Sermon.--School-Exhibition.--Splendid Mistake.
The Conrector received his 135 florins, 43 kreuzers, one halfpenny
Frankish; but no answer; the dog remained without name, his master
without parsonage. Meanwhile the summer passed away; and the
Dragoon Rittmeister had yet drawn out no pike from the Candidate
_breeding-pond_, and thrown him into the _feeding-pond_ of the Hukelum
parsonage. It gratified him to be behung with prayers like a Spanish
guardian Saint; and he postponed (though determined to prefer the
Subrector) granting any one petition, till he had seven-and-thirty
dyers', button-makers', tinsmiths' sons, whose petitions he could at
the same time refuse. Grudge not him of Aufhammer this outlengthening
of his electorial power! He knows the privileges of rank; feels that a
nobleman is like Timoleon, who gained his greatest victories on his
birthday, and had nothing more to do than name some squiress, countess,
or the like, as his mother. A man, however, who has been exalted to the
Peerage, while still a f[oe]tus, may with more propriety be likened to
the _spinner_, which, contrariwise to all other insects, passes from
the chrysalis state, and becomes a perfect insect in its mother's
womb.--
But to proceed! Fixlein was at present not without cash. It will be the
same as if I made a present of it to the reader, when I reveal to him,
that of the legacy, which was clearing off old scores, he had still 35
florins left to himself, as _allodium_ and pocket-money, wherewith he
might purchase whatsoever seemed good to him. And how came he by so
large a sum, by so considerable a competence? Simply by this means;
every time he changed a piece of gold, and especially at every payment
he received, it had been his custom to throw in, blindly at random,
two, three, or four small coins, among the papers of his trunk. His
purpose was to astonish himself one day, when he summed up and took
possession of this sleeping capital. And, by Heaven! he reached it too,
when, on mounting the throne of his Conrectorate, he drew out these
funds from his papers, and applied them to the coronation charges. For
the present, he sowed them in again among his waste letters. Foolish
Fixlein! I mean, had he not luckily exposed his legacy to jeopardy,
having offered it as bounty-money and luckpenny to the patron, this
false clutch of his at the knocker of the Hukelum church door, would
certainly have vexed him; but now, if he had missed the knocker, he had
the luckpenny again, and could be merry.
I now advance a little way in his History, and hit, in the rock of his
Life, upon so fine a vein of silver, I mean upon so fine a day, that I
must (I believe) content myself even in regard to the twenty-third of
Trinity-term, when he preached a vacation sermon in his dear native
village, with a brief transitory notice.
In itself the sermon was good and glorious; and the day a rich day of
pleasure; but I should really need to have more hours at my disposal
than I can steal from May, in which I am at present living and writing;
and more strength than wandering through this fine weather has left me
for landscape pictures of the same, before I could attempt, with any
well-founded hope, to draw out a mathematical estimate of the length
and thickness, and the vibrations and accordant relations to each
other, of the various strings, which combined together to form for his
heart a Music of the Spheres, on this day of Trinity-term, though such
a thing would please myself as much as another.... Do not ask me! In my
opinion, when a man preaches on Sunday, before all the peasants, who
had carried him in their arms when a gardener's boy; further, before
his mother, who is leading off her tears through the conduit of her
satin muff; further, before his Lordship, whom he can positively
command to be blessed; and finally before his muslin bride, who is
already blessed, and changing almost into stone, to find that the same
lips can both kiss and preach; in my opinion, I say, when a man effects
all this, he has some right to require of any Biographer who would
paint his situation, that he--hold his jaw; and of the reader who would
sympathize with it, that he open his, and preach himself.----
But what I must _ex officio_ depict, is the day to which this Sunday
was but the prelude, the vigil, and the whet; I mean the prelude, the
vigil, and the whet to the _Martini Actus_, or _Martinmas Exhibition_
of his school. On Sunday was the sermon, on Wednesday the Actus, on
Tuesday the Rehearsal. This Tuesday shall now be delineated to the
universe.
I count upon it that I shall not be read by mere people of the world
alone, to whom a School-Actus cannot truly appear much better, or more
interesting, than some Investiture of a Bishop, or the _opera seria_ of
Frankfort Coronation; but that I likewise have people before me, who
have been at schools, and who know how the School-Drama of an Actus and
the stage-manager, and the playbill (the programme) thereof are to be
estimated, still without overrating their importance.
Before proceeding to the Rehearsal of the _Martini Actus_, I impose
upon myself, as dramaturgist of the play, the duty, if not of
extracting, at least of recording, the Conrector's Letter of
Invitation. In this composition he said many things; and (what an
author likes so well) made proposals rather than reproaches;
interrogatively reminding the public, whether, in regard to the
well-known head-breakages of Priscian on the part of the Magnates in
Pest and Poland, our school-houses were not the best quarantine and
lazar-houses to protect us against infectious _barbarisms_? Moreover,
he defended in schools what could be defended (and nothing in the world
is sweeter or easier than a defence); and said, Schoolmasters, who, not
quite justifiably, like certain Courts, spoke nothing, and let nothing
be spoken to them, but Latin, might plead the Romans in excuse, whose
subjects, and whose kings, at least in their epistles and public
transactions, were obliged to make use of the Latin tongue. He wondered
why only our Greek, and not also oar Latin Grammars, were composed in
Latin, and put the pregnant question, whether the Romans, when they
taught their little children the Latin tongue, did it in any other than
in this same. Thereupon he went over to the Actus, and said what
follows, in his own words:--
"I am minded to prove, in a subsequent Invitation, that everything
which can be said or known about the great founder of the Reformation,
the subject of our present Martini Prolusions, has been long ago
exhausted, as well by Seckendorf as others. In fact, with regard to
Luther's personalities, his table-talk, incomes, journeys, clothes, and
so forth, there can now nothing new be brought forward, if at the same
time it is to be true. Nevertheless, the field of the Reformation
history is, to speak in a figure, by no means wholly cultivated; and it
does appear to me as if the inquirer even of the present day might in
vain look about for correct intelligence respecting the children,
grandchildren, and children's children, down to our own times, of this
great Reformer; all of whom, however, appertain, in a more remote
degree, to the Reformation history, as he himself in a nearer. Thou
shalt not perhaps be threshing, said I to myself, altogether empty
straw, if, according to thy small ability, thou bring forward and
cultivate this neglected branch of History. And so have I ventured,
with the last male descendant of Luther, namely, with the Advocate
Martin Gottlob Luther, who practised in Dresden, and deceased there in
1759, to make a beginning of a more special Reformation history. My
feeble attempt, in regard to this Reformationary Advocate, will be
sufficiently rewarded, should it excite to better works on the subject;
however, the little which I have succeeded in digging up and collecting
with regard to him I here submissively, obediently, and humbly request
all friends and patrons of the Flachsenfingen Gymnasium to listen to,
on the 14th of November, from the mouths of six well-conditioned
perorators. In the first place, shall
"_Gottlieb Spiesglass_, a Flachsenfinger, endeavor to show, in a Latin
oration, that Martin Gottlob Luther was certainly descended of the
Luther family. After him strives
"_Friedrich Christian Krabbler_, from Hukelum, in German prose, to
appreciate the influence which Martin Gottlob Luther exercised on the
then existing Reformation; whereupon, after him, will
"_Daniel Lorenz Stenzinger_ deliver, in Latin verse, an account of
Martin Gottlob Luther's lawsuits; embracing the probable merits of
Advocates generally, in regard to the Reformation. Which then will give
opportunity to
"_Nikol Tobias Pfizman_ to come forward in French, and recount the most
important circumstances of Martin Gottlob Luther's school-years,
university-life, and riper age. And now, when
"_Andreas Eintarm_ shall have endeavored, in German verse, to apologize
for the possible failings of this representative of the great Luther,
will
"_Justus Strobel_, in Latin verse according to ability, sing his
uprightness and integrity in the Advocate profession; whereafter I
myself shall mount the cathedra, and most humbly thank all the patrons
of the Flachsenfingen School, and then further bring forward those
portions in the life of this remarkable man, of which we yet know
absolutely nothing, they being spared, _Deo volente_, for the speakers
of the next _Martini Actus_."
* * * * *
The day before the Actus offered as it were the proof-shot and
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
gentleman. Smile away, Fixlein, at this astonishment over thy today's
_Ovation_, which is leading on to-morrow'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's 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 herb-woman
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 dewdrops 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 programmes, 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 neighbor, 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 _Fuechslein_ 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-unterbefehlshaber_, 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
salutations--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 to-day.
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 colored ink; as the Jewish copyists never wrote it
except ornamental letters and when newly washed;[55]--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.
But before the Actus, let us examine the Schadeck Lawyer. _Fixlein_
instead of _Fuechslein_[56] 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[57] whim of
Germanizing everything, minding little though when Germanized it should
cease to be intelligible;--as if a word needed any better act of
naturalization than that which universal unintelligibility 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 further
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, connections, acquaintances, and Heaven or
the Devil knows what!--
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 endeavoring, 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 pygmy 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 be anything grander, I mean a parson." Man, behind his
everlasting blind, which he only colors 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, wellnigh blew up the then Subrector
Hans von Fuechslein from his chair; and his face looked of a mingled
color, 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, incontestible 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_.[58]
Should the Parson ever chrysalize 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.
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,[59] can no mortal figure, except the
_Sponsus_ himself.