The Campaner Thal and Other Writings Part 8

In his Conrectorate closet he fell upon his knees and thanked G.o.d--not so much for his heritage and bride as--for his life; for he had gone away on Sunday morning with doubts whether he should ever come back; and it was purely out of love to the reader, and fear lest he might fret himself too much with apprehension, that I cunningly imputed Fixlein's journey more to his desire of knowing what was in the will, than of making his own will in presence of his mother. Every recovery is a bringing back and palingenesia of our youth; one loves the Earth and those that are on it with a new love. The Conrector could have found in his heart to take all his cla.s.s by the locks, and press them to his breast; but he only did so to his adjutant, the Quartaner, who, in the first Letter-box, was still sitting in the rank of a Quintaner....

His first expedition, after school-hours, was to the house of Meister Steinberger, where, without speaking a word, he counted down fifty florins cash in ducats, on the table: "At last I repay you," said Fixlein, "the moiety of my debt, and give you many thanks."

"Ey, Herr Conrector," said the Quartermaster, and continued calmly stuffing puddings as before, "in my bond it is said, _payable at three months' mutual notice_. How could a man like me go on, else? However, I will change you the gold-pieces." Thereupon he advised him that it might be more judicious to take back a florin or two, and buy himself a better hat, and whole shoes. "If you like," added he, "to get a calf-skin and half a dozen hare-skins dressed, they are lying up-stairs." I should think, for my own part, that to the reader it must be as little a matter of indifference as it was to the Butcher, whether the hero of such a History appeared before him with an old tattered potlid of a hat, and a pump-sucker and leg-harness pair of boots, or in suitable apparel. In short, before St. John's day, the man was dressed with taste and pomp.

But now came two most peculiarly important papers--at bottom only one, the pet.i.tion for the Hukelum parsons.h.i.+p--to be elaborated; in regard to which I feel as if I myself must a.s.sist.... It were a simple turn, if now at least the a.s.sembled public did not pay attention.

In the first place, the Conrector searched out and sorted all the Consistorial and Councillor quittances, or rather the toll-bills of the road-money, which he had been obliged to pay before the toll-gates at the Quintuss.h.i.+p and Conrectors.h.i.+p had been thrown open; for the executor of the Schadeck testament had to reimburse him the whole, as his discharge would express it, "to penny and farthing." Another would have summed up his post-excise much more readily; by merely looking what he--owed; as these debt-bills and those toll-bills, like parallel pa.s.sages, elucidate and confirm each other. But in Fixlein's case, there was a small circ.u.mstance of peculiarity at work, which I cannot explain till after what follows.

It grieved him a little that for his two offices he had been obliged to pay and to borrow no larger a sum than 135 florins, 41 kreuzers, and one halfpenny. The legacy, it is true, was to pa.s.s directly from the hands of the testamentary executor into those of the Regiments-Quartermaster; but yet he could have liked well had he--for man is a fool from the very foundation of him--had more to pay, and therefore to inherit. The whole Conrectorate he had, by a slight deposit of 90 florins, plucked, as it were, from the Wheel of Fortune; and so small a sum must surprise my reader; but what will he say, when I tell him that there are countries where the entry-money into school-rooms is even more moderate? In Scherau, a Conrector is charged only 88 florins, and perhaps he may have an income triple of this sum.

Not to speak of Saxony (what, in truth, was to be expected from the cradle of the Reformation, in Religion and Polite Literature), where a schoolmaster and a parson have _nothing_ to pay,--even in Baireuth, for example, in Hof, the progress of improvement has been such that a Quartus,--a Quartus, do I say,--a Tertius--a Tertius, do I say,--a Conrector,--at entrance on his post, is not required to pay down more than:--

Fl.rhen. Kr.rhen.

30 49 For taking the oaths at the Consistorium.

4 0 To the Syndic for the Presentation.

2 0 To the then Burgermeister.

45 7 For the Government-sanction.

--------------- Total, 81 fl. 56 kr.

If the printing-charges of a Rector do stand a little higher in some points, yet, on the other hand, a Tertius, Quartus, &c., come cheaper from the press than even a Conrector. Now, it is clear, that in this case a schoolmaster can subsist; since, in the course of the very first year, he gets an overplus beyond this _dockmoney_ of his office. A schoolmaster must, like his scholars, have been advanced from cla.s.s to cla.s.s, before these his loans to Government, together with the interest for delay of payment, can jointly amount to so much as his yearly income in the highest cla.s.s. Another thing in his favor is, that our inst.i.tutions do not--as those of Athens did--prohibit people from entering on office while in debt; but every man, with his debt-knapsack on his shoulders, mounts up, step after step, without obstruction. The Pope, in large benefices, appropriates the income of the first year, under the t.i.tle of _Annates_, or First-Fruits; and accordingly he, in all cases, bestows any large benefice on the possessor of a smaller one, thereby to augment both his own revenues and those of others; but it shows, in my opinion, a bright distinction between Popery and Lutheranism, that the Consistoriums of the latter abstract from their school-ministers and church-ministers not perhaps above two thirds of their first yearly income; though they too, like the Pope, must naturally have an eye to vacancies.

It may be that I shall here come in collision with the Elector of Mentz, when I confess, that, in Schmausen's _Corp. jur. pub. Germ_., I have turned up the Mentz-Imperial-Court-Chancery-tax-ordinance of the 6th January, 1659, and there investigated how much this same Imperial-Court-Chancery demands, as contrasted with a Consistorium. For example, any man that wishes to be baked or sodden into a _Poet Laureate_, has 50 florins tax-dues, and 20 florins Chancery-dues, to pay down; whereas, for 20 florins more, he might have been made a Conrector, who is a poet of this species, as it were by the by and _ex officio_. The inst.i.tution of a Gymnasium is permitted for 1,000 florins; an extraordinary sum, with which the whole body of the teachers in the inst.i.tuted Gymnasium might with us clear off the entry-moneys of their school-rooms. Again, a Freiherr, who, at any rate, often enough grows old without knowing how, must purchase the _venia aetatis_ with 200 hard florins; while, with the half sum, he might have become a schoolmaster, and here _age_ would have come of its own accord. And a thousand such things! They prove, however, that matters can be at no bad pa.s.s in our Governments and Circles, where promotions are sold dearer to Folly than to Diligence, and where it costs more to inst.i.tute a school than to serve in one.

The remarks I made on this subject to a Prince, as well as the remarks a Town-syndic made on it to myself, are too remarkable to be omitted for mere dread of digressiveness.

The Syndic--a man of enlarged views, and of fiery patriotism, the warmth of which was the more beneficent that he collected all the beams of it into one focus, and directed them to himself and his family--gave me (I had perhaps been comparing the School-bench and the School-stair to the _bench_ and the _ladder_, on which people are laid when about to be tortured) the best reply: "If a schoolmaster consume nothing but 30 reichsthalers;[52] if he annually purchase manufactured goods, according as Political Economists have calculated for each individual, namely, to the amount of 5 reichsthalers; and no more hundred-weights of victual than these a.s.sume, namely, 10; in short, if he live like a substantial wood-cutter, then the Devil must be in it if he cannot yearly lay by so much net profit as shall, in the long run, pay the interest of his entry debts."

The Syndic must have failed to convince me at that time, since I afterwards told the Flachsenfingen Prince:[53]

"Ill.u.s.trious sir, you know not, but I do,--not a player in your Theatre would act the Schoolmaster in Engel's _Prodigal Son_, three nights running, for such a sum as every real Schoolmaster has to take for acting it all the days of the year. In Prussia, invalids are made Schoolmasters; with us, Schoolmasters are made invalids." ....

But to our story! Fixlein wrote out the inventory of his Crown-debts; but with quite a different purpose than the reader will guess, who has still the Schadeck testament in his head. In one word, he wanted to be Parson of Hukelum. To be a clergyman, and in the place where his cradle stood, and all the little gardens of his childhood, his mother also, and the grove of betrothment,--this was an open gate into a New Jerusalem, supposing even that the living had been nothing but a meagre penitentiary. The main point was, he might marry, if he were appointed.

For, in the capacity of lank Conrector, supported only by the strengthening-girth of his waistcoat, and with emoluments whereby scarcely the purchase-money of a--purse was to be come at; in this way he was more like collecting wick and tallow for his burial torch than for his bridal one.

For the Schoolmaster cla.s.s are, in well-ordered states, as little permitted to marry as the soldiery. In _Conringius de Antiquitatibus Academicis_, where in every leaf it is proved that all cloisters were originally schools, I hit upon the reason. Our schools are now cloisters, and consequently we endeavor to maintain in our teachers at least an imitation of the Three Monastic Vows. The Vow of Obedience might perhaps be sufficiently enforced by School-Inspectors; but the second vow, that of Celibacy, would be more hard of attainment, were it not that, by one of the best political arrangements, the third vow, I mean a beautiful equality in Poverty, is so admirably attended to, that no man who has made it needs any further _testimonium paupertatis_;--and now _let_ this man, if he likes, lay hold of a matrimonial half, when of the two halves each has a whole stomach, and nothing for it but half-coins and half-beer!...

I know well, millions of my readers would themselves compose this Pet.i.tion for the Conrector, and ride with it to Schadeck to his Lords.h.i.+p, that so the poor rogue might get the sheepfold, with the annexed wedding-mansion; for they see clearly enough, that directly thereafter one of the best Letter-Boxes would be written that ever came from such a repository.

Fixlein's Pet.i.tion was particularly good and striking; it submitted to the Rittmeister four grounds of preference: 1. "He was a native of the parish; his parents and ancestors had already done Hukelum service; therefore he prayed," &c.

2. "The here doc.u.mented official debts of 135 florins, 41 kreuzers, and one halfpenny, the cancelling of which a never-to-be-forgotten testament secured him, he himself could clear, in case he obtained the living, and so hereby give up his claim to the legacy," &c.

_Voluntary Note by me_. It is plain he means to bribe his G.o.dfather, whom the lady's testament has put into a fume. But, gentle reader, blame not without mercy a poor, oppressed, heavy-laden school-man and school-horse for an indelicate insinuation, which truly was never mine.

Consider, Fixlein knew that the Rittmeister was a cormorant towards the poor, as he was a squanderer towards the rich. It may be, too, the Conrector might once or twice have heard, in the Law Courts, of patrons by whom not indeed the church and churchyard--though these things are articles of commerce in England--so much as the true management of them, had been sold, or rather farmed to farming-candidates. I know from Lange,[54] that the Church must support its patron, when he has nothing to live upon; and might not a n.o.bleman, before he actually began begging, be justified in taking a little advance, a fore-payment of his alimentary moneys, from the hands of his pulpit-farmer?--

3. "He had lately betrothed himself with Fraulein von Thiennette, and given her a piece of gold, as marriage-pledge; and could therefore wed the said Fraulein, were he once provided for," &c.

_Voluntary Note by me_. I hold this ground to be the strongest in the whole Pet.i.tion. In the eyes of Herr von Aufhammer, Thiennette's genealogical tree was long since stubbed, disleaved, worm-eaten, and full of millepedes; she was his [Oe]conoma, his Castle-Stewardess, and Legatess _a Latere_ for his domestics; and with her pretensions for an alms-coffer, was threatening in the end to become a burden to him. His indignant wish that she had been provided for with Fixlein's legacy might now be fulfilled. In a word, if Fixlein become Parson, he will have the third ground to thank for it; not at all the mad fourth....

4. "He had learned with sorrow, that the name of his Shock, which he had purchased from an Emigrant at Leipzig, meant Egidius in German; and that the dog had drawn upon him the displeasure of his Lords.h.i.+p. Far be it from him so to designate the Shock in future; but he would take it as a special grace, if for the dog, which he at present called without any name, his Lords.h.i.+p would be pleased to appoint one himself."

_My Voluntary Note_. The dog then, it seems, to which the n.o.bleman has. .h.i.therto been G.o.dfather, is to receive its name a _second_ time from him!--But how can the famis.h.i.+ng gardener's son, whose career never mounted higher than from the school-bench to the school-chair, and who never spoke with polished ladies, except singing, namely in the church, how can he be expected, in fingering such a string, to educe from it any finer tone than the pedantic one? And yet the source of it lies deeper; not the contracted _situation_, but the contracted _eye_, not a favorite science, but a narrow plebeian soul, makes us pedantic,--a soul that cannot _measure_ and _separate_ the _concentric_ circles of human knowledge and activity, that confounds the focus of universal human life, by reason of the focal distance, with every two or three converging rays; and that cannot see all, and tolerate all---- In short, the true Pedant is the Intolerant.

The Conrector wrote out his Pet.i.tion splendidly in five propitious evenings; employed a peculiar ink for the purpose; worked not indeed so long over it as the stupid Manucius over a Latin letter, namely, some months, if Scioppius's word is to be taken; still less so long as another scholar at a Latin epistle, who--truly we have nothing but Morhof's word for it--hatched it during four whole months; inserting his variations, adjectives, feet, with the authorities for his phrases, accurately marked between the lines. Fixlein possessed a more thoroughgoing genius, and had completely mastered the whole enterprise in sixteen days. While sealing, he thought, as we all do, how this cover was the seed-husk of a great entire Future, the rind of many sweet or bitter fruits, the swathing of his whole after life.

Heaven bless his cover; but I let you throw me from the Tower of Babel, if he get the parsonage; can't you see, then, that Aufhammer's hands are tied? In spite of all his other faults, or even because of them, he will stand like iron by his word, which he has given so long ago to the Subrector. It were another matter had he been resident at Court; for there, where old German manners still are, no promise is kept; for as, according to Moser, the Ancient Germans kept only such promises as they made in the _forenoon_ (in the afternoon they were all dead-drunk),--so the Court Germans likewise keep no afternoon promise; forenoon ones they would keep if they made any, which, however, cannot possibly happen, as at those hours they are--sleeping.

SEVENTH LETTER-BOX.

Sermon.--School-Exhibition.--Splendid Mistake.

The Conrector received his 135 florins, 43 kreuzers, one halfpenny Frankish; but no answer; the dog remained without name, his master without parsonage. Meanwhile the summer pa.s.sed away; and the Dragoon Rittmeister had yet drawn out no pike from the Candidate _breeding-pond_, and thrown him into the _feeding-pond_ of the Hukelum parsonage. It gratified him to be behung with prayers like a Spanish guardian Saint; and he postponed (though determined to prefer the Subrector) granting any one pet.i.tion, till he had seven-and-thirty dyers', b.u.t.ton-makers', tinsmiths' sons, whose pet.i.tions he could at the same time refuse. Grudge not him of Aufhammer this outlengthening of his electorial power! He knows the privileges of rank; feels that a n.o.bleman is like Timoleon, who gained his greatest victories on his birthday, and had nothing more to do than name some squiress, countess, or the like, as his mother. A man, however, who has been exalted to the Peerage, while still a f[oe]tus, may with more propriety be likened to the _spinner_, which, contrariwise to all other insects, pa.s.ses from the chrysalis state, and becomes a perfect insect in its mother's womb.--

But to proceed! Fixlein was at present not without cash. It will be the same as if I made a present of it to the reader, when I reveal to him, that of the legacy, which was clearing off old scores, he had still 35 florins left to himself, as _allodium_ and pocket-money, wherewith he might purchase whatsoever seemed good to him. And how came he by so large a sum, by so considerable a competence? Simply by this means; every time he changed a piece of gold, and especially at every payment he received, it had been his custom to throw in, blindly at random, two, three, or four small coins, among the papers of his trunk. His purpose was to astonish himself one day, when he summed up and took possession of this sleeping capital. And, by Heaven! he reached it too, when, on mounting the throne of his Conrectorate, he drew out these funds from his papers, and applied them to the coronation charges. For the present, he sowed them in again among his waste letters. Foolish Fixlein! I mean, had he not luckily exposed his legacy to jeopardy, having offered it as bounty-money and luckpenny to the patron, this false clutch of his at the knocker of the Hukelum church door, would certainly have vexed him; but now, if he had missed the knocker, he had the luckpenny again, and could be merry.

I now advance a little way in his History, and hit, in the rock of his Life, upon so fine a vein of silver, I mean upon so fine a day, that I must (I believe) content myself even in regard to the twenty-third of Trinity-term, when he preached a vacation sermon in his dear native village, with a brief transitory notice.

In itself the sermon was good and glorious; and the day a rich day of pleasure; but I should really need to have more hours at my disposal than I can steal from May, in which I am at present living and writing; and more strength than wandering through this fine weather has left me for landscape pictures of the same, before I could attempt, with any well-founded hope, to draw out a mathematical estimate of the length and thickness, and the vibrations and accordant relations to each other, of the various strings, which combined together to form for his heart a Music of the Spheres, on this day of Trinity-term, though such a thing would please myself as much as another.... Do not ask me! In my opinion, when a man preaches on Sunday, before all the peasants, who had carried him in their arms when a gardener's boy; further, before his mother, who is leading off her tears through the conduit of her satin m.u.f.f; further, before his Lords.h.i.+p, whom he can positively command to be blessed; and finally before his muslin bride, who is already blessed, and changing almost into stone, to find that the same lips can both kiss and preach; in my opinion, I say, when a man effects all this, he has some right to require of any Biographer who would paint his situation, that he--hold his jaw; and of the reader who would sympathize with it, that he open his, and preach himself.----

But what I must _ex officio_ depict, is the day to which this Sunday was but the prelude, the vigil, and the whet; I mean the prelude, the vigil, and the whet to the _Martini Actus_, or _Martinmas Exhibition_ of his school. On Sunday was the sermon, on Wednesday the Actus, on Tuesday the Rehearsal. This Tuesday shall now be delineated to the universe.

I count upon it that I shall not be read by mere people of the world alone, to whom a School-Actus cannot truly appear much better, or more interesting, than some Invest.i.ture of a Bishop, or the _opera seria_ of Frankfort Coronation; but that I likewise have people before me, who have been at schools, and who know how the School-Drama of an Actus and the stage-manager, and the playbill (the programme) thereof are to be estimated, still without overrating their importance.

Before proceeding to the Rehearsal of the _Martini Actus_, I impose upon myself, as dramaturgist of the play, the duty, if not of extracting, at least of recording, the Conrector's Letter of Invitation. In this composition he said many things; and (what an author likes so well) made proposals rather than reproaches; interrogatively reminding the public, whether, in regard to the well-known head-breakages of Priscian on the part of the Magnates in Pest and Poland, our school-houses were not the best quarantine and lazar-houses to protect us against infectious _barbarisms_? Moreover, he defended in schools what could be defended (and nothing in the world is sweeter or easier than a defence); and said, Schoolmasters, who, not quite justifiably, like certain Courts, spoke nothing, and let nothing be spoken to them, but Latin, might plead the Romans in excuse, whose subjects, and whose kings, at least in their epistles and public transactions, were obliged to make use of the Latin tongue. He wondered why only our Greek, and not also oar Latin Grammars, were composed in Latin, and put the pregnant question, whether the Romans, when they taught their little children the Latin tongue, did it in any other than in this same. Thereupon he went over to the Actus, and said what follows, in his own words:--

"I am minded to prove, in a subsequent Invitation, that everything which can be said or known about the great founder of the Reformation, the subject of our present Martini Prolusions, has been long ago exhausted, as well by Seckendorf as others. In fact, with regard to Luther's personalities, his table-talk, incomes, journeys, clothes, and so forth, there can now nothing new be brought forward, if at the same time it is to be true. Nevertheless, the field of the Reformation history is, to speak in a figure, by no means wholly cultivated; and it does appear to me as if the inquirer even of the present day might in vain look about for correct intelligence respecting the children, grandchildren, and children's children, down to our own times, of this great Reformer; all of whom, however, appertain, in a more remote degree, to the Reformation history, as he himself in a nearer. Thou shalt not perhaps be thres.h.i.+ng, said I to myself, altogether empty straw, if, according to thy small ability, thou bring forward and cultivate this neglected branch of History. And so have I ventured, with the last male descendant of Luther, namely, with the Advocate Martin Gottlob Luther, who practised in Dresden, and deceased there in 1759, to make a beginning of a more special Reformation history. My feeble attempt, in regard to this Reformationary Advocate, will be sufficiently rewarded, should it excite to better works on the subject; however, the little which I have succeeded in digging up and collecting with regard to him I here submissively, obediently, and humbly request all friends and patrons of the Flachsenfingen Gymnasium to listen to, on the 14th of November, from the mouths of six well-conditioned perorators. In the first place, shall

"_Gottlieb Spiesgla.s.s_, a Flachsenfinger, endeavor to show, in a Latin oration, that Martin Gottlob Luther was certainly descended of the Luther family. After him strives

"_Friedrich Christian Krabbler_, from Hukelum, in German prose, to appreciate the influence which Martin Gottlob Luther exercised on the then existing Reformation; whereupon, after him, will

"_Daniel Lorenz Stenzinger_ deliver, in Latin verse, an account of Martin Gottlob Luther's lawsuits; embracing the probable merits of Advocates generally, in regard to the Reformation. Which then will give opportunity to

"_Nikol Tobias Pfizman_ to come forward in French, and recount the most important circ.u.mstances of Martin Gottlob Luther's school-years, university-life, and riper age. And now, when

"_Andreas Eintarm_ shall have endeavored, in German verse, to apologize for the possible failings of this representative of the great Luther, will

"_Justus Strobel_, in Latin verse according to ability, sing his uprightness and integrity in the Advocate profession; whereafter I myself shall mount the cathedra, and most humbly thank all the patrons of the Flachsenfingen School, and then further bring forward those portions in the life of this remarkable man, of which we yet know absolutely nothing, they being spared, _Deo volente_, for the speakers of the next _Martini Actus_."