Ay, marry; now unmuzzle your wisdom.
Rosalind.
The hour of noon was past, when the stage was a second time filled with
the privileged. The multitude was again disposed around the area of the
square, and the bailiff and his friends once more occupied the seats of
honor in the centre of the long estrade. Procession after procession now
began to reappear, for all had made the circuit of the city, and each had
repeated its mummeries so often that the actors grew weary of their
sports. Still, as the several groups came again into the high presence of
the bailiff and the élite not only of their own country but of so many
others, pride overcame fatigue, and the songs and dances were renewed with
the necessary appearance of good will and zeal. Peter Hofmeister and
divers others of the magnates of the canton, were particularly loud in
their plaudits on this repetition of the games, for, by a process that
will be easily understood, they, who had been revelling and taking their
potations in the marquees and booths while the mummers were absent, were
more than qualified to supply the deficiencies of the actors by the
warmth and exuberance of their own warmed imaginations. The bailiff, in
particular, as became, his high office and determined character, was
unusually talkative and decided, both as respects the criticisms and
encomiums he uttered on the various performances, making as light of his
own peculiar qualifications to deal with the subject, as if he were a
common hack-reviewer of our own times, who is known to keep in view the
quantity rather than the quality of his remarks, and the stipulated price
he is to receive per line. Indeed the parallel would hold good in more
respects than that of knowledge, for his language was unusually captious
and supercilious, his tone authoritative, and his motive the desire to
exhibit his own endowments, rather than the wish he affected to manifest
of setting forth the excellences of others. His speeches were more
frequently than ever directed to the Signor Grimaldi, for whom there had
suddenly arisen in his mind a still stronger gusto than that he had so
liberally manifested, and which had already drawn so much attention to the
deportment of this pleasing but modest stranger. Still he never failed to
compel all, within reach of a reasonable exercise of his voice, to listen
to his oracles.
"Those that have passed, brother Melchior," said the bailiff, addressing
the Baron de Willading in the fraternal style of the bürgerschaft, while
his eye was directed to the Genoese, in whom in reality he wished to
excite admiration for his readiness in Heathen lore, "are no more than
shepherds and shepherdesses of our mountains, and none of your gods and
demigods, the former of which are to be known in this ceremony from all
others by the fact that they are carried on men's shoulders, and the
latter that they ride on asses, or have other conveniences natural to
their wants. Ah! here we have the higher orders of the mummers in person
--this comely creature is, in reality, Mariette Marron of this country,
as strapping a wench as there is in Vaud, and as impudent--but no matter!
She is now the Priestess of Flora, and I'll warrant you there is not a
horn in all our valleys that will bring a louder echo out of the rocks
than this very priestess will raise with her single throat! That yonder on
the throne is Flora herself, represented by a comely young woman, the
daughter of a warm citizen here in Vévey, and one able to give her all the
equipments she bears, without taxing the abbaye a doit. I warrant you that
every flower about her was culled from their own garden!"
"Thou treatest the poetry of the ceremonies with so little respect, good
Peterchen, that the goddess and her train dwindle into little more than
vine-dressers and milk-maids beneath thy tongue."
"Of Heaven's sake, friend Melchior," interrupted the amused Genoese, "do
not rob us of the advantage of the worthy bailiff's graphic remarks. Your
Heathen may be well enough in his way, but surely he is none the worse for
a few notes and illustrations, that would do credit to a Doctor of Padova.
I entreat you to continue, learned Peter, that we strangers may lose none
of the niceties of the exhibition."
"Thou seest, baron," returned the well-warmed bailiff, with a look of
triumph, "a little explanation can never injure a good thing, though it
were even the law itself. Ah! yon is Ceres and her company, and a goodly
train they appear! These are the harvest-men and harvest-women, who
represent the abundance of our country of Vaud, Signor Grimaldi, which,
truth to say, is a fat land, and worthy of the allegory. These knaves,
with the stools strapped to their nether parts, and carrying tubs, are
cowherds, and all the others are more or less concerned with the dairy.
Ceres was a personage of importance among the ancients, beyond dispute,
as may be seen by the manner in which, she is backed by the landed
interest. There is no solid respectability, Herr von Willading, that is
not fairly bottomed on broad lands. Ye perceive that the goddess sits on a
throne whose ornaments are all taken from the earth; a sheaf of wheat tops
the canopy; rich ears of generous grain are her jewels, and her sceptre is
the sickle. These are but allegories, Signor Grimaldi, but they are
allusions that give birth to wholesome thoughts in the prudent. There is
no science that may not catch a hint from our games; politics, religion,
or law--'tis all the same for the well-disposed and cunning."
"An ingenious scholar might even find an argument for the bürgerschaft in
an allegory that is less clear;" returned the amused Genoese. "But you
have overlooked, Signor Bailiff, the instrument that Ceres carries in the
other hand, and which is full to overflowing with the fruits of the
earth;--that which so much resembles a bullock's horn, I mean."
"That is, out of question, some of the utensils of the ancients; perhaps a
milking vessel in use among the gods and goddesses, for your deities of
old were no bad housewives, and made a merit of their economy; and Ceres
here, as is seen, is not ashamed of a useful occupation. By my faith, but
this affair has been gotten up with a very creditable attention to the
moral! But our dairy-people are about to give us some of their airs."
Peterchen now put a stop to his classic lore, while the followers of Ceres
arranged themselves in order, and began to sing. The contagious and wild
melody of the Ranz des Vaches rose in the square, and soon drew the
absorbed and delighted attention of all within hearing which, to say the
truth, was little less than all who were within the limits of the town,
for, the crowd chiming in with the more regular artists, a, sort of
musical enthusiasm seized upon all present who came of Vaud and her
valleys. The dogmatical, but well-meaning bailiff; though usually jealous
of his Bernese origin, and alive on system to the necessity of preserving
the superiority of the great canton by all the common observances of
dignity and reserve, yielded to the general movement, and shouted with the
rest, under favor of a pair of lungs that nature had admirably fitted to
sustain the chorus of a mountain song. This condescension in the deputy of
Berne was often spoken of afterwards with admiration, the simple-minded
and credulous ascribing the exaltation of Peterchen to a generous warmth
in their happiness and interests, while the more wary and observant were
apt to impute the musical excess to a previous excess of another
character, in which the wines of the neighboring côtes were fairly
entitled to come in for a full share of the merit. Those who were, nearest
the bailiff were secretly much diverted-with his awkward attempts at
graciousness, which one fair and witty Vaudoise likened to the antics of
one of the celebrated animals that are still fostered in the city which
ruled so much of Switzerland, and from whom, indeed, the town and canton
are both vulgarly supposed to have derived their common name; for, while
the authority of Berne weighed so imperiously and heavily on its
subsidiary countries, as is usual in such cases, the people of the latter
were much addicted to taking an impotent revenge, by whispering the
pleasantest sarcasms they could invent against their masters.
Notwithstanding this and many more criticisms on his performance, the
bailiff enacted his part in the representation to his own entire
satisfaction; and he resumed his seat with a consciousness of having at
least merited the applause of the people, for having entered with so much
spirit into their games, and with the hope that this act of grace might be
the means of causing them to forget some fifty, or a hundred, of his other
acts, which certainly had not possessed the same melodious and
companionable features.
After this achievement the bailiff was reasonably quiet, until Bacchus and
his train again entered the square. At the appearance of the laughing
urchin who bestrode the cask, he resumed his dissertations with a
confidence that all are apt to feel who are about to treat on a subject
with which they have had occasion to be familiar.
"This is the god of good liquor," said Peterchen, always speaking to any
who would listen although, by an instinct of respect, he chiefly preferred
favoring the Signor Grimaldi with his remarks, "as may plainly be seen by
his seat; and these are dancing attendants to show that wine gladdens the
heart;--yonder is the press at work, extracting the juices, and that huge
cluster is to represent the grapes which the messengers of Joshua brought
back from Canaan when sent to spy out the land, a history which I make no
doubt you Signore, in Italy, have at your fingers' ends."
Gaetano Grimaldi looked embarrassed, for, although well skilled in the
lore of the heathen mythology, his learning as a male papist and a laic
was not particularly rich in the story of the Christian faith. At first he
supposed that the bailiff had merely blundered in his account of the
mythology, but, by taxing his memory a little, he recovered some faint
glimpses of the truth, a redemption of his character as a book-man for
which he was materially indebted to having seen some celebrated pictures
on this very subject, a species of instruction in holy writ that is
sufficiently common those who inhabit the Catholic countries of the other
hemisphere.
"Thou surely hast not overlooked the history of the gigantic cluster of
grapes, Signore" exclaimed Peterchen, astonished at the apparent
hesitation of the Italian. "'Tis the most beautiful of all the legends of
the holy book. Ha! as I live, there is the ass without his rider;--what
has become of the blackguard Antoine Giraud? The rogue has alighted to
swallow a fresh draught from some booth, after draining his own skin to
the bottom. This comes of neglect; a sober man, or at least one of a
harder head, should have been put to the part;--for, look you,'tis a
character that need stand at least a gallon, since the rehearsals alone
are enough to take a common drinker off his centre."
The tongue of the bailiff ran on in accompaniment, during the time that
the followers of Bacchus were going through with their songs and pageants,
and when they disappeared, it gained a louder key, like the "rolling river
that murmuring flows and flows for ever," rising again on the ear, after
the din of any adventitious noise has ceased.
"Now we may expect the pretty bride and her maids," continued Peterchen,
winking at his companions, as the ancient gallant is wont to make a parade
of his admiration of the fair; "the solemn ceremony is to be pronounced
here, before the authorities, as a suitable termination to this happy day.
Ah! my good old friend Melchior, neither of us is the man he was, or these
skipping hoydens would not go through their pirouettes without some aid
from our arms! Now, dispose of yourselves, friends; for this is to be no
acting, but a downright marriage, and it is meet that we keep a graver
air. How! what means the movement among the officers?"
Peterchen had interrupted himself, for just at that moment the
thief-takers entered the square in a body, inclosing in their centre a
group, who had the mien of captives too evidently to be mistaken for
honest men. The bailiff was peculiarly an executive officer; one of that
class who believe that the enactment of a law is a point of far less
interest than its due fulfilment. Indeed, so far did he push his favorite
principle, that he did not hesitate sometimes to suppose shades of meaning
in the different ordinances of the great council that existed only in his
own brain, but which were, to do him justice, sufficiently convenient to
himself in carrying out the constructions which he saw fit to put on his
own duties. The appearance of an affair of justice was unfortunate for the
progress of the ceremonies, Peterchen having some such relish for the
punishment of rogues, and more especially for such as seemed to be an
eternal reproach to the action of the Bernese system by their incorrigible
misery and poverty, as an old coachman is proverbially said to retain for
the crack of the whip. All his judicial sympathies were not fully
awakened, on the present occasion, however: the criminals, though far from
belonging to the more lucky of their fellow-creatures, not being quite
miserable enough in appearance to awaken all those powers of magisterial
reproach and severity that lay dormant in the bailiff's moral temperament,
ready, at any time, to vindicate the right of the strong against the
innovations of the feeble and unhappy. The reader will at once have
anticipated that the prisoners were Maso and his companions, who had been
more successful in escaping from their keepers, than fortunate in evading
the attempts to secure their persons a second time.
"Who are these that dare affront the ruling powers on this day of general
good-will and rejoicing?" sternly demanded the bailiff, when the minions
of the law and their captives stood fairly before him. "Do ye not know,
knaves, that this is a solemn, almost a religious ceremony at Vévey--for
so it would be considered by the ancients at least--and that a crime is
doubly a crime when committed either in an honorable presence, on a solemn
and dignified occasion, like this, or against the authorities;--this last
being always the gravest and greatest of all?"
"We are but indifferent scholars, worshipful bailiff, as you may easily
perceive by our outward appearance, and are to be judged leniently,"
answered Maso. "Our whole offence was a hot but short quarrel touching a
dog, in which hands were made to play the part of reason, and which would
have done little harm to any but ourselves, had it been the pleasure of
the town authorities to have left us to decide the dispute in our own way.
As you well say, this is a joyous occasion, and we esteem it hard that we
of all Vévey should be shut up on account of so light an affair, and cut
off from the merriment of the rest."
"There is reason in this fellow, after all," said Peterchen, in a low
voice. "What is a dog more or less to Berne, and a public rejoicing to
produce its end should go deep into the community. Let the men go, of
God's name! and look to it, that all the dogs be beaten out of the square,
that we have no more folly."
"Please you, these are the men that have escaped from the authorities,
after knocking down their keeper;" the officer humbly observed.
"How is this! Didst thou not say, fellow, that it was all about a dog?"
"I spoke of the reason of our being shut up. It is true that, wearied with
breathing pent air, and a little heated with wine, we left the prison
without permission; but we hope this little sally of spirit will be
overlooked on account of the extraordinary occasion."
"Rogue, thy plea augments the offence. A crime committed on an
extraordinary occasion becomes an extraordinary crime, and requires an
extraordinary punishment, which I intend to see inflicted, forthwith. You
have insulted the authorities, and that is the unpardonable sin in all
communities. Draw nearer, friends, for I love to let my reasons be felt
and understood by those who are to be affected by my decisions, and this
is a happy moment, to give a short lesson to the Vévaisans--let the bride
and bridegroom wait--draw nearer all, that ye may better hear what I have
to say."
The crowd pressed more closely around the foot of the stage, and
Peterchen, assuming a didactic air, resumed his discourse.
"The object of all authority is to find the means of its own support,"
continued the bailiff; "for unless it can exist, it must fall to the
ground; and you all are sufficiently schooled to know that when a thing
becomes of indifferent value, it loses most of its consideration. Thus
government is established in order that it may protect itself; since
without this power it could not remain a government, and there is not a
man existing who is not ready to admit that even a bad government is
better than none. But ours is particularly a good government, its greatest
care on all occasions being to make itself respected, and he who respects
himself is certain to have esteem in the eyes of others. Without this
security we should become like the unbridled steed, or the victims of
anarchy and confusion, ay, and damnable heresies in religion. Thus you see
my friends, your choice lies between the government of Berne, or no
government at all; for when only two things exist, by taking one away the
number is reduced half, and as the great canton will keep its own share of
the institutions, by taking half away, Vaud is left as naked as my hand.
Ask yourselves if you have any government but this? You know you have not.
Were you quit of Berne, therefore, you clearly would have none at all.
Officer, you have a sword at your side, which is a good type of our
authority; draw it and hold it up, that all may see it. You perceive, my
friends, that the officer hath a sword; but that he hath only one sword.
Lay it at thy feet, officer. You perceive, friends, that having but one
sword, and laying that sword aside, he no longer hath a sword at all! That
weapon represents our authority, which laid aside becomes no authority,
leaving us with an unarmed hand."
This happy comparison drew a murmur of applause; the proposition of
Peterchen having most of the properties of a popular theory, being
deficient in neither a bold assertion, a brief exposition, nor a practical
illustration. The latter in particular was long afterwards spoken of in
Vaud, as an exposition little short of the well-known judgment of Solomon,
who had resorted to the same keen-edged weapon in order to solve a point
almost as knotty as this settled by the bailiff. When the approbation had
a little subsided, the warmed Peterchen continued his discourse, which
possessed the random and generalized logic of most of the dissertations
that are uttered in the interests of things as they are, without paying
any particular deference to things as they should be.
"What is the use of teaching the multitude to read and write?" he asked.
"Had not Franz Kauffman known how to write, could he have imitated his
master's hand, and would he have lost his head for mistaking another man's
name for his own? a little reflection shows us he would not. Now, as for
the other art, could the people read bad books had they never learned the
alphabet? If there is a man present who can say to the contrary, I absolve
him from his respect, and invite him to speak boldly, for there is no
Inquisition in Vaud, but we invite argument. This is a free government,
and a fatherly government, and a mild government, as ye all know; but it
is not a government that likes reading and writing; reading that leads to
the perusal of bad books, and writing that causes false signatures.
Fellow-citizens, for we are all equal, with the exception of certain
differences that need not now be named, it is a government for your good,
and therefore it is a government that likes itself, and whose first duty
it is to protect itself and its officers at all hazards, even though it
might by accident commit some seeming injustice. Fellow, canst thou read?"
"Indifferently, worshipful bailiff," returned Maso. "There are those who
get through a book with less trouble than myself."
"I warrant you, now, he means a good book but, as for a bad one, I'll
engage the varlet goes through it like a wild boar! This comes of
education among the ignorant! There is no more certain method to corrupt a
community, and to rivet it in beastly practices, than to educate the
ignorant. The enlightened can bear knowledge, for rich food does not harm
the stomach that is used to it, but it is hellebore to the ill-fed.
Education is an arm, for knowledge is power, and the ignorant man is but
an infant, and to give him knowledge is like putting a loaded blunderbuss
into the hands of a child. What can an ignorant man do with knowledge? He
is as likely to use it wrong end uppermost as in any other manner.
Learning is a ticklish thing; it was said by Festus to have maddened even
the wise and experienced Paul and what may we not expect it to do with
your downright ignoramus? What is thy name prisoner?"
"Tommaso Santi; sometimes known among my friends as San Tommaso; called by
my enemies, Il Maledetto, and by my familiars, Maso."
"Thou hast a formidable number of aliases, the certain sign of a rogue.
Thou hast confessed that thou canst read----"
"Nay, Signor Bailiff, I would not be taken to have said----"
"By the faith of Calvin, thou didst confess it, before all this goodly
company! Wilt thou deny thine own words, knave, in the very face of
justice? Thou canst read--thou hast it in thy countenance, and I would go
nigh to swear, too, that thou hast some inkling of the quill, were the
truth honestly said. Signor Grimaldi, I know not how you find this affair
on the other side of the Alps, but with us, our greatest troubles come
from these well-taught knaves, who, picking up knowledge fraudulently, use
it with felonious intent, without thought of the wants and rights of the
public."
"We have our difficulties, as is the fact wherever man is found with his
selfishness and passions Signor Bailiff; but are we not doing an ungallant
act towards yonder fair bride, by giving the precedency to men of this
cast? Would it not be better to dismiss the modest Christine, happy in
Hymen's chains, before we enter more deeply into the question of the
manacles of these prisoners?"
To the amazement of all who knew the bailiff's natural obstinacy, which
was wont to increase instead of becoming more manageable in his cups,
Peterchen assented to this proposition with a complaisance and apparent
good-will, that he rarely manifested towards any opinion of which he did
not think himself legitimately the father; though, like many others who
bear that honorable title, he was sometimes made to yield the privileges
of paternity to other men's children. He had shown an unusual deference to
the Italian, however, throughout the whole of their short intercourse, and
on no occasion was it less equivocal, than in the promptness with which he
received the present hint. The prisoners and officers were commanded to
stand aside, but so near as to remain beneath his eye, while some of the
officials of the abbaye were ordered to give notice to the train, which
awaited these arrangements in silent wonder, that it might now approach.