144. The Reviewer does not in reality employ his pen for writing; but
he burns it, to awaken weak people from their swoons with the smell; he
tickles with it the throat of the plagiary, to make him render back;
and he picks with it his own teeth. He is the only individual in the
whole learned lexicon that can never exhaust himself, never write
himself out, let him sit before the ink-glass for centuries, or tens of
centuries. For while the Scholar, the Philosopher, and the Poet produce
their new book solely from new materials and growth, the Reviewer
merely lays his old gauge of taste and knowledge on a thousand new
works; and his light, in the ever-passing, ever-differently-cut
glass-world, which he _elucidates_, is still refracted into new colors.
------------------------
A clergyman, amid the tempests of the world, readily makes for a free
harbor, for the church; the church-wall is his casement-wall and
fortification; and behind are to be found more peaceful and more
accordant souls than on the market-place; in short, I went into the
High Church. However, in the course of the psalm, I was somewhat
disturbed by a Heiduc, who came up to a well-dressed young gentleman
sitting opposite me, and tore the double opera-glass from his nose, it
being against rule in Flaetz, as it is in Dresden, to look at the Court
with glasses which diminish and approximate. I myself had on a pair of
spectacles, but they were magnifiers. It was impossible for me to
resolve on taking them off; and here again, I am afraid, I shall pass
for a foolhardy person and a desperado; so much only I reckoned fit, to
look invariably into my psalm-book; not once lifting my eyes while the
Court was rustling and entering, thereby to denote that my glasses were
ground convex. For the rest, the sermon was good, if not always finely
conceived for a Court-church; it admonished the hearers against
innumerable vices, to whose counterparts, the virtues, another preacher
might so readily have exhorted us. During the whole service, I made it
my business to exhibit true, deep reverence, not only towards God, but
also towards my illustrious Prince. For the latter reverence I had my
private reason. I wished to stamp this sentiment strongly and openly as
with raised letters on my countenance, and so give the lie to any
malicious imp about Court, by whom my contravention of the _Panegyric
on Nero_, and my free German satire on this real tyrant himself, which
I had inserted in the _Plaetz Weekly Journal_, might have been perverted
into a secret characteristic portrait of my own Sovereign. We live in
such times at present, that scarcely can we compose a pasquinade on the
Devil in Hell, but some human Devil on Earth will apply it to an angel.
------------------------
71. The Youth is singular from caprice, and takes pleasure in it; the
Man is so from constraint, unintentionally, and feels pain in it.
------------------------
When the Court at last issued from church, and were getting into their
carriages, I kept at such a distance that my face could not possibly be
noticed, in case I had happened to assume no reverent look, but an
indifferent or even proud one. God knows, who has kneaded into me those
mad, desperate fancies and crotchets, which perhaps would sit better on
a Hero Schabacker, than on an Army-chaplain under him. I cannot here
forbear recording to you, my Friends, one of the maddest among them,
though at first it may throw too glaring a light on me. It was at my
ordination to be Army-chaplain, while about to participate in the
Sacrament, on the first day of Easter. Now, here while I was standing,
moved into softness, before the balustrade of the altar, in the middle
of the whole male congregation,--nay, I perhaps more deeply moved than
any among them, since, as a person going to war, I might consider
myself a half-dead man, that was now partaking in the last Feast of
Souls, as it were like a person to be hanged on the morrow,--here,
then, amid the pathetic effects of the organ and singing, there rose
something--were it the first Easter-day which awoke in me what
primitive Christians call their Easter-laughter, or merely the contrast
between the most devilish predicaments and the most holy,--in short,
there rose something in me (for which reason I have ever since taken
the part of every simple person who might ascribe such things to the
Devil), and this something started the question: "Now, could there be
aught more diabolical than if thou, just in receiving the Holy Supper,
wert madly and blasphemously to begin laughing?" Instantly I took to
wrestling with this hell-dog of a thought; neglected the most precious
feelings, merely to keep the dog in my eye, and scare him away; yet was
forced to draw back from him, exhausted and unsuccessful, and arrived
at the step of the altar with the mournful certainty that in a little
while I should, without more ado, begin laughing, let me weep and moan
inwardly as I liked. Accordingly, while I and a very worthy old
Burgermeister were bowing down together before the long parson, and the
latter (perhaps kneeling on the low cushion, I fancied him too long)
put the wafer in my clenched mouth, I felt all the muscles of laughter
already beginning sardonically to contract; and these had not long
acted on the guiltless integument, till an actual smile appeared there;
and as we bowed the second time, I was grinning like an ape. My
companion the Burgermeister justly expostulated with me, in a low
voice, as we walked round behind the altar: "In Heaven's name, are you
an ordained Preacher of the Gospel, or a Merry-Andrew? Is it Satan that
is laughing out of you?"
------------------------
198. The Populace and Cattle grow giddy on the edge of no abyss; with
the Man it is otherwise.
11. The Golden Calf of Self-love soon waxes to be a burning Phalaris's
Bull, which reduces its father and adorer to ashes.
103. The male Beau-crop, which surrounds the female Roses and Lilies,
must (if I rightly comprehend its flatteries) most probably presuppose
in the fair the manners of the Spaniards and Italians, who offer any
valuable, by way of present, to the man who praises it excessively.
------------------------
"Ah, Heaven! who else?" said I; and this being over, I finished my
devotions in a more becoming fashion.
From the church (I now return to the Flaetz one) I proceeded to the
Tiger Inn, and dined at the _table-d'hote_, being at no time shy of
encountering men. Previous to the second course, a waiter handed me an
empty plate, on which, to my astonishment, I noticed a French verse
scratched in with a fork, containing nothing less than a lampoon on the
Commandant of Flaetz. Without ceremony, I held out the plate to the
company; saying, I had just, as they saw, got this lampooning cover
presented to me, and must request them to bear witness that I had
nothing to do with the matter. An officer directly changed plates with
me. During the fifth course, I could not but admire the chemico-medical
ignorance of the company; for a hare, out of which a gentleman
extracted and exhibited several grains of shot, that is to say,
therefore, of lead alloyed with arsenic, and then cleaned by hot
vinegar, did, nevertheless, by the spectators (I expected) continue to
be pleasantly eaten.
------------------------
199. But not many existing Governments, I believe, do behead under
pretext of trepanning; or sew (in a more choice allegory) the people's
lips together, under pretence of sewing the harelips in them.
------------------------
In the course of our table-talk, one topic seized me keenly by my weak
side, I mean by my honor. The law custom of the city happened to be
mentioned, as it affects natural children; and I learned that here a
loose girl may convert any man she pleases to select into the father of
her brat, simply by her oath. "Horrible!" said I, and my hair stood on
end. "In this way may the worthiest head of a family, with a wife and
children, or a clergyman lodging in the Tiger, be stript of honor and
innocence, by any wicked chambermaid whom he may have seen, or who may
have seen him, in the course of her employment!"
An elderly officer observed: "But will the girl swear herself to the
Devil so readily?"
What logic! "Or suppose," continued I, without answer, "a man happened
to be travelling with that Vienna Locksmith, who afterwards became a
mother, and was brought to bed of a baby son; or with any disguised
Chevalier d'Eon, who often passes the night in his company, whereby the
Locksmith or the Chevalier can swear to their private interviews; no
delicate man of honor will in the end risk travelling with another;
seeing he knows not how soon the latter may pull off his boots, and
pull on his women's-pumps, and swear his companion into Fatherhood, and
himself to the Devil!"
------------------------
67. Hospitable Entertainer, wouldst thou search into thy Guest?
Accompany him to another Entertainer, and listen to him. Just so,
wouldst thou become better acquainted with Mistress in an hour, than by
living with her for a month? Accompany her among her female friends and
female enemies (if that is no pleonasm), and look at her!
------------------------
Some of the company, however, misunderstood my oratorical fire so much,
that they, sheep-wise, gave some insinuations as if I myself were not
strict in this point, but lax. By Heaven! I no longer knew what I was
eating or speaking. Happily, on the opposite side of the table, some
lying story of a French defeat was started. Now, as I had read on the
street corners that French and German Proclamation, calling before the
Court Martial any one who had heard war rumors (disadvantageous,
namely), without giving notice of them,--I, as a man not willing ever
to forget himself, had nothing more prudent to do in this case, than to
withdraw with empty ears, telling none but the landlord why.
It was no improper time; for I had previously determined to have my
beard shaven about half past four, that so, towards five, I might
present myself with a chin just polished by the razor smoothing-iron,
and sleek as wove-paper, without the smallest root-stump of a hair left
on it. By way of preparation, like Pitt before Parliamentary debates, I
poured a devilish deal of Pontac into my stomach, with true disgust,
and contrary to all sanitary rules; not so much for fronting the light
stranger Barber, as the Minister and General von Schabacker, with whom
I had it in view to exchange perhaps more than one fiery statement.
------------------------
80. In the Summer of life, men keep digging and filling ice-pits, as
well as circumstances will admit; that so, in their Winter, they may
have something in store to give them coolness.
28. It is impossible for me, amid the tendril-forest of allusions (even
this again is a tendril-twig), to state and declare on the spot whether
all the Courts or Heights, the (Bougouer) _Snowline_ of Europe, have
ever been mentioned in my writings or not; but I could wish for
information on the subject, that, if not, I may try to do it still.
------------------------
The common Hotel Barber was ushered in to me; but at first view you
noticed in his polygonal, zigzag visage, more of a man that would
finally go mad, than of one growing wiser. Now, madmen are a class of
persons whom I hate incredibly; and nothing can take me to see any
madhouse, simply because the first maniac among them may clutch me in
his giant fists if he like; and bet cause, owing to infection, I cannot
be sure that I shall ever get out again with the sense which I brought
in. In a general way, I sit (when once I am lathered) in such a posture
on my chair as to keep both my hands (the eyes I fix intently on the
bartering countenance) lying clenched along my sides, and pointed
directly at the midriff of the barber; that so, on the smallest
ambiguity of movement, I may dash in upon him, and overset him in a
twinkling.
I scarce know rightly how it happened; but here, while I am anxiously
studying the foolish, twisted visage of the shaver, and he just then
chanced to lay his long whetted weapon a little too abruptly against my
bare throat, I gave him such a sudden bounce on the abdominal viscera,
that the silly varlet had wellnigh suicidally slit his own windpipe.
For me, truly, nothing remained but to indemnify the man; and then,
contrary to my usual principles, to tie round a broad stuffed cravat,
by way of cloak to what remained unshorn.
And now at last I sallied forth to the General, drinking out the
remnant of the Pontac, as I crossed the threshold.
------------------------
36. And so I should like, in all cases, to be the First, especially in
Begging. The first prisoner-of-war, the first cripple, the first man
ruined by burning (like him who brings the first fire-engine), gains
the head-subscription and the heart; the next comer finds nothing but
Duty to address; and at last, in this melodious _mancando_ of sympathy,
matters sink so far, that the last (if the last but one may at least
have retired laden with a rich "God help you!") obtains from the
benignant hand nothing more than its fist. And as in Begging the first,
so in Giving I should like to be the last; one obliterates the other,
especially the last the first. So, however, is the world ordered.
------------------------
I hope there were plans lying ready within me for answering rightly,
nay for asking. The Petition I carried in my pocket, and in my right
hand. In the left, I had a duplicate of it. My fire of spirit easily
helped over the living fence of ministerial obstructions; and soon I
unexpectedly found myself in the ante-chamber, among his most
distinguished lackeys; persons, so far as I could see, not inclined to
change flour for bran with any one. Selecting the most respectable
individual of the number, I delivered him my paper request, accompanied
with the verbal one that he would hand it in. He took it, but
ungraciously. I waited in vain till far in the sixth hour, at which
season alone the gay General can safely be applied to. At last I pitch
upon another lackey, and repeat my request; he runs about seeking his
runaway brother, or my Petition, to no purpose; neither of them
could be found. How happy was it that in the midst of my Pontac,
before shaving, I had written out the duplicate of this paper; and
therefore--simply on the principle that you should always keep a second
wooden leg packed into your knapsack when you have the first on your
body--and out of fear, that, if the original petition chanced to drop
from me in the way between the Tiger and Schabacker's, my whole journey
and hope would melt into water,--and therefore, I say, having stuck the
repeating work of that original paper into my pocket, I had, in any
case, something to hand in, and that something truly a Ditto. I handed
it in.
------------------------
136. If you mount too high above your time, your ears (on the side of
Fame) are little better off than if you sink too deep below it; in
truth, Charles up in his Balloon, and Halley down in his Diving-bell,
felt equally the same strange pain in their ears.
------------------------
Unhappily six o'clock was already past. The lackey, however, did not
keep me long waiting; but returned with--I may say, the text of this
whole Circular--the almost rude answer (which you, my Friends, out of
regard for me and Schabacker, will not divulge), that: "In case I
were the Attila Schmelzle of Schabacker's Regiment, might lift my
pigeon-liver flag again, and fly to the Devil, as I did at
Pimpelstadt." Another man would have dropt dead on the spot; I,
however, walked quite stoutly off, answering the fellow: "With great
pleasure indeed, I fly to the Devil; and so Devil a fly I care." On the
road home, I examined myself, whether it had not been the Pontac that
spoke out of me (though the very examination contradicted this, for
Pontac never examines); but I found that nothing but I, my heart, my
courage perhaps, had spoken; and why, after all, any whimpering? Does
not the patrimony of my good wife endow me better than ten Catechetical
Professorships? And has she not furnished all the corners of my book of
Life with so many golden clasps, that I can open it forever without
wearing it? Let henhearts cackle and pip; I flapped my pinions, and
said: "Dash boldly through it, come what may!" I felt myself excited
and exalted; I fancied Republics, in which I, as a hero, might be at
home; I longed to be in that noble Grecian time, when one hero readily
put up with bastinadoes from another, and said, "Strike, but hear!" and
out of this ignoble one, where men will scarcely put up with hard
words, to say nothing of more. I painted out to my mind how I
should feel, if, in happier circumstances, I were uprooting hollow
Thrones, and before whole nations mounting on mighty deeds as on the
Temple-steps of Immortality; and, in gigantic ages, finding quite other
men to outman and outstrip, than the mite-populace about me, or, at the
best, here and there a Vulcanello. I thought and thought, and grew
wilder and wilder, and intoxicated myself (no Pontac intoxication
therefore, which, you know, increases more by continuance than
cessation of drinking), and gesticulated openly, as I put the
question to myself: "Wilt thou be a mere state-lapdog? A dog's-dog,
a _pium desiderium_ of an _impium desiderium_, an Ex-Ex, a
Nothing's-Nothing?--Fire and Fury!" With this, however, I dashed down
my hat into the mud of the market. On lifting and cleaning this old
servant, I could not but perceive how worn and faded it was; and I
therefore determined instantly to purchase a new one, and carry the
same home in my hand.
------------------------
25. In youth, like a blind man just couched (and what is birth but a
couching of the sight?), you take the Distant for the Near, the starry
heaven for tangible room-furniture, pictures for objects; and, to the
young man, the whole world is sitting on his very nose, till repeating
bandaging and unbandaging have at last taught him, like the blind
patient, to estimate _Distance_ and _Appearance_.
------------------------
I accomplished this. I bought one of the finest cut. Strangely enough,
by this hat, as if it had been a Graduation-hat, was my head tried and
examined in the Ziegengasse or Goat-gate of Flaetz. For as General
Schabacker came driving along that street in his carriage, and I (it
need not be said) was determined to avenge myself, not by vulgar
clownishness, but by courtesy, I had here got one of the most ticklish
problems imaginable to solve on the spur of the instant. You observe,
if I swung only the fine hat which I carried in my hand, and kept the
faded one on my head,--I might have the appearance of a perfect clown,
who does not doff at all; if, on the other hand, I pulled the old hat
from my head, and therewith did my reverence, then two hats, both in
play at once (let me swing the other at the same time or not), brought
my salute within the verge of ridicule. Now do you, my Friends, before
reading further, bethink you how a man was to extricate himself from
such a plight, without losing his presence of mind! I think, perhaps,
by this means; by merely losing his hat. In one word, then, I simply
dropped the new hat from my hand into the mud, to put myself in a
condition for taking off the old hat by itself, and swaying it in
needful courtesy, without any shade of ridicule.
Arrived at the Tiger,--to avoid misconstructions, I first had the
glossy, fine, and superfine hat cleaned, and some time afterwards the
mud-hat or rubbis-hat.
And now, weighing my momentous Past in the adjusting balance within me,
I walked in fiery mood to and fro. The Pontac must--I know that there
is no unadulterated liquor here below--have been more than usually
adulterated; so keenly did it chase my fancy out of one fire into the
other. I now looked forth into a wide, glittering life, in which I
lived without post, merely on money; and which I beheld, as it were,
sowed with the Delphic caves, and Zenonic walks, and Muse-hills of all
the Sciences, which I might now cultivate at my ease. In particular,
I should have it in my power to apply more diligently to writing
Prize-essays for Academies; of which (that is to say, of the
Prize-essays) no author need ever be ashamed, since, in all cases,
there is a whole crowning Academy to stand and blush for the crownee.
And even if the Prize-marksman does not hit the crown, he still
continues more unknown and more anonymous (his Device not being
unsealed) than any other author, who indeed can publish some nameless
Long-ear of a book, but not hinder it from being, by a Literary
Ass-burial (_sepultura asinina_), publicly interred, in a short time,
before half the world.
------------------------
126. In the long run, out of mere fear and necessity, we shall become
the warmest cosmopolites I know of; so rapidly do ships shoot to and
fro, and, like shuttles, weave Islands and Quarters of the World
together. For let but the political weather-glass fall to-day in South
America, to-morrow we in Europe have storm and thunder.
19. It is easier, they say, to climb a hill when you ascend back
foremost. This, perhaps, might admit of application to political
eminences; if you still turned towards them that part of the body on
which you sit, and kept your face directed down to the people; all the
while, however, removing and mounting.
------------------------
Only one thing grieved me by anticipation; the sorrow of my Berga, for
whom, dear tired wayfarer, I on the morrow must overcloud her arrival,
and her shortened market-spectacle, by my negatory intelligence. She
would so gladly (and who can take it ill of a rich farmer's Daughter?)
have made herself somebody in Neusattel, and overshone many a female
dignitary! Every mortal longs for his parade-place, and some earlier
living honor than the last honors. Especially so good a lowly-born
housewife as my Berga, conscious perhaps rather of her metallic than of
her spiritual treasure, would still wish at banquets to be mistress of
some seat or other, and so in place to overtop this or that plucked
goose of the neighborhood.
------------------------
26. Few German writers are not original, if we may ascribe originality
(as is at least the conversational practice of all people) to a man who
merely dishes out his own thoughts without foreign admixture. For as,
between their Memory, where their reading or foreign matter dwells, and
their Imagination or Productive Power, where their writing or own
peculiar matter originates, a sufficient space intervenes, and the
boundary-stones are fixed in so conscientiously and firmly that nothing
foreign may pass over into their own, or inversely, so that they may
really read a hundred works without losing their own primitive flavor,
or even altering it,--their individuality may, I believe, be considered
as secured; and their spiritual nourishment, their pancakes, loaves,
fritters, caviare, and meat-balls, are not assimilated to their system,
but given back pure and unaltered. Often in my own mind, I figure such
writers as living but thousand-fold more artificial Ducklings from
Vaucasson's Artificial Duck of Wood. For in fact they are not less
cunningly put together than this timber Duck, which will gobble meat
and apparently void it again, under show of having digested it, and
derived from it blood and juices; though the secret of the business is,
the artist has merely introduced an ingenious compound ejective matter
behind, with which concoction and nourishment have nothing to do, but
which the Duck illusorily gives forth and publishes to the world.
------------------------
It is in this point of view that husbands are so indispensable. I
therefore resolved to purchase for myself, and consequently for her,
one of the best of those titles which our Courts in Germany (as in a
Leipzig saleroom) stand offering to buyers, in all sizes and sorts,
from Noble and Half-noble down to Rath or Councillor; and once
invested therewith, to reflect from my own Quarter-nobility such an
Eighth-part-nobility on this true soul, that many a Neusattelitess (I
hope) shall half burst with envy, and say and cry: "Pooh, the stupid
farmer thing! See how it wabbles and bridles! It has forgot how matters
stood when it had no money-bag and no Hofrath!" For to the Hofrathship
I shall before this have attained.
But in the cold solitude of my room, and the fire of my remembrances, I
longed unspeakably for my Bergelchen; I and my heart were wearied with
the foreign busy day; no one here said a kind word to me, which he did
not hope to put in the bill. Friends! I languished for my friend, whose
heart would pour out its blood as a balsam for a second heart; I cursed
my over-prudent regulations, and wished, that, to have the good Berga
at my side, I had given up the stupid houseware to all thieves and
fires whatsoever. As I walked to and fro, it seemed to me easier and
easier to become all things, an Exchequer-Rath, an Excise-Rath, any
Rath in the world, and whatever she required when she came.
"See thou take thy pleasure in the town!" had Bergelchen kept saying
the whole week through. But how, without her, can I take any? Our tears
of sorrow friends dry up, and accompany with their own; but our tears
of joy we find most readily repeated in the eyes of our wives. Pardon
me, good Friends, these libations of my sensibility; I am but showing
you my heart and my Berga. If I need an Absolution-merchant, the
Pontac-merchant is the man.
_First Night in Flaetz_.
Yet the wine did not take from me the good sense to look under the bed,
before going into it, and examine whether any one was lurking there;
for example, the Dwarf, or the Rat-catcher, or the Legations-Rath; also
to shove the key under the latch (which I reckon the best bolting
arrangement of all), and then, by way of further assurance, to bore my
night-screws into the door, and pile all the chairs in a heap behind
it; and, lastly, to keep on my breeches and shoes, wishing absolutely
to have no care upon my mind.
But I had still other precautions to take in regard to sleep-walking.
To me it has always been incomprehensible how so many men can go to
bed, and lie down at their ease there, without reflecting that perhaps,
in the first sleep, they may get up again as Somnambulists, and crawl
over the tops of roofs and the like; awakening in some spot where they
may fall in a moment and break their necks. While at home, there is
little risk in my sleep; because, my right toe being fastened every
night with three ells of tape (I call it in jest our marriage tie) to
my wife's left hand, I feel a certainty that, in case I should start up
from this bed-arrest, I must with the tether infallibly awaken her, and
so by my Berga, as by my living bridle, be again led back to bed. But
here in the Inn, I had nothing for it but to knot myself once or twice
to the bed-foot, that I might not wander; though in this way, an
irruption of villains would have brought double peril with it.--Alas!
so dangerous is sleep at all times, that every man, who is not lying on
his back a corpse, must be on his guard lest with the general system
some limb or other also fall asleep; in which case the sleeping limb
(there are not wanting examples of it in Medical History) may next
morning be lying ripe for amputation. For this reason, I have myself
frequently awakened, that no part of me fall asleep.
Having properly tied myself to the bed-posts, and at length got under
the coverlid, I now began to be dubious about my Pontac Fire-bath, and
apprehensive of the valorous and tumultuous dreams too likely to ensue;
which, alas, did actually prove to be nothing better than heroic and
monarchic feats, castle-stormings, rock-throwings, and the like. This
point also I am sorry to see so little attended to in medicine. Medical
gentlemen, as well as their customers, all stretch themselves quietly
in their beds, without one among them considering whether a furious
rage (supposing him also directly after to drink cold water in his
dream), or a heart-devouring grief, all which he may undergo in vision,
does harm to life or not.
Shortly before midnight, I awoke from a heavy dream, to encounter a
ghost-trick much too ghostly for my fancy. My brother-in-law, who
manufactured it, deserves for such vapid cookery to be named before you
without reserve, as the maltmaster of this washy brewage. Had suspicion
been more compatible with intrepidity, I might perhaps, by his moral
maxim about this matter, on the road, as well as by his taking up the
side-room, at the middle door of which stood my couch, have easily
divined the whole. But now, on awakening, I felt myself blown upon by a
cold ghost-breath, which I could nowise deduce from the distant bolted
window; a point I had rightly decided, for the Dragoon was producing
the phenomenon through the key-hole by a pair of bellows. Every sort
of coldness in the night-season reminds you of clay-coldness and
spectre-coldness. I summoned my resolution, however, and abode the
issue; but now the very coverlid began to get in motion; I pulled it
towards me; it would not stay; sharply I sit upright in my bed, and
cry, "What is that?" No answer; everywhere silence in the Inn; the
whole room full of moonshine. And now my drawing-plaster, my coverlid,
actually rose up, and let in the air; at which I felt like a wounded
man whose cataplasm you suddenly pull off. In this crisis, I made a
bold leap from this Devil's-torus, and leaping, snapped asunder my
somnambulist tether. "Where is the silly human fool," cried I, "that
dares to ape the unseen sublime him?" But on, above, under the bed,
there was nothing to be heard or seen, I looked out of the window;
everywhere spectral moonlight and street-stillness; nothing moving
except (probably from the wind), on the distant Gallows-hill, a person
lately hanged.
------------------------
15. After the manner of the fine polished English folding-knives, there
are now also folding-war-swords, or, in other words--Treaties of Peace.
------------------------
Any man would have taken it for self-deception as well as I; therefore
I again wrapped myself in my passive _lit de justice_ and air-bed, and
waited with calmness to see whether my fright would subside or not.
In a few minutes the coverlid, the infernal Faust's-mantle, again began
flying and towing; also, by way of change, the invisible bed-maker
again lifted me up. Accursed hour!--I should beg to know whether, in
the whole of cultivated Europe, there is one cultivated or uncultivated
man, who, in a case of this kind, would not have lighted on
ghost-devilry? I lighted on it, under my piece of (self) movable
property, my coverlid; and thought Berga had died suddenly, and was
now, in spirit, laying hold of my bed. However, I could not speak to
her, nor as little to the Devil, who might well be supposed to have a
hand in the game; but I turned myself solely to Heaven, and prayed
aloud: "To thee I commit myself; thou alone heretofore hast cared for
thy weak servant; and I swear that I will turn a new leaf,"--a promise
which shall be kept nevertheless, though the whole was but stupid
treachery and trick.
------------------------
13. _Omnibus una_ salus _Sanctis, sed_ gloria _dispar_; that is to say
(as Divines once taught), according to Saint Paul, we have all the same
Beatitude in Heaven, but different degrees of Honor. Here, on Earth, we
find a shadow of this in the writing world; for the Beatitude of
authors once beatified by Criticism, whether they be genial, good,
mediocre, or poor, is the same throughout; they all obtain the same
pecuniary Felicity, the same slender profit. But, Heavens! in regard to
the degrees of Fame, again, how far (in spite of the same emolument and
sale) will a Dunce, even in his lifetime, be put below a Genius! Is not
a shallow writer frequently forgotten in a single Fair? while a deep
writer, or even a writer of genius, will blossom through fifty Fairs,
and so may celebrate his Twenty-five Years' Jubilee, before, late
forgotten, he is lowered into the German Temple of Fame; a Temple
imitating the peculiarity of the _Padri Lucchesi_ churches in Naples,
which (according to Volkmann) permit _burials_ under their roofs, but
no _tombstone_.
------------------------
My prayer had no effect with the unchristian Dragoon, who now, once for
all, had got me prisoner in the dragnet of a coverlid; and heeded
little whether a guest's bed were, by his means, made a state-bed and
death-bed or not. He span out my nerves, like gold-wire through
smaller and smaller holes, to utter inanition and evanition, for the
bed-clothes at last literally marched off to the door of the room.
Now was the moment to rise into the sublime, and to trouble myself no
longer about aught here below, but softly to devote myself to death.
"Snatch me away," cried I, and, without thinking, cut three crosses;
"quick, dispatch me, ye ghosts; I die more innocent than thousands of
tyrants and blasphemers, to whom ye yet appear not, but to unpolluted
me." Here I heard a sort of laugh, either on the street or in the
side-room. At this warm human tone, I suddenly bloomed up again, as at
the coming of a new Spring, in every twig and leaf. Wholly despising
the winged coverlid, which was not now to be picked from the door, I
laid myself down uncovered, but warm and perspiring from other causes,
and soon fell asleep. For the rest, I am not the least ashamed, in the
face of all refined capital cities,--though they were standing here at
my hand,--that, by this Devil-belief and Devil-address, I have attained
some likeness to our great German Lion, to Luther.
_Second Day in Flaetz_.
Early in the morning, I felt myself awakened by the well-known
coverlid; it had laid itself on me like a nightmare; I gaped up; quiet,
in a corner of the room, sat a red, round, blooming, decorated girl,
like a full-blown tulip in the freshness of life, and gently rustling
with gay ribbons as with leaves.
"Who's there--how came you in?" cried I, half-blind.
"I covered thee softly, and thought to let thee sleep," said
Bergelchen; "I have walked all night to be here early; do but look!"
She showed me her boots, the only remnant of her travelling-gear which,
in the moulting process of the toilette, she had not stript at the gate
of Flaetz.
"Is there," said I, alarmed at her coming six hours sooner, and the
more, as I had been alarmed all night and was still so, at her
mysterious entrance; "is there some fresh woe come over us, fire,
murder, robbery?"
She answered: "The old Rat thou hast chased so long, died yesterday;
further there was nothing of importance."
"And all has been managed rightly, and according to my Letter of
Instructions, at home?" inquired I.
"Yes, truly," answered she; "only I did not see the Letter; it is lost;
thou hast packed it among thy clothes."
Well, I could not but forgive the blooming, brave pedestrian all
omissions. Her eye, then her heart was bringing fresh cool morning air
and morning red into my sultry hours. And yet, for this kind soul,
looking into life with such love and hope, I must in a little while
overcloud the merited Heaven of to-day, with tidings of my failure in
the Catechetical Professorship! I dallied and postponed to the utmost.
I asked how she had got in, as the whole _chevaux-de-frise_ barricado
of chairs was still standing fast at the door. She laughed heartily,
courtesying in village fashion, and said, she had planned it with her
brother the day before yesterday, knowing my precautions in locking,
that he should admit her into my room, that so she might cunningly
awaken me. And now bolted the Dragoon with loud laughter into the
apartment, and cried: "Slept well, brother?"
In this wise truly the whole ghost-story was now solved and expounded,
as if by the pen of a Biester or a Hennings. I instantly saw through
the entire ghost-scheme which our Dragoon had executed. With some
bitterness I told him my conjecture, and his sister my story. But
he lied and laughed; nay, attempted shamelessly enough to palm
spectre-notions on me a second time, in open day. I answered coldly,
that in me he had found the wrong man, granting even that I had some
similarity with Luther, with Hobbes, with Brutus, all of whom had seen
and dreaded ghosts. He replied, tearing the facts away from their
originating causes: "All he could say was, that last night he had heard
some poor sinner creaking and lamenting dolefully enough; and from this
he had inferred it must be an unhappy brother set upon by goblins."
------------------------
79. Weak and wrong heads are the hardest to change; and their inward
man acquires a scanty covering; thus capons never moult.
------------------------
In the end, his sister's eyes also were opened to the low character
which he had tried to act with me; she sharply flew at him, pushed
him with both hands out of his and my door, and called after him:
"Wait, thou villain, I will mind it!"
Then hastily turning round, she fell on my neck, and (at the wrong
place) into laughter, and said: "The wild fool! But I could not keep my
laugh another minute, and he was not to see it. Forgive the ninny, thou
a learned man, his ass-pranks; what can one expect?"
I inquired whether she, in her nocturnal travelling, had not met any
spectral persons; though I knew that to her a wild beast, a river, a
half abyss, are nothing. No, she had not; but the gay-dressed
town's-people, she said, had scared her in the morning. O, how I do
love these soft Harmonica-quiverings of female fright!
At last, however, I was forced to bite or cut the coloquinta-apple, and
give her the half of it; I mean the news of my rejected petition for
the Catechetical Professorship. Wishing to spare this joyful heart the
rudeness of the whole truth, and to subtract something from a heavy
burden, more fit for the shoulders of a man, I began: "Bergelchen, the
Professorship affair is taking another, though still a good enough
course; the General, whom may the Devil and his Grandmother teach
sense, will not be taken except by storm; and storm he shall have, as
certainly as I have on my nightcap."
"Then thou art nothing yet?" inquired she.
"For the moment, indeed, not!" answered I.
------------------------
89. In times of misfortune, the Ancients supported themselves with
Philosophy or Christianity; the moderns again (for example, in the
reign of Terror) take to Pleasure; as the wounded Buffalo, for bandage
and salve, rolls himself in the mire.
181. God be thanked that we live nowhere forever except in Hell or
Heaven; on Earth otherwise we should grow to be the veriest rascals,
and the World a House of Incurables, for want of the dog-doctor (the
Hangman), and the issue-cord (on the Gallows), and the sulphur and
chalybeate medicines (on Battle-fields). So that we too find our
gigantic moral force dependent on the _Debt of Nature_ which we have to
pay, exactly as your politicians (for example, the author of the _New
Leviathan_) demonstrate that the English have their _National Debt_ to
thank for their superiority.
------------------------
"But before Saturday night?" said she.
"Not quite," said I.
"Then am I sore stricken, and could leap out of the window," said she,
and turned away her rosy face, to hide its wet eyes, and was silent
very long. Then, with painfully quivering voice, she began: "Good
Christ, stand by me at Neusattel on Sunday, when these high-prancing
prideful dames look at me in church, and I grow scarlet for shame!"
Here in sympathetic woe I sprang out of bed to the dear soul, over
whose brightly blooming cheeks warm tears were rolling, and cried:
"Thou true heart, do not tear me in pieces so! May I die, if yet in
these dog-days I become not all and everything that thou wishest!
Speak, wilt thou be Mining-raethin, Build-raethin, Court-raethin,
War-raethin, Chamber-raethin, Commerce-raethin, Legations-raethin, or Devil
and his Dam's raethin; I am here, and will buy it, and be it. To-morrow
I send riding posts to Saxony and Hessia, to Prussia and Russia, to
Friesland and Katzenellenbogen, and demand patents. Nay, I will carry
matters further than another, and be all things at once, Flachsenfingen
Court-rath, Scheerau Excise-rath, Haarhaar Building-rath, Pestitz[76]
Chamber-rath (for we have the cash); and thus, alone and singlehanded,
represent with one _podex_ and _corpus_ a whole Rath-session of select
Raths; and stand, a complete Legion of Honor, on one single pair of
legs; the like no man ever did.
"O, now thou art angel-good!" said she, and gladder tears rolled down;
"thou shalt counsel me thyself which are the finest Raths, and these we
will be."
"No," continued I, in the fire of the moment, "neither shall this serve
us; to me it is not enough that to Mrs. Chaplain thou canst announce
thyself as Building-raethin, to Mrs. Town-parson as Legations-raethin, to
Mrs. Burgermeister as Court-raethin, to Mrs. Road-and-toll-surveyor as
Commerce-raethin, or how and where thou pleasest----"
"Ah! my own too good Attelchen!" said she.
"--But," continued I, "I shall likewise become corresponding member of
the several Learned Societies in the several best capital cities (among
which I have only to choose); and truly no common actual member, but a
whole honorary member; then thee, as another honorary member, growing
out of my honorary-membership, I uplift and exalt."
Pardon me, my Friends, this warm cataplasm, or deception-balsam for a
wounded breast, whose blood is so pure and precious, that one may
be permitted to endeavor, with all possible stanching-lints and
spider-webs, to drive it back into the fair heart, its home.
------------------------
63. To apprehend danger from the Education of the People is like
fearing lest the thunderbolt strike into the house because it has
_windows_; whereas the lightning never comes through these, but through
their _lead_ framing, or down by the smoke of the chimney.
------------------------
But now came bright and brightest hours. I had conquered Time, I had
conquered myself and Berga; seldom does a conqueror, as I did, bless
both the victorious and the vanquished party. Berga called back her
former Heaven, and pulled off her dusty boots, and on her flowery
shoes. Precious morning beverage, intoxicating to a heart that loves! I
felt (if the low figure may be permitted) a double-beer of courage in
me, now that I had one being more to protect. In general it is my
nature--which the honorable Premier seems not to be fully aware of--to
grow bolder not among the bold, but fastest among poltroons, the bad
example acting on me by the rule of contraries. Little touches may in
this case shadow forth man and wife without casting them into the
shade. When the trim waiter with his green silk apron brought up
cracknels for breakfast, and I told him, "Johann, for two!" Berga said:
"He would oblige her very much," and called him Herr Johann.
Bergelchen, more familiar with rural burghs than capital cities, felt a
good deal amazed and alarmed at the coffee-trays, dressing-tables,
paper-hangings, sconces, alabaster inkholders, with Egyptian emblems,
as well as at the gilt bell-handle, lying ready for any one to pull out
or to push in. Accordingly, she had not courage to walk through
the hall, with its lustres, purely because a whistling, whiffling
Cap-and-feather was gesturing up and down in it. Nay, her poor heart
was like to fail when she peeped out of the window at so many gay,
promenading town's people (I was briskly that in a little while, at my
side, she must break into whistling a Gascon air down over them); and
thought the middle of this dazzling courtly throng. In a case like
this, reasons are of less avail than examples. I tried to elevate
my Bergelchen, by reciting some of my nocturnal dream-feats; for
example, how, riding on a whale's back, with a three-pronged fork, I
had pierced and eaten three eagles; and by more of the like sort; but I
produced no effect; perhaps, because to the timid female heart the
battle-field was presented rather than the conqueror, the abyss rather
than the overleaper of it.
------------------------
76. Your economical, preaching Poetry apparently supposes that a
surgical Stone-cutter is an Artistical one; and a Pulpit or a Sinai a
Hill of the Muses.
------------------------
At this time a sheaf of newspapers was brought me, full of gallant,
decisive victories. And though these happen only on one side, and on
the other are just so many defeats, yet the former somehow assimilate
more with my blood than the latter, and inspire me (as Schiller's
_Robbers_ used to do) with a strange inclination to lay hold of some
one, and thrash and curry him on the spot. Unluckily for the waiter,
he had chanced even now, like a military host, to stand a triple
bell-order for march, before he would leave his ground and come up.
"Sir," began I, my head full of battle-fields, and my arm of
inclination to baste him; and Berga feared the very worst, as I gave
her the well-known anger and alarm signal, namely, shoved up my cap to
my hindhead,--"Sir, is this your way of treating guests? Why don't you
come promptly? Don't come so again; and now be going, friend!" Although
his retreat was my victory, I still kept briskly cannonading on the
field of action, and fired the louder (to let him hear it), the more
steps he descended in his flight. Bergelchen,--who felt quite
horror-struck at my fury, particularly in a quite strange house, and
at a quality waiter with silk apron, mustered all her soft words
against the wild ones of a man-of-war, and spoke of dangers that might
follow. "Dangers," answered I, "are just what I seek; but for a man
there are none; in all cases he will either conquer or evade them,
either show them front or back."
------------------------
115. According to Smith, the universal measure of economical value is
Labor. This fact, at least in regard to spiritual and poetical value,
we Germans had discovered before Smith; and to my knowledge, we have
always preferred the learned poet to the poet of genius, and the heavy
book full of labor to the light one full of sport.
------------------------
I could scarcely lay aside this indignant mood, so sweet was it to me,
and so much did I feel refreshed by the fire of rage, and quickened in
my breast as by a benignant stimulant. It belongs certainly to the
class of Unrecognized Mercies (on which, in ancient times, special
sermons were preached), that one is never more completely in his Heaven
and _Monplaisir_ (a pleasure-palace), than while in the midst of right
hearty storming and indignation. Heavens! what might not a man of
weight accomplish in this new walk of charity! The gall bladder is for
us the chief swimming-bladder and Montgolfier; and the filling of it
costs us nothing but a contumelious word or two from some bystander.
And does not the whirlwind Luther, with whom I nowise compare myself,
confess, in his _Table-Talk_, that he never preached, sung, or prayed
so well, as while in a rage? Truly, he was a man sufficient of himself
to rouse many others into rage.
The whole morning till noon now passed in viewing sights, and
trafficking for wares; and indeed, for the greatest part, in the broad
street of our Hotel. Berga needed but to press along with me into the
market throng; needed but to look, and see that she was decorated more
according to the fashion than hundreds like her. But soon, in her care
for household gear, she forgot that of dress, and in the potter-market
the toilette-table faded from her thoughts.
------------------------
4. The Hypocrite does not imitate the old practice, of cutting fruit by
a knife poisoned only on the one side, and giving the poisoned side to
the victim, the cutter eating the sound side himself; on the contrary,
he so disinterestedly inverts this practice, that to others he shows
and gives the sound moral half, or side, and retains for himself the
poisoned one. Heavens! compared with such a man, how wicked does the
Devil seem!
------------------------
I, for my share, full of true tedium, while gliding after her through
her various marts, with their long cheapenings and chafferings, merely
acted the Philosopher hid within me. I weighed this empty Life, and the
heavy value which is put upon it, and the daily anxiety of man lest it,
this lightest down-feather of the Earth, fly off', and feather him, and
take him with it. These thoughts, perhaps, I owe to the street-fry of
boys, who were turning their market-freedom to account, by throwing
stones at one another all round me; for in the midst of this tumult I
vividly figured myself to be a man who had never seen war; and who,
therefore, never having experienced that often of a thousand bullets
not one will hit, feels apprehensive of these few silly stones lest
they beat in his nose and eyes. O, it is the battle-field alone that
sows, manures, and nourishes true courage, courage even for daily,
domestic, and smallest perils. For not till he comes from the
battle-field can a man both sing and cannonade; like the canary-bird,
which, though so melodious, so timid, so small, so tender, so solitary,
so soft-feathered, can yet be trained to fire off cannon, though cannon
of smaller calibre.
After dinner (in our room) we issued from the Purgatory of the
market-tumult,--where Berga, at every booth, had something to order,
and load her attendant maid with,--into Heaven, into the Dog Inn, as
the best Flaetz public and pleasure-house without the gates is named,
where, in market time, hundreds turn in, and see thousands going by. On
the way thither, my little wife, my elbow-tendril, as it were, had
extracted from me such a measure of courage, that, while going through
the Gate (where I, aware of the military order, that you must not pass
near the sentry, threw myself over to the other side), she quietly
glided on, close by the very guns and fixed bayonets of the City Guard.
Outside the wall, I could direct her, with my finger to the bechained,
begrated, gigantic Schabacker-Palace, mounting up even externally on
stairs, where I last night had called and (it may be) stormed: "I had
rather take a peep at the Giant," said she, "and the Dwarf; why else
are we under one roof with them?"
------------------------
67. Individual Minds, nay, Political Bodies, are like organic bodies;
extract the interior air from them, the atmosphere crushes them
together; pump off under the bell the exterior resisting air, the
interior inflates and bursts them. Therefore let every State keep up
its internal and its external resistance both at once.
------------------------
In the pleasure-house itself we found sufficient pleasure; encircled as
we were, with blooming faces and meadows. In my secret heart, I all
along kept looking down, with success, on Schabacker's refusal; and
till midnight made myself a happy day of it. I had deserved it, Berga
still more. Nevertheless, about one in the morning, I was destined to
find a windmill to tilt with; a windmill, which truly lays about it
with somewhat longer, stronger, and more numerous arms than a giant,
for which Don Quixote might readily enough have taken it. On the market
place, for reasons more easily fancied than specified in words, I let
Berga go along some twenty paces before me; and I myself, for these
foresaid reasons, retire without malice behind a covered booth, the
tent most probably of some rude trader; and lingered there a moment
according to circumstances. Lo! steering hither with dart and spear,
comes the Booth-watcher, and coins and stamps me on the spot, into a
filcher and housebreaker of his Booth-street; though the simpleton sees
nothing but that I am standing in the corner, and doing anything
but--taking. A sense of honor without callosity is never blunted for
such attacks. But how in the dead of night was a man of this kind, who
had nothing in his head--at the utmost beer, instead of brains--to be
enlightened on the truth of the matter?
I shall not conceal my perilous resource; I seized the fox by the tail,
as we say; in other words, I made as if I had been muddled, and knew
not rightly, in my liquor, what I was about. I therefore mimicked
everything I was master of in this department; staggered hither and
thither; splayed out my feet like a dancing-master; got into zigzag in
spite of all efforts at the straight line; nay, I knocked my good head
(perhaps one of the clearest and emptiest of the night) like a full
one, against real posts.
However, the Booth-bailiff, who probably had been oftener drunk than I,
and knew the symptoms better, or even felt them in himself at this
moment, looked upon the whole exhibition as mere craft, and shouted
dreadfully: "Stop, rascal; thou art no more drunk than I! I know thee
of old. Stand, I say, till I speak to thee! Wouldst have thy long
finger in the market, too? Stand, dog, or I'll make thee!"
------------------------
8. In great Saloons, the real stove is masked into a pretty ornamented
sham stove; so, likewise, it is fit and pretty that a virgin _Love_
should always hide itself in an interesting virgin _Friendship_.
------------------------
You see the whole _nodus_ of the matter. I whisked away zigzag among
the booths as fast as possible, from the claws of this rude Tosspot;
yet he still hobbled after me. But my Teutoberga, who had heard
somewhat of it came running back; clutched the tipsy market-warder by
the collar, and said (shrieking, it is true, in village wise): "Stupid
sot, go sleep the drink out of thy head, or I'll teach thee! Dost know,
then, whom thou art speaking to? My husband, Army-chaplain Schmelzle
under General and Minister von Schabacker at Pimpelstadt, thou
blockhead!--Fie! Take shame, fellow!" The watchman mumbled, "Meant no
harm," and reeled about his business. "O thou Lioness!" said I, in the
transport of love, "why hast thou never been in any deadly peril, that
I might show thee the Lion in thy husband!"
Thus lovingly we both reached home; and perhaps in the sequel of this
Fair day might still have enjoyed a glorious after-midnight, had not
the Devil led my eye to the ninth volume of Lichtenberg's Works, and
the 206th page, where this passage occurs: "It is not impossible, that,
at a future period, our Chemists may light on some means of suddenly
decomposing the Atmosphere by a sort of Ferment. In this way the world
may be destroyed." Ah! true indeed! Since the Earth-ball is lapped up
in the larger Atmospheric ball, let but any chemical scoundrel, in the
remotest scoundrel-island, say in New Holland, devise some decomposing
substance for the Atmosphere, like what a spark of fire would be for a
powder-wagon; in a few seconds, the monstrous devouring world-storm
catches me and you in Flaetz by the throat; my breathing, and the like,
in this choke-air is over, and the whole game ended! The Earth becomes
a boundless gallows, where the very cattle are hanged; worm-powder, and
bug-liquor, Bradly ant-ploughs, and rat-poison, and wolf-traps are, in
this universal world-trap and world-poison, no longer specially
needful; and the Devil takes the whole, in the Bartholomew-night, when
this cursed "Ferment" is invented.
------------------------
12. Nations--unlike rivers, which precipitate their impurities in level
places and when at rest--drop their baseness just whilst in the most
violent motion; and become the dirtier the farther they flow along
through lazy flats.
------------------------
From the true soul, however, I concealed these deadly Night Thoughts;
seeing she would either painfully have sympathized in them, or else
mirthfully laughed at them. I merely gave orders that next morning
(Saturday) she was to be standing booted and ready, at the outset of
the returning coach; if so were she would have me speedily fulfil her
wishes in regard to that stock of Rathships which lay so near her
heart. She rejoiced in my purpose, gladly surrendering the market for
such prospects. I too slept sound, my great toe tied to her finger the
whole night through.
The Dragoon next morning twitched me by the ear, and secretly whispered
into it that he had a pleasant fairing to give his sister; and so would
ride off somewhat early, on the nag he had yesterday purchased of the
horse-dealer. I thanked him beforehand.
------------------------
28. When Nature takes the huge old Earth-round, the Earth-loaf and
kneads it up again, for the purpose of introducing, under this
piecrust, new stuffing and Dwarfs--she then, for most part, as a mother
when baking will do to her daughters, gives in jest a little fraction
of the dough (two or three thousand square leagues of such dough are
enough for a child) to some Poetical or Philosophical, or Legislative
polisher, that so the little elf may have something to be shaping and
manufacturing beside its mother. And when the other young ones get a
taste of sisterkin's baking, they all clap hands, and cry, "Aha,
Mother! canst bake like _Suky_ here?"
------------------------
At the appointed hour all gayly started from the Staple, I excepted;
for I still retained, even in the fairest daylight, that nocturnal
Devil's-Ferment and Decomposition (of my cerebral globe as well as of
the Earth-globe) fermenting in my head; a proof that the night had not
affected me, or exaggerated my fear. The Blind Passenger, whom I liked
so ill, also mounted along with us, and looked at me as usual, but
without effect; for on this occasion, when the destruction not of
myself only, but of worlds, was occupying my thoughts, the Passenger
was nothing to me but a joke and a show; as a man, while his leg is
a-sawing off, does not feel the throbbing of his heart; or amid the
humming of cannon, does not guard himself from that of wasps; so to me
any Passenger, with all the firebrands he might throw into my near or
distant Future, could appear but ludicrous, at a time when I was
reflecting that the "Ferment" might, even in my journey between Flaetz
and Neusattel, be, by some American or European man of science, quite
guiltlessly experimenting and decomposing, lighted upon by accident and
let loose. The question, nay prize-question now, however, were this:
"In how far, since Lichtenberg's threatening, it may not appear
world-murderous and self-murderous, if enlightened Potentates of
chemical nations do not enjoin it on their chemical subjects,--who in
their decompositions and separations may so easily separate the soul
from their body and unite Heaven with Earth,--not in future to make any
other chemical experiments than those already made, which hitherto have
profited the State rather than harmed it?"
Unfortunately, I continued sunk in this Doomsday of the Ferment with
all my thoughts and meditations, without, in the whole course of our
return from Flaetz to Neusattel, suffering or observing anything, except
that I actually arrived there, and at the same time saw the Blind
Passenger once more go his ways.
My Bergelchen alone had I constantly looked at by the road, partly
that I might still see her, so long as life and eyes endured; partly
that, even at the smallest danger to her, be it a great, or even
all-over-sweeping Deluge and World's-doom, I might die, if not _for_
her, at least _by_ her, and so, united with that stanch, true heart,
cast away a plagued and plaguing life, in which, at any rate, not half
of my wishes for her have been fulfilled.
So then were my Journey over--crowned with some _Historiola_; and in
time coming, perhaps, still more rewarded through you, ye Friends about
Flaetz, if in these pages you shall find any well-ground pruning-knives,
whereby you may more readily outroot the weedy tangle of Lies, which
for the present excludes me from the gallant Schabacker--Only this
cursed Ferment still sits in my head. Farewell, then, so long as there
are Atmospheres left us to breathe. I wish I had that Ferment out of my
head. Yours always,
Attila Schmelzle.
P. S.--My brother-in-law has kept his promise well, and Berga is
dancing. Particulars in my next!
Analects From Richter.