Chapter III (1)

LENETTE'S HONEYMOON--BOOK BREWING--SCHULRATH STIEFEL--MR. EVERARD--
A DAY BEFORE THE FAIR--THE RED COW--ST. MICHAEL'S FAIR--THE
BEGGARS' OPERA--DIABOLICAL TEMPTATION IN THE WILDERNESS, OR THE
MANNIKIN OF FASHION--AUTUMN JOYS--A NEW LABYRINTH.

The world could not make a greater mistake than to suppose that our common hero would be to be seen on the Monday sitting in a mourning coach, in a mourning cloak, crape hat-band and scarf, and black shoe-buckles, figuring as chief mourner at the sham funeral of his happiness and his capital.

Heavens! how _can_ the world make such an exceedingly bad shot as that? The advocate was not even in _quarter_ mourning, let alone half; he was in as good spirits as if he had this third chapter before him, and were just beginning it, as I am.

The reason was, that he had drawn up an able plaint against his guardian, Blaise (enlivening it with sundry satirical touches, which nobody but himself understood), and laid it before the Inheritance Office. When we are in a difficulty, it is always so much gained if we can but _do something or other_. Let fortune bluster in our faces with ever so harsh and frosty an autumn wind--as long as it does not break the fore joint of our wing (as in the case of the swans), our very fluttering, though it may not transport us into a warmer climate, will at all events have the effect of warming us a little. From motives of kindness, Siebenkæs kept his wife in ignorance of the delay in the settling of his heritage accounts, as well as of the old story of the change of names; he thought there was very little likelihood of a struggling advocate's wife ever having an opportunity of looking over a patrician's shoulder into his family hand at cards.

And, indeed, what could a man who had made a sudden plunge from out his hermit's holy-week of single blessedness, into the full honeymoon of double blessedness wish for besides? Not until now had he been able to hold his Lenette in both his arms rightly--hitherto his friend, always fluttering backwards and forwards in life, had been held fast with his _left_ arm; but now, she was able to stretch herself out far more comfortably in the chambers of his heart. And the bashful wife did this as much as she dared. She confessed to him, albeit timidly, that she was almost glad not to have that boisterous Saufinder lying under the table and glaring out in that terrible way of his. Whether she experienced a similar relief at the absence of his wild master, she could not be brought to say. To the advocate she felt a good deal like a daughter, and her great tall father could never have enough of her quaint little ways. That, when he went out, she used to look after him as long as he was in sight, was nothing in comparison to the way in which she used to run out after him with a brush, when she noticed from the window that there was such a quantity of street paving sticking to his coat-tails that nothing would do but she must have him back again into the house, and brush his back as clean as if the Kuhschnappel municipality would charge him paving-tax if any of the mud were found on him. He would take hold of the brush and stop it, and kiss her, and say, "There's a good deal _inside_ as well; but nobody sees it there; when I come back we'll set to work and scrub some of _that_ away."

Her maidenly obedience to his every wish and hint, her daughterly observance and fulfilment of them, were more than he looked for or required, indeed; but not too great for the love he bestowed in return. "Senate clerk's daughter," he said, "you mustn't be _too_ obedient to me; remember I'm not your father, a senate clerk, but a poor's advocate who has married you and signs himself Siebenkæs, to the best of his belief."

"My poor dear father," she answered, "used often to compose and write down things too at home, himself, with his own hand, and then fair-copy them beautifully afterwards." But he enjoyed these crooked answers which she used to make. And though, from sheer veneration of him, she never understood a single one of the jokes which he was always making about himself (for she gainsaid him when he satirically depreciated himself, and agreed with him completely if he ironically lauded himself), yet these mental provincialisms of hers pleased him not a little. She would use such words as "fleuch" for "fliehe," "reuch" and "kreuch" for "riehe" and "kriehe;" religious antiquities out of Luther's Bible, which were valuable and enjoyable contributions to her stock of idiosyncracies, and to the happiness of his honeymoon. One day when he took a particularly pretty cap which she had tried on with much satisfaction to each of her three cap-blocks, one after another (she would often gently kiss these cap-blocks), and putting it on her own little head before the looking-glass, said, "See how it looks on your _own_ head; perhaps that's as good a block as the others," she laughed with immense delight, and said, "Now, you are always flattering one!"

Believe me, this naive failure of hers to see his joke so touched him that he made a secret vow never to make another of the kind, except in private to himself. But there was a greater honeymoon pleasure still. This was that, when there came a fast day, Lenette would on no account allow him to kiss her, when she came into the room (ready for church), her white and red bloom of youth shining out with threefold beauty from under her black lace head-dress, and the dark leafage of her dress.

"Worldly thoughts of that kind," she said, "weren't at all proper before service, when people had on their fast-day things; people must wait!"

"By heaven!" said Siebenkæs to himself, "may I stick a soup spoon five inches long and three broad through my lower lip, like a North American squaw, and go about with it there, if ever I begin spooning and kissing the pious soul again, when she has a black dress on, and the bells are ringing." And though he wasn't much of a churchgoer himself, he kept his word. See how we men behave in matrimonial life, young ladies!

From all which it will readily appear how perfectly happy the advocate was during his honeymoon, when Lenette, in the most delightful manner, did all those things for him which he used previously to have to do for himself in a most miserable fashion and against the grain, making by unwearied sweepings and brushings his dithyrambic chartreuse as clean and level and smooth as a billiard-table. Whole honey-trees full of cakes did she plant during the honeymoon; humming round him of a morning like a busy bee, carrying wax into her little hive (while he was going quietly on with his law-papers, building away at his juridical wasp's nest), forming her cells, cleaning them out, ejecting foreign bodies, and mending chinks; he now and then looking out of his wasp's nest at the pretty little figure in the tidiest of household dresses, at sight of which he would take his pen in his mouth, hold his hand out to her across the ink-bottle, and say, "Only wait till the afternoon comes and you're sitting sewing--then, as I walk up and down, I shall pay you with kisses to your heart's content." But that none of my fair readers may be unhappy about the souring of the honey of this moon which the conduct of that disinheriting blackguard Blaise might bring about, let me just ask one question? Hadn't Siebenkæs a whole silver mine and a coining mill, in the shape of seven law suits all going on, full of veins of rich ore? And hadn't Leibgeber sent him a military treasury chest on four wheels of fortune, containing two spectacle dollars of Julius Duke of Brunswig, a Russian triple-dollar of 1679, a tail or queue ducat--a gnat or wasp dollar--five vicariat ducats, and a heap of Ephraimites? For he might melt down and volatilise this collection of coins without a moment's hesitation, inasmuch as his friend had only pocketed them by way of a jest on the people who pay a hundred dollars for one. They two had all things corporeal and mental in common to an extent comprehensible by few. They had arrived at that point where there is no distinction visible between the giver and the receiver of a benefit, and they stepped across the chasms of life bound together, as the crystal-seekers in the Alps tie themselves to each other to prevent their falling into the ice clefts.

One Lady Day, towards evening, however, he hit upon an idea which will quite reassure all fair readers of his history who may be in a state of anxiety about him, and which made _him_ happier than the receipt of the biggest basket of bread with little baskets of fruit in it would have done--or a hamper of wine. He had felt sure all along that he _would_ hit upon an idea. Whenever he was in a difficulty of any kind, he always used to say, "Now, I wonder what I shall hit upon _this_ time; for I _shall_ hit upon something or other as sure as there are four chambers in my brain." The delightful idea in question was, that he should do what I am doing at this moment--write a book; only his was to be a satirical one.[22] A torrent of blood rushed through the opened sluices of his heart, right in amongst the wheels and mill-machinery of his ideas, and the whole of the mental mechanism rattled, whirred, and jingled in a moment--a peck or two of material for the book was ground on the spot.

I know of no greater mental tumult--hardly of any sweeter--which can arise in a young man's being, than that which he experiences when he is walking up and down his room, and forming the daring resolution that he will take a book of blank paper and make it into a manuscript; indeed it is a point which might be argued whether Winckelmann, or Hannibal the great general, strode up and down _their_ rooms at a greater pace when they respectively formed the (equally daring) resolution that they would go to Rome. Siebenkæs, having made up his mind to write a 'Selection from the Devil's Papers,' was forced to run out of the house, and three times round the market-place, just to fix his fluttering, rushing ideas into their proper grooves again by the process of tiring his legs. He came back wearied by the glow within him--looked to see if there was enough white paper in the house for his manuscript--and running up to his Lenette, who was tranquilly working away at a cap, gave her a kiss before she could well take the needle out of her mouth--last thorn upon the rose-tree! During the kiss she quietly gave a finishing stitch to the border of the cap (squinting down at it the best way she could without moving her head).

"Rejoice with me!" he cried, "come and dance about with me! to-morrow I'm going to begin a work, a book! Roast the calf's head to-night, though it be a breach of our ten commandments." For he and she, on the Wednesday before, had formed themselves into a committee on food regulations, and, of the Thirty-nine articles of domestic economy, which had then been passed and subscribed to, one was that, Brahminlike, they were to do without meat at supper.

But he had the greatest difficulty in getting her to understand how it was that he made out that he would be able to procure her another calf's head with a single sheet of the 'Selections from the Devil's Papers,' and that he was perfectly justified in issuing a dispensation from that evening's fast; for like the common herd of mankind, or like the printers, Lenette thought that a written book was paid for at the same rate as a printed one, and that the compositor got rather more than the author. She had never in her life had the slightest idea of the enormous sums which authors are paid nowadays; she was like Racine's wife, who did not know what a line of poetry or a tragedy was, although she kept house upon them. For my part, however, I should never lead to the altar, or into my home as my wife, any woman who wasn't capable of at least completing any sentence which death should knock me over with his hour-glass in the middle of,--or who wouldn't be unspeakably delighted when I read to her learned Göttingen gazettes, or universal German magazines, in which I was bepraised, more than I deserved perhaps.

The rapture of authorship had set all Siebenkæs's blood-globules into such a flow, and all his ideas into such a whirlwind this whole evening that, in the condition of vividness of fueling and fancy in which he was (a condition which in him often assumed the appearance of temper), he would instantly have flown out and exploded like so much fulminating gold at everything of a slow moving kind which he came across--such as the servant girl's heavy dawdling step, or the species of dropsy with which her utterance was afflicted;--but that he at once laid hold on a precious sedative powder for the over-excitement caused by happiness, and took a dose of it. It is easier to communicate an impetus and a rapid flow to the slow-gliding blood of a heavy, sorrowful heart, than to moderate and restrain the billowy, surging, foaming current which rushes through the veins in happiness; but he could always calm himself, even in the wildest joy, by the thought of the inexhaustible Hand which bestowed it, and that gentle tenderness of heart wherewith our eyes are drooped to earth as we remember the invisible, eternal Benefactor of all hearts. At such a time the heart, softened by thankfulness and by joyful tears, will speak its gratitude by at least being kindlier towards all mankind, if in no other way. That fierce, untamed delight, which is what Nemesis avenges, can best be kept within due bounds by this sense of gratitude; and those who have died of joy would either _not_ have died at all, or would have died of a _better_ and lovelier joy, if their hearts had first been softened by a grateful heavenward gaze.

His first and best thanksgiving for the new, smooth, beautiful banks, between which his life-stream had now been led, took the form of a zealous and careful drawing up of a defence which he had to prepare in the case of a girl charged with child-murder, to save her from torture on the rack. The state-physician of the borough had condemned her to the "trial by the lungs," a neither more nor less suitable punishment than the "trial by water" (which used to be inflicted on witches).

Calm spring-days of matrimony, peaceful and undisturbed, laid down their carpet of flowers for the feet of these two to tread upon. Only there sometimes appeared under the window, when Lenette was stretching herself and her white arm out of a morning, and slowly accomplishing the fastening back of the outside shutters, a gentleman in flesh-coloured silk.

"I really feel quite ashamed to stretch," she said; "there's a gentleman always standing in the street, and he takes off his hat, and notes one down just as if he were the meat appraiser."

The Schulrath Stiefel kept, on the school Saturday holidays, the solemn promise he had made on the wedding-day to come and see them often, and at all events to be sure and come on the Saturdays. I think I shall call him Peltzstiefel (Furboots) as a pleasing variety for the ear--seeing that the whole town gave him that name on account of the gray miniver, faced with hareskin, which he wore on his legs by way of a portable wood-economising stove. Well, Peltzstiefel, the moment he came in at the door, fastened joy-flowers together into a nosegay, and stuck them into the advocate's button-bole, by appointing him on the spot his collaborateur on the 'Kuhschnappel Indicator, Heavenly Messenger, and School Programme Review'--a work which ought to be better known, so that the works recommended by it might be so too. This newspaper engagement of Siebenkæs is a great pleasure to me; it will at any rate bring my hero in sixpence or so towards a supper now and then. The Schulrath, who was editor of this paper, had a high sense of the power and responsibility of his post; but Siebenkæs had now risen to the dignity of an author--the only being who in his eyes was superior even to a reviewer--for Lenette had told him on the way to church that her husband was going to have a great thick book printed. The Schulrath considered the 'Salzburg Literary Gazette' of the period the apocryphal, and the 'Jena Literary Gazette' the canonical scriptures: the single voice of one reviewer was, for _his_ ears, multiplied by the echo in the critical judgment hall into a thousand voices. His deluded imagination multiplied the head of one single reviewer into several Lernæan heads, as it was believed of old that the devil used to surround the heads of sinners with delusive _false_ heads, that the executioner might miss his stroke at them.

The fact that a reviewer writes anonymously gives to a single individual's opinions the weight and authority they would possess, if arrived at by a whole council; but then if his name were put at the end, for instance, "X.Y.Z., Student of Divinity," instead of "New Universal German Library," it would weaken the effect of the divinity student's learned laying down of the law to too great an extent. The Schulrath paid court to my hero on account of his satirical turn; for he himself, a very lamb in common life, transformed himself into a wehrwolf in a review article; which is frequently the case with good-tempered men when they write, particularly on _humaniora_ and such like subjects. As indeed, peaceful shepherd races (according to Gibbon) are fond of making war, and of beginning it, or just as the Idyllic painter, Gessner, was himself a biting caricaturist.

And our hero for his part afforded Stiefel a great pleasure this evening, as well as holding out to him the prospect of many more such, when he took from Leibgeber's collection of coins a gnat or wasp dollar, and gave it to him, not as a douceur for his appointment to the critical wasp's nest, but that he might turn it into small change. The Schulrath who, being himself the zealous "Silberdiener" (master of the plate and jewels) of a dollar-cabinet of his own, would have been delighted if money had existed solely for the sake of cabinets--(meaning, however, numismatic, not political, cabinets)--sparkled and blushed delighted over the dollar, and declared to the advocate (who only wanted the absolute value of it, not the coin-fancier's price) that he considered this a piece of true friendship. "No," answered Siebenkæs, "the only piece of true friendship about the matter is Leibgeber giving _me_ the dollar." "But I'll give you certainly three dollars for it, if you like to ask it," said Stiefel. Lenette, delighted at Stiefel's delight, and at his kindly feeling, and secretly giving her husband a push as an admonition not to give way, here struck in with an amount of determination which astonishes me, "But my husband's not going to do anything of the kind, I assure you; a dollar's a dollar." "But," said Siebenkæs, "I ought rather to ask you only a _third_ of the price, if I'm going to hand over my coins to you one at a time in this way." Ye dear souls! If people's "yeses" in this world were only always such as your "buts."

Stiefel, confirmed bachelor though he was, wasn't going to let himself be found wanting, on such a delightful occasion as this, at all events, in proper politeness towards the fair sex, least of all towards a woman whom he had begun to be so fond of, even when he was bringing her home to be married, and whom he liked twice as much now that she was the wife of such a dear friend, and was such a dear friend herself too. He therefore adroitly led her to join in the conversation (which had previously been too deep and scholarly for her) by using the three cap-blocks as stepping-stones over to the journal of fashions; only he slid back again sooner than he might have done to a more ancient journal of fashions, that of Rubenius on the 'Costume of the ancient Greeks and Romans.' He said he should be happy to lend her his sermons every Sunday, as advocates don't deal in theology much. And when she was looking on the floor at her feet for the snuffers which had fallen, he held the candle down that she might see.

The next Sunday was an important day for the house (or rather rooms) of Siebenkæs, for it introduced thereto a grander character than any who have appeared hitherto, namely the Venner (Finance Councillor)--Mr. Everard Rosa von Meyern, a young member of the aristocracy, who went daily in and out at Heimlicher von Blaise's to "learn the routine of official business;" he was also engaged to be married to a poor niece of the Heimlicher's, who was being brought up and educated for his heart in another part of Germany.

Thus the Venner was a character of consequence in the borough of Kuhschnappel as well as in our 'Thorn-piece,' and this in every political point of view. In a corporeal point of view he was much less so. His body was stuck through his flowered garments much like a piece of stick through a village nosegay; under the shining wing-covers of his waistcoat (in itself a perfect animal-picture)[23] there pulsated a thorax, perpendicular, if not absolutely concave, and his legs had, all told, about the same amount of calf as those wooden ones which stocking-makers put into their windows as an advertisement.

The Venner gave the advocate to understand, in a cold and politely rude manner, that he had merely come to relieve him from the task of defending the case of child-murder, as he had so much to attend to besides. But Siebenkæs saw through this pretence with great ease. It was a well-known circumstance that the girl accused of this crime had adopted as the father of her child (now flown, away above this earth) a certain commercial traveller, whose name neither she nor the documents connected with her case could mention; but that the real father--who, like a young author, was bashful about putting his name to his _pièce fugitive_--was no other than the emaciated Venner, Everard Rosa von Meyern himself. There are certain things which a whole town will determine and make up its mind to ignore; and one of these was Rosa's authorship. Heimlicher von Blaise knew that Siebenkæs was aware of it, however, and feared that he might, out of revenge for the affair of the inheritance, purposely make a poor defence of the girl, that the shame and disgrace of her end might fall upon his relative, Meyern's shoulders. What a terrible, mean suspicion!

And yet the purest minds are sometimes driven to entertain such suspicions. Fortunately Siebenkæs had already got the poor mother's lightning-conductor all ready forged and set up. When he showed it to this false bridegroom of the supposed child-murderess, the latter immediately declared that she could not have found an abler guardian saint among all the advocates in the town; to which author and reader can both add "nor one who should be actuated by worthier motives," as we know he did it as a thank-offering to Heaven for the first idea of the 'Devil's Papers.'

At this juncture, the advocate's wife came suddenly back from the adjoining bookbinder's room, where she had been paying a flying visit. The Venner sprang to meet her at the threshold with a degree of politeness which couldn't have been carried further, inasmuch as she had to open the door before he could reach her. He took her hand, which, in her respect and awe of him, she half permitted, and kissed it stooping, but twisted his eyes up to her face, and said:

"Meddem! I have had this beautiful hand in mine for several days."

It now appeared, from what he said, that he was the identical flesh-coloured gentleman who had stolen her hand with his drawing-pen when she had had it out of the window; because he had been anxious to get a pretty Dolce's hand for a three-quarter portrait of the young lady he was engaged to, and hadn't known what to do; her _head_ he was doing from memory. He then took off his gloves, in which alone he had dared as yet to touch her (as many of the early Christians used only to touch the Eucharist in gloves from reverence therefor), displaying the fires of his rings and the snow of his skin. To preserve the whiteness of the latter from the sun, he hardly ever took his gloves off, except in winter when the sun has scarcely power to burn.

The Kuhschnappel aristocracy, particularly its younger members, give a willing obedience to the commandment which Christ gave to His apostles, to "greet no man by the way," and the Venner observed the required degree of incivility towards the husband, though not by any means to the wife, towards whom his condescension was infinite. An inborn characteristic of Siebenkæs's satirical disposition was a fault which he had of being too polite and kindly with the lower classes, and too forward and aggressive with the upper. He had not as yet sufficient knowledge of the world to enable him to determine the precise angle at which his back should bend before the various great ones of the place, wherefore he preferred to go about bolt upright, though he did so against the promptings of his kind heart. An additional cause was, that the profession to which he belonged being of a belligerent nature, has a tendency to embolden those who belong to it; an advocate has the advantage of never requiring to employ one himself, and consequently he is often inclined to treat even the grandest folks with some amount of coolness, unless they happen to be judges or clients, at the disposal of both of which classes of society his best services are at all times ready to be placed. Notwithstanding which, it generally happened that, in Siebenkæs's kindly feeling to all mankind, his moveable bridge got shoved down so low under his tightened strings that the notes given out by them became quite low and soft. On the present occasion, however, it was much more difficult to be polite to the Venner (whose designs as regarded Lenette he was compelled to see) than to be rude to him.

Moreover, he had an inborn detestation for dressy men although--just, the contrary feeling for dressy women--so that he would often sit and stare for a long time at the little Fugel-mannikins of dress in the fashion journals, just to get properly angry at them; and he would assure the Kuhschnappelers that there was nobody whom he should so delight in playing practical jokes upon as on such a mannikin--yea, in insulting him, or even doing him an injury (to the extent of a good cudgelling). Also it had always been a source of delight to him that Socrates and Cato walked barefoot about in the market-place; going _bareheaded_, on the other hand (_chapeau bas_), he did not like half so much.

But, ere he could utter himself otherwise than by making faces, the wooden-head of a Venner stroked his sprouting beard, and in a distant manner graciously offered himself to the advocate in the capacity of cardinal protector or mediator in the Blaise inheritance business; this he did, of course, partly to blind the advocate's eyes, and partly to impress upon him how immeasurably inferior was his station. The latter, however, shuddering at the idea of taking a gnome of this kind for paraclete and household angel, said to him (but in Latin)--

"In the first place I must _insist_ that my wife shall not hear a syllable about that insignificant potato quarrel. And moreover, in any legal question I scorn and despise anybody's assistance but a legal friend's, and in this instance _I_ am my own legal friend. I fill an official position here in Kuhschnappel; it is true, the official position by no means fills _me_." The latter play upon words he expressed by means of a Latin one, which displayed such an unusual amount of linguistic ability, that I should almost like to quote it here. The Venner, however, who could neither construe the pun nor the rest of the speech with the ease with which we have read it here, answered at once (so as to escape without exposing his ignorance) in the same language, "Imo, immo," which he meant for yes. Firmian then went on, in German, saying, "Guardian and ward, intimate as their connection should be, in this case came into contact to an extent almost too great to be pleasant; although, no doubt, there _have_ been cases before where one cousin has cozened another:[24] however, the very members of ecclesiastical councils have come to fisticuffs before now, _e. g_. at Ephesus in the fifteenth century. Indeed, the Abbot Barsumas and Dioscurus, Bishop of Alexandria, men of position, pummelled the good Flavian on that very occasion till he was as dead as a herring.[25] And this was on a Sunday too, a day on which, in these absurd old times, a sacred truce was put to quarrels and differences of every description; though now, Sundays and feast-days are the very days when the peace is broken; the public-house bells and the tinkling of the glasses ring the truce _out_, and people pummel each other, so that the law gets _her_ finger into the pie. In old days, people multiplied the number of saints' days for the sake of stopping fights, but the fact is that everybody connected with the legal profession, Herr von Meyern (who _must_ have _something_ to live upon), ought to petition that a peaceable working-day or two might be abolished now and then, so that the number of rows might be increased, and with them the fines and the fees in like ratio. Yet who thinks of such a thing, Venner?"

He was quite safe in spouting the greater part of this before Lenette; she had long been accustomed to understanding only a half, a fourth, or an eighth part of what he said; as for the _whole_ Venner, she gave herself no concern about him. When Meyern had taken his departure with frigid politeness, Siebenkæs, with the view of helping to advance him in his wife's good opinion, extolled his whole and undivided love for the entire female sex (though engaged to be married), and more particularly his attachment to that preliminary bride of his, who was now in the condemned cell of the prison; this, however, rather seemed to have the effect of _lowering_ him in her good opinion.

"Thou good, kind soul, may you always be as faithful to yourself and to me!" said he, taking her to his heart. But she didn't _know_ that she had been faithful, and said, "to whom should I be _un_faithful?"

From this day onwards to Michaelmas Day, which was the day of the borough fair, fortune seems to have led our _pathway_, I mean the reader's and mine, through no very special flower-beds to speak of, but merely along the smooth green turf of an English lawn, one would suppose on purpose that the fair on Michaelmas Day may suddenly arise upon our view as some shining, dazzling town starts up out of a valley. Very little did occur until then; at least, my pen, which only considers itself bound to record incidents of some importance, is not very willing to be troubled to mention that the Venner Meyern dropped in pretty often at the bookbinder's (who lived under the same roof with the Siebenkæses)--he merely came to see whether the 'Liaisons Dangereuses' were bound yet.

But that Michaelmas! Truly the world shall remember it. And in fact the very eve of it was a time of such a splendid and exquisite quality that we may venture to give the world some account of it.

Let the world _read_ the account of this eve of preparation at all events, and then give its vote.

On this eve of the fair all Kuhschnappel (as all other places are at such a time) was turned into a workhouse and house of industry for women; you couldn't have found a woman in the whole town either sitting down, or at peace, or properly dressed. Girls the most given to reading opened no books but needle-books to take needles out, and the only leaves they turned over were paste ones to be put on pies. Scarcely a woman took any dinner; the Michaelmas cakes and the coming enjoyment of them were the sole mainspring of the feminine machinery.

On these occasions women may be said to hold their exhibitions of pictures, the cakes being the altar-pieces. Everyone nibbles at and minutely inspects these baked escutcheons of her neighbour's nobility; and each has, as it were, her cake attached to her, as a medal is, or the lead tickets on bales of cloth, to indicate her value. They scarcely eat or drink anything, it is true, thick coffee being their consecrated sacrament wine, and thin transparent pastry their wafers; only the latter (in their friend's and hostess's houses) tastes best, and is eaten almost with fondness when it has turned out hard and stony and shot and dagger proof--or is burnt to a cinder--or, in short, is wretched from some cause or other; they cheerfully acknowledge all the failures of their dearest friends, and try to comfort them by taking them to their own houses and treating them to something of a _very different_ kind.

As for our Lenette, she, my dear lady reader, has always been a baker of such a sort that male connoisseurs have preferred her crust, and female connoisseurs her crum, both classes maintaining that no one but she (and yourself, dearest) could bake anything like either. The kitchen fire was this salamander's second element, for the first and native element of this dear nixie was water. To be scouring with sand, and squattering and splattering in it, in a great establishment like Siebenkæs's (who had devoted all Leibgeber's Ephraimites to the keeping of this feast), was quite her vocation. No kiss could be applied to her glowing face on such a day--and indeed she had her hands pretty full, for at ten o'clock the butcher came bringing more work with him.

The world will be glad (I'm perfectly certain in my own mind) if I just give them a very short account of this business--_who_ could have done it better, for that matter? The facts of it were these: at the beginning of summer the four fellow lodgers had clubbed together and bought a cow in poor condition which they had then put up to fatten. The bookbinder, the cobbler, the poor's advocate and the hairdresser--between whom and his tenants there was this distinction, that they owed _their_ rent to _him_, whereas he owed _his_ to his creditors--caused to be prepaid and drawn up by a skilful hand (which was attached to the arm of Siebenkæs) an authentic instrument (here KOLBE the word-purist will snarl at poor innocent me in his usual manner for employing foreign words in a document based on the Roman law) relative to the life and death of the cow; in which instrument the four contracting parties aforesaid--who all stood attentively round the document, he who was sitting and drawing it excepted--bound and engaged themselves in manner following, that is to say, that--

1stly. Each of the four parties interested, as aforesaid, in the said cow might and should have the privilege of milking her alternately.

2ndly. That this Cooking or Fattening Society might and should defray from a common treasury chest the price of said cow, the cost of the carriage of implements and provisions, and maintenance generally of the same; and

3rdly. That the allied powers as aforesaid should not only on the day before Michaelmas, the 28th September, 1785, slaughter the said cow, but further that each quarter of the same should then and there be further divided into four quarters, conformably to the lex agraria, for partition among the said parties to the said contract.

Siebenkæs prepared four certified copies of this treaty, one for each; he never wrote anything with graver pleasure. All that now remained to be performed of the contract by the house association of our four evangelists, who had collectively adopted as their armorial crest or emblematic animal, one single joint-stock beast, namely, the female of that of Saint Luke--was the third article of it.

However, I know the learned classes are panting for my fair, so I shall only dash down a hurried sketch of my Man-and-Animal piece (Kolbe of course goes on taking me to task).

That Septembriseur, the butcher, did his part of the business well, though it was at the close of Fructidor--the four messmates looking on throughout the operation, as also did old Sabine, who did a good deal, and got something for it. The quadruple alliance regaled itself on the slain animal at a general picnic, to which each contributed something in order that the butcher might be included gratis; and it is undeniable that one member of the league, whom I shall name hereafter, attended this picnic in a frame of mind and in a costume barely serious enough for the occasion. The slaughter confederation then set to working its division sum, according to the number of its members, and the golden calf round which their dance was executed was cut, up with the appropriate heraldic cuts. Then the whole thing was over. I think I can say nothing more laudatory of the manner in which the whole process of zootomic division was carried out than what Siebenkæs, an interested party, said himself, viz., "It's to be wished that the twelve tribes of Israel, as well as, in later times, the Roman empire, had been divided into as many and as fair divisions as our cow and Poland have been."

I shall be doing ample justice to the cow's embonpoint if I merely mention that Fecht the cobbler uttered a panegyric which commenced with the most lively and vigorous oaths, and the statement that she was an (adjective) bag of skin and bones, and ended with an assurance, uttered in mild and pious accents that Heaven had indeed favoured the poor beast, and "blessed us unworthy sinners above measure." A frolicsome cult by nature, he had had the heavy coach-harness of pietism put on to him, and was consequently obliged to keep softening down the "strong language" which came naturally to him into the pious sighs appropriate to his "converted state." And it was to the frame of mind and the costume of this very FECHT that I made allusion above as being barely suitable to the occasion, for I'm sorry to say he had no breeches on him the whole day of this great slaughter, but ran up and down the slaughter-house in a white frieze frock of his wife's, having a strange general effect of looking something like his own better half. However, the members of the association didn't take any offence; he couldn't help it, because while he was going about got up in this Amazon's _demi-negligée_, and presenting this hermaphrodite appearance, his own black-leather leg-cases were in the dye pot, being prepared for a reissue.

The poor's advocate had begged Lenette (about a quarter past four in the afternoon) not to go on working herself to death, and never to mind bothering about any supper, as he was going to be miserly for once, save himself a supper tonight, and sup upon eighteen penn'orth of pastry: but the busy soul kept running about brushing and sweeping, and by six o'clock they were both lying resting in the leather arms of--a big easy chair (for he had no flesh and she no bones), and looking around them with that expression of tranquil happiness which you may see in children while eating, at the room in its state of mathematical order, at the way in which everything in it was shining, at the pastry new-moon-crescents in their hands, and at the liquid burnished gold (or rather foilgold[26]) of the setting sun creeping up and up upon the gleaming tin dishes. There they rested and reposed like cradled children, with the screeching, clattering, twelve herculean labours of the rest of the people of the house going on all round them; and the clearness of the sky and the newly cleaned windows added a full half-hour to the length of the day; the bell-hammer, or tuning-hammer of the curfew bell gently let down the pitch of their melodious wishes till they lapsed into dreams.

At ten o'clock they woke up and went to bed...!

I quite enjoy this little starry night picture myself; though my head has reflected it all glimmery and out of focus, as the gilt hemisphere of my watch does the evening sun when I hold it up to it. Evening is the time when we weary, hunted men long to be at rest; it is for the evening of the day, for the evening of the year (autumn), and for the evening of life, that we lay up our hard-earned harvests, and with such eager hopes! But hast thou never seen in fields, when the crops were gathered, an image and emblem of thyself--I mean the autumn daisy, the flower of harvest; she delays her blossom till the summer is past and gone, the winter snows cover her before her fruit appears, and it is not till the--coming spring that that fruit is ripe!

But see how the roaring, dashing surges of the fair-day morning come beating upon our hero's bedposts! He comes into the white, shining room, which Lenette had stolen out of bed like a thief before midnight to wash while he was in his first sleep, and had sanded all over like an Arabia; in which manner she had her own way while he had his. On a fair-day morning I recommend everybody to open the window and lean out, as Siebenkæs did, to watch the rapid erection and hiring of the wooden booths in the market-place, and the falling of the first drops of the coming deluge of people, only let the reader observe that it wasn't by my advice that my hero, in the very arrogance of his wealth (for there were samples of every kind of pastry which the house contained on a table behind him), called down to many of the little green aristocratic caterpillars whom he saw moving along in the street with even greater arrogance than his own, and whose natural history he felt inclined to learn by a look at their faces.

"I say, sir, will you just be good enough to look at that house, that one there--do you notice anything particular?"

If the caterpillar lifted up its physiognomy, he could peruse and study it at his ease,--which was of course his object.

"You don't notice anything particular?" he would ask.

When the insect shook its head, he concurred with it, and did the same up at the window, saying:

"No, of course not! I've been looking at it for the last twelve months myself, and can't see anything particular about it; but I didn't choose to believe my own eyes."

Giddypated Firmian! Your seething foam of pleasure may soon drop down and disappear--as it did that Saturday when the cards were left. As yet, however, his little drop of must which he has squeezed out of the forenoon hours was foaming and sparkling briskly. The landlord moved at a gallop, casting (with his powder-sowing machine) seed into a fruitful soil. The bookbinder conveyed his goods (consisting partly of empty manuscript books, partly of still emptier song books, partly of "novelties," in almanacs) to the fair by land-carriage in a wheelbarrow, which he had to make two journeys with in going, but only one in returning in the evening, because then he had got rid of his almanacs to purchasers and to sellers (almanacs are the greatest of all novelties, or pieces of news--for there is nothing in all the long course of time so new as the new year). Old Sabel had set up her East India house, her fruit garner, and her cabinet of tin rings at the town gate; she wouldn't have let that warehouse of hers go to her own brother at a lower figure than half-a-sovereign. The cobbler put a stitch in no shoe on this St. Michael's Day except his wife's.

Suck away, my hero, at your nice bit of raffinade sugar of life, and empty your forenoon sweetstuff spoon, not troubling your head about the devil and his grandmother, although the pair of them should be thinking (after the nature of them) about getting a bitter potion, even a poison cup, made ready and handing it to you.

But his greatest enjoyment is still to come, to wit, the numberless beggar people. I will describe this enjoyment, and so distribute it.

A fair is the high mass which the beggars of all ranks and classes attend; when it is still a day or two off, all the footsoles that have nothing to walk upon but compassionate hearts, are converging towards the spot like so many radii, but on the morning of the fair-day itself the whole annual congress of beggardom and the column of cripples are fairly on the march. Anyone who has seen _Fŭrth_, or been in Elwangen during P. Gassner's government, may cut these few leaves out of his copy; but no one else has any idea of it till I proceed and lead him in at the town-gate of Kuhschnappel.

The street choral service and the vocal serenades now commence. The blind sing like blinded singing-birds--better, but louder; the lame walk; the poor preach the gospel themselves; the deaf and dumb make a terrible noise, and ring in the feast with little bells--everybody sings his own tune in the middle of everybody else's--a paternoster is clattering at the door of every house, and in the rooms inside nobody can hear himself swear. Whole cabinets of small coppers are lavished on one hand, pocketed on the other. The one-legged soldiery spice their ejaculatory prayers with curses, and blaspheme horribly, because people don't give them enough--in brief, the borough which had made up its mind for a day's enjoyment, is invaded and almost taken by storm by the rabble of beggars.

And now the maimed and the diseased begin to appear. Whoever has a wooden jury-leg under him, sets it and his long third leg and fellow-labourer the crutch, in motion towards Kuhschnappel, and drives and plants his sharp-pointed timber toe into moist earth there in the vicinity of the town-gate, in hopes of its thriving and bearing fruit. Whosoever has no arms or hands left, stretches both out for an alms. Those to whom Heaven has entrusted the beggars' talent, disease, above all paralysis, the beggars' _vapeurs_--trades with his talent, and the body appertaining to it, levying contributions with it on the whole and the sound. People who might stand as frontispieces to works on surgery and medicine, quite as appropriately as at city gates, take up their position near the latter and announce what they lack, which is, first and foremost, other people's cash. There are plenty of legs, noses, and arms in Kuhschnappel, but a great many more people. There is one most extraordinary fellow--(to be admired at a distance, though impossible to be equalled--looked upon with envy, though indeed only by such blotting-paper souls as can never see supreme excellence without longing to possess it); there's only half of him there, because the other half's in his grave already, everything you could call legs having been shot clean away; and these shots have placed him in a position at once to arrogate and assume to himself the primacy and generalship-in-chief of the cripples, and be drawn about on a triumphal car as a kind of demigod, whose soul, in place of a corporeal garment, has on merely a sort of cape and short doublet. "A soldier," said Siebenkæs, "who is still afflicted with one leg, and who on that ground expostulates with fate, inquiring of her, 'Why am _I_ not shot to pieces like that cripple, so that I might make as much in the day as he does?' seems to forget that on the other side of the question there are thousands of other warriors besides himself who haven't even _one_ wooden leg (let alone more), but are totally unprovided with even _that_ fire- and begging-certificate; moreover, that however many of his limbs he might have been relieved of by bullets, he might still keep on asking, 'Why not more?'"

Siebenkæs was merry over the poor because they are merry over themselves; and he never would kick up a politico-economical row about their occasionally tippling and guzzling a little too much,--when, for instance, a whole lazarette-wagon, or ambulance-load of them, halting at some shepherd's hut, they get down, and go in, and their plasters, their martyrs' crowns, their spiked girdles and hair-shirts come off, leaving nothing but a brisk human being who has left off sighing just for a minute; or--since what everybody works for is, not merely to live, but to live a little better now and then--when the beggar too has something a little better than his everyday fare, and when the cripple pulls the goddess of joy into his boarded dancing-barn to dance with him as his partner, and her hot mask falls off in the waltz (as for _our_ ball-rooms, it never falls off in them).

About 11 o'clock, the devil, as I have half hinted already, dropped a handful of blue-bottle flies into Firmian's wedding soup--to wit, Herr Rosa von Meyern, who graciously intimated his aristocratic intention of coming to call that afternoon, "because there was such a good view of the market-place." People of impecunious gentility, who can't issue orders in any houses but their own, construct _in_ their own, with much ease, loopholes whence they can fire upon the enemy who makes his attack from--within. The advocate had a piece of rudeness towards the Venner to put into either scale of his balance of justice, so as to determine which was the least of the two. The one was, to let him be told he might stay where he was; the other, to let him in, and then behave just as though the noodle were up in the moon. Siebenkæs chose the latter as the smaller.

Women, good souls, have always to carry and hold up the Jacob's ladder by which the male sex mount into the blue æther and into the evening-red; this call of the Venner came as an extra freight loaded on to Lenette's two burden-poles of arms. The laving of all moveable property, and the aspersion of all immoveable, recommenced. Meyern, the false lover of the poor child-murderess, Lenette detested with all her heart; at the same time, all her polishing machinery was at once set agoing on the room, indeed, I think women dress themselves more and with greater pains for their lady-enemies than for their lady-friends.

The advocate went up and down, all behung with long chains of ratiocination, like a ghost, and would fain have succeeded in imbuing her with the idea that she shouldn't give herself the slightest bother of any kind about the nincompoop. "It was no good," she said, "what would he think of me?" It was not until having eliminated from the room as a piece of crudity his old ink-bottle, into which he had only that minute put ink-powder to dissolve and make ink for the 'Selection from the Devil's Papers,' she was about to lay hands on that holy ark, his writing-table--that the head of the house ramped up--on his hind legs, pointing with his fore paw to the line of demarcation.