This, I conceive, may be managed in two words. The _first_ word must
relate to the Circular Letter of Army-Chaplain Schmelzle, wherein he
describes to his friends his Journey to the metropolitan city of Flaetz;
after having, in an Introduction, premised some proofs and assurances
of his valor. Properly speaking, the _Journey_ itself has been written
purely with a view that his courageousness, impugned by rumor, may be
fully evinced and demonstrated by the plain facts which he therein
records. Whether, in the mean time, there shall not be found certain
quick-scented readers, who may infer, directly contrariwise, that his
breast is not everywhere bomb-proof, especially in the left side,--on
this point I keep my judgment suspended.
For the rest, I beg the judges of literature, as well as their
satellites, the critics of literature, to regard this _Journey_, for
whose literary contents I, as Editor, am answerable, solely in the
light of a Portrait (in the French sense), a little Sketch of
Character. It is a voluntary or involuntary comedy-piece, at which I
have laughed so often, that I purpose in time coming to paint some
similar Pictures of Character myself. And, for the present, when could
such a little comic toy be more fitly imparted and set forth to the
world than in these very days, when the sound both of heavy money and
of light laughter has died away from among us,--when, like the Turks,
we count and pay merely with sealed _purses_, and the coin within them
has vanished?
Despicable would it seem to me, if any clownish squire of the
goose-quill should publicly and censoriously demand of me in what way
this self-cabinet-piece of Schmelzle's has come into my hands. I know
it well, and do not disclose it. This comedy-piece, for which I, at all
events, as my Bookseller will testify, draw the profit myself, I got
hold of so unblamably, that I await, with unspeakable composure, what
the Army-Chaplain shall please to say against the publication of it, in
case he say anything at all. My conscience bears me witness, that I
acquired this article at least by more honorable methods than are those
of the learned persons who steal with their ears, who, in the character
of spiritual auditory-thieves, and class-room cut-purses and pirates,
are in the habit of disloading their plundered Lectures, and vending
them up and down the country as productions of their own. Hitherto, in
my whole life, I have stolen little, except now and then in youth
some--glances.
The _second_ word must explain or apologize for the singular form of
this little Work, standing as it does on a substratum of Notes. I
myself am not contented with it. Let the world open, and look, and
determine, in like manner. But the truth is, this line of demarcation,
stretching through the whole book, originated in the following
accident: certain thoughts (or digressions) of my own, with which it
was not permitted me to disturb those of the Army-Chaplain, and which
could only be allowed to fight behind the lines, in the shape of Notes,
I, with a view to conveniency and order, had written down in a separate
paper; at the same time, as will be observed, regularly providing every
Note with its Number, and thus referring it to the proper page of the
main Manuscript. But, in the copying of the latter, I had forgotten to
insert the corresponding numbers in the Text itself. Therefore, let no
man, any more than I do, cast a stone at my worthy Printer, inasmuch as
he (perhaps in the thought that it was my way, that I had some purpose
in it) took these Notes, just as they stood, pellmell, without
arrangement of Numbers, and clapped them under the Text; at the same
time, by a praiseworthy, artful computation, taking care, at least,
that at the bottom of every page in the Text there should some portion
of this glittering Note-precipitate make its appearance. Well, the
thing at any rate is done, nay, perpetuated, namely, printed. After
all, I might almost partly rejoice at it. For, in good truth, had I
meditated for years (as I have done for the last twenty) how to provide
for my digression-comets new orbits, if not focal suns, for my episodes
new epopees,--I could scarce possibly have hit upon a better or more
spacious Limbo for such Vanities than Chance and Printer here
accidentally offer me ready-made. I have only to regret that the thing
has been printed before I could turn it to account. Heavens! what
remotest allusions (had I known it before printing) might not have been
privily introduced in every Text-page and Note-number; and what
apparent incongruity in the real congruity between this upper and under
side of the cards! How vehemently and devilishly might one not have cut
aloft, and to the right and left, from these impregnable casemates and
covered-ways; and what _laesio ultra dimidium_ (injury beyond the half
of the Text) might not, with these satirical injuries, have been
effected and completed!
But Fate meant not so kindly with me; of this golden harvest-field of
satire I was not to be informed till three days before the Preface.
Perhaps, however, the writing world, by the little blue flame of this
accident, may be guided to a weightier acquisition, to a larger
subterranean treasure, than I, alas! have dug up. For, to the writer,
there is now a way pointed out of producing in one marbled volume a
group of altogether different works; of writing in one leaf, for both
sexes at the same time, without confounding them, nay, for the five
faculties all at once, without disturbing their limitations; since
now, instead of boiling up a vile, fermenting shove-together,
fit for nobody, he has nothing to do but draw his note-lines or
partition-lines; and so on his five-story leaf give board and lodging
to the most discordant heads. Perhaps one might then read many a book
for the fourth time, simply because every time one had read but a
fourth part of it.
On the whole, this Work has at least the property of being a short one;
so that the reader, I hope, may almost run through it, and read it at
the bookseller's counter, without, as in the case of thicker volumes,
first needing to buy it. And why, indeed, in this world of Matter
should anything whatever be great, except only what belongs not to it,
the world of Spirit?
Jean Paul Fr. Richter.
_Bayreuth, in the Bay and Peace Month_, 1707.
SCHMELZLE'S
JOURNEY TO FLAeTZ.
_Circular Letter of the proposed Catechetical Professor_ Attila
Schmelzle _to his Friends; containing some Account of a Holidays'
Journey to Flaetz, with an Introduction, touching his Flight, and
his Courage as former Army-Chaplain_.
Nothing can be more ludicrous, my esteemed Friends, than to hear people
stigmatizing a man as cowardly and hare-hearted, who perhaps is
struggling all the while with precisely the opposite faults, those of a
lion; though indeed the African lion himself, since the time of
Sparrmann's Travels, passes among us for poltroon. Yet this case is
mine, worthy Friends; and I purpose to say a few words thereupon,
before describing my journey.
------------------------
108. Good princes easily obtain good subjects; not so easily good
subjects good princes; thus Adam, in the state of innocence, ruled over
animals all tame and gentle, till simply through his means they fell
and grew savage.
------------------------
You in truth are all aware that, directly in the teeth of this calumny,
it is courage, it is desperadoes (provided they be not braggarts
and tumultuous persons), whom I chiefly venerate; for example, my
brother-in-law, the Dragoon, who never in his life bastinadoed one man,
but always a whole social circle at the same time. How truculent was my
fancy, even in childhood, when I, as the parson was toning away to the
silent congregation, used to take it into my head: "How now, if thou
shouldst start up from thy pew, and shout aloud, I am here too, Mr.
Parson!" and to paint out this thought in such glowing colors, that,
for very dread, I have often been obliged to leave the church! Anything
like Rugenda's battle-pieces; horrid murder-tumults, sea-fights or
Stormings of Toulon, exploding fleets; and, in my childhood, Battles of
Prague on the harpsichord; nay, in short, every map of any remarkable
scene of war; these are perhaps too much my favorite objects; and I
read--and purchase nothing sooner; and doubtless they might lead me
into many errors, were it not that my circumstances restrain me. Now,
if it be objected that true courage is something higher than mere
thinking and willing, then you, my worthy friends, will be the first to
recognize mine, when it shall break forth into not barren and empty,
but active and effective words, while I strengthen my future
Catechetical Pupils, as well as can be done in a course of College
Lectures, and steel them into Christian heroes.
------------------------
5. For a good Physician saves, if not always from the disease, at least
from a bad Physician.
------------------------
It is well known that, out of care for the preservation of my life, I
never walk within at least ten fields of any shore full of bathers or
swimmers; merely because I foresee to a certainty, that, in case one of
them were drowning, I should that moment (for the heart overbalances
the head) plunge after the fool to save him, into some bottomless depth
or other, where we should both perish. And if dreaming is the reflex of
waking, let me ask you, true Hearts, if you have forgotten my relating
to you dreams of mine, which no Caesar, no Alexander or Luther, need
have felt ashamed of? Have I not, to mention a few instances, taken
Rome by storm; and done battle with the Pope and the whole elephantine
body of the Cardinal College, at one and the same time? Did I
not once on horseback, while simply looking at a review of military,
dash headlong into a _bataillon quarre_; and then capture, in
Aix-la-Chapelle, the Peruke of Charlemagne, for which the town pays
yearly ten reichsthalers of barber-money; and carrying it off to
Halberstadt von Gleim, there in like manner seize the Great Frederick's
Hat; put both Peruke and Hat on my head, and yet return home, after I
had stormed their batteries and turned the cannon against the
cannoneers themselves? Did I not once submit to be made a Jew of, and
then be regaled with hams; though they were ape-hams on the Orinoco
(see Humboldt)? And a thousand such things; for I have thrown the
Consistorial President of Flaetz out of the Palace window; those
alarm-fulminators, sold by Heinrich Backofen in Gotha, at six groschen
the dozen, and each going off like a cannon, I have listened to so
calmly that the fulminators did not even awaken me; and more of the
like sort.
------------------------
100. In books lie the Phoenix-ashes of a past Millennium and Paradise;
but War blows, and much ashes are scattered away.
------------------------
But enough! It is now time briefly to touch that further slander of my
chaplainship, which unhappily has likewise gained some circulation in
Flaetz, but which, as Caesar did Alexander, I shall now by my touch
dissipate into dust. Be what truth in it there can, it is still little
or nothing. Your great Minister and General in Flaetz (perhaps the very
greatest in the world, for there are not many Schabackers) may indeed,
like any other great man, be turned against me; but not with the
Artillery of Truth; for this Artillery I here set before you, my good
Hearts, and do you but fire it off for my advantage! The matter is
this. Certain foolish rumors are afloat in the Flaetz country, that I,
on occasion of some important battles, took leg-bail (such is their
plebeian phrase), and that afterwards, on the Chaplain's being called
for to preach a Thanksgiving sermon for the victory, no chaplain
whatever was to be found. The ridiculousness of this story will best
appear, when I tell you that I never was in any action; but have always
been accustomed, several hours prior to such an event, to withdraw so
many miles to the rear, that our men, so soon as they were beaten,
would be sure to find me. A good retreat is reckoned the masterpiece in
the art of war; and at no time can a retreat be executed with such
order, force, and security as just before the battle, when you are not
yet beaten.
------------------------
102. Dear Political or Religious Inquisitor! Art thou aware that Turin
tapers never rightly begin shining till thou breakest them, and then
they take fire?
------------------------
It is true, I might perhaps, as expectant Professor of Catechetics, sit
still and smile at such nugatory speculations on my courage; for if by
Socratic questioning I can hammer my future Catechist Pupils into the
habit of asking questions in their turn, I shall thereby have tempered
_them_ into heroes, seeing they have nothing to fight with but
children--(Catechists at all events, though dreading fire, have no
reason to dread light, since in our days, as in London illuminations,
it is only the _unlighted_ windows that are battered in; whereas, in
other ages, it was with nations and light as it is with dogs and water;
if you give them none for a long time, they at last get a horror at
it);--and on the whole, for Catechists, any park looks kindlier, and
smiles more sweetly, than a sulphurous park of artillery; and the
Warlike Foot, which the age is placed on, is to them the true Devil's
cloven-foot of human nature.
------------------------
86. Very true! In youth we love and enjoy the most ill-assorted
friends, perhaps more than, in old age, the best assorted.
------------------------
But for my part I think not so; almost as if the party spirit of my
Christian name, Attila, had passed into me more strongly than was
proper, I feel myself impelled still further to prove my
courageousness; which, dearest Friends! I shall here in a few lines
again do. This proof I could manage by mere inferences and learned
citations. For example, if Galen remarks that animals with large
hind-quarters are timid, I have nothing to do but turn round, and show
the enemy my back and what is under it, in order to convince him that I
am not deficient in valor, but in flesh. Again, if by well-known
experiences it has been found that flesh-eating produces courage, I can
evince that in this particular I yield to no officer of the service;
though it is the habit of these gentlemen not only to run up long
scores of roast-meat with their landlords, but also to leave them
unpaid, that so at every hour they may have an open document in the
hands of the enemy himself (the landlord), testifying that they have
eaten their own share (with some of other people's too), and so put
common butcher-meat on a War-footing, living not like others _by_
bravery, but _for_ bravery. As little have I ever, in my character of
chaplain, shrunk from comparison with any officer in the regiment, who
may be a true lion, and so snatch every sort of plunder, but yet, like
this King of the Beasts, is afraid of _fire_; or who,--like King James
of England,[72] that scampered off at sight of drawn swords, yet so
much the more gallantly, before all Europe, went out against the
storming Luther with book and pen,--does, from a similar idiosyncrasy,
attack all warlike armaments, both by word and writing. And here I
recollect, with satisfaction, a brave sub-lieutenant, whose confessor I
was (he still owes me the confession-money), and who, in respect of
stout-heartedness, had in him perhaps something of that Indian dog
which Alexander had presented to him as a sort of Dog-Alexander. By way
of trying this crack dog, the Macedonian made various heroic or
heraldic beasts be let loose against him; first a stag; but the dog lay
still; then a sow; he lay still; then a bear; he lay still. Alexander
was on the point of condemning him; when a lion was let forth; the dog
rose, and tore the lion in pieces. So likewise the sub-lieutenant. A
challenger, a foreign enemy, a Frenchman, are to him only stag, and
sow, and bear, and he lies still in his place; but let his oldest
enemy, his creditor, come and knock at his gate, and demand of him
actual smart-money for long bygone pleasures, thus presuming to rob him
both of past and present; the sub-lieutenant rises, and throws his
creditor down-stairs. I, alas! am still standing by the sow; and thus,
naturally enough, misunderstood.
------------------------
128. In Love there are Summer Holidays; but in Marriage also there are
Winter Holidays, I hope.
------------------------
_Quo_, says Livy, xii. 5, and with great justice, _quo timoris minus
est, eo minus ferme periculi est_, The less fear you have, the less
danger you are likely to be in. With equal justice I invert the maxim,
and say, The less the danger, the smaller the fear; nay, there may be
situations in which one has absolutely no knowledge of fear; and among
these mine is to be reckoned. The more hateful, therefore, must that
calumny about hare-heartedness appear to me.
To my Holidays' Journey I shall prefix a few facts, which prove how
easily foresight--that is to say, when a person would not resemble the
stupid marmot, that will even attack a man out on horseback--may pass
for cowardice. For the rest, I wish only that I could with equal ease
wipe away a quite different reproach, that of being a foolhardy
desperado; though I trust, in the sequel, I shall be able to advance
some facts which invalidate it.
------------------------
143. Women have weekly at least one active and passive day of glory,
the holy day, the Sunday. The higher ranks alone have more Sundays than
work-days; as, in great towns, you can celebrate your Sunday on Friday
with the Turks, on Saturday with the Jews, and on Sunday with yourself.
------------------------
What boots the heroic arm, without a hero's eye? The former readily
grows stronger and more nervous; but the latter is not so soon ground
sharper, like glasses. Nevertheless, the merits of foresight obtain
from the mass of men less admiration (nay, I should say, more ridicule)
than those of courage. Whoso, for instance, shall see me walking under
quite cloudless skies with a wax-cloth umbrella over me, to him I shall
probably appear ridiculous, so long as he is not aware that I carry
this umbrella as a thunder-screen, to keep off any bolt out of the blue
heaven (whereof there are several examples in the history of the Middle
Ages) from striking me to death. My thunder-screen, in fact, is exactly
that of Reimarus. On a long walking-stick I carry the wax-cloth roof;
from the peak of which depends a string of gold-lace as a conductor;
and this, by means of a key fastened to it, which it trails along the
ground, will lead off every possible bolt, and easily distribute it
over the whole superficies of the Earth. With this _Paratonnerre
Portatif_ in my hand, I can walk about for weeks under the clear sky,
without the smallest danger. This Diving-bell, moreover, protects me
against something else; against shot. For who, in the latter end of
Harvest, will give me black on white that no lurking ninny of a
sportsman somewhere, when I am out enjoying Nature, shall so fire off
his piece, at an angle of 45 deg., that, in falling down again, the shot
needs only light directly on my crown, and so come to the same as if I
had been shot through the brain from a side?
It is bad enough, at any rate, that we have nothing to guard us from
the Moon; which at present is bombarding us with stones like a very
Turk; for this paltry little Earth's train-bearer and errand-maid
thinks, in these rebellious times, that she too must begin, forsooth,
to sling somewhat against her Mother! In good truth, as matters stand,
any young Catechist of feeling may go out o' nights, with whole limbs,
into the moonshine, a meditating; and erelong (in the midst of his
meditation the villanous Satellite hits him) come home a pounded jelly.
By Heaven! new proofs of courage are required of us on every hand! No
sooner have we, with great effort, got thunder-rods manufactured, and
comet-tails explained away, than the enemy opens new batteries in the
Moon, or somewhere else in the Blue!
------------------------
21. Schiller and Klopstock are Poetic Mirrors held up to the Sun-god;
the Mirrors reflect the Sun with such dazzling brightness, that you
cannot find the Picture of the World imaged forth in them.
------------------------
Suffice one other story to manifest how ludicrous the most serious
foresight, with all imaginable inward courage, often externally appears
in the eyes of the many. Equestrians are well acquainted with the
dangers of a horse that runs away. My evil star would have it that
I should once in Vienna get upon a hack-horse; a pretty enough
honey-colored nag, but old and hard-mouthed as Satan; so that the
beast, in the next street, went off with me; and this in truth--only at
a _walk_. No pulling, no tugging, took effect; I at last, on the back
of this Self-riding-horse, made signals of distress, and cried: "Stop
him, good people! for God's sake stop him! my horse is off!" But these
simple persons seeing the beast move along as slowly as a Reichshofrath
lawsuit, or the Daily Postwagen, could not in the least understand the
matter, till I cried as if possessed: "Stop him then, ye blockheads and
joltheads! don't you see that I cannot hold the nag?" But now, to these
noodles the sight of a hard-mouthed horse going off with its rider step
by step seemed ridiculous rather than otherwise; half Vienna gathered
itself like a comet-tail behind my beast and me. Prince Kaunitz, the
best horseman of the century (the last), pulled up to follow me. I
myself sat and swam like a perpendicular piece of drift-ice on my
honey-colored nag, which stalked on, on, step by step; a many-cornered,
red-coated letter-carrier was delivering his letters, to the right and
left, in the various stories, and he still crossed over before me
again, with satirical features, because the nag went along too slowly.
The Schwanzschleuderer, or Train-dasher (the person, as you know, who
drives along the streets with a huge barrel of water, and besplashes
them with a leathern pipe of three ells long from an iron trough), came
across the haunches of my horse, and, in the course of his duty, wetted
both these and myself in a very cooling manner, though, for my part, I
had too much cold sweat on me already to need any fresh refrigeration.
On my infernal Trojan Horse (only I myself was Troy, not beridden, but
riding to destruction), I arrived at Malzlein (a suburb of Vienna), or
perhaps, so confused were my senses, it might be quite another range of
streets. At last, late in the dusk, I had to turn into the Prater; and
here, long after the Evening Gun, to my horror, and quite against the
police-rules, keep riding to and fro on my honey-colored nag; and
possibly I might even have passed the night on him, had not my
brother-in-law, the Dragoon, observed my plight, and so found me still
sitting firm as a rock on my runaway steed. He made no ceremonies;
caught the brute; and put the pleasant question, why I had not vaulted,
and come off by ground-and-lofty tumbling; though he knew full well
that for this a wooden horse, which stands still, is requisite.
However, he took me down; and so, after all this riding, horse and man
got home with whole skins and unbroken bones.
------------------------
84. Women are like precious carved works of ivory: nothing is whiter
and smoother, and nothing sooner grows yellow.
------------------------
But now at last to my Journey!
JOURNEY TO FLAeTZ.
------------------------
72. The Half-learned is adored by the Quarter-learned; the latter by
the Sixteenth-part-learned; and so on: but not the Whole-learned by the
Half-learned.
------------------------
You are aware, my friends, that this Journey to Flaetz was necessarily
to take place in Vacation time; not only because the Cattle-market, and
consequently the Minister and General von Schabacker, was there then;
but more especially because the latter (as I had it positively from a
private hand) did annually, on the 23d of July, the market-eve, about
five o'clock, become so full of gaudium and graciousness, that in many
cases he did not so much snarl on people as listen to them, and grant
their prayers. The cause of this gaudium I had rather not trust to
paper. In short, my Petition, praying that he would be pleased to
indemnify and reward me, as an unjustly deposed army-chaplain, by a
Catechetical Professorship, could plainly be presented to him at no
better season than exactly about five o'clock in the evening of the
first dog-day. In less than a week I had finished writing my Petition.
As I spared neither summaries nor copies of it, I had soon got so far
as to see the relatively best lying completed before me; when, to my
terror, I observed that in this paper I had introduced above thirty
_dashes_, or breaks, in the middle of my sentences! Now-a-days, alas!
these stings shoot forth involuntarily from learned pens, as tails of
wasps. I debated long within myself whether a private scholar could
justly be entitled to approach a minister with dashes,--greatly as this
level interlineation of thoughts, these horizontal note-marks of
poetical _music_-pieces, and these rope-ladders or Achilles'-tendons of
philosophical _see_-pieces, are at present fashionable and
indispensable; but, at last, I was obliged (as erasures may offend
people of quality) to write my best proof-petition over again; and then
to afflict myself for another quarter of an hour over the name Attila
Schmelzle, seeing it is always my principle that this and the address
of the letter, the two cardinal points of the whole, can never be
written legibly enough.
------------------------
85. _Bien ecouter c'est presque repondre_, says Marivaux justly of
social circles; but I extend it to round Councillor-tables and
Cabinet-tables, where reports are made, and the Prince listens.
------------------------
_First Stage; from Neusattel to Vierstaedten_.
The 22d of July, or Wednesday, about five in the afternoon, was now, by
the way-bill of the regular Post-coach, irrevocably fixed for my
departure. I had still half a day to order my house; from which, for
two nights and two days and a half, my breast, its breastwork and
palisado, was now, along with my Self, to be withdrawn. Besides this,
my good wife Bergelchen, as I call my Teutoberga, was immediately to
travel after me, on Friday the 24th, in order to see and to make
purchases at the yearly Fair; nay, she was ready to have gone along
with me, the faithful spouse. I therefore assembled my little knot of
domestics, and promulgated to them the Household Law and Valedictory
Rescript, which, after my departure, in the first place _before_ the
outset of my wife, and in the second place _after_ this outset, they
had rigorously to obey; explaining to them especially whatever, in case
of conflagrations, housebreakings, thunder-storms, or transits of
troops, it would behoove them to do. To my wife I delivered an
inventory of the best goods in our little Registership; which goods
she, in case the house took fire, had, in the first place, to secure. I
ordered her in stormy nights (the peculiar thief-weather) to put our
AEolian harp in the window, that so any villanous prowler might imagine
I was fantasying on my instrument, and therefore awake; for like
reasons, also, to take the house-dog within doors by day, that he might
sleep then, and so be livelier at night. I further counselled
her to have an eye on the focus of every knot in the panes of the
stable-window, nay, on every glass of water she might set down in the
house; as I had already often recounted to her examples of such
accidental burning-glasses having set whole buildings in flames. I then
appointed her the hour when she was to set out on Friday morning to
follow me; and recapitulated more emphatically the household precepts
which, prior to her departure, she must afresh inculcate on her
domestics. My dear, heart-sound, blooming Berga answered her faithful
lord, as it seemed very seriously: "Go thy ways, little old one; it
shall all be done as smooth as velvet. Wert thou but away! There is no
end of thee!" Her brother, my brother-in-law, the Dragoon, for whom,
out of complaisance, I had paid the coach-fare, in order to have in the
vehicle along with me a stout swordsman and hector, as spiritual
relative and bully-rock, so to speak; the Dragoon, I say, on hearing
these my regulations, puckered up (which I easily forgave the wild
soldier and bachelor) his sun-burnt face considerably into ridicule,
and said: "Were I in thy place, sister, I should do what I liked, and
then afterwards take a peep into these regulation-papers of his."
------------------------
17. The Bed of Honor, since so frequently whole regiments lie on it,
and receive their last unction, and last honor but one, really ought
from time to time be new-filled, beaten, and sunned.
------------------------
"Oh!" answered I, "misfortune may conceal itself like a scorpion in any
corner; I might say, we are like children, who, looking at their gayly
painted toy-box, soon pull off the lid, and, pop! out springs a mouse
who has young ones."
"Mouse, mouse!" said he, stepping up and down. "But, good brother, it
is five o'clock; and you will find, when you return, that all looks
exactly as it does to-day; the dog like the dog, and my sister like a
pretty woman; _allons donc_!" It was purely his blame that I, fearing
his misconceptions, had not previously made a sort of testament.
------------------------
120. Many a one becomes a free-spoken Diogenes, not when he dwells in
the Cask, but when the Cask dwells in him.
------------------------
I now packed in two different sorts of medicines, heating as well as
cooling, against two different possibilities; also my old splints for
arm or leg breakages, in case the coach overset; and (out of foresight)
two times the money I was likely to need. Only here I could have
wished, so uncertain is the stowage of such things, that I had been an
Ape with cheek-pouches, or some sort of Opossum with a natural bag,
that so I might have reposited these necessaries of existence in
pockets which were sensitive. Shaving is a task I always go through
before setting out on journeys; having a rational mistrust against
stranger bloodthirsty barbers; but, on this occasion, I retained my
beard; since, however close shaved, it would have grown again by the
road to such a length that I could have fronted no Minister and General
with it.
With a vehement emotion, I threw myself on the pith-heart of my Berga,
and with a still more vehement one, tore myself away; in her, however,
this our first marriage-separation seemed to produce less lamentation
than triumph, less consternation than rejoicing; simply because she
turned her eye not half so much on the parting, as on the meeting, and
the journey after me, and the wonders of the Fair. Yet she threw and
hung herself on my somewhat long and thin neck and body, almost
painfully, being, indeed, a too fleshy and weighty load, and said to
me: "Whisk thee off quick, my charming Attel (Attila), and trouble thy
head with no cares by the way, thou singular man! A whiff or two of ill
luck we can stand, by God's help, so long as my father is no beggar.
And for thee, Franz," continued she, turning with some heat to her
brother, "I leave my Attel on thy soul; thou well knowest, thou wild
fly, what I wilt do, if thou play the fool, and leave him anywhere in
the lurch." Her meaning here was good, and I could not take it ill; to
you, also, my Friends, her wealth and her open-heartedness are nothing
new.
------------------------
8. Culture makes whole lands, for instance Germany, Gaul, and others,
physically warmer, but spiritually colder.
------------------------
Melted into sensibility, I said: "Now, Berga, if there be a reunion
appointed for us, surely it is either in Heaven or in Flaetz; and I hope
in God, the latter." With these words, we whirled stoutly away. I
looked round through the back-window of the coach at my good little
village of Neusattel, and it seemed to me, in my melting mood, as if
its steeples were rising aloft like an epitaphium over my life,
or over my body, perhaps to return a lifeless corpse. "How will it all
be," thought I, "when thou at last, after two or three days, comest
back?" And now I noticed my Bergelchen looking after us from the
garret-window; I leaned far out from the coach-door, and her falcon eye
instantly distinguished my head; kiss on kiss she threw with both
hands after the carriage, as it rolled down into the valley. "Thou
true-hearted wife," thought I, "how is thy lowly birth, by thy
spiritual new-birth, made forgetable, nay, remarkable!"
------------------------
1. The more Weakness the more Lying. Force goes straight; any
cannon-ball with holes or cavities in it goes crooked.
------------------------
I must confess, the assemblage and conversational picnic of the
stage-coach was much less to my taste; the whole of them suspicious,
unknown rabble, whom (as markets usually do) the Flaetz cattle-market
was alluring by its scent. I dislike becoming acquainted with
strangers; not so my brother-in-law, the Dragoon; who now, as he always
does, had in a few minutes elbowed himself into close quarters with the
whole ragamuffin posse of them. Beside me sat a person, who, in all
human probability, was a Harlot; on her breast a Dwarf intending to
exhibit himself at the Fair; on the other side was a Rat-catcher gazing
at me; and a Blind Passenger,[73] in a red mantle, had joined us down
in the valley. No one of them, except my brother-in-law, pleased me.
That rascals among these people would not study me and my properties
and accidents, to entangle me in their snares, no man could be my
surety. In strange places, I even, out of prudence, avoid looking long
up at any jail-window; because some losel, sitting behind the bars, may
in a moment call down out of mere malice: "How goes it, comrade
Schmelzle?" or, further, because any lurking catchpole may fancy I am
planning a rescue for some confederate above. From another sort of
prudence, little different from this, I also make a point of never
turning round when any booby calls, Thief! after me.
------------------------
88. Epictetus advises us to travel, because our old acquaintances, by
the influence of shame, impede our transition to higher virtues; as a
bashful man will rather lay aside his provincial accent in some foreign
quarter, and then return wholly purified to his own countrymen. In our
days, people of rank and virtue follow this advice, but inversely; and
travel because their old acquaintances, by the influence of shame,
would too much deter them from new sins.
------------------------
As to the Dwarf himself, I had no objection to his travelling with me
whithersoever he pleased; but he thought to raise a particular
delectation in our minds, by promising that his Pollux and Brother in
Trade, an extraordinary Giant who was also making for the Fair to
exhibit himself, would by midnight, with his elephantine pace,
infallibly overtake the coach, and plant himself among us, or behind on
the outside. Both these noodies, it appeared, are in the habit of going
in company to fairs, as reciprocal exaggerators of opposite magnitudes;
the Dwarf is the convex magnifying-glass of the Giant, the Giant the
concave diminishing-glass of the Dwarf. Nobody expressed much joy at
the prospective arrival of this Anti-dwarf, except my brother-in-law,
who (if I may venture on a play of words) seems made, like a clock,
solely for the purpose of _striking_, and once actually said to me,
that "if in the Upper world he could not get a soul to curry and towzle
by a time, he would rather go to the Under, where most probably there
would be plenty of cuffing and to spare." The Rat-catcher--besides the
circumstance that no man can prepossess us much in his favor, who
lives solely by poisoning, like this Destroying Angel of rats, this
mouse-Atropos; and also, which is still worse, that such a fellow bids
fair to become an increaser of the vermin kingdom the moment he may
cease to be a lessener of it--besides all this, I say, the present
Rat-catcher had many baneful features about him. First, his stabbing
look, piercing you like a stiletto; then the lean, sharp, bony visage,
conjoined with his enumeration of his considerable stock of poisons;
then (for I hated him more and more) his sly stillness, his sly smile,
as if in some corner he noticed a mouse, as he would notice a man! To
me, I declare, though usually I take not the slightest exception
against people's looks, it seemed at last as if his throat were a
Dog-grotto, a _Grotta del cane_, his cheekbones cliffs and breakers,
his hot breath the wind of a calcining furnace, and his black, hairy
breast, a kiln for parching and roasting.
Nor was I far wrong, I believe; for soon after this, he began quite
coolly to inform the company, in which were a dwarf and a female, that,
in his time, he had, not without enjoyment, run ten men through the
body; had with great convenience hewed off a dozen men's arms; slowly
split four heads, torn out two hearts, and more of the like sort; while
none of them, otherwise persons of spirit, had in the least resisted.
"But why?" added he with a poisonous smile, and taking the hat from his
odious baldpate; "I am invulnerable. Let any one of the company that
chooses lay as much fire on my bare crown as he likes, I shall not mind
it."
My brother-in-law, the Dragoon, directly kindled his tinder-box, and
put a heap of the burning matter on the Rat-catcher's pole; but the
fellow stood it, as if it had been a mere picture of fire, and the two
looked expectingly at one another; and the former smiled very
foolishly, saying: "It was simply pleasant to him, like a good
warming-plaster; for this was always the wintry region of his body."
Here the Dragoon groped a little on the naked scull, and cried with
amazement, that "it was as cold as a knee-pan."
------------------------
32. Our Age (by some called the Paper Age, as if it were made from the
rags of some better dressed one) is improving in so far as it now
tears, its rags rather into Bandages than into Papers; although,
or because, the Rag-hacker (the Devil as they call it) will not
altogether be at rest. Meanwhile, if Learned Heads transform themselves
into Books, Crowned Heads transform and coin themselves into
Government-paper. In Norway, according to the _Universal Indicator_,
the people have even paper-houses; and in many good German States, the
Exchequer Collegium (to say nothing of the Justice Collegium) keeps
its own paper-mills, to furnish wrappage enough for the meal of its
wind-mills. I could wish, however, that our Collegiums would take
pattern from that Glass Manufactory at Madrid, in which (according to
Baumgaertner) there were indeed nineteen clerks stationed, but also
eleven workmen.
------------------------
But now the fellow, to our horror, after some preparations, actually
lifted off the quarter-skull and held it out to us, saying: "He had
sawed it off a murderer, his own having accidentally been broken"; and
withal explained, that the stabbing and arm-cutting he had talked of
was to be understood as a jest, seeing he had merely done it in the
character of Famulus at an Anatomical Theatre. However, the jester
seemed to rise little in favor with any of us; and for my part, as he
put his brain-lid and sham-skull on again, I thought to myself: "This
dung-bed-bell has changed its place, indeed, but not the hemlock it was
made to cover."
Further, I could not but reckon it a suspicious circumstance, that he
as well as all the company (the Blind Passenger too) were making for
this very Flaetz, to which I myself was bound. Much good I could not
expect of this; and, in truth, turning home again would have been as
pleasant to me as going on, had I not rather felt a pleasure in defying
the future.
I come now to the red-mantled Blind Passenger; most probably an
_Emigre_ or _Refugie_; for he speaks German not worse than he does
French; and his name, I think, was _Jean Pierre_ or _Jean Paul_, or
some such thing, if indeed he had any name. His red cloak,
notwithstanding this his identity of color with the Hangman, would in
itself have remained heartily indifferent to me; had it not been for
this singular circumstance, that he had already five times, contrary to
all expectation, come upon me in five different towns (in great Berlin,
in little Hof, in Coburg, Meiningen, and Bayreuth), and, each of these
times, had looked at me significantly enough, and then gone his ways.
Whether this _Jean Pierre_ is dogging me with hostile intent or not, I
cannot say; but to our fancy, at any rate, no object can be gratifying
that thus, with corps of observation, or out of loop-holes, holds and
aims at us with muskets, which for year after year it shall move to
this side and that, without our knowing on whom it is to fire. Still
more offensive did Redcloak become to me, when he began to talk about
his soft mildness of soul; a thing which seemed either to betoken
pumping you or undermining you.
I replied: "Sir, I am just come, with my brother-in-law here, from the
field of battle (the last affair was at Pimpelstadt), and so perhaps am
too much of a humor for fire, pluck, and war-fury; and to many a one,
who happens to have a roaring waterspout of a heart, it may be well if
his clerical character (which is mine) rather enjoins on him mildness
than wildness. However, all mildness has its iron limit. If any
thoughtless dog chance to anger me, in the first heat of rage I kick my
foot through him; and after me, my good brother here will perhaps drive
matters twice as far, for he is the man to do it. Perhaps it may be
singular; but I confess, I regret to this day, that once when a boy I
received three blows from another, without tightly returning them; and
I often feel as if I must still pay them to his descendants. In sooth,
if I but chance to see a child running off like a dastard from the weak
attack of a child like himself, I cannot for my life understand his
running, and can scarcely keep from interfering to save him by a
decisive knock."
The Passenger meanwhile was smiling, not in the best fashion. He gave
himself out for a Legations-Rath, and seemed fox enough for such a
post; but a mad fox will, in the long run, bite me as rabidly as a mad
wolf will. For the rest, I calmly went on with my eulogy on courage;
only that, instead of ludicrous gasconading, which directly betrays the
coward, I purposely expressed myself in words at once cool, clear, and
firm.
"I am altogether for Montaigne's advice," said I: "'Fear nothing but
fear.'"
"I again," replied the Legations-man, with useless wire-drawing, "I
should fear again that I did not sufficiently fear fear, but continued
too dastardly."
"To this fear also," replied I, coldly, "I set limits. A man, for
instance, may not in the least believe in or be afraid of ghosts; and
yet by night may bathe himself in cold sweat, and this purely out of
terror at the dreadful fright he should be in (especially with what
whiffs of epilepsies, falling-sicknesses, and so forth, he might be
visited), in case simply his own too vivid fancy should create any wild
fever-image, and hang it up in the air before him."
"One should not, therefore," added my brother-in-law the Dragoon,
contrary to his custom, moralizing a little,--"one should not bamboozle
the poor sheep, man, with any ghost-tricks; the henheart may die on the
spot."
------------------------
2. In his Prince, a soldier reverences and obeys at once his Prince and
his Generalissimo; a Citizen, only his Prince.
------------------------
A loud storm of thunder overtaking the stage-coach altered the
discourse. You, my Friends, knowing me as a man not quite destitute of
some tincture of Natural Philosophy, will easily guess my precautions
against thunder. I place myself on a chair in the middle of the room
(often, when suspicious clouds are out, I stay whole nights on it), and
by careful removal of all conductors, rings, buckles, and so forth, I
here sit thunder-proof, and listen with a cool spirit to this elemental
music of the cloud-kettledrum. These precautions have never harmed me,
for I am still alive at this date; and to the present hour I
congratulate myself on once hurrying out of church, though I had
confessed but the day previous; and running, without more ceremony,
and before I had received the sacrament, into the charnel-house,
because a heavy thunder-cloud (which did, in fact, strike the
churchyard linden-tree) was hovering over it. So soon as the cloud had
disloaded itself, I returned from the charnel-house into the church,
and was happy enough to come in after the Hangman (usually the last),
and so still participate in the Feast of Love.
------------------------
45. Our present writers shrug their shoulders most at those on whose
shoulders they stand; and exalt those most who crawl up along them.
------------------------
Such, for my own part, is my manner of proceeding; but in the full
stage-coach I met with men to whom Natural Philosophy was no philosophy
at all. For when the clouds gathered dreadfully together over our
coach-canopy, and sparkling, began to play through the air, like so
many fireflies, and I at last could not but request that the sweating
coach-conclave would at least bring out their watches, rings, money,
and such like, and put them all into one of the carriage-pockets, that
none of us might have a conductor on his body; not only would no one of
them do it, but my own brother-in-law the Dragoon even sprang out, with
naked drawn sword, to the coach-box, and swore that he would conduct
the thunder all away himself. Nor do I know whether this desperate
mortal was not acting prudently; for our position within was frightful,
and any one of us might every moment be a dead man. At last, to crown
all, I got into a half altercation with two of the rude members of our
leathern household, the Poisoner and the Harlot; seeing, by their
questions, they almost gave me to understand, that, in our
conversational picnic, especially with the Blind Passenger, I had not
always come off with the best share. Such an imputation wounds your
honor to the quick; and in my breast there was a thunder louder than
that above us. However, I was obliged to carry on the needful exchange
of sharp words as quietly and slowly as possible; and I quarrelled
softly, and in a low tone, lest in the end a whole coachful of people,
set in arms against each other, might get into heat and perspiration;
and so, by vapor steaming through the coach-roof, conduct the too near
thunderbolt down into the midst of us. At last I laid before the
company the whole theory of Electricity in clear words, but low and
slow (striving to avoid all emission of vapor); and especially
endeavored to frighten them away from fear. For, indeed, through fear,
the stroke--nay, two strokes, the electric or the apoplectic--might hit
any one of us; since in Erxleben and Reimarus it is sufficiently proved
that violent fear, by the transpiration it causes, may attract the
lightning. I accordingly, in some fear of my own and other people's
fear, represented to the passengers that now, in a coach so hot and
crowded, with a drawn sword on the coach-box piercing the very
lightning, with the thunder-cloud hanging over us, and even with so
many transpirations from incipient fear; in short, with such visible
danger on every hand, they must absolutely fear nothing, if they would
not, all and sundry, be smitten to death in a few minutes.
------------------------
103. The Great perhaps take as good charge of their posterity as the
Ants; the eggs once laid, the male and female Ants fly about their
business, and confide them to the trusty _working-Ants_.
------------------------
"O Heaven!" cried I, "Courage! only courage! No fear, not even fear of
fear! Would you have Providence to shoot you here sitting, like so many
hares hunted into a pinfold? Fear, if you like, when you are out of the
coach; fear to your heart's content in other places, where there is
less to be afraid of; only not here, not here!"
I shall not determine--since among millions scarcely one man dies by
thunder-clouds, but millions perhaps by snow-clouds, and rain-clouds,
and thin mist--whether my Coach-sermon could have made any claim to a
prize for man-saving; however, at last, all uninjured, and driving
towards a rainbow, we entered the town of Vierstaedten, where dwelt a
Postmaster, in the only street which the place had.
_Second Stage; from Vierstaedten to Niederschoena_.
The Postmaster was a churl and a striker; a class of mortals whom I
inexpressibly detest, as my fancy always whispers to me, in their
presence, that by accident or dislike I might happen to put on a
scornful or impertinent look, and hound these mastiffs on my own
throat; and so, from the very first, I must incessantly watch them.
Happily, in this case (supposing I even had made a wrong face), I could
have shielded myself with the Dragoon; for whose giant force such
matters are a tidbit. This brother-in-law of mine, for example, cannot
pass any tavern where he hears a sound of battle, without entering,
and, as he crosses the threshold, shouting, "Peace, dogs!"--and
therewith, under show of a peace deputation, he directly snatches
up the first chair-leg in his hand, as if it were an American
peace-calumet, and cuts to the right and left among the belligerent
powers, or he gnashes the hard heads of the parties together (he
himself takes no side), catching each by the hind-lock. In such cases
the rogue is in Heaven!
------------------------
10. And does Life offer us, in regard to our ideal hopes and purposes,
anything but a prosaic, unrhymed, unmetrical Translation?
78. Our German frame of Government, cased in its harness, had much
difficulty in moving, for the same reason why Beetles cannot fly,
when their _wings_ have _wing-shells_, of very sufficient strength,
and--grown together.
------------------------
I, for my part, rather avoid discrepant circles than seek them; as I
likewise avoid all dead or killed people. The prudent man easily
foresees what is to be got by them; either vexatious and injurious
witnessing, or often even (when circumstances conspire) painful
investigation, and suspicions of your being an accomplice.
In Vierstaedten nothing of importance presented itself, except--to my
horror--a dog without tail, which came running along the town or
street. In the first fire of passion at this sight, I pointed it out to
the passengers, and then put the question, whether they could reckon a
system of Medical Police well arranged, which, like this of
Vierstaedten, allowed dogs openly to scour about, when their tails were
wanting. "What am I to do," said I, "when this member is cut away, and
any such beast comes running towards me, and I cannot, either by the
tail being cocked up or being drawn in, since the whole is snipt off,
come to any conclusion whether the vermin is mad or not? In this way,
the most prudent man may be bit, and become rabid, and so make
shipwreck purely for want of a tail compass."
------------------------
8. Constitutions of Government are like highways; on a new and quite
untrodden one, where every carriage helps in the process of bruising
and smoothing, you are as much jolted and pitched, as an old worn-out
one, full of holes. What is to be done then? Travel on.
------------------------
The Blind Passenger (he now got himself inscribed as a Seeing one, God
knows for what objects) had heard my observation; which he now spun out
in my presence almost into ridicule, and at last awakened in me the
suspicion, that, by an overdone flattery in imitating my style of
speech, he meant to banter me. "The Dog-tail," said he, "is, in truth,
an alarm-beacon, and finger-post for us, that we come not even into the
outmost precincts of madness; cut away from Comets their tails, from
Bashaws theirs, from Crabs theirs (outstretched it denotes that they
are burst); and in the most dangerous predicaments of life, we are left
without clew, without indicator, without hand _in margine_; and we
perish not so much as knowing how."
For the rest, this stage passed over without quarreling or peril. About
ten o'clock, the whole party, including even the Postilion, myself
excepted, fell asleep. I indeed pretended to be sleeping, that I might
observe whether some one, for his own good reasons, might not also be
pretending it. But all continued snoring; the moon threw its
brightening beams on nothing but downpressed eyelids.
I had now a glorious opportunity of following Lavater's counsel, to
apply the physiognomical ellwand specially to sleepers, since sleep,
like death, expresses the genuine form in coarser lines. Other sleepers
not in stage-coaches I think it less advisable to mete with this
ellwand; having always an apprehension lest some fellow, but pretending
to be asleep, may, the instant I am near enough, start up as in a
dream, and deceitfully plant such a knock on the physiognomical
mensurator's own facial structure, as to exclude it forever from
appearing in any Physiognomical Fragments (itself being reduced to
one), either in the stippled or line style. Nay, might not the most
honest sleeper in the world, just while you are in hand with his
physiognomical dissection, lay about him, spurred on by honor in some
cudgelling-scene he may be dreaming; and in a few instants of
clapperclawing, and kicking, and trampling, lull you into a much more
lasting sleep than that out of which he was awakened?
------------------------
8. In Criminal Courts, murdered children are often represented as
still-born; in Anticritiques, still-born as murdered.
------------------------
In my _Adumbrating Magic-lantern_, as I have named the Work, the
whole physiognomical contents of this same sleeping stage-coach will be
given to the world. There I shall explain to you at large how the
Poisoner, with the murder-cupola, appeared to me devil-like; the Dwarf
old-child-like; the Harlot languidly shameless; my Brother-in-law
peacefully satisfied, with revenge or food; and the Legations-Rath,
_Jean Pierre_, Heaven only knows why, like a half angel,--though,
perhaps, it might be because only the fair body, not the other half,
the soul, which had passed away in sleep, was affecting me.
------------------------
101. Not only were the Rhodians, from their Colossus, called
Colossians; but also innumerable Germans are, from their Luther, called
Lutherans.
------------------------
I had almost forgotten to mention, that, in a little village, while my
Brother-in-law and the Postilion were sitting at their liquor, I
happily fronted a small terror, Destiny having twice been on my side.
Not far from a Hunting Box, beside a pretty clump of trees, I noticed a
white tablet, with a black inscription on it. This gave me hopes that
perhaps some little monumental piece, some pillar of honor, some battle
memento, might here be awaiting me. Over an untrodden flowery tangle I
reach the black on white; and to my horror and amazement I decipher in
the moonshine, _Beware of Spring-guns!_ Thus was I standing perhaps
half a nail's breadth from the trigger, with which, if I but stirred my
heel, I should shoot myself off, like a forgotten ramrod, into the
other world, beyond the verge of Time! The first thing I did was to
slutch down my toe-nails, to bite, and, as it were, eat myself into the
ground with them; since I might, at least, continue in warm life so
long as I pegged my body firmly in beside the Atropos-scissors and
hangman's block, which lay beside me. Then I endeavored to recollect by
what steps the Fiend had led me hither unshot, but in my agony I had
perspired the whole of it, and could remember nothing. In the Devil's
village, close at hand, there was no dog to be seen and called to, who
might have plucked me from the water; and my Brother-in-law and the
Postilion were both carousing with full can. However, I summoned my
courage and determination; wrote down on a leaf of my pocket-book my
last will, the accidental manner of my death, and my dying remembrance
of Berga; and then, with full sails, flew helter-skelter through the
midst of it the shortest way; expecting at every step to awaken the
murderous engine, and thus to clap over my still long candle of life
the bonsoir, or extinguisher, with my own hand. However, I got off
without shot. In the tavern, indeed, there was more than one fool to
laugh at me; because, forsooth, what none but a fool could know, this
Notice had stood there for the last ten years without any gun, as guns
often do without any notice. But so it is, my Friends, with our
game-police, which warns against all things, only not against warnings.
------------------------
88. Hitherto I have always regarded the Polemical writings of our
present philosophic and aesthetic Idealist Logic-buffers,--in which,
certainly, a few contumelies, and misconceptions, and misconclusions do
make their appearance,--rather on the fair side; observing in it merely
an imitation of classical Antiquity, in particular of the ancient
Athletes, who (according to Schoettgen) besmeared their bodies with
_mud_, that they might not be laid hold of; and filled their hands with
_sand_, that they might lay hold of their antagonists.
------------------------
For the rest, throughout the whole stage, I had a constant source of
altercation with the coachman, because he grudged stopping perhaps
once in the quarter of an hour, when I chose to come out for a
natural purpose. Unhappily, in truth, one has little reason to expect
water-doctors among the postilion class, since Physicians themselves
have so seldom learned from Haller's large _Physiology_ that a
postponement of the above operation will precipitate devilish
stone-ware, and at last precipitate the proprietor himself; this
stone-manufactory being generally concluded, not by the Lithotomist,
but by Death. Had postilions read that Tycho Brahe died like a
bombshell by bursting, they would rather pull up for a moment; with
such unlooked-for knowledge, they would see it to be reasonable that a
man, though expecting some time to carry his death-stone _on_ him,
should not incline, for the time being, to carry it _in_ him. Nay, have
I not often, at Weimar, in the longest concluding scenes of Schiller,
run out with tears in my eyes; purely that, while his Minerva was
melting me on the whole, I might not by the Gorgon's head on her breast
be partially turned to stone? And did I not return to the weeping
play-house, and fall into the general emotion so much the more briskly,
as now I had nothing to give vent to but my heart?
------------------------
103. Or are all Mosques, Episcopal-churches, Pagodas, Chapels-of-Ease,
Tabernacles, and Pantheons, anything else than the Ethnic Forecourt of
the Invisible Temple and its Holy of Holies?
------------------------
Deep in the dark we arrived at Niederschoena.
_Third Stage; from Niederschoena to Flaetz_.
While I am standing at the Posthouse musing, with my eye fixed on my
portmanteau, comes a beast of a watchman, and bellows and brays in his
night-tube so close by my ear that I start back in trepidation, I whom
even a too hasty accosting will vex. Is there no medical police, then,
against such efflated hour-fulminators and alarm-cannon, by which
notwithstanding no gunpowder cannon are saved? In my opinion nobody
should be invested with the watchman-horn but some reasonable man, who
had already blown himself into an asthma, and who would consequently be
in case to sing out his hour-verse so low that you could not hear it.
------------------------
40. The common man is copious only in narration, not in reasoning; the
cultivated man is brief only in the former, not in the latter; because
the common man's reasons are a sort of sensations, which, as well as
things visible, he merely _looks at_; by the cultivated man, again,
both reasons and things visible are rather _thought_ than looked at.
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What I had long expected, and the Dwarf predicted, now took place;
deeply stooping, through the high Posthouse door, issued the Giant,
and raised in the open air a most unreasonably high figure, heightened
by the ell-long bonnet and feather on his huge jobbernowl. My
Brother-in-law, beside him, looked but like his son of fourteen years;
the Dwarf like his lap-dog waiting for him on its two hind legs. "Good
friend," said my bantering Brother-in-law, leading him towards me and
the stagecoach, "just step softly in, we shall all be happy to make
room for you. Fold yourself neatly together, lay your head on your
knee, and it will do." The unseasonable banterer would willingly have
seen the almost stupid Giant (of whom he had soon observed that his
brain was no active substance, but in the inverse ratio of his trunk)
squeezed in among us in the post-chest, and lying kneaded together like
a sand-bag before him. "Won't do! Won't do!" said the Giant, looking
in. "The gentleman perhaps does not know," said the Dwarf, "how big the
Giant is; and so he thinks that because _I_ go in-- But that is another
story; _I_ will creep into any hole, do but tell me where."
In short, there was no resource for the Postmaster and the Giant, but
that the latter should plant himself behind, in the character of
luggage, and there lie bending down like a weeping willow over the
whole vehicle. To me such a back-wall and rear-guard could not be
particularly gratifying; and I may refer it (I hope) to any one of you,
ye Friends, if with such ware at your back you would not, as clearly
and earnestly as I, have considered what manifold murderous projects a
knave of a Giant behind you, a _pursuer_ in all senses, might not
maliciously attempt; say, that he broke in and assailed you by the
back-window, or with Titanian strength laid hold of the coach-roof and
demolished the whole party in a lump. However, this Elephant (who
indeed seemed to owe the similarity more to his overpowering mass than
to his quick light of inward faculty), crossing his arms over the top
of the vehicle, soon began to sleep and snore above us; an Elephant, of
whom, as I more and more joyfully observed, my Brother-in-law, the
Dragoon, could easily be the tamer and bridle-holder, nay, had already
been so.
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9. In any national calamity the ancient Egyptians took revenge on the
god Typhon, whom they blamed for it, by hurling his favorites, the
Asses, down over rocks. In similar wise have countries of a different
religion now and then taken their revenge.
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As more than one person now felt inclined to sleep, but I, on the
contrary, as was proper, to wake, I freely offered my seat of honor,
the front place in the coach (meaning thereby to abolish many little
flaws of envy in my fellow-passengers), to such persons as wished to
take a nap thereon. The Legation's man accepted the offer with
eagerness, and soon fell asleep there sitting, under the Titan.[74] To
me this sort of coach-sleeping of a diplomatic _charge d'affaires_
remained a thing incomprehensible. A man, that in the middle of a
stranger and often barbarously-minded company permits himself to
slumber, may easily, supposing him to talk in his sleep and coach,
(think of the Saxon minister[75] before the Seven Years' War!) blab out
a thousand secrets, and crimes, some of which, perhaps, he has not
committed. Should not every minister, ambassador, or other man of honor
and rank, really shudder at the thought of insanity or violent fevers;
seeing no mortal can be his surety that he shall not in such cases
publish the greatest scandals, of which, it may be, the half are lies?
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70. Let Poetry veil itself in Philosophy, but only as the latter does
in the former. Philosophy in poetized Prose resembles those tavern
drinking-glasses, encircled with party-colored wreaths of figures,
which disturb your enjoyment both of the drink, and (often awkwardly
eclipsing and covering each other) of the carving also.
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At last, after the long July night, we passengers, together with
Aurora, arrived in the precincts of Flaetz. I looked with a sharp
yet moistened eye at the steeples. I believe, every man who has
anything decisive to seek in a town, and to whom it is either to be a
judgment-seat of his hopes, or their anchoring-station, either a
battle-field or a sugar-field, first and longest directs his eye on the
steeples of the town, as upon the indexes and balance-tongues of his
future destiny; these artificial peaks, which, like natural ones, are
the thrones of our Future. As I happened to express myself on this
point perhaps too poetically to _Jean Pierre_, he answered with
sufficient want of taste: "The steeples of such towns are indeed the
Swiss Alpine peaks, on which we milk and manufacture the Swiss cheese
of our Future." Did the Legations-Peter mean with this style to make me
ridiculous, or only himself? Determine!
"Here is the place, the town," said I in secret, "where to-day much and
for many years is to be determined, where thou this evening, about five
o'clock, art to present thy petition and thyself. May it prosper! May
it be successful! Let Flaetz, this arena of thy little efforts among the
rest, become a building-space for fair castles and air-castles to two
hearts, thy own and thy Berga's!"
At the Tiger Inn I alighted.
_First Day in Flaetz_.
No mortal in my situation at this Tiger-hotel would have triumphed much
in his more immediate prospects. I, as the only man known to me,
especially in the way of love (of the runaway Dragoon anon!), looked
out from the windows of the overflowing Inn, and down on the rushing
sea of marketers, and very soon began to reflect, that, except Heaven
and the rascals and murderers, none knew how many of the latter two
classes were floating among the tide; purposing, perhaps, to lay hold
of the most innocent strangers, and in part cut their purses, in part
their throats. My situation had a special circumstance against it. My
brother-in-law, who still comes plump out with everything, had
mentioned that I was to put up at the Tiger. O Heaven! when will such
people learn to be secret, and to cover even the meanest pettinesses of
life under mantles and veils, were it only that a silly mouse may as
often give birth to a mountain as a mountain to a mouse! The whole
rabble of the stagecoach stopped at the Tiger; the Harlot, the
Rat-catcher, _Jean Pierre_, the Giant, who had dismounted at the Gate
of the town, and carrying the huge block-head of the Dwarf on his
shoulders as his own (cloaking over the deception by his cloak), had
thus, like a ninny, exhibited himself gratis by half a dwarf more
gigantic than he could be seen for money.
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158. Governments should not too often change the penny-trumps and
child's drums of the Poets for the regimental trumpet and fire-drum;
on the other hand, good subjects should regard many a princely
drum-tendency simply as a disease, in which the patient, by air
insinuating under the skin, has got dreadfully swoln.
------------------------
And now for each of the Passengers, the question was how he could make
the Tiger, the heraldic emblem of the Inn, his prototype; and so what
lamb he might suck the blood of, and tear in pieces, and devour. My
brother-in-law too left me, having gone in quest of some horse-dealer;
but he retained the chamber next mine for his sister; this, it
appeared, was to denote attention on his part. I remained solitary,
left to my own intrepidity and force of purpose.
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89. In great towns, a stranger, for the first day or two after his
arrival, lives purely at his own expense, in an inn; afterwards, in the
houses of his friends, without expense; on the other hand, if you
arrive at the Earth, as for instance I have done, you are courteously
maintained, precisely for the first few years, free of charges; but in
the next and longer series--for you often stay sixty--you are actually
obliged (I have the documents in my hands) to pay for every drop and
morsel, as if you were in the great Earth Inn, which indeed you are.
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Yet among so many villains, encompassing if not even beleaguring me, I
thought warmly of one far distant, faithful soul, of my Berga in
Neusattel; a true heart of pith, which perhaps with many a weak
marriage-partner might have given protection rather than sought it.
"Appear, then, quickly to-morrow at noon, Berga," said my heart; "and
if possible before noon, that I may lengthen thy market paradise so
many hours as thou arrivest earlier!"
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