The Campaner Thal and Other Writings Part 19

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 pa.s.sive _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 Beat.i.tude in Heaven, but different degrees of Honor. Here, on Earth, we find a shadow of this in the writing world; for the Beat.i.tude 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.

"s.n.a.t.c.h 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 Flatz_.

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 Flatz.

"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 a.s.s-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 pet.i.tion 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. G.o.d be thanked that we live nowhere forever except in h.e.l.l 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 Sat.u.r.day 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-rathin, Build-rathin, Court-rathin, War-rathin, Chamber-rathin, Commerce-rathin, Legations-rathin, or Devil and his Dam's rathin; 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, Pest.i.tz[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.