathsherr
passed through the crowd in the first waggon.
He sat bolt upright on his sack, and held his hand to his hat all along
the street, and turned his dignified face to right and left; and with
his dignity was mixed some emotion, as he whispered to the Miller:
"Voss, this makes me forget the triumphal arch."
"Yes, and me Itzig," said the old Miller, who, on seeing what the
Rathsherr did, began to do the same. The valet-de-chambre kept on
bowing away at his side of the waggon, treating his hat most cruelly
and from the other side old Witte kept up a fire of: "Good day
neighbour. Good day Bank, how's your back. Good day Johann. Good day
Struewingken--Is all right? How are the pigs?"
When they came to the market-place, they saw Aunt Herse waving the
bottom half of one of the white curtains out at the window, and such a
storm-wind arose in my uncle Herse's heart that his feelings rolled in
great waves and sent the water up to his eyes:--"Aunt," he said half
aloud to himself, "Aunt,"--for he always called his wife "Aunt" and she
called him "Uncle" in return,--"Aunt, I cannot obey your signal, for
both these last days have concerned me in my public, and not in my
private capacity--have concerned me as Rathsherr and not as Uncle, and
they must end in the same way as they have begun.--To the Rathhaus,
baker Witte!" he cried, and as he said it, he pulled his cocked hat
down over his eyes. The Rathsherr had won the victory over the "Uncle"
and father of a family.
O, what a merry evening it was at the Rathhaus! Everything in kitchen
and cellar that had been hidden away from the French was brought out,
and whatever was wanting was fetched from the Schloss. Marie Wienken
laid the cloth on a long, long table, and to the table added leaf after
leaf, and, when there were no more leaves, she joined on small tables,
and when there were not enough of them, the chairs were spread for us
children. Mamsell Westphalen stood at the corner-cupboard, and squeezed
lemons on to sugar, and poured the contents of all sorts of bottles
over it; and the kettles went backwards and forwards, from the kitchen
into the room, and from the room into the kitchen; and the Herr
Amtshauptmann stood by, and kept tasting and shaking his head, and then
pouring in something himself; and at last he nodded and said: "Now
Mamsell Westphalen it's right; this is quite another thing;" and he
turned round to my mother, and said:--"You must let me have my way in
one thing, my friend, I will make the punch." My father managed the
corkscrew, Luth the pouring out, and the valet-de-chambre stood by the
stove, and shook his head at all these arrangements; and he showed Luth
how he ought to wait; and, as Luth tried to imitate him, he spilled a
glass of punch into Mamsell Westphalen's lap.--Yes, it was a merry
evening!
Friedrich stood at the door, upright as a grenadier, and not moving or
stirring a limb except to drink; Fritz Besserdich stood at his side,
not moving or stirring either, except, too, when he drank. And Fieka
Voss sat next to my Mother, and my Mother pressed her hand, and stroked
her soft cheek, and when I came up to her side, she stroked mine too
and said: "Shall you love me as much as Fieka loves her father?"
The Herr Amtshauptmann called Heinrich Voss into a corner, and talked
to him aside. What had the Herr Amtshauptmann got to say in secret to
Heinrich Voss, and why did he keep patting him on the shoulder? Old
Miller Voss asked himself this, and when he had made out that it must
be about the lawsuit, he said to Witte:--
"Well, I have finished with the lawsuit now, the Jew's the only thing
remaining, and I'll drown him to-night in punch."
"By the way that reminds me ..." said the baker going out.
After a time he came back again, holding a basket in one hand and
Struewingken by the other:--"By your leave, Herr Burmeister, perhaps I
may bring something towards the feast; here are a few sweet cakes; and
here, Frau Burmeister, is my daughter Struewingken; pardon the liberty,
but she wished so much to see the company."
But what was all this to the splendour and pomp which surrounded my
uncle Herse. He had taken off his cloak, and now stood there in full
uniform; and everyone came round him, and thanked him; my father
because he had taken him under the shelter of his cloak; My mother
because he had thereby helped my father to escape; Mamsell Westphalen
curtseyed three times, and said she should never forget what he had
done for her; and Miller Voss said that, strictly speaking, they had
only been set free at Brandenburg owing to the Herr Rathsherr; and when
old Witte confirmed this, Struewingken secretly promised herself that
she would send the Rathsherr an immense tea-cake. His fine, full face
beamed with pleasure and delight, and he bent down to my Mother and
said:--"I can't at all make out why 'Aunt' does not come."
At the Miller's words, he suddenly recollected the French Colonel's
message and turned to the Herr Amtshauptmann:--"I have two words to say
to you, Herr Amtshauptmann, on a very secret matter," and so saying he
drew him into a corner. We know what it is he is going to say, but if
the corner could speak, and were to tell us what the Rathsherr had said
there, we should be obliged to pretend that we had known nothing about
it.
My father was obliged at length to free the old Amtshauptmann. He took
my uncle and placed him in the post of honour at the head of the table,
and never was anyone put in the right place more at the right time;
for, hardly was he seated, when the door opened and in came Aunt Herse
in a black silk dress, and behind this dress stood old Metz the father
of the present old Metz, and the present rich Joseph Kasper who was
then a little Jew boy. Aunt Herse had a wreath of green laurel in her
hand picked from old Metz's laurel-tree, from which he generally picked
the leaves only when his wife cooked bream; and the wreath was bound
with a long red ribbon; Joseph Kasper had furnished this, and so Aunt
Herse had brought him with her. She went up to uncle Herse, gave him a
kiss, placed the wreath on his head with the ends of ribbon hanging
down his back, and made a pretty little speech which nobody heard, for
baker Witte broke out the same moment with: "Hurrah!" and the Miller
with "Long live!" and every one joined in and clinked glasses.
Yes, it _was_ a delightful evening! And a long time afterwards, when I
saw a picture of Julius Caesar it put me in mind of my uncle Herse, for
he looked exactly like it in his laurel wreath, only my uncle was a
good deal stouter and more genial than the crabbed dried-up Roman. And
a long time afterwards whenever I had specially nice cakes before me I
thought of Baker Witte's. And I can still praise them; for you may eat
a great many, and yet not be made ill.