The Campaner Thal and Other Writings Part 16

_Second Stage; from Vierstadten to Niederschona_.

The Postmaster was a churl and a striker; a cla.s.s of mortals whom I inexpressibly detest, as my fancy always whispers to me, in their presence, that by accident or dislike I might happen to put on a scornful or impertinent look, and hound these mastiffs on my own throat; and so, from the very first, I must incessantly watch them.

Happily, in this case (supposing I even had made a wrong face), I could have shielded myself with the Dragoon; for whose giant force such matters are a tidbit. This brother-in-law of mine, for example, cannot pa.s.s any tavern where he hears a sound of battle, without entering, and, as he crosses the threshold, shouting, "Peace, dogs!"--and therewith, under show of a peace deputation, he directly s.n.a.t.c.hes up the first chair-leg in his hand, as if it were an American peace-calumet, and cuts to the right and left among the belligerent powers, or he gnashes the hard heads of the parties together (he himself takes no side), catching each by the hind-lock. In such cases the rogue is in Heaven!

10. And does Life offer us, in regard to our ideal hopes and purposes, anything but a prosaic, unrhymed, unmetrical Translation?

78. Our German frame of Government, cased in its harness, had much difficulty in moving, for the same reason why Beetles cannot fly, when their _wings_ have _wing-sh.e.l.ls_, of very sufficient strength, and--grown together.

I, for my part, rather avoid discrepant circles than seek them; as I likewise avoid all dead or killed people. The prudent man easily foresees what is to be got by them; either vexatious and injurious witnessing, or often even (when circ.u.mstances conspire) painful investigation, and suspicions of your being an accomplice.

In Vierstadten nothing of importance presented itself, except--to my horror--a dog without tail, which came running along the town or street. In the first fire of pa.s.sion at this sight, I pointed it out to the pa.s.sengers, and then put the question, whether they could reckon a system of Medical Police well arranged, which, like this of Vierstadten, allowed dogs openly to scour about, when their tails were wanting. "What am I to do," said I, "when this member is cut away, and any such beast comes running towards me, and I cannot, either by the tail being c.o.c.ked up or being drawn in, since the whole is snipt off, come to any conclusion whether the vermin is mad or not? In this way, the most prudent man may be bit, and become rabid, and so make shipwreck purely for want of a tail compa.s.s."

8. Const.i.tutions of Government are like highways; on a new and quite untrodden one, where every carriage helps in the process of bruising and smoothing, you are as much jolted and pitched, as an old worn-out one, full of holes. What is to be done then? Travel on.

The Blind Pa.s.senger (he now got himself inscribed as a Seeing one, G.o.d knows for what objects) had heard my observation; which he now spun out in my presence almost into ridicule, and at last awakened in me the suspicion, that, by an overdone flattery in imitating my style of speech, he meant to banter me. "The Dog-tail," said he, "is, in truth, an alarm-beacon, and finger-post for us, that we come not even into the outmost precincts of madness; cut away from Comets their tails, from Bashaws theirs, from Crabs theirs (outstretched it denotes that they are burst); and in the most dangerous predicaments of life, we are left without clew, without indicator, without hand _in margine_; and we perish not so much as knowing how."

For the rest, this stage pa.s.sed over without quarreling or peril. About ten o'clock, the whole party, including even the Postilion, myself excepted, fell asleep. I indeed pretended to be sleeping, that I might observe whether some one, for his own good reasons, might not also be pretending it. But all continued snoring; the moon threw its brightening beams on nothing but downpressed eyelids.

I had now a glorious opportunity of following Lavater's counsel, to apply the physiognomical ellwand specially to sleepers, since sleep, like death, expresses the genuine form in coa.r.s.er lines. Other sleepers not in stage-coaches I think it less advisable to mete with this ellwand; having always an apprehension lest some fellow, but pretending to be asleep, may, the instant I am near enough, start up as in a dream, and deceitfully plant such a knock on the physiognomical mensurator's own facial structure, as to exclude it forever from appearing in any Physiognomical Fragments (itself being reduced to one), either in the stippled or line style. Nay, might not the most honest sleeper in the world, just while you are in hand with his physiognomical dissection, lay about him, spurred on by honor in some cudgelling-scene he may be dreaming; and in a few instants of clapperclawing, and kicking, and trampling, lull you into a much more lasting sleep than that out of which he was awakened?

8. In Criminal Courts, murdered children are often represented as still-born; in Anticritiques, still-born as murdered.

In my _Adumbrating Magic-lantern_, as I have named the Work, the whole physiognomical contents of this same sleeping stage-coach will be given to the world. There I shall explain to you at large how the Poisoner, with the murder-cupola, appeared to me devil-like; the Dwarf old-child-like; the Harlot languidly shameless; my Brother-in-law peacefully satisfied, with revenge or food; and the Legations-Rath, _Jean Pierre_, Heaven only knows why, like a half angel,--though, perhaps, it might be because only the fair body, not the other half, the soul, which had pa.s.sed away in sleep, was affecting me.

101. Not only were the Rhodians, from their Colossus, called Colossians; but also innumerable Germans are, from their Luther, called Lutherans.

I had almost forgotten to mention, that, in a little village, while my Brother-in-law and the Postilion were sitting at their liquor, I happily fronted a small terror, Destiny having twice been on my side.

Not far from a Hunting Box, beside a pretty clump of trees, I noticed a white tablet, with a black inscription on it. This gave me hopes that perhaps some little monumental piece, some pillar of honor, some battle memento, might here be awaiting me. Over an untrodden flowery tangle I reach the black on white; and to my horror and amazement I decipher in the moonshine, _Beware of Spring-guns!_ Thus was I standing perhaps half a nail's breadth from the trigger, with which, if I but stirred my heel, I should shoot myself off, like a forgotten ramrod, into the other world, beyond the verge of Time! The first thing I did was to s.l.u.tch down my toe-nails, to bite, and, as it were, eat myself into the ground with them; since I might, at least, continue in warm life so long as I pegged my body firmly in beside the Atropos-scissors and hangman's block, which lay beside me. Then I endeavored to recollect by what steps the Fiend had led me hither unshot, but in my agony I had perspired the whole of it, and could remember nothing. In the Devil's village, close at hand, there was no dog to be seen and called to, who might have plucked me from the water; and my Brother-in-law and the Postilion were both carousing with full can. However, I summoned my courage and determination; wrote down on a leaf of my pocket-book my last will, the accidental manner of my death, and my dying remembrance of Berga; and then, with full sails, flew helter-skelter through the midst of it the shortest way; expecting at every step to awaken the murderous engine, and thus to clap over my still long candle of life the bonsoir, or extinguisher, with my own hand. However, I got off without shot. In the tavern, indeed, there was more than one fool to laugh at me; because, forsooth, what none but a fool could know, this Notice had stood there for the last ten years without any gun, as guns often do without any notice. But so it is, my Friends, with our game-police, which warns against all things, only not against warnings.

88. Hitherto I have always regarded the Polemical writings of our present philosophic and aesthetic Idealist Logic-buffers,--in which, certainly, a few contumelies, and misconceptions, and misconclusions do make their appearance,--rather on the fair side; observing in it merely an imitation of cla.s.sical Antiquity, in particular of the ancient Athletes, who (according to Schottgen) besmeared their bodies with _mud_, that they might not be laid hold of; and filled their hands with _sand_, that they might lay hold of their antagonists.

For the rest, throughout the whole stage, I had a constant source of altercation with the coachman, because he grudged stopping perhaps once in the quarter of an hour, when I chose to come out for a natural purpose. Unhappily, in truth, one has little reason to expect water-doctors among the postilion cla.s.s, since Physicians themselves have so seldom learned from Haller's large _Physiology_ that a postponement of the above operation will precipitate devilish stone-ware, and at last precipitate the proprietor himself; this stone-manufactory being generally concluded, not by the Lithotomist, but by Death. Had postilions read that Tycho Brahe died like a bombsh.e.l.l by bursting, they would rather pull up for a moment; with such unlooked-for knowledge, they would see it to be reasonable that a man, though expecting some time to carry his death-stone _on_ him, should not incline, for the time being, to carry it _in_ him. Nay, have I not often, at Weimar, in the longest concluding scenes of Schiller, run out with tears in my eyes; purely that, while his Minerva was melting me on the whole, I might not by the Gorgon's head on her breast be partially turned to stone? And did I not return to the weeping play-house, and fall into the general emotion so much the more briskly, as now I had nothing to give vent to but my heart?

103. Or are all Mosques, Episcopal-churches, PaG.o.das, Chapels-of-Ease, Tabernacles, and Pantheons, anything else than the Ethnic Forecourt of the Invisible Temple and its Holy of Holies?

Deep in the dark we arrived at Niederschona.

_Third Stage; from Niederschona to Flatz_.

While I am standing at the Posthouse musing, with my eye fixed on my portmanteau, comes a beast of a watchman, and bellows and brays in his night-tube so close by my ear that I start back in trepidation, I whom even a too hasty accosting will vex. Is there no medical police, then, against such efflated hour-fulminators and alarm-cannon, by which notwithstanding no gunpowder cannon are saved? In my opinion n.o.body should be invested with the watchman-horn but some reasonable man, who had already blown himself into an asthma, and who would consequently be in case to sing out his hour-verse so low that you could not hear it.

40. The common man is copious only in narration, not in reasoning; the cultivated man is brief only in the former, not in the latter; because the common man's reasons are a sort of sensations, which, as well as things visible, he merely _looks at_; by the cultivated man, again, both reasons and things visible are rather _thought_ than looked at.

What I had long expected, and the Dwarf predicted, now took place; deeply stooping, through the high Posthouse door, issued the Giant, and raised in the open air a most unreasonably high figure, heightened by the ell-long bonnet and feather on his huge jobbernowl. My Brother-in-law, beside him, looked but like his son of fourteen years; the Dwarf like his lap-dog waiting for him on its two hind legs. "Good friend," said my bantering Brother-in-law, leading him towards me and the stagecoach, "just step softly in, we shall all be happy to make room for you. Fold yourself neatly together, lay your head on your knee, and it will do." The unseasonable banterer would willingly have seen the almost stupid Giant (of whom he had soon observed that his brain was no active substance, but in the inverse ratio of his trunk) squeezed in among us in the post-chest, and lying kneaded together like a sand-bag before him. "Won't do! Won't do!" said the Giant, looking in. "The gentleman perhaps does not know," said the Dwarf, "how big the Giant is; and so he thinks that because _I_ go in-- But that is another story; _I_ will creep into any hole, do but tell me where."

In short, there was no resource for the Postmaster and the Giant, but that the latter should plant himself behind, in the character of luggage, and there lie bending down like a weeping willow over the whole vehicle. To me such a back-wall and rear-guard could not be particularly gratifying; and I may refer it (I hope) to any one of you, ye Friends, if with such ware at your back you would not, as clearly and earnestly as I, have considered what manifold murderous projects a knave of a Giant behind you, a _pursuer_ in all senses, might not maliciously attempt; say, that he broke in and a.s.sailed you by the back-window, or with t.i.tanian strength laid hold of the coach-roof and demolished the whole party in a lump. However, this Elephant (who indeed seemed to owe the similarity more to his overpowering ma.s.s than to his quick light of inward faculty), crossing his arms over the top of the vehicle, soon began to sleep and snore above us; an Elephant, of whom, as I more and more joyfully observed, my Brother-in-law, the Dragoon, could easily be the tamer and bridle-holder, nay, had already been so.

9. In any national calamity the ancient Egyptians took revenge on the G.o.d Typhon, whom they blamed for it, by hurling his favorites, the a.s.ses, down over rocks. In similar wise have countries of a different religion now and then taken their revenge.