In my opinion the state favors duelling in order to set limits to the
increase of the nobility, as Titus for that very reason made the Jews
challenge each other. As in chanceries they still continue to make
nobles, but no burghers,--as, besides, a burgher must always be used
and demolished for the purpose, before the Imperial Chancery can set up
a nobleman on his building-ground,--as standing armies and coronations
increase simultaneously, and consequently the manufacture of nobles
too; the state would accordingly possess too many, certainly, rather
than too few noblemen (as is not the case, however), were not a mutual
shooting or stabbing of each other allowed them. In reference to the
petty princes who are made in the chancery-bakehouse, nothing more were
to be wished than that at the same time subjects also--say one or two
herds, with every prince--should fall off from the potter's-wheel; just
as, in fact, I know no reason, either, why the Imperial Chancery will
make poets only, when it might certainly quite as well scrape off from
its saltpetre wall historians, publicists, biographers, reviewers.--Let
it not be objected to me, that at court they seldom shoot each other;
here Nature herself has in another way set beneficial bounds to the
increase of courtiers. Somewhat as with marmots, of whose depopulation
Bechstein finds a wise design in the fact, that, though they generally
assert their own with a malicious rabidity, nevertheless they do not
reckon their brood _as_ their own, but willingly let it go. Even Dr.
Fenk may possibly be nearer right, who takes their part and says, he
grants they are of no use to the weightier members of the state, the
teaching class, the peasantry, &c., but of much, however, to the
lesser, unprofitable members, the mass-attendants of the stomach and of
luxury, the mistresses, the lackey-department, &c., and that an
impartial person must compare them with the stinging nettles, on which,
while they are of little use to men and large animals, most of the
insects get their living.
_End of this Apologetic Extra-Leaf_.
Flamin's soul worked itself off all day in images of revenge. In such a
boiling of the blood, moral skin-moles became to him bone-black,[167]
the typographical mistakes of the state appeared to him as grammatical
blunders, the _peccata splendida_ of the regency-college as black
vices. To-day, too, he saw the Prince always before his eyes, whom in
the clubs of the twins and still more in relation to Clotilda he
mortally hated. He despised the load of life, and in this heat, wherein
all materials of his inner being were melted into one flood, the inner
lava sought an outbreak in some foolhardy venture. His to-day's
exasperation was, after all, a daughter of virtue; but the daughter
grew over the mother's head. The three twins, who, although not with
the tongue, yet with the head, were as wild as he, kindled absolutely
the whole vaporous atmosphere of his full soul.
At length, when night came, the two seconds and Flamin and Matthieu
disguised as the third Englishman rode out to the shooting-ground.
Flamin contended furiously with his prancing, smoking steed. By and by
a gray nag brought along in curvets the Chamberlain. Mutely they
measure off the murdering and shooting distance, and exchange pistols.
Flamin, as insulted party, first lets fly like a storm against the
other; and, on his snorting steed, and in the trembling of rage, he
shoots his ball away over his adversary's--life. The Chamberlain fired
intentionally and openly far aside from his antagonist, because the
fall of the (supposed) Matthieu would have killed at the same time his
whole prosperity at court. Matthieu, with all his slyness, too
precipitate and too full of energy, foaming already amidst the very
preparations for the fight, and still more exasperated at the
frustration of both his alternatives, and too proud to let himself be
shamed before the Englishmen by receiving his life as a present under
another's name and from so contemptible an adversary, thrust down his
own mask and Flamin's too, and rode coldly up to the Chamberlain and
said, by way of humiliating him with the disclosure of his ignoble
opponent, "You have been under a mistake about rank,--but now let us
exchange shots." ... Le Baut stuttered, confused and offended; but
Matthieu backed his horse--stopped--screamed--shot with petrified arm,
and hit, and snuffed out the bald life of poor Le Baut.... Quick as
lightning he said to all, "To Count O.'s!" and--with the conviction of
an early and easy forgiveness on the part of the princely couple and of
the widow--trotted off over the limits towards Kussewitz.
Flamin became an iceberg,--then a volcano,--then a wild-fire,--then he
grasped the hands of the Britons, and said: "I, only I, have killed
this man. My friend would have had no quarrel with him; but, as he
has sinned for me, it is my duty to suffer for him.--I will die: I
shall give myself up to the judges as the murderer, that I may be
executed,--and you must back my asseveration."--But he disclosed to
them now a much higher motive for his bold lie; "If I die," said he,
more and more glowingly, "they will have to let me say at the place of
execution what I will. Then will I throw flames among the people, which
shall turn the throne to ashes. I will say, 'Lo! here beside the sword
of justice I am as firm and cheerful as you; and yet I have sent only
one good-for-nothing fellow out of the world. You could catch and
confine bloodsuckers, wolves, and serpents, and a lamb-vulture at
once;--you could reap a life full of freedom, or a death full of fame.
Are then the thousand staring eyes around me all blind with the
cataract, the arms all palsied, that none will see and hurl away the
long bloodsucker that crawls over you all, and whose tail is cut off,
so that the court and the boards in turn suck from it behind? Lo! I too
was once part and parcel of all that, and saw how they flay you,--and
how the messieurs of the court go about in your skins. Take one look
into the city; are yours the palaces or the dog-kennels? The long
pleasure-gardens in which they walk, or the stony fields in which you
must work yourselves--to death? You toil, indeed; but you have nothing,
you are nothing, you become nothing,--on the contrary the lazy, dead
Chamberlain there beside me'" ... No one smiled; but he came to
himself. The three twins, to whom the body and time and the throne were
a fire-proof wall, or a stove-screen against their self-devouring blaze
of freedom, vowed to him tied tongues, steadfast hearts, and active
hands; yet were they silently resolved, _after_ the flashing speech, to
rescue him with their blood, and to reveal his innocence. One
consequence of this dithyrambic of freedom was, that Cato the Elder,
the day after, blew up in the storm the powder-house at Maienthal,
which was the only powder-magazine in the country (magazines of corn
they had not so many), as he rode towards Kussewitz to join Matthieu.
Now they carried the lie into the village, that Flamin had availed
himself of Matthieu's disguise, and in a similar one had attacked the
Chamberlain, whom, for want of ancestors, he could not shoot in duel,
and blown out with a pistol his lamp of life. The Regency-Councillor
was, upon a slight, specious flight, arrested, and placed as a statue
of a god alone in that temple, which, like the old temples, was without
windows or furniture, and which the gods inhabiting them furnish, as
Diogenes did his tub, with inscriptions, and which the common man calls
merely a prison.----I will, however, first and foremost, call this and
the following words an