SCHMELZLE'S JOURNEY TO FLÆTZ.Circular Letter of the proposed Catechetical ProfessorAttila Schmelzleto his Friends; containing some Account of a Holidays' Journey to Flätz, with an Introduction, touching his Plight and his Courage as former Army-chaplain.Nothing can be more ludicrous, my esteemed Friends, than to hear people stigmatising a man as cowardly and hare-hearted, who perhaps is struggling all the while with precisely the opposite faults, those of a lion; though indeed the African lion himself, since the time of Sparrmann's Travels, passes among us for a poltroon. Yet this case is mine, worthy Friends; and I purpose to say a few words thereupon, before describing my Journey.You in truth are all aware that, directly in the teeth of this calumny, it is courage, it is desperadoes (provided they be not braggarts and tumultuous persons), whom I chiefly venerate; for example, my brother-in-law, the Dragoon, who never in his life bastinadoed one man, but always a whole social circle at the same time. How truculent was my fancy, even in childhood, when I, as the parson was toning away to the silent congregation, used to take it into my head: "How now, if thou shouldst start up from the pew, and shout aloud: I am here too, Mr. Parson!" and to paint out this thought in such glowing colours, that for very dread, I have often been obliged to leave the church! Anything like Rugenda's battle-pieces; horrid murder-tumults, sea-fights or Stormings of Toulon, exploding fleets; and, in my childhood, Battles of Prague on the harpsichord; nay, in short, every map of any remarkable scene of war: these are perhaps too much my favourite objects; and I read—and purchase nothing sooner; and doubtless, they might lead me into many errors, were it not that, my circumstances restrain me. Now, if it be objected that true courage is something higher than mere thinking and willing, thenyou, my worthy Friends, will be the first to recognise mine, when it shall break forth into, not barren and empty, but active and effective words, while I strengthen my future Catechetical Pupils, as well as can be done in a course of College Lectures, and steel them into Christian heroes.103: Good princes easily obtain good subjects; not so easily good subjects good princes: thus Adam, in the state of innocence, ruled over animals all tame and gentle, till simply through his means they fell and grew savage.5: For a good Physician saves, if not always from the disease, at least from a bad Physician.It is well known that, out of care for the preservation of my life, I never walk within at least ten fields of any shore full of bathers or swimmers; merely because I foresee to a certainty, that in case one of them were drowning, I should that moment (for the heart overbalances the head) plunge after the fool to save him, into some bottomless depth or other, where we should both perish. And if dreaming is the reflex of waking, let me ask you, true Hearts, if you have forgotten my relating to you dreams of mine, which no Cæsar, no Alexander or Luther, need have felt ashamed of? Have I not, to mention a few instances, taken Rome by storm; and done battle with the Pope, and the whole elephantine body of the Cardinal College, at one and the same time? Did I not once on horseback, while simply looking at a review of military, dash headlong into abataillon quarré; and then capture, in Aix-la-Chapelle, the Peruke of Charlemagne, for which the town pays yearly ten reichsthalers of barber-money; and carrying it off to Halberstadt and Herr Gleim's, there in like manner seize the Great Frederick's Hat; put both Peruke and Hat on my head, and yet return home, after I had stormed their batteries, and turned the cannon against the cannoneers themselves? Did I not once submit to be made a Jew of, and then be regaled with hams; though they were ape-hams on the Orinocco (see Humboldt)? And a thousand such things; for I have thrown the Consistorial President of Flätz; out of the Palace window; those alarm-fulminators, sold by Heinrich Backofen in Gotha, at six groschen the dozen, and each going off like a cannon, I have listened to so calmly that the fulminators did not even awaken me; and more of the like sort.But enough! It is now time briefly to touch that farther slander of my chaplainship, which unhappily has likewise gained some circulation in Flätz, but which, as Cæsar did Alexander, I shall now by my touch dissipate into dust. Be what truth in itthere can, it is still little or nothing. Your great Minister and General in Flätz (perhaps the very greatest in the world, for there are not many Schabackers) may indeed, like any other great man, be turned against me, but not with the Artillery of Truth; for this Artillery I here set before you, my good Hearts, and do you but fire it off for my advantage! The matter is this: Certain foolish rumours are afloat in the Flätz country, that I, on occasion of some important battles, took leg-bail (such is their plebeian phrase), and that afterwards, on the chaplain's being called-for to preach a Thanksgiving sermon for the victory, no chaplain whatever was to be found. The ridiculousness of this story will best appear, when I tell you that I never was in any action; but have always been accustomed, several hours prior to such an event, to withdraw so many miles to the rear, that our men, so soon as they were beaten, would be sure to find me. A good retreat is reckoned the masterpiece in the art of war; and at no time can a retreat be executed with such order, force and security, as just before the battle, when you are not yet beaten.100: In books lie the Phœnix-ashes of a past Millennium and Paradise; but War blows, and much ashes are scattered away.102: Dear Political or Religious Inquisitor! art thou aware that Turin tapers never rightly begin shining, till thou breakest them, and then they take fire?It is true, I might perhaps, as expectant Professor of Catechetics, sit still and smile at such nugatory speculations on my courage; for if by Socratic questioning I can hammer my future Catechist Pupils into the habit of asking questions in their turn, I shall thereby have temperedtheminto heroes, seeing they have nothing to fight with but children—(Catechists at all events, though dreading fire, have no reason to dread light, since in our days, as in London illuminations, it is only theunlightedwindows that are battered in; whereas, in other ages, it was with nations and light, as it is with dogs and water; if you give them none for a long time, they at last get a horror at it);—and on the whole, for Catechists, any park looks kindlier, and smiles more sweetly, than a sulphurous park of artillery; and the Warlike Foot, which the age is placed on, is to them the true Devil's cloven-foot of human nature.But for my part I think not so: almost as if the party-spirit influence of my christian name, Attila, had passed into me more strongly than was proper, I feel myself impelled still farther to prove my courageousness; which, dearest Friends! I shall herein a few lines again do. This proof I could manage by mere inferences and learned citations. For example, if Galen remarks that animals with large hind-quarters are timid, I have nothing to do but turn round, and show the enemy my back, and what is under it, in order to convince him that I am not deficient in valour, but in flesh. Again, if by well-known experiences it has been found that flesh-eating produces courage, I can evince, that in this particular I yield to no officer of the service; though it is the habit of these gentlemen not only to run up long scores of roast-meat with their landlords, but also to leave them unpaid, that so at every hour they may have an open document in the hands of the enemy himself (the landlord), testifying that they have eaten their own share (with some of other people's too), and so put common butcher's-meat on a War-footing, living not like othersbybravery, butforbravery. As little have I ever, in my character of chaplain, shrunk from comparison with any officer in the regiment, who may be a true lion, and so snatch every sort of plunder, but yet, like this King of the Beasts, is afraid offire; or who,—like King James of England, that scampered off at sight of drawn swords, yet so much the more gallantly, before all Europe, went out against the storming Luther with book and pen,[2]—does, from a similar idiosyncrasy, attack all warlike armaments, both by word and writing. And here I recollect with satisfaction a brave sub-lieutenant, whose confessor I was (he still owes me the confession-money), and who, in respect of stout-heartedness, had in him perhaps something of that Indian dog which Alexander had presented to him, as a sort of Dog-Alexander. By way of trying this crack dog, the Macedonian made various heroic or heraldic beasts be let loose against him: first a stag; but the dog lay still: then a sow; he lay still: then a bear; he lay still. Alexander was on the point of condemning him; when a lion was let forth: the dog rose, and tore the lion in pieces. So likewise the sub-lieutenant. A challenger, a foreign enemy, a Frenchman, are to him only stag, and sow, and bear, and helies still in his place; but let his oldest enemy, his creditor, come and knock at his gate, and demand of him actual smart-money for long bygone pleasures, thus presuming to rob him both of past and present; the sub-lieutenant rises, and throws his creditor down stairs. I, alas, am still standing by the sow; and thus, naturally enough, misunderstood.86: Very true! In youth we love and enjoy the most ill-assorted friends, perhaps more than, in old age, the best-assorted.128: In Love there are Summer Holidays; but in Marriage also there are Winter Holidays, I hope.143: Women have weekly at least one active and passive day of glory, the holy day, the Sunday. The higher ranks alone have more Sundays than workdays; as in great towns, you can celebrate your Sunday on Friday with the Turks, on Saturday with the Jews, and on Sunday with yourself.[2]The good Professor of Catechetics is out here.Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Schmelzlæus!—Ed.Quo, says Livy, xii. 5, and with great justice,quo timoris minus est, eo minus ferme periculi est, The less fear you have, the less danger you are likely to be in. With equal justice I invert the maxim, and say: The less the danger, the smaller the fear; nay, there may be situations, in which one has absolutely no knowledge of fear; and, among these, mine is to be reckoned. The more hateful, therefore, must that calumny about hare-heartedness appear to me.To my Holidays' Journey I shall prefix a few facts, which prove how easily foresight—that is to say, when a person would not resemble the stupid marmot, that will even attack a man on horseback—may pass for cowardice. For the rest, I wish only that I could with equal ease wipe away a quite different reproach, that of being a foolhardy desperado; though I trust, in the sequel, I shall be able to advance some facts which invalidate it.What boots the heroic arm, without a hero's eye? The former readily grows stronger and more nervous; but the latter is not so soon ground sharper, like glasses. Nevertheless, the merits of foresight obtain from the mass of men less admiration (nay, I should say, more ridicule) than those of courage. Whoso, for instance, shall see me walking under quite cloudless skies, with a wax-cloth umbrella over me, to him I shall probably appear ridiculous, so long as he is not aware that I carry this umbrella as a thunder-screen, to keep off any bolt out of the blue heaven (whereof there are several examples in the history of the Middle Ages) from striking me to death. My thunder-screen, in fact, is exactly that of Reimarus: on a long walking-stick, I carry the wax-cloth roof; from the peak of which depends a string of gold-lace as a conductor; and this, by means of a key fastened to it, which it trails along the ground, will lead off every possible bolt, and easily distribute it over the whole superficies of the Earth.With thisParatonnerre Portatifin my hand, I can walk about for weeks, under the clear sky, without the smallest danger. This Diving-bell, moreover, protects me against something else; against shot. For who, in the latter end of Harvest, will give me black on white that no lurking ninny of a sportsman somewhere, when I am out enjoying Nature, shall so fire off his piece, at an angle of 45°, that in falling down again, the shot needs only light directly on my crown, and so come to the same as if I had been shot through the brain from a side?21: Schiller and Klopstock are Poetic Mirrors held up to the Sun-god: the Mirrors reflect the Sun with such dazzling brightness, that you cannot find the Picture of the World imaged forth in them.It is bad enough, at any rate, that we have nothing to guard us from the Moon; which at present is bombarding us with stones like a very Turk: for this paltry little Earth's trainbearer and errand-maid thinks, in these rebellious times, that she too must begin, forsooth, to sling somewhat against her Mother! In good truth, as matters stand, any young Catechist of feeling may go out o' nights, with whole limbs, into the moonshine, a-meditating; and ere long (in the midst of his meditation the villanous Satellite hits him) come home a pounded jelly. By heaven! new proofs of courage are required of us on every hand! No sooner have we, with great effort, got thunder-rods manufactured, and comet-tails explained away, than the enemy opens new batteries in the Moon, or somewhere else in the Blue!Suffice one other story to manifest how ludicrous the most serious foresight, with all imaginable inward courage, often externally appears in the eyes of the many. Equestrians are well acquainted with the dangers of a horse that runs away. My evil star would have it, that I should once in Vienna get upon a hack-horse; a pretty enough honey-coloured nag, but old and hard-mouthed as Satan; so that the beast, in the next street, went off with me; and this in truth—only at awalk. No pulling, no tugging, took effect; I, at last, on the back of this Self-riding-horse, made signals of distress, and cried: "Stop him, good people, for God's sake stop him, my horse is off!" But these simple persons seeing the beast move along as slowly as a Reichshofrath law-suit, or the Daily Postwagen, could not in the least understand the matter, till I cried as if possessed: "Stop himthen, ye blockheads and joltheads; don't you see that I cannot hold the nag?" But now, to these noodles, the sight of a hard-mouthed horse going off with its rider step by step, seemed ridiculous rather than otherwise; half Vienna gathered itself like a comet-tail behind my beast and me. Prince Kaunitz, the best horseman of the century (the last), pulled up to follow me. I myself sat and swam like a perpendicular piece of drift-ice on my honey-coloured nag, which stalked on, on, step by step: a many-cornered, red-coated letter-carrier, was delivering his letters, to the right and left, in the various stories, and he still crossed over before me again, with satirical features, because the nag went along too slowly. The Schwanzschleuderer, or Train-dasher (the person, as you know, who drives along the streets with a huge barrel of water, and besplashes them with a leathern pipe of three ells long from an iron trough), came across the haunches of my horse, and, in the course of his duty, wetted both these and myself in a very cooling manner, though, for my part, I had too much cold sweat on me already, to need any fresh refrigeration. On my infernal Trojan Horse (only I myself was Troy, not beridden but riding to destruction), I arrived at Malzlein (a suburb of Vienna), or perhaps, so confused were my senses, it might be quite another range of streets. At last, late in the dusk, I had to turn into the Prater; and here, long after the Evening Gun, to my horror, and quite against the police-rules, keep riding to and fro on my honey-coloured nag; and possibly I might even have passed the night on him, had not my brother-in-law, the Dragoon, observed my plight, and so found me still sitting firm as a rock on my runaway steed. He made no ceremonies; caught the brute; and put the pleasant question: Why I had not vaulted, and come off by ground-and-lofty tumbling? though he knew full well, that for this a wooden-horse, which stands still, is requisite. However, he took me down; and so, after all this riding, horse and man got home with whole skins and unbroken bones.But now at last to my Journey!34: Women are like precious carved works of ivory; nothing is whiter and smoother, and nothing sooner growsyellow.72: The Half-learned is adored by the Quarter-learned; the latter by the Sixteenth-part-learned; and so on; but not the Whole-learned by the Half-learned.Journey to Flätz.You are aware, my friends, that this Journey to Flätz was necessarily to take place in Vacation time; not only because theCattle-market, and consequently the Minister and General von Schabacker, was there then; but more especially, because the latter (as I had it positively from a private hand) did annually, on the 23d of July, the market-eve, about five o'clock, become so full of gaudium and graciousness, that in many cases he did not so much snarl on people, as listen to them, and grant their prayers. The cause of this gaudium I had rather not trust to paper. In short, my Petition, praying that he would be pleased to indemnify and reward me, as an unjustly deposed Army-chaplain, by a Catechetical Professorship, could plainly be presented to him at no better season, than exactly about five o'clock in the evening of the first dog-day. In less than a week, I had finished writing my Petition. As I spared neither summaries nor copies of it, I had soon got so far as to see the relatively best lying completed before me; when, to my terror, I observed, that, in this paper, I had introduced above thirtydashes, or breaks, in the middle of my sentences! Nowadays, alas, these stings shoot forth involuntarily from learned pens, as from the tails of wasps. I debated long within myself whether a private scholar could justly be entitled to approach a minister with dashes,—greatly as this level interlineation of thoughts, these horizontal note-marks of poeticalmusic-pieces, and these rope-ladders or Achilles' tendons of philosophicalsee-pieces, are at present fashionable and indispensable: but, at last, I was obliged (as erasures may offend people of quality) to write my best proof-petition over again; and then to afflict myself for another quarter of an hour over the name Attila Schmelzle, seeing it is always my principle that this and the address of the letter, the two cardinal points of the whole, can never be written legibly enough.35:Bien écouter c'est presque répondre, says Marivaux justly of social circles: but I extend it to round Councillor-tables and Cabinet-tables, where reports are made, and the Prince listens.First Stage; from Neusattel to Vierstädten.The 22d of July, or Wednesday, about five in the afternoon, was now, by the way-bill of the regular Post-coach, irrevocably fixed for my departure. I had still half a day to order my house; from which, for two nights and two days and a half, my breast, its breastwork and palisado, was now, along with my Self, to be withdrawn. Besides this, my good wife Bergelchen, as I call my Teutoberga, was immediately to travel after me, on Friday the24th, in order to see and to make purchases at the yearly Fair; nay, she was ready to have gone along with me, the faithful spouse. I therefore assembled my little knot of domestics, and promulgated to them the Household Law and Valedictory Rescript, which, after my departure, in the first placebeforethe outset of my wife, and in the second placeafterthis outset, they had rigorously to obey; explaining to them especially whatever, in case of conflagrations, house-breakings, thunder-storms, or transits of troops, it would behove them to do. To my wife I delivered an inventory of the best goods in our little Registership; which goods she, in case the house took fire, had, in the first place, to secure. I ordered her, in stormy nights (the peculiar thief-weather), to put our Eolian harp in the window, that so any villanous prowler might imagine I was fantasying on my instrument, and therefore awake: for like reasons, also, to take the house-dog within doors by day, that he might sleep then, and so be livelier at night. I farther counselled her to have an eye on the focus of every knot in the panes of the stable-window, nay, on every glass of water she might set down in the house; as I had already often recounted to her examples of such accidental burning-glasses having set whole buildings in flames. I then appointed her the hour when she was to set out on Friday morning to follow me; and recapitulated more emphatically the household precepts, which, prior to her departure, she must afresh inculcate on her domestics. My dear, heart-sound, blooming Berga answered her faithful lord, as it seemed very seriously: "Go thy ways, little old one; it shall all be done as smooth as velvet. Wert thou but away! There is no end of thee!" Her brother, my brother-in-law the Dragoon, for whom, out of complaisance, I had paid the coach-fare, in order to have in the vehicle along with me a stout swordsman and hector, as spiritual relative and bully-rock, so to speak; the Dragoon, I say, on hearing these my regulations, puckered up (which I easily forgave the wild soldier and bachelor) his sunburnt face considerably into ridicule, and said: "Were I in thy place, sister, I should do what I liked, and then afterwards take a peep into these regulation-papers of his."17: The Bed of Honour, since so frequently whole regiments lie on it, and receive their last unction, and last honour but one, really ought from time to time to be new-filled, beaten and sunned.120: Many a one becomes a free-spoken Diogenes, not when he dwells in the Cask, but when the Cask dwells in him.3: Culture makes whole lands, for instance Germany, Gaul, and others, physically warmer, but spiritually colder."O!" answered I, "misfortune may conceal itself like a scorpion in any corner: I might say, we are like children, who, looking at their gaily painted toy-box, soon pull off the lid, and, pop! out springs a mouse who has young ones.""Mouse, mouse!" said he, stepping up and down. "But, good brother, it is five o'clock; and you will find, when you return, that all looks exactly as it does today; the dog like the dog, and my sister like a pretty woman:allons donc!" It was purely his blame that I, fearing his misconceptions, had not previously made a sort of testament.I now packed-in two different sorts of medicines, heating as well as cooling, against two different possibilities; also my old splints for arm or leg breakages, in case the coach overset; and (out of foresight) two times the money I was likely to need. Only here I could have wished, so uncertain is the stowage of such things, that I had been an Ape with cheek-pouches, or some sort of Opossum with a natural bag, that so I might have reposited these necessaries of existence in pockets which were sensitive. Shaving is a task I always go through before setting out on journeys; having a rational mistrust against stranger bloodthirsty barbers: but, on this occasion, I retained my beard; since, however close shaved, it would have grown again by the road to such a length that I could have fronted no Minister and General with it.With a vehement emotion, I threw myself on the pith-heart of my Berga, and, with a still more vehement one, tore myself away: in her, however, this our first marriage-separation seemed to produce less lamentation than triumph, less consternation than rejoicing; simply because she turned her eye not half so much on the parting, as on the meeting, and the journey after me, and the wonders of the Fair. Yet she threw and hung herself on my somewhat long and thin neck and body, almost painfully, being indeed a too fleshy and weighty load, and said to me: "Whisk thee off quick, my charming Attel (Attila), and trouble thy head with no cares by the way, thou singular man! A whiff or two of ill luck we can stand, by God's help, so long as my father is no beggar. And for thee, Franz," continued she, turning with some heat to her brother, "I leave my Attel on thy soul: thouwell knowest, thou wild fly, what I will do, if thou play the fool, and leave him anywhere in the lurch." Her meaning here was good, and I could not take it ill: to you also, my Friends, her wealth and her open-heartedness are nothing new.1: The more Weakness the more Lying: Force goes straight; any cannonball with holes or cavities in it goes crooked.Melted into sensibility, I said: "Now, Berga, if there be a reunion appointed for us, surely it is either in Heaven or in Flätz; and I hope in God, the latter." With these words, we whirled stoutly away. I looked round through the back-window of the coach at my good little village of Neusattel, and it seemed to me, in my melting mood, as if its steeples were rising aloft like an epitaphium over my life, or over my body, perhaps to return a lifeless corpse. "How will it all be," thought I, "when thou at last, after two or three days, comest back?" And now I noticed my Bergelchen looking after us from the garret-window. I leaned far out from the coach-door, and her falcon eye instantly distinguished my head; kiss on kiss she threw with both hands after the carriage, as it rolled down into the valley. "Thou true-hearted wife," thought I, "how is thy lowly birth, by thy spiritual new-birth, made forgettable, nay remarkable!"I must confess, the assemblage and conversational picnic of the stage-coach was much less to my taste: the whole of them suspicious, unknown rabble, whom (as markets usually do) the Flätz cattle-market was alluring by its scent. I dislike becoming acquainted with strangers: not so my brother-in-law, the Dragoon; who now, as he always does, had in a few minutes elbowed himself into close quarters with the whole ragamuffin posse of them. Beside me sat a person who, in all human probability, was a Harlot; on her breast, a Dwarf intending to exhibit himself at the Fair; on the other side was a Ratcatcher gazing at me; and a Blind Passenger,[3]in a red mantle, had joined us down in the valley. No one of them, except my brother-in-law, pleased me. That rascals among these people would not study me and my properties and accidents, to entangle me in theirsnares, no man could be my surety. In strange places, I even, out of prudence, avoid looking long up at any jail-window; because some losel, sitting behind the bars, may in a moment call down out of mere malice: "How goes it, comrade Schmelzle?" or farther, because any lurking catchpole may fancy I am planning a rescue for some confederate above. From another sort of prudence, little different from this, I also make a point of never turning round when any booby calls, Thief! behind me.38: Epictetus advises us to travel, because our old acquaintances, by the influence of shame, impede our transition to higher virtues; as a bashful man will rather lay aside his provincial accent in some foreign quarter, and then return wholly purified to his own countrymen: in our days, people of rank and virtue follow this advice, but inversely; and travel because their old acquaintances, by the influence of shame, would too much deter them from new sins.[3]'Live Passenger,' 'Nip;' a passenger taken up only by Jarvie's authority, and for Jarvie's profit.—Ed.As to the Dwarf himself, I had no objection to his travelling with me whithersoever he pleased; but he thought to raise a particular delectation in our minds, by promising that his Pollux and Brother in Trade, an extraordinary Giant, who was also making for the Fair to exhibit himself, would by midnight, with his elephantine pace, infallibly overtake the coach, and plant himself among us, or behind on the outside. Both these noodles, it appeared, are in the habit of going in company to fairs, as reciprocal exaggerators of opposite magnitudes: the Dwarf is the convex magnifying-glass of the Giant, the Giant the concave diminishing-glass of the Dwarf. Nobody expressed much joy at the prospective arrival of this Anti-dwarf, except my brother-in-law, who (if I may venture on a play of words) seems made, like a clock, solely for the purpose ofstriking, and once actually said to me: "That if in the Upper world he could not get a soul to curry and towzle by a time, he would rather go to the Under, where most probably there would be plenty of cuffing and to spare." The Ratcatcher, besides the circumstance that no man can prepossess us much in his favour, who lives solely by poisoning, like this Destroying Angel of rats, this mouse-Atropos; and also, which is still worse, that such a fellow bids fair to become an increaser of the vermin kingdom, the moment he may cease to be a lessener of it; besides all this, I say, the present Ratcatcher had many baneful features about him: first, his stabbing look, piercing you like a stiletto; then the lean sharp bony visage, conjoined with his enumeration of his considerable stock of poisons; then (for I hated him more and more) his sly stillness, his sly smile, as if in some corner he noticed a mouse, as he would notice a man! To me, I declare, though usually I take not the slightest exception against people'slooks, it seemed at last as if his throat were a Dog-grotto, aGrotta del cane, his cheek-bones cliffs and breakers, his hot breath the wind of a calcining furnace, and his black hairy breast a kiln for parching and roasting.32: Our Age (by some called the Paper Age, as if it were made from the rags of some better-dressed one) is improving in so far, as it now tears its rags rather into Bandages than into Papers; although, or because, the Rag-hacker (the Devil as they call it) will not altogether be at rest. Meanwhile, if Learned Heads transform themselves into Books, Crowned Heads transform and coin themselves into Government-paper: in Norway, according to theUniversal Indicator, the people have even paper-houses; and in many good German States, the Exchequer Collegium (to say nothing of the Justice Collegium) keeps its own paper-mills, to furnish wrappage enough for the meal of its wind-mills. I could wish, however, that our Collegiums would take pattern from that Glass Manufactory at Madrid, in which (according to Baumgartner) there were indeed nineteen clerks stationed, but also eleven workmen.Nor was I far wrong, I believe; for soon after this, he began quite coolly to inform the company, in which were a dwarf and a female, that, in his time, he had, not without enjoyment, run ten men through the body; had with great convenience hewed off a dozen men's arms; slowly split four heads, torn out two hearts, and more of the like sort; while none of them, otherwise persons of spirit, had in the least resisted: "but why?" added he, with a poisonous smile, and taking the hat from his odious bald pate: "I am invulnerable. Let any one of the company that chooses lay as much fire on my bare crown as he likes, I shall not mind it."My brother-in-law, the Dragoon, directly kindled his tinder-box, and put a heap of the burning matter on the Ratcatcher's pole; but the fellow stood it, as if it had been a mere picture of fire, and the two looked expectingly at one another; and the former smiled very foolishly, saying: "It was simply pleasant to him, like a good warming-plaster; for this was always the wintry region of his body."Here the Dragoon groped a little on the naked scull, and cried with amazement, that "it was as cold as a knee-pan."But now the fellow, to our horror, after some preparations, actually lifted off the quarter-scull and held it out to us, saying: "He had sawed it off a murderer, his own having accidentally been broken;" and withal explained, that the stabbing and arm-cutting he had talked of was to be understood as a jest, seeing he had merely done it in the character of Famulus at an Anatomical Theatre. However, the jester seemed to rise little in favour with any of us; and for my part, as he put his brain-lid and sham-scull on again, I thought to myself; "This dungbed-bell has changed its place indeed, but not the hemlock it was made to cover."Farther, I could not but reckon it a suspicious circumstance, that he as well as all the company (the Blind Passenger too) were making for this very Flätz, to which I myself was bound: much good I could not expect of this; and, in truth, turning home again would have been as pleasant to me as going on, had I not rather felt a pleasure in defying the future.I come now to the red-mantled Blind Passenger; most probably anEmigréorRéfugié; for he speaks German not worse than he does French; and his name, I think, wasJean PierreorJean Paul, or some such thing, if indeed he had any name. His red cloak, notwithstanding this his identity of colour with the Hangman, would in itself have remained heartily indifferent to me, had it not been for this singular circumstance, that he had already five times, contrary to all expectation, come upon me in five different towns (in great Berlin, in little Hof, in Coburg, Meiningen and Bayreuth), and each of these times had looked at me significantly enough, and then gone his ways. Whether thisJean Pierreis dogging me with hostile intent or not, I cannot say; but to our fancy, at any rate, no object can be gratifying that thus, with corps of observation, or out of loopholes, holds and aims at us with muskets, which for year after year it shall move to this side and that, without our knowing on whom it is to fire. Still more offensive did Redcloak become to me, when he began to talk about his soft mildness of soul; a thing which seemed either to betoken pumping you or undermining you.I replied: "Sir, I am just come, with my brother-in-law here, from the field of battle (the last affair was at Pimpelstadt), and so perhaps am too much of a humour for fire, pluck and war-fury; and to many a one, who happens to have a roaring waterspout of a heart, it may be well if his clerical character (which is mine) rather enjoins on him mildness than wildness. However, all mildness has its iron limit. If any thoughtless dog chance to anger me, in the first heat of rage I kick my foot through him; and after me, my good brother here will perhaps drive matters twice as far, for he is the man to do it. Perhaps it may be singular; but I confess I regret to this day, that once when a boy I received three blows from another, without tightly returningthem; and I often feel as if I must still pay them to his descendants. In sooth, if I but chance to see a child running off like a dastard from the weak attack of a child like himself, I cannot for my life understand his running, and can scarcely keep from interfering to save him by a decisive knock."2: In his Prince, a soldier reverences and obeys at once his Prince and his Generalissimo; a Citizen only his Prince.The Passenger meanwhile was smiling, not in the best fashion. He gave himself out for a Legations-Rath, and seemed fox enough for such a post; but a mad fox will, in the long-run, bite me as rabidly as a mad wolf will. For the rest, I calmly went on with my eulogy on courage; only that, instead of ludicrous gasconading, which directly betrays the coward, I purposely expressed myself in words at once cool, clear and firm."I am altogether for Montaigne's advice," said I: "Fear nothing but fear.""I again," replied the Legations-man, with useless wire-drawing, "I should fear again that I did not sufficiently fear fear, but continued too dastardly.""To this fear also," replied I coldly, "I set limits. A man, for instance, may not in the least believe in, or be afraid of ghosts; and yet by night may bathe himself in cold sweat, and this purely out of terror at the dreadful fright he should be in (especially with what whiffs of apoplexies, falling-sicknesses and so forth, he might be visited), in case simply his own too vivid fancy should create any wild fever-image, and hang it up in the air before him.""One should not, therefore," added my brother-in-law the Dragoon, contrary to his custom, moralising a little, "one should not bamboozle the poor sheep, man, with any ghost-tricks; the hen-heart may die on the spot."A loud storm of thunder, overtaking the stage-coach, altered the discourse. You, my Friends, knowing me as a man not quite destitute of some tincture of Natural Philosophy, will easily guess my precautions against thunder. I place myself on a chair in the middle of the room (often, when suspicious clouds are out, I stay whole nights on it), and by careful removal of all conductors, rings, buckles, and so forth, I here sit thunder-proof, and listen with a cool spirit to this elemental music of the cloud-kettledrum. These precautions have never harmed me, for I am still alive atthis date; and to the present hour I congratulate myself on once hurrying out of church, though I had confessed but the day previous; and running, without more ceremony, and before I had received the sacrament, into the charnel-house, because a heavy thunder-cloud (which did, in fact, strike the churchyard linden-tree) was hovering over it. So soon as the cloud had disloaded itself, I returned from the charnel-house into the church, and was happy enough to come in after the Hangman (usually the last), and so still participate in the Feast of Love.45: Our present writers shrug their shoulders most at those on whose shoulders they stand; and exalt those most who crawl up along them.Such, for my own part, is my manner of proceeding: but in the full stage-coach I met with men to whom Natural Philosophy was no philosophy at all. For when the clouds gathered dreadfully together over our coach-canopy, and sparkling, began to play through the air like so many fire-flies, and I at last could not but request that the sweating coach-conclave would at least bring out their watches, rings, money and suchlike, and put them all into one of the carriage-pockets, that none of us might have a conductor on his body; not only would no one of them do it, but my own brother-in-law the Dragoon even sprang out, with naked drawn sword, to the coach-box, and swore that he would conduct the thunder all away himself. Nor do I know whether this desperate mortal was not acting prudently; for our position within was frightful, and any one of us might every moment be a dead man. At last, to crown all, I got into a half altercation with two of the rude members of our leathern household, the Poisoner and the Harlot; seeing, by their questions, they almost gave me to understand that, in our conversational picnic, especially with the Blind Passenger, I had not always come off with the best share. Such an imputation wounds your honour to the quick; and in my breast there was a thunder louder than that above us: however, I was obliged to carry on the needful exchange of sharp words as quietly and slowly as possible; and I quarrelled softly, and in a low tone, lest in the end a whole coachful of people, set in arms against each other, might get into heat and perspiration; and so, by vapour steaming through the coach-roof, conduct the too-near thunderbolt down into the midst of us. At last, I laid before thecompany the whole theory of Electricity, in clear words, but low and slow (striving to avoid all emission of vapour); and especially endeavoured to frighten them away from fear. For indeed, through fear, the stroke—nay two strokes, the electric or the apoplectic—might hit any one of us; since in Erxleben and Reimarus, it is sufficiently proved, that violent fear, by the transpiration it causes, may attract the lightning. I accordingly, in some fear of my own and other people's fear, represented to the passengers that now, in a coach so hot and crowded, with a drawn sword on the coach-box piercing the very lightning, with the thunder-cloud hanging over us, and even with so many transpirations from incipient fear; in short, with such visible danger on every hand, they must absolutely fear nothing, if they would not, all and sundry, be smitten to death in a few minutes.103: The Great perhaps take as good charge of their posterity as the Ants: the eggs once laid, the male and female Ants fly about their business, and confide them to the trustyworking-Ants.10: And does Life offer us, in regard to our ideal hopes and purposes, anything but a prosaic, unrhymed, unmetrical Translation?"O Heaven!" cried I, "Courage! only courage! No fear, not even fear of fear! Would you have Providence to shoot you here sitting, like so many hares hunted into a pinfold? Fear, if you like, when you are out of the coach; fear to your heart's content in other places, where there is less to be afraid of; only not here, not here!"I shall not determine—since among millions scarcely one man dies by thunder-clouds, but millions perhaps by snow-clouds, and rain-clouds, and thin mist—whether my Coach-sermon could have made any claim to a prize for man-saving; however, at last, all uninjured, and driving towards a rainbow, we entered the town of Vierstädten, where dwelt a Postmaster, in the only street which the place had.Second Stage; from Vierstädten to Niederschöna.The Postmaster was a churl and a striker; a class 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 hadmade a wrong face), I could have shielded myself with the Dragoon; for whose giant force such matter are a tidbit. This brother-in-law of mine, for example, cannot pass 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 snatches 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!78: Our German frame of Government, cased in its harness, had much difficulty in moving, for the same reason why Beetles cannot fly, when theirwingshavewing-shells, of very sufficient strength, and—grown together.8: Constitutions 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 on an old worn-out one, full of holes? What is to be done then? Travel on.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 circumstances conspire) painful investigation, and suspicions of your being an accomplice.In Vierstädten, 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 passion at this sight, I pointed it out to the passengers, and then put the question, Whether they could reckon a system of Medical Police well arranged, which, like this of Vierstädten, 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 cocked 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-compass."The Blind Passenger (he now got himself inscribed as a Seeing one, God 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 ofmadness: 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 handin margine; and we perish, not so much as knowing how."
Circular Letter of the proposed Catechetical ProfessorAttila Schmelzleto his Friends; containing some Account of a Holidays' Journey to Flätz, with an Introduction, touching his Plight and his Courage as former Army-chaplain.
Circular Letter of the proposed Catechetical ProfessorAttila Schmelzleto his Friends; containing some Account of a Holidays' Journey to Flätz, with an Introduction, touching his Plight and his Courage as former Army-chaplain.
Nothing can be more ludicrous, my esteemed Friends, than to hear people stigmatising a man as cowardly and hare-hearted, who perhaps is struggling all the while with precisely the opposite faults, those of a lion; though indeed the African lion himself, since the time of Sparrmann's Travels, passes among us for a poltroon. Yet this case is mine, worthy Friends; and I purpose to say a few words thereupon, before describing my Journey.
You in truth are all aware that, directly in the teeth of this calumny, it is courage, it is desperadoes (provided they be not braggarts and tumultuous persons), whom I chiefly venerate; for example, my brother-in-law, the Dragoon, who never in his life bastinadoed one man, but always a whole social circle at the same time. How truculent was my fancy, even in childhood, when I, as the parson was toning away to the silent congregation, used to take it into my head: "How now, if thou shouldst start up from the pew, and shout aloud: I am here too, Mr. Parson!" and to paint out this thought in such glowing colours, that for very dread, I have often been obliged to leave the church! Anything like Rugenda's battle-pieces; horrid murder-tumults, sea-fights or Stormings of Toulon, exploding fleets; and, in my childhood, Battles of Prague on the harpsichord; nay, in short, every map of any remarkable scene of war: these are perhaps too much my favourite objects; and I read—and purchase nothing sooner; and doubtless, they might lead me into many errors, were it not that, my circumstances restrain me. Now, if it be objected that true courage is something higher than mere thinking and willing, thenyou, my worthy Friends, will be the first to recognise mine, when it shall break forth into, not barren and empty, but active and effective words, while I strengthen my future Catechetical Pupils, as well as can be done in a course of College Lectures, and steel them into Christian heroes.
103: Good princes easily obtain good subjects; not so easily good subjects good princes: thus Adam, in the state of innocence, ruled over animals all tame and gentle, till simply through his means they fell and grew savage.5: For a good Physician saves, if not always from the disease, at least from a bad Physician.
103: Good princes easily obtain good subjects; not so easily good subjects good princes: thus Adam, in the state of innocence, ruled over animals all tame and gentle, till simply through his means they fell and grew savage.
5: For a good Physician saves, if not always from the disease, at least from a bad Physician.
It is well known that, out of care for the preservation of my life, I never walk within at least ten fields of any shore full of bathers or swimmers; merely because I foresee to a certainty, that in case one of them were drowning, I should that moment (for the heart overbalances the head) plunge after the fool to save him, into some bottomless depth or other, where we should both perish. And if dreaming is the reflex of waking, let me ask you, true Hearts, if you have forgotten my relating to you dreams of mine, which no Cæsar, no Alexander or Luther, need have felt ashamed of? Have I not, to mention a few instances, taken Rome by storm; and done battle with the Pope, and the whole elephantine body of the Cardinal College, at one and the same time? Did I not once on horseback, while simply looking at a review of military, dash headlong into abataillon quarré; and then capture, in Aix-la-Chapelle, the Peruke of Charlemagne, for which the town pays yearly ten reichsthalers of barber-money; and carrying it off to Halberstadt and Herr Gleim's, there in like manner seize the Great Frederick's Hat; put both Peruke and Hat on my head, and yet return home, after I had stormed their batteries, and turned the cannon against the cannoneers themselves? Did I not once submit to be made a Jew of, and then be regaled with hams; though they were ape-hams on the Orinocco (see Humboldt)? And a thousand such things; for I have thrown the Consistorial President of Flätz; out of the Palace window; those alarm-fulminators, sold by Heinrich Backofen in Gotha, at six groschen the dozen, and each going off like a cannon, I have listened to so calmly that the fulminators did not even awaken me; and more of the like sort.
But enough! It is now time briefly to touch that farther slander of my chaplainship, which unhappily has likewise gained some circulation in Flätz, but which, as Cæsar did Alexander, I shall now by my touch dissipate into dust. Be what truth in itthere can, it is still little or nothing. Your great Minister and General in Flätz (perhaps the very greatest in the world, for there are not many Schabackers) may indeed, like any other great man, be turned against me, but not with the Artillery of Truth; for this Artillery I here set before you, my good Hearts, and do you but fire it off for my advantage! The matter is this: Certain foolish rumours are afloat in the Flätz country, that I, on occasion of some important battles, took leg-bail (such is their plebeian phrase), and that afterwards, on the chaplain's being called-for to preach a Thanksgiving sermon for the victory, no chaplain whatever was to be found. The ridiculousness of this story will best appear, when I tell you that I never was in any action; but have always been accustomed, several hours prior to such an event, to withdraw so many miles to the rear, that our men, so soon as they were beaten, would be sure to find me. A good retreat is reckoned the masterpiece in the art of war; and at no time can a retreat be executed with such order, force and security, as just before the battle, when you are not yet beaten.
100: In books lie the Phœnix-ashes of a past Millennium and Paradise; but War blows, and much ashes are scattered away.102: Dear Political or Religious Inquisitor! art thou aware that Turin tapers never rightly begin shining, till thou breakest them, and then they take fire?
100: In books lie the Phœnix-ashes of a past Millennium and Paradise; but War blows, and much ashes are scattered away.
102: Dear Political or Religious Inquisitor! art thou aware that Turin tapers never rightly begin shining, till thou breakest them, and then they take fire?
It is true, I might perhaps, as expectant Professor of Catechetics, sit still and smile at such nugatory speculations on my courage; for if by Socratic questioning I can hammer my future Catechist Pupils into the habit of asking questions in their turn, I shall thereby have temperedtheminto heroes, seeing they have nothing to fight with but children—(Catechists at all events, though dreading fire, have no reason to dread light, since in our days, as in London illuminations, it is only theunlightedwindows that are battered in; whereas, in other ages, it was with nations and light, as it is with dogs and water; if you give them none for a long time, they at last get a horror at it);—and on the whole, for Catechists, any park looks kindlier, and smiles more sweetly, than a sulphurous park of artillery; and the Warlike Foot, which the age is placed on, is to them the true Devil's cloven-foot of human nature.
But for my part I think not so: almost as if the party-spirit influence of my christian name, Attila, had passed into me more strongly than was proper, I feel myself impelled still farther to prove my courageousness; which, dearest Friends! I shall herein a few lines again do. This proof I could manage by mere inferences and learned citations. For example, if Galen remarks that animals with large hind-quarters are timid, I have nothing to do but turn round, and show the enemy my back, and what is under it, in order to convince him that I am not deficient in valour, but in flesh. Again, if by well-known experiences it has been found that flesh-eating produces courage, I can evince, that in this particular I yield to no officer of the service; though it is the habit of these gentlemen not only to run up long scores of roast-meat with their landlords, but also to leave them unpaid, that so at every hour they may have an open document in the hands of the enemy himself (the landlord), testifying that they have eaten their own share (with some of other people's too), and so put common butcher's-meat on a War-footing, living not like othersbybravery, butforbravery. As little have I ever, in my character of chaplain, shrunk from comparison with any officer in the regiment, who may be a true lion, and so snatch every sort of plunder, but yet, like this King of the Beasts, is afraid offire; or who,—like King James of England, that scampered off at sight of drawn swords, yet so much the more gallantly, before all Europe, went out against the storming Luther with book and pen,[2]—does, from a similar idiosyncrasy, attack all warlike armaments, both by word and writing. And here I recollect with satisfaction a brave sub-lieutenant, whose confessor I was (he still owes me the confession-money), and who, in respect of stout-heartedness, had in him perhaps something of that Indian dog which Alexander had presented to him, as a sort of Dog-Alexander. By way of trying this crack dog, the Macedonian made various heroic or heraldic beasts be let loose against him: first a stag; but the dog lay still: then a sow; he lay still: then a bear; he lay still. Alexander was on the point of condemning him; when a lion was let forth: the dog rose, and tore the lion in pieces. So likewise the sub-lieutenant. A challenger, a foreign enemy, a Frenchman, are to him only stag, and sow, and bear, and helies still in his place; but let his oldest enemy, his creditor, come and knock at his gate, and demand of him actual smart-money for long bygone pleasures, thus presuming to rob him both of past and present; the sub-lieutenant rises, and throws his creditor down stairs. I, alas, am still standing by the sow; and thus, naturally enough, misunderstood.
86: Very true! In youth we love and enjoy the most ill-assorted friends, perhaps more than, in old age, the best-assorted.128: In Love there are Summer Holidays; but in Marriage also there are Winter Holidays, I hope.143: Women have weekly at least one active and passive day of glory, the holy day, the Sunday. The higher ranks alone have more Sundays than workdays; as in great towns, you can celebrate your Sunday on Friday with the Turks, on Saturday with the Jews, and on Sunday with yourself.
86: Very true! In youth we love and enjoy the most ill-assorted friends, perhaps more than, in old age, the best-assorted.
128: In Love there are Summer Holidays; but in Marriage also there are Winter Holidays, I hope.
143: Women have weekly at least one active and passive day of glory, the holy day, the Sunday. The higher ranks alone have more Sundays than workdays; as in great towns, you can celebrate your Sunday on Friday with the Turks, on Saturday with the Jews, and on Sunday with yourself.
[2]The good Professor of Catechetics is out here.Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Schmelzlæus!—Ed.
[2]The good Professor of Catechetics is out here.Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Schmelzlæus!—Ed.
Quo, says Livy, xii. 5, and with great justice,quo timoris minus est, eo minus ferme periculi est, The less fear you have, the less danger you are likely to be in. With equal justice I invert the maxim, and say: The less the danger, the smaller the fear; nay, there may be situations, in which one has absolutely no knowledge of fear; and, among these, mine is to be reckoned. The more hateful, therefore, must that calumny about hare-heartedness appear to me.
To my Holidays' Journey I shall prefix a few facts, which prove how easily foresight—that is to say, when a person would not resemble the stupid marmot, that will even attack a man on horseback—may pass for cowardice. For the rest, I wish only that I could with equal ease wipe away a quite different reproach, that of being a foolhardy desperado; though I trust, in the sequel, I shall be able to advance some facts which invalidate it.
What boots the heroic arm, without a hero's eye? The former readily grows stronger and more nervous; but the latter is not so soon ground sharper, like glasses. Nevertheless, the merits of foresight obtain from the mass of men less admiration (nay, I should say, more ridicule) than those of courage. Whoso, for instance, shall see me walking under quite cloudless skies, with a wax-cloth umbrella over me, to him I shall probably appear ridiculous, so long as he is not aware that I carry this umbrella as a thunder-screen, to keep off any bolt out of the blue heaven (whereof there are several examples in the history of the Middle Ages) from striking me to death. My thunder-screen, in fact, is exactly that of Reimarus: on a long walking-stick, I carry the wax-cloth roof; from the peak of which depends a string of gold-lace as a conductor; and this, by means of a key fastened to it, which it trails along the ground, will lead off every possible bolt, and easily distribute it over the whole superficies of the Earth.With thisParatonnerre Portatifin my hand, I can walk about for weeks, under the clear sky, without the smallest danger. This Diving-bell, moreover, protects me against something else; against shot. For who, in the latter end of Harvest, will give me black on white that no lurking ninny of a sportsman somewhere, when I am out enjoying Nature, shall so fire off his piece, at an angle of 45°, that in falling down again, the shot needs only light directly on my crown, and so come to the same as if I had been shot through the brain from a side?
21: Schiller and Klopstock are Poetic Mirrors held up to the Sun-god: the Mirrors reflect the Sun with such dazzling brightness, that you cannot find the Picture of the World imaged forth in them.
21: Schiller and Klopstock are Poetic Mirrors held up to the Sun-god: the Mirrors reflect the Sun with such dazzling brightness, that you cannot find the Picture of the World imaged forth in them.
It is bad enough, at any rate, that we have nothing to guard us from the Moon; which at present is bombarding us with stones like a very Turk: for this paltry little Earth's trainbearer and errand-maid thinks, in these rebellious times, that she too must begin, forsooth, to sling somewhat against her Mother! In good truth, as matters stand, any young Catechist of feeling may go out o' nights, with whole limbs, into the moonshine, a-meditating; and ere long (in the midst of his meditation the villanous Satellite hits him) come home a pounded jelly. By heaven! new proofs of courage are required of us on every hand! No sooner have we, with great effort, got thunder-rods manufactured, and comet-tails explained away, than the enemy opens new batteries in the Moon, or somewhere else in the Blue!
Suffice one other story to manifest how ludicrous the most serious foresight, with all imaginable inward courage, often externally appears in the eyes of the many. Equestrians are well acquainted with the dangers of a horse that runs away. My evil star would have it, that I should once in Vienna get upon a hack-horse; a pretty enough honey-coloured nag, but old and hard-mouthed as Satan; so that the beast, in the next street, went off with me; and this in truth—only at awalk. No pulling, no tugging, took effect; I, at last, on the back of this Self-riding-horse, made signals of distress, and cried: "Stop him, good people, for God's sake stop him, my horse is off!" But these simple persons seeing the beast move along as slowly as a Reichshofrath law-suit, or the Daily Postwagen, could not in the least understand the matter, till I cried as if possessed: "Stop himthen, ye blockheads and joltheads; don't you see that I cannot hold the nag?" But now, to these noodles, the sight of a hard-mouthed horse going off with its rider step by step, seemed ridiculous rather than otherwise; half Vienna gathered itself like a comet-tail behind my beast and me. Prince Kaunitz, the best horseman of the century (the last), pulled up to follow me. I myself sat and swam like a perpendicular piece of drift-ice on my honey-coloured nag, which stalked on, on, step by step: a many-cornered, red-coated letter-carrier, was delivering his letters, to the right and left, in the various stories, and he still crossed over before me again, with satirical features, because the nag went along too slowly. The Schwanzschleuderer, or Train-dasher (the person, as you know, who drives along the streets with a huge barrel of water, and besplashes them with a leathern pipe of three ells long from an iron trough), came across the haunches of my horse, and, in the course of his duty, wetted both these and myself in a very cooling manner, though, for my part, I had too much cold sweat on me already, to need any fresh refrigeration. On my infernal Trojan Horse (only I myself was Troy, not beridden but riding to destruction), I arrived at Malzlein (a suburb of Vienna), or perhaps, so confused were my senses, it might be quite another range of streets. At last, late in the dusk, I had to turn into the Prater; and here, long after the Evening Gun, to my horror, and quite against the police-rules, keep riding to and fro on my honey-coloured nag; and possibly I might even have passed the night on him, had not my brother-in-law, the Dragoon, observed my plight, and so found me still sitting firm as a rock on my runaway steed. He made no ceremonies; caught the brute; and put the pleasant question: Why I had not vaulted, and come off by ground-and-lofty tumbling? though he knew full well, that for this a wooden-horse, which stands still, is requisite. However, he took me down; and so, after all this riding, horse and man got home with whole skins and unbroken bones.
But now at last to my Journey!
34: Women are like precious carved works of ivory; nothing is whiter and smoother, and nothing sooner growsyellow.72: The Half-learned is adored by the Quarter-learned; the latter by the Sixteenth-part-learned; and so on; but not the Whole-learned by the Half-learned.
34: Women are like precious carved works of ivory; nothing is whiter and smoother, and nothing sooner growsyellow.
72: The Half-learned is adored by the Quarter-learned; the latter by the Sixteenth-part-learned; and so on; but not the Whole-learned by the Half-learned.
You are aware, my friends, that this Journey to Flätz was necessarily to take place in Vacation time; not only because theCattle-market, and consequently the Minister and General von Schabacker, was there then; but more especially, because the latter (as I had it positively from a private hand) did annually, on the 23d of July, the market-eve, about five o'clock, become so full of gaudium and graciousness, that in many cases he did not so much snarl on people, as listen to them, and grant their prayers. The cause of this gaudium I had rather not trust to paper. In short, my Petition, praying that he would be pleased to indemnify and reward me, as an unjustly deposed Army-chaplain, by a Catechetical Professorship, could plainly be presented to him at no better season, than exactly about five o'clock in the evening of the first dog-day. In less than a week, I had finished writing my Petition. As I spared neither summaries nor copies of it, I had soon got so far as to see the relatively best lying completed before me; when, to my terror, I observed, that, in this paper, I had introduced above thirtydashes, or breaks, in the middle of my sentences! Nowadays, alas, these stings shoot forth involuntarily from learned pens, as from the tails of wasps. I debated long within myself whether a private scholar could justly be entitled to approach a minister with dashes,—greatly as this level interlineation of thoughts, these horizontal note-marks of poeticalmusic-pieces, and these rope-ladders or Achilles' tendons of philosophicalsee-pieces, are at present fashionable and indispensable: but, at last, I was obliged (as erasures may offend people of quality) to write my best proof-petition over again; and then to afflict myself for another quarter of an hour over the name Attila Schmelzle, seeing it is always my principle that this and the address of the letter, the two cardinal points of the whole, can never be written legibly enough.
35:Bien écouter c'est presque répondre, says Marivaux justly of social circles: but I extend it to round Councillor-tables and Cabinet-tables, where reports are made, and the Prince listens.
35:Bien écouter c'est presque répondre, says Marivaux justly of social circles: but I extend it to round Councillor-tables and Cabinet-tables, where reports are made, and the Prince listens.
The 22d of July, or Wednesday, about five in the afternoon, was now, by the way-bill of the regular Post-coach, irrevocably fixed for my departure. I had still half a day to order my house; from which, for two nights and two days and a half, my breast, its breastwork and palisado, was now, along with my Self, to be withdrawn. Besides this, my good wife Bergelchen, as I call my Teutoberga, was immediately to travel after me, on Friday the24th, in order to see and to make purchases at the yearly Fair; nay, she was ready to have gone along with me, the faithful spouse. I therefore assembled my little knot of domestics, and promulgated to them the Household Law and Valedictory Rescript, which, after my departure, in the first placebeforethe outset of my wife, and in the second placeafterthis outset, they had rigorously to obey; explaining to them especially whatever, in case of conflagrations, house-breakings, thunder-storms, or transits of troops, it would behove them to do. To my wife I delivered an inventory of the best goods in our little Registership; which goods she, in case the house took fire, had, in the first place, to secure. I ordered her, in stormy nights (the peculiar thief-weather), to put our Eolian harp in the window, that so any villanous prowler might imagine I was fantasying on my instrument, and therefore awake: for like reasons, also, to take the house-dog within doors by day, that he might sleep then, and so be livelier at night. I farther counselled her to have an eye on the focus of every knot in the panes of the stable-window, nay, on every glass of water she might set down in the house; as I had already often recounted to her examples of such accidental burning-glasses having set whole buildings in flames. I then appointed her the hour when she was to set out on Friday morning to follow me; and recapitulated more emphatically the household precepts, which, prior to her departure, she must afresh inculcate on her domestics. My dear, heart-sound, blooming Berga answered her faithful lord, as it seemed very seriously: "Go thy ways, little old one; it shall all be done as smooth as velvet. Wert thou but away! There is no end of thee!" Her brother, my brother-in-law the Dragoon, for whom, out of complaisance, I had paid the coach-fare, in order to have in the vehicle along with me a stout swordsman and hector, as spiritual relative and bully-rock, so to speak; the Dragoon, I say, on hearing these my regulations, puckered up (which I easily forgave the wild soldier and bachelor) his sunburnt face considerably into ridicule, and said: "Were I in thy place, sister, I should do what I liked, and then afterwards take a peep into these regulation-papers of his."
17: The Bed of Honour, since so frequently whole regiments lie on it, and receive their last unction, and last honour but one, really ought from time to time to be new-filled, beaten and sunned.120: Many a one becomes a free-spoken Diogenes, not when he dwells in the Cask, but when the Cask dwells in him.3: Culture makes whole lands, for instance Germany, Gaul, and others, physically warmer, but spiritually colder.
17: The Bed of Honour, since so frequently whole regiments lie on it, and receive their last unction, and last honour but one, really ought from time to time to be new-filled, beaten and sunned.
120: Many a one becomes a free-spoken Diogenes, not when he dwells in the Cask, but when the Cask dwells in him.
3: Culture makes whole lands, for instance Germany, Gaul, and others, physically warmer, but spiritually colder.
"O!" answered I, "misfortune may conceal itself like a scorpion in any corner: I might say, we are like children, who, looking at their gaily painted toy-box, soon pull off the lid, and, pop! out springs a mouse who has young ones."
"Mouse, mouse!" said he, stepping up and down. "But, good brother, it is five o'clock; and you will find, when you return, that all looks exactly as it does today; the dog like the dog, and my sister like a pretty woman:allons donc!" It was purely his blame that I, fearing his misconceptions, had not previously made a sort of testament.
I now packed-in two different sorts of medicines, heating as well as cooling, against two different possibilities; also my old splints for arm or leg breakages, in case the coach overset; and (out of foresight) two times the money I was likely to need. Only here I could have wished, so uncertain is the stowage of such things, that I had been an Ape with cheek-pouches, or some sort of Opossum with a natural bag, that so I might have reposited these necessaries of existence in pockets which were sensitive. Shaving is a task I always go through before setting out on journeys; having a rational mistrust against stranger bloodthirsty barbers: but, on this occasion, I retained my beard; since, however close shaved, it would have grown again by the road to such a length that I could have fronted no Minister and General with it.
With a vehement emotion, I threw myself on the pith-heart of my Berga, and, with a still more vehement one, tore myself away: in her, however, this our first marriage-separation seemed to produce less lamentation than triumph, less consternation than rejoicing; simply because she turned her eye not half so much on the parting, as on the meeting, and the journey after me, and the wonders of the Fair. Yet she threw and hung herself on my somewhat long and thin neck and body, almost painfully, being indeed a too fleshy and weighty load, and said to me: "Whisk thee off quick, my charming Attel (Attila), and trouble thy head with no cares by the way, thou singular man! A whiff or two of ill luck we can stand, by God's help, so long as my father is no beggar. And for thee, Franz," continued she, turning with some heat to her brother, "I leave my Attel on thy soul: thouwell knowest, thou wild fly, what I will do, if thou play the fool, and leave him anywhere in the lurch." Her meaning here was good, and I could not take it ill: to you also, my Friends, her wealth and her open-heartedness are nothing new.
1: The more Weakness the more Lying: Force goes straight; any cannonball with holes or cavities in it goes crooked.
1: The more Weakness the more Lying: Force goes straight; any cannonball with holes or cavities in it goes crooked.
Melted into sensibility, I said: "Now, Berga, if there be a reunion appointed for us, surely it is either in Heaven or in Flätz; and I hope in God, the latter." With these words, we whirled stoutly away. I looked round through the back-window of the coach at my good little village of Neusattel, and it seemed to me, in my melting mood, as if its steeples were rising aloft like an epitaphium over my life, or over my body, perhaps to return a lifeless corpse. "How will it all be," thought I, "when thou at last, after two or three days, comest back?" And now I noticed my Bergelchen looking after us from the garret-window. I leaned far out from the coach-door, and her falcon eye instantly distinguished my head; kiss on kiss she threw with both hands after the carriage, as it rolled down into the valley. "Thou true-hearted wife," thought I, "how is thy lowly birth, by thy spiritual new-birth, made forgettable, nay remarkable!"
I must confess, the assemblage and conversational picnic of the stage-coach was much less to my taste: the whole of them suspicious, unknown rabble, whom (as markets usually do) the Flätz cattle-market was alluring by its scent. I dislike becoming acquainted with strangers: not so my brother-in-law, the Dragoon; who now, as he always does, had in a few minutes elbowed himself into close quarters with the whole ragamuffin posse of them. Beside me sat a person who, in all human probability, was a Harlot; on her breast, a Dwarf intending to exhibit himself at the Fair; on the other side was a Ratcatcher gazing at me; and a Blind Passenger,[3]in a red mantle, had joined us down in the valley. No one of them, except my brother-in-law, pleased me. That rascals among these people would not study me and my properties and accidents, to entangle me in theirsnares, no man could be my surety. In strange places, I even, out of prudence, avoid looking long up at any jail-window; because some losel, sitting behind the bars, may in a moment call down out of mere malice: "How goes it, comrade Schmelzle?" or farther, because any lurking catchpole may fancy I am planning a rescue for some confederate above. From another sort of prudence, little different from this, I also make a point of never turning round when any booby calls, Thief! behind me.
38: Epictetus advises us to travel, because our old acquaintances, by the influence of shame, impede our transition to higher virtues; as a bashful man will rather lay aside his provincial accent in some foreign quarter, and then return wholly purified to his own countrymen: in our days, people of rank and virtue follow this advice, but inversely; and travel because their old acquaintances, by the influence of shame, would too much deter them from new sins.
38: Epictetus advises us to travel, because our old acquaintances, by the influence of shame, impede our transition to higher virtues; as a bashful man will rather lay aside his provincial accent in some foreign quarter, and then return wholly purified to his own countrymen: in our days, people of rank and virtue follow this advice, but inversely; and travel because their old acquaintances, by the influence of shame, would too much deter them from new sins.
[3]'Live Passenger,' 'Nip;' a passenger taken up only by Jarvie's authority, and for Jarvie's profit.—Ed.
'Live Passenger,' 'Nip;' a passenger taken up only by Jarvie's authority, and for Jarvie's profit.—Ed.
As to the Dwarf himself, I had no objection to his travelling with me whithersoever he pleased; but he thought to raise a particular delectation in our minds, by promising that his Pollux and Brother in Trade, an extraordinary Giant, who was also making for the Fair to exhibit himself, would by midnight, with his elephantine pace, infallibly overtake the coach, and plant himself among us, or behind on the outside. Both these noodles, it appeared, are in the habit of going in company to fairs, as reciprocal exaggerators of opposite magnitudes: the Dwarf is the convex magnifying-glass of the Giant, the Giant the concave diminishing-glass of the Dwarf. Nobody expressed much joy at the prospective arrival of this Anti-dwarf, except my brother-in-law, who (if I may venture on a play of words) seems made, like a clock, solely for the purpose ofstriking, and once actually said to me: "That if in the Upper world he could not get a soul to curry and towzle by a time, he would rather go to the Under, where most probably there would be plenty of cuffing and to spare." The Ratcatcher, besides the circumstance that no man can prepossess us much in his favour, who lives solely by poisoning, like this Destroying Angel of rats, this mouse-Atropos; and also, which is still worse, that such a fellow bids fair to become an increaser of the vermin kingdom, the moment he may cease to be a lessener of it; besides all this, I say, the present Ratcatcher had many baneful features about him: first, his stabbing look, piercing you like a stiletto; then the lean sharp bony visage, conjoined with his enumeration of his considerable stock of poisons; then (for I hated him more and more) his sly stillness, his sly smile, as if in some corner he noticed a mouse, as he would notice a man! To me, I declare, though usually I take not the slightest exception against people'slooks, it seemed at last as if his throat were a Dog-grotto, aGrotta del cane, his cheek-bones cliffs and breakers, his hot breath the wind of a calcining furnace, and his black hairy breast a kiln for parching and roasting.
32: Our Age (by some called the Paper Age, as if it were made from the rags of some better-dressed one) is improving in so far, as it now tears its rags rather into Bandages than into Papers; although, or because, the Rag-hacker (the Devil as they call it) will not altogether be at rest. Meanwhile, if Learned Heads transform themselves into Books, Crowned Heads transform and coin themselves into Government-paper: in Norway, according to theUniversal Indicator, the people have even paper-houses; and in many good German States, the Exchequer Collegium (to say nothing of the Justice Collegium) keeps its own paper-mills, to furnish wrappage enough for the meal of its wind-mills. I could wish, however, that our Collegiums would take pattern from that Glass Manufactory at Madrid, in which (according to Baumgartner) there were indeed nineteen clerks stationed, but also eleven workmen.
32: Our Age (by some called the Paper Age, as if it were made from the rags of some better-dressed one) is improving in so far, as it now tears its rags rather into Bandages than into Papers; although, or because, the Rag-hacker (the Devil as they call it) will not altogether be at rest. Meanwhile, if Learned Heads transform themselves into Books, Crowned Heads transform and coin themselves into Government-paper: in Norway, according to theUniversal Indicator, the people have even paper-houses; and in many good German States, the Exchequer Collegium (to say nothing of the Justice Collegium) keeps its own paper-mills, to furnish wrappage enough for the meal of its wind-mills. I could wish, however, that our Collegiums would take pattern from that Glass Manufactory at Madrid, in which (according to Baumgartner) there were indeed nineteen clerks stationed, but also eleven workmen.
Nor was I far wrong, I believe; for soon after this, he began quite coolly to inform the company, in which were a dwarf and a female, that, in his time, he had, not without enjoyment, run ten men through the body; had with great convenience hewed off a dozen men's arms; slowly split four heads, torn out two hearts, and more of the like sort; while none of them, otherwise persons of spirit, had in the least resisted: "but why?" added he, with a poisonous smile, and taking the hat from his odious bald pate: "I am invulnerable. Let any one of the company that chooses lay as much fire on my bare crown as he likes, I shall not mind it."
My brother-in-law, the Dragoon, directly kindled his tinder-box, and put a heap of the burning matter on the Ratcatcher's pole; but the fellow stood it, as if it had been a mere picture of fire, and the two looked expectingly at one another; and the former smiled very foolishly, saying: "It was simply pleasant to him, like a good warming-plaster; for this was always the wintry region of his body."
Here the Dragoon groped a little on the naked scull, and cried with amazement, that "it was as cold as a knee-pan."
But now the fellow, to our horror, after some preparations, actually lifted off the quarter-scull and held it out to us, saying: "He had sawed it off a murderer, his own having accidentally been broken;" and withal explained, that the stabbing and arm-cutting he had talked of was to be understood as a jest, seeing he had merely done it in the character of Famulus at an Anatomical Theatre. However, the jester seemed to rise little in favour with any of us; and for my part, as he put his brain-lid and sham-scull on again, I thought to myself; "This dungbed-bell has changed its place indeed, but not the hemlock it was made to cover."
Farther, I could not but reckon it a suspicious circumstance, that he as well as all the company (the Blind Passenger too) were making for this very Flätz, to which I myself was bound: much good I could not expect of this; and, in truth, turning home again would have been as pleasant to me as going on, had I not rather felt a pleasure in defying the future.
I come now to the red-mantled Blind Passenger; most probably anEmigréorRéfugié; for he speaks German not worse than he does French; and his name, I think, wasJean PierreorJean Paul, or some such thing, if indeed he had any name. His red cloak, notwithstanding this his identity of colour with the Hangman, would in itself have remained heartily indifferent to me, had it not been for this singular circumstance, that he had already five times, contrary to all expectation, come upon me in five different towns (in great Berlin, in little Hof, in Coburg, Meiningen and Bayreuth), and each of these times had looked at me significantly enough, and then gone his ways. Whether thisJean Pierreis dogging me with hostile intent or not, I cannot say; but to our fancy, at any rate, no object can be gratifying that thus, with corps of observation, or out of loopholes, holds and aims at us with muskets, which for year after year it shall move to this side and that, without our knowing on whom it is to fire. Still more offensive did Redcloak become to me, when he began to talk about his soft mildness of soul; a thing which seemed either to betoken pumping you or undermining you.
I replied: "Sir, I am just come, with my brother-in-law here, from the field of battle (the last affair was at Pimpelstadt), and so perhaps am too much of a humour for fire, pluck and war-fury; and to many a one, who happens to have a roaring waterspout of a heart, it may be well if his clerical character (which is mine) rather enjoins on him mildness than wildness. However, all mildness has its iron limit. If any thoughtless dog chance to anger me, in the first heat of rage I kick my foot through him; and after me, my good brother here will perhaps drive matters twice as far, for he is the man to do it. Perhaps it may be singular; but I confess I regret to this day, that once when a boy I received three blows from another, without tightly returningthem; and I often feel as if I must still pay them to his descendants. In sooth, if I but chance to see a child running off like a dastard from the weak attack of a child like himself, I cannot for my life understand his running, and can scarcely keep from interfering to save him by a decisive knock."
2: In his Prince, a soldier reverences and obeys at once his Prince and his Generalissimo; a Citizen only his Prince.
2: In his Prince, a soldier reverences and obeys at once his Prince and his Generalissimo; a Citizen only his Prince.
The Passenger meanwhile was smiling, not in the best fashion. He gave himself out for a Legations-Rath, and seemed fox enough for such a post; but a mad fox will, in the long-run, bite me as rabidly as a mad wolf will. For the rest, I calmly went on with my eulogy on courage; only that, instead of ludicrous gasconading, which directly betrays the coward, I purposely expressed myself in words at once cool, clear and firm.
"I am altogether for Montaigne's advice," said I: "Fear nothing but fear."
"I again," replied the Legations-man, with useless wire-drawing, "I should fear again that I did not sufficiently fear fear, but continued too dastardly."
"To this fear also," replied I coldly, "I set limits. A man, for instance, may not in the least believe in, or be afraid of ghosts; and yet by night may bathe himself in cold sweat, and this purely out of terror at the dreadful fright he should be in (especially with what whiffs of apoplexies, falling-sicknesses and so forth, he might be visited), in case simply his own too vivid fancy should create any wild fever-image, and hang it up in the air before him."
"One should not, therefore," added my brother-in-law the Dragoon, contrary to his custom, moralising a little, "one should not bamboozle the poor sheep, man, with any ghost-tricks; the hen-heart may die on the spot."
A loud storm of thunder, overtaking the stage-coach, altered the discourse. You, my Friends, knowing me as a man not quite destitute of some tincture of Natural Philosophy, will easily guess my precautions against thunder. I place myself on a chair in the middle of the room (often, when suspicious clouds are out, I stay whole nights on it), and by careful removal of all conductors, rings, buckles, and so forth, I here sit thunder-proof, and listen with a cool spirit to this elemental music of the cloud-kettledrum. These precautions have never harmed me, for I am still alive atthis date; and to the present hour I congratulate myself on once hurrying out of church, though I had confessed but the day previous; and running, without more ceremony, and before I had received the sacrament, into the charnel-house, because a heavy thunder-cloud (which did, in fact, strike the churchyard linden-tree) was hovering over it. So soon as the cloud had disloaded itself, I returned from the charnel-house into the church, and was happy enough to come in after the Hangman (usually the last), and so still participate in the Feast of Love.
45: Our present writers shrug their shoulders most at those on whose shoulders they stand; and exalt those most who crawl up along them.
45: Our present writers shrug their shoulders most at those on whose shoulders they stand; and exalt those most who crawl up along them.
Such, for my own part, is my manner of proceeding: but in the full stage-coach I met with men to whom Natural Philosophy was no philosophy at all. For when the clouds gathered dreadfully together over our coach-canopy, and sparkling, began to play through the air like so many fire-flies, and I at last could not but request that the sweating coach-conclave would at least bring out their watches, rings, money and suchlike, and put them all into one of the carriage-pockets, that none of us might have a conductor on his body; not only would no one of them do it, but my own brother-in-law the Dragoon even sprang out, with naked drawn sword, to the coach-box, and swore that he would conduct the thunder all away himself. Nor do I know whether this desperate mortal was not acting prudently; for our position within was frightful, and any one of us might every moment be a dead man. At last, to crown all, I got into a half altercation with two of the rude members of our leathern household, the Poisoner and the Harlot; seeing, by their questions, they almost gave me to understand that, in our conversational picnic, especially with the Blind Passenger, I had not always come off with the best share. Such an imputation wounds your honour to the quick; and in my breast there was a thunder louder than that above us: however, I was obliged to carry on the needful exchange of sharp words as quietly and slowly as possible; and I quarrelled softly, and in a low tone, lest in the end a whole coachful of people, set in arms against each other, might get into heat and perspiration; and so, by vapour steaming through the coach-roof, conduct the too-near thunderbolt down into the midst of us. At last, I laid before thecompany the whole theory of Electricity, in clear words, but low and slow (striving to avoid all emission of vapour); and especially endeavoured to frighten them away from fear. For indeed, through fear, the stroke—nay two strokes, the electric or the apoplectic—might hit any one of us; since in Erxleben and Reimarus, it is sufficiently proved, that violent fear, by the transpiration it causes, may attract the lightning. I accordingly, in some fear of my own and other people's fear, represented to the passengers that now, in a coach so hot and crowded, with a drawn sword on the coach-box piercing the very lightning, with the thunder-cloud hanging over us, and even with so many transpirations from incipient fear; in short, with such visible danger on every hand, they must absolutely fear nothing, if they would not, all and sundry, be smitten to death in a few minutes.
103: The Great perhaps take as good charge of their posterity as the Ants: the eggs once laid, the male and female Ants fly about their business, and confide them to the trustyworking-Ants.10: And does Life offer us, in regard to our ideal hopes and purposes, anything but a prosaic, unrhymed, unmetrical Translation?
103: The Great perhaps take as good charge of their posterity as the Ants: the eggs once laid, the male and female Ants fly about their business, and confide them to the trustyworking-Ants.
10: And does Life offer us, in regard to our ideal hopes and purposes, anything but a prosaic, unrhymed, unmetrical Translation?
"O Heaven!" cried I, "Courage! only courage! No fear, not even fear of fear! Would you have Providence to shoot you here sitting, like so many hares hunted into a pinfold? Fear, if you like, when you are out of the coach; fear to your heart's content in other places, where there is less to be afraid of; only not here, not here!"
I shall not determine—since among millions scarcely one man dies by thunder-clouds, but millions perhaps by snow-clouds, and rain-clouds, and thin mist—whether my Coach-sermon could have made any claim to a prize for man-saving; however, at last, all uninjured, and driving towards a rainbow, we entered the town of Vierstädten, where dwelt a Postmaster, in the only street which the place had.
The Postmaster was a churl and a striker; a class 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 hadmade a wrong face), I could have shielded myself with the Dragoon; for whose giant force such matter are a tidbit. This brother-in-law of mine, for example, cannot pass 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 snatches 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!
78: Our German frame of Government, cased in its harness, had much difficulty in moving, for the same reason why Beetles cannot fly, when theirwingshavewing-shells, of very sufficient strength, and—grown together.8: Constitutions 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 on an old worn-out one, full of holes? What is to be done then? Travel on.
78: Our German frame of Government, cased in its harness, had much difficulty in moving, for the same reason why Beetles cannot fly, when theirwingshavewing-shells, of very sufficient strength, and—grown together.
8: Constitutions 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 on an old worn-out one, full of holes? What is to be done then? Travel on.
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 circumstances conspire) painful investigation, and suspicions of your being an accomplice.
In Vierstädten, 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 passion at this sight, I pointed it out to the passengers, and then put the question, Whether they could reckon a system of Medical Police well arranged, which, like this of Vierstädten, 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 cocked 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-compass."
The Blind Passenger (he now got himself inscribed as a Seeing one, God 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 ofmadness: 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 handin margine; and we perish, not so much as knowing how."