The Campaner Thal and Other Writings Part 18

What logic! "Or suppose," continued I, without answer, "a man happened to be travelling with that Vienna Locksmith, who afterwards became a mother, and was brought to bed of a baby son; or with any disguised Chevalier d'Eon, who often pa.s.ses the night in his company, whereby the Locksmith or the Chevalier can swear to their private interviews; no delicate man of honor will in the end risk travelling with another; seeing he knows not how soon the latter may pull off his boots, and pull on his women's-pumps, and swear his companion into Fatherhood, and himself to the Devil!"

67. Hospitable Entertainer, wouldst thou search into thy Guest?

Accompany him to another Entertainer, and listen to him. Just so, wouldst thou become better acquainted with Mistress in an hour, than by living with her for a month? Accompany her among her female friends and female enemies (if that is no pleonasm), and look at her!

Some of the company, however, misunderstood my oratorical fire so much, that they, sheep-wise, gave some insinuations as if I myself were not strict in this point, but lax. By Heaven! I no longer knew what I was eating or speaking. Happily, on the opposite side of the table, some lying story of a French defeat was started. Now, as I had read on the street corners that French and German Proclamation, calling before the Court Martial any one who had heard war rumors (disadvantageous, namely), without giving notice of them,--I, as a man not willing ever to forget himself, had nothing more prudent to do in this case, than to withdraw with empty ears, telling none but the landlord why.

It was no improper time; for I had previously determined to have my beard shaven about half past four, that so, towards five, I might present myself with a chin just polished by the razor smoothing-iron, and sleek as wove-paper, without the smallest root-stump of a hair left on it. By way of preparation, like Pitt before Parliamentary debates, I poured a devilish deal of Pontac into my stomach, with true disgust, and contrary to all sanitary rules; not so much for fronting the light stranger Barber, as the Minister and General von Schabacker, with whom I had it in view to exchange perhaps more than one fiery statement.

80. In the Summer of life, men keep digging and filling ice-pits, as well as circ.u.mstances will admit; that so, in their Winter, they may have something in store to give them coolness.

28. It is impossible for me, amid the tendril-forest of allusions (even this again is a tendril-twig), to state and declare on the spot whether all the Courts or Heights, the (Bougouer) _Snowline_ of Europe, have ever been mentioned in my writings or not; but I could wish for information on the subject, that, if not, I may try to do it still.

The common Hotel Barber was ushered in to me; but at first view you noticed in his polygonal, zigzag visage, more of a man that would finally go mad, than of one growing wiser. Now, madmen are a cla.s.s of persons whom I hate incredibly; and nothing can take me to see any madhouse, simply because the first maniac among them may clutch me in his giant fists if he like; and bet cause, owing to infection, I cannot be sure that I shall ever get out again with the sense which I brought in. In a general way, I sit (when once I am lathered) in such a posture on my chair as to keep both my hands (the eyes I fix intently on the bartering countenance) lying clenched along my sides, and pointed directly at the midriff of the barber; that so, on the smallest ambiguity of movement, I may dash in upon him, and overset him in a twinkling.

I scarce know rightly how it happened; but here, while I am anxiously studying the foolish, twisted visage of the shaver, and he just then chanced to lay his long whetted weapon a little too abruptly against my bare throat, I gave him such a sudden bounce on the abdominal viscera, that the silly varlet had wellnigh suicidally slit his own windpipe.

For me, truly, nothing remained but to indemnify the man; and then, contrary to my usual principles, to tie round a broad stuffed cravat, by way of cloak to what remained unshorn.

And now at last I sallied forth to the General, drinking out the remnant of the Pontac, as I crossed the threshold.

36. And so I should like, in all cases, to be the First, especially in Begging. The first prisoner-of-war, the first cripple, the first man ruined by burning (like him who brings the first fire-engine), gains the head-subscription and the heart; the next comer finds nothing but Duty to address; and at last, in this melodious _mancando_ of sympathy, matters sink so far, that the last (if the last but one may at least have retired laden with a rich "G.o.d help you!") obtains from the benignant hand nothing more than its fist. And as in Begging the first, so in Giving I should like to be the last; one obliterates the other, especially the last the first. So, however, is the world ordered.

I hope there were plans lying ready within me for answering rightly, nay for asking. The Pet.i.tion I carried in my pocket, and in my right hand. In the left, I had a duplicate of it. My fire of spirit easily helped over the living fence of ministerial obstructions; and soon I unexpectedly found myself in the ante-chamber, among his most distinguished lackeys; persons, so far as I could see, not inclined to change flour for bran with any one. Selecting the most respectable individual of the number, I delivered him my paper request, accompanied with the verbal one that he would hand it in. He took it, but ungraciously. I waited in vain till far in the sixth hour, at which season alone the gay General can safely be applied to. At last I pitch upon another lackey, and repeat my request; he runs about seeking his runaway brother, or my Pet.i.tion, to no purpose; neither of them could be found. How happy was it that in the midst of my Pontac, before shaving, I had written out the duplicate of this paper; and therefore--simply on the principle that you should always keep a second wooden leg packed into your knapsack when you have the first on your body--and out of fear, that, if the original pet.i.tion chanced to drop from me in the way between the Tiger and Schabacker's, my whole journey and hope would melt into water,--and therefore, I say, having stuck the repeating work of that original paper into my pocket, I had, in any case, something to hand in, and that something truly a Ditto. I handed it in.

136. If you mount too high above your time, your ears (on the side of Fame) are little better off than if you sink too deep below it; in truth, Charles up in his Balloon, and Halley down in his Diving-bell, felt equally the same strange pain in their ears.

Unhappily six o'clock was already past. The lackey, however, did not keep me long waiting; but returned with--I may say, the text of this whole Circular--the almost rude answer (which you, my Friends, out of regard for me and Schabacker, will not divulge), that: "In case I were the Attila Schmelzle of Schabacker's Regiment, might lift my pigeon-liver flag again, and fly to the Devil, as I did at Pimpelstadt." Another man would have dropt dead on the spot; I, however, walked quite stoutly off, answering the fellow: "With great pleasure indeed, I fly to the Devil; and so Devil a fly I care." On the road home, I examined myself, whether it had not been the Pontac that spoke out of me (though the very examination contradicted this, for Pontac never examines); but I found that nothing but I, my heart, my courage perhaps, had spoken; and why, after all, any whimpering? Does not the patrimony of my good wife endow me better than ten Catechetical Professors.h.i.+ps? And has she not furnished all the corners of my book of Life with so many golden clasps, that I can open it forever without wearing it? Let henhearts cackle and pip; I flapped my pinions, and said: "Dash boldly through it, come what may!" I felt myself excited and exalted; I fancied Republics, in which I, as a hero, might be at home; I longed to be in that n.o.ble Grecian time, when one hero readily put up with bastinadoes from another, and said, "Strike, but hear!" and out of this ign.o.ble one, where men will scarcely put up with hard words, to say nothing of more. I painted out to my mind how I should feel, if, in happier circ.u.mstances, I were uprooting hollow Thrones, and before whole nations mounting on mighty deeds as on the Temple-steps of Immortality; and, in gigantic ages, finding quite other men to outman and outstrip, than the mite-populace about me, or, at the best, here and there a Vulcanello. I thought and thought, and grew wilder and wilder, and intoxicated myself (no Pontac intoxication therefore, which, you know, increases more by continuance than cessation of drinking), and gesticulated openly, as I put the question to myself: "Wilt thou be a mere state-lapdog? A dog's-dog, a _pium desiderium_ of an _impium desiderium_, an Ex-Ex, a Nothing's-Nothing?--Fire and Fury!" With this, however, I dashed down my hat into the mud of the market. On lifting and cleaning this old servant, I could not but perceive how worn and faded it was; and I therefore determined instantly to purchase a new one, and carry the same home in my hand.

25. In youth, like a blind man just couched (and what is birth but a couching of the sight?), you take the Distant for the Near, the starry heaven for tangible room-furniture, pictures for objects; and, to the young man, the whole world is sitting on his very nose, till repeating bandaging and unbandaging have at last taught him, like the blind patient, to estimate _Distance_ and _Appearance_.

I accomplished this. I bought one of the finest cut. Strangely enough, by this hat, as if it had been a Graduation-hat, was my head tried and examined in the Ziegenga.s.se or Goat-gate of Flatz. For as General Schabacker came driving along that street in his carriage, and I (it need not be said) was determined to avenge myself, not by vulgar clownishness, but by courtesy, I had here got one of the most ticklish problems imaginable to solve on the spur of the instant. You observe, if I swung only the fine hat which I carried in my hand, and kept the faded one on my head,--I might have the appearance of a perfect clown, who does not doff at all; if, on the other hand, I pulled the old hat from my head, and therewith did my reverence, then two hats, both in play at once (let me swing the other at the same time or not), brought my salute within the verge of ridicule. Now do you, my Friends, before reading further, bethink you how a man was to extricate himself from such a plight, without losing his presence of mind! I think, perhaps, by this means; by merely losing his hat. In one word, then, I simply dropped the new hat from my hand into the mud, to put myself in a condition for taking off the old hat by itself, and swaying it in needful courtesy, without any shade of ridicule.

Arrived at the Tiger,--to avoid misconstructions, I first had the glossy, fine, and superfine hat cleaned, and some time afterwards the mud-hat or rubbis-hat.

And now, weighing my momentous Past in the adjusting balance within me, I walked in fiery mood to and fro. The Pontac must--I know that there is no unadulterated liquor here below--have been more than usually adulterated; so keenly did it chase my fancy out of one fire into the other. I now looked forth into a wide, glittering life, in which I lived without post, merely on money; and which I beheld, as it were, sowed with the Delphic caves, and Zenonic walks, and Muse-hills of all the Sciences, which I might now cultivate at my ease. In particular, I should have it in my power to apply more diligently to writing Prize-essays for Academies; of which (that is to say, of the Prize-essays) no author need ever be ashamed, since, in all cases, there is a whole crowning Academy to stand and blush for the crownee.

And even if the Prize-marksman does not hit the crown, he still continues more unknown and more anonymous (his Device not being unsealed) than any other author, who indeed can publish some nameless Long-ear of a book, but not hinder it from being, by a Literary a.s.s-burial (_sepultura asinina_), publicly interred, in a short time, before half the world.

126. In the long run, out of mere fear and necessity, we shall become the warmest cosmopolites I know of; so rapidly do s.h.i.+ps shoot to and fro, and, like shuttles, weave Islands and Quarters of the World together. For let but the political weather-gla.s.s fall to-day in South America, to-morrow we in Europe have storm and thunder.

19. It is easier, they say, to climb a hill when you ascend back foremost. This, perhaps, might admit of application to political eminences; if you still turned towards them that part of the body on which you sit, and kept your face directed down to the people; all the while, however, removing and mounting.

Only one thing grieved me by antic.i.p.ation; the sorrow of my Berga, for whom, dear tired wayfarer, I on the morrow must overcloud her arrival, and her shortened market-spectacle, by my negatory intelligence. She would so gladly (and who can take it ill of a rich farmer's Daughter?) have made herself somebody in Neusattel, and overshone many a female dignitary! Every mortal longs for his parade-place, and some earlier living honor than the last honors. Especially so good a lowly-born housewife as my Berga, conscious perhaps rather of her metallic than of her spiritual treasure, would still wish at banquets to be mistress of some seat or other, and so in place to overtop this or that plucked goose of the neighborhood.

26. Few German writers are not original, if we may ascribe originality (as is at least the conversational practice of all people) to a man who merely dishes out his own thoughts without foreign admixture. For as, between their Memory, where their reading or foreign matter dwells, and their Imagination or Productive Power, where their writing or own peculiar matter originates, a sufficient s.p.a.ce intervenes, and the boundary-stones are fixed in so conscientiously and firmly that nothing foreign may pa.s.s over into their own, or inversely, so that they may really read a hundred works without losing their own primitive flavor, or even altering it,--their individuality may, I believe, be considered as secured; and their spiritual nourishment, their pancakes, loaves, fritters, caviare, and meat-b.a.l.l.s, are not a.s.similated to their system, but given back pure and unaltered. Often in my own mind, I figure such writers as living but thousand-fold more artificial Ducklings from Vauca.s.son's Artificial Duck of Wood. For in fact they are not less cunningly put together than this timber Duck, which will gobble meat and apparently void it again, under show of having digested it, and derived from it blood and juices; though the secret of the business is, the artist has merely introduced an ingenious compound ejective matter behind, with which concoction and nourishment have nothing to do, but which the Duck illusorily gives forth and publishes to the world.

It is in this point of view that husbands are so indispensable. I therefore resolved to purchase for myself, and consequently for her, one of the best of those t.i.tles which our Courts in Germany (as in a Leipzig saleroom) stand offering to buyers, in all sizes and sorts, from n.o.ble and Half-n.o.ble down to Rath or Councillor; and once invested therewith, to reflect from my own Quarter-n.o.bility such an Eighth-part-n.o.bility on this true soul, that many a Neusattelitess (I hope) shall half burst with envy, and say and cry: "Pooh, the stupid farmer thing! See how it wabbles and bridles! It has forgot how matters stood when it had no money-bag and no Hofrath!" For to the Hofraths.h.i.+p I shall before this have attained.

But in the cold solitude of my room, and the fire of my remembrances, I longed unspeakably for my Bergelchen; I and my heart were wearied with the foreign busy day; no one here said a kind word to me, which he did not hope to put in the bill. Friends! I languished for my friend, whose heart would pour out its blood as a balsam for a second heart; I cursed my over-prudent regulations, and wished, that, to have the good Berga at my side, I had given up the stupid houseware to all thieves and fires whatsoever. As I walked to and fro, it seemed to me easier and easier to become all things, an Exchequer-Rath, an Excise-Rath, any Rath in the world, and whatever she required when she came.

"See thou take thy pleasure in the town!" had Bergelchen kept saying the whole week through. But how, without her, can I take any? Our tears of sorrow friends dry up, and accompany with their own; but our tears of joy we find most readily repeated in the eyes of our wives. Pardon me, good Friends, these libations of my sensibility; I am but showing you my heart and my Berga. If I need an Absolution-merchant, the Pontac-merchant is the man.

_First Night in Flatz_.

Yet the wine did not take from me the good sense to look under the bed, before going into it, and examine whether any one was lurking there; for example, the Dwarf, or the Rat-catcher, or the Legations-Rath; also to shove the key under the latch (which I reckon the best bolting arrangement of all), and then, by way of further a.s.surance, to bore my night-screws into the door, and pile all the chairs in a heap behind it; and, lastly, to keep on my breeches and shoes, wis.h.i.+ng absolutely to have no care upon my mind.