Translations from the German Part 24

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; farther, 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 today, 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, curtseying 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?"

[Note 79: Weak and wrong heads are the hardest to change; and their inward man acquires a scanty covering: thus capons never moult.]

[Note 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.]

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."

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 with 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!

[Note 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 Battlefields). 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.]

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.

"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. Tomorrow I send riding posts to Saxony and Hessia, to Prussia and Russia, to Friesland and Katzenellenbogen, and demand patents. Nay, I will carry matters farther than another, and be all things at once, Flachsenfingen Court-rath, Scheerau Excise-rath, Haarhaar Building-rath, Pest.i.tz[6] Chamber-rath (for we have the cash); and thus, alone and single-handed, represent with one _podex_ and _corpus_ a whole Rath-session of select Raths; and stand, a complete Legion of Honour, on one single pair of legs: the like no man ever did."

[Note 63: To apprehend danger from the Education of the People, is like fearing lest the thunderbolt strike into the house because it has _windows_; whereas the lightning never comes through these, but through their _lead_ framing, or down by the _smoke_ of the chimney.]

[Note 6: Cities of Richter's romance kingdom. Flachsenfingen he sometimes calls _Klein-Wien_, Little Vienna.--ED.]

"O! now thou art angel-good!" said she, and gladder tears rolled down; "thou shalt counsel me thyself which are the finest Raths, and these we will be."

"No," continued I, in the fire of the moment, "neither shall this serve us: to me it is not enough that to Mrs. Chaplain thou canst announce thyself as Building-rathin, to Mrs. Town-parson as Legations-rathin, to Mrs. Burgermeister as Court-rathin, to Mrs. Road-and-toll-surveyor as Commerce-rathin, or how and where thou pleasest----"

"Ah! my own too good Attelchen!" said she.

"--But," continued I, "I shall likewise become corresponding member of the several Learned Societies in the several best capital cities (among which I have only to choose); and truly no common actual member, but a whole honorary member; then thee, as another honorary member, growing out of my honorary membership, I uplift and exalt."

Pardon me, my Friends, this warm cataplasm, or deception-balsam for a wounded breast, whose blood is so pure and precious, that one may be permitted to endeavour, with all possible stanching-lints and spider-webs, to drive it back into the fair heart, its home.

But now came bright and brightest hours. I had conquered Time, I had conquered myself and Berga: seldom does a conqueror, as I did, bless both the victorious and the vanquished party. Berga called back her former Heaven, and pulled off her dusty boots, and on her flowery shoes.

Precious morning beverage, intoxicating to a heart that loves! I felt (if the low figure may be permitted) a double-beer of courage in me, now that I had one being more to protect. In general it is my nature--which the honourable Premier seems not to be fully aware of--to grow bolder not among the bold, but fastest among poltroons, the bad example acting on me by the rule of contraries. Little touches may in this case shadow forth man and wife, without casting them into the shade: When the trim waiter with his green silk ap.r.o.n brought up cracknels for breakfast, and I told him: "Johann, for two!" Berga said: "He would oblige her very much," and called him Herr Johann.

[Note 76: Your economical, preaching Poetry, apparently supposes that a surgical Stone-cutter is an Artistical one; and a Pulpit or a Sinai a Hill of the Muses.]

Bergelchen, more familiar with rural burghs than capital cities, felt a good deal amazed and alarmed at the coffee-trays, dressing-tables, paper-hangings, sconces, alabaster inkholders, with Egyptian emblems, as well as at the gilt bell-handle, lying ready for any one to pull out or to push in. Accordingly, she had not courage to walk through the hall, with its l.u.s.tres, purely because a whistling, whiffling Cap-and-feather was gesturing up and down in it. Nay, her poor heart was like to fail when she peeped out of the window at so many gay promenading town's-people (I was briskly whistling a Gascon air down over them); and thought that in a little while, at my side, she must break into the middle of this dazzling courtly throng. In a case like this, reasons are of less avail than examples. I tried to elevate my Bergelchen, by reciting some of my nocturnal dream-feats; for example, how, riding on a whale's back, with a three-p.r.o.nged fork, I had pierced and eaten three eagles; and by more of the like sort: but I produced no effect; perhaps, because to the timid female heart the battle-field was presented rather than the conqueror, the abyss rather than the overleaper of it.

At this time a sheaf of newspapers was brought me, full of gallant decisive victories. And though these happen only on one side, and on the other are just so many defeats, yet the former somehow a.s.similate more with my blood than the latter, and inspire me (as Schiller's _Robbers_ used to do) with a strange inclination to lay hold of some one, and thrash and curry him on the spot. Unluckily for the waiter, he had chanced, even now, like a military host, to stand a triple bell-order for march, before he would leave his ground and come up. "Sir," began I, my head full of battle-fields, and my arm of inclination to baste him; and Berga feared the very worst, as I gave her the well-known anger and alarm signal, namely, shoved up my cap to my hindhead--"Sir, is this your way of treating guests? Why don't you come promptly? Don't come so again; and now be going, friend!" Although his retreat was my victory, I still kept briskly cannonading on the field of action, and fired the louder (to let him hear it), the more steps he descended in his flight.

Bergelchen,--who felt quite horrorstruck at my fury, particularly in a quite strange house, and at a quality waiter with silk ap.r.o.n,--mustered all her soft words against the wild ones of a man-of-war, and spoke of dangers that might follow. "Dangers," answered I, "are just what I seek; but for a man there are none; in all cases he will either conquer or evade them, either show them front or back."

[Note 115: According to Smith, the universal measure of economical value is _Labour_. This fact, at least in regard to spiritual and poetical value, we Germans had discovered before Smith; and to my knowledge we have always preferred the learned poet to the poet of genius, and the heavy book full of labour to the light one full of sport.]

I could scarcely lay aside this indignant mood, so sweet was it to me, and so much did I feel refreshed by the fire of rage, and quickened in my breast as by a benignant stimulant. It belongs certainly to the cla.s.s of Unrecognised Mercies (on which, in ancient times, special sermons were preached), that one is never more completely in his Heaven and _Monplaisir_ (a pleasure-palace) than while in the midst of right hearty storming and indignation. Heavens! what might not a man of weight accomplish in this new walk of charity! The gall-bladder is for us the chief swimming-bladder and Montgolfier; and the filling of it costs us nothing but a contumelious word or two from some bystander. And does not the whirlwind Luther, with whom I nowise compare myself, confess, in his _Table-talk_, that he never preached, sung, or prayed so well, as while in a rage? Truly, he was a man sufficient of himself to rouse many others into rage.

The whole morning till noon now pa.s.sed in viewing sights, and trafficking for wares; and indeed, for the greatest part, in the broad street of our Hotel. Berga needed but to press along with me into the market throng; needed but to look, and see that she was decorated more according to the fashion than hundreds like her. But soon, in her care for household gear, she forgot that of dress, and in the potter-market the toilette-table faded from her thoughts.

I, for my share, full of true tedium, while gliding after her through her various marts, with their long cheapenings and chafferings, merely acted the Philosopher hid within me: I weighed this empty Life, and the heavy value which is put upon it, and the daily anxiety of man lest it, this lightest down-feather of the Earth, fly off, and feather him, and take him with it. These thoughts, perhaps, I owe to the street-fry of boys, who were turning their market-freedom to account, by throwing stones at one another all round me: for, in the midst of this tumult, I vividly figured myself to be a man who had never seen war; and who, therefore, never having experienced, that often of a thousand bullets not one will hit, feels apprehensive of these few silly stones lest they beat-in his nose and eyes. O! it is the battle-field alone that sows, manures and nourishes true courage, courage even for daily, domestic and smallest perils. For not till he comes from the battle-field can a man both sing and cannonade; like the canary-bird, which, though so melodious, so timid, so small, so tender, so solitary, so soft-feathered, can yet be trained to fire off cannon, though cannon of smaller calibre.

[Note 4: The Hypocrite does not imitate the old practice, of cutting fruit by a knife poisoned only on the one side, and giving the poisoned side to the victim, the cutter eating the sound side himself; on the contrary, he so disinterestedly inverts this practice, that to others he shows and gives the sound moral half, or side, and retains for himself the poisoned one. Heavens! compared with such a man, how wicked does the Devil seem!]

After dinner (in our room), we issued from the Purgatory of the market-tumult,--where Berga, at every booth, had something to order, and load her attendant maid with,--into Heaven, into the Dog Inn, as the best Flatz public and pleasure-house without the gates is named, where, in market-time, hundreds turn in, and see thousands going by. On the way thither, my little wife, my elbow-tendril, as it were, had extracted from me such a measure of courage, that, while going through the Gate (where I, aware of the military order that you must not pa.s.s _near_ the sentry, threw myself over to the other side), she quietly glided on, close by the very guns and fixed bayonets of the City Guard. Outside the wall, I could direct her with my finger, to the bechained, begrated, gigantic Schabacker-Palace, mounting up even externally on stairs, where I last night had called and (it may be) stormed: "I had rather take a peep at the Giant," said she, "and the Dwarf: why else are we under one roof with them?"

In the pleasure-house itself we found sufficient pleasure; encircled, as we were, with blooming faces and meadows. In my secret heart, I all along kept looking down, with success, on Schabacker's refusal; and till midnight made myself a happy day of it: I had deserved it, Berga still more. Nevertheless, about one in the morning, I was destined to find a windmill to tilt with; a windmill, which truly lays about it with somewhat longer, stronger and more numerous arms than a giant, for which Don Quixote might readily enough have taken it. On the market-place, for reasons more easily fancied than specified in words, I let Berga go along some twenty paces before me; and I myself, for these foresaid reasons, retire without malice behind a covered booth, the tent most probably of some rude trader; and linger there a moment according to circ.u.mstances: lo! steering hither with dart and spear, comes the Booth-watcher, and coins and stamps me, on the spot, into a filcher and housebreaker of his Booth-street; though the simpleton sees nothing but that I am standing in the corner, and doing anything but--taking. A sense of honour without callosity is never blunted for such attacks. But how in the dead of night was a man of this kind, who had nothing in his head--at the utmost beer, instead of brains--to be enlightened on the truth of the matter?

[Note 67: Individual Minds, nay Political Bodies, are like organic bodies: extract the _interior_ air from them, the atmosphere crushes them together; pump off under the bell the _exterior_ resisting air, the interior inflates and bursts them. Therefore, let every State keep up its internal and its external resistance both at once.]

I shall not conceal my perilous resource: I seized the fox by the tail, as we say; in other words, I made as if I had been muddled, and knew not rightly, in my liquor, what I was about: I therefore mimicked everything I was master of in this department; staggered hither and thither; splayed out my feet like a dancing-master; got into zigzag in spite of all efforts at the straight line; nay, I knocked my good head (perhaps one of the clearest and emptiest of the night), like a full one, against real posts.

However, the Booth-bailiff, who probably had been oftener drunk than I, and knew the symptoms better, or even felt them in himself at this moment, looked upon the whole exhibition as mere craft, and shouted dreadfully: "Stop, rascal; thou art no more drunk than I! I know thee of old. Stand, I say, till I speak to thee! Wouldst have thy long finger in the market, too? Stand, dog, or I'll make thee!"

You see the whole _nodus_ of the matter: I whisked away zigzag among the booths as fast as possible, from the claws of this rude Tosspot; yet he still hobbled after me. But my Teutoberga, who had heard somewhat of it, came running back; clutched the tipsy market-warder by the collar, and said (shrieking, it is true, in village-wise): "Stupid sot, go sleep the drink out of thy head, or I'll teach thee! Dost know, then, whom thou art speaking to? My husband, Army-chaplain Schmelzle under General and Minister von Schabacker at Pimpelstadt, thou blockhead!--Fye! Take shame, fellow!" The watchman mumbled: "Meant no harm," and reeled about his business. "O thou Lioness!" said I, in the transport of love, "why hast thou never been in any deadly peril, that I might show thee the Lion in thy husband?"