After galloping for a full half-hour, Frantz Mathéus, hearing nothing but
the beating of his horse’s hoofs on the road, and the song of the birds
in the free air, ventured to open first one eye, then the other; and
seeing himself in the midst of a thick forest, far from the cudgels and
sophistical minds of the worthy country-folks, breathed like one who has
been cut down after having been hanged.
Coucou Peter, on his side, slackened Bruno’s pace, and felt his own ribs
to make sure they were still intact. When he had thoroughly convinced
himself that all was in its place, he turned towards the village, which
was still to be seen through the trees, and extending his hands with an
imploring air, cried—
“Peasants of Oberbronn, the prophet Coucou Peter curses you!”
“No, no—do not curse them,” murmured the good doctor, in a tone of
supplication; “do not curse them. Alas! the unfortunates know not what
they do.”
“So much the worse for them,” replied the fiddler, out of temper. “I
curse them to the third and fourth generation! Ah, you beggar, Tapihans!
you beggar, Spengler! I curse you both! I despise you like the dust of my
shoes!”
This said, he turned in the saddle and rode on.
Bruno was slowly following the path to Eschenbach. The sun heated the
sandy ground; thousands of insects danced about the furze-bushes, and
their vague buzzing was the only sound that met the ear. This immense
calm of nature insensibly affected Mathéus; he gently bowed his head,
covered his face, and burst into tears.
“What’s the matter with you, Maître Frantz?” cried Coucou Peter.
“Nothing, my friend,” replied the good man, in a stifled voice. “I am
thinking of those unhappy people who have persecuted us; I am thinking of
the numberless transformations they still have to endure before reaching
moral perfection; and I pity them for having such bad hearts. I, who
would have done so much for them!—who sought to enlighten them on their
future destinies! I, who love them still with all the strength of my
soul! They strike me, cover me with abuse, and misunderstand the purity
of my intentions. You cannot imagine how much this pains me. Let me weep
in silence; these are gentle tears, and prove to me my own goodness. Oh,
Mathéus! Mathéus! man of virtue!” he cried, “weep—weep for the errors
of your species; but murmur not against eternal justice! That alone
makes your greatness and strength. In turn, onion, tulip, snail, and
hare—finally man. You have not always been a philosopher; it has needed
many ages to overcome your animal instincts. Be indulgent, therefore, and
think that, if inferior beings do you harm, it is because they are not
worthy to comprehend you.”
“That’s all very fine! We are knocked about, and you take pity on those
fellows!” cried Coucou Peter. “The devil’s in it if we haven’t enough to
be sorry for on our own account!”
“Listen to me, my friend,” said Mathéus, drying his eyes. “The more I
think of it, the more convinced I am that it could not be otherwise. A
nameless prophet was sent to Beth-el, on condition that he neither drank
nor ate; but having unfortunately eaten a piece of bread, he was devoured
by a lion, and his bones were found between this lion and an ass that had
been given to him. Jonah was swallowed by a fish. It is true, he only
remained three days in the fish’s stomach; but it is very disagreeable to
be kept for seventy-two hours in such a constrained position. Habakkuk
was transported by his hair through the air to Babylon. Imagine, Coucou
Peter, how much he must have suffered by being suspended by his hair
during such a journey. Ezekiel was stoned. It is not exactly known
whether Jeremiah was stoned or sawed in two; but Isaiah was certainly
sawed in two. Amos was——”
“Maître Frantz,” cried Coucou Peter, abruptly, “if you think to give me
courage by telling me such stories as these, you are very much mistaken.
I won’t conceal from you that, sooner than be cut in two, I’d rather go
back to my fiddle, and play tunes on it all the rest of my life.”
“Come, come—do not be afraid. In these days prophets are no longer so
ill-treated; on the contrary, handsome pensions are given to them—so long
as they maintain at least the existence of a soul.”
“And we, who maintain thousands of souls, deserve pensions a thousand
times bigger!” cried the gay fiddler.
Conversing in this manner, the illustrious philosopher and his disciple
tranquilly went their way along the valleys of the Zorn. Mathéus,
who loved nothing so well as the interior of the woods, forgot the
ingratitude of the human species; the scarce perceptible sound of an
insect nibbling the bark of an old tree, the flight of a bird through
the rustling foliage, the vague murmur of a stream in the ravine, the
whirl of the gnats dancing above the still pools—these thousand details
of solitude ceaselessly furnished new texts for his anthropo-zoological
meditations.
Coucou Peter whistled to amuse himself, and from time to time paid his
respects to his flask of kirschwasser. Bruno often went into the Zorn up
to the saddle-girths; at those times Maître Frantz and his disciple clung
to one another, raising their legs well out of the way of the water,
which they watched running below them with tumultuous gurglings.
The heat, however, became overpowering; not a breath of air penetrated
the woods. Coucou Peter, having dismounted, felt the perspiration
streaming down his back; Mathéus, who had not closed an eye all night,
yawned from time to time, murmuring, “Great—Great Demiourgos!” without
exactly knowing what further he wished to say.
In this way they reached a gorge where the torrent spread over a
pebbly bed. Hardly had Bruno reached the edge of the water, before the
confounded beast stretched out his neck to drink, and Maître Frantz, not
expecting this movement, was nearly shot over his head. Coucou Peter
quickly seized him by the tails of his coat; and then the rogue gave vent
to such a formidable roar of laughter that all the neighbouring echoes
rang with it.
“Coucou Peter! Coucou Peter!” cried the scandalised Doctor; “are you not
ashamed to laugh when I am in danger of being drowned? Is this, then,
your affection for me?”
“I’m laughing, Maître Frantz, because you’ve escaped. If I hadn’t got
hold of you, you’d now be paddling in the water like a frog.”
“This is an unpropitious day,” replied Mathéus; “if we continue our
journey, I foresee numberless misfortunes!”
“Many besides you have dropped off to sleep and tumbled from their
horses,” said Coucou Peter. “Lie down on the moss, take a good nap, and
the unpropitious will have passed away by the time you wake. I’ll go and
have a bathe. Bruno won’t be sorry for a rest, I’m sure.”
This advice was too much in accord with the good Doctor’s own ideas not
to be agreeable to him.
“I approve of this pleasant design,” he said. “Lend me the aid of your
shoulder; I am stiff. Take off the horse’s bridle. Go and bathe, my good
fellow—go and bathe; a bath will refresh your blood.”
While he was speaking, Frantz Mathéus laid himself down at the foot of an
oak, and was truly glad to be able to stretch his limbs in the midst of
the heather. The crickets chirped about him. Now and then a wave broke
on the pebbles with a sharp slush; he would then open his eyes, and saw
Coucou Peter in the act of undressing—of taking off his boots.
The sound of the torrent, the rustle of the leaves, lulled his
imagination into vague reverie. Through the tufted branches of the trees
he confusedly distinguished the sky, the crests of the mountains. At
length his mind reposed; the same sounds fell upon his ears, but their
monotony resembled deep silence. The good man distinguished them no
longer—his soft and regular breathing announced a profound sleep. Then,
perhaps, his mind, freed from its earthly trammels, and going back ages
upon ages, wandered, in the form of a hare, through the immense forests
of Gaul—perhaps, also, he saw again the humble roof of his sires at
Graufthal, and good old Martha weeping for his absence.