Chapter VIII: Part 8

The sick man recognized in a moment these projecting peaks of a spring-world sunk in the stream of Time,--these half shadows, this dusk of down-gone days,--this conflagration-place and Golgotha of a heavenly time, which none of us forgets, which we love forever, and look back to even from the grave.... And when he saw all this, he slowly turned round his head, as if he were awakening from a long, heavy dream; and his whole heart flowed down in warm showers of tears, and he said, fixing his full eyes on the eyes of his mother: "But are my father and brother still living then?"--"They are dead lately," said the wounded mother; but her heart was overpowered, and she turned away her eyes, and bitter tears fell unseen from her down-bent head. And now at once that evening, when he lay confined to bed by the death of his father, and was cured by his playthings, overflowed his soul with splendor and lights, and presence of the Past.

And so Delirium dyed for itself rosy wings in the Aurora of life, and fanned the panting soul,--and shook down golden butterfly-dust from its plumage on the path, on the flowerage of the suffering man;--in the far distance rose lovely tones, in the distance floated lovely clouds--O his heart was like to fall in pieces, but only into fluttering flower-stamina, into soft sentient nerves; his eyes were like to melt away, but only into dew-drops for the cups of joy-blossoms, into blood-drops for loving hearts; his soul was floating, palpitating, drinking, and swimming in the warm, relaxing rose-perfume of the brightest delusion....

The rapture bridled his feverish heart; and his mad pulse grew calm. Next morning his mother, when she saw that all was prospering, would have had the church-bells rung, to make him think that the second Sunday was already here. But his wife (perhaps out of shame in my presence) was averse to the lying; and said it would be all the same if we moved the month-hand of his clock (but otherwise than Hezekiah's Dial) eight days forward; especially as he was wont rather to rise and look at his clock for the day of the month, then to turn it up in the almanac. I for my own part simply went up to the bedside, and asked him: "If he was cracked--what in the world he meant with his mad death-dreams, when he had lain so long, and passed clean over the Cantata-Sunday, and yet, out of sheer terror, was withering to a lath?"

A glorious reinforcement joined me; the Flesher or Quartermaster. In his anxiety, he rushed into the room, without saluting the women, and I forthwith addressed him aloud: "My gossip here is giving me trouble enough, Mr. Regiments-Quartermaster; last night, he let them persuade him he was little older than his own son; here is the child's fall-hat he was for putting on." The Guardian deuced and devilled, and said: "Ward, are you a parson or a fool?--Have not I told you twenty times, there was a maggot in your head about this?"--

At last he himself perceived that he was not rightly wise, and so grew better; besides the guardian's invectives, my oaths contributed a good deal; for I swore I would hold him as no right gossip, and edit no word of his Biography, unless he rose directly and got better....

--In short, he showed so much politeness to me that he rose and got better.--He was still sickly, it is true, on Saturday; and on Sunday could not preach a sermon (something of the sort the Schoolmaster read, instead); but yet he took Confessions on Saturday, and at the altar next day he dispensed the Sacrament. Service ended, the feast of his recovery was celebrated, my farewell-feast included; for I was to go in the afternoon.

This last afternoon I will chalk out with all possible breadth, and then, with the pentagraph of free garrulity, fill up the outline and draw on the great scale.

During the Thanksgiving-repast, there arrived considerable personal tribute from his catechumens, and fairings by way of bonfire for his recovery; proving how much the people loved him, and how well he deserved it; for one is oftener hated without reason by the many, than without reason loved by them. But Fixlein was friendly to every child; was none of those clergy who never pardon their enemies except in--God's stead; and he praised at once the whole world, his wife, and himself.

I then attended at his afternoon's catechizing; and looked down (as he did in the first Letter-Box) from the choir, under the wing of the wooden cherub. Behind this angel, I drew out my note-book, and shifted a little under the cover of the Black Board, with its white Psalm-ciphers,[66] and wrote down what I was there--thinking. I was well aware, that when I to-day, on the twenty-fifth of May retired from this _Salernic_[67] spinning-school, where one is taught to spin out the thread of life, in fairer wise, and without wetting it by foreign mixtures,--I was well aware, I say, that I should carry off with me far more elementary principles of the Science of Happiness than the whole Chamberlain piquet ever muster all their days. I noted down my first impression, in the following Rules of Life for myself and the press.

"Little joys refresh us constantly like house-bread, and never bring disgust; and great ones, like sugar-bread, briefly, and then bring it.--Trifles we should let, not plague us only, but also gratify us; we should seize not their poison-bags only, but their honey-bags also; and if flies often buzz about our room, we should, like Domitian, amuse ourselves with flies, or, like a certain still living Elector,[68] feed them.--For _civic_ life and its micrologies, for which the Parson has a natural taste, we must acquire an artificial one; must learn to love without esteeming it; learn, far as it ranks beneath _human_ life, to enjoy it like another twig of this human life, as poetically as we do the pictures of it in romances. The loftiest mortal loves and seeks the _same sort_ of things with the meanest; only from higher grounds and by higher paths. Be every minute, Man, a full life to thee!--Despise anxiety and wishing, the Future and the Past!--If the _Second-pointer_ can be no road-pointer into an Eden for thy soul, the _Month-pointer_ will still less be so, for thou livest not from month to month, but from second to second! Enjoy thy Existence more than thy Manner of Existence, and let the dearest object of thy Consciousness be this Consciousness itself!--Make not the Present a means of thy Future; for this Future is nothing but a coming Present; and the Present, which thou despisest, was once a Future which thou desiredst!--Stake in no lotteries,--keep at home,--give and accept no pompous entertainments,--travel not abroad every year!--Conceal not from thyself, by long plans, thy household goods, thy chamber, thy acquaintance!--Despise Life, that thou mayst enjoy it!--Inspect the neighborhood of thy life; every shelf, every nook of thy abode; and nestling in, quarter thyself in the farthest and most domestic winding of thy snail-house!--Look upon a capital but as a collection of villages, a village as some blind-alley of a capital; fame as the talk of neighbors at the street-door; a library as a learned conversation, joy as a second, sorrow as a minute, life as a day; and three things as all in all: God, Creation, Virtue!"----

And if I would follow myself and these rules, it will behoove me not to make so much of this Biography; but once for all, like a moderate man, to let it sound out.

After the Catechizing, I stept down to my wide-gowned and black-gowned gossip. The congregation gone, we clambered up to all high places, perused the plates on the pews--I took a lesson on the altar on its inscription incrusted with the _sediment of Time_ (I speak not metaphorically); I organed, my gossip managing the bellows; I mounted the pulpit, and was happy enough there to alight on one other rose-shoot, which in the farewell minute, I could still plant in the rose-garden of my Fixlein. For I descried aloft, on the back of a wooden Apostle, the name _Lavater_, which the Zurich Physiognomist had been pleased to leave on this sacred Torso in the course of his wayfaring. Fixlein did not know the hand, but I did, for I had seen it frequently in Flachsenfingen, not only on the tapestry of a Court Lady there, but also in his _Hand-Library_;[69] and met with it besides in many country churches, forming, as it were, the Directory and Address-Calendar of this wandering name, for Lavater likes to inscribe in pulpits, as a shepherd does in trees, the name of his beloved. I could now advise my gossip prudently to cut away the name, with the chip of wood containing it, from the back of the Apostle, and to preserve it carefully among his _curiosa_.

On returning to the parsonage, I made for my hat and stick; but the design, as it were the projection and contour of a supper in the acacia-grove, had already been sketched by Thiennette. I declared that I would stay till evening, in case the young mother went out with us to the proposed meal.... and truly the Biographer at length got his way, all doctors' regulations notwithstanding.

I then constrained the Parson to put on his Kraeutermuetze,[70] or Herb-cap, which he had stitched together out of simples for the strengthening of his memory: "Would to Heaven," said I, "that Princes instead of their Princely Hats, Doctors and Cardinals instead of theirs, and Saints instead of martyr-crowns, would clap such memory-bonnets on their heads!"--Thereupon, till the roasting and cooking within doors were over, we marched out alone over the parsonage meadows, and talked of learned matters, we packed ourselves into the ruined Robber-Castle, on which my gossip, as already mentioned, has a literary work in hand. I deeply approved, the rather as this Kidnapper-tower had once belonged to an Aufhammer, his intention of dedicating the description to the Rittmeister; that nobleman, I think, will sooner give his name to the Book than to the Shock. For the rest, I exhorted my fellow-craftsman to pluck up literary heart, and said to him: "A fearless pen, good gossip! Let Subrector Hans von Fuechslein be, if he like, the Dragon of the Apocalypse, lying in wait for the delivery of the fugitive Woman, to swallow the offspring; I am there too, and have my friend the Editor of the _Litteraturzeitung_ at my side, who will gladly permit me to give an _anticritique_ on paying the insertion-dues!"--I especially excited him to new fillings and return-freights of his Letter-Boxes. I have not taken oath that into this biographical chest-of-drawers I will not in the course of time introduce another Box. "Neither to my godson, worthy gossip, will it do any harm that he is presented, poor child, even now to the reading public, when he does not count more months than, as Horace will have it, a literary child should count years, namely, _nine_."

In walking homewards, I praised his wife. "If marriage," said I to him, "is the madder which in maids, as in cotton, makes the colors visible, then I contend, that Thiennette, when a maid, could scarcely be so good as she is now when a wife. By Heaven! in such a marriage, I should write Books of quite another sort, divine ones; in a marriage, I mean, where beside the writing-table (as beside the great voting-table at the Regensburg Diets, there are little tables of confectionery); where in like manner, I say, a little jar of marmalade were standing by me, namely, a sweetened, dainty, lovely face, and out of measure fond of the Letter-Box-writer, gossip! Your marriage will resemble the acacia-grove we are now going to, the leaves of which grow thicker with the heat of summer, while other shrubs are yielding only shrunk and porous shade."

As we entered through the upper garden-door into this same bower, the supper and the good mistress were already there. Nothing is more pure and tender than the respect with which a wife treats the benefactor or comrade of her husband; and happily the Biographer himself was this comrade, and the object of this respect. Our talk was cheerful, but my spirit was oppressed. The fetters, which bind the mere reader to my heroes, were in my case of triple force; as I was at once their guest and their portrait-painter. I told the Parson that he would live to a greater age than I, for that his temperate temperament was balanced, as if by a doctor, so equally between the nervousness of refinement and the hot thick-bloodedness of the rustic. Fixlein said that if he lived but as long as he had done, namely, two-and-thirty years, it would amount, exclusive of the leap-year-days, to 280,320 seconds, which in itself was something considerable; and that he often reckoned up with satisfaction the many thousand persons of his own age that would have a life equally long.

At last I tried to get in motion; for the red lights of the falling sun were mounting up over the grove, and dipping us still deeper in the shadows of night; the young mother had grown chill in the evening dew. In confused mood, I invited the Parson to visit me soon in the city, where I would show him not only all the chambers of the Palace, but the Prince himself. Gladder there was nothing this day on our old world than the face to which I said so; and than the other one which was the mild reflection of the former.--For the Biographer it would have been too hard, if now in that minute, when his fancy, like mirror-telescopes, was representing every object in a _tremulous_ form, he had been obliged to cut and run; if, I will say, it had not occurred to him that to the young mother it could do little harm (but much good) were she to take a short walk, and assist in escorting the Author and architect of the present Letter-Box out of the garden to his road.

In short, I took this couple one in each hand, instead of under each arm, and moved with them through the garden to the Flachsenfingen highway. I often abruptly turned round my head between them, as if I had heard some one coming after us; but in reality I only meant once more, though mournfully, to look back into the happy hamlet, whose houses were all dwellings of contented still Sabbath-joy, and which is happy enough, though over its wide-parted pavement-stones there passes every week but one barber, every holiday but one dresser of hair, and every year but one hawker of parasols. Then truly I had again to turn round my head, and look at the happy pair beside me. My otherwise affectionate gossip could not rightly suit himself to these tokens of sorrow; but in thy heart, thou good, so oft afflicted sex, every mourning-bell soon finds its unison; and Thiennette, ennobled with the thin trembling _resonance_ of a reverberating soul, gave me back all my tones with the beauties of an echo.---- At last we reached the boundary, over which Thiennette could not be allowed to walk; and now must I part from my gossip, with whom I had talked so gayly every morning (each of us from his bed), and from the still circuit of modest hope where he dwelt, and return once more to the rioting, fermenting Court-sphere, where men in bull-beggar tone demand from Fate a root of Life-Licorice, thick as the arm, like the botanical one on the Wolga, not so much that they may chew the sweet bean themselves, as fell others to earth with it.

As I thought to myself that I would say, Farewell! to them, all the coming plagues, all the corpses, and all the marred wishes of this good pair, arose before my heart; and I remembered that little, save the falling asleep of joy-flowers, would mark the current of their Life-day, as it does of mine and of every one's.--And yet is it fairer, if they measure their years not by the _Water-clock_ of falling tears, but by the _Flower-clock_[71] of asleep-going flowers, whose bells in our short-lived garden are sinking together before us from hour to hour.--

I would even now--for I still recollect how I hung with streaming eyes over these two loved ones, as over their corpses--address myself, and say: Far too soft, _Jean Paul_, whose chalk still sketches the models of Nature on a ground of Melancholy; harden thy heart like thy frame, and waste not thyself and others by such thoughts. Yet why should I do it, why should I not confess directly what, in the softest emotion, I said to these two beings? "May all go right with you, ye mild beings," I said, for I no longer thought of courtesies, "may the arm of Providence bear gently your lacerated hearts, and the good Father, above all these suns which are now looking down on us, keep you ever united, and exalt you still undivided to his bosom and his lips!" "Be you, too, right happy and glad!" said Thiennette. "And to you, Thiennette," continued I, "Ah! to your pale cheeks, to your oppressed heart, to your long cold maltreated youth, I can never, never wish enough. No! But all that can soothe a wounded soul, that can please a pure one, that can still the hidden sigh--O, all that you deserve--may this be given you; and when you see me again, then say to me, 'I am now much happier!'"

We were all of us too deeply moved. We at last tore ourselves asunder from repeated embraces; my friend retired with the soul whom he loves,--I remained alone behind him with the Night.

And I walked without aim through woods, through valleys, and over brooks, and through sleeping villages, to enjoy the great Night like a Day. I walked, and still looked like the magnet to the region of midnight, to strengthen my heart at the gleaming twilight, at this upstretching Aurora of a morning beneath our feet. White night-butterflies flitted, white blossoms fluttered, white stars fell, and the white snow-powder hung silvery in the high Shadow of the Earth, which reaches beyond the Moon, and which is our Night. Then began the AEolian Harp of the Creation to tremble and to sound, blown on from above, and my immortal soul was a string in this Harp.--The heart of a brother everlasting Man swelled under the everlasting Heaven, as the seas swell under the Sun and under the Moon.--The distant village-clocks struck midnight, mingling, as it were, with the ever-pealing tone of ancient Eternity.--The limbs of my buried ones touched cold on my soul, and drove away its blots, as dead hands heal eruptions of the skin.--I walked silently through little hamlets, and close by their outer churchyards, where crumbled upcast coffin-boards were glimmering, while the once bright eyes that had lain in them were mouldered into gray ashes.--Cold thought! clutch not like a cold spectre at my heart; I look up to the starry sky, and an everlasting chain stretches thither, and over and below; and all is Life, and Warmth, and Light, and all is godlike or God....

Towards morning I descried thy late lights, little city of my dwelling, which I belong to on this side the grave; I return to the Earth; and in thy steeples, behind the by-advanced great Midnight, it struck half past two; about this hour, in 1794, Mars went down in the west, and the Moon rose in the east; and my soul desired, in grief for the noble warlike blood which is still streaming on the blossoms of Spring: "Ah, retire, bloody War, like red Mars; and thou, still Peace, come forth like the mild divided Moon!"--

ARMY-CHAPLAIN SCHMELZLE'S
JOURNEY TO FLAeTZ;

WITH

A RUNNING COMMENTARY OF NOTES.

TRANSLATED BY THOMAS CARLYLE.

PREFACE

This, I conceive, may be managed in two words. The _first_ word must relate to the Circular Letter of Army-Chaplain Schmelzle, wherein he describes to his friends his Journey to the metropolitan city of Flaetz; after having, in an Introduction, premised some proofs and assurances of his valor. Properly speaking, the _Journey_ itself has been written purely with a view that his courageousness, impugned by rumor, may be fully evinced and demonstrated by the plain facts which he therein records. Whether, in the mean time, there shall not be found certain quick-scented readers, who may infer, directly contrariwise, that his breast is not everywhere bomb-proof, especially in the left side,--on this point I keep my judgment suspended.

For the rest, I beg the judges of literature, as well as their satellites, the critics of literature, to regard this _Journey_, for whose literary contents I, as Editor, am answerable, solely in the light of a Portrait (in the French sense), a little Sketch of Character. It is a voluntary or involuntary comedy-piece, at which I have laughed so often, that I purpose in time coming to paint some similar Pictures of Character myself. And, for the present, when could such a little comic toy be more fitly imparted and set forth to the world than in these very days, when the sound both of heavy money and of light laughter has died away from among us,--when, like the Turks, we count and pay merely with sealed _purses_, and the coin within them has vanished?

Despicable would it seem to me, if any clownish squire of the goose-quill should publicly and censoriously demand of me in what way this self-cabinet-piece of Schmelzle's has come into my hands. I know it well, and do not disclose it. This comedy-piece, for which I, at all events, as my Bookseller will testify, draw the profit myself, I got hold of so unblamably, that I await, with unspeakable composure, what the Army-Chaplain shall please to say against the publication of it, in case he say anything at all. My conscience bears me witness, that I acquired this article at least by more honorable methods than are those of the learned persons who steal with their ears, who, in the character of spiritual auditory-thieves, and class-room cut-purses and pirates, are in the habit of disloading their plundered Lectures, and vending them up and down the country as productions of their own. Hitherto, in my whole life, I have stolen little, except now and then in youth some--glances.

The _second_ word must explain or apologize for the singular form of this little Work, standing as it does on a substratum of Notes. I myself am not contented with it. Let the world open, and look, and determine, in like manner. But the truth is, this line of demarcation, stretching through the whole book, originated in the following accident: certain thoughts (or digressions) of my own, with which it was not permitted me to disturb those of the Army-Chaplain, and which could only be allowed to fight behind the lines, in the shape of Notes, I, with a view to conveniency and order, had written down in a separate paper; at the same time, as will be observed, regularly providing every Note with its Number, and thus referring it to the proper page of the main Manuscript. But, in the copying of the latter, I had forgotten to insert the corresponding numbers in the Text itself. Therefore, let no man, any more than I do, cast a stone at my worthy Printer, inasmuch as he (perhaps in the thought that it was my way, that I had some purpose in it) took these Notes, just as they stood, pellmell, without arrangement of Numbers, and clapped them under the Text; at the same time, by a praiseworthy, artful computation, taking care, at least, that at the bottom of every page in the Text there should some portion of this glittering Note-precipitate make its appearance. Well, the thing at any rate is done, nay, perpetuated, namely, printed. After all, I might almost partly rejoice at it. For, in good truth, had I meditated for years (as I have done for the last twenty) how to provide for my digression-comets new orbits, if not focal suns, for my episodes new epopees,--I could scarce possibly have hit upon a better or more spacious Limbo for such Vanities than Chance and Printer here accidentally offer me ready-made. I have only to regret that the thing has been printed before I could turn it to account. Heavens! what remotest allusions (had I known it before printing) might not have been privily introduced in every Text-page and Note-number; and what apparent incongruity in the real congruity between this upper and under side of the cards! How vehemently and devilishly might one not have cut aloft, and to the right and left, from these impregnable casemates and covered-ways; and what _laesio ultra dimidium_ (injury beyond the half of the Text) might not, with these satirical injuries, have been effected and completed!

But Fate meant not so kindly with me; of this golden harvest-field of satire I was not to be informed till three days before the Preface.

Perhaps, however, the writing world, by the little blue flame of this accident, may be guided to a weightier acquisition, to a larger subterranean treasure, than I, alas! have dug up. For, to the writer, there is now a way pointed out of producing in one marbled volume a group of altogether different works; of writing in one leaf, for both sexes at the same time, without confounding them, nay, for the five faculties all at once, without disturbing their limitations; since now, instead of boiling up a vile, fermenting shove-together, fit for nobody, he has nothing to do but draw his note-lines or partition-lines; and so on his five-story leaf give board and lodging to the most discordant heads. Perhaps one might then read many a book for the fourth time, simply because every time one had read but a fourth part of it.

On the whole, this Work has at least the property of being a short one; so that the reader, I hope, may almost run through it, and read it at the bookseller's counter, without, as in the case of thicker volumes, first needing to buy it. And why, indeed, in this world of Matter should anything whatever be great, except only what belongs not to it, the world of Spirit?

Jean Paul Fr. Richter.

_Bayreuth, in the Bay and Peace Month_, 1707.

SCHMELZLE'S
JOURNEY TO FLAeTZ.

_Circular Letter of the proposed Catechetical Professor_ Attila
Schmelzle _to his Friends; containing some Account of a Holidays'
Journey to Flaetz, with an Introduction, touching his Flight, and
his Courage as former Army-Chaplain_.

Nothing can be more ludicrous, my esteemed Friends, than to hear people stigmatizing a man as cowardly and hare-hearted, who perhaps is struggling all the while with precisely the opposite faults, those of a lion; though indeed the African lion himself, since the time of Sparrmann's Travels, passes among us for poltroon. Yet this case is mine, worthy Friends; and I purpose to say a few words thereupon, before describing my journey.

------------------------

108. Good princes easily obtain good subjects; not so easily good subjects good princes; thus Adam, in the state of innocence, ruled over animals all tame and gentle, till simply through his means they fell and grew savage.

------------------------

You in truth are all aware that, directly in the teeth of this calumny, it is courage, it is desperadoes (provided they be not braggarts and tumultuous persons), whom I chiefly venerate; for example, my brother-in-law, the Dragoon, who never in his life bastinadoed one man, but always a whole social circle at the same time. How truculent was my fancy, even in childhood, when I, as the parson was toning away to the silent congregation, used to take it into my head: "How now, if thou shouldst start up from thy pew, and shout aloud, I am here too, Mr. Parson!" and to paint out this thought in such glowing colors, that, for very dread, I have often been obliged to leave the church! Anything like Rugenda's battle-pieces; horrid murder-tumults, sea-fights or Stormings of Toulon, exploding fleets; and, in my childhood, Battles of Prague on the harpsichord; nay, in short, every map of any remarkable scene of war; these are perhaps too much my favorite objects; and I read--and purchase nothing sooner; and doubtless they might lead me into many errors, were it not that my circumstances restrain me. Now, if it be objected that true courage is something higher than mere thinking and willing, then you, my worthy friends, will be the first to recognize mine, when it shall break forth into not barren and empty, but active and effective words, while I strengthen my future Catechetical Pupils, as well as can be done in a course of College Lectures, and steel them into Christian heroes.

------------------------

5. For a good Physician saves, if not always from the disease, at least from a bad Physician.

------------------------

It is well known that, out of care for the preservation of my life, I never walk within at least ten fields of any shore full of bathers or swimmers; merely because I foresee to a certainty, that, in case one of them were drowning, I should that moment (for the heart overbalances the head) plunge after the fool to save him, into some bottomless depth or other, where we should both perish. And if dreaming is the reflex of waking, let me ask you, true Hearts, if you have forgotten my relating to you dreams of mine, which no Caesar, no Alexander or Luther, need have felt ashamed of? Have I not, to mention a few instances, taken Rome by storm; and done battle with the Pope and the whole elephantine body of the Cardinal College, at one and the same time? Did I not once on horseback, while simply looking at a review of military, dash headlong into a _bataillon quarre_; and then capture, in Aix-la-Chapelle, the Peruke of Charlemagne, for which the town pays yearly ten reichsthalers of barber-money; and carrying it off to Halberstadt von Gleim, there in like manner seize the Great Frederick's Hat; put both Peruke and Hat on my head, and yet return home, after I had stormed their batteries and turned the cannon against the cannoneers themselves? Did I not once submit to be made a Jew of, and then be regaled with hams; though they were ape-hams on the Orinoco (see Humboldt)? And a thousand such things; for I have thrown the Consistorial President of Flaetz out of the Palace window; those alarm-fulminators, sold by Heinrich Backofen in Gotha, at six groschen the dozen, and each going off like a cannon, I have listened to so calmly that the fulminators did not even awaken me; and more of the like sort.

------------------------

100. In books lie the Phoenix-ashes of a past Millennium and Paradise; but War blows, and much ashes are scattered away.

------------------------

But enough! It is now time briefly to touch that further slander of my chaplainship, which unhappily has likewise gained some circulation in Flaetz, but which, as Caesar did Alexander, I shall now by my touch dissipate into dust. Be what truth in it there can, it is still little or nothing. Your great Minister and General in Flaetz (perhaps the very greatest in the world, for there are not many Schabackers) may indeed, like any other great man, be turned against me; but not with the Artillery of Truth; for this Artillery I here set before you, my good Hearts, and do you but fire it off for my advantage! The matter is this. Certain foolish rumors are afloat in the Flaetz country, that I, on occasion of some important battles, took leg-bail (such is their plebeian phrase), and that afterwards, on the Chaplain's being called for to preach a Thanksgiving sermon for the victory, no chaplain whatever was to be found. The ridiculousness of this story will best appear, when I tell you that I never was in any action; but have always been accustomed, several hours prior to such an event, to withdraw so many miles to the rear, that our men, so soon as they were beaten, would be sure to find me. A good retreat is reckoned the masterpiece in the art of war; and at no time can a retreat be executed with such order, force, and security as just before the battle, when you are not yet beaten.

------------------------

102. Dear Political or Religious Inquisitor! Art thou aware that Turin tapers never rightly begin shining till thou breakest them, and then they take fire?

------------------------

It is true, I might perhaps, as expectant Professor of Catechetics, sit still and smile at such nugatory speculations on my courage; for if by Socratic questioning I can hammer my future Catechist Pupils into the habit of asking questions in their turn, I shall thereby have tempered _them_ into heroes, seeing they have nothing to fight with but children--(Catechists at all events, though dreading fire, have no reason to dread light, since in our days, as in London illuminations, it is only the _unlighted_ windows that are battered in; whereas, in other ages, it was with nations and light as it is with dogs and water; if you give them none for a long time, they at last get a horror at it);--and on the whole, for Catechists, any park looks kindlier, and smiles more sweetly, than a sulphurous park of artillery; and the Warlike Foot, which the age is placed on, is to them the true Devil's cloven-foot of human nature.

------------------------

86. Very true! In youth we love and enjoy the most ill-assorted friends, perhaps more than, in old age, the best assorted.

------------------------

But for my part I think not so; almost as if the party spirit of my Christian name, Attila, had passed into me more strongly than was proper, I feel myself impelled still further to prove my courageousness; which, dearest Friends! I shall here in a few lines again do. This proof I could manage by mere inferences and learned citations. For example, if Galen remarks that animals with large hind-quarters are timid, I have nothing to do but turn round, and show the enemy my back and what is under it, in order to convince him that I am not deficient in valor, but in flesh. Again, if by well-known experiences it has been found that flesh-eating produces courage, I can evince that in this particular I yield to no officer of the service; though it is the habit of these gentlemen not only to run up long scores of roast-meat with their landlords, but also to leave them unpaid, that so at every hour they may have an open document in the hands of the enemy himself (the landlord), testifying that they have eaten their own share (with some of other people's too), and so put common butcher-meat on a War-footing, living not like others _by_ bravery, but _for_ bravery. As little have I ever, in my character of chaplain, shrunk from comparison with any officer in the regiment, who may be a true lion, and so snatch every sort of plunder, but yet, like this King of the Beasts, is afraid of _fire_; or who,--like King James of England,[72] that scampered off at sight of drawn swords, yet so much the more gallantly, before all Europe, went out against the storming Luther with book and pen,--does, from a similar idiosyncrasy, attack all warlike armaments, both by word and writing. And here I recollect, with satisfaction, a brave sub-lieutenant, whose confessor I was (he still owes me the confession-money), and who, in respect of stout-heartedness, had in him perhaps something of that Indian dog which Alexander had presented to him as a sort of Dog-Alexander. By way of trying this crack dog, the Macedonian made various heroic or heraldic beasts be let loose against him; first a stag; but the dog lay still; then a sow; he lay still; then a bear; he lay still. Alexander was on the point of condemning him; when a lion was let forth; the dog rose, and tore the lion in pieces. So likewise the sub-lieutenant. A challenger, a foreign enemy, a Frenchman, are to him only stag, and sow, and bear, and he lies still in his place; but let his oldest enemy, his creditor, come and knock at his gate, and demand of him actual smart-money for long bygone pleasures, thus presuming to rob him both of past and present; the sub-lieutenant rises, and throws his creditor down-stairs. I, alas! am still standing by the sow; and thus, naturally enough, misunderstood.

------------------------

128. In Love there are Summer Holidays; but in Marriage also there are Winter Holidays, I hope.

------------------------

_Quo_, says Livy, xii. 5, and with great justice, _quo timoris minus est, eo minus ferme periculi est_, The less fear you have, the less danger you are likely to be in. With equal justice I invert the maxim, and say, The less the danger, the smaller the fear; nay, there may be situations in which one has absolutely no knowledge of fear; and among these mine is to be reckoned. The more hateful, therefore, must that calumny about hare-heartedness appear to me.

To my Holidays' Journey I shall prefix a few facts, which prove how easily foresight--that is to say, when a person would not resemble the stupid marmot, that will even attack a man out on horseback--may pass for cowardice. For the rest, I wish only that I could with equal ease wipe away a quite different reproach, that of being a foolhardy desperado; though I trust, in the sequel, I shall be able to advance some facts which invalidate it.

------------------------

143. Women have weekly at least one active and passive day of glory, the holy day, the Sunday. The higher ranks alone have more Sundays than work-days; as, in great towns, you can celebrate your Sunday on Friday with the Turks, on Saturday with the Jews, and on Sunday with yourself.

------------------------

What boots the heroic arm, without a hero's eye? The former readily grows stronger and more nervous; but the latter is not so soon ground sharper, like glasses. Nevertheless, the merits of foresight obtain from the mass of men less admiration (nay, I should say, more ridicule) than those of courage. Whoso, for instance, shall see me walking under quite cloudless skies with a wax-cloth umbrella over me, to him I shall probably appear ridiculous, so long as he is not aware that I carry this umbrella as a thunder-screen, to keep off any bolt out of the blue heaven (whereof there are several examples in the history of the Middle Ages) from striking me to death. My thunder-screen, in fact, is exactly that of Reimarus. On a long walking-stick I carry the wax-cloth roof; from the peak of which depends a string of gold-lace as a conductor; and this, by means of a key fastened to it, which it trails along the ground, will lead off every possible bolt, and easily distribute it over the whole superficies of the Earth. With this _Paratonnerre Portatif_ in my hand, I can walk about for weeks under the clear sky, without the smallest danger. This Diving-bell, moreover, protects me against something else; against shot. For who, in the latter end of Harvest, will give me black on white that no lurking ninny of a sportsman somewhere, when I am out enjoying Nature, shall so fire off his piece, at an angle of 45 deg., that, in falling down again, the shot needs only light directly on my crown, and so come to the same as if I had been shot through the brain from a side?

It is bad enough, at any rate, that we have nothing to guard us from the Moon; which at present is bombarding us with stones like a very Turk; for this paltry little Earth's train-bearer and errand-maid thinks, in these rebellious times, that she too must begin, forsooth, to sling somewhat against her Mother! In good truth, as matters stand, any young Catechist of feeling may go out o' nights, with whole limbs, into the moonshine, a meditating; and erelong (in the midst of his meditation the villanous Satellite hits him) come home a pounded jelly. By Heaven! new proofs of courage are required of us on every hand! No sooner have we, with great effort, got thunder-rods manufactured, and comet-tails explained away, than the enemy opens new batteries in the Moon, or somewhere else in the Blue!

------------------------

21. Schiller and Klopstock are Poetic Mirrors held up to the Sun-god; the Mirrors reflect the Sun with such dazzling brightness, that you cannot find the Picture of the World imaged forth in them.

------------------------

Suffice one other story to manifest how ludicrous the most serious foresight, with all imaginable inward courage, often externally appears in the eyes of the many. Equestrians are well acquainted with the dangers of a horse that runs away. My evil star would have it that I should once in Vienna get upon a hack-horse; a pretty enough honey-colored nag, but old and hard-mouthed as Satan; so that the beast, in the next street, went off with me; and this in truth--only at a _walk_. No pulling, no tugging, took effect; I at last, on the back of this Self-riding-horse, made signals of distress, and cried: "Stop him, good people! for God's sake stop him! my horse is off!" But these simple persons seeing the beast move along as slowly as a Reichshofrath lawsuit, or the Daily Postwagen, could not in the least understand the matter, till I cried as if possessed: "Stop him then, ye blockheads and joltheads! don't you see that I cannot hold the nag?" But now, to these noodles the sight of a hard-mouthed horse going off with its rider step by step seemed ridiculous rather than otherwise; half Vienna gathered itself like a comet-tail behind my beast and me. Prince Kaunitz, the best horseman of the century (the last), pulled up to follow me. I myself sat and swam like a perpendicular piece of drift-ice on my honey-colored nag, which stalked on, on, step by step; a many-cornered, red-coated letter-carrier was delivering his letters, to the right and left, in the various stories, and he still crossed over before me again, with satirical features, because the nag went along too slowly. The Schwanzschleuderer, or Train-dasher (the person, as you know, who drives along the streets with a huge barrel of water, and besplashes them with a leathern pipe of three ells long from an iron trough), came across the haunches of my horse, and, in the course of his duty, wetted both these and myself in a very cooling manner, though, for my part, I had too much cold sweat on me already to need any fresh refrigeration. On my infernal Trojan Horse (only I myself was Troy, not beridden, but riding to destruction), I arrived at Malzlein (a suburb of Vienna), or perhaps, so confused were my senses, it might be quite another range of streets. At last, late in the dusk, I had to turn into the Prater; and here, long after the Evening Gun, to my horror, and quite against the police-rules, keep riding to and fro on my honey-colored nag; and possibly I might even have passed the night on him, had not my brother-in-law, the Dragoon, observed my plight, and so found me still sitting firm as a rock on my runaway steed. He made no ceremonies; caught the brute; and put the pleasant question, why I had not vaulted, and come off by ground-and-lofty tumbling; though he knew full well that for this a wooden horse, which stands still, is requisite. However, he took me down; and so, after all this riding, horse and man got home with whole skins and unbroken bones.

------------------------

84. Women are like precious carved works of ivory: nothing is whiter and smoother, and nothing sooner grows yellow.

------------------------

But now at last to my Journey!

JOURNEY TO FLAeTZ.

------------------------

72. The Half-learned is adored by the Quarter-learned; the latter by the Sixteenth-part-learned; and so on: but not the Whole-learned by the Half-learned.

------------------------

You are aware, my friends, that this Journey to Flaetz was necessarily to take place in Vacation time; not only because the Cattle-market, and consequently the Minister and General von Schabacker, was there then; but more especially because the latter (as I had it positively from a private hand) did annually, on the 23d of July, the market-eve, about five o'clock, become so full of gaudium and graciousness, that in many cases he did not so much snarl on people as listen to them, and grant their prayers. The cause of this gaudium I had rather not trust to paper. In short, my Petition, praying that he would be pleased to indemnify and reward me, as an unjustly deposed army-chaplain, by a Catechetical Professorship, could plainly be presented to him at no better season than exactly about five o'clock in the evening of the first dog-day. In less than a week I had finished writing my Petition. As I spared neither summaries nor copies of it, I had soon got so far as to see the relatively best lying completed before me; when, to my terror, I observed that in this paper I had introduced above thirty _dashes_, or breaks, in the middle of my sentences! Now-a-days, alas! these stings shoot forth involuntarily from learned pens, as tails of wasps. I debated long within myself whether a private scholar could justly be entitled to approach a minister with dashes,--greatly as this level interlineation of thoughts, these horizontal note-marks of poetical _music_-pieces, and these rope-ladders or Achilles'-tendons of philosophical _see_-pieces, are at present fashionable and indispensable; but, at last, I was obliged (as erasures may offend people of quality) to write my best proof-petition over again; and then to afflict myself for another quarter of an hour over the name Attila Schmelzle, seeing it is always my principle that this and the address of the letter, the two cardinal points of the whole, can never be written legibly enough.

------------------------

85. _Bien ecouter c'est presque repondre_, says Marivaux justly of social circles; but I extend it to round Councillor-tables and Cabinet-tables, where reports are made, and the Prince listens.

------------------------

_First Stage; from Neusattel to Vierstaedten_.

The 22d of July, or Wednesday, about five in the afternoon, was now, by the way-bill of the regular Post-coach, irrevocably fixed for my departure. I had still half a day to order my house; from which, for two nights and two days and a half, my breast, its breastwork and palisado, was now, along with my Self, to be withdrawn. Besides this, my good wife Bergelchen, as I call my Teutoberga, was immediately to travel after me, on Friday the 24th, in order to see and to make purchases at the yearly Fair; nay, she was ready to have gone along with me, the faithful spouse. I therefore assembled my little knot of domestics, and promulgated to them the Household Law and Valedictory Rescript, which, after my departure, in the first place _before_ the outset of my wife, and in the second place _after_ this outset, they had rigorously to obey; explaining to them especially whatever, in case of conflagrations, housebreakings, thunder-storms, or transits of troops, it would behoove them to do. To my wife I delivered an inventory of the best goods in our little Registership; which goods she, in case the house took fire, had, in the first place, to secure. I ordered her in stormy nights (the peculiar thief-weather) to put our AEolian harp in the window, that so any villanous prowler might imagine I was fantasying on my instrument, and therefore awake; for like reasons, also, to take the house-dog within doors by day, that he might sleep then, and so be livelier at night. I further counselled her to have an eye on the focus of every knot in the panes of the stable-window, nay, on every glass of water she might set down in the house; as I had already often recounted to her examples of such accidental burning-glasses having set whole buildings in flames. I then appointed her the hour when she was to set out on Friday morning to follow me; and recapitulated more emphatically the household precepts which, prior to her departure, she must afresh inculcate on her domestics. My dear, heart-sound, blooming Berga answered her faithful lord, as it seemed very seriously: "Go thy ways, little old one; it shall all be done as smooth as velvet. Wert thou but away! There is no end of thee!" Her brother, my brother-in-law, the Dragoon, for whom, out of complaisance, I had paid the coach-fare, in order to have in the vehicle along with me a stout swordsman and hector, as spiritual relative and bully-rock, so to speak; the Dragoon, I say, on hearing these my regulations, puckered up (which I easily forgave the wild soldier and bachelor) his sun-burnt face considerably into ridicule, and said: "Were I in thy place, sister, I should do what I liked, and then afterwards take a peep into these regulation-papers of his."

------------------------

17. The Bed of Honor, since so frequently whole regiments lie on it, and receive their last unction, and last honor but one, really ought from time to time be new-filled, beaten, and sunned.

------------------------

"Oh!" answered I, "misfortune may conceal itself like a scorpion in any corner; I might say, we are like children, who, looking at their gayly painted toy-box, soon pull off the lid, and, pop! out springs a mouse who has young ones."

"Mouse, mouse!" said he, stepping up and down. "But, good brother, it is five o'clock; and you will find, when you return, that all looks exactly as it does to-day; the dog like the dog, and my sister like a pretty woman; _allons donc_!" It was purely his blame that I, fearing his misconceptions, had not previously made a sort of testament.

------------------------

120. Many a one becomes a free-spoken Diogenes, not when he dwells in the Cask, but when the Cask dwells in him.

------------------------

I now packed in two different sorts of medicines, heating as well as cooling, against two different possibilities; also my old splints for arm or leg breakages, in case the coach overset; and (out of foresight) two times the money I was likely to need. Only here I could have wished, so uncertain is the stowage of such things, that I had been an Ape with cheek-pouches, or some sort of Opossum with a natural bag, that so I might have reposited these necessaries of existence in pockets which were sensitive. Shaving is a task I always go through before setting out on journeys; having a rational mistrust against stranger bloodthirsty barbers; but, on this occasion, I retained my beard; since, however close shaved, it would have grown again by the road to such a length that I could have fronted no Minister and General with it.

With a vehement emotion, I threw myself on the pith-heart of my Berga, and with a still more vehement one, tore myself away; in her, however, this our first marriage-separation seemed to produce less lamentation than triumph, less consternation than rejoicing; simply because she turned her eye not half so much on the parting, as on the meeting, and the journey after me, and the wonders of the Fair. Yet she threw and hung herself on my somewhat long and thin neck and body, almost painfully, being, indeed, a too fleshy and weighty load, and said to me: "Whisk thee off quick, my charming Attel (Attila), and trouble thy head with no cares by the way, thou singular man! A whiff or two of ill luck we can stand, by God's help, so long as my father is no beggar. And for thee, Franz," continued she, turning with some heat to her brother, "I leave my Attel on thy soul; thou well knowest, thou wild fly, what I wilt do, if thou play the fool, and leave him anywhere in the lurch." Her meaning here was good, and I could not take it ill; to you, also, my Friends, her wealth and her open-heartedness are nothing new.

------------------------

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

------------------------