Office-brokage.--Discovery of the Promised Secret.--Hans
von Fuechslein.
For while the Quintus, in his vapory 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 sick-bed
exhortation into a Christmas present; which consisted, _first_, of a
table-clock, with a wooden ape thereon, starting out when the hour
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 Burgermeister 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[49] 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 connections, relationships, party
recommendations, and bowings and cringings? Is it not a contradiction,
to charge titulary offices dearer than real ones? Should one not 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.
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
we not at least contrive to invent some Virtues harmonizing 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 Hamel's _Rat_-and-Child-_catcher_; or a
Weissen'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."
But what did Fixlein make of the affair? Little or nothing; the only
thing he did was, that he took little or no pains to fall in love with
Thiennette; that so no other might have cause for fear on his account.
He himself, however, for five reasons, minded it so little, that he
hoped to be older than Senior Astmann before he died. First, because
three Gypsies, in three different places, and at three different times,
had each shown him the same long vista of years in her magic mirror.
Secondly, because he had a sound constitution. Thirdly, because his own
brother had formed an exception, and perished before the thirties.
Fourthly, on this ground: When a boy he had fallen sick of sorrow, on
the very Cantata-Sunday when his father was lying in the winding-sheet,
and only been saved from death by his playthings; and with this
Cantata-sickness, he conceived that he had given the murderous Genius
of his race the slip. Fifthly, the church-books being destroyed, and
with them the certainty of his age, he could never fall into a right
definite deadly fear: "It may be," said he, "that I have got whisked
away over this whoreson year, and no one the wiser." I will not deny
that last year he had fancied he was two-and-thirty; "however," said
he, "if I am not to be so till, God willing, the next (1792), it may
run away as smoothly as the last; am I not always in _His_ keeping? And
were it unjust if the pretty years that were broken off from the life
of my brother should be added to mine?" Thus, under the cold snow of
the Present, does poor man strive to warm himself, or to mould out of
it a fair snow-man.
The Councillor Oligarchy, however, built upon the opposite opinion;
and, like a Divinity, elevated our Quintus all at once from the
Quintusship to the Conrectorate; swearing to themselves that he would
soon vacate it again. Properly speaking, by school-seniority, this holy
chair should have belonged to the Subrector Hans von Fuechslein; but he
wished it not; being minded to become Hukelum Parson; especially, as
Astmann's Death-angel, according to sure intelligence, was opening more
and more widely the door of this spiritual sheepfold. "If the fellow
weather another year, 't is more than I expect," said Hans.
This Hans was such a churl, that it is pity he had not been a
Hanoverian Post-boy; that so, by the Mandate of the Hanoverian
Government, enjoining on all its Post-officers an elegant style of
manners, he might have somewhat refined himself. To our poor Quintus,
whom no mortal disliked, and who again could hate no mortal, he alone
bore a grudge; simply because _Fixlein_ did not write himself
_Fuechslein_, and had not chosen along with him to purchase a Patent of
Nobility. The Subrector, on this his Patent triumphal chariot, drawn by
a team of four specified ancestors, was obliged to see the Quintus, who
was related to him, clutching by the lackey-straps behind the carriage;
and to hear him, in the most despicable raiment, saying to the train:
"He that rides there is my cousin, and a mortal, and I always remind
him of it." The mild, compliant Quintus never noticed this large
wasp-poison-bag in the Subrector, but took it for a honey-bag; nay, by
his brotherly warmness, which the nobleman regarded as mere show, he
concreted these venomous juices into still feller consistency. The
Quintus, in his simplicity, took Fuechslein's contempt for envy of his
pedagogic talents.
A Catherinenhof, an Annenhof, an Elizabethhof, Stralenhof, and
Petershof, all these Russian pleasure palaces, a man can dispense with
(if not despise), who has a room, in which on Christmas eve he walks
about with a Presentation in his hand. The new Conrector now longed for
nothing but--daylight; joys always (cares never) nibbled from him, like
sparrows, his sleep-grains; and to-night, moreover, the registrator of
his glad time, the clock-ape, drummed out every hour to him, which,
accordingly, he spent in gay dreaming, rather than in sound snoring.
On Christmas morn he looked at his Class-prodromus, and thought but
little of it; he scarcely knew what to make of his last night's foolish
inflation about his Quintusship. "The Quintus-post," said he to
himself, "is not to be named in the same day with the Conrectorate; I
wonder how I could parade so last night before my promotion; at
present, I had more reason." To-day he eat, as on all Sundays and
holidays, with the Master-Butcher Steinberger, his former Guardian. To
this man Fixlein was, what common people are _always_, but polished,
philosophical, and sentimental people very _seldom_ are,--_thankful_; a
man thanks you the less for presents, the more inclined he is to give
presents of his own; and the beneficent is rarely a grateful person.
Meister Steinberger, in the character of storemaster, had introduced
into the wire-cage of a garret, where Fixlein, while a Student
at Leipzig, was suspended, many a well-filled trough with good
canary-meat, of hung-beef, of household bread, and _Sauerkraut_. Money
indeed was never to be wrung from him; it is well known that he often
sent the best calf-skins gratis to the tanner, to be boots for our
Quintus; but the tanning-charges the Ward himself had to bear.--On
Fixlein's entrance, as was at all times customary, a smaller damask
table-cloth was laid upon the large coarser one; the arm-chair, silver
implements, and a wine-soup were handed him; mere waste, which, as the
Guardian used to say, suited well enough for a Scholar; but for a
Flescher not at all. Fixlein first took his victuals, and then
signified that he was made Conrector. "Ward," said Steinberger, "if you
are made that, it is well.--Seest thou, Eva, I cannot buy a tail of thy
cows now; I must have smelt it beforehand." He was hereby informing his
daughter that the cash set apart for the fatted cattle must now be
applied to the Conrectorate; for he was in the habit of advancing all
instalment-dues to his Ward, at an interest of four and a half per
cent. Fifty gulden he had already lent the Quintus on his advancement
to the Quintusship; of these the interest had to be duly paid; yet, on
the day of payment, the Quintus always got some abatement; being wont
every Sunday after dinner to instruct his guardian's daughter in
arithmetic, writing, and geography. Steinberger with justice required
of his own grown-up daughter that she should know all the towns where
he in his wanderings as a journeyman had slain fat oxen; and if she
slipped, or wrote crookedly, or subtracted wrong, he himself, as
Academical Senate and Justiciary, was standing behind her chair, ready,
so to speak, with the forge-hammer of his fist to beat out the dross
from her brain, and at a few strokes hammer it into right ductility.
The soft Quintus, for his part, had never struck her. On this account
she had perhaps, with a few glances, appointed him executor and
assignee of her heart. The old Flescher--simply because his wife was
dead--had constantly been in the habit of searching with mine-lamps and
pokers into all the corners of Eva's heart; and had in consequence long
ago observed--what the Quintus never did--that she had a mind for the
said Quintus. Young women conceal their sorrows more easily than their
joys; to-day, at the mention of this Conrectorate, Eva had become
unusually _red_.
When she went after breakfast to bring in coffee, which the Ward had to
drink down to the grounds: "I beat Eva to death if she but look at
him," said he. Then addressing Fixlein: "Hear you, Ward, did you never
cast an eye on my Eva? She can suffer you, and if you want her, you get
her; but _we_ have done with one another; for a learned man needs quite
another sort of thing."
"Herr Regiments-Quartermaster," said Fixlein, (for this post
Steinberger filled in the Provincial Militia,) "such a match were far
too rich, at any rate, for a Schoolman." The Quartermaster nodded fifty
times; and then said to Eva, as she returned,--at the same time taking
down from the shelf a wooden crook, on which he used to rack out and
suspend his slain calves: "Stop!--Hark, dost wish the present Herr
Conrector here for thy husband?"
"Ah, good Heaven!" said Eva.
"Mayst wish him or not," continued the Flescher; "with this crook thy
father knocks thy brains out, if thou but think of a learned man. Now
make his coffee." And so by the dissevering stroke of this wooden crook
was a love easily smitten asunder, which in a higher rank, by such
cutting through it with the sword, would only have foamed and hissed
the keenlier.
Fixlein might now, at any hour he liked, lay hold of fifty florins
Frankish, and clutch the pedagogic sceptre, and become coadjutor of the
Rector, that is, Conrector. We may assert, that it is with debts, as
with proportions in Architecture; of which Wolf has shown that those
are the best which can be expressed in the smallest numbers.
Nevertheless, the Quartermaster cheerfully took learned men under his
arm; for the notion that his debtor would decease in his thirty-second
year, and that so Death, as creditor in the first rank, must be paid
his Debt of Nature, before the other creditors could come forward with
their debts--this notion he named stuff and old-wifery; he was neither
Superstitious nor Fanatical, and he walked by firm principles of
action, such as the common man much oftener has than your vaporing man
of letters, or your empty, dainty man of rank.
As it is but a few clear Ladydays, warm Mayday-nights, at the most a
few odorous Rose-weeks, which I am digging from this Fixleinic Life,
embedded in the dross of week-day cares; and as if they were so many
veins of silver, am separating, stamping, smelting, and burnishing for
the reader,--I must now travel on with the stream, his history to
Cantata-Sunday, 1792, before I can gather a few handfuls of this
gold-dust, to carry in and wash in my biographical gold-hut. That
Sunday, on the contrary, is very metalliferous; do but consider that
Fixlein is yet uncertain (the ashes of the Church-books not being
legible) whether it is conducting him into his thirty-second or his
thirty-third year.
From Christmas till then he did nothing, but simply became Conrector.
The new chair of office was a Sun-altar, on which, from his
Quintus-ashes, a young Ph[oe]nix combined itself together. Great
changes--in offices, marriages, travels--make us younger; we always
date our history from the last revolution, as the French have done from
theirs. A colonel, who first set foot on the ladder of seniority as
corporal, is five times younger than a king, who in his whole life has
never been aught else except a--crown-prince.