The Campaner Thal and Other Writings Part 15

8. Culture makes whole lands, for instance Germany, Gaul, and others, physically warmer, but spiritually colder.

Melted into sensibility, I said: "Now, Berga, if there be a reunion appointed for us, surely it is either in Heaven or in Flatz; and I hope in G.o.d, 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 forgetable, nay, remarkable!"

1. The more Weakness the more Lying. Force goes straight; any cannon-ball with holes or cavities in it goes crooked.

I must confess, the a.s.semblage 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 Flatz 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 ragam.u.f.fin 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 Rat-catcher gazing at me; and a Blind Pa.s.senger,[73] 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 their snares, 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, further, 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 b.o.o.by calls, Thief! after me.

88. 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.

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 noodies, it appeared, are in the habit of going in company to fairs, as reciprocal exaggerators of opposite magnitudes; the Dwarf is the convex magnifying-gla.s.s of the Giant, the Giant the concave diminis.h.i.+ng-gla.s.s of the Dwarf. n.o.body 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 of _striking_, 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 Rat-catcher--besides the circ.u.mstance that no man can prepossess us much in his favor, 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 Rat-catcher 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's looks, it seemed at last as if his throat were a Dog-grotto, a _Grotta del cane_, his cheekbones cliffs and breakers, his hot breath the wind of a calcining furnace, and his black, hairy breast, a kiln for parching and roasting.

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 baldpate; "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 Rat-catcher'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."

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 the _Universal 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 Gla.s.s Manufactory at Madrid, in which (according to Baumgartner) there were indeed nineteen clerks stationed, but also eleven workmen.

But now the fellow, to our horror, after some preparations, actually lifted off the quarter-skull 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 favor with any of us; and for my part, as he put his brain-lid and sham-skull on again, I thought to myself: "This dung-bed-bell has changed its place, indeed, but not the hemlock it was made to cover."

Further, I could not but reckon it a suspicious circ.u.mstance, that he as well as all the company (the Blind Pa.s.senger too) were making for this very Flatz, 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 Pa.s.senger; most probably an _Emigre_ or _Refugie_; for he speaks German not worse than he does French; and his name, I think, was _Jean Pierre_ or _Jean Paul_, or some such thing, if indeed he had any name. His red cloak, notwithstanding this his ident.i.ty of color with the Hangman, would in itself have remained heartily indifferent to me; had it not been for this singular circ.u.mstance, 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 this _Jean Pierre_ is d.o.g.g.i.ng 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 loop-holes, 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 humor 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 returning them; 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."

The Pa.s.senger meanwhile was smiling, not in the best fas.h.i.+on. 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 epilepsies, 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, moralizing a little,--"one should not bamboozle the poor sheep, man, with any ghost-tricks; the henheart may die on the spot."

2. In his Prince, a soldier reverences and obeys at once his Prince and his Generalissimo; a Citizen, only his Prince.

A loud storm of thunder overtaking the stage-coach altered the discourse. You, my Friends, knowing me as a man not quite dest.i.tute 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 at this 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 partic.i.p.ate 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 fireflies, and I at last could not but request that the sweating coach-conclave would at least bring out their watches, rings, money, and such like, 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 Pa.s.senger, I had not always come off with the best share. Such an imputation wounds your honor 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 vapor steaming through the coach-roof, conduct the too near thunderbolt down into the midst of us. At last I laid before the company the whole theory of Electricity in clear words, but low and slow (striving to avoid all emission of vapor); and especially endeavored 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 pa.s.sengers 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 trusty _working-Ants_.

"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 Vierstadten, where dwelt a Postmaster, in the only street which the place had.