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 NORTH CAROLINA 
 
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THOMAS CARLYLE'S WORKS 
 
 IN 1 8 VOLUMES 
 
 Volume IX 
 
 TALES BY 
 MUS^US, TIECK, RICHTER 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2015 
 
 https://archive.org/details/thomascarlyleswo09carl 
 
Cyi/Ul#(EltS. 
 
TALES BY 
 
 MUS^US, TIECK 
 RICHTER 
 
 Translated from the German 
 
 By THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 [1827] 
 
 WITH PORTRAIT 
 
 FUNK & WAGN ALLS COMPANY 
 NEW YORK 
 1905 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 MUS.EUS : 
 
 PAGE 
 
 v 
 
 Dumb Love 3 
 
 Libussa , . .58 
 
 Melechsala 98 
 
 TIECK : 
 
 The Fair-haired Eckbert 159 
 
 The Trusty Eckari 175 
 
 The Runenberg . .200 
 
 The Elves 220 
 
 The Goblet . 238 
 
 RICHTER: 
 
 Schmelzle's Journey to Fl;etz 25? 
 
 Life of Quintus Fixlein 305 
 
 Portrait of Mus^eus . Frontispiece 
 
MUSiEUS. 
 
 VOL. III. 
 
 B 
 
DUMB LOVE. 1 
 
 ♦ 
 
 Theee was once a wealthy merchant, Melchior of Bremen by 
 name, who used to stroke his beard with a contemptuous grin, 
 when he heard the Eich Man in the Gospel preached of, whom, 
 in comparison, he reckoned little better than a petty shopkeeper. 
 Melchior had money in such plenty, that he floored his dining- 
 room all over with a coat of solid dollars. In those frugal times, 
 as in our own, a certain luxury prevailed among the rich ; only 
 then it had a more substantial shape than now. But though this 
 pomp of Melchior' s was sharply censured by his fellow- citizens 
 and consorts, it was, in truth, directed more to trading specula- 
 tion than to mere vain-glory. The cunning Bremer easily ob- 
 served, that those who grudged and blamed this seeming vanity, 
 would but diffuse the reputation of his wealth, and so increase his 
 credit. He gained his purpose to the full ; the sleeping capital 
 of old dollars, so judiciously set up to public inspection in the 
 parlour, brought interest a hundredfold, by the silent surety which 
 it offered for his bargains in every market ; yet, at last, it became 
 a rock on which the welfare of his family made shipwreck. 
 
 Melchior of Bremen died of a surfeit at a city-feast, without 
 having time to set his house in order ; and left all his goods and 
 chattels to an only son, in the bloom of life, and just arrived at 
 the years when the laws allowed him to take possession of his 
 inheritance. Franz Melcherson was a brilliant youth, endued 
 by nature with the best capacities. His exterior was gracefully 
 formed, yet firm and sinewy withal ; his temper was cheery and 
 jovial, as if hung-beef and old French wine had joined to influence 
 his formation. On his chocks bloomed health; and from his 
 
 1 Prefatory Introduction to Musaous, supra, at p. 316, Vol. VI. of Works 
 (Vol. I. of Miscellanies), 
 
4 
 
 MUS^lUS. 
 
 brown eyes looked mirthfulness and love of joy. He was like a 
 marrowy plant, which needs but water and the poorest ground to 
 make it grow to strength ; but which, in too fat a soil, will shoot 
 into luxuriant overgrowth, without fruit or usefulness. The father's 
 heritage, as often happens, proved the ruin of the son. Scarce 
 had he felt the joy of being sole possessor and disposer of a large 
 fortune, when he set about endeavouring to get rid of it as of a 
 galling burden ; began to play the Kich Man in the Gospel to the 
 very letter ; went clothed in fine apparel, and fared sumptuously 
 every day. No feast at the bishop's court could be compared for 
 pomp and superfluity with his ; and never while the town of Bre- 
 men shall endure, will such another public dinner be consumed, 
 as it yearly got from him ; for to every burgher of the place he 
 gave a Krusel-soup and a jug of Spanish wine. For this, all 
 people cried : Long life to him ! and Franz became the hero of 
 the day. 
 
 In this unceasing whirl of joviality, no thought was cast upon 
 the Balancing of Entries, which, in those days, was the merchant's 
 vade-mecum, though in our times it is going out of fashion, and 
 for want of it the tongue of the commercial beam too frequently 
 declines with a magnetic virtue from the vertical position. Some 
 years passed on without the joyful Franz's noticing a diminution 
 in his incomes ; for at his father's death every chest and coffer 
 had been full. The voracious host of table-friends, the airy com- 
 pany of jesters, gamesters, parasites, and all who had their living 
 by the prodigal son, took special care to keep reflection at a dist- 
 ance from him ; they hurried him from one enjoyment to another; 
 kept him constantly in play, lest in some sober moment Keason 
 might awake, and snatch him from their plundering claws. 
 
 But at last their well of happiness went suddenly dry ; old 
 Melchior's casks of gold were now run off even to the lees. One 
 day, Franz ordered payment of a large account ; his cash-keeper 
 was not in a state to execute the precept, and returned it with a 
 protest. This counter-incident flashed keenly through the soul 
 of Franz ; yet he felt nothing else but anger and vexation at his 
 servant, to whose unaccountable perversity, by no means to his 
 own ill husbandry, he charged the present disorder in his finances. 
 Nor did he give himself the trouble to investigate the real condi- 
 tion of the business ; but after flying to the common Fool's-litany, 
 and thundering out some scores of curses, he transmitted to his 
 shoulder- shrugging steward the laconic order: Find means. 
 
DUMB LOVE, 
 
 5 
 
 Bill-brokers, usurers and money-changers now came into play. 
 For high interest, fresh sums were poured into the empty coffers ; 
 the silver flooring of the dining-room was then more potent in the 
 eyes of creditors, than in these times of ours the promissory obli- 
 gation of the Congress of America, with the whole thirteen United 
 States to back it. This palliative succeeded for a season ; but, 
 underhand, the rumour spread about the town, that the silver 
 flooring had been privily removed, and a stone one substituted in 
 its stead. The matter was immediately, by application of the 
 lenders, legally inquired into, and discovered to be actually so. 
 Now, it could not be denied, that a marble-floor, worked into nice 
 Mosaic, looked much better in a parlour, than a sheet of dirty, 
 tarnished dollars : the creditors, however, paid so little reverence 
 to the proprietor's refinement of taste, that on the spot they, one 
 and all, demanded payment of their several moneys ; and as this 
 was not complied with, they proceeded to procure an act of bank- 
 ruptcy; and Melchior's house, with its appurtenances, offices, 
 gardens, parks and furniture, were sold by public auction, and their 
 late owner, who in this extremity had screened himself from jail 
 by some chicanery of law, judicially ejected. 
 
 It was now too late to moralise on his absurdities, since philo- 
 sophical reflections could not alter what was done, and the most 
 wholesome resolutions would not bring him back his money. Ac- 
 cording to the principles of this our cultivated century, the hero 
 at this juncture ought to have retired with dignity from the stage, 
 or in some way terminated his existence ; to have entered on his 
 travels into foreign parts, or opened his carotid artery ; since in 
 his native town he could live no longer as a man of honour. Franz 
 neither did the one nor the other. The qu'en-dira-t-on, which 
 French morality employs as bit and curb for thoughtlessness and 
 folly, had never once occurred to the unbridled squanderer in the 
 days of his profusion, and his sensibility was still too dull to feel 
 so keenly the disgrace of his capricious wastefulness. He was 
 like a toper, who has been in drink, and on awakening out of his 
 carousal, cannot rightly understand how matters are or have been 
 with him. He lived according to the manner of unprospering 
 spendthrifts ; repented not, lamented not. By good fortune, he 
 had picked some relics from the wreck ; a few small heir-looms 
 of the family ; and these secured him for a time from absolute 
 starvation. 
 
 He engaged a lodging in a remote alley, into which the sun 
 
6 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 never shone throughout the year, except for a few days about the 
 solstice, when it peeped for a short while over the high roofs. Here 
 he found the little that his now much- contracted wants required. 
 The frugal kitchen of his landlord screened him from hunger, the 
 stove from cold, the roof from rain, the four walls from wind ; only 
 from the pains of tedium he could devise no refuge or resource. 
 The light rabble of parasites had fled away with his prosperity ; 
 and of his former friends there was now no one that knew him. 
 Reading had not yet become a necessary of life ; people did not 
 yet understand the art of killing time by means of those amusing 
 shapes of fancy which are wont to lodge in empty heads. There 
 were yet no sentimental, pedagogic, psychologic, popular, simple, 
 comic, or moral tales ; no novels of domestic life, no cloister- 
 stories, no romances of the middle ages ; and of the innumerable 
 generation of our Henrys, and Adelaides, and Cliffords, and Em- 
 mas, no one had as yet lifted up its mantua-maker voice, to weary 
 out the patience of a lazy and discerning public. In those days, 
 knights were still diligently pricking round the tilt-yard ; Dietrich 
 of Bern, Hildebrand, Seyfried with the Horns, Rennewart the 
 Strong, were following their snake and dragon hunt, and killing 
 giants and dwarfs of twelve men's strength. The venerable epos, 
 Theuerdank, was the loftiest ideal of German art and skill, the 
 latest product of our native wit, but only for the cultivated minds, 
 the poets and thinkers of the age. Franz belonged to none of 
 those classes, and had therefore nothing to employ himself upon, 
 except that he tuned his lute, and sometimes twanged a little on 
 it ; then, by way of variation, took to looking from the window, 
 and instituted observations on the weather ; out of which, indeed, 
 there came no inference a whit more edifying than from all the 
 labours of the most rheumatic meteorologist of this present age. 
 Meanwhile his turn for observation ere long found another sort 
 of nourishment, by which the vacant space in his head and heart 
 was at once filled. 
 
 In the narrow lane right opposite his window dwelt an honest 
 matron, who, in hope of better times, was earning a painful living 
 by the long threads, which, assisted by a marvellously fair daugh- 
 ter, she winded daily from her spindle. Day after day the couple 
 spun a length of yarn, with which the whole town of Bremen, with 
 its walls and trenches, and all its suburbs, might have been begirt. 
 These two spinners had not been born for the wheel; they were 
 of good descent, and had lived of old in pleasant affluence. The 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 7 
 
 fair Meta's father had once had a ship of his own on the sea, and, 
 freighting it himself, had yearly sailed to Antwerp ; but a heavy 
 storm had sunk the vessel, " with man and mouse," and a rich 
 cargo, into the abysses of the ocean, before Meta had passed the 
 years of her childhood. The mother, a staid and reasonable 
 woman, bore the loss of her husband and all her fortune with a 
 wise composure ; in her need she refused, out of noble pride, all 
 help from the charitable sympathy of her relations and friends ; 
 considering it as shameful alms, so long as she believed, that in 
 her own activity she might find a living by the labour of her 
 hands. She gave up her large house, and all her costly furniture, 
 to the rigorous creditors of her ill-fated husband, hired a little 
 dwelling in the lane, and span from early morning till late night, 
 though the trade went sore against her, and she often wetted the 
 thread with her tears. Yet by this diligence she reached her 
 object, of depending upon no one, and owing no mortal any obli- 
 gation. By and by she trained her growing daughter to the same 
 employment ; and lived so thriftily, that she laid-by a trifle of her 
 gainings, and turned it to account by carrying on a little trade 
 in flax. 
 
 She, however, nowise purposed to conclude her life in these 
 poor circumstances ; on the contrary, the honest dame kept up 
 her heart with happy prospects into the future, and hoped that 
 she should once more attain a prosperous situation, and in the 
 autumn of her life enjoy her woman' s-summer. Nor were these 
 hopes grounded altogether upon empty dreams of fancy, but upon 
 a rational and calculated expectation. She saw her daughter 
 budding up like a spring rose, no less virtuous and modest than 
 she was fair ; and with such endowments of art and spirit, that 
 the mother felt delight and comfort in her, and spared the morsel 
 from her own lips, that nothing might be wanting in an educa- 
 tion suitable to her capacities. For she thought, that if a maiden 
 could come up to the sketch which Solomon, the wise friend of 
 woman, has left of the ideal of a perfect wife, it could not fail 
 that a pearl of such price would be sought after, and bidden for, 
 to ornament some good man's house ; for beauty combined with 
 virtue, in the days of Mother Brigitta, were as important in the 
 eyes of wooers, as, in our days, birth combined with fortune. 
 Besides, the number of suitors was in those times greater; it 
 was then believed that the wife was the most essential, not, as 
 in our refined economical theory, the most superfluous item in 
 
8 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 the household. The fair Meta, it is true, bloomed only like a 
 precious rare flower in the greenhouse, not under the gay, free 
 sky; she lived in maternal oversight and keeping, sequestered 
 and still; was seen in no walk, in no company; and scarcely 
 once in the year passed through the gate of her native town ; all 
 which seemed utterly to contradict her mother's principle. The 
 old Lady E * * of Memel understood it otherwise, in her time. 
 She sent the itinerant Sophia, it is clear as day, from Memel into 
 Saxony, simply on a marriage speculation, and attained her pur- 
 pose fully. How many hearts did the wandering nymph set on 
 fire, how many suitors courted her ! Had she stayed at home, as 
 a domestic modest maiden, she might have bloomed away in the 
 remoteness of her virgin cell, without even making a conquest of 
 Kubbuz the schoolmaster. Other times, other manners. Daugh- 
 ters with us are a sleeping capital, which must be put in circula- 
 tion if it is to yield any interest ; of old, they were kept like 
 thrifty savings, under lock and key ; yet the bankers still knew 
 where the treasure lay concealed, and how it might be come at. 
 Mother Brigitta steered towards some prosperous son-in-law, who 
 might lead her back from the Babylonian captivity of the narrow 
 lane into the land of superfluity, flowing with milk and honey ; 
 and trusted firmly, that in the urn of Fate, her daughter's lot 
 would not be coupled with a blank. 
 
 One day, while neighbour Franz was looking from the win- 
 dow, making observations on the weather, he perceived the charm- 
 ing Meta coming with her mother from church, whither she went 
 daily, to attend mass. In the times of his abundance, the un- 
 stable voluptuary had been blind to the fairer half of the species ; 
 the finer feelings were still slumbering in his breast ; and all his 
 senses had been overclouded by the ceaseless tumult of debauchery. 
 But now the stormy waves of extravagance had subsided ; and 
 in this deep calm, the smallest breath of air sufficed to curl the 
 mirror surface of his soul. He was enchanted by the aspect of 
 this, the loveliest female figure that had ever flitted past him. 
 He abandoned from that hour the barren study of the winds and 
 clouds, and now instituted quite another set of Observations for 
 the furtherance of Moral Science, and one which afforded to him- 
 self much finer occupation. He soon extracted from his landlord 
 intelligence of this fair neighbour, and learned most part of what 
 we know already. 
 
 Now rose on him the first repentant thought for his heedless 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 9 
 
 squandering ; there awoke a secret good-will in his heart to this 
 new acquaintance ; and for her sake he wished that his paternal 
 inheritance were his own again, that the lovely Meta might be 
 fitly dowered with it. His garret in the narrow lane was now so 
 dear to him, that he would not have exchanged it with the Schud- 
 ding itself. 2 Throughout the day he stirred not from the window, 
 watching for an opportunity of glancing at the dear maiden ; and 
 when she chanced to show herself, he felt more rapture in his 
 soul than did Horrox in his Liverpool Observatory, when he saw, 
 for the first time, Venus passing over the disk of the Sun. 
 
 Unhappily the watchful mother instituted counter - observa- 
 tions, and ere long discovered what the lounger on the other side 
 was driving at ; and as Franz, in the capacity of spendthrift, 
 already stood in very bad esteem with her, this daily gazing an- 
 gered her so much, that she shrouded her lattice as with a cloud, 
 and drew the curtains close together. Meta had the strictest 
 orders not again to appear at the window ; and when her mother 
 went with her to mass, she drew a rain-cap over her face, disguised 
 her like a favourite of the Grand Signior, and hurried till she turned 
 the corner with her, and escaped the eyes of the lier-in-wait. 
 
 Of Franz, it was not held that penetration was his master 
 faculty ; but Love awakens all the talents of the mind. He ob- 
 served, that by his imprudent spying, he had betrayed himself; 
 and he thenceforth retired from the window, with the resolution 
 not again to look out at it, though the Venerabile itself were 
 carried by. On the other hand, he meditated some invention for 
 proceeding with his observations in a private manner ; and with- 
 out great labour, his combining spirit mastered it. 
 
 He hired the largest looking-glass that he could find, and 
 hung it up in his room, with such an elevation and direction, that 
 he could distinctly see whatever passed in the dwelling of his 
 neighbours. Here, as for several days the w 7 atcher did not come 
 to light, the screens by degrees went asunder; and the broad 
 mirror now and then could catch the form of the noble maid, and, 
 to the great refreshment of the virtuoso, cast it truly back. The 
 more deeply love took root in his heart, 3 the more widely did his 
 wishes extend. It now struck him that he ought to lay his 
 passion open to the fair Meta, and investigate the corresponding 
 
 2 One of the largest buildings in Bremen, where the meetings of the mer- 
 chants are usually held. 
 
 3 'Airb tov bpav epx^rai rb 4pa,y, 
 
10 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 state of her opinions. The commonest and readiest way which 
 lovers, under such a constellation of their wishes, strike into, was 
 in his position inaccessible. In those modest ages, it was always 
 difficult for Paladins in love to introduce themselves to daughters 
 of the family ; toilette calls were not in fashion ; trustful inter- 
 views tete-a-tete were punished by the loss of reputation to the 
 female sharer; promenades, esplanades, masquerades, pic-nics, 
 goutes, soupes, and other inventions of modern wit for forward- 
 ing sweet courtship, had not then been hit upon ; yet, notwith- 
 standing, all things went their course, much as they do with us. 
 Gossipings, weddings, lykewakes, were, especially in our Imperial 
 Cities, privileged vehicles for carrying on soft secrets, and expe- 
 diting marriage contracts ; hence the old proverb, One wedding 
 makes a score. But a poor runagate no man desired to number 
 among his baptismal relatives ; to no nuptial dinner, to no wake- 
 supper, was he bidden. The by-way of negotiating, with the 
 woman, with the young maid, or any other serviceable spirit of 
 a go-between, was here locked up. Mother Brigitta had neither 
 maid nor woman ; the flax and yarn trade passed through no 
 hands but her own ; and she abode by her daughter as closely 
 as her shadow. 
 
 In these circumstances, it was clearly impossible for neigh- 
 bour Franz to disclose his heart to the fair Meta, either verbally 
 or in writing. Ere long, however, he invented an idiom, which 
 appeared expressly calculated for the utterance of the passions. 
 It is true, the honour of the first invention is not his. Many 
 ages ago, the sentimental Celadons of Italy and Spain had taught 
 melting harmonies, in serenades beneath the balconies of their 
 dames, to speak the language of the heart ; and it is said that 
 this melodious pathos had especial virtue in love-matters ; and, 
 by the confession of the ladies, was more heart-affecting and sub- 
 duing, than of yore the oratory of the reverend Chrysostom, or 
 the pleadings of Demosthenes and Tully. But of all this the 
 simple Bremer had not heard a syllable; and consequently the 
 invention of expressing his emotions in symphonious notes, and 
 trilling them to his beloved Meta, was entirely his own. 
 
 In an hour of sentiment, he took his lute : he did not now 
 tune it merely to accompany his voice, but drew harmonious 
 melodies from its strings ; and Love, in less than a month, had 
 changed the musical scraper to a new Amphion. His first efforts 
 did not seem to have been noticed ; but soon the population of 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 11 
 
 the lane were all ear, every time the dilettante struck a note, 
 Mothers hushed their children, fathers drove the noisy urchins 
 from the doors, and the performer had the satisfaction to observe 
 that Meta herself, with her alabaster hand, would sometimes open 
 the window as he began to prelude. If he succeeded in enticing 
 her to lend an ear, his voluntaries whirled along in gay allegro, 
 or skipped away in mirthful jigs ; but if the turning of the spindle, 
 or her thrifty mother, kept her back, a heavy-laden andante rolled 
 over the bridge of the sighing lute, and expressed, in languishing 
 modulations, the feeling of sadness which love-pain poured over 
 his soul. 
 
 Meta was no dull scholar ; she soon learned to interpret this 
 expressive speech. She made various experiments to try whether 
 she had rightly understood it, and found that she could govern 
 at her will the dilettante humours of the unseen lute-twanger ; 
 for your silent modest maidens, it is well known, have a much 
 sharper eye than those giddy flighty girls, who hurry with the 
 levity of butterflies from one object to another, and take proper 
 heed of none. She felt her female vanity a little flattered ; and 
 it pleased her that she had it in her power, by a secret magic, to 
 direct the neighbouring lute, and tune it now to the note of joy, 
 now to the whimpering moan of grief. Mother Brigitta, on the 
 other hand, had her head so constantly employed with her traffic 
 on the small scale, that she minded none of these things ; and 
 the sly little daughter took especial care to keep her in the dark 
 respecting the discovery; and, instigated either by some touch 
 of kindness for her cooing neighbour, or perhaps by vanity, that 
 she might show her hermeneutic penetration, meditated on the 
 means of making some symbolical response to these harmonious 
 apostrophes to her heart. She expressed a wish to have flower- 
 pots on the outside of the window ; and to grant her this inno- 
 cent amusement was a light thing for the mother, who no longer 
 feared the coney-catching neighbour, now that she no longer saw 
 him with her eyes. 
 
 Henceforth Meta had a frequent call to tend her flowers, to 
 water them, to bind them up, and guard them from approaching 
 storms, and watch their growth and flourishing. With inexpres- 
 sible delight the happy Franz explained this hieroglyphic alto- 
 gether in his favour ; and the speaking lute did not fail to modu- 
 late his glad emotions, through the alley, into the heedful ear of 
 the fair friend of flowers. This, in her tender virgin heart, worked 
 
12 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 wonders. She began to be secretly vexed, when Mother Brigitta, 
 in her wise table-talk, in which at times she spent an hour chatting 
 with her daughter, brought their melodious neighbour to her bar, 
 and called him a losel and a sluggard, or compared him with the 
 Prodigal in the Gospel. She always took his part ; threw the 
 blame of his ruin on the sorrowful temptations he had met with ; 
 and accused him of nothing worse than not having fitly weighed 
 the golden proverb, A 'penny saved is a penny got. Yet she de- 
 fended him with cunning prudence ; so that it rather seemed as 
 if she wished to help the conversation, than took any interest in 
 the thing itself. 
 
 While Mother Brigitta within her four walls was inveighing 
 against the luckless spendthrift, he on his side entertained the 
 kindest feelings towards her ; and was considering diligently how 
 he might, according to his means, improve her straitened circum- 
 stances, and divide with her the little that remained to him, and 
 so that she might never notice that a portion of his property had 
 passed over into hers. This pious outlay, in good truth, was spe- 
 cially intended not for the mother, but the daughter. Underhand 
 he had come to know, that the fair Meta had a hankering for a 
 new gown, which her mother had excused herself from buying, 
 under pretext of hard times. Yet he judged quite accurately, that 
 a present of a piece of stuff, from an unknown hand, would scarcely 
 be received, or cut into a dress for Meta; and that he should 
 spoil all, if he stept forth and avowed himself the author of the 
 benefaction. Chance afforded him an opportunity to realise this 
 purpose in the way he wished. 
 
 Mother Brigitta was complaining to a neighbour, that flax was 
 very dull ; that it cost her more to purchase than the buyers of it 
 would repay ; and that hence this branch of industry was nothing 
 better for the present, than a withered bough. Eaves-dropper 
 Franz did not need a second telling ; he ran directly to the gold- 
 smith, sold his mother's ear-rings, bought some stones of flax, 
 and, by means of a negotiatress, whom he gained, had it offered 
 to the mother for a cheap price. The bargain was concluded ; 
 and it yielded so richly, that on All- Saints' day the fair Meta 
 sparkled in a fine new gown. In this decoration, she had such a 
 splendour in her watchful neighbour's eyes, that he would have 
 overlooked the Eleven Thousand Virgins, all and sundry, had it 
 been permitted him to choose a heart' s-mate from among them, 
 and fixed upon the charming Meta. 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 13 
 
 But just as he was triumphing in the result of his innocent 
 deceit, the secret was betrayed. Mother Brigitta had resolved to 
 do the flax-retailer, who had brought her that rich gain, a kind- 
 ness in her turn ; and was treating her with a well- sugared rice- 
 pap, and a quarter-stoop of Spanish sack. This dainty set in 
 motion not only the toothless jaw, but also the garrulous tongue 
 of the crone : she engaged to continue the flax-brokerage, should 
 her consigner feel inclined, as from good grounds she guessed he 
 would. One word produced another ; Mother Eve's two daughters 
 searched, with the curiosity peculiar to their sex, till at length 
 the brittle seal of female secrecy gave way. Meta grew pale with 
 affright at the discovery, which would have charmed her, had her 
 mother not partaken of it. But she knew her strict ideas of 
 morals and decorum ; and these gave her doubts about the pre- 
 servation of her gown. The serious dame herself was no less 
 struck at the tidings, and wished, on her side too, that she alone 
 had got intelligence of the specific nature of her flax-trade ; for 
 she dreaded that this neighbourly munificence might make an im- 
 pression on her daughter's heart, which would derange her whole 
 calculations. She resolved, therefore, to root out the still tender 
 germ of this weed, in the very act, from the maiden heart. The 
 gown, in spite of all the tears and prayers of its lovely owner, was 
 first hypothecated, and next day transmitted to the huckster's shop ; 
 the money raised from it, with the other profits of the flax specu- 
 lation, accurately reckoned up, were packed together, and under 
 the name of an old debt, returned to " Mr. Franz Melcherson, in 
 Bremen," by help of the Hamburg post. The receiver, nothing 
 doubting, took the little lot of money as an unexpected blessing ; 
 wished that all his father's debtors would clear off their old scores 
 as conscientiously as this honest unknown person ; and had not 
 the smallest notion of the real position of affairs. The talking 
 brokeress, of course, was far from giving him a true disclosure of 
 her blabbing ; she merely told him that Mother Brigitta had given 
 up her flax-trade. 
 
 Meanwhile, the mirror taught him, that the aspects over the 
 way had altered greatly in a single night. The flower-pots were 
 entirely vanished ; and the cloudy veil again obscured the friendly 
 horizon of the opposite window. Meta was seldom visible ; and 
 if for a moment, like the silver moon, from among her clouds in 
 a stormy night, she did appear, her countenance was troubled, 
 the fire of her eyes was extinguished, and it seemed to him, that, 
 
14 
 
 MUSJBTJS. 
 
 at times, with her finger, she pressed away a pearly tear. This 
 seized him sharply by the heart ; and his lute resounded melan- 
 choly sympathy in soft Lydian mood. He grieved, and meditated 
 to discover why his love was sad ; but all his thinking and ima- 
 gining were vain. After some days were past, he noticed, to his 
 consternation, that his dearest piece of furniture, the large mirror, 
 had become entirely useless. He set himself one bright morning 
 in his usual nook, and observed that the clouds over the way had, 
 like natural fog, entirely dispersed ; a sign which he at first im- 
 puted to a general washing ; but ere long he saw that, in the 
 chamber, all was waste and empty ; his pleasing neighbours had in 
 silence withdrawn the night before, and broken up their quarters. 
 
 He might now, once more, with the greatest leisure and con- 
 venience, enjoy the free prospect from his window, without fear of 
 being troublesome to any ; but for him it was a dead loss to miss 
 the kind countenance of his Platonic love. Mute and stupefied, 
 he stood, as of old his fellow- craftsman, the harmonious Orpheus, 
 when the dear shadow of his Eurydice again vanished down to 
 Orcus ; and if the bedlam humour of those " noble minds," who 
 raved among us through the bygone lustre, but have now like 
 drones disappeared with the earliest frost, had then been ripened 
 to existence, this calm of his would certainly have passed into a 
 sudden hurricane. The least he could have done, would have 
 been to pull his hair, to trundle himself about upon the ground, 
 or run his head against the wall, and break his stove and window. 
 All this he omitted ; from the very simple cause, that true love 
 never makes men fools, but rather is the universal remedy for 
 healing sick minds of their foolishness, for laying gentle fetters 
 on extravagance, and guiding youthful giddiness from the broad 
 way of ruin to the narrow path of reason ; for the rake whom love 
 will not recover is lost irrecoverably. 
 
 When once his spirit had assembled its scattered powers, he 
 set on foot a number of instructive meditations on the unexpected 
 phenomenon, but too visible in the adjacent horizon. He readily 
 conceived that he was the lever which had effected the removal of 
 the wandering colony : his money-letter, the abrupt conclusion of 
 the flax-trade, and the emigration which had followed thereupon, 
 were like reciprocal exponents to each other, and explained the 
 whole to him. He perceived that Mother Brigitta had got round 
 his secrets, and saw from every circumstance that he was not her 
 hero ; a discovery which yielded him but little satisfaction. The 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 15 
 
 symbolic responses of the fair Meta, with her flower-pots, to his 
 musical proposals of love ; her trouble, and the tear which he had 
 noticed in her bright eyes shortly before her departure from the 
 lane, again animated his hopes, and kept him in good heart. His 
 first employment was to go in quest, and try to learn where Mother 
 Brigitta had pitched her residence, in order to maintain, by some 
 means or other, his secret understanding with the daughter. It 
 cost him little toil to find her abode ; yet he was too modest to 
 shift his own lodging to her neighbourhood ; but satisfied himself 
 with spying out the church where she now attended mass, that he 
 might treat himself once each day with a glance of his beloved. 
 He never failed to meet her as she returned, now here, now there, 
 in some shop or door which she was passing, and salute her 
 kindly; an equivalent for a billet-doux, and productive of the same 
 effect. 
 
 Had not Meta been brought up in a style too nunlike, and 
 guarded by her rigid mother as a treasure, from the eyes of thieves, 
 there is little doubt that neighbour Franz, with his secret wooing, 
 would have made no great impression on her heart. But she was 
 at the critical age, when Mother Nature and Mother Brigitta, with 
 their wise nurture, were perpetually coming into collision. The 
 former taught her, by a secret instinct, the existence of emotions, 
 for which she had no name, and eulogised them as the panacea of 
 life ; the latter warned her to beware of tbe surprisals of a passion, 
 which she would not designate by its true title, but which, as she 
 maintained, was more pernicious and destructive to young maidens 
 than the small-pox itself. The former, in the spring of life, as 
 beseemed the season, enlivened her heart with a genial warmth ; 
 the latter wished that it should always be as cold and frosty as an 
 ice-house. These conflicting pedagogic systems of the two good 
 mothers gave the tractable heart of the daughter the direction of 
 a ship which is steered against the wind, and follows neither the 
 wind nor the helm, but a course between the two. She maintained 
 the modesty and virtue which her education, from her youth up- 
 wards, had impressed upon her ; but her heart continued open to 
 all tender feelings. And as neighbour Franz was the first youth 
 who had awakened these slumbering emotions, she took a certain 
 pleasure in him, which she scarcely owned to herself, but which 
 any less unexperienced maiden would have recognised as love. It 
 was for this that her departure from the narrow lane had gone so 
 near her heart ; for this that the little tear had trickled from her 
 
16 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 beautiful eyes ; for this that, when the watchful Franz saluted her 
 as she came from church, she thanked him so kindly, and grew 
 scarlet to the ears. The lovers had in truth never spoken any 
 word to one another ; but he understood her, and she him, so 
 perfectly, that in the most secret interview they could not have 
 explained themselves more clearly ; and both contracting parties 
 swore in their silent hearts, each for himself, under the seal of 
 secrecy, the oath of faithfulness to the other. 
 
 In the quarter, where Mother Brigitta had now settled, there 
 were likewise neighbours, and among these likewise girl-spiers, 
 whom the beauty of the charming Meta had not escaped. Eight 
 opposite their dwelling lived a wealthy Brewer, whom the wags of 
 the part, as he was strong in means, had named the Hop-King. 
 He was a young stout widower, whose mourning year was just 
 concluding, so that now he was entitled, without offending the 
 precepts of decorum, to look about him elsewhere for a new help- 
 mate to his household. Shortly after the departure of his whilom 
 wife, he had in secret entered into an engagement with his Patron 
 Saint, St. Christopher, to offer him a wax-taper as long as a hop- 
 pole, and as thick as a mashing-beam, if he would vouchsafe in 
 this second choice to prosper the desire of his heart. Scarcely had 
 he seen the dainty Meta, when he dreamed that St. Christopher 
 looked in upon him, through the window of his bedroom in the 
 second story, 4 and demanded payment of his debt. To the quick 
 widower this seemed a heavenly call to cast out the net without 
 delay. Early in the morning he sent for the brokers of the town, 
 and commissioned them to buy bleached wax ; then decked him- 
 self like a Syndic, and set forth to expedite his marriage specula- 
 tion. He had no musical talents, and in the secret symbolic 
 language of love he was no better than a blockhead : but he had 
 a rich brewery, a solid mortgage on the city-revenues, a ship on 
 the Weser, and a farm without the gates. With such recommen- 
 dations he might have reckoned on a prosperous issue to his court- 
 ship, independently of all assistance from St. Kit, especially as 
 his bride was without dowry. 
 
 According to old use and wont, he went directly to the master 
 hand, and disclosed to the mother, in a kind neighbourly way, his 
 
 4 St. Christopher never appears to his favourites, like the other Saints, in a 
 solitary room, encircled with a glory : there is no room high enough to admit 
 him ; thus the celestial Son of Anak is obliged to transact all business with his 
 wards outside the window. 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 17 
 
 christian intentions towards her virtuous and honourable daugh- 
 ter. No angel's visit could have charmed the good lady more 
 than these glad tidings. She now saw ripening before her the fruit 
 of her prudent scheme, and the fulfilment of her hope again to 
 emerge from her present poverty into her former abundance ; she 
 blessed the good thought of moving from the crooked alley, and 
 in the first ebullition of her joy, as a thousand gay ideas were 
 ranking themselves up within her soul, she also thought of neigh- 
 bour Franz, who had given occasion to it. Though Franz was not 
 exactly her bosom-youth, she silently resolved to gladden him, as 
 the accidental instrument of her rising star, with some secret gift 
 or other, and by this means likewise recompense his well-intended 
 flax-dealing. 
 
 In the maternal heart the marriage-articles were as good as 
 signed ; but decorum did not permit these rash proceedings in a 
 matter of such moment. She therefore let the motion lie ad 
 referendum, to be considered by her daughter and herself; and 
 appointed a term of eight days, after which " she hoped she should 
 have it in her power to give the much-respected suitor a reply that 
 would satisfy him;" all which, as the common manner of proceed- 
 ing, he took in good part, and with his usual civilities withdrew. 
 No sooner had he turned his back, than spinning-wheel and reel, 
 swingling- stake and hatchel, without regard being paid to their 
 faithful services, and without accusation being lodged against them, 
 were consigned, like some luckless Parliament of Paris, to dis- 
 grace, and dismissed as useless implements into the lumber-room. 
 On returning from mass, Meta was astonished at the sudden cata- 
 strophe which had occurred in the apartment ; it was all decked 
 out as on one of the three high Festivals of the year. She could 
 not understand how her thrifty mother, on a work- day, had so 
 neglectfully put her active hand in her bosom ; but before she had 
 time to question the kindly- smiling dame concerning this reform 
 in household affairs, she was favoured by the latter with an expla- 
 nation of the riddle. Persuasion rested on Brigitta's tongue; and 
 there flowed from her lips a stream of female eloquence, depicting 
 the offered happiness in the liveliest hues which her imagination 
 could lay on. She expected from the chaste Meta the blush of 
 soft virgin bashfulness, which announces the novitiate in love ; 
 and then a full resignation of herself to the maternal will. For 
 of old, in proposals of marriage, daughters were situated as our 
 princesses are still ; they were not asked about their inclination, 
 
 VOL. III. c 
 
18 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 and had no voice in the selection of their legal helpmate, save the 
 Yes before the altar. 
 
 But Mother Brigitta was in this point widely mistaken ; the 
 fair Meta did not at the unexpected announcement grow red as a 
 rose, but pale as ashes. An hysterical giddiness swam over her 
 brain, and she sank fainting in her mother's arms. When her 
 senses were recalled by the sprinkling of cold water, and she had 
 in some degree recovered strength, her eyes overflowed with tears, 
 as if a heavy misfortune had befallen her. From all these symp- 
 toms, the sagacious mother easily perceived that the marriage - 
 trade was not to her taste ; at which she wondered not a little, 
 sparing neither prayers nor admonitions to her daughter to secure 
 her happiness by this good match, not flout it from her by caprice 
 and contradiction. But Meta could not be persuaded that her hap- 
 piness depended on a match, to which her heart gave no assent. 
 The debates between the mother and the daughter lasted several 
 days, from early morning to late night ; the term for decision 
 was approaching ; the sacred taper for St. Christopher, which Og 
 King of Bashan need not have disdained had it been lit for him 
 as a marriage -torch at his espousals, stood in readiness, all beau- 
 tifully painted with living flowers like a many - coloured light, 
 though the Saint had all the while been so inactive in his client's 
 cause, that the fair Meta's heart was still bolted and barred against 
 him fast as ever. 
 
 Meanwhile she had bleared her eyes with weeping, and the 
 maternal rhetoric had worked so powerfully, that, like a flower 
 in the sultry heat, she was drooping together, and visibly fading 
 away. Hidden grief was gnawing at her heart ; she had pre- 
 scribed herself a rigorous fast, and for three days no morsel had 
 she eaten, and with no drop of water moistened her parched lips. 
 By night sleep never visited her eyes ; and with all this she grew 
 sick to death, and began to talk about extreme unction. As the 
 tender mother saw the pillar of her hope wavering, and bethought 
 herself that she might lose both capital and interest at once, she 
 found, on accurate consideration, that it would be more advisable 
 to let the latter vanish, than to miss them both ; and with kindly 
 indulgence plied into the daughter's will. It cost her much con- 
 straint, indeed, and many hard battles, to turn away so advant- 
 ageous an offer ; yet at last, according to established order in 
 household governments, she yielded unconditionally to the incli- 
 nation of her child, and remonstrated no more with her beloved 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 19 
 
 patient on the subject. As the stout widower announced himself 
 on the appointed day, in the full trust that his heavenly deputy 
 had arranged it all according to his wish, he received, quite un- 
 expectedly, a negative answer, which, however, was sweetened 
 with such a deal of blandishment, that he swallowed it like wine- 
 of- wormwood mixed with sugar. For the rest, he easily accom- 
 modated himself to his destiny ; and discomposed himself no more 
 about it, than if some bargain for a ton of malt had chanced to 
 come to nothing. Nor, on the whole, had he any cause to sorrow 
 without hope. His native town has never wanted amiable daugh- 
 ters, who come up to the Solomonic sketch, and are ready to make 
 perfect spouses ; besides, notwithstanding this unprospered court- 
 ship, he depended with firm confidence upon his Patron Saint ; 
 who in fact did him such substantial service elsewhere, that ere a 
 month elapsed, he had plr.nted with much pomp his devoted taper 
 at the friendly shrine. 
 
 Mother Brigitta was now fain to recall the exiled spinning- 
 tackle from its lumber-room, and again set it in action. All once 
 more went its usual course. Meta soon bloomed out anew, was 
 active in business, and diligently went to mass ; but the mother 
 could not hide her secret grudging at the failure of her hopes, and 
 the annihilation of her darling plan ; she was splenetic, peevish 
 and dejected. Her ill-humour had especially the upper hand that 
 day when neighbour Hop-King held his nuptials. As the wedding 
 company proceeded to the church, with the town-band bedrum- 
 ming and becymballing them in the van, she whimpered and 
 sobbed as in the evil hour when the Job's-news reached her, 
 that the wild sea had devoured her husband, with ship and for- 
 tune. Meta looked at the bridal pomp with great equanimity ; 
 even the royal ornaments, the jewels in the myrtle-crown, and 
 the nine strings of true pearls about the neck of the bride, made 
 no impression on her peace of mind ; a circumstance in some 
 degree surprising, since a new Paris cap, or any other meteor in 
 the gallery of Mode, will so frequently derange the contentment 
 and domestic peace of an entire parish. Nothing but the heart- 
 consuming sorrow of her mother discomposed her, and overclouded 
 the gay look of her eyes ; she strove by a thousand caresses and 
 little attentions to work herself into favour ; and she so far suc- 
 ceeded that the good lady grew a little more communicative. 
 
 In the evening, when the redding-dance began, she said, 
 "Ah, child! this merry dance it might have been thy part to 
 
20 
 
 lead off. What a pleasure, hadst thou recompensed thy mother's 
 care and toil with this joy ! But thou hast mocked thy happiness, 
 and now I shall never see the day when I am to attend thee to the 
 altar." — " Dear mother," answered Meta, " I confide in Heaven; 
 and if it is written above that I am to be led to the altar, you 
 will surely deck my garland : for when the right wooer comes, 
 my heart will soon say Yes." — " Child, for girls without dowry 
 there is no press of wooers ; they are heavy ware to trade with. 
 Nowadays the bachelors are mighty stingy ; they court to be 
 happy, not to make happy. Besides, thy planet bodes thee no 
 good ; thou wert born in April. Let us see how it is written in 
 the Calendar : ' A damsel born in this month is comely of counte- 
 nance, slender of shape, but of changeful humour, has a liking to 
 men. Should have an eye upon her maiden garland, and so a 
 laughing wooer come, not miss her fortune.' Alas, it answers to 
 a hair ! The wooer has been here, comes not again : thou hast 
 missed him." — " Ah, mother ! let the planet say its pleasure, 
 never mind it ; my heart says to me that I should love and 
 honour the man who asks me to be his wife : and if I do not 
 find that man, or he do not seek me, I will live in good courage 
 by the labour of my hands, and stand by you, and nurse you in 
 your old age, as beseems a good daughter. But if the man of 
 my heart do come, then bless my choice, that it may be well with 
 your daughter on the Earth ; and ask not whether he is noble, 
 rich, or famous, but whether he is good and honest, whether he 
 loves and is loved." — " Ah, daughter! Love keeps a sorry kitchen, 
 and feeds one poorly, along with bread and salt." — " But yet 
 Unity and Contentment delight to dwell with him, and these 
 season bread and salt with the cheerful enjoyment of our days." 
 
 The pregnant subject of bread and salt continued to be sifted 
 till the night was far spent, and the last fiddle in the wedding- 
 dance was resting from its labours. The moderation of the pru- 
 dent Meta, who, with youth and beauty on her side, pretended 
 only to an altogether bounded happiness, after having turned away 
 an advantageous offer, led the mother to conjecture that the plan 
 of some such salt-trade might already have been sketched in the 
 heart of the virgin. Nor did she fail to guess the trading-partner 
 in the lane, of whom she never had believed that he would be 
 the tree for rooting in the lovely Meta's heart. She had locked 
 upon him only as a wild tendril, that stretches out towards every 
 neighbouring twig, to clamber up by means of it. This discovery 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 21 
 
 procured her little joy ; but she gave no hint that she had made 
 it. Only, in the spirit of her rigorous morality, she compared a 
 maiden who lets love, before the priestly benediction, nestle in 
 her heart, to a worm-eaten apple, which is good for the eye, but 
 no longer for the palate, and is laid upon a shelf and no more 
 heeded, for the pernicious worm is eating its internal marrow, 
 and cannot be dislodged. She now despaired of ever holding up 
 her head again in Bremen ; submitted to her fate, and bore in 
 silence what she thought was now not to be altered. 
 
 Meanwhile the rumour of the proud Meta's having given the 
 rich Hop -King the basket, spread over the town, and sounded 
 even into Franz's garret in the alley. Franz was transported 
 with joy to hear this tale confirmed ; and the secret anxiety lest 
 some wealthy rival might expel him from the dear maiden's heart 
 tormented him no more. He was now certain of his object ; and 
 the riddle, which for every one continued an insoluble problem, 
 had no mystery for him. Love had already changed a spend- 
 thrift into a dilettante ; but this for a bride-seeker was the very 
 smallest of recommendations, a gift which in those rude times 
 was rewarded neither with such praise nor with such pudding, 
 as it is in our luxurious century. The fine arts were not then 
 children of superfluity, but of want and necessity. No travelling 
 professors were at that time known, save the Prague students, 
 whose squeaking symphonies solicited a charitable coin at the 
 doors of the rich. The beloved maiden's sacrifice was too great 
 to be repaid by a serenade. And now the feeling of his youthful 
 dissipation became a thorn in the soul of Franz. Many a touch- 
 ing monodrama did he begin with an 0 and an Ah, besighing his 
 past madness : " Ah, Meta," said he to himself, "why did I not 
 know thee sooner ! Thou hadst been my guardian angel, thou 
 hadst saved me from destruction. Could I live my lost years 
 over again, and be what I was, the world were now Elysium for 
 me, and for thee I would make it an Eden ! Noble maiden, thou 
 sacrificest thyself to a wretch, to a beggar, who has nothing in 
 the world but a heart full of love, and despair that he can offer 
 thee no happiness such as thou deservest." Innumerable times, 
 in the paroxysms of these pathetic humours, he struck his brow 
 in fury, with the repentant exclamation : "0 fool ! 0 madman ! 
 thou art wise too late." 
 
 Love, however, did not leave its working incomplete. It had 
 already brought about a wholesome fermentation in his spirit, a 
 
22 
 
 MTJSZEUS. 
 
 desire to put in use his powers and activity, to try if he might 
 struggle up from his present nothingness : it now incited him to 
 the attempt of executing these good purposes. Among many 
 speculations he had entertained for the recruiting of his wrecked 
 finances, the most rational and promising was this : To run over 
 his father's ledgers, and there note down any small escheats which 
 had heen marked as lost, with a view of going through the land, „ 
 and gleaning, if so were that a lock of wheat might still he 
 gathered from these neglected ears. With the produce of this 
 enterprise, he would then commence some little traffic, which his 
 fancy soon extended over all the quarters of the world. Already, 
 in his mind's eye, he had vessels on the sea, which were 
 freighted with his property. He proceeded rapidly to execute 
 his purpose ; changed the last golden fragment of his heritage, 
 his father's hour-egg, 5 into money, and bought with it a riding 
 nag, which was to bear him as a Bremen merchant out into the 
 wide world. 
 
 Yet the parting with his fair Meta went sore against his 
 heart. "What will she think," said he to himself, " of this 
 sudden disappearance, when thou shalt no more meet her in the 
 church-way ? Will she not regard thee as faithless, and banish 
 thee from her heart ?" This thought afflicted him exceedingly ; 
 and for a great while he could think of no expedient for explain- 
 ing to her his intention. But at last inventive Love suggested 
 the idea of signifying to her from the pulpit itself his absence 
 and its purpose. With this view, in the church, which had al- 
 ready favoured the secret understanding of the lovers, he bought 
 a Prayer "for a young Traveller, and the happy arrangement of 
 his affairs ;" which was to last, till he should come again and 
 pay his groschen for the Thanksgiving. 
 
 At the last meeting, he had dressed himself as for the road ; 
 he passed quite near his sweetheart ; saluted her expressively, 
 and with less reserve than before ; so that she blushed deeply ; 
 and Mother Brigitta found opportunity for various marginal notes, 
 which indicated her displeasure at the boldness of this ill-bred 
 fop, in attempting to get speech of her daughter, and with which 
 she entertained the latter not in the most pleasant style the live- 
 long day. From that morning Franz was no more seen in Bre- 
 men, and the finest pair of eyes within its circuit sought for him 
 in vain. Meta often heard the Prayer read, but she did not heed 
 
 e The oldest watches, from the shape they had, were named hour-eggs. 
 
 t 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 23 
 
 it, for her heart was troubled because her lover had become in- 
 visible. This disappearance was inexplicable to her ; she knew 
 not what to think of it. After the lapse of some months, when 
 time had a little softened her secret care, and she was suffering 
 his absence with a calmer mind, it happened once, as the last 
 appearance of her love was hovering upon her fancy, that this 
 same Prayer struck her as a strange matter. She coupled one 
 thing with another, she guessed the true connexion of the 
 business, and the meaning of that notice. And although church 
 litanies and special prayers have not the reputation of extreme 
 potency, and for the worthy souls that lean on them are but a 
 supple staff, inasmuch as the fire of devotion in the Christian flock 
 is wont to die out at the end of the sermon ; yet in the pious 
 Meta's case, the reading of the last Prayer was the very thing 
 which fanned that fire into a flame ; and she never neglected, 
 with her whole heart, to recommend the young traveller to his 
 guardian angel. 
 
 Under this invisible guidance, Franz was journeying towards 
 Brabant, to call in some considerable sums that were due him at 
 Antwerp. A journey from Bremen to Antwerp, in the time when 
 road-blockades were still in fashion, and every landlord thought 
 himself entitled to plunder any traveller who had purchased no 
 safe-conduct, and to leave him pining in the ward-room of his 
 tower, was an undertaking of more peril and difficulty, than in our 
 days would attend a journey from Bremen to Kamtschatka : for 
 the Land-fried (or Act for suppressing Private Wars), which the 
 Emperor Maximilian had proclaimed, was in force through the 
 Empire, rather as a law than an observance. Nevertheless our 
 solitary traveller succeeded in arriving at the goal of his pilgrim- 
 age, without encountering more than a single adventure. 
 
 Far in the wastes of Westphalia, he rode one sultry day till 
 nightfall, without reaching any inn. Towards evening stormy 
 clouds towered up at the horizon, and a heavy rain wetted him to 
 the skin. To the fondling, who from his youth had been accus- 
 tomed to all possible conveniences, this was a heavy matter, and 
 he felt himself in great embarrassment how in this condition he 
 should pass the night. To his comfort, when the tempest had 
 moved away, he saw a light in the distance ; and soon after, 
 reached a mean peasant hovel, which afforded him but little con- 
 solation. The house was more like a cattlo-stall than a human 
 habitation ; and the unfriendly landlord refused him fire and water, 
 
24 
 
 MUS.EUS. 
 
 as if he had been an outlaw. For the man was just about to 
 stretch himself upon the straw among his steers ; and too tired to 
 relight the fire on his hearth, for the sake of a stranger. Franz 
 in his despondency uplifted a mournful miserere, and cursed the 
 Westphalian steppes with strong maledictions : but the peasant 
 took it all in good part ; and blew out his light with great com- 
 posure, troubling himself no farther about the stranger ; for in the 
 laws of hospitality he was altogether uninstructed. But as the 
 wayfarer, standing at the door, would not cease to annoy him 
 with his lamentations, he endeavoured in a civil way to get rid of 
 him, consented to answer, and said : ' ' Master, if you want good 
 entertainment, and would treat yourself handsomely, you could 
 not find what you are seeking here. But ride there to the left 
 hand, through the bushes ; a little way behind, lies the Castle of 
 the valiant Eberhard Bronkhorst, a knight who lodges every tra- 
 veller, as a Hospitaller does the pilgrims from the Holy Sepulchre. 
 He has just one maggot in his head, which sometimes twitches 
 and vexes him ; he lets no traveller depart from him unbasted. 
 If you do not lose your way, though he may dust your jacket, you 
 will like your cheer prodigiously." 
 
 To buy a mess of pottage, and a stoup of wine, by surrender- 
 ing one's ribs to the bastinado, is in truth no job for every man, 
 though your spungers and plate-lickers let themselves be tweaked 
 and snubbed, and from rich artists willingly endure all kinds of 
 tar-and-feathering, so their palates be but tickled for the service. 
 Franz considered for a while, and was undetermined what to do ; 
 at last he resolved on fronting the adventure. "What is it to 
 me," said he, "whether my back be broken here on miserable 
 straw, or by the Kitter Bronkhorst ? The friction will expel the 
 fever which is coming on, and shake me tightly if I cannot dry 
 my clothes." He put spurs to his nag, and soon arrived before a 
 c .stle-gate of old Gothic architecture ; knocked pretty plainly on 
 the iron door, and an equally distinct " Who's there?" resounded 
 from within. To the freezing passenger, the long entrance cere- 
 monial of this door-keeper precognition was as inconvenient, as 
 are similar delays to travellers who, at barriers and gates of towns, 
 bewail or execrate the despotism of guards and tollmen. Never- 
 theless he must submit to use and wont, and patiently wait to see 
 whether the philanthropist in the Castle was disposed that night 
 for cudgelling a guest, or would choose rather to assign him a 
 couch under the open canopy. 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 25 
 
 The possessor of this ancient tower had served, in his youth, 
 as a stout soldier in the Emperor's army, under the hold Georg 
 von Fronsberg, and led a troop of foot against the Venetians ; had 
 afterwards retired to repose, and was now living on his property; 
 where, to expiate the sins of his campaigns, he employed himself 
 in doing good works ; in feeding the hungry, giving drink to the 
 thirsty, lodging pilgrims, and cudgelling his lodgers out of doors. 
 For he was a rude wild son of war ; and could not lay aside his 
 martial tone, though he had lived for many years in silent peace. 
 The traveller, who had now determined for good quarters to sub- 
 mit to the custom of the house, had not waited long till the bolts 
 and locks began rattling within, and the creaking gate-leaves 
 moved asunder, moaning in doleful notes, as if to warn or to de- 
 plore the entering stranger. Franz felt one cold shudder after 
 the other running down his back, as he passed in ; nevertheless 
 he was handsomely received ; some servants hastened to assist 
 him in dismounting ; speedily unbuckled his luggage, took his 
 steed to the stable, and its rider to a large well-lighted chamber, 
 where their master was in waiting. 
 
 The warlike aspect of this athletic gentleman, — who advanced 
 to meet his guest, and shook him by the hand so heartily, that he 
 was like to shout with pain, and bade him welcome with a Sten- 
 tor's voice, as if the stranger had been deaf, and seemed withal 
 to be a person still in the vigour of life, full of fire and strength, 
 — put the timorous wanderer into such a terror, that he could not 
 hide his apprehensions, and began to tremble over all his body. 
 
 " What ails you, my young master," asked the Hitter, with 
 a voice of thunder, ' ' that you quiver like an aspen-leaf, and look 
 as pale as if Death had you by the throat ?" 
 
 Franz plucked up a spirit ; and considering that his shoulders 
 had at all events the score to pay, his poltroonery passed into a 
 species of audacity. <; 
 
 " Sir," replied he, " you perceive that the rain has soaked 
 me, as if I had swum across the Weser. Let me have my clothes 
 dried or changed ; and get me, by way of luncheon, a well-spiced 
 aleberry, to drive away the ague-fit that is quaking through my 
 nerves ; then I shall come to heart, in some degree." 
 
 " Good !" replied the Knight ; " demand what you want ; 
 you are at home here." 
 
 Franz made himself be served like a bashaw ; and having 
 nothing else but currying to expect, he determined to deserve it ; 
 
26 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 he bantered and bullied, in his most imperious style, the servants 
 that were waiting on him ; it comes all to one, thought he, in the 
 long-run. " This waistcoat," said he, " would go round a tun ; 
 bring me one that fits a little better : this slipper burns like a 
 coal against my corns ; pitch it over the lists : this ruff is stiff 
 as a plank, and throttles me like a halter ; bring one that is 
 easier, and is not plastered with starch." 
 
 At this Bremish frankness, the landlord, far from showing 
 any anger, kept inciting his servants to go briskly through with 
 their commands, and calling them a pack of blockheads, who were 
 fit to serve no stranger. The table being furnished, the Hitter 
 and his guest sat down to it, and both heartily enjoyed their ale- 
 berry. The Hitter asked : " Would you have aught farther, by 
 way of supper ?" 
 
 " Bring us what you have," said Franz, " that I may see 
 how your kitchen is provided." 
 
 Immediately appeared the Cook, and placed upon the table a 
 repast with which a duke might have been satisfied. Franz dili- 
 gently fell to, without waiting to be pressed. When he had satis- 
 fied himself : " Your kitchen," said he, " is not ill-furnished, I 
 perceive ; if your cellar corresponds to it, I shall almost praise 
 your housekeeping." 
 
 Bronkhorst nodded to his Butler, who directly filled the cup 
 of welcome with common table wine, tasted, and presented it to 
 his master, and the latter cleared it at a draught to the health of 
 his guest. Franz pledged him honestly, and Bronkhorst asked : 
 " Now, fair sir, what say you to the wine ?" 
 
 " I say," answered Franz, " that it is bad, if it is the 
 best sort in your catacombs ; and good, if it is your meanest 
 number." 
 
 " You are a judge," replied the Bitter : " Here, Butler, bring 
 us of the mother-cask." 
 
 The Butler put a stoup upon the table, as a sample, and Franz 
 having tasted it, said, " Ay, this is genuine last year's growth ; 
 we will stick by this." 
 
 The Bitter made a vast pitcher of it be brought in ; soon 
 drank himself into hilarity and glee beside his guest ; began to 
 talk of his campaigns, how he had been encamped against the 
 Venetians, had broken through their barricado, and butchered the 
 Italian squadrons, like a flock of sheep. In this narrative he rose 
 into such a warlike enthusiasm, that he hewed down bottles and 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 27 
 
 glasses, brandishing the carving-knife like a lance, and in the fire 
 of action came so near his messmate with it, that the latter was 
 in fright for his nose and ears. 
 
 It grew late, but no sleep came into the eyes of the Bitter ; 
 he seemed to be in his proper element, when he got to speak of 
 his Venetian campaigns. The vivacity of his narration increased 
 with every cup he emptied ; and Franz was afraid that this would 
 prove the prologue to the melodrama, in which he himself was to 
 play the most interesting part. To learn whether it was meant 
 that he should lodge within the Castle, or without, he demanded 
 a bumper by way of good-night. Now, he thought, hi*; host would 
 first force him to drink more wine, and if he refused, would, under 
 pretext of a drinking quarrel, send him forth, according to the 
 custom of the house, with the usual viaticum. Contrary to his 
 expectation, the request was granted without remonstrance ; the 
 Hitter instantly cut asunder the thread of his narrative, and said : 
 " Time will wait on no one ; more of it tomorrow !" 
 
 "Pardon me, Herr Bitter," answered Franz, "tomorrow by 
 sunrise I must over hill and dale ; I am travelling a far journey to 
 Brabant, and must not linger here. So let me take leave of you 
 tonight, that my departure may not disturb you in the morning." 
 
 " Do your pleasure," said the Bitter ; " but depart from this 
 you shall not, till I am out of the feathers, to refresh you with a 
 bit of bread, and a toothful of Dantzig, then attend you to the 
 door, and dismiss you according to the fashion of the house." 
 
 Franz needed no interpretation of these words. Willingly 
 as he would have excused his host this last civility, attendance 
 to the door, the latter seemed determined to abate no whit of 
 the established ritual. He ordered his servants to undress the 
 stranger, and put him in the guest's-bed ; where Franz, once 
 settled on elastic swan's down, felt himself extremely snug, and 
 enjoyed delicious rest ; so that ere he fell asleep, he owned to 
 himself that, for such royal treatment, a moderate bastinado was 
 not too dear a price. Soon pleasant dreams, came hovering round 
 his fancy. He found his charming Meta in a rosy grove, where 
 she was walking with her mother, plucking flowers. Instantly he 
 hid himself behind a thick-leaved hedge, that the rigorous duenna 
 might not see him. Again his imagination placed him in the 
 alley, and by his looking-glass he saw the snow-white hand oi 
 the maiden busied with her flowers ; soon he was sitting with her 
 on the grass, and longing to declare his heartfelt love to her, and 
 
28 
 
 MUS^lUS. 
 
 the bashful shepherd found no words to do it in. He would have 
 dreamed till broad mid-day, had he not been roused by the son- 
 orous voice and clanking spurs of the Kitter, who, with the earliest 
 dawn, was holding a review of kitchen and cellar, ordering a 
 sufficient breakfast to be readied, and placing every servant at 
 his post, to be at hand when the guest should awake, to dress 
 him, and wait upon him. 
 
 It cost the happy dreamer no small struggling to forsake his 
 safe and hospitable bed. He rolled to this side and to that ; but 
 the pealing voice of the worshipful Knight came heavy on his 
 heart ; and dally as he might, the sour apple must at last be bit. 
 So he rose from his down ; and immediately a dozen hands were 
 busy dressing him. The Kitter led him into the parlour, where a 
 small well-furnished table waited them ; but now, when the hour 
 of reckoning had arrived, the traveller's appetite was gone. The 
 host endeavoured to encourage him. " "Why do you not get to ? 
 Come, take somewhat for the raw foggy morning." 
 
 "Herr Kitter," answered Franz, "my stomach is still too 
 full of your supper ; but my pockets are empty ; these I may fill 
 for the hunger that is to come." 
 
 With this he began stoutly cramming, and stowed himself 
 with the daintiest and best that was transportable, till all his 
 pockets were bursting. Then, observing that his horse, well 
 curried and equipt, was led past, he took a dram of Dantzig for 
 good-b'ye, in the thought that this would be the watch-word for 
 his host to catch him by the neck, and exercise his household 
 privileges. 
 
 But, to his astonishment, the Kitter shook him kindly by the 
 hand, as at his first entrance, wished him luck by the way, and 
 the bolted door was thrown open. He loitered not in putting 
 spurs to his nag ; and, tip ! tap ! he was without the gate, and 
 no hair of him harmed. 
 
 A heavy stone was lifted from his heart as he found himself 
 in safety, and saw that he had got away with a whole skin. He 
 could not understand how the landlord had trusted him the shot, 
 which, as he imagined, must have run pretty high on the chalk ; 
 and he embraced with warm love the hospitable man, whose club- 
 law arm he had so much dreaded ; and he felt a strong desire to 
 search out, at the fountain-head, the reason or unreason of the 
 ill report which had affrighted him. Accordingly he turned his 
 horse, and cantered back. The Knight was still standing in the 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 29 
 
 gate, and descanting with his servants, for the forwarding of the 
 science of horse-flesh, on the breed, shape and character of the 
 nag, and his hard pace : he supposed the stranger must have 
 missed something in his travelling gear, and he already looked 
 askance at his servants for such negligence 
 
 " What is it, young master," cried he, .,, that makes you turn 
 again, when you were for proceeding ?" 
 
 " Ah ! yet a word, valiant Knight," cried the traveller. " An 
 ill report has gone abroad, that injures your name and breeding. 
 It is said that you treat every stranger that calls upon you with 
 your best ; and then, when he leaves you, let him feel the weight 
 of your strong fists. This story I have credited, and spared no- 
 thing to deserve my due from you. I thought within myself, His 
 worship will abate me nothing ; I will abate him as little. But 
 now you let me go, without strife or peril; and that is what sur- 
 prises me. Pray tell me, is there any shadow of foundation for 
 the thing; or shall I call the foolish chatter lies next time I 
 hear it ?" 
 
 The Bitter answered: "Report has nowise told you lies; 
 there is no saying that circulates among the people but contains 
 in it some grain of truth. Let me tell you accurately how the 
 matter stands. I lodge every stranger that comes beneath my 
 roof, and divide my morsel with him, for the love of God. But 
 I am a plain German man, of the old cut and fashion ; speak as 
 it lies about my heart, and require that my guest also should be 
 hearty and confiding ; should enjoy with me what I have, and 
 tell frankly what he wants. Now, there is a sort of people that 
 vex me with all manner of grimaces; that banter me with smirk - 
 ings, and bows, and crouchings ; put all their words to the tor- 
 ture ; make a deal of talk without sense or salt ; think they will 
 cozen me with smooth speeches ; behave at dinner as women at 
 a christening. If I say, Help yourself ! out of reverence, they 
 pick you a fraction from the plate which I would not offer to my 
 dog : if I say, Your health ! they scarcely wet their lips from the 
 full cup, as if they set God's gifts at naught. Now, when the 
 sorry rabble carry things too far with me, and I cannot, for the 
 soul of me, know what they would be at, I get into a rage at 
 last, and use my household privilege ; catch the noodle by the 
 spall, thrash him sufficiently, and pack him out of doors. This 
 is the use and wont with me, and I do so with every guest that 
 plagues me with these freaks. But a man of your stamp is al- 
 
30 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 ways welcome : you told me plump out in plain German what 
 you thought, as is the fashion with the Bremers. Call on me 
 boldly again, if your road lead you hither. And so, God be 
 with you." 
 
 Franz now moved on, with a joyful humour, towards Antwerp ; 
 and he wished that he might everywhere find such a reception as 
 he had met with from the Hitter Eberhard Bronkhorst. On ap- 
 proaching the ancient queen of the Flemish cities, the sail of his 
 hope was swelled by a propitious breeze. Riches and superfluity 
 met him in every street ; and it seemed as if scarcity and want 
 had been exiled from the busy town. In all probability, thought 
 he, there must be many of my father's debtors who have risen 
 again, and will gladly make me full payment whenever I sub- 
 stantiate my claims. After resting for a while from his fatigues, 
 he set about obtaining, in the inn where he was quartered, some 
 preliminary knowledge of the situation of his debtors. 
 
 "How stands it with Peter Martens?" inquired he one day 
 of his companions at table; "is he still living, and doing much 
 business ?" 
 
 " Peter Martens is a warm man," answered one of the party ; 
 " has a brisk commission trade, and draws good profit from it." 
 
 " Is Fabian van Pliirs still in good circumstances ?" 
 
 " 0 ! there is no end to Fabian's wealth. He is a Coun- 
 cillor; his woollen manufactories are thriving incredibly." 
 
 " Has Jonathan Frischkier good custom in his trade ?" 
 
 " Ah ! Jonathan were now a brisk fellow, had not Kaiser 
 Max let the French chouse him out of his Princess. 6 Jonathan 
 had got the furnishing of the lace for the bride's dress ; but the 
 Kaiser has left poor Frischkier in the lurch, as the bride has left 
 himself. If you have a fair one, whom you would remember 
 with a bit of lace, he will give it you at half-price." 
 
 " Is the firm Op de Biitekant still standing, or has it sunk ?" 
 
 " There was a crack in the beams there some years ago; but 
 the Spanish caravelles have put a new prop to it, and it now 
 holds fast." 
 
 Franz inquired about several other merchants who were on 
 his list ; found that most of them, though in his father's time 
 they had "failed," were now standing firmly on their legs; and 
 inferred from this, that a judicious bankruptcy has, from of old, 
 been the mine of future gains. This intelligence refreshed him 
 
 • Anne of Brittany, 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 31 
 
 mightily : he hastened to put his documents in order, and sub- 
 mit them to the proper parties. But with the Antwerpers, he 
 fared as his itinerating countrymen do with shopkeepers in the 
 German towns : they find everywhere a friendly welcome at their 
 first appearance, but are looked upon with cheerfulness nowhere 
 when they come collecting debts. Some would have nothing to 
 do with these former sins ; and were of opinion, that by the ten- 
 der of the legal five-per-cent composition they had been entirely 
 abolished: it was the creditor's fault if he had not accepted 
 payment in time. Others could not recollect any Melchior of 
 Bremen ; opened their Infallible Books ; found no debtor-entry 
 marked for this unknown name. Others, again, brought out a 
 strong counter - reckoning ; and three days had not passed till 
 Franz was sitting in the Debtors' Ward, to answer for his father's 
 credit, not to depart till he had paid the uttermost farthing. 
 
 These were not the best prospects for the young man, who 
 had set his hope and trust upon the Antwerp patrons of his for- 
 tune, and now saw the fair soap-bubble vanish quite away. In 
 his strait confinement, he felt himself in the condition of a soul 
 in Purgatory, now that his skiff had run ashore and gone to 
 pieces, in the middle of the haven where he thought to find 
 security. Every thought of Meta was as a thorn in his heart ; 
 there was now no shadow of a possibility, that from the whirl- 
 pool which had sunk him, he could ever rise, and stretch out his 
 hand to her ; nor, suppose he should get his head above water, 
 was it in poor Meta's power to pull him on dry land. He fell 
 into a sullen desperation ; had no wish but to die speedily, and 
 give his woes the slip at once ; and, in fact, he did attempt to 
 kill himself by starvation. But this is a sort of death which is 
 not at the beck of every one, so ready as the shrunk Pomponius 
 Atticus found it, when his digestive apparatus had already struck 
 work. A sound peptic stomach does not yield so tamely to 
 the precepts of the head or heart. After the moribund debtor 
 had abstained two days from food, a ravenous hunger suddenly 
 usurped the government of his will, and performed, of its own 
 authority, all the operations which, in other cases, are directed 
 by the mind. It ordered his hand to seize the spoon, his mouth 
 to receive the victual, his inferior maxillary jaw to get in motion, 
 and itself accomplished the usual functions of digestion, unor- 
 dered. Thus did this last resolve make shipwreck, on a hard 
 bread-crust ; for, in the seven-and-twentieth year of life, it has a 
 
82 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 heroism connected with it, which in the seven-and-seventieth is 
 entirely gone. 
 
 At bottom, it was not the object of the barbarous Antwerpers 
 to squeeze money from the pretended debtor, but only to pay him 
 none, as his demands were not admitted to be liquid. Whether it 
 were, then, that the public Prayer in Bremen had in truth a little 
 virtue, or that the supposed creditors were not desirous of sup- 
 porting a superfluous boarder for life, true it is, that after the 
 lapse of three months Franz was delivered from his imprison- 
 ment, under the condition of leaving the city within four-and- 
 twenty hours, and never again setting foot on the soil and ter- 
 ritory of Antwerp. At the same time, he received five crowns 
 for travelling expenses from the faithful hands of Justice, which 
 had taken charge of his horse and luggage, and conscientiously 
 balanced the produce of the same against judicial and curatory 
 expenses. 
 
 With heavy-laden heart, in the humblest mood, with his staff 
 in his hand, he left the rich city, into which he had ridden some 
 time ago with high-soaring hopes. Broken down, and unde- 
 termined what to do, or rather altogether without thought, he 
 plodded through the streets to the nearest gate, not minding 
 whither the road into which chance conducted him might lead. 
 He saluted no traveller, he asked for no inn, except when fatigue 
 or hunger forced him to lift up his eyes, and look around for some 
 church- spire, or sign of human habitation, when he needed 
 human aid. Many days he had wandered on, as if unconsciously; 
 and a secret instinct had still, by means of his uncrazed feet, led 
 him right forward on the way to home; when, all at once, he 
 awoke as from an oppressive dream, and perceived on what road 
 he was travelling. 
 
 He halted instantly, to consider whether he should proceed 
 or turn back. Shame and confusion took possession of his soul, 
 when he thought of skulking about in his native town as a beggar, 
 branded with the mark of contempt, and claiming the charitable 
 help of his townsmen, whom of old he had eclipsed by his wealth 
 and magnificence. And how in this form could he present himself 
 before his fair Meta, without disgracing the choice of her heart ? 
 He did not leave his fancy time to finish this doleful picture ; 
 but wheeled about to take the other road, as hastily as if he had 
 been standing even then at the gate of Bremen, and the ragged 
 apprentices had been assembling to accompany him with jibes and 
 
DTJMB LOVE. 
 
 33 
 
 mockery through the streets. His purpose was formed: he would 
 make for the nearest seaport in the Netherlands ; engage as sailor 
 in a Spanish ship, to work his passage to the new world; and not 
 return to his country, till in the Peruvian land of gold he should 
 have regained the wealth, which he had squandered so heedlessly, 
 before he knew the worth of money. In the shaping of this new 
 plan, it is true, the fair Meta fell so far into the background, that 
 even to the sharpest prophetic eye she could only hover as a faint 
 shadow in the distance; yet the wandering projector pleased him- 
 self with thinking that she was. again interwoven with the scheme 
 of his life ; and he took large steps, as if by this rapidity he meant 
 to reach her so much the sooner. 
 
 Already he was on the Flemish soil once more ; and found him- 
 self at sunset not far from Rheinberg, in a little hamlet, Rumm els- 
 burg by name, which has since, in the Thirty-Years War, been 
 utterly destroyed. A caravan of carriers from Lyke had already 
 filled the inn, so that Mine Host had no room left, and referred 
 him to the next town; the rather that he did not draw too flatter- 
 ing a presage from his present vagabond physiognomy, and held 
 him to be a thieves' purveyor, who had views upon the Lyke car- 
 riers. He was forced, notwithstanding his excessive weariness, 
 to gird himself for march, and again to take his bundle on his 
 back. 
 
 As in retiring, he was muttering between his teeth some bitter 
 complaints and curses of the Landlord's hardness of heart, the 
 latter seemed to take some pity on the forlorn wayfarer, and called 
 after him, from the door: "Stay, neighbour, let me speak to you: 
 if you wish to rest here, I can accommodate you after all. In that 
 Castle there are empty rooms enow, if they be not too lonely ; it 
 is not inhabited, and I have got the keys." Franz accepted the 
 proposal with joy, praised it as a deed of mercy, and requested 
 only shelter and a supper, were it in a castle or a cottage. Mine 
 Host, however, was privily a rogue, whom it had galled to hear 
 the stranger drop some half-audible contumelies against him, and 
 meant to be avenged on him, by a Hobgoblin that inhabited 
 the old fortress, and had many long years before expelled the 
 owners. 
 
 The Castle lay hard by the hamlet, on a steep rock, right 
 opposite the inn, from which it was divided merely by the high- 
 way, and a little gurgling brook. The situation being so agree- 
 able, the edifice was still kept in repair, and well provided with 
 
 VOL. III. D 
 
34 
 
 MUS^US* 
 
 all sorts of house-gear ; for it served the Owner as a hunting- 
 lodge, where he frequently caroused all day ; and so soon as the 
 stars began to twinkle in the sky, retired with his whole retinue, 
 to escape the mischief of the Ghost, who rioted about in it the 
 whole night over, but by day gave no disturbance. Unpleasant 
 as the owner felt this spoiling of his mansion by a bugbear, the 
 nocturnal sprite was not without advantages, for the great security 
 it gave from thieves, The Count could have appointed no trustier 
 or more watchful keeper over the Castle, than this same Spectre, 
 for the rashest troop of robbers never ventured to approach its 
 station. Accordingly he knew of no safer place for laying up his 
 valuables, than this old tower, in the hamlet of Rummelsburg, 
 near Rheinberg. 
 
 The sunshine had sunk, the dark night was coming heavily 
 on, when Franz, with a lantern in his hand, proceeded to the 
 castle-gate, under the guidance of Mine Host, who carried in his 
 hand a basket of victuals, with a flask of wine, which he said should 
 not be marked against him. He had also taken along with him a 
 pair of candlesticks, and two wax-lights ; for in the whole Castle 
 there was neither lamp nor taper, as no one ever stayed in it after 
 twilight. In the way, Franz noticed the creaking heavy-laden 
 basket, and the wax-lights, which he thought he should not need, 
 and yet must pay for. Therefore he said : ' ' What is this super- 
 fluity and waste, as at a banquet ? The light in the lantern is 
 enough to see with, till I go to bed ; and when I awake, the sun 
 will be high enough, for I am tired completely, and shall sleep 
 with both eyes." 
 
 " I will not hide from you," replied the Landlord, " that a 
 story runs of there being mischief in the Castle, and a Goblin 
 that frequents it. You, however, need not let tho thing disturb 
 you ; we are near enough, you see, for you to call us, should you 
 meet with aught unnatural ; I and my folks will be at your hand 
 in a twinkling, to assist you. Down in the house there we keep 
 astir all night through, some one is always moving. I have lived 
 here these thirty years ; yet I cannot say that I have ever seen 
 aught. If there be now and then a little hurly-burlying at nights, 
 it is nothing but cats and martins rummaging about the granary. 
 As a precaution, I have provided you with candles : the night is 
 no friend of man ; and the tapers are consecrated, so that sprites, 
 if there be such in the Castle, will avoid their shine." 
 
 It was no lying in Mine Host to say that he had never seen 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 85 
 
 anything of spectres in the Castle ; for by night he had taken 
 special care not once to set foot in it ; and by day the Goblin did 
 not come to sight. In the present case, too, the traitor would not 
 risk himself across the border. After opening the door, he handed 
 Franz the basket, directed him what way to go, and wished him 
 good-night. Franz entered the lobby without anxiety or fear ; 
 believing the ghost- story to be empty tattle, or a distorted tradi- 
 tion of some real occurrence in the place, which idle fancy had 
 shaped into an unnatural adventure. He remembered the stout 
 Ritter Eberhard Bronkhorst, from whose heavy arm he had appre- 
 hended such maltreatment, and with whom, notwithstanding, he 
 had found so hospitable a reception. On this ground he had laid 
 it down as a rule deduced from his travelling experiences, when 
 he heard any common rumour, to believe exactly the reverse, and 
 left the grain of truth, which, in the opinion of the wise Knight, 
 always lies in such reports, entirely out of sight. 
 
 Pursuant to Mine Host's direction, he ascended the winding 
 stone stair ; and reached a bolted door, which he opened with his 
 key. A long dark gallery, where his footsteps resounded, led him 
 into a large hall, and from this, a side-door, into a suite of apart- 
 ments, richly provided with all furniture for decoration or conve- 
 nience. Out of these he chose the room which had the friendliest 
 aspect, where he found a well-pillowed bed ; and from the window 
 could look right down upon the inn, and catch every loud word 
 that was spoken there. He lit his wax-tapers, furnished his table, 
 and feasted with the commodiousness and relish of an Otaheitean 
 noble. The big-bellied flask was an antidote to thirst. So long 
 as his teeth were in full occupation, he had no time to think of 
 the reported devilry in the Castle. If aught now and then made 
 a stir in the distance, and Fear called to him, " Hark ! hark ! 
 there comes the Goblin ;" Courage answered : " Stuff ! it is cats 
 and martins bickering and caterwauling." But in the digestive 
 half-hour after meat, when the sixth sense, that of hunger and 
 thirst, no longer occupied the soul, she directed her attention 
 from the other five exclusively upon the sense of hearing ; and al- 
 ready Fear was whispering three timid thoughts into the listener's 
 ear, before Courage had time to answer once. 
 
 As the first resource, he locked the door, and bolted it ; made 
 his retreat to the walled seat in the vault of the window. He 
 opened this, and to dissipate his thoughts a little, looked out on 
 the spangled sky, gazed at the corroded moon, and counted how 
 
36 
 
 MUSiEUS. 
 
 often the stars snuffed themselves. On the road beneath him 
 all was void ; and in spite of the pretended nightly bustle in the 
 inn, the doors were shut, the lights out, and everything as still as 
 in a sepulchre. On the other hand, the watchman blew his horn, 
 making his " List, gentlemen !" sound over all the hamlet ; and 
 for the composure of the timorous astronomer, who still kept 
 feasting his eyes on the splendour of the stars, uplifted a rusty 
 evening - hymn right under his window ; so that Franz might 
 easily have carried on a conversation with him, which, for the 
 sake of company, he would willingly have done, had he in the 
 least expected that the watchman would make answer to him. 
 
 Tn a populous city, in the middle of a numerous household, 
 where there is a hubbub equal to that of a bee-hive, it may form 
 a pleasant entertainment for the thinker to philosophise on Soli- 
 tude, to decorate her as the loveliest playmate of the human spirit, 
 to view her under all her advantageous aspects, and long for her 
 enjoyment as for hidden treasure. But in scenes where she is 
 no exotic, in the isle of Juan Fernandez, where a solitary eremite, 
 escaped from shipwreck, lives with her through long years ; or in 
 the dreary night-time, in a deep wood, or in an old uninhabited 
 castle, where empty walls and vaults awaken horror, and nothing 
 breathes of life, but the moping owl in the ruinous turret ; there, 
 in good sooth, she is not the most agreeable companion for the 
 timid anchorite that has to pass his time in her abode, especially 
 if he is every moment looking for the entrance of a spectre to 
 augment the party. In such a case it may easily chance that 
 a window conversation with the watchman shall afford a richer 
 entertainment for the spirit and the heart, than a reading of the 
 most attractive eulogy on solitude. If Eitter Zimmermann had 
 been in Franz's place, in the castle of Kummelsburg, on the 
 Westphalian marches, he would doubtless in this position have 
 struck out the fundamental topics of as interesting a treatise 
 on Society, as, inspired to all appearance by the irksomeness of 
 some ceremonious assembly, he has poured out from the fulness 
 of his heart in praise of Solitude. 
 
 Midnight is the hour at which the world of spirits acquires 
 activity and life, when hebetated animal nature lies entombed in 
 deep slumber. Franz inclined getting through this critical hour 
 in sleep rather than awake ; so he closed his window, went the 
 rounds of his room once more, spying every nook and crevice, to 
 see whether all was safe and earthly ; snuffed the lights to make 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 37 
 
 them burn clearer ; and without undressing or delaying, threw 
 himself upon his bed, with which his wearied person felt unusual 
 satisfaction. Yet he could not get asleep so fast as he wished. A 
 slight palpitation at the heart, which he ascribed to a tumult in 
 the blood, arising from the sultriness of the day, kept him waking 
 for a while ; and he failed not to employ this respite in offering 
 up such a pithy evening prayer as he had not prayed for many 
 years. This produced the usual effect, that he softly fell asleep 
 while saying it. 
 
 After about an hour, as he supposed, he started up with a 
 sudden terror ; a thing not at all surprising when there is tumult 
 in the blood. He was broad awake : he listened whether all was 
 quiet, and heard nothing but the clock strike twelve ; a piece of 
 news which the watchman forthwith communicated to the hamlet 
 in doleful recitative. Franz listened for a while, turned on the 
 other side, and was again about to sleep, when he caught, as it 
 were, the sound of a door grating in the distance, and immediately 
 it shut with a stifled bang. "Alake ! alake!" bawled Fright into 
 his ear ; " this is the Ghost in very deed !" — " 'Tis nothing but 
 the wind," said Courage manfully. But quickly it came nearer, 
 nearer, like the sound of heavy footsteps. Clink here, clink there, 
 as if a criminal were rattling his irons, or as if the porter were 
 walking about the Castle with his bunch of keys. Alas, here was 
 no wind business ! Courage held his peace ; and quaking Fear 
 drove all the blood to the heart, and made it thump like a smith's 
 forge-hammer. 
 
 The thing was now beyond jesting. If Fear would still have 
 let Courage get a word, the latter would have put the terror-struck 
 watcher in mind of his subsidiary treaty with Mine Host, and in- 
 cited him to claim the stipulated assistance loudly from the win- 
 dow ; but for this there was a want of proper resolution. The 
 quaking Franz had recourse to the bed-clothes, the last fortress of 
 the timorous, and drew them close over his ears, as Bird Ostrich 
 sticks his head in the grass, when he can no longer escape the 
 huntsman. Outside it came along, door up, door to, with hideous 
 uproar ; and at last it reached the bed-room. It jerked sharply at 
 the lock, tried several keys till it found the right one ; yet the bar 
 still held the door, till a bounce like a thunder- clap made bolt and 
 rivet start, and threw it wide open. Now stalked in a long lean 
 man, with a black beard, in ancient garb, and with a gloomy coun- 
 tenance, his eyebrows hanging down in deep earnestness from his 
 
33 
 
 MUSiEUS. 
 
 brow. Over his right shoulder he had a scarlet cloak; and on his 
 head he wore a peaked hat. With a heavy step he walked thrice 
 in silence up and down the chamber ; looked at the consecrated 
 tapers, and snuffed them that they might burn brighter. Then 
 he threw aside his cloak, girded on a scissor-pouch which he had 
 under it, produced a set of shaving-tackle, and immediately began 
 to whet a sharp razor on the broad strap which he wore at his 
 girdle. 
 
 Franz perspired in mortal agony under his coverlet ; recom- 
 mended himself to the keeping of the Virgin ; and anxiously 
 speculated on the object of this manoeuvre, not knowing whether 
 it was meant for his throat or his beard. To his comfort, the 
 Goblin poured some water from a silver flask into a basin of silver, 
 and with his skinnj^ hand lathered the soap into light foam ; then 
 set a chair, and beckoned with a solemn look to the quaking 
 looker-on to come forth from his recess. 
 
 Against so pertinent a sign, remonstrance was as bootless as 
 it is against the rigorous commands of the Grand Turk, when he 
 transmits an exiled vizier to the Angel of Death, the Capichi 
 Bashi with the Silken Cord, to take delivery of his head. The 
 most rational procedure that can be adopted in this critical case, 
 is to comply with necessity, put a good face on a bad business, 
 and with stoical composure let one's throat be noosed. Franz 
 honoured the Spectre's order ; the coverlet began to move, he 
 sprang sharply from his couch, and took the place pointed out to 
 him on the seat. However strange this quick transition from the 
 uttermost terror to the boldest resolution may appear, I doubt not 
 but Moritz in his Psychological Journal could explain the matter 
 till it seemed quite natural. 
 
 Immediately the Goblin Barber tied the towel about his shiver- 
 ing customer ; seized the comb and scissors, and clipped off his 
 hair and beard. Then he soaped him scientifically, first the beard, 
 next the eyebrows, at last the temples and the hind-head ; and 
 shaved him from throat to nape as smooth and bald as a Death's- 
 head. This operation finished, he washed his head, dried it clean, 
 made his bow, and buttoned-up his scissor-pouch ; wrapped him- 
 self in his scarlet mantle, and made for departing. The conse- 
 crated tapers had burnt with an exquisite brightness through the 
 whole transaction ; and Franz, by the light of them, perceived in 
 the mirror that the shaver had changed him into a Chinese pagoda. 
 In secret he heartily deplored the loss of his fair brown locks ; yet 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 39 
 
 now took fresh breath, as he observed that with this sacrifice the 
 account was settled, and the Ghost had no more power over him. 
 
 So it was in fact; Kedcloak went towards the door, silently 
 as he had entered, without salutation or good-b'ye ; and seemed 
 entirely the contrast of his talkative guild-brethren. But scarcely 
 was he gone three steps, when he paused, looked round with a 
 mournful expression at his well- served customer, and stroked the 
 flat of his hand over his black bushy beard. He did the same a 
 second time ; and again, just as he was in the act of stepping 
 out at the door. A thought struck Franz that the Spectre wanted 
 something; and a rapid combination of ideas suggested, that per- 
 haps he was expecting the very service he himself had just per- 
 formed. 
 
 As the Ghost, notwithstanding his rueful look, seemed more 
 disposed for banter than for seriousness, and had played his guest 
 a scurvy trick, not done him any real injury, the panic of the latter 
 had now almost subsided. So he ventured the experiment, and 
 beckoned to the Ghost to take the seat from which he had him- 
 self just risen. The Goblin instantly obeyed, threw off his cloak, 
 laid his barber tackle on the table, and placed himself in the chair, 
 in the posture of a man that wishes to be shaved. Franz care- 
 fully observed the same procedure which the Spectre had observed 
 to him, clipped his beard with the scissors, cropt away his hair, 
 lathered his whole scalp, and the Ghost all the while sat steady 
 as a wig-block. The awkward journeyman came ill at handling 
 the razor : he had never had another in his hand ; and he shore 
 the beard right against the hair ; whereat the Goblin made as 
 strange grimaces as Erasmus's Ape, when imitating its master's 
 shaving. Nor was the unpractised bungler himself well at ease, 
 and he thought more than once of the sage aphorism, What is not 
 thy trade make not thy business ; yet he struggled through the 
 task, the best way he could, and scraped the Ghost as bald as he 
 himself was. 
 
 Hitherto the scene between the Spectre and the traveller had 
 been played pantomimically ; the action now became dramatic. 
 " Stranger," said the Ghost, " accept my thanks for the service 
 thou hast done me. By thee I am delivered from the long im- 
 prisonment, which has chained me for three hundred years within 
 these walls ; to which my departed soul was doomed, till a mortal 
 hand should consent to retaliate on me what I practised on others 
 in my lifetime. 
 
40 
 
 MUSiEUS. 
 
 " Know that of old a reckless scorner dwelt within this tower, 
 who took his sport on priests as well as laics. Count Hardman, 
 such his name, was no philanthropist, acknowledged no superior 
 and no law, but practised vain caprice and waggery, regarding not 
 the sacredness of hospitable rights : the wanderer who came be- 
 neath his roof, the needy man who asked a charitable alms of him, 
 he never sent away un visited by wicked joke. I was his Castle 
 Barber, still a willing instrument, and did whatever pleased him. 
 Many a pious pilgrim, journeying past us, I allured with friendly 
 speeches to the hall ; prepared the bath for him, and when he 
 thought to take good comfort, shaved him smooth and bald, and 
 packed him out of doors. Then would Count Hardman, looking 
 from the window, see with pleasure how the foxes' whelps of chil- 
 dren gathered from the hamlet to assail the outcast, and to cry 
 as once their fellows to Elisha : ' Baldhead ! Baldhead!' In 
 this the scoffer took his pleasure, laughing with a devilish joy, 
 till he would hold his pot-paunch, and his eyes ran down with 
 water. 
 
 "Once came a saintly man, from foreign lands; he carried, 
 like a penitent, a heavy cross upon his shoulder, and had stamped 
 five nail-marks on his hands, and feet, and side ; upon his head 
 there was a ring of hair like to the Crown of Thorns. He called 
 upon us here, requesting water for his feet, and a small crust of 
 bread. Immediately I took him to the bath, to serve him in my 
 common way ; respected not the sacred ring, but shore it clean 
 from off him. Then the pious pilgrim spoke a heavy malison 
 upon me : ' Know, accursed man, that when thou diest, Heaven, 
 and Hell, and Purgatory's iron gate, are shut against thy soul. 
 As goblin it shall rage within these walls, till unrequired, unbid, 
 a traveller come and exercise retaliation on thee.' 
 
 " That hour I sickened, and the marrow in my bones dried 
 up ; I faded like a shadow. My spirit left the wasted carcass, 
 and was exiled to this Castle, as the saint had doomed it. In 
 vain I struggled for deliverance from the torturing bonds that 
 fettered me to Earth ; for thou must know, that when the soul 
 forsakes her clay, she panteth for her place of rest, and this sick 
 longing spins her years to aeons, while in foreign element she 
 languishes for home. Now self-tormenting, I pursued the mourn- 
 ful occupation I had followed in my lifetime. Alas ! my uproar 
 soon made desolate this house ! But seldom came a pilgrim here 
 to lodge. And though I treated all like thee, no one would un- 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 41 
 
 derstand me, and perform, as thou, the service which has freed 
 my soul from bondage. Henceforth shall no hobgoblin wander 
 in this Castle ; I return to my long-wished-for rest. And now, 
 young stranger, once again my thanks, that thou hast loosed me ! 
 Were I keeper of deep-hidden treasures, they were thine ; but 
 wealth in life was not my lot, nor in this Castle lies there any 
 cash entombed. Yet mark my counsel. Tarry here till beard 
 and locks again shall cover chin and scalp; then turn thee home- 
 wards to thy native town ; and on the We ser- bridge of Bremen, 
 at the time when day and night in Autumn are alike, wait for a 
 Friend, who there will meet thee, who will tell thee what to do, 
 that it be well with thee on Earth. If from the golden horn of 
 plenty, blessing and abundance flow to thee, then think of me ; 
 and ever as the day thou freedst me from the curse comes round, 
 cause for my soul's repose three masses to be said. Now fare 
 thee well. I go, no more returning." 7 
 
 With these words the Ghost, having by his copiousness of 
 talk satisfactorily attested his former existence as court-barber in 
 the Castle of Eummelsburg, vanished into air, and left his de- 
 liverer full of wonder at the strange adventure. He stood for a 
 long while motionless ; in doubt whether the whole matter had 
 actually happened, or an unquiet dream had deluded his senses ; 
 but his bald head convinced him that here had been a real occur- 
 rence. He returned to bed, and slept, after the fright he had 
 undergone, till the hour of noon. The treacherous Landlord had 
 been watching since morning, when the traveller with the scalp 
 was to come forth, that he might receive him with jibing speeches 
 under pretext of astonishment at his nocturnal adventure. But 
 as the stranger loitered too long, and mid-day was approaching, 
 the affair became serious ; and Mine Host began to dread that 
 the Goblin might have treated his guest a little harshly, have 
 beaten him to a jelly perhaps, or so frightened him that he had 
 died of terror ; and to carry his wanton revenge to such a length 
 as this had not been his intention. He therefore rang his people 
 together, hastened out with man and maid to the tower, and 
 reached the door of the apartment where he had observed the 
 light on the previous evening. He found an unknown key in the 
 lock ; but the door was barred within ; for after the disappearance 
 
 7 I know not whether the reader has observed, that our Author makes the 
 Spectre speak in iambics ; a whim which here and there comes over him in other 
 tales also. — Wielanp. 
 
42 
 
 MUS^EUS. 
 
 of the Goblin, Franz had again secured it. He knocked with 
 a perturbed violence, till the Seven Sleepers themselves would 
 have awoke at the din. Franz started up, and thought in his 
 first confusion that the Ghost was again standing at the door, to 
 favour him with another call. But hearing Mine Host's voice, 
 who required nothing more but that his guest would give some 
 sign of life, he gathered himself up and opened the room. 
 
 With seeming horror at the sight of him, Mine Host, strik- 
 ing his hands together, exclaimed : " By Heaven and all the 
 saints ! Redcloak" (by this name the Ghost was known among 
 them) "has been here, and has shaved you bald as a block! 
 Now, it is clear as day that the old story is no fable. But tell me 
 how looked the Goblin : what did he say to you? what did he do ?" 
 
 Franz, who had now seen through the questioner, made ans- 
 wer : " The Goblin looked like a man in a red cloak; what he 
 did is not hidden from you, and what he said I well remember : 
 ' Stranger,' said he, 1 trust no innkeeper who is a Turk in grain. 
 What would befall thee here he knew. Be wise and happy. I 
 withdraw from this my ancient dwelling, for my time is run. 
 Henceforth no goblin riots here ; I now become a silent Incubus, 
 to plague the Landlord ; nip him, tweak him, harass him, unless 
 the Turk do expiate his sin ; do freely give thee prog and lodg- 
 ing till brown locks again shall cluster round thy head.' " 8 
 
 The Landlord shuddered at these words, cut a large cross in 
 the air before him, vowed by the Holy Virgin to give the traveller 
 free board so long as he liked to continue, led him over to his 
 house, and treated him with the best. By this adventure, Franz 
 had well-nigh got the reputation of a conjuror, as the spirit thence- 
 forth never once showed face. He often passed the night in the 
 tower ; and a desperado of the village once kept him company, 
 without having beard or scalp disturbed. The owner of the place, 
 having learned that Bedcloak no longer walked in Bummels- 
 burg, was, of course, delighted at the news, and ordered that the 
 stranger, who, as he supposed, had laid him, should be well taken 
 care of. 
 
 By the time when the clusters were beginning to be coloured 
 on the vine, and the advancing autumn reddened the apples, Franz's 
 brown locks were again curling over his temples, and he girded up 
 his knapsack ; for all his thoughts and meditations were turned 
 
 8 Here too, on the Spectre's score, Franz makes extempore iambics. — Wis- 
 
 LAND. 
 
DUMB LOVE. 43 
 
 upon the Weser-bridge, to seek the Friend, who, at the behest of 
 the Goblin Barber, was to direct him how to make his fortune. 
 When about taking leave of Mine Host, that charitable person led 
 from his stable a horse well saddled and equipt, which the owner 
 of the Castle had presented to the stranger, for having made his 
 house again habitable ; nor had the Count forgot to send a suffi- 
 cient purse along with it, to bear its travelling charges ; and so 
 Franz came riding back into his native city, brisk and light of 
 heart, as he had ridden out of it twelve months ago. He sought 
 out his old quarters in the alley, but kept himself quite still and 
 retired ; only inquiring underhand how matters stood with the fair 
 Meta, whether she was still alive and unwedded. To this inquiry 
 he received a satisfactory answer, and contented himself with it 
 in the mean while ; for, till his fate were decided, he would not 
 risk appearing in her sight, or making known to her his arrival 
 in Bremen. 
 
 With unspeakable longing, he waited the equinox ; his im- 
 patience made every intervening day a year. At last the long- 
 wished-for term appeared. The night before, he could not close 
 an eye, for thinking of the winders that were coming. The blood 
 was whirling and beating in his arteries, as it had done at the 
 Castle of Eummelsburg, when he lay in expectation of his spectre 
 visitant. To be sure of not missing his expected Friend, he rose 
 by daybreak, and proceeded with the earliest dawn to the Weser- 
 bridge, which as yet stood empty and untrod by passengers. He 
 walked along it several times in solitude, with that presentiment 
 of coming gladness, which includes in it the real enjoyment of all 
 terrestrial felicity ; for it is not the attainment of our wishes, but 
 the undoubted hope of attaining them, which offers to the human 
 soul the full measure of highest and most heartfelt satisfaction. 
 He formed many projects as to how he should present himself to 
 his beloved Meta, w T hen his looked - for happiness should have 
 arrived ; whether it would be better to appear before her in full 
 splendour, or to mount from his former darkness with the first 
 gleam of morning radiance, and discover to her by degrees the 
 change in his condition. Curiosity, moreover, put a thousand 
 questions to Reason in regard to the adventure. Who can the 
 Friend be that is to meet me on the Weser-bridge ? Will it be 
 one of my old acquaintances, by whom, since my ruin, I have 
 been entirely forgotten ? How will he pave the way to me for 
 happiness ? And will this way be short or long, easy or toilsome ? 
 
44 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 To the whole of which Keason, in spite of all her thinldiig and 
 
 speculating, answered not a word. 
 
 In about an hour, the Bridge began to get awake ; there was 
 riding, driving, walking to and fro on it ; and much commercial 
 ware passing this way and that. The usual day-guard of beggars 
 and importunate persons also by degrees took up this post, so 
 favourable for their trade, to levy contributions on the public bene- 
 volence ; for of poor-houses and work-houses, the wisdom of the 
 legislature had as yet formed no scheme. The first of the tattered 
 cohort that applied for alms to the jovial promenader, from whose 
 eyes gay hope laughed forth, was a discharged soldier, provided 
 with the military badge of a timber leg, which had been lent him, 
 seeing he had fought so stoutly in former days for his native 
 country, as the recompense of his valour, with the privilege of 
 begging where he pleased ; and who now, in the capacity of phy- 
 siognomist, pursued the study of man upon the Weser- bridge, 
 with such success, that he very seldom failed in his attempts for 
 charity. Nor did his exploratory glance in anywise mislead him 
 in the present instance ; for Franz, in the joy of his heart, threw 
 a white engel-groschen into the cripple's hat. 
 
 During the morning hours, when none but the laborious artisan 
 is busy, and the more exalted townsman still lies in sluggish rest, 
 he scarcely looked for his promised Friend ; he expected him in 
 the higher classes, and took little notice of the present passengers. 
 About the council-hour, however, when the Proceres of Bremen 
 were driving past to the hall, in their gorgeous robes of office, and 
 about exchange-time, he was all eye and ear ; he spied the pas- 
 sengers from afar ; and when a right man came along the bridge, 
 his blood began to flutter, and he thought here was the creator of 
 his fortune. Meanwhile hour after hour passed on ; the sun rose 
 high ; ere long the noontide brought a pause in business ; the 
 rushing crowd faded away ; and still the expected Friend appeared 
 not. Franz now walked up and down the Bridge quite alone ; 
 had no society in view but the beggars, who were serving out 
 their cold collations, without moving from the place. He made 
 no scruple to do the same ; and, not being furnished with pro- 
 visions, he purchased some fruit, and took his dinner inter ambit- 
 landum. 
 
 The whole club that was dining on the Bridge had remarked 
 the young man, watching here from early morning till noon, with- 
 out addressing any one, or doing any sort of business. They held 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 45 
 
 him to be a lounger; and though all of them had tasted his bounty, 
 he did not escape their critical remarks. In jest, they had named 
 him the Bridge-bailiff. The physiognomist with the timber-toe, 
 however, noticed that his countenance was not now so gay as in 
 the morning ; he appeared to be reflecting earnestly on something ; 
 he had drawn his hat close over his face ; his movement was slow 
 and thoughtful ; he had nibbled at an apple -rind for some time, 
 without seeming to be conscious that he was doing so. From this 
 appearance of affairs, the man-spier thought he might extract some 
 profit; therefore he put his wooden and his living leg in motion, 
 and stilted off to the other end of the Bridge, and lay in wait for 
 the thinker, that he might assail him, under the appearance of a 
 new arrival, for a fresh alms. This invention prospered to the 
 full : the musing philosopher gave no heed to the mendicant, put 
 his hand into his pocket mechanically, and threw a six-groat piece 
 into the fellow's hat, to be rid of him. 
 
 In the afternoon, a thousand new faces once more came abroad. 
 The watcher was now tired of his unknown Friend's delaying, yet 
 hope still kept his attention on the stretch. He stept into the 
 view of every passenger, hoped that one of them would clasp him 
 in his arms ; but all proceeded coldly on their way ; the most did 
 not observe him at all, and few returned his salute with a slight 
 nod. The sun was already verging to decline, the shadows were 
 becoming longer, the crowd upon the Bridge diminished ; and 
 the beggar-piquet by degrees drew back into their barracks in 
 the Mattenburg. A deep sadness sank upon the hopeless Franz, 
 when he. saw his expectation mocked, and the lordly prospect 
 which had lain before him in the morning vanish from his eyes 
 at evening. Ho fell into a sort of sulky desperation ; was on the 
 point of springing over the parapet, and dashing himself down 
 from the Bridge into the river. But the thought of Meta kept 
 him back, and induced him to postpone his purpose till he had 
 seen her yet once more. He resolved to watch next day when 
 she should go to church, for the last time to drink delight from 
 her looks, and then forthwith to still his warm love forever in the 
 cold stream of the Weser. 
 
 While about to leave the Bridge, he was met by the invalided 
 pikeman with the wooden leg, who, for pastime, had been making 
 many speculations as to what could be the young man's object, 
 that had made him watch upon the Bridge from dawn to darkness. 
 He himself had lingered beyond his usual time, that he might wait 
 
46 
 
 him out; but as the matter hung too long upon the pegs, curi- 
 osity incited him to turn to the youth himself, and question him 
 respecting it. 
 
 " No offence, young gentleman," said he : " allow me to ask 
 you a question." 
 
 Franz, who was not in a very talking humour, and was now 
 meeting, from the mouth of a cripple, the address which he had 
 looked for with such longing from a friend, answered rather tes- 
 tily : "Well, then, what is it? Speak, old graybeard!" 
 
 " We two," said the other, " were the first upon the Bridge 
 today, and now, you see, we are the last. As to me and others 
 of my kidney, it is our vocation brings us hither, our trade of 
 alms -gathering ; but for you, in sooth you are not of our guild ; 
 yet you have watched here the whole blessed day. Now I pray 
 you, tell me, if it is not a secret, what it is that brings you hither ; 
 or what stone is lying on your heart, that you wished to roll away." 
 
 "What good were it to thee, old blade," said Franz bitterly, 
 "to know where the shoe pinches me, or what concern is lying 
 on my heart ? It will give thee small care." 
 
 " Sir, I have a kind wish towards you, because you opened 
 your hand to me, and twice gave me alms, for which God re- 
 ward you ; but your countenance at night was not so cheerful 
 as in the morning, and that grieves my heart." 
 
 The kindly sympathy of this old warrior pleased the misan- 
 thrope, so that he willingly pursued the conversation. 
 
 " Why, then," answered he, "if thou wouldst know what has 
 made me battle here all day with tedium, thou must understand 
 that I was waiting for a Friend, who appointed me hither, and 
 now leaves me to expect in vain." 
 
 " Under favour," answered Timbertoe, " if I might speak my 
 mind, this Friend of yours, be who he like, is little better than a 
 rogue, to lead you such a dance. If he treated me so, by my faith, 
 his crown should get acquainted with my crutch next time we met. 
 If he could not keep his word, he should have let you know, and 
 not bamboozled you as if you were a child." 
 
 "Yet I cannot altogether blame this Friend," said Franz, 
 " for being absent ; he did not promise ; it was but a dream that 
 told me I should meet him here." 
 
 The goblin-tale was too long for him to tell, so he veiled it 
 under cover of a dream. 
 
 " Ah ! that is another story," said the beggar ; "if you build 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 4? 
 
 . on dreams, it is little wonder that your hope deceives you. I 
 myself have dreamed much foolish stuff in my time ; but I was 
 never such a madman as to heed it. Had I all the treasures 
 that have been allotted to me in dreams, I might buy the city of 
 Bremen, were it sold by auction. But I never credited a jot of 
 them, or stirred hand or foot to prove their worth or worthless- 
 ness : I knew well it would be lost. Ha ! I must really laugh in 
 your face, to think that on the order of an empty dream, you have 
 squandered a fair day of your life, which you might have spent 
 better at a merry banquet." 
 
 "The issue shows that thou art right, old man, and that 
 dreams many times deceive. But," continued Franz, defensively, 
 ' ' I dreamed so vividly and circumstantially, above three months 
 ago, that on this very day, in this very place, I should meet a 
 Friend, who would tell me things of the deepest importance, that 
 it was well worth while to go and see if it would come to pass." 
 
 "0, as for vividness," said Timbertoe, "no man can dream 
 more vividly than I. There is one dream I had, which I shall 
 never in my life forget. I dreamed, who knows how many years 
 ago, that my Guardian Angel stood before my bed in the figure 
 of a youth, with golden hair, and two silver wings on his back, 
 and said to me : ' Berthold, listen to the words of my mouth, that 
 none of them be lost from thy heart. There is a treasure ap- 
 pointed thee, which thou shalt dig, to comfort thy heart withal 
 for the remaining days of thy life. Tomorrow, about evening, 
 when the sun is going down, take spade and shovel on thy shoul- 
 der ; go forth from the Mattenburg on the right, across the Tieber, 
 by the Balkenbriicke, past the Cloister of St. John's, and on to 
 the Great Boland. 9 Then take thy way over the Court of the 
 Cathedral, through the Schiisselkorb, till thou arrive without the 
 city at a garden, which has this mark, that a stair of three stone 
 steps leads down from the highway to its gate. Wait by a side, 
 in secret, till the sickle of the moon shall shine on thee, then 
 push with the strength of a man against the weak-barred gate, 
 which will resist thee little. Enter boldly into the garden, and 
 turn thee to the vine-trellises which overhang the covered-walk ; 
 
 9 The rude figure of a man in armour, usually erected in the public square or 
 market-place of old German towns, is called the Rolandsdule, or Rutlandsdule, 
 from its supposed reference to Roland the famous peer of Charlemagne. The 
 proper and ancient name, it seems, is Rug elands aide, or Pillar of Judgment ; and 
 the stone indicated, of old, that the town possessed an independent jurisdic- 
 tion. — Ed. 
 
48 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 behind this, on the left, a tall apple-tree overtops the lowly shrubs. 
 Go to the trunk of this tree, thy face turned right against the 
 moon : look three ells before thee on the ground, thou shalt see 
 two cinnamon-rose bushes ; there strike in, and dig three spans 
 deep, till thou find a stone plate ; under this lies the treasure, 
 buried in an iron chest, full of money and money's worth. Though 
 the chest be heavy and clumsy, avoid not the labour of lifting 
 it from its bed ; it will reward thy trouble well, if thou seek the 
 key which lies hid beneath it.' " 
 
 In astonishment at what he heard, Franz stared and gazed 
 upon the dreamer, and could not have concealed his amazement, 
 had not the dusk of night been on his side. By every mark in 
 the description, he had recognised his own garden, left him by 
 his fa! her. It had been the good man's hobby in his life; but 
 on this account had little pleased his son ; according to the rule 
 that son and father seldom sympathise in their favourite pursuit, 
 unless indeed it be a vice, in which case, as the adage runs, the 
 apple often falls at no great distance from the trunk. Father 
 Melchior had himself laid out this garden, altogether to his own 
 taste, in a style as wonderful and varied as that of his great-great- 
 grandson, who has immortalised his paradise by an original de- 
 scription in HirschfelcVs Garden- Calendar. He had not, it is 
 true, set up in it any painted menagerie for the deception of the 
 eye ; but he kept a very large one, notwithstanding, of springing- 
 horses, winged-lions, eagles, griffins, unicorns and other wondrous 
 beasts, all stamped on pure gold, which he carefully concealed 
 from every eye, and had hid in their iron case beneath the ground. 
 This paternal Tempe the wasteful son, in the days of his extra- 
 vagance, had sold for an old song. 
 
 To Franz the pikeman had at once become extremely interest- 
 ing, as he perceived that this was the very Friend, to whom the 
 Goblin in the Castle of Eummelsburg had consigned him. Gladly 
 could he have embraced the veteran, and in the first rapture called 
 him friend and father : but he restrained himself, and found it 
 more advisable to keep his thoughts about this piece of news to 
 himself. So he said : " Well, this is what I call a circumstan- 
 tial dream. But what didst thou do, old master, in the morning, 
 on awakening ? Didst thou not follow whither thy Guardian 
 Angel beckoned thee ?" 
 
 "Pooh," said the dreamer, "why should I toil, and have 
 my labour for my pains ? It was nothing, after all, but a mere 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 4<J 
 
 dream. If my Guardian Angel had a fancy for appearing to me. 
 I have had enow of sleepless nights in my time, when he might 
 have found me waking. But he takes little charge of me, I think, 
 else I should not, to his shame, he going hitching here on a 
 wooden leg." 
 
 Franz took out the last piece of silver he had on him : 
 " There," said he, " old Father, take this other gift from me, to 
 get thee a pint of wine for evening- cup : thy talk has scared away 
 my ill humour. Neglect not diligently to frequent this Bridge ; 
 we shall see each other here, I hope, again." 
 
 The lame old man had not gathered so rich a stock of aim? 
 for many a day, as he was now possessed of; he Messed his bene- 
 factor for his kindness, hopped away into a drinking-shop, to do 
 himself a good turn ; while Franz, enlivened with new hope, has- 
 tened off to his lodging in the alley. 
 
 Next day he got in readiness everything that is required for 
 treasure-digging. The unessential equipment's, conjurations, ma- 
 gic formulas, magic girdles, hieroglyphic characters, and suchlike, 
 were entirely wanting : but these are not indispensable, provided 
 there be no failure in the three main requisites : shovel, spade, 
 and, before all, a treasure underground. The necessary imple- 
 ments he carried to the place a little before sunset, and hid them 
 for the mean while in a hedge ; and as to the treasure itself, he 
 had the firm conviction that the Goblin in the Castle, and the 
 Friend on the Bridge, would prove no liars to him. With long- 
 ing impatience he expected the rising of the moon ; and no sooner 
 did she stretch her silver horns over the bushes, than he briskly 
 set to work ; observing exactly everything the Invalid had taught 
 him ; and happily accomplished the raising of the treasure, with- 
 out meeting any adventure in the process ; without any black dog 
 having frightened him, or any bluish flame having lighted him to 
 the spot. 
 
 Father Melchior, in providently burying this penny for a rainy 
 day, had nowise meant that his son should be deprived of so con- 
 siderable a part of his inheritance. The mistake lay in this, that 
 Death had escorted the testator out of the world in another way 
 than said testator had expected. He had been completely con- 
 vinced, that he should take his journey, old and full of days, after 
 regulating his temporal concerns with all the formalities of an 
 ordinary sick - bed ; for so it had been prophesied to him in his 
 youth. In consequence he purposed, when, according to the usag« 
 
 vol. m, 9 e 
 
50 
 
 MUS^IUS. 
 
 of the Church, extreme unction should have been dispensed to 
 him, to call his beloved son to his bed-side, having previously 
 dismissed all bystanders; there to give him the paternal blessing, 
 and by way of farewell memorial direct him to this treasure buried 
 in the garden. All this, too, would have happened in just order, 
 if the light of the good old man had departed, like that of a wick 
 whose oil is done ; but as Death had privily snuffed him out at a 
 least, he undesignedly took along with him his Mammon secret 
 to the grave ; and almost as many fortunate concurrences were 
 required before the secreted patrimony could arrive at the proper 
 heir, as if it had been forwarded to its address by the hand of 
 Justice itself. 
 
 With immeasurable joy the treasure -digger took possession of 
 the shapeless Spanish pieces, which, with a vast multitude of other 
 finer coins, the iron chest had faithfully preserved. When the first 
 intoxication of delight had in some degree evaporated, he be- 
 thought him how the treasure was to be transported, safe and un- 
 observed, into the narrow alley. The burden was too heavy to be 
 carried without help; thus, with the possession of riches, all the 
 cares attendant on them were awakened. The new Croesus found 
 no better plan, than to intrust his capital to the hollow trunk of a 
 tree that stood behind the garden, in a meadow : the empty chest 
 he again buried under the rose-bush, and smoothed the place as 
 well as possible. In the space of three days, the treasure had been 
 faithfully transmitted by instalments from the hollow tree into 
 the narrow alley ; and now the owner of it thought he might with 
 honour lay aside his strict incognito. He dressed himself with the 
 finest; had his Prayer displaced from the church; and required, 
 instead of it, "a Christian Thanksgiving for a Traveller, on re- 
 turning to his native town, after happily arranging his affairs." 
 He hid himself in a corner of the church, where he could observe 
 the fair Meta, without himself being seen; he turned not his eye 
 from the maiden, and drank from her looks the actual rapture, 
 which in foretaste had restrained him from the break-neck somer- 
 set on the Bridge of the Weser. When the Thanksgiving came in 
 hand, a glad sympathy shone forth from all her features, and the 
 cheeks of the virgin glowed with joy. The customary greeting on 
 the way homewards was so full of emphasis, that even to the third 
 party who had noticed them, it would have been intelligible. 
 
 Franz now appeared once more on the Exchange ; began a 
 branch of trade which in a few weeks extended to the great scale ; 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 51 
 
 and as his wealth became daily more apparent, Neighbour Grudge, 
 the scandal-chewer, was obliged to conclude, that in the cashing of 
 his old debts, he must have had more luck than sense. He hired 
 a large house, fronting the Roland, in the Market-place ; engaged 
 clerks and warehousemen, and carried on his trade unweariedly. 
 Now the sorrowful populace of parasites again diligently handled 
 the knocker of his door ; appeared in crowds, and suffocated him 
 with assurances of friendship, and joy-wdshings on his fresh 
 prosperity ; imagined they should once more catch him in their 
 robber claws. But experience had taught him wisdom ; he paid 
 them in their own coin, feasted their false friendship on smooth 
 words, and dismissed them with fasting stomachs ; which sove- 
 reign means for scaring off the cumbersome brood of pickthanks 
 and toadeaters produced the intended effect, that they betook 
 them elsewhither. 
 
 In Bremen, the remounting Melcherson had become the story 
 of the day ; the fortune w T hich in some inexplicable manner he had 
 realised, as was supposed, in foreign parts, w r as the subject-matter 
 of all conversations at formal dinners, in the Courts of Justice and 
 at the Exchange. But in proportion as the fame of his fortune and 
 affluence increased, the contentedness and peace of mind of the 
 fair Meta diminished. The friend in petto was now, in her opinion, 
 well qualified to speak a plain word. Yet still his Love continued 
 Dumb ; and except the greeting on the way from church, he gave 
 no tidings of himself. Even this sort of visit was becoming rarer, 
 and such aspects were the sign not of warm, but of cold weather 
 in the atmosphere of Love. Jealousy, 10 the baleful Harpy, flut- 
 tered round her little room by night, and when sleep w T as closing 
 her blue eyes, croaked many a dolorous presage into the ear of 
 the re-awakened Meta. " Forego the flattering hope of binding 
 an inconstant heart, wmich, like a feather, is the sport of every 
 wind. He loved thee, and w r as faithful to thee, widle his lot was 
 as thy own : like only draws to like. Now a propitious destiny 
 exalts the Changeful far above thee. Ah ! now he scorns the 
 truest thoughts in mean apparel, now that pomp, and wealth, and 
 splendour dazzle him once more ; and courts who knows what 
 haughty fair one that disdained him when he lay among the pots, 
 and now with siren call allures him back to her. Perhaps her 
 cozening voice has turned him from thee, speaking with false 
 
 i° Jealousy too (at bottom a very sad spectre, but not here introduced as one) 
 now croaks in iambics, as the Goblin Barber lately spoke in them. — Wieland. 
 
52 
 
 MUSJEUS. 
 
 words : ' For thee, God's garden blossoms in thy native town . 
 
 friend, thou hast now thy choice of all our maidens ; choose 
 with prudence, not by the eye alone. Of girls are many, and of 
 fathers many, who in secret lie in wait for thee : none will with- 
 hold his darling daughter. Take happiness and honour with the 
 fairest; likewise birth and fortune. The councillor dignity awaits 
 thee, where vote of friends is potent in the city.' " 
 
 These suggestions of Jealousy disturbed and tormented her 
 heart without ceasing : she reviewed her fair contemporaries in 
 Bremen, estimated the ratio of so many splendid matches to her- 
 self and her circumstances ; and the result was far from favour- 
 able. The first tidings of her lover's change of situation had in 
 secret charmed her ; not in the selfish view of becoming partici- 
 patress in a large fortune ; but for her mother's sake, who had 
 abdicated all hopes of earthly happiness, ever since the marriage 
 project with neighbour Hop-King had made shipwreck. But now 
 poor Meta wished that Heaven had not heard the Prayer of the 
 Church, or granted to the traveller any such abundance of suc- 
 cess ; but rather kept him by the bread and salt, which he would 
 willingly have shared with her. 
 
 The fair half of the species are by no means calculated to 
 conceal an inward care : Mother Brigitta soon observed the trouble 
 of her daughter; and without the use of any great penetration, like- 
 wise guessed its cause. The talk about the re-ascending star of 
 her former flax-negotiator, who was now celebrated as the pattern 
 of an orderly, judicious, active tradesman, had not escaped her, 
 any more than the feeling of the good Meta towards him ; and it 
 was her opinion, that if he loved in earnest, it was needless to 
 hang off so long, without explaining what he meant. Yet out of 
 tenderness to her daughter, she let no hint of this discovery es- 
 cape her; till at length poor Meta*s heart became so full, that of 
 her own accord she made her mother the confidante of her sorrow, 
 and disclosed to her its true origin. The shrewd old lady learned 
 little more by this disclosure than she knew already. But it 
 afforded opportunity to mother and daughter for a full, fair and 
 free discussion of this delicate affair. Brigitta made her no re- 
 proaches on the subject ; she believed that what was done could 
 not be undone ; and directed all her eloquence to strengthen and 
 encourage the dejected Meta to bear the failure of her hopes with 
 a steadfast mind. 
 
 With this view, she spelt out to her the extremely reasonable 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 53 
 
 moral, a, b, ab; discoursing thus : " My child, thou hast already 
 said a, thou must now say b too ; thou hast scorned thy fortune 
 when it sought thee, now thou must submit when it will meet thee 
 no longer. Experience has taught me, that the most confident 
 Hope is the first to deceive us. Therefore, follow my example ; 
 abandon the fair cozener utterly, and thy peace of mind will no 
 longer be disturbed by her. Count not on any improvement of 
 thy fate; and thou wilt grow contented with thy present situation. 
 Honour the spinning-wheel, which supports thee : what are for- 
 tune and riches to thee, when thou canst do without them ?" 
 
 Close on this stout oration followed a loud humming sym- 
 phony of snap -reel and spinning-wheel, to make up for the time 
 lost in speaking. Mother Brigitta was in truth philosophising 
 from the heart. After her scheme for the restoration of her for- 
 mer affluence had gone to ruin, she had so simplified the plan of 
 her life, that Fate could not perplex it any more. But Meta was 
 still far from this philosophical centre of indifference ; and hence 
 this doctrine, consolation and encouragement affected her quite 
 otherwise than had been intended : the conscientious daughter 
 now looked upon herself as the destroyer of her mother's fair 
 hopes, and suffered from her own mind a thousand reproaches for 
 this fault. Though she had never adopted the maternal scheme 
 of marriage, and had reckoned only upon bread and salt in her 
 future wedlock ; yet, on hearing of her lover's riches and spread- 
 ing commerce, her diet-project had directly mounted to six plates ; 
 and it delighted her to think, that by her choice she should still 
 realise her good mother's wish, and see her once more planted in 
 her previous abundance. 
 
 This fair dream now vanished by degrees, as Franz continued 
 silent. To make matters worse, there spread a rumour over all 
 the city, that he was furnishing his house in the most splendid 
 fashion for his marriage with a rich Antwerp lady, who was al- 
 ready on her way to Bremen. This Job's-news drove the lovely 
 maiden from her last defence : she passed on the apostate sent- 
 ence of banishment from her heart ; and vowed from that hour 
 never more to think of him ; and aS she did so, wetted the twin- 
 ing thread with her tears. 
 
 In a heavy hour she was breaking this vow, and thinking, 
 against her will, of the faithless lover : for she had just spun off a 
 rock of flax ; and there was an old rhyme which had been taught 
 her by her mother for encouragement to diligence : 
 
54 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 ' Spin, claughterkin, spin ; 
 Thy sweetheart's within !' 
 
 which she always recollected when her rock was done ; and along 
 with it the memory of the Deceitful necessarily occurred to her. 
 In this heavy hour, a finger rapped with a most dainty patter at 
 the door. Mother Brigitta looked forth : the sweetheart was 
 without. And who could it be ? Who else but neighbour Franz, 
 from the alley ? He had decked himself with a gallant wooing- 
 suit ; and his well-dressed, thick brown locks shook forth per- 
 fume. This stately decoration boded, at all events, something 
 else than flax-dealing. Mother Brigitta started in alarm ; she 
 tried to speak, but words failed her. Meta rose in trepidation 
 from her seat, blushed like a purple rose, and was silent. Franz, 
 however, had the power of utterance ; to the soft adagio which 
 he had jn former days trilled forth to her, he now appended a 
 suitable text, and explained his dumb love in clear words. There- 
 upon he made solemn application for her to the mother ; justi- 
 fying his proposal by the statement, that the preparations in his 
 house had been meant for the reception of a bride, and that this 
 bride was the charming Meta. 
 
 The pointed old lady, having brought her feelings once more 
 into equilibrium, was for protracting the affair to the customary 
 term of eight days for deliberation ; though joyful tears were run- 
 ning down her cheeks, presaging no impediment on her side, but 
 rather answer of approval. Franz, however, was so pressing in 
 his suit, that she fell upon a middle path between the wooer's 
 ardour and maternal use and wont, and empowered the gentle 
 Meta to decide in the affair according to her own good judgment. 
 In the virgin heart there had occurred, since Franz's entrance, 
 an important revolution. His presence here was the most speak- 
 ing proof of his innocence ; and as, in the course of conversation, 
 it distinctly came to light, that his apparent coldness had been 
 nothing else than zeal and diligence in putting his commercial 
 affairs in order, and preparing what was necessary for the coming 
 nuptials, it followed that the secret reconciliation would proceed 
 forthwith without any stone of stumbling in its way. She acted 
 with the outlaw, as Mother Brigitta with her disposted spinning 
 gear, or the First-born Son of the Church with an exiled Parlia- 
 ment ; recalled him with honour to her high-beating heart, and 
 reinstated him in all his former rights and privileges there. The 
 decisive three-lettered little word, that ratifies the happiness of 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 55 
 
 love, came gliding with such unspeakable grace from her soft lips, 
 that the answered lover could not help receiving it with a warm 
 melting kiss. 
 
 The tender pair had now time and opportunity for decipher- 
 ing all the hieroglyphics of their mysterious love ; which afforded 
 the most pleasant conversation that ever two lovers carried on. 
 They found, what our commentators ought to pray for, that they 
 had always understood and interpreted the text aright, without 
 once missing the true sense of their reciprocal proceedings. It 
 cost the delighted bridegroom almost as great an effort to part 
 from his charming bride, as on the day when he set out on his 
 crusade to Antwerp. However, he had an important walk to 
 take ; so at last it became time to withdraw. 
 
 This walk was directed to the Weser-bridge, to find Timber- 
 toe, whom he had not forgotten, though he had long delayed to 
 keep his word to him. Sharply as the physiognomist, ever since 
 his interview with the open-handed Bridge -bailiff, had been on 
 the outlook, he could never catch a glimpse of him among the 
 passengers, although a second visit had been faithfully promised. 
 Yet the figure of his benefactor had not vanished from his me- 
 mory. The moment he perceived the fair- apparelled youth from 
 a distance, he stilted towards him, and gave him kindly welcome. 
 Franz answered his salutation, and said : " Friend, canst thou 
 take a walk with me into the Neustadt, to transact a small affair ? 
 Thy trouble shall not be unpaid." 
 
 " Ah ! why not ?" replied the old blade ; " though I have a 
 wooden leg, I can step you with it as stoutly as the lame dwarf 
 that crept round the city-common; 11 for the wooden leg, you must 
 know, has this good property, it never tires. But excuse me a 
 little while till Graycloak is come : he never misses to pass along 
 the Bridge between day and night." 
 
 * 4 What of Graycloak ?" inquired Franz : " let me know about 
 him." 
 
 " Graycloak brings me daily about nightfall a silver groschen, 
 I know not from whom. It is of no use prying into things, so I 
 never mind. Sometimes it occurs to me Graycloak must be the 
 devil, and means to buy my soul with the money. But devil or 
 
 11 There is an old tradition, that a neighhouring Countess promised in jest to 
 give the Bremers as much land as a cripple, who was just asking her for alms, 
 would creep round in a day. They took her at her word ; and the cripple crawled 
 so well, that the town obtained this large common by means of him. 
 
56 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 no devil, what care I ? I did not strike him on the bargain, so 
 it cannot hold." 
 
 "I should not wonder," answered Franz, with a smile, "if 
 Graycloak were a piece of a knave. But do thou follow me : the 
 silver groschen shall not fail thee." 
 
 Timbertoe set forth, hitched on briskly after his guide, who 
 conducted him up one street and down another, to a distant quar- 
 ter of the city, near the wall ; then halted before a neat little 
 new-built house, and knocked at the door. When it was opened : 
 " Friend," said he, " thou madest one evening of my life cheerful ; 
 it is just that I should make the evening of thy life cheerful also. 
 This house, with its appurtenances, and the garden where it 
 stands, are thine ; kitchen and cellar are full ; an attendant is 
 appointed to wait upon thee ; and the silver groschen, over and 
 above, thou wilt find every noon lying under thy plate. Nor will 
 I hide from thee that Graycloak was my servant, whom I sent to 
 give thee daily an honourable alms, till I had got this house made 
 ready for thee. If thou like, thou mayest reckon me thy proper 
 Guardian Angel, since the other has not acted to thy satisfaction." 
 
 He then led the old man into his dwelling, where the table 
 was standing covered, and everything arranged for his conveni- 
 ence and comfortable living. The grayhead was so astonished at 
 his fortune, that he could not understand or even believe it. That 
 a rich man should take such pity on a poor one, was incompre- 
 hensible : he felt disposed to take the whole affair for magic or 
 jugglery, till Franz removed his doubts. A stream of thankful 
 tears flowed down the old man's cheeks ; and his benefactor, satis- 
 fied with this, did not wait till he should recover from his amaze- 
 ment and thank him in words, but, after doing this angel-message, 
 vanished from the old man's eyes, as angels are wont ; and left 
 him to piece together the affair as he best could. 
 
 Next morning, in the habitation of the lovely Meta, all was 
 as a fair. Franz dispatched to her a crowd of merchants, jewel- 
 lers, milliners, lace-dealers, tailors, sutors and sempstresses, in 
 part to offer her all sorts of wares, in part their own good ser- 
 vices. She passed the whole day in choosing stuffs, laces and 
 other requisites for the condition of a bride, or being measured 
 for her various new apparel. The dimensions of her dainty foot, 
 her beautifully-formed arm, and her slim waist, were as often and 
 as carefully meted, as if some skilful statuary had been taking 
 froni her the model for a Goddess of Love. Meanwhile the bride- 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 57 
 
 groom went to appoint the bans ; and before three weeks were 
 past, he led his bride to the altar, with a solemnity by which 
 even the gorgeous wedding-pomp of the Hop-King was eclipsed. 
 Mother Brigitta had the happiness of twisting the bridal-garland 
 for her virtuous Meta ; she completely attained her wish of 
 spending her woman's -summer in propitious affluence; and de- 
 served this satisfaction, as a recompense for one praiseworthy 
 quality which she possessed : She was the most tolerable mother- 
 in-law that has ever been discovered. 
 
LIBUSSA. 1 
 
 Deep in the Bohemian forest, which has now dwindled to a few 
 scattered woodlands, there abode, in the primeval times, while it 
 stretched its umbrage far and wide, a spiritual race of beings, airy 
 and avoiding light, incorporeal also, more delicately fashioned than 
 the clay-formed sons of men ; to the coarser sense of feeling im- 
 perceptible, but to the finer, half- visible by moonlight ; and well 
 known to poets by the name of Dryads, and to ancient bards by 
 that of Elves. From immemorial ages, they had dwelt here 
 undisturbed ; till all at once the forest sounded with the din of 
 warriors, for Duke Czech of Hungary, with his Sclavonic hordes, 
 had broken over the mountains, to seek in these wild tracts a new 
 habitation. The fair tenants of the aged oaks, of the rocks, clefts 
 and grottos, and of the flags in the tarns and morasses, fled before 
 the clang of arms and the neighing of chargers : the stout Erl- 
 King himself was annoyed by the uproar, and transferred his court 
 to more sequestered wildernesses. One solitary Elf could not 
 resolve to leave her darling oak ; and as the wood began here 
 and there to be felled for the purposes of cultivation, she alone 
 undertook to defend her tree against the violence of the strangers, 
 and chose the towering summit of it for her residence. 
 
 Among the retinue of the Duke was a young Squire, Krokus 
 by name, full of spirit and impetuosity ; stout and handsome, and 
 of noble mien, to whom the keeping of his master's stud had been 
 entrusted, which at times he drove far into the forest for their 
 
 1 From Jo. Dubravii Historia Bohemica, and JSnece Sylvii Cardinalis de 
 Bohemarum Origine ac Gestis Historia. 
 
LIJBUSSA. 
 
 59 
 
 pasture. Frequently he rested beneath the oak which the Elf in- 
 habited : she observed him with satisfaction ; and at night, when 
 he was sleeping at the root, she would whisper pleasant dreams 
 into his ear, and announce to him in expressive images the events 
 of the coming day. When any horse had strayed into the desert, 
 and the keeper had lost its tract, and gone to sleep with anxious 
 thoughts, he failed not to see in vision the marks of the hidden 
 path, which led him to the spot where his lost steed was grazing. 
 
 The farther the new colonists extended, the nearer came they 
 to the dwelling of the Elf ; and as by her gift of divination, she 
 perceived how soon her life-tree would be threatened by the axe, 
 she determined to unfold this sorrow to her guest. One moon- 
 shiny summer evening, Krokus had folded his herd somewhat 
 later than usual, and was hastening to his bed under the lofty 
 oak. His path led him round a little fishy lake, on whose silver 
 face the moon was imaging herself like a gleaming ball of gold ; 
 and across this glittering portion of the water, on the farther side, 
 he perceived a female form, apparently engaged in walking by the 
 cool shore. This sight surprised the young warrior : What brings 
 the maiden hither, thought he, by herself, in this wilderness, at 
 the season of the nightly dusk ? Yet the adventure was of such 
 a sort, that, to a young man, the more strict investigation of it 
 seemed alluring rather than alarming. He redoubled his steps, 
 keeping firmly in view the form which had arrested his attention ; 
 and soon reached the place where he had first noticed it, beneath 
 the oak. But now it looked to him as if the thing he saw were 
 a shadow rather than a body ; he stood wondering and motion- 
 less, a cold shudder crept over him ; and he heard a sweet soft 
 voice address to him these words : " Come hither, beloved stranger, 
 and fear not ; I am no phantasm, no deceitful shadow : I am the 
 Elf of this grove, the tenant of the oak, under whose leafy boughs 
 thou hast often rested. I rocked thee in sweet delighting dreams, 
 and prefigured to thee thy adventures ; and when a brood-mare 
 or a foal had chanced to wander from the herd, I told thee of the 
 place where thou wouldst find it. Repay this favour by a service 
 which I now require of thee ; be the Protector of this tree, which 
 has so often screened thee from the shower and the scorching 
 heat ; and guard the murderous axes of thy brethren, which lay 
 waste the forest, that they harm not this venerable trunk." 
 
 The young warrior, restored to self-possession by this soft still 
 voice, made answer : " Goddess or mortal, whoever thou mayesii 
 
60 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 be, require of me what thou pleasest ; if I can, I will perform it. 
 But I am a man of no account among my people, the servant of 
 the Duke my lord. If he tell me today or tomorrow, Feed here, 
 feed there, how shall I protect thy tree in this distant forest ? Yet 
 if thou commandest me, I will renounce the service of princes, 
 and dwell under the shadow of thy oak, and guard it while I live." 
 
 " Do so," said the Elf : " thou shalt not repent it." 
 
 Hereupon she vanished ; and there was a rustling in the 
 branches above, as if some breath of an evening breeze had been 
 entangled in them, and had stirred the leaves. Krokus, for a 
 while, stood enraptured at the heavenly form which had appeared 
 to him. So soft a female, of such slender shape and royal bear- 
 ing, he had never seen among the short squat damsels of his own 
 Sclavonic race. At last he stretched himself upon the moss, but 
 no sleep descended on his eyes ; the dawn overtook him in a 
 whirl of sweet emotions, which were as strange and new to him 
 as the first beam of light to the opened eye of one born blind. 
 With the earliest morning he hastened to the Court of the Duke, 
 required his discharge, packed up his war-accoutrements, and, 
 with rapid steps, his burden on his shoulders, and his head full 
 of glowing enthusiasm, hied him back to his enchanted forest- 
 hermitage. 
 
 Meanwhile, in his absence, a craftsman among the people, a 
 miller by trade, had selected for himself the round straight trunk 
 of the oak to be an axle, and was proceeding with his mill-men 
 to fell it. The affrighted Elf sobbed bitterly, as the greedy saw 
 began with iron tooth to devour the foundations of her dwelling. 
 She looked wildly round, from the highest summit, for her faithful 
 guardian, but her glance could find him nowhere ; and the gift of 
 prophecy, peculiar to her race, was in the present case so ineffec- 
 tual, that she could as little read the fate that stood before her, 
 as the sons of iEsculapius, with their vaunted prognosis, can dis- 
 cover ways and means for themselves when Death is knocking at 
 their own door. 
 
 Krokus, however, was approaching, and so near the scene of 
 this catastrophe, that the screeching of the busy saw did not 
 escape his ear. Such a sound in the forest boded no good : he 
 quickened his steps, and beheld before his eyes the horror of the 
 devastation that was visiting the tree which he had taken under 
 his protection. Like a fury he rushed upon the wood-cutters, 
 with pike and sword, and scared them from their work ; for they 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 61 
 
 \ concluded he must be a forest-demon, and fled in great precipita- 
 tion. By good fortune, the wound of the tree was still curable ; 
 and the scar of it disappeared in a few summers. 
 
 In the solemn hour of evening, when the stranger had fixed 
 upon the spot for his future habitation ; had meted out the space 
 for hedging round as a garden, and was weighing in his mind the 
 whole scheme of his future hermitage ; where, in retirement from 
 the society of men, he purposed to pass his days in the service of 
 a shadowy companion, possessed apparently of little more reality 
 than a Saint of the Calendar, whom a pious friar chooses for his 
 spiritual paramour, — the Elf appeared before him at the brink of 
 the lake, and with gentle looks thus spoke : 
 
 " Thanks to thee, beloved stranger, that thou hast turned 
 away the wasteful arms of thy brethren from ruining this tree, 
 with which my life is united. For thou shalt know that Mother 
 Nature, who has granted to my race such varied powers and in- 
 fluences, has combined the fortune of our life with the growth 
 and duration of the oak. By us the sovereign of the forest raises 
 his venerable head above the populace of other trees and shrubs ; 
 we further the circulation of the sap through his trunk and boughs, 
 that he may gain strength to battle with the tempest, and for long 
 centuries to defy destructive Time. On the other hand, our life 
 is bound to his : when the oak, which the lot of Destiny has ap- 
 pointed for the partner of our existence, fades by years, we fade 
 along with him; and when he dies, we die, and sleep, like mortals, 
 as it were a sort of death-sleep, till, by the everlasting cycle of 
 things, Chance, or some hidden provision of Nature, again weds 
 our being to a new germ ; which, unfolded by our enlivening 
 virtue, after the lapse of long years, springs up to be a mighty 
 tree, and affords us the enjoyment of existence anew. From this 
 thou mayest perceive what a service thou hast done me by thy 
 help, and what gratitude I owe thee. Ask of me the recompense 
 of thy noble deed ; disclose to me the wish of thy heart, and this 
 hour it shall be granted thee." 
 
 Krokus continued silent. The sight of the enchanting Elf 
 had made more impression on him than her speech, of which, 
 indeed, he understood but little. She noticed his embarrass- 
 ment ; and, to extricate him from it, plucked a withered reed 
 from the margin of the lake, broke it into three pieces, and said : 
 ' ' Choose one of these three stalks, or take one without a choice. 
 In the first, lie Honour and Kenown ; in the second. Riches and 
 
62 
 
 MUSJEUS. 
 
 the wise enjoyment of them ; in the third is happiness in Love 
 laid up for thee." 
 
 The young man cast his eyes upon the ground, and answered : 
 "Daughter of Heaven, if thou wouldst deign to grant the desire 
 of my heart, know that it lies not in these three stalks which 
 thou offerest me ; the recompense I aim at is higher. What is 
 Honour but the fuel of Pride ? what are Riches but the root of 
 Avarice ? and what is Love but the trap-door of Passion, to en- 
 snare the noble freedom of the heart ? Grant me my wish, to 
 rest under the shadow of thy oak-tree from the toils of warfare, 
 and to hear from thy sweet mouth the lessons of wisdom, that I 
 may understand by them the secrets of the future." 
 
 " Thy request," replied the Elf, "is great ; but thy deserving 
 toward me is not less so : be it then as thou hast asked. Nor, 
 with the fruit, shall the shell be wanting to thee ; for the wise 
 man is also honoured ; he alone is rich, for he desires nothing 
 more than he needs, and he tastes the pure nectar of Love with- 
 out poisoning it by polluted lips." 
 
 So saying, she again presented him the three reed-stalks, 
 and vanished from his sight. 
 
 The young Eremite prepared his bed of moss, beneath the 
 oak, exceedingly content with the reception which the Elf had 
 given him. Sleep came upon him like a strong man ; gay morn- 
 ing dreams danced round his head, and solaced his fancy with 
 the breath of happy forebodings. On awakening, he joyfully be- 
 gan his day's work ; ere long he had built himself a pleasant 
 hermit's- cottage ; had dug his garden, and planted in it roses 
 and lilies, with other odoriferous flowers and herbs ; not forget- 
 ting pulse and cole, and a sufficiency of fruit-trees. The Elf 
 never failed to visit him at twilight ; she rejoiced in the prosper- 
 ing of his labours ; walked with him, hand in hand, by the sedgy 
 border of the lake ; and the wavering reeds, as the wind passed 
 through them, whispered a melodious evening salutation to the 
 trustful pair. She instructed her attentive disciple in the secrets 
 of Nature ; showed him the origin and causes of things ; taught 
 him their common and their magic properties and effects ; and 
 formed the rude soldier into a thinker and philosopher. 
 
 In proportion as the feelings and senses of the young man 
 grew renned by this fair spiritual intercourse, it seemed as if the 
 tender form of the Elf were condensing, and acquiring more con- 
 sistency ; her bosom caught warmth and life ; her brown eyes 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 63 
 
 sparkled with the fire of love ; and with the shape, she appeared 
 to have adopted the feelings of a young blooming maiden. The 
 sentimental hour of dusk, which is as if expressly calculated to 
 awaken slumbering feelings, had its usual effect ; and after a few 
 moons from their first acquaintance, the sighing Krokus found 
 himself possessed of the happiness in Love, which the Third 
 Reed-stalk had appointed him ; and did not repent that by the 
 trap-door of Passion the freedom of his heart had been ensnared. 
 Though the marriage of the tender pair took place without wit- 
 nesses, it was celebrated with as much enjoyment as the most 
 tumultuous espousal; nor were speaking proofs of love's recom- 
 pense long wanting. The Elf gave her husband three daughters 
 at a birth ; and the father, rejoicing in the bounty of his better 
 half, named, at the first embrace, the eldest infant, Bela ; the 
 next born, Therba ; and the youngest, Libussa. They were all 
 like the Genies in beauty of form ; and though not moulded of 
 such light materials as the mother, their corporeal structure was 
 finer than the dull earthy clay of the father. They were also free 
 from all the infirmities of childhood ; their swathings did not gall 
 them ; they teethed without epileptic fits, needed no calomel taken 
 inwardly, got no rickets ; had no small-pox, and, of course, no 
 scars, no scum-eyes, or puckered faces : nor did they require any 
 leading-strings ; for after the first nine days, they ran like little 
 partridges ; and as they grew up, they manifested all the talents 
 of the mother for discovering hidden things, and predicting what 
 was future. 
 
 Krokus himself, by the aid of time, grew skilful in these mys- 
 teries also. When the wolf had scattered the flocks through the 
 forest, and the herdsmen were seeking for their sheep and horses ; 
 when the woodman missed an axe or bill, they took counsel from 
 the wise Krokus, who showed them where to find what they had 
 lost. When a wicked prowler had abstracted aught from the 
 common stock ; had by night broken into the pinfold, or the 
 dwelling of his neighbour, and robbed or slain him, and none 
 could guess the malefactor, the wise Krokus was consulted. He 
 led the people to a green ; made them form a ring ; then stept 
 into the midst of them, set the faithful sieve a-running, and so 
 failed not to discover the misdoer. By such acts his fame spread 
 over all the country of Bohemia ; and whoever had a weighty care, 
 or an important undertaking, took counsel from the wise Krokus 
 about its issue, The lame and the sick, too, required from him 
 
64 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 help and recovery; even the unsound cattle of the fold were driven 
 to him ; and his gift of curing sick kine by his shadow, was not 
 less than that of the renowned St. Martin of Schierbach. By 
 these means the concourse of the people to him grew more fre- 
 quent, day by day, no otherwise than if the Tripod of the Delphic 
 Apollo had been transferred to the Bohemian forest : and though 
 Krokus answered all inquiries, and cured the sick and afflicted, 
 without fee or reward, yet the treasure of his secret wisdom paid 
 him richly, and brought him in abundant profit ; the people 
 crowded to him with gifts and presents, and almost oppressed 
 him with testimonies of their good-will. It was he that first 
 disclosed the mystery of washing gold from the sands of the Elbe ; 
 and for his recompense he had a tenth of all the produce. By 
 these means his wealth and store increased ; he built strongholds 
 and palaces ; had vast herds of cattle ; possessed fertile pastur- 
 ages, fields and woods ; and thus found himself imperceptibly 
 possessed of all the Kiches which the beneficently foreboding Elf 
 had enclosed for him in the Second Reed. 
 
 One fine summer evening, when Krokus with his train was 
 returning from an excursion, having by special request been set- 
 tling the disputed marches of two townships, he perceived his 
 spouse on the margin of the sedgy lake, where she had first ap- 
 peared to him. She waved him with her hand ; so he dismissed 
 his servants, and hastened to clasp her in his arms. She received 
 him, as usual, with tender love ; but her heart was sad and op- 
 pressed ; from her eyes trickled down ethereal tears, so fine and 
 fugitive, that as they fell they were greedily inhaled by the air, 
 and not allowed to reach the ground. Krokus was alarmed at 
 this appearance ; he had never seen his wife's fair eyes otherwise 
 than cheerful, and sparkling with youthful gaiety. ' 'What ails 
 thee, beloved of my heart?" said he; "black forebodings over- 
 cast my soul. Speak, say what mean those tears." 
 
 The Elf sobbed, leaned her head sorrowfully on his shoulder, 
 and said : " Beloved husband, in thy absence I have looked into 
 the Book of Destiny ; a doleful chance overhangs my life-tree ; I 
 must part from thee forever. Follow me into the Castle, till I 
 bless my children ; for from this day you will never see me more." 
 
 "Dearest wife," said Krokus, "chase away these mournful 
 thoughts. What misfortune is it that can harm thy tree ? Be- 
 hold its sound boughs, how they stretch forth loaded with fruit 
 and leaves, and how it raises its top to the clouds. While this 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 65 
 
 arm can move, it shall defend thy tree from any miscreant that 
 presumes to wound its stem." 
 
 " Impotent defence," replied she, " which a mortal arm can 
 yield ! Ants can but secure themselves from ants, flies from flies, 
 and the worms of Earth from other earthly worms. But what can 
 the mightiest among you do against the workings of Nature, or 
 the unalterable decisions of Fate ? The kings of the Earth can 
 heap up little hillocks, which they name fortresses and castles ; 
 but the weakest breath of air defies their authority, blows where 
 it lists, and mocks at their command. This oak-tree thou hast 
 guarded from the violence of men ; canst thou likewise forbid the 
 tempest that it rise not to disleaf its branches ; or if a hidden 
 worm is gnawing in its marrow, canst thou draw it out, and tread 
 it under foot ?" 
 
 Amid such conversation they arrived at the Castle. The 
 slender maidens, as they were wont at the evening visit of their 
 mother, came bounding forth to meet them ; gave account of their 
 day's employments, produced their needlework, and their embroid- 
 eries, to prove their diligence : but now the hour of household hap- 
 piness was joyless. They soon observed that the traces of deep 
 suffering were imprinted on the countenance of their father ; and 
 they looked with sympathising sorrow at their mother's tears, 
 without venturing to inquire their cause. The mother gave them 
 many wise instructions and wholesome admonitions ; but her 
 speech was like the singing of a swan, as if she wished to give 
 the world her farewell. She lingered with her husband, till the 
 morning-star went up in the sky ; then she embraced him and 
 her children with mournful tenderness ; and at dawn of day re- 
 tired, as was her custom, through the secret door, to her oak-tree, 
 and left her friends to their own sad forebodings. 
 
 Nature stood in listening stillness at the rising sun ; but 
 heavy black clouds soon veiled his beaming head. The day 
 grew sultry and oppressive ; the whole atmosphere was electric. 
 Distant thunder came rolling over the forest ; and the hundred- 
 voiced Echo repeated, in the winding valleys, its baleful sound. 
 At the noontide, a forked thunderbolt struck quivering down 
 upon the oak ; and in a moment shivered with resistless force the 
 trunk and boughs, and the wreck lay scattered far around it in 
 the forest. When Father Krokus was informed of this, he rent 
 his garments, went forth with his daughters to deplore the life- 
 tree of his spouse, and to collect the fragments of it, and preserve 
 
 VOL. III. J? 
 
66 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 them as invaluable relics. But the Elf from that day was not 
 seen any more. 
 
 In some few years, the tender girls had waxed in stature ; 
 their maiden forms blossomed forth, as the rose pushing up from 
 the bud ; and the fame of their beauty spread abroad over all the 
 land. The noblest youths of the people crowded round, with 
 cases to submit to Father Krokus for his counsel ; but at bottom, 
 these their specious pretexts were directed to the fair maidens, 
 whom they wished to get a glimpse of; as is the mode with 
 young men, who delight to have some business with the master 
 of the household, when his daughters are beautiful. The three 
 sisters lived in great simplicity and unity together; as yet but 
 little conscious of their talents. The gift of prophecy had been 
 communicated to them in an equal degree ; and all their words 
 were oracles, although they knew it not. Yet soon their vanity 
 awoke at the voice of flattery ; word - catchers eagerly laid hold 
 of every sound proceeding from their lips ; Celadons noted down 
 every look, spied out the faintest smile, explored the aspect of 
 their eyes, and drew from it more or less favourable prognostics, 
 conceiving that their own destiny was to be read by means of it ; 
 and from this time, it has become the mode with lovers to deduce 
 from the horoscope of the eyes the rising or declining of their star 
 in courtship. Scarcely had Vanity obtained a footing in the virgin 
 heart, till Pride, her dear confidante, with her wicked rabble of a 
 train, Self-love, Self-praise, Self-will, Self-interest, were standing 
 at the door ; and all of them in time sneaked in. The elder 
 sisters struggled to outdo the younger in their arts ; and envied 
 her in secret her superiority in personal attractions. For though 
 they all were very beautiful, the youngest was the most so. Frau- 
 lein Bela turned her chief attention to the science of plants ; as 
 Fraulein Medea did in earlier times. She knew their hidden 
 virtues, could extract from them poisons and antidotes ; and far- 
 ther, understood the art of making from them sweet or nauseous 
 odours for the unseen Powers. When her censer steamed, she 
 allured to her Spirits out of the immeasurable depth of aether, 
 from beyond the Moon, and they became her subjects, that with 
 their fine organs they might be allowed to snuff these delicious 
 vapours : and when she scattered villanous perfumes upon the 
 coals, she could have smoked away with it the very Zihim and the 
 Ohim from the Wilderness. 
 
 Fraulein Therba was inventive as Circe in devising magic for' 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 67 
 
 mulas, which could command the elements, could raise tempests 
 and whirlwinds, also hail and thunder; could shake the bowels of 
 the Earth, or lift itself from the sockets of its axle. She employed 
 these arts to terrify the people, and be feared and honoured by 
 them as a goddess ; and she could, in fact, arrange the weather 
 more according to the wish and taste of men than wise old Nature 
 does. Two brothers quarrelled on this subject, for their wishes 
 never were the same. The one was a husbandman, and still 
 desired rain for the growth and strengthening of his crops. The 
 other was a potter, and desired constant sunshine to dry his 
 dishes, which the rain destroyed. And as Heaven never could 
 content them in disposing of this matter, they repaired one day 
 with rich presents to the Castle of the wise Krokus ; and sub- 
 mitted their petitions to Therba. The daughter of the Elf gave 
 a smile over their unquiet grumbling at the wise economy of 
 Nature ; and contented the demands of each : she made rain fall 
 on the seed-lands of the cultivator ; and the sun shone on the 
 potter-field close by. By these enchantments both the sisters 
 gained much fame and riches, for they never used their gifts 
 without a fee. With their treasures they built castles and 
 country-houses ; laid out royal pleasure-gardens ; to their festi- 
 vals and divertisements there was no end. The gallants, who 
 solicited their love, they gulled and laughed at. 
 
 Fraulein Libussa was no sharer in the vain proud disposition 
 of her sisters. Though she had the same capacities for penetrat- 
 ing the secrets of Nature, and employing its hidden powers in her 
 service, she remained contented with the gifts she had derived 
 from her maternal inheritance, without attempting to increase 
 them, or turn them to a source of gain. Her vanity extended not 
 beyond the consciousness that she was beautiful ; she cared not 
 for riches ; and neither longed to be feared nor to be honoured 
 like her sisters. Whilst these were gadding up and down among 
 their country-houses, hastening from one tumultuous pleasure to 
 another, with the flower of the Bohemian chivalry fettered to 
 their chariot-wheels, she abode in her father's house, conducting 
 the economy, giving counsel to those who begged it, friendly 
 help to the afflicted and oppressed; and all from good-will, with- 
 out remuneration. 2 Her temper was soft and modest, and her 
 
 8 Nulla Crocco virilis sexus proles fuit, sed moriturus tres a morte sua filias 
 superstites reliquit, omnes ut ipse erat fatidicas, vel magas potius, qualis Medea 
 tt Circe fuerant. Nam Bela natu filiarum maxima herbis incantandis Medeam 
 
68 
 
 MUS^UB. 
 
 conduct virtuous and discreet, as beseems a noble virgin. She 
 might secretly rejoice in the victories which her beauty gained 
 over the hearts of men, and accept the sighing and cooing of her - 
 languishing adorers as a just tribute to her charms; but none 
 dared speak a word of love to her, or venture on aspiring to her 
 heart. Yet Amor, the roguish urchin, takes a pleasure in exert- 
 ing his privileges on the coy ; and often hurls his burning torch 
 upon the lowly straw-roof, when he means to set on fire a lofty 
 palace. 
 
 Far in the bosom of the forest lived an ancient Knight, who 
 had come into the land with the host of Czech. In this seclusion 
 he had fixed his settlement; reduced the desert under cultivation, 
 and formed for himself a small estate, where he thought to pass 
 the remainder of his days in peace, and live upon the produce of 
 his husbandry. A strong-handed neighbour took forcible posses- 
 sion of the land, and expelled the owner, whom a hospitable pea- 
 sant sheltered in his dwelling. The distressed old Knight had a 
 son, who now formed the sole consolation and support of his age; 
 a bold active youth, but possessed of nothing save a hunting- 
 spear and a practised arm, for the sustenance of his gray-haired 
 father. The injustice of their neighbour stimulated him to re- 
 venge, and he had been prepared for resisting force by force; but 
 the command of the anxious father, unwilling to expose his son to 
 danger, had disarmed him. Yet ere long he resumed his former 
 purpose. Then the father called him to his presence, and said : 
 
 " Pass over, my son, to the wise Krokus, or to the cunning 
 virgins his daughters, and ask counsel whether the gods approve 
 thy undertaking, and will grant it a prosperous issue. If so, gird 
 on thy sword, and take the spear in thy hand, and go forth to 
 fight for thy inheritance. If not, stay here till thou hast closed 
 my eyes and laid me in the earth ; then do what shall seem 
 good to thee." 
 
 The youth set forth, and first reached Bela's palace, a build- 
 
 imitabatur, Tetcha (T herb a) natu minor carminibus magicis Circem reddebat. 
 Ad utramque frequens multitudinis concursus; dum alii amoves sibi conciliare, 
 alii cum bond valetudine in gratiam redire, alii res amissas recuperare cupiunt. 
 Ilia arcem Belinam, hcec altera arcem Thetin ex mercenarid pecunid, nihil enim 
 gratuito faciebant, cedijicandam curavit. Liber alior in hac re Lybussa natu 
 minima apparuit, ut qucs a nemine quidquam extorquebat, et potius fata publica 
 omnibus, quam privata singulis, prcecinebat : qua liberalitate, et quia non gratuitd 
 solum sed etiam minus fallace prcedictione utebatur, assecuta est ut in locum patris 
 Crocci subrogaretur. — Dubkavius. 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 69 
 
 ing like a temple for the habitation of a goddess. He knocked at 
 the door, and desired to be admitted ; but the porter observing 
 that he came empty-handed, dismissed him as a beggar, and shut 
 the door in his face. He went forward in sadness, and reached 
 the house of sister Therba, where he knocked and requested an 
 audience. The porter looked upon him through his window, and 
 said : " If thou bringest gold in thy bag, which thou canst weigh 
 out to my mistress, she will teach thee one of her good saws to 
 read thy fortune withal. If not, then go and gather of it in the 
 sands of the Elbe as many grains as the tree hath leaves, the 
 sheaf ears, and the bird feathers, then will I open thee this gate." 
 The mocked young man glided off entirely dejected ; and the more 
 so, as he learned that Seer Krokus was in Poland, arbitrating the 
 disputes of some contending Grandees. He anticipated from the 
 third sister no more flattering reception ; and as he descried her 
 father's castle from a hill in the distance, he could not venture 
 to approach it, but hid himself in a thicket to pursue his bitter 
 thoughts. Ere long he was roused by an approaching noise ; he 
 listened, and heard a sound of horses' hoofs. A flying roe dashed 
 through the bushes, followed by a lovely huntress and her maids 
 on stately steeds. She hurled a javelin from her hand ; it flew 
 whizzing through the air, but did not hit the game. Instantly 
 the watchful young man seized his bow, and launched from the 
 twanging cord a bolt, which smote the deer through the heart, 
 and stretched it lifeless on the spot. The lady, in astonishment 
 at this phenomenon, looked round to find her unknown hunting 
 partner : and the archer, on observing this, stept forward from 
 his bush, and bent himself humbly before her to the ground. 
 Fraulein Libussa thought she had never seen a finer man. At 
 the first glance, his figure made so deep an impression on her, 
 that she could not but award him that involuntary feeling of good- 
 will, which a beautiful appearance claims as its prerogative. 4 ' Tell 
 me, fair stranger," said she to him, ' 'who art thou, and what 
 chance is it that leads thee to these groves ?" The youth guessed 
 rightly that his lucky star had brought him what he was in search 
 of ; he disclosed his case to her in modest words ; not hiding how 
 disgracefully her sisters had dismissed him, or how the treatment 
 had afflicted him. She cheered his heart with friendly words. 
 " Follow me to my abode," said she ; " I will consult the Book 
 of Fate for thee, and answer thy demand tomorrow by the rising 
 of the sun." 
 
70 
 
 MUS^EUS. 
 
 The young man did as he was ordered. No churlish porter 
 here barred for him the entrance of the palace ; the fair lady ex- 
 ercised the rights of hospitality with generous attention. He was 
 charmed by this benignant reception, but still more by the beauty 
 of his gentle hostess. Her enchanting figure hovered all night 
 before his eyes ; he carefully defended himself from sleep, that 
 he might not for a moment lose from his thoughts the delightful 
 events of the day. Fraulein Libussa, on the contrary, enjoyed soft 
 slumber : for seclusion from the influences of the external senses, 
 which disturb the finer presentiments of the future, is an indis- 
 pensable condition for the gift of prophecy. The glowing fancy 
 of the maiden blended the form of this young stranger with all 
 the dreaming images which hovered through her mind that night. 
 She found him where she had not looked for him, in connexion 
 with affairs in which she could not understand how this unknown 
 youth had come to be involved. 
 
 On her early awakening, at the hour when the fair prophetess 
 was wont to separate and interpret the visions of the night, she 
 felt inclined to cast away these phantasms from her mind, as 
 errors which had sprung from a disturbance in the operation of 
 her prophetic faculty, and were entitled to no heed from her. Yet 
 a dim feeling signified that this creation of her fancy was not idle 
 dreaming ; but had a significant allusion to certain events which 
 the future would unravel; and that last night this presaging 
 Fantasy had spied out the decrees of Fate, and blabbed them to 
 her, more successfully than ever. By help of it, she found that 
 her guest was inflamed with warm love to her ; and with equal 
 honesty her heart confessed the same thing in regard to him. 
 But she instantly impressed the seal of silence on the news ; as 
 the modest youth had, on his side, set a guard upon his lips and 
 his eyes, that he might not expose himself to a contemptuous 
 refusal; for the chasm which Fortune had interposed between 
 him and the daughter of the wise Krokus seemed impassable. 
 
 Although the fair Libussa well knew what she had to say in 
 answer to the young man's question, yet it went against her heart 
 to let him go from her so soon. At sunrise she called him to 
 her in her garden, and said : " The curtain of darkness yet hangs 
 before my eyes; abide with me till sunset;" and at night she 
 said: ce Stay till sunrise;" and next morning: "Wait another 
 day;" and the third day: "Have patience till tomorrow." On 
 the fourth day she at last dismissed him ; finding no more pre- 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 71 
 
 texts for detaining him, with safety to her secret. At parting, 
 she gave him his response in friendly words : " The gods will not 
 that thou shouldst contend with a man of violence in the land ; to 
 hear and suffer is the lot of the weaker. Keturn to thy father ; 
 he the comfort of his old age ; and support him hy the labour of 
 thy diligent hand. Take two white Steers as a present from my 
 herd ; and this Staff to drive them ; and when it blossoms and 
 bears fruit, the spirit of prophecy will descend on thee." 
 
 The young man felt himself unworthy of the gentle virgin's 
 gift ; and blushed that he should receive it and make no return. 
 With ineloquent lips, but with looks so much the more elo- 
 quent, he took mournful leave of her ; and at the gate below 
 found two white Steers awaiting him, as sleek and glittering as 
 of old the godlike Bull, on whose smooth back the virgin Europa 
 swam across the blue sea waves. Joyfully he loosed them from 
 the post, and drove them softly on before him. The distance 
 home seemed but a few ells, so much was his spirit busied with 
 the fair Libussa : and he vowed, that as he never could obtain 
 her love, he would love no other all his days. The old Knight 
 rejoiced in the return of his son ; and still more in learning that 
 the oracle of the fair heiress agreed so completely with his own 
 wishes. As husbandry had been appointed by the gods for the 
 young man's trade, he lingered not in harnessing his white Steers, 
 and yoking them to the plough. The first trial prospered to his 
 wish : the bullocks had such strength and alacrity that they turned 
 over in a single day more land than twelve yoke of oxen com- 
 monly can master : for they were fiery and impetuous, as the 
 Bull is painted in the Almanac, where he rushes from the clouds 
 in the sign of April ; not sluggish and heavy like the Ox, who 
 plods on with his holy consorts, in our Gospel-Book, phlegmati- 
 cally, as a Dutch skipper in a calm. 
 
 Duke Czech, who had led the first colony of his people into 
 Bohemia, was now long ago committed to his final rest, yet his 
 descendants had not been promoted to succeed him in his princely 
 dignity. The Magnates had in truth, at his decease, assembled 
 for a new election ; but their wild stormy tempers would admit of 
 no reasonable resolution. Self-interest and self-sufficiency trans- 
 formed the first Bohemian Convention of Estates into a Polish 
 Diet : as too many hands laid hold of the princely mantle, they 
 tore it in pieces, and no one of them obtained it. The government 
 had dwindled to a sort of Anarchy ; every one did what was right 
 
72 
 
 MUSiEUS. 
 
 in his own eyes ; the strong oppressed the weak, the rich the poor, 
 the great the little. There was now no public security in the land; 
 yet the frank spirits of the time thought their new republic very 
 well arranged: "All is in order," said they, " everything goes on 
 its way with us as well as elsewhere ; the wolf eats the lamb, the 
 kite the dove, the fox the cock." This artless constitution could 
 not last : when the first debauch of fancied freedom had gone off, 
 and the people were again grown sober, reason asserted its rights ; 
 the patriots, the honest citizens, whoever in the nation loved his 
 country, joined together to destroy the idol Hydra, and unite the 
 people once more under a single head. * ' Let us choose a Prince," 
 said they, "to rule over us, after the manner of our fathers, to 
 tame the froward, and exercise right and justice in the midst of 
 us. Not the strongest, the boldest, or the richest ; the wisest 
 be our Duke!" The people, wearied out with the oppressions 
 of their petty tyrants, had on this occasion but one voice, and 
 loudly applauded the proposal. A meeiing of Estates was con- 
 voked ; and the choice unanimously fell upon the wise Krokus. 
 An embassy of honour was appointed, inviting him to take pos- 
 session of the princely dignity. Though he had never longed for 
 lofty titles, he hesitated not about complying with the people's 
 wish. Invested with the purple, he proceeded, with great pomp, 
 to Vizegrad, the residence of the Dukes ; where the people met 
 him with triumphant shouting, and did reverence to him as their 
 Eegent. Whereby he perceived, that now the third Reed-stalk of 
 the bountiful Elf was likewise sending forth its gift upon him. 
 
 His love of justice, and his wise legislation, soon spread his 
 fame over all the surrounding countries. The Sarmatic Prince?, 
 incessantly at feud with one another, brought their contention 
 from afar before his judgment-seat. He weighed it with the un- 
 deceitful weights of natural Justice, in the scales of Law ; and 
 when he opened his mouth, it was as if the venerable Solon, or 
 the wise Solomon from between the Twelve Lions of his throne, 
 had been pronouncing sentence. Some seditious instigators having 
 leagued against the peace of their country, and kindled war among 
 the Poles, he advanced at the head of his army into Poland ; put 
 an end to the civil strife ; and a large portion of the people, grate- 
 ful for the peace which he had given them, chose him for their 
 Duke also. He there built the city Cracow, which is called by 
 his name, and has the privilege of crowning the Polish Kings, 
 even to the present time. Krokus ruled with great glory to the 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 73 
 
 end of his days. Observing that he was now near their limit, 
 and must soon set out, he caused a coffin to be made from the 
 fragments of the oak which his spouse the Elf had inhabited ; 
 and then departed in peace, bewept by the Princesses his three 
 daughters, who deposited the Ducal remains in the coffin, and 
 consigned him to the Earth as he had commanded ; and the whole 
 land mourned for him. 
 
 When the obsequies were finished, the Estates assembled to 
 deliberate who should now possess the vacant throne. The people 
 were unanimous for one of Krokus's daughters ; but which of the 
 three they had not yet determined. Fraulein Bela had, on the 
 whole, the fewest adherents ; for her heart was not good ; and her 
 magic-lantern was too frequently employed in doing sheer mis- 
 chief. But she had raised such a terror of herself among the 
 people, that no one liked to take exception at her, lest he might 
 draw down her vengeance on him. When the vote was called, 
 therefore, the Electors all continued dumb ; there was no voice for 
 her, but also none against her. At sunset the representatives of 
 the people separated, adjourning their election to another day. 
 Then Fraulein Therba was proposed : but confidence in her in- 
 cantations had made Fraulein Therba's head giddy; she was 
 proud and overbearing ; required to be honoured as a goddess ; 
 and if incense did not always smoke for her, she grew peevish, 
 cross, capricious ; displaying all the properties by which the fair 
 sex, when they please, can cease to be fair. She was less feared 
 than her elder sister, but not on that account more loved. For 
 these reasons, the election-field continued silent as a lykewake ; 
 and the vote was never called for. On the third day came Li- 
 bussa's turn. No sooner was this name pronounced, than a con- 
 fidential hum was heard throughout the electing circle ; the 
 solemn visages unwrinkled and brightened up, and each of the 
 Electors had some good to whisper of the Fraulein to his neigh- 
 bour. One praised her virtue, another praised her modesty, a 
 third her prudence, a fourth her infallibility in prophecy, a fifth 
 her disinterestedness in giving counsel, a tenth her chastity, other 
 ninety her beauty, and the last her gifts as a housewife. When 
 a lover draws out such a catalogue of the perfections of his mis- 
 tress, it remains still doubtful whether she is really the possessor 
 of a single one among them ; but the public seldom errs on the 
 favourable side, however often on the other, in the judgments it 
 pronounces on good fame. With so many universally acknow- 
 
74 
 
 MUSJEUS. 
 
 ledged praiseworthy qualities, Fraulein Libussa was undoubtedly 
 the favoured candidate, at least in petto, of the sage Electors : 
 but the preference of the younger sister to the elder has so fre- 
 quently, in the affair of marriage, as experience testifies, destroyed 
 the peace of the house, that reasonable fear might be entertained 
 lest in affairs of still greater moment it might disturb the peace 
 of the country. This consideration put the sapient guardians of 
 the people into such embarrassment, that they could come to no 
 conclusion whatever. There was wanting a speaker, to hang the 
 clock-weight of his eloquence upon the wheel of the Electors' 
 favourable will, before the business could get into motion, and 
 the good disposition of their minds become active and efficient ; 
 and this speaker now appeared, as if appointed for the business. 
 
 Wladomir, one of the Bohemian Magnates, the highest after 
 the Duke, had long sighed for the enchanting Libussa, and wooed 
 her during Father Krokus's lifetime. The youth being one of his 
 most faithful vassals, and beloved by him as a son, the worthy 
 Krokus could have wished well that love would unite this pair ; 
 but the coyness of the maiden was insuperable, and he would in 
 nowise force her inclination. Prince Wladomir, however, would 
 not be deterred by these doubtful aspects ; but still hoped, by 
 fidelity and constancy, to tire out the hard heart of the Fraulein, 
 and by his tender attentions make it soft and pliant. He con- 
 tinued in the Duke's retinue to the end, without appearing by this 
 means to have advanced a hair's-breadth towards the goal of his 
 desires. But now, he thought, an opportunity was offered him 
 for opening her closed heart by a meritorious deed, and earning 
 from her noble-minded gratitude what love did not seem inclined 
 to grant him voluntarily. ,He determined on braving the hatred 
 and vengeance of the two dreaded sisters, and raising his beloved 
 to her paternal throne. Observing the indecision of the wavering 
 assembly, he addressed them, and said : 
 
 "If ye will hear me, ye courageous Knights and Nobles from 
 among the people, I will lay before you a similitude, by which 
 you shall perceive how this coming choice may be accomplished, 
 to the weal and profit of the land." 
 
 Silence being ordered, he proceeded thus : 
 
 " The Bees had lost their Queen, and the whole hive sat sad 
 and moping ; they flew seldom and sluggishly out, had small heart 
 or activity in honey-making, and their trade and sustenance fell 
 into decay. Therefore they resolved upon a new sovereign, to 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 75 
 
 rule over their community, that discipline and order might not be 
 lost from among them. Then came the Wasp flying towards them, 
 and said: ( Choose me for your Queen, I am mighty and terrible; 
 the strong horse is afraid of my sting; with it I can even defy the 
 lion, your hereditary foe, and prick him in the snout when he 
 approaches your store : I will watch you and defend you.' This 
 speech was pleasant to the Bees ; but after deeply considering it, 
 the wisest among them answered : ' Thou art stout and dreadful, 
 but even the sting which is to guard us we fear : thou canst not 
 be our Queen.' Then the Humble-bee came buzzing towards 
 them, and said : ' Choose me for your Queen ; hear ye not that 
 the sounding of my wings announces loftiness and dignity? Nor 
 is a sting wanting to me, wherewith to protect you.' The Bees 
 answered : ' We are a peaceable and quiet people ; the proud 
 sounding of thy wings would annoy us, and disturb the continu- 
 ance of our diligence : thou canst not be our Queen.' Then the 
 Royal-bee requested audience : * Though I am larger and stronger 
 than you,' said she, 'my strength cannot hurt or damage you; 
 for, lo, the dangerous sting is altogether wanting. I am soft of 
 temper, a friend of order and thrift, can guide your honey-mak- 
 ing, and further your labour.' ' Then,' said the Bees, * thou art 
 worthy to rule over us : we obey thee ; be our Queen.' " 
 
 Wladomir was silent. The whole assembly guessed the mean- 
 ing of his speech, and the minds of all were in a favourable tone 
 for Fraulein Libussa. But at the moment when the vote was to 
 be put, a croaking raven flew over their heads : this evil omen 
 interrupted all deliberations, and the meeting was adjourned till 
 the morrow. It was Fraulein Bela who had sent this bird of 
 black augury to stop their operations, for she well knew how the 
 minds of the Electors were inclining ; and Prince Wladomir had 
 raised her bitterest spleen against him. She held a secret con- 
 sultation with her sister Therba ; when it was determined to take 
 vengeance on their common slanderer, and to dispatch a heavy 
 Incubus to suffocate the soul from his body. The stout Knight, 
 dreaming nothing of this danger, went, as he was wont, to wait 
 upon his mistress, and was favoured by her with the first friendly 
 look ; from which he failed not to presage for himself a heaven 
 of delight ; and if anything could still have increased his rapture, 
 it must have been the gift of a rose, which was blooming on the 
 Fraulein's breast, and which she reached him, with an injunction 
 to let it wither on his heart. He interpreted these words quite 
 
76 
 
 MUSiEUS. 
 
 otherwise than they were meant ; for of all the sciences, there is 
 none so deceitful as the science of expounding in matters of love : 
 here errors, as it were, have their home. The enamoured Knight 
 was anxious to preserve his rose as long as possible in freshness 
 and bloom ; he put it in a flower-pot among water, and fell asleep 
 with the most flattering hopes. 
 
 At gloomy midnight, the destroying angel sent by Fraulein 
 Bela glided towards him ; with panting breath blew off the bolts 
 and locks of his apartment ; lighted like a mountain of lead upon 
 the slumbering Knight, and so squeezed him together, that he 
 felt on awakening as if a millstone had been hung about his neck. 
 In this agonising suffocation, thinking that the last moment of 
 his life was at hand, he happily remembered the rose, which was 
 standing by his bed in a flower-pot, and pressed it to his breast, 
 saying: "Wither with me, fair rose, and die on my chilled bo- 
 som, as a proof that my last thought was directed to thy gentle 
 mistress." In an instant all was light about his heart; the 
 heavy Incubus could not withstand the magic force of the flower ; 
 his crushing weight would not now have balanced a feather ; his 
 antipathy to the perfume soon scared him from the chamber ; 
 and the narcotic virtue of this rose -odour again lulled the Knight 
 into refreshing sleep. He rose with the sun next morning, fresh 
 and alert, and rode to the field, to see what impression his simili- 
 tude had made on the Electors, and to watch what course the 
 business was about to take ; determined at all hazards, should a 
 contrary wind spring up, and threaten with shipwreck the vessel 
 of his hopes, to lay his hand upon the rudder, and steer it into 
 port. 
 
 For the present this was not required. The electing Senate 
 had considered Wladomir's parable, and so sedulously ruminated 
 and digested it overnight, that it had passed into their hearts 
 and spirits. A stout Knight, who espied this favourable crisis, 
 and who sympathised in the concerns of his heart with the en- 
 amoured Wladomir, was endeavouring to snatch away, or at least 
 to share with him, the honour of exalting Fraulein Libussa to the 
 throne. He stept forth, and drew his sword, and with a loud 
 voice proclaimed Libussa Duchess of Bohemia, calling upon all 
 who thought as he did, to draw their swords and justify the choice. 
 In a moment hundreds of swords were gleaming through the field ; 
 a loud huzza announced the new Begent, and on all sides arose 
 the joyful shout: " Libussa be our Duchess!" A commission 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 77 
 
 was appointed, with Wladomir and the stout sword- drawer at its 
 head, to acquaint the Fraulein with her exaltation to the princely- 
 rank. With that modest blush, which gives the highest grace 
 to female charms, she accepted the sovereignty over the people ; 
 and the magic of her enrapturing look made all hearts subject to 
 her. The nation celebrated the event with vast rejoicings : and 
 although her two sisters envied her, and employed their secret 
 arts to obtain revenge on her and their country for the slight 
 which had been put upon them, and endeavoured by the leaven 
 of criticism, by censuring all the measures and transactions of 
 their sister, to produce a hurtful fermentation in the state, yet 
 Libussa was enabled wisely to encounter this unsisterly pro- 
 cedure, and to ruin all the hostile projects, magical or other, of 
 these ungentle persons ; till at last, weary of assailing her in 
 vain, they ceased to employ their ineffectual arts against her. 
 
 The sighing Wladomir awaited, in the mean time, with wist- 
 ful longing, the unfolding of his fate. More than once he had 
 tried to read the final issue of it in the fair eyes of his Princess ; 
 but Libussa had enjoined them strict silence respecting the feel- 
 ings of her heart ; and for a lover, without prior treaty with the 
 eyes and their significant glances, to demand an oral explanation, 
 is at all times an unhappy undertaking. The only favourable 
 sign, which still sustained his hopes, was the unfaded rose ; for 
 after a year had passed away, it still bloomed as fresh as on the 
 night when he received it from her fair hand. A flower from a 
 lady's hand, a nosegay, a ribbon, or a lock of hair, is certainly 
 in all cases better than an empty nut ; yet all these pretty things 
 are but ambiguous pledges of love, if they have not borrowed 
 meaning from some more trustworthy revelation. Wladomir had 
 nothing for it but to play in silence the part of a sighing shep- 
 herd, and to watch what Time and Chance might in the long-run 
 do to help him. The unquiet Mizisla pursued his courtship with 
 far more vivacity : he pressed forward on every occasion where he 
 could obtain her notice. At the coronation, he had been the first 
 that took the oath of fealty to the Princess ; he followed her in- 
 separably, as the Moon does the Earth, to express by unbidden 
 offices of zeal his devotion to her person ; and on public solemni- 
 ties and processions, he flourished his sword before her, to keep 
 its good services in her remembrance. 
 
 Yet Libussa seemed, like other people in the world, to have 
 very speedily forgotten the promoters of her fortune ; for when an 
 
78 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 obelisk is once standing perpendicular, one heeds not the levers 
 and implements which raised it ; so at least the claimants of her 
 heart explained the Fraulein's coldness. Meanwhile both of them 
 were wrong in their opinion : the Fraulein was neither insensible 
 nor ungrateful ; but her heart was no longer a free piece of pro- 
 perty, which she could give or sell according to her pleasure. The 
 decree of Love had already passed in favour of the trim Forester 
 with the sure cross-bow. The first impression, which the sight of 
 him had made upon her heart, was still so strong, that no second 
 could efface it. In a period of three years, the colours of imagina- 
 tion, in which that Divinity had painted the image of the graceful 
 youth, had no whit abated in their brightness ; and love therefore 
 continued altogether unimpaired. For the passion of the fair sex 
 is of this nature, that if it can endure three moons, it will then 
 last three times three years, or longer if required. In proof of 
 this, see the instances occurring daily before our eyes. When the 
 heroes of Germany sailed over distant seas, to fight out the quarrel 
 of a self-willed daughter of Britain with her motherland, they tore 
 themselves from the arms of their dames with mutual oaths of 
 truth and constancy ; yet before the last Buoy of the Weser had 
 got astern of them, the heroic navigators were for most part for- 
 gotten of their Chloes. The fickle among these maidens, out of 
 grief to find their hearts unoccupied, hastily supplied the vacuum 
 by the surrogate of new intrigues ; but the faithful and true, who 
 had constancy enough to stand the Weser-proof, and had still 
 refrained from infidelity when the conquerors of their hearts had 
 got beyond the Black Buoy, these, it is said, preserved their 
 vow unbroken till the return of the heroic host into their German 
 native country ; and are still expecting from the hand of Love the 
 recompense of their unwearied perseverance. 
 
 It is therefore less surprising that the fair Libussa, under 
 these circumstances, could withstand the courting of the brilliant 
 chivalry who struggled for her love, than that Penelope of Ithaca 
 could let a whole cohort of wooers sigh for her in vain, when her 
 heart had nothing in reserve but the gray-headed Ulysses. Rank 
 and birth, however, had established such a difference in the situ- 
 ations of the Fraulein and of her beloved youth, that any closer 
 union than Platonic love, a shadowy business which can neither 
 warm nor nourish, was not readily to be expected. Though in 
 those distant times, the pairing of the sexes was as little esti- 
 mated by parchments and genealogical trees, as the chaffers were 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 79 
 
 arranged by their antennae and shell-wings, or the flowers by their 
 pistils, stamina, calix and honey-produce ; it was understood that 
 with the lofty elm the precious vine should mate itself, and not 
 the rough tangleweed which creeps along the hedges. A mis- 
 assortment of marriage from a difference of rank an inch in breadth 
 excited, it is true, less uproar than in these our classic times ; 
 yet a difference of an ell in breadth, especially when rivals occu- 
 pied the interstice, and made the distance of the two extremities 
 more visible, was. even then a thing which men could notice. All 
 this, and much more, did the Fraulein accurately ponder in her 
 prudent heart ; therefore she granted Passion, the treacherous 
 babbler, no audience, loudly as it spoke in favour of the youth 
 whom Love had honoured. Like a chaste vestal, she made an 
 irrevocable vow to persist through life in her virgin closeness of 
 heart ; and to answer no inquiry of a wooer, either with her eyes, 
 or her gestures, or her lips ; yet reserving to herself, as a just 
 indemnification, the right of platonising to any length she liked. 
 This nunlike system suited the aspirants' way of thought so ill, 
 that they could not in the least comprehend the killing coldness 
 of their mistress ; Jealousy, the confidant of Love, whispered tor- 
 turing suspicion in their ears ; each thought the other was the 
 happy rival, and their penetration spied about unweariedly to 
 make discoveries, which both of them recoiled from. Yet Frau- 
 lein Libussa weighed out her scanty graces to the two valiant 
 Bitters with such prudence and acuteness, on so fair a balance, 
 that the scale of neither rose above the other. 
 
 Weary of this fruitless waiting, both of them retired from 
 the Court of their Princess, and settled, with secret discontent, 
 upon the affeoffments which Duke Krokus had conferred on them. 
 They brought so much ill-humour home with them, that Wlado- 
 mir was an oppression to all his vassals and his neighbours ; and 
 Hitter Mizisla, on the other hand, became a hunter, followed deer 
 and foxes over the seed-fields and fences of his subjects, and often 
 with his train, to catch one hare, would ride ten acres of corn to 
 nothing. In consequence, arose much sobbing and bewailing in 
 the land ; yet no righteous judge stepped forth to stay the mis- 
 chief; for who would willingly give judgment against the stronger? 
 And so the sufferings of the people never reached the throne of 
 the Duchess. By the virtue of her second-sight, however, no in- 
 justice done within the wide limits of her sway could escape her 
 observation ; and the disposition of her mind being soft, like the 
 
80 
 
 MUS2EUS. 
 
 sweet features of her face, she sorrowed inwardly at the misdeeds 
 of her vassals, and the violence of the powerful. She took counsel 
 with herself how the evil might be remedied, and her wisdom sug- 
 gested an imitation of the gods, who, in their judicial procedure, 
 do not fall upon the criminal, and cut him off as it were with the 
 red hand ; though vengeance, following with slow steps, sooner 
 or later overtakes him. The young Princess appointed a general 
 Convention of her Chivalry and States, and made proclamation, 
 that wmoever had a grievance or a wrong to be righted, should 
 come forward free and fearless, under her safe-conduct. There- 
 upon, from every end and corner of her dominions, the maltreated 
 and oppressed crowded towards her ; the wranglers also, and liti- 
 gious persons, and whoever had a legal cause against his neigh- 
 bour. Libussa sat upon her throne, like the goddess Themis, 
 and passed sentence, without respect of persons, with unerring 
 judgment ; for the labyrinthic mazes of chicane could not lead her 
 astray, as they do the thick heads of city magistrates ; and all 
 men were astonished at the wisdom with which she unravelled 
 the perplexed hanks of processes for meum and tuum, and at her 
 unwearied patience in picking out the threads of justice, never 
 once catching a false end, but passing them from side to side of 
 their embroilments, and winding them off to the uttermost thrum. 
 
 When the tumult of the parties at her bar had by degrees 
 diminished, and the sittings were about to be concluded, on the 
 last clay of these assizes audience was demanded by a free neigh- 
 bour of the potent Wladomir, and by deputies from the subjects 
 of the hunter Mizisla. They were admitted, and the Freeholder 
 first addressing her, began : " An industrious planter," said he, 
 " fenced-in a little circuit, on the bank of a broad river, whose 
 waters glided down with soft rushing through the green valley ; 
 for, he thought, The fair stream will be a guard to me on this 
 side, that no hungry wild-beast eat my crops, and it will moisten 
 the roots of my fruit-trees, that they flourish speedily and bring 
 me fruit. But when the earnings of his toil were about to ripen, 
 the deceitful stream grew troubled ; its still waters began to swell 
 and roar, it overflowed its banks, and carried one piece after 
 another of the fruitful soil along with it ; and dug itself a bed 
 through the middle of the cultivated land ; to the sorrow of the 
 poor planter, who had to give up his little property to the mali- 
 cious wasting of his strong neighbour, the raging of whose waves 
 he himself escaped with difficulty. Puissant daughter of the wise 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 81 
 
 Krokus, the poor planter entreats of thee to command the haughty 
 river no longer to roll its proud hillows over the field of the toil- 
 some husbandman, or wash away the fruit of his weary arms, his 
 hope of glad harvest ; but to flow peacefully along within the 
 limits of its own channel." 
 
 During this speech, the cheerful brow of the fair Libussa be- 
 came overclouded ; manly rigour gleamed from her eyes, and all 
 around was ear to catch her sentence, which ran thus : " Thy 
 cause is plain and straight ; no force shall disturb thy rightful 
 privileges. A dike, which it shall not overpass, shall set bounds 
 to the tumultuous river ; and from its fishes thou shalt be repaid 
 sevenfold the plunder of its wasteful billows." Then she beckoned 
 to the eldest of the Deputies, and he bowed his face to the earth, 
 and said: " Wise daughter of the far-famed Krokus, Whose is 
 the grain upon the field, the sower's, who has hidden the seed- 
 corn in the ground that it spring up and bear fruit ; or the 
 tempest's, which breaks it and scatters it away?" She answered: 
 " The sower's." — " Then command the tempest," said the spokes- 
 man, " that it choose not our corn-fields for the scene of its 
 caprices, to uproot our crops and shake the fruit from our trees." 
 — " So be it," said the Duchess; " I will tame the tempest, 
 and banish it from your fields ; it shall battle with the clouds, 
 and disperse them, where they are rising from the south, and 
 threatening the land with hail and heavy weather." 
 
 Prince Wladomir and Bitter Mizisla were both assessors in 
 the general tribunal. On hearing the complaint, and the rigorous 
 sentence passed regarding it, they waxed pale, and looked down 
 upon the ground with suppressed indignation ; not daring to dis- 
 cover how sharply it stung them to be condemned by a decree 
 from female lips. For although, out of tenderness to their honour, 
 the complainants had modestly overhung the charge with an alle- 
 gorical veil, which the righteous sentence of the fair President 
 had also prudently respected, yet the texture of this covering was 
 so fine and transparent, that whoever had an eye might see what 
 stood behind it. But as they dared not venture to appeal from 
 the judgment-seat of the Princess to the people, since the sent- 
 ence passed upon them had excited universal joy, they submitted 
 to it, though with great reluctance. Wladomir indemnified his 
 freeholding neighbour sevenfold for the mischief done him ; and 
 Nimrod Mizisla engaged, on the honour of a knight, no more to 
 select the corn-fields of his subjects as a chase for hare-catching. 
 
 VOL. III. Q 
 
82 
 
 MUSJETJS. 
 
 Libussa, at the same time, pointed out to them a more respect- 
 able employment, for occupying their activity, and restoring to 
 their fame, which now, like a cracked pot when struck, emitted 
 nothing but discords, the sound ring of knightly virtues. She 
 placed them at the head of an army, which she was dispatching 
 to encounter Zornebock, the Prince of the Sorbi, a giant, and a 
 powerful magician withal, who was then meditating war against 
 Bohemia. This commission she accompanied with the penance, 
 that they were not to appear again at Court, till the one could 
 offer her the plume, the other the golden spurs, of the monster, 
 as tokens of their victory. 
 
 The unfading rose, during this campaign, displayed its magic 
 virtues once more. By means of it, Prince Wladomir was as 
 invulnerable to mortal weapons, as Achilles the Hero ; and as 
 nimble, quick and dextrous, as Achilles the Light- of-foot. The 
 armies met upon the southern boundaries of the Kingdom, and 
 joined in fierce battle. The Bohemian heroes flew through the 
 squadrons, like storm and whirlwind ; and cut down the thick 
 spear -crop, as the scythe of the mower cuts a field of hay. 
 Zornebock fell beneath the strong dints of their falchions ; they 
 returned in triumph with the stipulated spoils to Vizegrad ; and 
 the spots and blemishes, which had soiled their knightly virtue, 
 were now washed clean away in the blood of their enemies. 
 Libussa bestowed on them every mark of princely honour, dis- 
 missed them to their homes when the army was discharged; and 
 gave them, as a new token of her favour, a purple-red apple from 
 her pleasure-garden, for a memorial of her by the road, enjoining 
 them to part the same peacefully between them, without cutting 
 it in two. They then went their way ; put the apple on a shield, 
 and had it borne before them as a public spectacle, while they con- 
 sulted together how the parting of it might be prudently effected, 
 according to the meaning of its gentle giver. 
 
 While the point where their roads divided lay before them at 
 a distance, they proceeded with their partition-treaty in the most 
 accommodating mood ; but at last it became necessary to deter- 
 mine which of the two should have the apple in his keeping, for 
 both had equal shares in it, and only one could get it, though 
 each promised to himself great wonders from the gift, and was 
 eager to obtain possession of it. They split in their opinions on 
 this matter ; and things went so far, that it appeared as if the 
 sword must decide, to whom this indivisible apple had been al- 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 S3 
 
 lotted by the fortune of arms. But a shepherd driving his flock 
 overtook them as they stood debating ; him they selected (appa- 
 rently in imitation of the Three Goddesses, who also applied to a 
 shepherd to decide their famous apple -quarrel), and made arbiter 
 of their dispute, and laid the business in detail before him. The 
 shepherd thought a little, then said: "In the gift of this apple 
 lies a deep-hidden meaning ; but who can bring it out, save the 
 sage Virgin who hid it there ? For myself, I conceive the apple 
 is a treacherous fruit, that has grown upon the Tree of Discord, 
 and its purple skin may prefigure bloody feud between your wor- 
 shipful knightships ; that each is to cut off the other, and neither 
 of you get enjoyment of the gift. For, tell me, how is it possible 
 to part an apple, without cutting it in twain?" The Knights 
 took the shepherd's speech to heart, and thought there was a 
 deal of truth in it. " Thou hast judged rightly," said they: 
 " Has not this base apple already kindled anger and contention 
 between us ? Were we not standing harnessed to fight, for the 
 deceitful gift of this proud Princess ? Did she not put us at the 
 head of her army, with intention to destroy us ? And haviug 
 failed in this, she now arms our hands with the weapons of dis- 
 cord against each other ! We renounce her crafty present ; neither 
 of us will have the apple. Be it thine, as the reward of thy 
 righteous sentence : to the judge belongs the fruit of the process, 
 and to the parties the rind." 
 
 The Knights then went their several ways, while the herds- 
 man consumed the objection litis with all the composure and con- 
 veniency common among judges. The ambiguous present of the 
 Duchess cut them to the heart ; and as they found, on returning 
 home, that they could no longer treat their subjects and vassals 
 in the former arbitrary fashion, but were forced to obey the laws, 
 which Fraulein Libussa had promulgated for the general security 
 among her people, their ill humour grew more deep and rancor- 
 ous. They entered into a league offensive and defensive with each 
 other ; made a party for themselves in the country ; and many 
 mutinous wrongheads joined them, and were sent abroad in packs 
 to decry and calumniate the government of women. "Shame! 
 8hame !" cried they, " that we must obey a woman, who gathers 
 our victorious laurels to decorate a distaff with them ! The Man 
 should be master of the house, and not the Wife ; this is his 
 special right, and so it is established everywhere, among all people. 
 What is an army without a Duke to go before his warriors, but a 
 
84 
 
 MUSiEUS. 
 
 helpless trunk without a head ? Let us appoint a Prince, who 
 may be ruler over us, and whom we may obey." 
 
 These seditious speeches were no secret to the watchful Prin- 
 cess ; nor was she ignorant what wind blew them thither, or what 
 its sounding boded. Therefore she convened a deputation of the 
 States ; entered their assembly with the stateliness of an earthly 
 goddess, and the words of her mouth dropped like honey from her 
 virgin lips. "A rumour flies about the land," said she, "that 
 you desire a Duke to go before you to battle, and that you reckon 
 it inglorious to obey me any longer. Yet, in a free and uncon- 
 strained election, you yourselves did not choose a man from among 
 you ; but called one of the daughters of the people, and clothed 
 her with the purple, to rule over you according to the laws and 
 customs of the land. Whoso can accuse me of error in conduct- 
 ing the government, let him step forward openly and freely, and 
 bear witness against me. But if I, after the manner of my father 
 Krokus, have done prudently and justly in the midst of you, 
 making crooked things straight, and rough places plain ; if I 
 have secured your harvests from the spoiler, guarded the fruit- 
 tree, and snatched the flock from the claws of the wolf ; if I have 
 bowed the stiff neck of the violent, assisted the down -pressed, 
 and given the weak a staff to rest on ; then will it beseem you to 
 live according to your covenant, and be true, gentle and helpful 
 to me, as in doing fealty to me you engaged. If you reckon it 
 inglorious to obey a woman, you should have thought of this before 
 appointing me to be your Princess ; if there is disgrace here, it 
 is you alone who ought to bear it. But your procedure shows 
 you not to understand your own advantage : for woman's hand is 
 soft and tender, accustomed only to waft cool air with the fan ; 
 and sinewy and rude is the arm of man, heavy and oppressive 
 when it grasps the supreme control. And know ye not that where 
 a woman governs, the rule is in the power of men ? For she 
 gives heed to wise counsellors, and these gather round her. But 
 where the distaff excludes from the throne, there is the govern- 
 ment of females ; for the women, that please the king's eyes, 
 have his heart in their hand. Therefore, consider well of your 
 attempt, lest ye repent your fickleness too late." 
 
 The fair speaker ceased ; and a deep reverent silence reigned 
 throughout the hall of meeting ; none presumed to utter a word 
 against her. Yet Prince Wladomir and his allies desisted not 
 from their intention, but whispered in each other's ear: "The 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 85 
 
 sly Doe is loath to quit the fat pastures ; but the hunter's horn 
 shall sound yet louder, and scare her forth." 3 Next day they 
 prompted the knights to call loudly on the Princess to choose 
 a husband within three days, and by the choice of her heart to 
 give the people a Prince, who might divide with her the cares of 
 government. At this unexpected requisition, coming as it seemed 
 from the voice of the nation, a virgin blush overspread the cheeks 
 of the lovely Princess ; her clear eye discerned all the sunken 
 cliffs, which threatened her with peril. For even if, according to 
 the custom of the great world, she should determine upon sub- 
 jecting her inclination to her state-policy, she could only give her 
 hand to one suitor, and she saw well that all the remaining can- 
 didates would take it as a slight, and begin to meditate revenge. 
 Besides, the private vow of her heart was inviolable and sacred 
 in her eyes. Therefore she endeavoured prudently to turn aside 
 this importunate demand of the States ; and again attempted to 
 persuade them altogether to renounce their schemes of innova 
 tion. " The eagle being dead," said she, "the birds chose the 
 Ring-dove for their queen, and all of them obeyed her soft cooing 
 call. But light and airy, as is the nature of birds, they soon 
 altered their determination, and repented them that they had 
 made it. The proud Peacock thought that it beseemed him better 
 to be ruler ; the keen Falcon, accustomed to make the smaller 
 birds his prey, reckoned it disgraceful to obey the peaceful Dove ; 
 they formed a party, and appointed the weak-eyed Owl to be the 
 spokesman of their combination, and propose a new election of a 
 sovereign. The sluggish Bustard, the heavy-bodied Heath-cock, 
 the lazy Stork, the small-brained Heron, and all the larger birds 
 chuckled, flapped, and croaked applause to him ; and the host of 
 little birds twittered, in their simplicity, and chirped out of bush 
 and grove to the same tune. Then arose the warlike Kite, and 
 soared boldly up into the air, and the birds cried out : ' What a 
 majestic flight ! The brave, strong Kite shall be our King !' 
 Scarcely had the plundering bird taken possession of the throne, 
 when he manifested his activity and courage on his winged sub- 
 jects, in deeds of tyranny and caprice : he plucked the feathers 
 from the larger fowls, and eat the little songsters." 
 
 Significant as this oration was, it made but a small impression 
 
 8 Invita de Icetioribus pascuis, autor seditionis inquit, bucula ista decedit; sed 
 jam vi inde deturbanda est, si sua sponte loco suo concedere viro alicui principi 
 noluerit. — Dubeavius. 
 
86 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 on the minds of the people, hungering and thirsting after change ; 
 and they abode by their determination, that within three days, 
 Fraulein Libussa should select herself a husband. At this, Prince 
 Wladomir rejoiced in heart ; for now, he thought, he should se- 
 cure the fair prey, for which he had so long been watching in 
 vain. Love and ambition inflamed his wishes, and put eloquence 
 into his mouth, which had hitherto confined itself to secret sigh- 
 ing. He came to Court, and required audience of the Duchess. 
 
 " Gracious ruler of thy people and my heart," thus he ad- 
 dressed her, "from thee no secret is hidden; thou knowest the 
 flames which burn in this bosom, holy and pure as on the altar 
 of the gods, and thou knowest also what fire has kindled them. 
 It is now appointed, that at the behest of thy people, thou give 
 the land a Prince. Wilt thou disdain a heart, which lives and 
 beats for thee ? To be worthy of thy love, I risked my life to 
 put thee on the throne of thy father. Grant me the merit of 
 retaining thee upon it by the bon^ of tender affection : let us 
 divide the possession of thy throne and thy heart ; the first be 
 thine, the second be mine, and my happiness will be exalted 
 beyond the lot of mortals." 
 
 Fraulein Libussa wore a most maidenlike appearance during 
 this oration, and covered her face with her veil, to hide the soft 
 blush which deepened the colour of her cheeks. On its conclusion, 
 she made a sign with her hand, not opening her lips, for the Prince 
 to step aside ; as if she would consider what she should resolve 
 upon, in answer to his suit. 
 
 Immediately the brisk Knight Mizisla announced himself, and 
 desired to be admitted. 
 
 " Loveliest of the daughters of princes," said he, as he entered 
 the audience-chamber, "the fair Ring-dove, queen of the air, must 
 no longer, as thou well knowest, coo in solitude, but take to her- 
 self a mate. The proud Peacock, it is talked, holds up his glitter- 
 ing plumage in her eyes, and thinks to blind her by the splendour 
 of his feathers ; but she is prudent and modest, and will not unite 
 herself with the haughty Peacock. The keen Falcon, once a plun- 
 dering bird, has now changed his nature ; is gentle and honest, 
 and without deceit ; for he loves the fair Dove, and would fain 
 that she mated with him. That his bill is hooked and his talons 
 sharp, must not mislead thee : he needs them to protect the fair 
 Dove his darling, that no bird hurt her, or disturb the habitation 
 of her rule ; for he is true and kindly to her, and first swore fealty 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 87 
 
 on the day when she was crowned. Now tell me, wise Princess, 
 if the soft Dove will grant to her trusty Falcon the love which he 
 longs for ?" 
 
 Fraulein Libussa did as she had done before ; beckoned to the 
 Knight to step aside ; and, after waiting for a space, she called 
 the two rivals into her presence, and spoke thus : 
 
 " I owe you great thanks, noble Knights, for your help in 
 obtaining me the princely crown of Bohemia, which my father 
 Krokus honourably wore. The zeal, of which you remind me, had 
 not faded from my remembrance; nor is it hid from my knowledge, 
 that you virtuously love me, for your looks and gestures have long 
 been the interpreters of your feelings. That I shut up my heart 
 against you, and did not answer love with love, regard not as in- 
 sensibility; it was not meant for slight or scorn, but for harmo- 
 niously determining a choice which was doubtful. I weighed your 
 merits, and the tongue of the trying balance bent to neither side. 
 Therefore I resolved on leaving the decision of your fate to your- 
 selves ; and offered you the possession of my heart, under the 
 figure of an enigmatic apple ; that it might be seen to which of 
 you the greater measure of judgment and wisdom had been given, 
 in appropriating to himself this gift, which could not be divided. 
 Now tell me without delay, In whose hands is the apple ? Which- 
 ever of you has won it from the other, let him from this hour re- 
 ceive my throne and my heart as the prize of his skill." 
 
 The two rivals looked at one another with amazement ; grew 
 pale, and held their peace. At last, after a long pause, Prince 
 Wladomir broke silence, and said : 
 
 " The enigmas of the wise are, to the foolish, a nut in a tooth- 
 less mouth, a pearl which the cock scratches from the sand, a 
 lantern in the hand of the blind. 0 Princess, be not wroth with 
 us, that we neither knew the use nor the value of thy gift ; we mis- 
 interpreted thy purpose; thought that thou hadst cast an apple of 
 contention on our path, to awaken us to strife and deadly feud ; 
 therefore each gave up his share, and we renounced the divisive 
 fruit, whose sole possession neither of us would have peaceably 
 allowed the other !" 
 
 " You have given sentence on yourselves," replied the Frau- 
 lein : " if an apple could inflame your jealousy, what fighting 
 would ye not have fought for a myrtle -garland twined about a 
 crown !" 
 
 With this response she dismissed the Knights, who now 
 
88 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 lamented that they had given ear to the unwise arbiter, and 
 thoughtlessly cast away the pledge of love, which, as it appeared, 
 had been the casket of their fairest hopes. They meditated sever- 
 ally how they might still execute their purpose, and by force or 
 guile get possession of the throne, with its lovely occupant. 
 
 Fraulein Libussa, in the mean while, was not spending in 
 idleness the three days given her for consideration ; but diligently 
 taking counsel with herself, how she might meet the importunate 
 demand of her people, give Bohemia a Duke, and herself a hus- 
 band according to the choice of her heart. She dreaded lest Prince 
 Wladomir might still more pressingly assail her, and perhaps de- 
 prive her of the throne. Necessity combined with love to make 
 her execute a plan, with which she had often entertained herself 
 as with a pleasant dream ; for what mortal's head has not some 
 phantom walking in it, towards which he turns in a vacant hour, 
 to play with it as with a puppet ? There is no more pleasing pas- 
 time for a strait -shod maiden, when her galled corns are resting 
 from the toils of the pavement, than to think of a stately and com- 
 modious equipage; the coy beauty dreams gladly of counts sighing 
 at her feet; Avarice gets prizes in the Lottery; the debtor in the 
 jail falls heir to vast possessions ; the squanderer discovers the 
 Hermetic Secret ; and the poor woodcutter finds a treasure in the 
 hollow of a tree ; all merely in fancy, yet not without the enjoy- 
 ment of a secret satisfaction. The gift of prophecy has always 
 been united with a warm imagination ; thus the fair Libussa had, 
 like others, willingly and frequently given heed to this seductive 
 playmate, which, in kind companionship, had always entertained 
 her with the figure of the young Archer, so indelibly impressed 
 upon her heart. Thousands of projects came into her mind, which 
 Fancy palmed on her as feasible and easy. At one time she formed 
 schemes of drawing forth her darling youth from his obscurity, 
 placing him in the army, and raising him from one post of honour 
 to another ; and then instantly she bound a laurel garland about 
 his temples, and led him, crowned with victory and honour, to the 
 throne she could have been so glad to share with him. At other 
 times, she gave a different turn to the romance : she equipped her 
 darling as a knight -errant, seeking for adventures; brought him to 
 her Court, and changed him into a Huon of Bourdeaux ; nor was 
 the wondrous furniture wanting, for endowing him as highly as 
 Mend Oberon did his ward. But when Common Sense again got 
 possession of the maiden's soul, the many- coloured forms of the 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 89 
 
 magic lantern waxed pale in the beam of prudence, and the fair 
 vision vanished into air. She then bethought her what hazards 
 would attend such an enterprise ; what mischief for her people, 
 when jealousy and envy raised the hearts of her grandees in re- 
 bellion against her, and the alarum beacon of discord gave the 
 signal for uproar and sedition in the land. Therefore she sedu- 
 lously hid the wishes of her heart from the keen glance of the 
 spy, and disclosed no glimpse of them to any one. 
 
 But now, when the people were clamouring for a Prince, the 
 matter had assumed another form : the point would now be at- 
 tained, could she combine her wishes with the national demand. 
 She strengthened her soul with manly resolution ; and as the third 
 day dawned, she adorned herself with all her jewels, and her head 
 was encircled with the myrtle crown. Attended by her maidens, 
 all decorated with flower garlands, she ascended the throne, full 
 of lofty courage and soft dignity. The assemblage of knights and 
 vassals around her stood in breathless attention, to learn from her 
 lips the name of the happy Prince with whom she had resolved to 
 share her heart and throne. " Ye nobles of my people," thus she 
 spoke, " the lot of your destiny still lies untouched in the urn of 
 concealment ; you are still free as my coursers that graze in the 
 meadows, before the bridle and the bit have curbed them, or their 
 smooth backs have been pressed by the burden of the saddle and 
 the rider. It now rests with you to signify, Whether, in the space 
 allowed me for the choice of a spouse, your hot desire for a Prince 
 to rule over you has cooled, and given place to more calm scrutiny 
 of this intention ; or you still persist inflexibly in your demand." 
 She paused for a moment; but the hum of the multitude, the whis- 
 pering and buzzing, and looks of the whole Senate, did not long 
 leave her in uncertainty, and their speaker ratified the conclusion, 
 that the vote was still for a Duke. " Then be it so !" said she ; 
 " the die is cast, the issue of it stands not with me ! The gods 
 have appointed, for the kingdom of Bohemia, a Prince who shall 
 sway its sceptre with justice and wisdom. The young cedar does 
 not yet overtop the firm-set oaks; concealed among the trees of the 
 forest it grows, encircled with ignoble shrubs ; but soon it shall 
 send forth branches to give shade to its roots ; and its top shall 
 touch the clouds. Choose a deputation, ye nobles of the people, 
 of twelve honourable men from among you, that they hasten to 
 seek out the Prince, and attend him to the throne. My steed will 
 point out your path ; unloaded and free it shall course on before 
 
90 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 you; and as a token that you have found what you are sent forth 
 to seek, observe that the man whom the gods have selected for 
 your Prince, at the time when you approach him, will be eating 
 his repast on an iron table, under the open sky, in the shadow of a 
 solitary tree. To him you shall do reverence, and clothe his body 
 with the princely robe. The white horse will let him mount it, 
 and bring him hither to the Court, that he may be my husband 
 and your lord." 
 
 She then left the assembly, with the cheerful yet abashed coun- 
 tenance which brides wear, when they look for the arrival of the 
 bridegroom. At her speech there was much wondering ; and the 
 prophetic spirit breathing from it worked upon the general mind 
 like a divine oracle, which the populace blindly believe, and which 
 thinkers alone attempt investigating. The messengers of honour 
 were selected, the white horse stood in readiness, caparisoned with 
 Asiatic pomp, as if it had been saddled for carrying the Grand 
 Signior to mosque. The cavalcade set forth, attended by the con- 
 course, and the loud huzzaing of the people ; and the white horse 
 paced on before. But the train soon vanished from the eyes of 
 the spectators : and nothing could be seen but a little cloud of 
 dust whirling up afar off : for the spirited courser, getting to its 
 mettle when it reached the open air, began a furious gallop, like 
 a British racer, so that the squadron of deputies could hardly keep 
 in sight of it. Though the quick steed seemed abandoned to its 
 own guidance, an unseen power directed its steps, pulled its bridle, 
 and spurred its flanks. Fraulein Libussa, by the magic virtues 
 inherited from her Elfine mother, had contrived so to instruct the 
 courser, that it turned neither to the right hand nor to the left 
 from its path, but with winged steps hastened on to its destina- 
 tion : and she herself, now that all combined to the fulfilment of 
 her wishes, awaited its returning rider with tender longing. 
 
 The messengers had in the mean time been soundly galloped ; 
 already they had travelled many leagues, up hill and down dale ; 
 had swum across the Elbe and the Moldau ; and as their gastric 
 juices made them think of dinner, they recalled to mind the 
 strange table, at which, according to the Fraulein's oracle, their 
 new Prince was to be feeding. Their glosses and remarks on it 
 were many. A forward knight observed to his companions : " In 
 my poor view of it, our gracious lady has it in her eye to bilk us, 
 and make April messengers of us ; for who ever heard of any man 
 in Bohemia that ate his victuals off an iron table ? What use is 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 91 
 
 it ? our sharp galloping will bring us nothing but mockery and 
 scorn." Another, of a more penetrating turn, imagined that the 
 iron table might be allegorical ; that they should perhaps fall in 
 with some knight -errant, who, after the manner of the wandering 
 brotherhood, had sat down beneath a tree, and spread out his 
 frugal dinner on his shield. A third said, jesting: "I fear our 
 way will lead us down to the workshop of the Cyclops ; and we 
 shall find the lame Vulcan, or one of his journeymen, dining from 
 his stithy, and must bring him to our Venus." 
 
 Amid such conversation, they observed their guiding quad- 
 ruped, which had got a long start of them, turn across a new- 
 ploughed field, and, to their wonder, halt beside the ploughman. 
 They dashed rapidly forward, and found a peasant sitting on an 
 upturned plough, and eating his black bread from the iron plough- 
 share, which he was using as a table, under the shadow of a fresh 
 pear-tree. He seemed to like the stately horse ; he patted it, 
 offered it a bit of bread, and it eat from his hand. The Embassy, 
 of course, was much surprised at this phenomenon ; nevertheless, 
 no member of it doubted but that they had found their man. 
 They approached him reverently, and the eldest among them 
 opened his lips, and said: "The Duchess of Bohemia has sent 
 us hither, and bids us signify to thee the will and purpose of the 
 gods, that thou change thy plough with the throne of this king- 
 dom, and thy goad with its sceptre. She selects thee for her hus- 
 band, to rule with her over the Bohemians." The young peasant 
 thought they meant to banter him ; a thing little to his taste, 
 especially as he supposed that they had guessed his love-secret, 
 and were now come to mock his weakness. Therefore he ans- 
 wered somewhat stoutly, to meet mockery with mockery : ' 1 But 
 is your dukedom worth this plough ? If the prince cannot eat 
 with better relish, drink more joyously, or sleep more soundly 
 than the peasant, then in sooth it is not worth while to change 
 this kindly furrow -field with the Bohemian kingdom, or this 
 smooth ox-goad with its sceptre. For, tell me, Are not three 
 grains of salt as good for seasoning my morsel as three bushels?" 
 
 Then one of the Twelve answered : " The purblind mole digs 
 underground for worms to feed upon ; for he has no eyes which 
 can endure the daylight, and no feet which are formed for run- 
 ning like the nimble roe ; the scaly crab creeps to and fro in the 
 mud of lakes and marshes, delights to dwell under tree-roots and 
 shrubs by the banks of rivers, for he wants the fins for swimming ; 
 
92 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 and the barn-door cock, cooped up within his hen-fence, risks no 
 flight over the low wall, for he is too timorous to trust in his 
 wings, like the high-soaring bird of prey. Have eyes for seeing, 
 feet for going, fins for swimming, and pinions for flight been 
 allotted thee, thou wilt not grub like a mole underground ; nor 
 hide thyself like a dull shell-fish among mud ; nor, like the king 
 of the poultry, be content with crowing from the barn-door : but 
 come forward into day ; run, swim, or fly into the clouds, as 
 Nature may have furnished thee with gifts. For it suffices not 
 the active man to continue what he is ; but he strives to become 
 what he may be. Therefore, do thou try being what the gods 
 have called thee to ; then wilt thou judge rightly whether the 
 Bohemian kingdom is worth an acre of corn-land in barter, yea 
 or not." 
 
 This earnest oration of the Deputy, in whose face no jesting 
 feature was to be discerned ; and still more the insignia of royalty, 
 the purple robe, the sceptre and the golden sword, which the am- 
 bassadors brought forward as a reference and certificate of their 
 mission's authenticity, at last overcame the mistrust of the doubt- 
 ing ploughman. All at once, light rose on his soul ; a rapturous 
 thought awoke in him, that Libussa had discovered the feelings 
 of his heart ; had, by her skill in seeing what was secret, recog- 
 nised his faithfulness and constancy : and was about to recom- 
 pense him, so as he had never ventured even in dreams to hope. 
 The gift of prophecy predicted to him by her oracle, then came 
 into his mind ; and he thought that now or never it must be ful- 
 filled. Instantly he grasped his hazel staff; stuck it deep into 
 the ploughed land; heaped loose mould about it, as you plant 
 a tree ; and, lo, immediately the staff got buds, and shot forth 
 sprouts and boughs with leaves and flowers. Two of the green 
 twigs withered, and their dry leaves became the sport of the wind ; 
 but the third grew up the more luxuriantly, and its fruits ripened. 
 Then came the spirit of prophecy upon the rapt ploughman ; he 
 opened his mouth, and said : "Ye messengers of the Princess 
 Libussa and of the Bohemian people, hear the words of Primis- 
 laus the son of Mnatha, the stout-hearted Knight, for whom, 
 blown upon by the spirit of prophecy, the mists of the Future 
 part asunder. The man who guided the ploughshare, ye have 
 called to seize the handles of your princedom, before his day's 
 work was ended. 0 that the glebe had been broken by the 
 furrow, to the boundary - stone ; so had Bohemia remained an 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 93 
 
 independent kingdom to the utmost ages ! But since ye have 
 disturbed the labour of the plougher too early, the limits of your 
 country will become the heritage of your neighbour, and your 
 distant posterity will be joined to him in unchangeable union. 
 The three twigs of the budding Staff are three sons which your 
 Princess shall bear me : two of them, as unripe shoots, shall 
 speedily wither away ; but the third shall inherit the throne, and 
 by him shall the fruit of late grandchildren be matured, till the 
 Eagle soar over your mountains and nestle in the land ; yet soon 
 fly thence, and return as to his own possession. And then, when 
 the Son of the Gods arises, 4 who is his plougher's friend, and 
 smites the slave-fetters from his limbs, then mark it, Posterity, 
 for thou shalt bless thy destiny ! For when he has trodden under 
 his feet the Dragon of Superstition, he will stretch out his arm 
 against the waxing moon, to pluck it from the firmament, that he 
 may himself illuminate the world as a benignant star." 
 
 The venerable deputation stood in silent wonder, gazing at 
 the prophetic man, like dumb idols : it was as if a god were 
 speaking by his lips. He himself turned away from them to the 
 two white steers, the associates of his toilsome labour ; he un- 
 yoked and let them go in freedom from their farm-service ; at 
 which they began frisking joyfully upon the grassy lea, but at the 
 same time visibly decreased in bulk ; like thin vapour melted into 
 air, and vanished out of sight. Then Primislaus doffed his peasant 
 wooden shoes, and proceeded to the brook to clean himself. The 
 precious robes were laid upon him ; he begirt himself with the 
 sword, and had the golden spurs put on him like a knight ; then 
 stoutly sprang upon the white horse, which bore him peaceably 
 along. Being now about to quit his still asylum, he commanded 
 the ambassadors to bring his wooden shoes after him, and keep 
 them carefully, as a token that the humblest among the people 
 had once been exalted to the highest dignity in Bohemia ; and 
 as a memorial for his posterity to bear their elevation meekly, 
 and, mindful of their origin, to respect and defend the peasantry, 
 from which themselves had sprung. Hence came the ancient 
 practice of exhibiting a pair of wooden shoes before the Kings of 
 Bohemia on their coronation ; a custom held in observance till 
 the male line of Primislaus became extinct. 
 
 The planted hazel rod bore fruit and grew ; striking roots out 
 on every side, and sending forth new shoots, till at last the whole 
 * Emperor Joseph II. 
 
94 
 
 MUS^EUS. 
 
 field was changed into a hazel copse ; a circumstance of great 
 advantage to the neighbouring township, which included it within 
 their bounds ; for, in memory of this miraculous plantation, they 
 obtained a grant from the Bohemian Kings, exempting them from 
 ever paying any public contribution in the land, except a pint of 
 hazel nuts ; which royal privilege their late descendants, as the 
 story runs, are enjoying at this day. 5 
 
 Though the white courser, which was now proudly carrying 
 the bridegroom to his mistress, seemed to outrun the winds, Pri- 
 mislaus did not fail now and then to let him feel the golden spurs, 
 to push him on still faster. The quick gallop seemed to him a 
 tortoise-pace, so keen was his desire to have the fair Libussa, 
 whose form, after seven years, was still so new and lovely in his 
 soul, once more before his eyes ; and this not merely as a show, 
 like some bright peculiar anemone in the variegated bed of a 
 flower-garden, but for the blissful appropriation of victorious love. 
 He thought only of the myrtle-crown, which, in the lover's valua- 
 tion, far outshines the crown of sovereignty ; and had he balanced 
 love and rank against each other, the Bohemian throne without 
 Libussa would have darted up, like a clipped ducat in the scales 
 of the money-changer. 
 
 The sun was verging to decline, when the new Prince, with his 
 escort, entered Yizegrad. Fraulein Libussa was in her garden, 
 where she had just plucked a basket of ripe plums, when her 
 future husband's arrival was announced to her. She went forth 
 modestly, with all her maidens, to meet him ; received him as 
 a bridegroom conducted to her by the gocls, veiling the election 
 of her heart under a show of submission to the will of Higher 
 Powers. The eyes of the Court were eagerly directed to the 
 stranger; in whom, however, nothing could be seen but a fair 
 handsome man. In respect of outward form, there were several 
 courtiers who, in thought, did not hesitate to measure with him; 
 and could not understand why the gods should have disdained 
 the anti-chamber, and not selected from it some accomplished 
 and ruddy lord, rather than the sunburnt ploughman, to assist 
 the Princess in her government. Especially in Wladomir and 
 
 6 .ZEneas Sylvius affirms that he saw, with his own eyes, a renewal of this 
 charter from Charles IV. Vidi inter privilegia regni litems Caroli Quarti, 
 Romanorum Imperatoris, divi Sigismundi patris, in quibus (villa illius incolce) 
 libertate donantur ; nec plus tributi pendere jubentur, quam nucum illius arbor is 
 exiyuam mensuram. 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 95 
 
 Mizisla, it was observable that their pretensions were reluctantly 
 withdrawn. It behoved the Fraulein then to vindicate the work 
 of the gods ; and show that Squire Primislaus had been indemni- 
 fied for the defect of splendid birth, by a fair equivalent in sterling 
 common sense and depth of judgment. She had caused a royal 
 banquet to be prepared, no whit inferior to the feast with which 
 the hospitable Dido entertained her pious guest iEneas. The 
 cup of welcome passed diligently round, the presents of the Prin- 
 cess had excited cheerfulness and good-humour, and a part of the 
 night had already vanished amid jests and pleasant pastime, when 
 Libussa set on foot a game at riddles ; and, as the discovery of 
 hidden things was her proper trade, she did not fail to solve, 
 with satisfactory decision, all the riddles that were introduced. 
 
 When her own turn came to propose one, she called Prince 
 Wladomir, Mizisla and Primislaus to her, and said : " Fair sirs, 
 it is now for you to read a riddle, which I shall submit to you, 
 that it may be seen who among you is the wisest and of keenest 
 judgment. I intended, for you three, a present of this basket of 
 plums, which I plucked in my garden. One of you shall have 
 the half, and one over ; the next shall have the half of what re- 
 mains, and one over; the third shall again have the half, and 
 three over. Now, if so be that the basket is then emptied, tell 
 me, How many plums are in it now ?" 
 
 The headlong Bitter Mizisla took the measure of the fruit 
 with his eye, not the sense of the riddle with his understanding, 
 and said : " What can be decided with the sword I might under- 
 take to decide ; but thy riddles, gracious Princess, are, I fear, 
 too hard for me. Yet at thy request I will risk an arrow at the 
 bull's-eye, let it hit or miss : I suppose there is a matter of some 
 three score plums in the basket." 
 
 " Thou hast missed, dear Knight," said Fraulein Libussa. 
 "Were there as many again, half as many, and a third part as 
 many as the basket has in it, and five over, there would then be 
 as many above three score as there are now below it.'* 
 
 Prince Wladomir computed as laboriously and anxiously, as 
 if the post of Comptroller-General of Finances had depended on 
 a right solution ; and at last brought out the net product five- 
 and-forty. The Fraulein then said : 
 
 " Were there a third, and a half, and a sixth as many again 
 of them, the number would exceed forty-five as much as it now 
 falls short of it." 
 
96 
 
 MTTS^US. 
 
 Though, in our days, any man endowed with the arithmetical 
 faculty of a tapster, might have solved this problem without diffi- 
 culty, yet, for an untaught computant, the gift of divination was 
 essential, if he meant to get out of the affair with honour, and 
 not stick in the middle of it with disgrace. As the wise Primislaus 
 was happily provided with this gift, it cost him neither art nor 
 exertion to find the answer. 
 
 "Familiar companion of the heavenly Powers," said he, 
 "whoso undertakes to pierce thy high celestial meaning, under- 
 takes to soar after the eagle when he hides himself in the clouds. 
 Yet I will pursue thy hidden flight, as far as the eye, to which 
 thou hast given its light, will reach. I judge that of the plums 
 which thou hast laid in the basket, there are thirty in number, 
 not one fewer, and none more." 
 
 The Fraulein cast a kindly glance on him, and said: " Thou 
 tracest the glimmering ember, which lies deep-hid among the 
 ashes ; for thee light dawns out of darkness and vapour : thou 
 hast read my riddle." 
 
 Thereupon she opened her basket, and counted out fifteen 
 plums, and one over, into Prince Wladomir's hat, and fourteen 
 remained. Of these she gave Hitter Mizisla seven and one over, 
 and there were still six in the basket ; half of these she gave the 
 wise Primislaus and three over, and the basket was empty. The 
 whole Court was lost in wonder at the fair Libussa's ciphering 
 gift, and at the penetration of her cunning spouse. Nobody could 
 comprehend how human wit was able, on the one hand, to enclose 
 a common number so mysteriously in words ; or, on the other 
 hand, to drag it forth so accurately from its enigmatical conceal- 
 ment. The empty basket she conferred upon the two Knights, 
 who had failed in soliciting her love, to remind them that their 
 suit was voided. Hence comes it, that when a wooer is rejected, 
 people say, His love has given him the basket, even to the pre- 
 sent day. 
 
 So soon as all was ready for the nuptials and coronation, 
 both these ceremonies were transacted with becoming pomp. 
 Thus the Bohemian people had obtained a Duke, and the fair 
 Libussa had obtained a husband, each according to the wish of 
 their hearts ; and what was somewhat wonderful, by virtue of 
 Chicane, an agent who has not the character of being too bene- 
 ficent or prosperous. And if either of the parties had been over- 
 reached in any measure, it at least was not the fair Libussa. 
 
LTBUSSA. 
 
 97 
 
 Bohemia had a Duke in name, but the administration now, as 
 formerly, continued in the female hand. Primislaus was the 
 proper pattern of a tractable obedient husband, and contested 
 with his Duchess neither the direction of her house nor of her 
 empire. His sentiments and wishes sympathised with hers, as 
 perfectly as two accordant strings, of. which when the one is 
 struck, the other voluntarily trembles to the self- same note. Nor 
 was Libussa like those haughty overbearing dames, who would 
 pass for great matches ; and having, as they think, made the 
 fortune of some hapless wight, continually remind him of his 
 wooden shoes : but she resembled the renowned Palmyran Queen ; 
 and ruled, as Zenobia did her kindly Odenatus, by superiority of 
 mental talent. 
 
 The happy couple lived in the enjoyment of unchangeable 
 love ; according to the fashion of those times, when the instinct 
 which united hearts was as firm and durable, as the mortar and 
 cement with which they built their indestructible strongholds. 
 Duke Primislaus soon became one of the most accomplished and 
 valiant knights of his time, and the Bohemian Court the most 
 splendid in Germany. By degrees, many knights and nobles, and 
 multitudes of people from all quarters of the empire, drew to it ; 
 so that Vizegrad became too narrow for its inhabitants ; and, in 
 consequence, Libussa called her officers before her, and com- 
 manded them to found a city, on the spot where they should find 
 a man at noontide making the wisest use of his teeth. They set 
 forth, and at the time appointed found a man engaged in sawing 
 a block of wood. They judged that this industrious character 
 was turning his saw-teeth, at noontide, to a far better use than 
 the parasite does his jaw-teeth by the table of the great ; and 
 doubted not but they had found the spot, intended by the Princess 
 for the site of their town. They marked out a space upon the 
 green with the ploughshare, for the circuit of the city walls. On 
 asking the workman what he meant to make of his sawed timber, 
 he replied, " Prah," which in the Bohemian language signifies a 
 door-threshold. So Libussa called her new city Praha, that is 
 Prague, the well-known capital upon the Moldau. In process of 
 time, Primislaus's predictions were punctually fulfilled. His spouse 
 became the mother of three Princes ; two died in youth, but the 
 third grew to manhood, and from him went forth a glorious royal 
 line, which flourished for long centuries on the Bohemian throne. 
 
 VOL. in. 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 Father Gregory, the ninth of the name who sat upon St. Peter's 
 chair, had once, in a sleepless night, an inspiration from the 
 spirit, not of prophecy, hut of political chicane, to clip the wings 
 of the German Eagle, lest it rose ahove the head of his own 
 haughty Home. No sooner had the first sunbeam enlightened 
 the venerable Vatican, than his Holiness summoned his attendant 
 chamberlain, and ordered him to call a meeting of the Sacred 
 College ; where Father Gregory, in his pontifical apparel, cele- 
 brated high mass, and after its conclusion moved a new Crusade ; 
 to which all his cardinals, readily surmising the wise objects of 
 this armament for God's glory and the common weal of Christen- 
 dom, gave prompt and cordial assent. 
 
 Thereupon, a cunning Nuncio started instantly for Naples, 
 where the Emperor Frederick of Swabia had his Court ; and took 
 with him in his travelling-bag two boxes, one of which was filled 
 with the sweet honey of persuasion ; the other with tinder, steel 
 and flint, to light the fire of excommunication, should the muti- 
 nous son of the Church hesitate to pay the Holy Father due obe- 
 dience. On arriving at Court, the Legate opened his sweet box, 
 and copiously gave out its smooth confectionery. But the Em- 
 peror Frederick was a man delicate in palate ; he soon smacked 
 the taste of the physic hidden in this sweetness, and he knew too 
 well its effects on the alimentary canal ; so he turned away from 
 the treacherous mess, and declined having any more of it. Then 
 the Legate opened his other box, and made it spit some sparks, 
 which singed the Imperial beard, and stung the skin like nettles ; 
 whereby the Emperor discovered that the Holy Father's finger 
 might, ere long, be heavier on him than the Legate's loins; there- 
 fore plied himself to the purpose, engaged to lead the armies of 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 99 
 
 tne Lord against the Unbelievers in the East, and appointed his 
 Princes to assemble for an expedition to the Holy Land. The 
 Princes communicated the Imperial order to the Counts, the 
 Counts summoned out their vassals, the Knights and Nobles ; 
 the Knights equipped their Squires and Horsemen ; all mounted, 
 and collected, each under his proper banner. 
 
 Except the night of St. Bartholomew, no night has ever 
 caused such sorrow and tribulation in the world, as this, which 
 God's Vicegerent upon Earth had employed in watching to pro- 
 duce a ruinous Crusade. Ah, how many warm tears flowed, as 
 knight and squire pricked off, and blessed their dears ! A glorious 
 race of German heroes never saw the light, because of this de- 
 parture ; but languished in embryo, as the germs of plants in 
 the Syrian desert, when the hot Sirocco has passed over them. 
 The ties of a thousand happy marriages were violently torn 
 asunder; ten thousand brides in sorrow hung their garlands, 
 like the daughters of Jerusalem, upon the Babylonian willow- 
 trees, and sat and wept ; and a hundred thousand lovely maidens 
 grew up for the bridegroom in vain, and blossomed like a rose- 
 bed in a solitary cloister garden, for there was no hand to pluck 
 them, and they withered away unenjoyed. Among the sighing 
 spouses, whom this sleepless night of his Holiness deprived of 
 their husbands, were St. Elizabeth, the Landgraf of Thuringia's 
 lady, and Ottilia, Countess of Gleichen ; a wife not standing, it 
 is true, in the odour of sanctity, yet in respect of personal en- 
 dowments, and virtuous conduct, inferior to none of her contem- 
 poraries. 
 
 Landgraf Ludwig, a trusty feudatory of the Emperor, had 
 issued general orders for his vassals to collect, and attend him 
 to the camp. But most of them sought pretexts for politely 
 declining this honour. One was tormented by the gout, another 
 by the stone; one had got his horses foundered, another's armoury 
 had been destroyed by fire. Count Ernst of Gleichen, however, 
 with a little troop of stout retainers, who were free and unen- 
 cumbered, and took pleasure in the prospect of distant adven- 
 tures, equipped their squires and followers, obeyed the orders of 
 the Landgraf, and led their people to the place of rendezvous. 
 The Count had been wedded for two years ; and in this period 
 his lovely consort had presented him with two children, a little 
 master and a little miss, which, according to the custom of those 
 stalwart ages, had been born without the aid of science, fair and 
 
100 
 
 MUS-EUS. 
 
 softly as the dew from tlie Twilight. A third pledge, which she 
 carried under her heart, was, by virtue of the Pope's insonmo- 
 leucy, destined, when it saw the light, to forego the embraces of 
 its father. Although Count Ernst put on the rugged aspect of a 
 man, Nature maintained her rights in him, and he could not hide 
 his strong feelings of tenderness, when at parting he quitted the 
 embraces of his weeping spouse. As in dumb sorrow he was 
 leaving her, she toned hastily to the cradle of her children ; 
 plucked out of it her sleeping boy ; pressed it softly to her breast, 
 and held it with tearful eyes to the father, to imprint a parting 
 kiss on its unconscious cheek. With her little girl she did the 
 same This gave the Count a sharp twinge about the heart : 
 his lips began to quiver, his mouth visibly increased in breadth ; 
 and sobbing aloud, he pressed the infants to his steel cuirass, 
 under which there beat a very soft and feeling heart ; kissed 
 them from then- sleep, and recommended them, together with 
 their much loved mother, to the keeping of God and all the 
 Saints. As he winded down along the castle road with his 
 harnessed troop from the high fortress of Gleicken, she looked 
 after him with desolate sadness, till his banner, upon which she 
 herself had wrought the Red-cross with fine purple silk, no longer 
 floated in her vision. 
 
 Landgraf Ludwig was exceedingly contented as he saw his 
 stately vassal, and his knights and squires, advancing with their 
 flag unfurled ; but on viewing him more narrowly, and noticing 
 his trouble, he grew wroth ; for he thought the Count was faint 
 of heart, and out of humour with the expedition, and following it 
 against his will. Therefore his brow wrinkled down into frowns, 
 and the landgraphic nostrils sniffed displeasure. Count Ernst 
 had a fine pathognomic eye ; he soon observed what ailed his 
 lord, and going boldly up, disclosed to him the reason of his 
 cloudy mood. His words were as oil on the vinegar of dis- 
 content ; the Landgraf, with honest frankness, seized his vas- 
 sal's hand, and said: " Ah, is it so, good cousin? Then the 
 shoe pinches both of us in one place ; Elizabeth's good-b'ye has 
 given me a sore heart too. But be of good cheer ! While we 
 are fighting abroad, our wives will be praying at home, that we 
 may return with renown and glory." Such was the custom oi 
 the country in those days : while the husband took the field, the 
 wife continued in her chamber, solitary and still, fasting and 
 praying, and making vows without end, for his prosperous re- 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 101 
 
 turn. This old usage is not universal in the land at present ; 
 as the last crusade of our German warriors to the distant West, 1 
 by the rich increase of families during the absence of their heroic 
 heads, has sufficiently made manifest. 
 
 The pious Elizabeth felt no less pain at parting from her 
 husband than her fair companion in distress, the Countess of 
 Gleichen. Though her lord the Landgraf was rather of a stormy 
 disposition, she had lived with him in the most perfect unity : 
 and his terrestrial mass was by degrees so imbued with the 
 sanctity of his helpmate, that some beneficent historians have 
 appended to him likewise the title of Saint ; which, however, 
 must be looked on rather as a charitable compliment than a real 
 statement of the truth ; as with us, in these times, the epithets 
 of great, magnanimous, immortal, erudite, profound, for the most 
 part indicate no more than a little outward edge-gilding. So much 
 appears from all the circumstances, that the elevated couple did 
 not always harmonise in works of holiness ; nay, that the Powers 
 of Heaven had to interfere at times in the domestic differences 
 thence arising, to maintain the family peace : as the following 
 example will evince. The pious lady, to the great dissatisfaction 
 of her courtiers and lip-licking pages, had the custom of reserv- 
 ing from the Landgraf 's table the most savoury dishes for certain 
 hungry beggars, who incessantly beleaguered the castle ; and she 
 used to give herself the satisfaction, when the court dinner was 
 concluded, of distributing this kind donation to the poor with her 
 own hands. According to the courtly system, whereby thrift on the 
 small scale is always to make up for wastefulness on the great, 
 the meritorious cook-department every now and then complained 
 of this as earnestly as if the whole dominions of Thuringia had 
 run the risk of being eaten up by these lank-sided guests ; and 
 the Landgraf, who dabbled somewhat in economy, regarded it as 
 so important an affair, that, in all seriousness, he strictly forbade 
 his consort this labour of love, which had through time become 
 her spiritual hobby. Nevertheless, one day the impulse of be- 
 nevolence, and the temptation to break through her husband's 
 orders in pursuit of it, became too strong to be resisted. She 
 beckoned to her women, who were then uncovering the table, to 
 take off some untouched dishes, with a few rolls of wheaten bread, 
 and keep them as smuggled goods. These she packed into a little 
 basket, and stole out with it by a postern gate. 
 
 1 Of the Hessian troops to America, during the Revolutionary War. — Ed. 
 
102 
 
 MUSiEUS. 
 
 But the watchers had got wind of it, and betrayed it to the 
 Landgraf, who gave instant orders for a strict guard upon all the 
 outlets of the castle. Being told that his lady had been seen 
 gliding with a heavy load through the postern, he proceeded with 
 majestic strides across the court -yard, and stept out upon the 
 drawbridge, as if to take a mouthful of fresh air. Alas ! The 
 pious lady heard the jingling of his golden spurs ; and fear and 
 terror came upon her, till her knees trembled, and she could not 
 move another footstep. She concealed the victual-basket under 
 her apron, that modest covering of female charms and roguery ; 
 but whatever privileges this inviolable asylum may enjoy against 
 excisemen and officers of customs, it is no wall of brass for a 
 husband. The Landgraf, smelling mischief, hastened to the 
 place ; his sunburnt cheeks were reddened with indignation, and 
 the veins swelled fearfully upon his brow. 
 
 " Wife," said he, in a hasty tone, " what hast thou in the 
 basket thou art hiding from me ? Is it victuals from my table, 
 for thy vile crew of vagabonds and beggars ?" 
 
 " Not at all, dear lord," replied Elizabeth, meekly, but with 
 embarrassment, who held herself entitled, without prejudice to 
 her sanctity, to make a little slip in the present critical position 
 of affairs : ' ' it is nothing but a few roses that I gathered in the 
 garden." 
 
 Had the Landgraf been one of our contemporaries, he must 
 have believed his lady on her word of honour, and desisted from 
 farther search ; but in those wild times the minds of men were 
 not so polished. 
 
 " Let us see," said the imperious husband, and sharply pulled 
 the apron to a side. The tender wife had no defence against this 
 violence but by recoiling : "0 ! softly, softly, my dear husband !" 
 said she, and blushed for shame at being detected in a falsehood, 
 in presence of her servants. But, 0 wonder upon wonder ! the 
 corpus delicti was in very deed transformed into the fairest bloom- 
 ing roses ; the rolls had changed to white roses, the sausages to 
 red, the omelets to yellow ones ! With joyful amazement the 
 saintly dame observed this metamorphosis, and knew not whethei 
 to believe her eyes ; for she had never given credit to her Guardian 
 Angel for such delicate politeness, as to work a miracle in favour 
 of a lady, when the point was to cajole a rigorous husband, and 
 make good a female affirmation. 
 
 So visible a proof of innocence allayed the fierceness of the 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 103 
 
 Lion. He now turned his tremendous looks on the down- stricken 
 serving-men, who, as it was apparent, had been groundlessly ca- 
 lumniating his angelic wife ; he scornfully rated them, and swore 
 a deep oath, that the first eaves-dropping pickthank who again 
 accused his virtuous wife to him, he would cast into the dungeon, 
 and there let him lie and rot. This done, he took a rose from 
 the basket, and stuck it in his hat, in triumph for his lady's in- 
 nocence. History has not certified us, whether, on the following 
 day, he found a withered rose or a cold sausage there : in the 
 mean time it assures us, that the saintly wife, when her lord had 
 left her with the kiss of peace, and she herself had recovered 
 from her fright, stept down the hill, much comforted in heart, 
 to the meadow where her nurslings, the lame and blind, the 
 naked and the hungry, were awaiting her, to dole out among 
 them her intended bounty. For she well knew that the mi- 
 raculous deception would again vanish were she there, as in 
 reality it did; for, on opening her victual - magazine she found 
 no roses at all, but in their stead the nutritious crumbs which 
 she had snatched from the teeth of the castle bone-polishers. 
 
 Though now, by the departure of her husband, she was to be 
 freed from his rigorous superintendence, and obtain free scope to 
 execute her labours of love in secret or openly, when and where 
 it pleased her, yet she loved her imperious husband so faithfully 
 and sincerely, that she could not part from him without the 
 deepest sorrow. Ah ! she foreboded but too well, that in this 
 world she should not see him any more. And for the enjoyment 
 of him in the other, the aspect of affairs was little better. A 
 canonised Saint has such preferment there, that all other Saints 
 compared with her are but a heavenly mob. 
 
 High as the Landgraf had been stationed in this sublunary 
 world, it was a question whether, in the courts of Heaven, he 
 might be found worthy to kneel on the footstool of her throne, 
 and raise his eyes to his former bedmate. Yet, many vows as 
 she made, many good works as she did, much as her prayers in 
 other cases had availed with all the Saints, her credit in the upper 
 world was not sufficient to stretch out her husband's term a span. 
 He died on this march, in the bloom of life, of a malignant fever, 
 at Otranto, before he had acquired the knightly merit of chining 
 a single Saracen. While he was preparing for departure, and the 
 time was come for him to give the world his blessing, he called 
 Count Ernst from among his other servants and vassals to his 
 
104 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 bedside ; appointed him commander of the troops which he him- 
 self had led thus far, and made him swear that he would not 
 return till he had thrice drawn his sword against the Infidel. 
 Then he took the holy viaticum from the hands of his marching 
 chaplain; and ordering as many masses for his soul, as might 
 have brought himself and all his followers triumphantly into the 
 New Jerusalem, he breathed his last. Count Ernst had the corpse 
 of his lord embalmed : he enclosed it in a silver coffin, and sent 
 it to the widowed lady, who wore mourning for her husband like 
 a Roman Empress, for she never laid her weeds aside while she 
 continued in this world. 
 
 Count Ernst of Gleichen forwarded the pilgrimage as much 
 as possible, and arrived in safety with his people in the camp at 
 Ptolemais. Here, it was rather a theatrical emblem of war than 
 a serious campaign that met his view. For as on our stages, when 
 they represent a camp or field of battle, there are merely a few 
 tents erected in the foreground, and a little handful of players 
 scuffling together ; but in the distance many painted tents and 
 squadrons to assist the illusion, and cheat the eye, the whole 
 being merely intended for an artificial deception of the senses ; 
 so also was the crusading army a mixture of fiction and reality. 
 Of the numerous heroic hosts that left their native country, it 
 was always the smallest part that reached the boundaries of the 
 land they had gone forth to conquer. But few were devoured by 
 the swords of the Saracens. These Infidels had powerful allies, 
 whom they sent beyond their frontiers, and who made brisk work 
 among their enemies, though getting neither wages nor thanks 
 for their good service. These allies were, Hunger and Naked- 
 ness, Perils by land and water and among bad brethren, Frost 
 and Heat, Pestilence and malignant Boils ; and the grinding 
 Home-sickness also fell at times like a heavy Incubus upon the 
 steel harness, and crushed it together like soft pasteboard, and 
 spurred the steed to a quick return. Under these circumstances, 
 Count Ernst had little hope of speedily fulfilling his oath, and 
 thrice dyeing his knightly sword in unbelieving blood, as must be 
 done before he thought of returning. For three days' journey 
 round the camp, no Arab archer was to be seen ; the weakness 
 of the Christian host lay concealed behind its bulwarks and en- 
 trenchments ; they did not venture 'out to seek the distant enemy, 
 but waited for the slow help of his slumbering Holiness, who, since 
 the wakeful night that gave rise to this Crusade, had enjoyed un- 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 105 
 
 broken sleep, and about the issue of the Holy War had troubled 
 himself very little. 
 
 In this inaction, as inglorious to the Christian army, as of 
 old that loitering was to the Greeks before the walls of bloody 
 but courageous Troy, where the godlike Achilles, with his con- 
 federates, moped so long about his fair Briseis, — the chivalry of 
 Christendom kept up much jollity and recreation in their camp, 
 to kill lazy time, and scare away the blue devils ; the Italians, 
 with song and harping, to which the nimble -footed Frenchmen 
 danced ; the solemn Spaniards with chess ; the English with cock- 
 fighting; the . Germans with feasting and wassail. 
 
 Count Ernst, taking small delight in any of these pastimes, 
 amused himself with hunting ; made war on the foxes in the dry 
 wildernesses, and pursued the shy chamois into the barren moun- 
 tains. The knights of his train "disagreed" with the glowing 
 sun by day, and the damp evening air under the open sky, and 
 sneaked to a side when their lord called for his horses ; therefore, 
 in his hunting expeditions, he was generally attended only by his 
 faithful Squire, named the mettled Kurt, and a single groom. 
 Once, his eagerness in clambering after the chamois, had carried 
 him to such a distance, that the sun was dipping in the Mid-sea 
 wave before he thought of returning ; and, fast as he hastened 
 homewards, night came upon him at a distance from the camp. 
 The appearance of some treacherous ignes fatui, which he mis- 
 took for the watch-fires, led him off still farther. On discovering 
 his error, he resolved to rest beneath a tree till daybreak. The 
 trusty Squire prepared a bed of soft moss for his lord, who, wearied 
 by the heat of the day, fell asleep before he could lift his hand to 
 bless himself, according to custom, with the sign of the cross. 
 But to the mettled Kurt there came no wink of sleep, for he was 
 by nature watchful like a bird of darkness ; and though this gift 
 had not belonged to him, his faithful care for his lord would have 
 kept him waking. The night, as usual in the climate of Asia, 
 was serene and still ; the stars twinkled in pure diamond light ; 
 and solemn silence, as in the Valley of Death, reigned over the 
 wide desert. No breath of air was stirring, yet the nocturnal 
 coolness poured life and refreshment over herb and living thing. 
 But about the third watch, when the morning star had begun to 
 announce the coming day, there arose a din in the dusky re- 
 moteness, like the voice of a forest stream rushing over some steep 
 precipice. The watchful squire listened eagerly, and sent his 
 
106 
 
 MUSiEUS. 
 
 other senses also out for tidings, as his sharp eye could not pierce 
 the veil of darkness. He hearkened, and snuffed at the same 
 time, like a bloodhound, for a scent came towards him as of sweet- 
 smelling herbs and trodden grass, and the strange noise appeared 
 to be approaching. He laid his ear to the ground, and heard a 
 trampling as of horses' hoofs, which led him to conclude that the 
 Infernal Chase was hunting in these parts. A cold shudder passed 
 over him, and his terror grew extreme. He shook his master 
 from sleep ; and the latter, having roused himself, soon saw that 
 here another than a spectral host was to be fronted. Whilst his 
 groom girded up the horses, the Count had his harness buckled 
 on in all haste. 
 
 The dim shadows gradually withdrew, and the advancing 
 morning tinted the eastern hem of the horizon with purple light. 
 The Count now discovered, what he had anticipated, a host of 
 Saracens approaching, all equipped for fight, to snatch some booty 
 from the Christians. To escape their hands was hopeless, and 
 the hospitable tree in the wide solitary plain gave no shelt&r to 
 conceal horse and man behind it. Unluckily the massy steed 
 was not a Hippogryph, but a heavy-bodied Frieslander, to which, 
 by reason of its make, the happy talent of bearing off its master 
 on the wings of the wind had not been allotted ; therefore the 
 gallant hero gave his soul to the keeping of God and the Holy 
 Virgin, and resolved on dying like a knight. He bade his serv- 
 ants follow him, and sell their lives as dear as might be. There- 
 upon he pricked the Frieslander boldly forward, and dashed right 
 into the middle of the hostile squadron, who had been expecting 
 no such sudden onset from a single knight. The Pagans started 
 in astonishment, and flew asunder like light chaff when scattered 
 by the wind. But seeing that the enemy was only three men 
 strong, their courage rose, and there began an unequal battle, in 
 which valour was surpassed by number. The Count meanwhile 
 kept plunging yarely through the ranks ; the point of his lance 
 gleamed death and destruction to the Infidel ; and when it found 
 its man, he flew inevitably from his saddle. Their Captain him- 
 self, who ran at him with grim fury, his manly arm laid low, and 
 with his victorious spear transfixed him writhing in the dust, as 
 St. George of England did the Dragon. The mettled Kurt went 
 on with no less briskness ; though availing little for attack, he 
 was a master in the science of dispatching, and sent all to pot 
 who did not make resistance ; as a modern critic butchers the 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 107 
 
 defenceless rabble of the lame and halt, who venture with such 
 courage in our days into the literary tilt-yard : and if now and 
 then some fainting invalid, with furious aim, like an exasperated 
 Reviewer-hunter, did hurl a stone at him with enfeebled fist, he 
 heeded it little ; for he knew well that his basnet and iron jack 
 would turn a moderate thump. The groom, too, did his best to 
 make clear ground about him, and kept his master's back un- 
 harmed. But as nine gad-flies will beat the strongest horse ; 
 four Caffre bulls an African lion ; and, by the common tale, one 
 troop of mice an archbishop, as the Mdusethurm, or Mouse -tower, 
 on the Rhine, by Hiibner's account, gives open testimony; so the 
 Count of Gleichen, after doing knightly battle, was at length over- 
 powered by the number of his enemies. His arm grew weary, his 
 lance was shivered into splinters, his sword became blunt, and his 
 Friesland horse at last staggered down upon the gory battle-field. 
 The Knight's fall was the watch-word of victory; a hundred vali- 
 ant arms stormed in on him to wrench away his sword, and his 
 hand had no longer any strength for resistance. As the mettled 
 Kurt observed the Knight come down, his own courage sank also, 
 and along with it the pole-axe, wherewith he had so magnanim- 
 ously hammered in the Saracenic skulls. He surrendered at dis- 
 cretion, and pressingly entreated quarter. The groom stood in 
 blank rumination ; bore himself enduringly ; and awaited with 
 oxlike equanimity the stroke of some mace upon his basnet, which 
 should crush him to the ground. 
 
 But the Saracens were less inhuman victors than the con- 
 quered could have expected ; they disarmed their three prisoners 
 of war, and did them no bodily harm whatever. This mild usage 
 took its rise not in any movement of philanthropy, but in mere 
 spy's-mercy : from a dead enemy there is nothing to be learnt, 
 and the special object of this roaming troop had been to get correct 
 intelligence about the state of matters in the Christian host at 
 Ptolemais. The captives, being questioned and heard, were next, 
 according to the Asiatic fashion, furnished with slave-fetters ; and 
 as a ship was just then lying ready to set sail for Alexandria, the 
 Bey of Asdod sent them off with it as a present to the Sultan of 
 Egypt, to confirm at Court their description of the Christian re- 
 sources and position. The rumour of the bold Frank's valour had 
 arrived before him at the gates of Grand Cairo ; and so pugnacious 
 a prisoner might, on entering the hostile metropolis, have merited 
 as pompous a reception as the Twelfth of April saw bestowed upon 
 
108 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 the Comte de Grasse in London, where the merry capital ernu- 
 lously strove to let the conquered sea-hero feel the honour which 
 their victory had done him : but Moslem self-conceit allows no 
 justice to foreign merit. Count Ernst, in the garb of a felon, 
 loaded with heavy chains, was quietly locked into the Grated 
 Tower, where the Sultan's slaves were wont to be kept. 
 
 Here, in long painful nights, and mournful solitary days, he 
 had time and leisure to survey the grim stony aspect of his future 
 life ; and it required as much steadfastness and courage to bear 
 up under these contemplations, as to tilt it on the battle-field 
 among a wandering horde of Arabs. The image of his former 
 domestic happiness kept hovering before his eyes ; he thought of 
 his gentle wife, and the tender shoots of their chaste love. Ah ! 
 how he cursed the miserable feud of Mother-church with the Gog 
 and Magog of the East, which had robbed him of his fair lot in 
 existence, and fettered him in slave-shackles never to be loosed ! 
 In such moments he was ready to despair altogether; and his 
 piety had well-nigh made shipwreck on this rock of offence. 
 
 In the days of Count Ernst there was current, among anec- 
 dotic persons, a wondrous story of Duke Henry the Lion, which 
 at that period, as a thing that had occurred within the memory 
 of man, found great credence in the German Empire. The Duke, 
 so runs the tale, while proceeding over sea to the Holy Land, was, 
 in a tempest, cast away upon a desert part of the African coast ; 
 where, escaping alone from shipwreck, he found shelter and suc- 
 cour in the den of a hospitable Lion. This kindness in the savage 
 owner of the cave had its origin not in the heart, but in the left 
 hind-paw ; while hunting in the Libyan wilderness, he had run a 
 thorn into his foot, which so tormented him, that he could hardly 
 move, and had entirely forgotten his natural voracity. The ac- 
 quaintance being formed, and mutual confidence established be- 
 tween the parties, the Duke assumed the office of chirurgeon to 
 the royal beast, and laboriously picked out the thorn from his 
 foot. The patient rapidly recovered, and, mindful of the service, 
 entertained his lodger with his best from the produce of his plun- 
 der; and, though a Lion, was as friendly and officious towards 
 him as a lap-dog. 
 
 The Duke, however, soon grew weary of the cold collations 
 of his four-footed landlord, and began to long for the flesh-pots of 
 his own far-distant kitchen ; for in readying the game handed in 
 to him, he by no means rivalled his Brunswick cook. Then 
 
MELECHSAIA. 
 
 109 
 
 the home-sickness came upon him like a heavy load ; and seeing 
 no possibility of ever getting back to his paternal heritage, the 
 thought of this so grieved his soul, that he wasted visibly, and 
 pined like a wounded hart. Thereupon the Tempter, with his 
 wonted impudence in desert places, came before him, in the figure 
 of a little swart wrinkled manikin, whom the Duke at first sight 
 took for an ourang-outang ; but it was the Devil himself, Satan 
 in proper person, and he grinned, and said : ' ' Duke Henry, what 
 ails thee ? If thou trust to me, I will put an end to all thy sor- 
 row, and take thee home to thy wife to sup with her this night 
 in the Castle of Brunswick ; for a lordly supper is making ready 
 there, seeing she is about to wed another man, having lost hope 
 of thy life." 
 
 This despatch came rolling like a thunder-clap into the Duke's 
 ear, and cut him through the heart like a sharp two-edged sword. 
 Rage burnt in his eyes like flames of fire, and desperation up- 
 roared in his breast. If Heaven will not help me in this crisis, 
 thought he, then let Hell ! It was one of those entangling situa- 
 tions which the Arch-crimp, with his consummate skill in psycho- 
 logical science, can employ so dextrously when the enlisting of a 
 soul that he has cast an eye on is to prosper in his hands. The 
 Duke, without hesitation, buckled on his golden spurs, girded his 
 sword about his loins, and put himself in readiness. " Quick, my 
 good fellow !" said he ; " carry me, and this my trusty Lion, to 
 Brunswick, before the varlet reach my bed!" — "Well!" answered 
 Blackbeard, "but dost thou know the carriage - dues ?" — "Ask 
 what thou wilt !" said Duke Henry; "it shall be given thee at 
 thy word." — " Thy soul at sight in the other world," replied Beel- 
 zebub. — " Done ! Be it so !" cried furious jealousy, from Henry's 
 mouth. 
 
 The bargain was forthwith concluded in legal form, between 
 the two contracting parties. The Infernal Kite directly changed 
 himself into a winged Griffin, and seizing the Duke in the one 
 clutch, and the trusty Lion in the other, conveyed them both in 
 one night from the Libyan coast to Brunswick, the towering city, 
 founded on the lasting basis of the Harz, which even the lying 
 prophecies of the Zillerfeld vaticinator have not ventured to over- 
 throw. There he set down his burden safely in the middle of the 
 market-place, and vanished, just as the watchman was blowing his 
 horn with intent to proclaim the hour of midnight, and then carol 
 forth a superannuated bridal -song from his rusty mum -washed 
 
110 
 
 MUS^JUS. 
 
 weasand. The ducal palace, and the whole city, still gleamed like 
 the starry heaven with the nuptial illumination ; every street re- 
 sounded with the din and tumult of the gay people streaming for- 
 ward to gaze on the decorated bride, and the solemn torch- dance 
 with which the festival was to conclude. The Aeronaut, un- 
 wearied by his voyage, pressed on amid the crowding multitude 
 through the entrance of the Palace ; advanced with clanking 
 spurs, under the guidance of his trusty Lion, to the banquet- 
 chamber ; drew his sword, and cried: " With me, whoever 
 stands by Duke Henry; and to traitors, death and hell!" The 
 Lion also bellowed, as if seven thunders had been uttering their 
 united voices ; shook his awful mane, and furiously erected his 
 tail, as the signal of attack. The cornets and kettle-drums struck 
 silent suddenly, and a horrid sound of battle pealed from the 
 tumult in the wedding-hall, up to the very Gothic roof, till the 
 walls rang with it, and the thresholds shook. 
 
 The golden-haired bridegroom, and his party-coloured butter- 
 flies of courtiers, fell beneath the sword of the Duke, as the 
 thousand Philistines beneath the ass's jaw-bone, in the sturdy 
 fist of the son of Manoah ; and he who escaped the sword, rushed 
 into the Lion's throat, and was butchered like a defenceless lamb. 
 When the forward wooer and his retinue of serving-men and 
 nobles were abolished, Duke Henry, having used his household 
 privilege as sternly as of old the wise Ulysses to the wooing-club 
 of his chaste Penelope, sat down to table, refreshed in spirit, 
 beside his wife, who was just beginning to recover from the deadly 
 fright his entrance had caused her. While briskly enjoying the 
 dainties of his cook, which had not been prepared for him, he 
 cast a glance of triumph on his new conquest, and perceived that 
 she was bathed in ambiguous tears, which might as well refer to 
 loss as to gain. However, like a man that knew the world, he 
 explained them wholly to his own advantage ; and merely re- 
 proving her in gentle words for the hurry of her heart, he from 
 that hour entered upon all his former rights. 
 
 Count Ernst had often listened to this strange story, from 
 the lips of his nurse; yet in riper years, as an enlightened 
 sceptic, entertained doubts of its truth. But in the dreary lone- 
 liness of his Grated Tower, the whole incident acquired a form 
 of possibility, and his wavering nursery belief increased almost 
 to conviction. A transit through the air appeared to him the 
 simplest thing in nature, if the Prince of Darkness, in the gloomy 
 
MELECHSALA. Ill 
 
 midnight, chose to lend his bat-wings for the purpose. Though 
 in obedience to his religious principles, he no night neglected to 
 cut a large cross before him as he went to sleep ; yet a secret 
 longing awoke in his heart, without its own distinct conscious- 
 ness, to accomplish the same adventure. If a wandering mouse 
 in the night-season happened to scratch upon the wainscot, he 
 immediately supposed the Hellish Proteus was announcing his 
 arrival, and at times in thought he went so far as settling the 
 freight charges beforehand. But except the illusion of a dream, 
 which juggled him into an aerial journey to his German native 
 land, the Count gained nothing by his nursery faith, except em- 
 ploying with these fantasies a few vacant hours ; and like a reader 
 of novels, transporting himself into the situation of the acting 
 hero. Why old Abaddon showed himself so sluggish in this 
 case, when the kidnapping of a soul was in the wind, and in all 
 likelihood the enterprise must have succeeded, may be accounted 
 for in two ways. Either the Count's Guardian Angel was more 
 watchful than the one to whom Duke Henry had intrusted the 
 keeping of his soul, and resisted so stoutly that the Evil One 
 could get no advantage over him ; or the Prince of the Air had 
 grown disgusted with the transport-trade in this his own element, 
 having been bubbled out of his stipulated freightage by Duke 
 Henry after all their engagements ; for when it came to the 
 point with Henry, his soul was found to have so many good 
 works on her side of the account, that the scores on the Infernal 
 tally were altogether cancelled by them. 
 
 Whilst Count Ernst was weaving in romantic dreams a feeble 
 shadow of hope for deliverance from his captivity, and for a few 
 moments in the midst of them forgetting his dejection and misery, 
 his returning servants brought the Countess tidings that their 
 master had vanished from the camp, and none knew what had 
 become of him. Some supposed that he had been the prey of 
 snakes or dragons ; others that a pestilential blast of wind had 
 met him in the Syrian desert, and killed him; others that he had 
 been robbed and murdered, or taken captive, by some plundering 
 troop of Arabs. In one point all agreed: That he was to be held 
 pro mortuo, dead in law, and that the Countess was entirely re- 
 lieved and enfranchised from her matrimonial engagements. But 
 to the Countess herself, a secret foreboding still whispered that 
 her lord was alive notwithstanding. Nor did she by any means 
 repress this thought, which so solaced her heart : for hope is 
 
112 
 
 MUSiEUS. 
 
 always the stoutest stay of the afflicted, and the sweetest dream 
 of life. To maintain it, she secretly equipped a trusty servant, 
 and sent him out for tidings, over sea into the Holy Land. Like 
 the raven from the Ark, this scout flew to and fro upon the waters, 
 and was no more heard of. Then she sent another forth ; who 
 returned after several years' cruising over sea and land ; but no 
 olive-leaf of hope was in his bill. Nevertheless the steadfast lady 
 doubted not in the least that she should yet meet her lord in the 
 land of the living : for she had a firm persuasion that so tender 
 and true a husband could not possibly have left the world without 
 in the catastrophe remembering his wife and little children at 
 home, and giving them some token of his death. Now, since 
 the Count's departure, there had nothing happened in the Castle ; 
 neither in the armoury by rattling of the harness, nor in the garret 
 by a rolling joist, nor in the bed-chamber by a faint footstep, or 
 heavy- booted tread. Nor had any nightly moaning chanted its 
 Ncenia down from the high battlements of the palace ; nor had 
 the baleful bird Kreideweiss ever issued its lugubrious death- 
 summons. In the absence of all these signs of evil omen, she in- 
 ferred by the principles of female common-sense philosophy, which 
 even in our own times are by no means fallen into such desuetude 
 among the fair sex, as Father Aristotle's Organum is among the 
 male, that her much-loved husband was still living ; a conclusion, 
 which we know was perfectly correct. The fruitless issue of her 
 first two missions of discovery, the object of which was more im- 
 portant to her than the finding of the Southern Polar Continent 
 is to us, she allowed not in the least to deter her from sending 
 out a third Apostle into All the World. This third was of a slow 
 turn, and had imprinted on his mind the adage, As soon gets the 
 snail to his bed as the sioallotv ; therefore he called at every inn, 
 and treated himself well. And it being infinitely more convenient 
 that the people whom he was to question about his master should 
 come to him, than that he should go tracking and spying them 
 out in the wide world, he determined on choosing a position where 
 he could examine every passenger from the East, with the inso- 
 lent inquisitiveness of a toll-man behind his barrier ; and fixed 
 his quarters by the harbour of Venice. This Queen of the Waters 
 was at that time, as it were, the general gate, which all pilgrims and 
 crusaders from the Holy Land passed through in their way home. 
 Whether this shrewd genius chose the best or the worst means 
 for discharging his appointed function, will appear in the sequel. 
 
Melechsala. 
 
 After a seven-years narrow custody in the Grated Towcr. at 
 Grand Cairo, — a term which to the Count seemed far longer than 
 to the Seven Sleepers their seventy-years sleep in the Koman 
 catacombs, — he concluded himself to be forsaken of Heaven and 
 Hell, and utterly gave up hope of ever getting out in the body 
 from this melancholy cage, where the kind face of the sun was 
 not allowed to visit him, and the broken daylight struggled faintly 
 in through a window secured with iron bars. His devil -romance 
 was long ago concluded ; and his faith in miraculous assistance 
 from his Guardian Saint was lighter than a mustard-seed. He 
 vegetated rather than lived ; and if in these circumstances any 
 wish arose in him, it was the wish to be annihilated. 
 
 From this lethargic stupor he was suddenly aroused by the 
 rattling of a bunch of keys, before the door of his cell. Since the 
 day of his entrance, his jailor had never more performed for him 
 the office of turnkey ; for all the necessaries of the prisoner had 
 been conveyed through a trap-board in the door. Accordingly, it 
 was not without long resistance, and the bribery of a little veget- 
 able oil, that the rusty bolt obeyed him. But the creaking of 
 the iron hinges, as the door went up with reluctant grating, was 
 to the Count a compound of more melodious notes than ever came 
 from the Harmonica of Franklin. A foreboding palpitation ot 
 the heart set his stagnant blood in motion ; and he expected with 
 impatient longing the intelligence of a change in his fate : for the 
 rest, it was indifferent to him whether it brought life or death. 
 Two black slaves entered with his jailor, at whose signal they 
 loosed the fetters from the prisoner ; and a second mute sign from 
 the solemn graybeard commanded him to follow. He obeyed with 
 faltering steps ; his feet refused their service, and he needed the 
 support of the two slaves, to totter down the winding stone stair. 
 He was then conducted to the Captain of the Prison, who, looking 
 at him with a reproachful air, thus spoke : " Obstinate Frank, 
 what made thee hide the craft thou art acquainted with, when 
 thou wert put into the Grated Tower ? One of thy fellow-pri- 
 soners has betrayed thee, and informed us that thou art a master 
 in the art of gardening. Go, whither the will of the Sultan calls 
 thee ; lay out a garden in the manner of the Franks, and watch 
 over it like the apple of thy eye ; that the Flower of the World 
 may blossom in it pleasantly, for the adorning of the East." 
 
 If the Count had got a call to Paris to be Hector of the Sor- 
 bonne, the appointment could not have astonished him more, than 
 
 vol. in, I 
 
in 
 
 mvsmvs. 
 
 this of being gardener to the Sultan of Egypt. About gardening 
 he understood as little as a laic about the secrets of the Church. 
 In Italy, it is true, he had seen many gardens ; and at Niirnberg, 
 where the dawn of that art was now first penetrating into Ger- 
 many, though the horticultural luxury of the Niirnbergers did not 
 3 r et extend much farther than a bowling-green, and a few beds of 
 roman lettuce. But about the planning of gardens, and the culti- 
 vation of plants, like a martial nobleman, he had never troubled 
 his head ; and his botanic science was so limited, that the Flower 
 of the World had never once come under his inspection. Hence 
 he knew not in the least by what method it was to be treated ; 
 whether like the aloe it must be brought to blossom by the aid 
 of art, or like a common marigold by the genial virtue of nature 
 alone. Nevertheless, he did not venture to acknowledge his ignor- 
 ance, or decline the preferment offered him ; being reasonably 
 apprehensive that they might convince him of his fitness for the 
 post, by a bastinading on the soles. 
 
 A pleasant park was assigned him, which he was to change 
 into a European garden. The spot had, either by the hand of 
 bountiful Nature, or of ancient cultivation, been so happily dis- 
 posed and ornamented already, that the new Abdalonymus, let 
 him cudgel his brains as he would, could perceive no error or 
 defect in it, nothing that admitted of improvement. Besides, 
 the aspect of living and active nature, which for seven long years 
 in his dreary prison he had been obliged to forego, affected him 
 at once so powerfully, that he inhaled rapture from every grass- 
 flower, and looked at all things around him with delight, like the 
 First Man in Paradise, to whom the scientific thought of cen- 
 suring anything in the arrangement of his Eden did not occur. 
 The Count therefore found himself in no small embarrassment 
 about discharging his commission creditably ; he feared that every 
 change would rob the garden of a beauty, and were he detected 
 as a botcher, he must travel back into his Grated Tower. 
 
 In the mean time, as Shiek Kiamel, Overseer of the Gardens 
 and favourite of the Sultan, was diligently stimulating him to 
 begin the work, he required fifty slaves, as necessary for the exe- 
 cution of his enterprise. Next morning at dawn, they were all 
 ready, and passed muster before their new commander, who as 
 yet saw not how he should employ a man of them. But how 
 great was his joy as he perceived the mettled Kurt and the pon- 
 derous Groom, his two companions of misfortune, ranked among 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 115 
 
 the troop ! A hundredweight of lead rolled off his heart, the 
 wrinkle of dejection vanished from his brow, and his eyes were 
 enlightened, as if he had dipt his staff in honey and tasted thereof. 
 He led the trusty Squire aside, and frankly informed him into 
 what a heterogeneous element he had been cast by the caprices 
 of fate, where he could neither fly nor swim ; nor could he in the 
 least comprehend what enigmatical mistake had exchanged his 
 knightly sword with the gardener's spade. No sooner had he 
 done speaking, than the mettled Kurt, with wet eyes, fell at his 
 feet, then lifted up his voice and said: " Pardon, dear master! 
 It is I that have caused your perplexity and your deliverance from 
 the rascally Grated Tower, which has kept you so long in ward. 
 Be not angry that the innocent deceit of your servant has brought 
 you out of it ; be glad rather that you see God's sky again above 
 your head. The Sultan required a garden after the manner of the 
 Franks, and had proclamation made to all the Christian captives 
 in the Bazam, that the proper man should step forth, and expect 
 great recompense if the undertaking prospered. No one of them 
 durst meddle with it ; but I recollected your heavy durance. Then 
 some good spirit whispered me the lie of announcing you as an 
 adept in the art of gardening, and it has succeeded perfectly. 
 And now never vex yourself about the way of managing the busi- 
 ness : the Sultan, like the great people of the world, has a fancy 
 not for something better than he has already, but for something 
 different, that may be new and singular. Therefore, delve and 
 devastate, and cut and carve, in this glorious field, according to 
 your pleasure; and depend upon it, everything you do or purpose 
 will be right in his eyes." 
 
 This speech was as the murmur of a running brook in the 
 ears of a tired wanderer in the desert. The Count drew balsam 
 to his soul from it, and courage to commence with boldness the 
 ungainly undertaking. He set his men to work at random, with- 
 out plan ; and proceeded with the well-ordered shady park, as one 
 of your " bold geniuses" proceeds with an antiquated author, who 
 falls into his creative hands, and, nill he will he, must submit to 
 let himself be modernised, that is to say, again made readable 
 and likeable ; or as a new pedagogue with the ancient forms of 
 the Schools. He jumbled in variegated confusion what he found 
 before him, making all things different, nothing better. The pro- 
 fitable fruit-trees he rooted out, and planted rosemary and vale- 
 rian, and exotic shrubs, or scentless amaranths, in their stead. 
 
116 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 The rich soil he dug away, and coated the naked bottom with 
 many - coloured gravel, which he carefully stamped hard, and 
 smoothed like a threshing - floor, that no blade of grass might 
 spring in it. The whole space he divided into various terraces, 
 which he begirt with a hem of green ; and through these a 
 strangely-twisted flower-bed serpentised along, and ended in a 
 knot of villanously- smelling boxwood. And as from his ignorance 
 of botany, he paid no heed to the proper seasons for sowing and 
 planting, his garden project hovered for a long time between 
 life and death, and had the aspect of a suit of clothes afeuille 
 mourante. 
 
 Shiek Kiamel, and the Sultan himself, allowed the Western 
 gardener to take his course, without deranging his conception by 
 their interference or their dictatorial opinion, and by premature 
 hypercriticism interrupting the procedure of his horticultural ge- 
 nius. In this they acted more wisely than our obstreperous public, 
 which, from our famous philanthropic scheme of sowing acorns, 
 expected in a summer or two a stock of strong oaks, fit to be 
 masts for three-deckers ; while the plantation was as yet so soft 
 and feeble, that a few frosty nights might have sent it to de- 
 struction. Now, indeed, almost in the middle of the second 
 decade of years from the commencement of the enterprise, when 
 the first fruits must certainly be over-ripe, it were in good season 
 for a German Kiamel to step forward with the question : "Planter, 
 what art thou about ? Let us see what thy delving, and the loud 
 clatter of thy cars and wheelbarrows have produced ?" And if the 
 plantation stood before him like that of the Gleichic Garden at 
 Grand Cairo, in the sere and yellow leaf, then were he well en- 
 titled, after due consideration of the matter, like the Shiek, to 
 shake his head in silence, to spit a squirt through his teeth, and 
 think within himself : If this be all, it might have stayed as it was. 
 For one day, as the gardener was surveying his new creation with 
 contentment, sitting in judgment on himself, and pronouncing that' 
 the work praised the master, and that, everything considered, it 
 had fallen out better than he could have anticipated, his whole 
 ideal being before his eyes, not only what was then, but what 
 was to be made of it, — the Overseer, the Sultan's favourite, stept 
 into the garden, and said : " Frank, what art thou about ? And 
 how far art thou got with thy labour?" The Count easily per- 
 ceived that the produce of his genius would now have to stand 
 a rigorous criticism ; however, he had long been ready for this 
 
MELECHSALA. 117 
 
 accident. He collected all his presence of mind, and answered 
 confidently: "Come, sir, and see! This former wilderness has 
 obeyed the hand of art, and is now moulded, after the pattern of 
 Paradise, into a scene which the Houris would not disdain to select 
 for their abode." The Shiek, hearing a professed artist speak 
 with such apparent warmth and satisfaction of his own perform- 
 ance, and giving the master credit for deeper insight in his own 
 sphere than he himself possessed, restrained the avowal of his 
 discontentment with the whole arrangement, modestly ascribing 
 this dislike to his inacquaintance with foreign taste, and leaving 
 the matter to rest on its own basis. Nevertheless, he could not 
 help putting one or two questions, for his own information ; to 
 which the garden satrap was not in the least behindhand with his 
 answers. 
 
 "Where are the glorious fruit-trees," began the Shiek, 
 "which stood on this sandy level, loaded with peaches and sweet 
 lemons, which solaced the eye, and invited the promenader to 
 refreshing enjoyment?" 
 
 "They are all hewn away by the surface, and their place is 
 no longer to be found." 
 
 "And why so ?" 
 
 "Could the garden of the Sultan admit such trash of trees, 
 which the commonest citizen of Cairo cultivates, and the fruit of 
 which is offered for sale by assloads every day?" 
 
 "What moved thee to desolate the pleasant grove of dates 
 and tamarinds, which was the wanderer's shelter against the sul- 
 try noontide, and gave him coolness and refection under the vault 
 of its shady boughs ?" 
 
 "What has shade to do in a garden which, while the sun 
 shoots forth scorching beams, stands solitary and deserted, and 
 only exhales its balsamic odours when fanned by the cool breeze 
 of evening ?" 
 
 "But did not this grove cover, with an impenetrable veil, the 
 secrets of love, when the Sultan, enchanted by the charms of a 
 fair Circassian, wished to hide his tenderness from the jealous 
 eyes of her companions ?" 
 
 "An impenetrable veil is to be found in that bower, over- 
 arched with honeysuckle and ivy ; or in that cool grotto, where 
 a crystal fountain gushes out of artificial rocks into a basin of 
 marble ; or in that covered walk with its trellises of clustering 
 vines ; or on the sofa, pillowed with soft moss, in the rustic reed- 
 
» 
 
 118 MUS2EUS. 
 
 house by the pond ; nor will any of these secret shrines afford 
 lodging for destructive worms, and buzzing insects, or keep away 
 the wafting air, or shut up the free prospect, as the gloomy grove 
 of tamarinds did." 
 
 "But why hast thou planted sage, and hyssop which grows 
 upon the wall, here on this spot where formerly the precious balm- 
 tree of Mecca bloomed?" 
 
 "Because the Sultan wanted no Arabian, but a European 
 garden. In Italy, and in the German gardens of the Nurn- 
 bergers, no dates are ripened, nor does any balm-tree of Mecca 
 bloom." 
 
 To this last argument no answer could be made. As neither 
 the Shiek nor any of the Heathen in Cairo had ever been at Niirn- 
 berg, he had nothing for it but to take this version of the garden 
 from Arabic into German, on the word of the interpreter. Only, 
 he could not bring himself to think that the present horticultural 
 reform had been managed by the pattern of the Paradise, ap- 
 pointed by the Prophet for believing Mussulmans ; and, allowing 
 the pretension to be true, he promised to himself, from the joys 
 of the future life, no very special consolation. There was nothing 
 for him, therefore, but, in the way above mentioned, to shake his 
 head, contemplatively squirt a dash of liquid out over his beard, 
 and go the way whence he had come. 
 
 The Sultan who at that time swayed the Egyptian sceptre was 
 the gallant Malek al Aziz Othman, a son of the renowned Saladin. 
 The fame of Sultan Malek rests less upon his qualities in the field 
 or the cabinet, than upon the unexampled numerousness of his 
 offspring. Of princes he had so many, that had every one of them 
 been destined to wear a crown, he might have stocked with them 
 all the kingdoms of the then known world. Seventeen years ago, 
 however, this copious spring had, one hot summer, finally gone 
 dry. Princess Melechsala terminated the long series of the Sul- 
 tanic progeny ; and, in the unanimous opinion of the Court, she 
 was the jewel of the whole. She enjoyed to its full extent the 
 prerogative of youngest children, preference to all the rest ; and 
 this distinction was enhanced by the circumstance, that of all the 
 Sultan's daughters, she alone had remained in life ; while Nature 
 nad adorned her with so many charms, that they enchanted even 
 the paternal eye. For this must in general be conceded to the 
 Oriental Princes, that in the scientific criticism of female beauty 
 they are infinitely more advanced than our Occidentals, who are 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 119 
 
 every now and then betraying their imperfect culture in this point. 2 
 Melechsala was the pride of the Sultan's family ; her brothers 
 themselves were unremitting in attentions to her, and in efforts 
 to outdo each other in affectionate regard. The grave Divan was 
 frequently employed in considering what Prince, by means of her, 
 might be connected, in the bonds of love, with the interest of the 
 Egyptian state. This her royal father made his smallest care ; he 
 was solely and incessantly concerned to grant this darling of his 
 heart her every wish, to, keep her spirit always in a cheerful mood, 
 that no cloud might overcast the serene horizon of her brow. 
 
 The first years of childhood she had passed under the super- 
 intendence of a nurse, who was a Christian, and of Italian extrac- 
 tion. This slave had in early youth been kidnapped from the 
 beach of her native town by a Barbary pirate ; sold in Alexandria ; 
 and, by the course of trade, transmitted from one hand to an- 
 other, till at last she had arrived in the palace of the Sultan, 
 where her hale constitution recommended her to this office, which 
 she filled with the greatest reputation. Though less tuneful than 
 the French court-nurse, who used to give the signal for a general 
 chorus over all Versailles, whenever she uplifted, with melodious 
 throat, her Marlborough s'en va-t-en guerre; yet nature had 
 sufficiently indemnified her by a glibness of tongue, in which she 
 was unrivalled. She knew as many tales and stories as the fair 
 Sheherazade in the Thousand-and-one Nights ; a species of enter- 
 tainment for which it would appear the race of Sultans, in the 
 privacy of their seraglios, have considerable liking. The Prin- 
 cess, at least, found pleasure in it, not for a thousand nights, 
 but for a thousand weeks ; and when once a maiden has attained 
 the age of a thousand weeks, she can no longer be contented with 
 the histories of others, for she sees materials in herself to make 
 a history of her own. In process of time, the gifted waiting- 
 woman changed her nursery-tales with the theory of European 
 manners and customs ; and being herself a warm patriot, and 
 recollecting her native country with delight, she painted the supe- 
 riorities of Italy so vividly, that the fancy of her tender nursling 
 became filled with the subject, and the pleasant impression never 
 afterwards faded from her memory. The more this fair Princess 
 grew in stature, the stronger grew in her the love for foreign 
 decoration ; and her whole demeanour shaped itself according to 
 the customs of Europe rather than of Egypt. 
 
 2 Journal of Fashions, June 1786, 
 
120 
 
 MUSJEUS. 
 
 From youth upwards she had heen a great lover of flowers : 
 part of her occupation had consisted in forming, according to the 
 manner of the Arabs, a constant succession of significant nose- 
 gays and garlands ; with which, in delicate expressiveness, she 
 used to disclose the emotions of her heart. Nay, she at last 
 grew so inventive, that, by combining flowers of various proper- 
 ties, she could compose, and often very happily, whole sentences 
 and texts of the Koran. These she would then submit to her 
 playmates for interpretation, which they seldom failed to hit. 
 Thus one day, for example, she formed with Chalcedonic Lychnis 
 the figure of a heart ; surrounded it with white Roses and Lilies ; 
 fastened under it two mounting Kingsweeds, enclosing a beauti- 
 fully marked Anemone between them ; and her women, when she- 
 showed them the wreath, unanimously read : Innocence of heart 
 is above Birth and Beauty. She frequently presented her slaves 
 with fresh nosegays : and these flower- donations commonly in- 
 cluded praise or blame for their receivers. A garland of Peony- 
 roses censured levity ; the swelling Poppy, dulness and vanity ; 
 a bunch of odoriferous Hyacinths, with drooping bells, was a 
 panegyric for modesty ; the gold Lily, which shuts her leaves at 
 sunset, for prudence ; the Marine Convolvulus rebuked eye-ser- 
 vice ; and the blossoms of the Thorn-Apple, with the Daisy whose 
 roots are poisonous, indicated slander and private envy. 
 
 Father Othman took a secret pleasure in this sprightly play 
 of his daughter's fancy, though he himself had no talent for de- 
 ciphering these witty hieroglyphics, and was frequently obliged 
 to look with the spectacles of his whole Divan before he could 
 pierce their meaning. The exotic taste of the Princess was not 
 hidden from him ; and though, as a plain Mussulman, he could 
 not sympathise with her in it, he endeavoured, as a tender and 
 indulgent parent, rather to maintain than to suppress this favourite 
 tendency of his daughter. He fell upon the project of combining 
 her passion for flowers with her preference for foreign parts, and 
 laying out a garden for her in the taste of the Franks. This idea 
 appeared to him so happy, that he lost not a moment in impart- 
 ing it to his favourite, Shiek Kiamel, and pressing him with the 
 strictest injunctions to realise it as speedily as possible. The 
 Shiek, well knowing that his master's wishes were for him com- 
 mands, which he must obey without reply, presumed not to men- 
 tion the difficulties which he saw in the attempt. He himself 
 understood as little about European gardens as the Sultan ; and 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 121 
 
 in all Cairo there was no mortal known to him, with whom he 
 might find counsel in the business. Therefore he made search 
 among the Christian slaves for a man skilful in gardening ; and 
 lighted exactly on the wrong hand for extricating him from his 
 difficulty. It was no wonder, then, that Shiek Kiamel shook his 
 head contemplatively as he inspected the procedure of this horti- 
 cultural improvement ; for he was apprehensive, that if it delighted 
 the Sultan as little as it did himself, he might be involved in 
 a heavy responsibility, and his favouriteship, at the very least, 
 might take wings and fly away. 
 
 At Court, this project had hitherto been treated as a secret, 
 and the entrance of the place prohibited to every one in the 
 seraglio. The Sultan purposed to surprise his daughter with this 
 present on her birthday ; to conduct her with ceremony into the 
 garden, and make it over to her as her own. This day was now 
 approaching ; and his Highness had a wish to take a view of 
 everything beforehand, to get acquainted with the new arrange- 
 ments ; that he might give himself the happiness of pointing out 
 in person to his daughter the peculiar beauties of her garden. 
 He communicated this to the Shiek, whom the tidings did not 
 much exhilarate ; and who, ^n consequence, composed a short 
 defensive oration, which he fondly hoped might extricate his head 
 from the noose, if the Sultan showed himself dissatisfied with the 
 appearance of his Christian garden. 
 
 " Commander of the Faithful," he purposed to say, " thy nod 
 is the director of my path ; my feet hasten whither thou leadest 
 them, and my hand holds fast what thou committest to it. Thou 
 wishedst a garden after the manner of the Franks : here stands 
 it before thy eyes. These untutored barbarians have no gardens ; 
 but meagre wastes of sand, which, in their own rude climate, 
 where no dates or lemons ripen, and there is neither Kalaf nor 
 Bahobab, 3 they plant with grass and weeds. For the curse of 
 the Prophet has smitten with perpetual barrenness the plains of 
 the Unbeliever, and forbidden him any foretaste of Paradise by 
 the perfume of the Mecca balm-tree, or the enjoyment of spicy 
 fruits." 
 
 The day was far spent, when the Sultan, attended only by the 
 Shiek, stept into the garden, in high expectation of the wonders 
 
 3 Kalaf, a shrub, from whose blossoms a liquor is extracted, resembling our 
 cherry-water, and much used in domestic medicine. Bahobab, a sort of fruit, in 
 great esteem among the Egyptians. 
 
122 
 
 MUSJEUS. 
 
 he was to behold. A wide unobstructed prospect over a part of 
 the city, and the mirror surface of the Nile with its Mushems, 
 Shamdecks and Sheomeons* sailing to and fro ; in the background, 
 the skyward-pointing pyramids, and a chain of blue vapoury moun- 
 tains, met his eye from the upper terrace, no longer shrouded-in 
 by the leafy grove of palms. A refreshing breath of air was also 
 stirring in the place, and fanning him agreeably. Crowds of new 
 objects pressed on him from every side. The garden had in truth 
 got a strange foreign aspect ; and the old park which had been 
 his promenade from youth upwards, and had long since wearied 
 him by its everlasting sameness, was no longer to be recognised. 
 The knowing Kurt had judged wisely, that the charm of novelty 
 would have its influence. The Sultan tried this horticultural 
 metamorphosis not by the principles of a critic, but by its first 
 impression on the senses ; and as these are easily decoyed into 
 contentment by the bait of singularity, the whole seemed good 
 and right to him there as he found it. Even the crooked un- 
 symmetrical walks, overlaid with hard stamped gravel, gave his 
 feet an elastic force, and a light firm tread, accustomed as he was 
 to move on nothing else but Persian carpets, or on the soft green- 
 sward. He could not satisfy himself with wandering up and down 
 the labyrinthic walks ; and he showed himself especially con- 
 tented with the rich variety of wild flowers, which had been fos- 
 tered and cultivated with the greatest care, though they were 
 blossoming of their own accord, outside the wall, with equal 
 luxuriance and in greater multitude. 
 
 At last, having placed himself upon a seat, he turned to the 
 Shiek with a cheerful countenance, and said : " Kiamel, thou hast 
 not deceived my expectation : I well anticipated that thou wouldst 
 transform me this old park into something singular, and diverse 
 from the fashion of the land ; and now I will not hide my satis- 
 faction from thee. Melechsala may accept thy work as a garden 
 after the manner of the Franks." 
 
 The Shiek, when he heard his despot talk in this dialect, 
 marvelled much that all things took so well ; and blessed himself 
 that he had held his tongue, and retained his defensive oration to 
 himself. Perceiving that the Sultan seemed to look upon the 
 whole as his invention, he directly turned the rudder of his talk 
 to the favourable breeze which was rustling his sails, and spoke 
 thus : " Puissant Commander ot the Faithful, be it known to 
 * Various sorts of sailing craft in use there, 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 123 
 
 thee that thy obedient slave took thought with himself day and 
 night how he might produce out of this old date-grove, at thy beck 
 and order, something unexampled, the like of which had nevei 
 been in Egypt before. Doubtless it was an inspiration of the 
 Prophet that suggested the idea of planning it according to the 
 pattern of Paradise ; for I trusted, that by so doing I should not 
 fail to meet the intention of thy Highness." 
 
 The worthy Sultan's conception of the Paradise, which to all 
 appearance by the course of nature he must soon become possessed 
 of, had still been exceedingly confused ; or rather, like the fa- 
 voured of fortune, who take their ease in this lower world, he had 
 never troubled himself much about the other. But whenever any 
 Dervish or Iman, or other spiritual person, mentioned Paradise, 
 some image of his old park used to rise on his fancy ; and the 
 park was not by any means his favourite scene. Now, however, 
 his imagination had been steered on quite a different tack. The 
 new picture of his future happiness filled his soul with joy ; at 
 least he could now suppose that Paradise might not be so dull as 
 he had hitherto figured it : and believing that he now possessed 
 a model of it on the small scale, he formed a high opinion of the 
 garden ; and expressed this forthwith, by directly making Shiek 
 Kiamel a Bey, and presenting him with a splendid caftan. Your 
 thorough-paced courtier belies his nature in no quarter of the 
 world : Kiamel, without the slightest hesitation, modestly appro- 
 priated the reward of a service which his functionary had per- 
 formed ; not uttering a syllable about him to the Sultan, and 
 thinking him rather too liberally rewarded by a few aspers which 
 he added to his daily pay. 
 
 About the time when the Sun enters the Bam, a celestial 
 phenomenon, which in our climates is the watch-word for winter 
 to commence his operation ; but under the milder sky of Egypt 
 announces the finest season of the year, the Flower of the World 
 stept forth into the garden which had been prepared for her, and 
 found it altogether to her foreign taste. She herself was, in 
 truth, its greatest ornament : any scene where she had wandered, 
 had it been a desert in Arabia the Stony, or a Greenland ice-field, 
 would, in the eyes of a gallant person, have been changed into 
 Elysium at her appearance. The wilderness of flowers, which 
 chance had mingled in interminable rows, gave equal occupation 
 to her eye and her spirit : the disorder itself she assimilated, by 
 her sprightly allegories, to methodical arrangement. 
 
124 
 
 MUSJEUS. 
 
 According to the custom of the country, every time she en« 
 tered the garden, all specimens of the male sex, planters, diggers, 
 water-carriers, were expelled by her guard of Eunuchs. The 
 Grace for whom our artist worked was thus hidden from his eyes, 
 much as he could have wished for once to behold this Flower of 
 the World, which had so long been a riddle in his botany. But 
 as the Princess used to overstep the fashions of the East in many 
 points, so by degrees, while she grew to like the garden more 
 and more, and to pay it several visits daily, she began to feel 
 obstructed and annoyed by the attendance of her guard sallying 
 out before her in solemn parade, as if the Sultan had been riding 
 to Mosque in the Bairam festival. She frequently appeared alone, 
 or leaning on the arm of some favourite waiting-woman; always, 
 however, with a thin veil over her face, and a little rush basket 
 in her hand : she wandered up and down the walks, plucking 
 flowers, which, according to custom, she arranged into emblems 
 of her thoughts, and distributed among her people. 
 
 One morning, before the hot season of the day, while the dew- 
 drops were still reflecting all the colours of the rainbow from the 
 grass, she visited her Tempe to enjoy the cool morning air, just 
 as her gardener was employed in lifting from the ground some 
 faded plants, and replacing them by others newly blown, which 
 he was carefully transporting in flower-pots, and then cunningly 
 inserting in the soil with all their appurtenances, as if by a magic 
 vegetation they had started from the bosom of the earth in a sin- 
 gle night. The Princess noticed with pleasure this pretty decep- 
 tion of the senses, and having now found out the secret of the 
 flowers which she plucked away being daily succeeded by fresh 
 ones, so that there was never any want, she thought of turning 
 her discovery to advantage, and instructing the gardener how and 
 when to arrange them, and make them blossom. On raising his 
 eyes, the Count beheld this female Angel, whom he took for the 
 possessor of the garden, for she was encircled with celestial charms 
 as with a halo. He was so surprised by this appearance that he 
 dropped a flower-pot from his hands, forgetful of the precious 
 colocassia contained in it, which ended its tender life as tragically 
 as the Sieur Pilastre de Rosier, though both only fell into the 
 bosom of their mother Earth. 
 
 The Count stood petrified like a statue without life or motion ; 
 one might have broken off his nose, as the Turks do with stone 
 statues in temples and gardens, and never have aroused him. 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 125 
 
 But the sweet voice of the Princess, who opened her purple lips, 
 recalled him to his senses. "Christian," said she, "be not 
 afraid ! It is my blame that thou art here beside me ; go for- 
 ward with thy work, and order thy flowers as I shall bid thee." 
 — " Glorious Flower of the World !" replied the gardener, " in 
 whose splendour all the colours of this blossomy creation wax pale, 
 thou reignest here as in thy firmament, like the Star-queen on the 
 battlements of Heaven. Let thy nod enliven the hand of the 
 happiest among thy slaves, who kisses his fetters, so thou think 
 him worthy to perform thy commands." The Princess had not 
 expected that a slave would open his mouth to her, still less pay 
 her compliments, and her eyes had been directed rather to the 
 flowers than the planter. She now deigned to cast a glance on 
 him, and was astonished to behold a man of the most noble form, 
 surpassing in masculine grace all that she had ever seen or 
 dreamed of. 
 
 Count Ernst of Gleichen had been celebrated for his manly 
 beauty over all Germany. At the tournament of Wiirzburg, he 
 had been the hero of the dames. When he raised his visor to 
 take air, the running of the boldest spearman was lost for every 
 female eye ; all looked on him alone ; and when he closed his 
 helmet to begin a course, the chastest bosom heaved higher, and 
 all hearts beat anxious sympathy with the lordly Knight. The 
 partial hand of the Duke of Bavaria's love-sick niece had crowned 
 him with a guerdon, which the young man blushed to receive. 
 His seven years' durance in the Grated Tower, had indeed paled 
 his blooming cheeks, relaxed his firm-set limbs, and dulled the 
 fire of his eyes ; but the enjoyment of the free atmosphere, and 
 Labour, the playmate of Health, had now made good the loss, 
 with interest. He was flourishing like a laurel, which has pined 
 throughout the long winter in the greenhouse, and at the return 
 of spring sends forth new leaves, and gets a fair verdant crown. 
 
 With her predilection for all foreign things, the Princess could 
 not help contemplating with satisfaction the attractive figure of 
 the stranger ; and it never struck her that the sight of an Endy- 
 mion may have quite another influence on a maiden's heart, than 
 the creation of a milliner, set up for show in her booth. With kind 
 gentle voice, she gave her handsome gardener orders how to man- 
 age the arrangement of his flowers ; often asked his own advice 
 respecting it, and talked with him so long as any horticultural 
 idea was in her head. She left him at length, but scarcely was 
 
126 
 
 MUS^KTJS. 
 
 she gone five paces when she turned to give him fresh commis- 
 sions ; and as she took a promenade along the serpentine-walk, 
 she called him again to her, and put new questions to him, and 
 proposed new improvements before she went away. As the day 
 began to cool, she again felt the want of fresh air, and scarcely 
 had the sun returned to gild the waxing Nile, when a wish to see 
 the awakening flowers unfold their blossoms, brought her back 
 into the garden. Day after day her love of fresh air and awaken- 
 ing flowers increased ; and in these visits she never failed to go 
 directly to the place where her florist was labouring, and give him 
 new orders, which he strove punctually and speedily to execute. 
 
 One day the Bostangi, 5 when she came to see him, was not 
 to be found ; she wandered up and down the intertwisted walks, 
 regardless of the flowers that were blooming around her, and, by 
 the high tints of their colours and the balmy air of their perfumes, 
 as if striving with each other to attract her attention ; she ex- 
 pected him behind every bush, searched every branching plant 
 that might conceal him, fancied she should find him in the grotto, 
 and, on his failing to appear, made a pilgrimage to all the groves 
 in the garden, hoping to surprise him somewhere asleep, and en- 
 joying the embarrassment which he would feel when she awoke 
 him ; but the head-gardener nowhere met her eye. By chance 
 she came upon the stoical Yiet, the Count's Groom, a dull piece 
 of mechanism, whom his master had been able to make nothing 
 out of but a drawer of water. On perceiving her, he wheeled 
 with his water-cans to the left-about, that he might not meet her, 
 but she called him to her, and asked, Where the Bostangi was ? 
 " Where else," said he, in his sturdy way, "but in the hands of 
 the Jewish quack- salver, who will sweat the soul from his body in 
 a trice ?" These tidings cut the lovely Princess to the heart, for 
 she had never dreamed that it was sickness which prevented her 
 Bostangi from appearing at his post. She immediately returned 
 to her palace, where her women saw, with consternation, that the 
 serene brow of their mistress was overcast, as when the moist 
 breath of the south wind has dimmed the mirror of the sky, and 
 the hovering vapours have collected into clouds. In retiring to 
 the Seraglio, she had plucked a variety of flowers, but all were of 
 a mournful character, and bound with cypress and rosemary, in- 
 dicating clearly enough the sadness of her mood. She did the 
 same for several days, which brought her council of women into 
 • Head-gardener. 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 127 
 
 much perplexity, and many deep debates about the cause of their 
 fair Melechsala's grief; but withal, as in female consultations too 
 often happens, they arrived at no conclusion, as in calling for the 
 vote there was such a dissonance of opinions, that no harmonious 
 note could be discovered in them. The truth was, Count Ernst's 
 too zealous efforts to anticipate every nod of the Princess, and 
 realise whatever she expressed the faintest hint of, had so acted 
 on a frame unused to labour, that his health suffered under it, 
 and he was seized with a fever. Yet the Jewish pupil of Galen, 
 or rather the Count's fine constitution, mastered the disease, and 
 in a few days he was able to resume his tasks. The instant the 
 Princess noticed him, the clouds fled away from her brow ; and 
 her female senate, to whom her melancholy humour had remained 
 an inexplicable riddle, now unanimously voted that some flower- 
 plant, of whose progress she had been in doubt, had now taken 
 root and begun to thrive, — a conclusion not inaccurate, if taken 
 allegorically. 
 
 Princess Melechsala was still as innocent in heart as she had 
 come from the hands of Nature. She had never got the smallest 
 warning or foreboding of the rogueries, which Amor is wont to 
 play on inexperienced beauties. Hitherto, on the whole, there 
 has been a want of Hints for Princesses and Maidens in regard 
 to love ; though a satisfactory theory of that kind might do infi- 
 nitely greater service to the world than any Hints for the Instruc- 
 tors of Princes ; 6 a class of persons who regard no hint, however 
 broad, nay sometimes take it ill ; whereas maidens never fail to 
 notice every hint, and pay heed to it, their perception being finer, 
 and a secret hint precisely their affair. The Princess was still 
 in the first novitiate of love, and had not the slightest knowledge 
 of its mysteries. She therefore yielded wholly to her feelings, 
 without scrupling in the least, or ever calling a Divan of the 
 three confidantes of her heart, Reason, Prudence and Reflection, 
 to deliberate on the business. Had she done so, doubtless the 
 concern she felt in the circumstances of the Rostangi would have 
 indicated to her that the germ of an unknown passion was already 
 vegetating strongly in her heart, and Reason and Reflection would 
 have whispered to her that this passion was love. Whether in 
 the Count's heart there was any similar process going on in secret, 
 we have no diplomatic evidence before us : his over- anxious zeal 
 
 6 Allusion to a small Treatise, which, about the time Musseus wrote his story, 
 had appeared under that title. — Wikland. 
 
128 
 
 MUS^EUS. 
 
 to execute the commands of his mistress might excite some such 
 conjecture ; and if so, a bunch of Lovage with a withered stalk 
 of Honesty, tied up together, might have befitted him as an 
 allegorical nosegay. Perhaps, however, it was nothing but an 
 innocent chivalrous feeling which occasioned this distinguished 
 alacrity; for in those times it was the most inviolable law of 
 Knighthood, that its professors should in all things rigorously 
 conform to the injunctions of the fair. 
 
 No day now passed without the good Melechsala's holding 
 trustful conversation with her Bostangi. The soft tone of her 
 voice delighted his ear, and every one of her expressions seemed 
 to say something flattering to him. Had he been endowed with 
 the self-confidence of a court lord, he would have turned so fair 
 a situation to profit for making farther advances : but he con- 
 stantly restrained himself within the bounds of modesty. And 
 as the Princess was entirely inexperienced in the science of co- 
 quetry, and knew not how to set about encouraging the timid 
 shepherd to the stealing of her heart, the whole intrigue revolved 
 upon the axis of mutual good-will ; and might undoubtedly have 
 long continued so revolving, had not Chance, which we all know 
 commonly officiates as primum mobile in every change of things, 
 ere long given the scene another form. 
 
 About sunset, one very beautiful day, the Princess visited the 
 garden ; her soul was as bright as the horizon ; she talked de- 
 lightfully with her Bostangi about many indifferent matters, for 
 the mere purpose of speaking to him ; and after he had filled her 
 flower-basket, she seated herself in a grove, and bound up a nose- 
 gay, with which she presented him. The Count, as a mark of 
 reverence to his fair mistress, fastened it, with a look of surprise 
 and delight, to the breast of his waistcoat, without ever dream- 
 ing that the flowers might have a secret import ; for these hiero- 
 glyphics were hidden from his eyes, as from the eyes of a dis- 
 cerning public the secret wheel -work of the famous Wooden 
 Chess-player. And as the Princess did not afterwards expound 
 that secret import, it has withered away with the blossoms, and 
 been lost to the knowledge of posterity. Meanwhile she herself 
 supposed that the language of flowers must be as plain to all 
 mortals as their mother-tongue ; she never doubted, therefore, 
 but her favourite had understood the whole quite right ; and as 
 he looked at her with such an air of reverence when he took 
 the nosegay, she accepted his gestures as expressions of modest 
 
1 
 
 MELECHSALA. 129 
 
 thanks for the praise of his activity and zeal, which, in all pro- 
 bability, the flowers had been meant to convey. She now took 
 a thought of putting his inventiveness to proof in her turn, and 
 trying whether in this flowery dialect of thanks he could pay a 
 pretty compliment ; or, in a word, translate the present aspect 
 of his countenance, which betrayed the feelings of his heart, into 
 flower- writing ; and accordingly, she asked him for a nosegay of 
 his composition. The Count, affected by such a proof of conde- 
 scending goodness, darted to the end of the garden, into a remote 
 greenhouse, where he had established his flower-depot, and out 
 of which he was in the habit of transferring his plants to the soil 
 as they came into blossom, without stirring them from their pots. 
 There chanced to be an aromatic plant just then in bloom, a 
 flower named Miishirumi 7 by the Arabs, and which hitherto had 
 not appeared in the garden. With this novelty Count Ernst im- 
 agined he might give a little harmless pleasure to his fair florist ; 
 and accordingly, for want of a salver, having put a broad fig-leaf 
 under it, he held it to her on his knees, with a look expressive 
 of humility, yet claiming a little merit ; for he thought to earn 
 a word of praise by it. But, with the utmost consternation, he 
 perceived that the Princess turned away her face, and, so far as 
 he could notice through the veil, cast down her eyes as if ashamed, 
 and looked on the ground, without uttering a word. She hesi- 
 tated, and seemed embarrassed in accepting it ; not deigning to 
 cast a look on it, but laying it beside her on the seat. Her 
 gay humour had departed; she assumed a majestic attitude, 
 announcing haughty earnestness ; and after a few moments left 
 the grove, without taking any farther notice of her favourite, not, 
 however, leaving her Mushirumi behind her, but carefully con- 
 cealing it under her veil. 
 
 The Count was thunderstruck at this enigmatical catastrophe ; 
 he could not for his life understand the meaning of this strange 
 behaviour, and continued sitting on his knees, in the position of 
 a man doing penance, for some time after his Princess had left 
 the place. It grieved him to the heart that he should have dis- 
 pleased and alienated this divinity, whom, for her condescending 
 kindness, he venerated as a Saint of Heaven. When his first con- 
 sternation had subsided, he slunk home to his dwelling, timid and 
 rueful, like a man conscious of some heavy crime. The mettled 
 Kurt had supper on the table ; but his master would not bite P 
 7 Hyacinthus Ma^ari. 
 
 VOL. III. K 
 
130 
 
 MUSiEUS, 
 
 and kept forking about in the plate, without carrying a morsel tn 
 his lips. By this the trusty Dapifer perceived that all was not 
 right with the Count ; wherefore he vanished speedily from the 
 room, and uncorked a flask of Chian wine ; which Grecian care- 
 dispeller did not fail in its effect. The Count became communi- 
 cative, and disclosed to his faithful Squire the adventure in the 
 garden. Their speculations on it were protracted to a late hour, 
 without affording any tenable hypothesis for the displeasure of 
 the Princess ; and as with all their pondering nothing could be 
 discovered, master and servant betook them to repose. The lat- 
 ter found it without difficulty ; the former sought it in vain, and 
 watched throughout the painful night, till the dawn recalled him 
 to his employments. 
 
 At the hour when Melechsala used to visit him, the Count kept 
 an eager eye on the entrance, but the door of the Seraglio did not 
 open. He waited the second day; then the third: the door of the 
 Seraglio was as if walled up within. Had not the Count of 
 Gleichen been a sheer idiot in flower-language, he would readily 
 have found the key to this surprising behaviour of the Princess. By 
 presenting the flower to her, he had, in fact, without knowing a 
 syllable of the matter, made a formal declaration of love, and that 
 in no Platonic sense. For when an Arab lover, by some trusty 
 hand, privily transmits a Mushirumi flower to his mistress, he 
 gives her credit for penetration enough to discover the only rhyme 
 which exists in the Arabian language for the word. This rhyme 
 is Ydskerumi, which, delicately rendered, means reward of love. 8 
 To this invention it must be conceded, that there cannot be a 
 more compendious method of proceeding in the business than this 
 of the Mushirumi, which might well deserve the imitation of our 
 Western lovers. The whole insipid scribbling of Billets-doux, which 
 often cost their authors so much toil and brain-beating, often 
 when they come into the wrong hand are pitilessly mangled by 
 hard-hearted jesters, often by the fair receivers themselves mis- 
 treated or falsely interpreted, might by this means be dispensed 
 with. It need not be objected that the Mushirumi, or Muscadine- 
 hyacinth, flowers but rarely and for a short time in our climates ; 
 because an imitation of it might be made by our Parisian or native 
 gumflower-makers, to supply the wants of lovers at all seasons of 
 the year ; and an inland trade in this domestic manufacture might 
 easily afford better profit than our present speculations with Ame- 
 8 Hasselquist's Travels in Palestine. 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 131 
 
 rica. Nor would a Chevalier in Europe have to dread that the 
 presenting of so eloquent a flower might be charged upon him as 
 a capital offence, for which his life might have to answer, as in 
 the East could very simply happen. Had not Princess Melechsala 
 been so kind and soft a soul, or had not omnipotent Love sub- 
 dued the pride of the Sultan's daughter, the Count, for this flower- 
 gallantry, innocently as on his part it was intended, must have 
 paid with his head. But the Princess was in the main so little 
 indignant at receiving this expressive flower, that on the contrary 
 the fancied proffer struck a chord in her heart, which had long 
 been vibrating before, and drew from it a melodious tone. Yet her 
 virgin modesty was hard put to proof, when her favourite, as she 
 supposed, presumed to entreat of her the reward of love. It was 
 on this account that she had turned away her face at his proposal. 
 A purple blush, which the veil had hidden from the Count, over- 
 spread her tender cheeks, her snow-white bosom heaved, and her 
 heart beat higher beneath it. Bashfulness and tenderness were 
 fighting a fierce battle within it, and her embarrassment was such 
 that she could not utter a word. For a time she had been in 
 doubt what to do with the perplexing Mushirumi ; to disdain it, 
 was to rob her lover of all hope ; to accept it, was the promise that 
 his wishes should be granted. The balance of resolution wavered, 
 now to this side, now to that, till at length love decided; she took 
 the flower with her, and this at least secured the Count's head, 
 in the first place. But in her solitary chamber, there doubtless 
 ensued much deep deliberation about the consequences which this 
 step might produce ; and the situation of the Princess was the 
 more difficult, that in her ignorance of the concerns of the heart, 
 she knew not how to act of herself ; and durst not risk disclosing 
 the affair to any other, if she would not leave the life of her be- 
 loved and her own fate at the caprice of a third party. 
 
 It is easier to watch a goddess at the bath than to penetrate 
 the secrets of an Oriental Princess in the bedchamber of the 
 Seraglio. It is therefore difficult for the historian to determine 
 whether Melechsala left the Mushirumi which she had accepted 
 of to wither on her dressing-table ; or put it in fresh water, to 
 preserve it for the solace of her eyes as long as possible. In like 
 manner, it is difficult to discover whether this fair Princess spent 
 the night asleep, with gay dreams dancing round her, or awake, a 
 victim to the wasting cares of love. The latter is more probable, 
 since early in the morning there arose great dole and lamentation 
 
132 
 
 MUSJBUS. 
 
 in the Palace, as the Princess made her appearance with pale 
 cheeks and languid eyes ; so that her female council dreaded the 
 approach of grievous sickness. The Court Physician was called 
 in ; the same bearded Hebrew who had floated off the Count's 
 fever in his sweat-bath ; he was now to examine the pulse of a 
 more delicate patient. According to the custom of the country, 
 she was lying on a sofa, with a large screen in front of it, pro- 
 vided with a little opening, through which she stretched her beau- 
 tifully turned arm, twice and three times wrapt with fine muslin, 
 to protect it from the profane glance of a masculine eye. " God 
 help me!" whispered the Doctor into the chief waiting-woman's 
 ear : " Things have a bad look with her Highness ; the pulse is 
 quivering like a mouse-tail." At the same time, with practical 
 policy, he shook his head dubitatingly, as cunning doctors are 
 wont ; ordered abundance of Kalaf and other cordials, and with a 
 shrug of the shoulders predicted a dangerous fever. 
 
 Nevertheless, these alarming symptoms, which the medical 
 gentleman considered as so many heralds announcing the ap- 
 proach of a malignant distemper, appeared to be nothing more 
 than the consequences of a bad night' s-rest ; for the patient hav- 
 ing taken her siesta about noon, found herself, to the Israelite's 
 astonishment, out of danger in the evening ; needed no more 
 drugs, and by the orders of her iEsculapius was required merely 
 to keep quiet for a day or two. This space she employed in 
 maturely deliberating her intrigue, and devising ways and means 
 for fulfilling the demands of the Mushirumi. She was diligently 
 occupied, inventing, proving, choosing and rejecting. One hour 
 fancy smoothed away the most impassable mountains ; and the 
 next, she saw nothing but clefts and abysses, from the brink of 
 which she shuddered back, and over which the boldest imagina- 
 tion could not build a bridge. Yet on all these rocks of offence 
 she grounded the firm resolution to obey the feelings of her heart, 
 come what come might ; a piece of heroism, not unusual with 
 Mother Eve's daughters ; which in the mean time they often pay 
 for with the happiness and contentment of their lives. 
 
 The bolted gate of the Seraglio at last went up, and the fair 
 Melechsala again passed through it into the garden, like the gay 
 Sun through the portals of the East. The Count observed her 
 entrance from behind a grove of ivy ; and there began a knocking 
 in his heart as in a mill ; a thumping and hammering as if he 
 had just run a race. Was it joy, was it fear, or anxious expect- 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 133 
 
 ing of what this visit would announce to him — forgiveness or 
 disfavour ? Who can unfold so accurately the heart of man, as 
 to trace the origin and cause of every start and throb in this 
 irritable muscle ? In short, Count Ernst did feel considerable 
 palpitations of the heart, so soon as he descried the Princess 
 from afar ; but of their Whence or Why, he could give his own 
 mind no account. She very soon dismissed her suite ; and from 
 all the circumstances it was clear that poetical anthology was not 
 her business in the present case. She bent her course to the 
 grove; and as the Count was not playing hide-and-seek with 
 much adroitness or zeal, she found him with great ease. While 
 she was still at some distance, he fell upon his knees with mute 
 eloquence before her, not venturing to raise his eyes, and looked 
 as ruefully as a delinquent when the judge is ready to pass sent- 
 ence on him. The Princess, however, with a soft voice and 
 friendly gesture, said to him: "Bostangi, rise and follow me 
 into this grove." Bostangi obeyed in silence; and she having 
 taken her seat, spoke thus : " The will of the Prophet be done ! 
 I have called on him three days and three nights long, to direct 
 me by a sign if my conduct were wavering between error and 
 folly. He is silent ; and approves the purpose of the Kingdove 
 to free the captive Linnet from the chain with which he toil- 
 somely draws water, and to nestle by his side. The Daughter of 
 the Sultan has not disdained the Mushirumi from thy fettered 
 hand. My lot is cast ! Loiter not in seeking the Iman, that 
 he lead thee to the Mosque, and confer on thee the Seal of the 
 Faithful. Then will my Father, at my request, cause thee to 
 grow as the Nile-stream, when it oversteps its narrow banks, and 
 pours itself into the valley. And when thou art governing a 
 Province as its Bey, thou mayest confidently raise thy eyes to 
 the throne : the Sultan will not reject the son-in-law whom the 
 Prophet has appointed for his daughter." 
 
 Like the conjuration of some potent Fairy, this address again 
 transformed the Count into the image of a stone statue ; he gazed 
 at the Princess without life or motion ; his cheeks grew pale, and 
 his tongue was chained. On the whole, he had caught the mean- 
 ing of the speech : but how he was to reach the unexpected 
 honour of becoming the Sultan of Egypt's son-in-law was an 
 unfathomable mystery. In this predicament, he certainly, for an 
 accepted wooer, did not make the most imposing figure in the 
 world ; but awakening love, like the rising sun, coats everything 
 
134 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 with gold. The Princess took his dumb astonishment for excess 
 of rapture, and attributed his visible perplexity of spirit to the 
 overwhelming feeling of his unexpected success. Yet in her heart 
 there arose some virgin scruples lest she might have gone too fast 
 to work with the ultimatum of the courtship, and outrun the ex- 
 pectations of her lover ; therefore she again addressed him, and 
 said: "Thou art silent, Bostangi? Let it not surprise thee 
 that the perfume of thy Mushirumi breathes back on thee the 
 odour of my feelings ; in the curtain of deceit my heart has never 
 been shrouded. Ought I by wavering hope to increase the toil 
 of the steep path, which thy foot must climb before the bridal 
 chamber can be opened to thee ?" 
 
 During this speech the Count had found time to recover his 
 senses ; he roused himself, like a warrior from sleep when the 
 alarm is sounded in the camp. "Resplendent Flower of the 
 East," said he, "how shall the tiny herb that grows among the 
 thorns presume to blossom under thy shadow ? Would not the 
 watchful hand of the gardener pluck it out as an unseemly weed, 
 and cast it forth, to be trodden under foot on the highway, or 
 withered in the scorching sun ? If a breath of air stir up the 
 dust, that it soil thy royal diadem, are not a hundred hands in 
 instant employment wiping it away ? How should a slave desire 
 the precious fruit, which ripens in the garden of the Sultan for 
 the palate of Princes ? At thy command I sought a pleasant 
 flower for thee, and found the Mushirumi, the name of which 
 was as unknown to me, as its secret import still is. Think not 
 that I meant aught with it but to obey thee." 
 
 This response distorted the fair plan of the Princess very 
 considerably. She had not expected that it could be possible for 
 a European not to combine with the Mushirumi, when presented 
 to a lady, the same thought which the two other quarters of the 
 world unite with it. The error was now clear as day ; but love, 
 which had once for all taken root in her heart, now dextrously 
 winded and turned the matter ; as a seamstress does a piece of 
 work which she has cut wrong, till at last she makes ends meet 
 notwithstanding. The Princess concealed her embarrassment by 
 the playing of her fair hands with the hem of her veil ; and, after 
 a few moments' silence, she said, with gentle gracefulness: "Thy 
 modesty resembles the night-violet, which covets not the glitter 
 of the sun, yet is loved for its aromatic odour. A happy chance 
 has been the interpreter of thy heart, and elicited the feelings of 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 135 
 
 mine. They are no longer hid from thee. Follow the doctrine 
 of the Prophet, and thou art on the way to gain thy wish." 
 
 The Count now began to perceive the connection of the matter 
 more and more distinctly ; the darkness vanished from his mind 
 by degrees, as the shades of night before the dawn. Here, then, 
 the Tempter, whom, in the durance of the Grated Tower, he had 
 expected under the mask of a horned satyr, or a black shrivelled 
 gnome, appeared to him in the figure of winged Cupid, and was 
 employing all his treacherous arts, persuading him to deny his 
 faith, to forsake his tender spouse, and forget the pledges of her 
 chaste love. " It stands in thy power," said he, " to change thy 
 iron fetters with the kind ties of love. The first beauty in the 
 world is smiling on thee, and with her the enjoyment of all earthly 
 happiness ! A flame, pure as the fire of Vesta, burns for thee in 
 her bosom, and would waste her life, should folly and caprice 
 overcloud thy soul to the refusing her favour. Conceal thy faith 
 a little while under the turban ; Father Gregory has water enough 
 in his absolution - cistern to wash thee clean from such a sin. 
 Who knows but thou mayest earn the merit of saving the pure 
 maiden's soul, and leading it to the Heaven for which it was 
 intended?" To this deceitful oration the Count would willingly 
 have listened longer, had not his good Angel twitched him by 
 the ear, and warned him to give no farther heed to the voice of 
 temptation. So he thought that he must not speak with flesh 
 and blood any longer, but by one bold effort gain the victory over 
 himself. The word died away more than once in his mouth; but 
 at last he took heart, and said : ' 1 The longing of the wanderer, 
 astray in the Libyan wilderness, to cool his parched lips in the 
 fountains of the Nile, but aggravates the torments of his thirsty 
 heart, when he must still languish in the torrid waste. Therefore 
 think not, 0 best and gentlest of thy sex, that such a wish has 
 awakened within me, which, like a gnawing worm, would consume 
 my heart, since I could not nourish it with hope. Know that, in 
 my home, I am already joined by the indissoluble tie of marriage 
 to a virtuous wife, and her three tender children lisp then father's 
 name. How could a heart, torn asunder by sadness and longing, 
 aspire to the Pearl of Beauty, and offer her a divided love ?" 
 
 This explanation was distinct ; and the Count believed that, 
 as it were by one stroke, and in the spirit of true knighthood, 
 he had ended this strife of love. He conceived that the Princess 
 would now see her over-hasty error, and renounce her plan. But 
 
136 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 here he was exceedingly mistaken. The Princess could not bring 
 herself to think that the Count, a young blooming man, could be 
 without eyes for her ; she knew that she was lovely ; and this 
 frank exposition of the state of his heart made no impression on 
 her whatever. According to the fashion of her country, she had 
 no thought of appropriating to herself the sole possession of it ; 
 for, in the parabolic sport of the Seraglio, she had often heard, 
 that man's love is like a thread of silk, which may be split and 
 parted, so that every filament shall still remain a whole. In 
 truth, a sensible similitude ; which the wit of our Occidental 
 ladies has never yet lighted on ! Her father's Harem had also, 
 from her earliest years, set before her numerous instances of 
 sociality in love ; the favourites of the Sultan lived there with 
 one another in the kindest unity. 
 
 " Thou namest me the Flower of the World," replied the 
 Princess; " but behold, in this garden there are many flowers 
 blossoming beside me, to delight eye and heart by their variety 
 of loveliness ; nor do I forbid thee to partake in this enjoyment 
 along with me. Should I require of thee, in thy own garden, to 
 plant but a single flower, with the constant sight of which thy 
 eye would grow weary ? Thy wife shall be sharer of the happiness 
 I am providing for thee ; thou shalt bring her into thy Harem ; 
 to me she shall be welcome ; for thy sake she shall become my 
 dearest companion, and for thy sake she will love me in return. 
 Her little children also shall be mine ; I will give them shade, 
 that they bud pleasantly, and take root in this foreign soil." 
 
 The doctrine of Toleration in Love has, in our enlightened 
 century, made far slower progress than that of Toleration in Ke- 
 ligion ; otherwise this declaration of the Princess could not seem 
 to my fair readers so repulsive, as in all probability it will. But 
 Melechsala was an Oriental ; and under that mild sky, Megaera 
 Jealousy has far less influence on the lovelier half of the species 
 than on the stronger; whom, in return, she does indeed rule 
 with an iron sceptre. 
 
 Count Ernst was affected by this meek way of thinking ; and 
 who knows what he might have resolved on, could he have de- 
 pended on an equal liberality of sentiment from his Ottilia at 
 home, and contrived in any way to overleap the other stone of 
 stumbling which fronted him, — the renunciation of his creed ? 
 He by no means hid this latter difficulty from the goddess who 
 was courting him so frankly ; and, easy as it had been for her to 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 137 
 
 remove all previous obstacles, the present was beyond her skill. 
 The confidential session was adjourned, without any settlement 
 of this contested point. When the conference broke up, the pro- 
 posals stood as in a frontier conference between two neighbouring 
 states, where neither party will relinquish his rights, and the ad- 
 justment of the matter is postponed to another term, while the 
 commissioners in the interim again live in peace with each other, 
 and enjoy good cheer together. 
 
 In the secret conclave of the Count, the mettled Kurt, as we 
 know, had a seat and vote ; his master opened to him in the 
 evening the whole progress of his adventure, for he was much 
 disquieted ; and it is very possible that some spark of love may 
 have sputtered over from the heart of the Princess into his, too 
 keen for the ashes of his lawful fire to quench. An absence of 
 seven years, the relinquished hope of ever being re-united with 
 the first beloved, and the offered opportunity of occupying the 
 heart as it desires, are three critical circumstances, which, in so 
 active a substance as love, may easily produce a fermentation 
 that shall quite change its nature. The sagacious Squire pricked 
 up his ears at hearing of these interesting events ; and, as if the 
 narrow passage of the auditory nerves had not been sufficient to 
 convey the tidings fast enough into his brain, he likewise opened 
 the wide doorway of his mouth, and both heard and tasted the 
 unexpected news with great avidity. After maturely weighing 
 everything, his vote ran thus : To lay hold of the seeming hope 
 of release with both hands, and realise the Princess's plan; mean- 
 while, to do nothing either for it or against it, and leave the issue 
 to Heaven. " You are blotted out from the book of the living," 
 said he, "in your native land; from the abyss of slavery there 
 is no deliverance, if you do not hitch yourself up by the rope of 
 love. Your spouse, good lady, will never return to your em- 
 braces. If, in seven years, sorrow for your loss has not over- 
 powered her and cut her off, Time has overpowered her sorrow, 
 and she is happy by the side of another. But, to renounce your 
 religion ! That is a hard nut, in good sooth ; too hard for you 
 to crack. Yet there are means for this, too. In no country on 
 Earth is it the custom for the wife to teach the husband what 
 road to take for Heaven ; no, she follows his steps, and is led 
 and guided by him as the cloud by the wind ; looks neither to 
 the right hand nor to the left, nor behind her, like Lot's wife, 
 who was changed into a pillar of salt : for where the husband 
 
138 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 arrives, there is her abode. I have a wife at home, too ; but 
 think you, if I were stuck in Purgatory, she would hesitate to 
 follow me, and waft fresh air upon my poor soul with her fan ? 
 So, depend on it, the Princess will renounce her' false Prophet. 
 If she love you truly, she will, to a certainty, be glad to change 
 her Paradise for ours." 
 
 The mettled Kurt added much farther speaking to persuade 
 his master that he ought not to resist this royal passion, but to 
 forget all other ties, and free himself from his captivity. It did 
 not strike him, that by his confidence in the affection of his wife, 
 he had recalled to his master's memory the affection of his 
 own amiable spouse ; a remembrance which it was his object to 
 abolish. The heart of the Count felt crushed as in a press ; he 
 rolled to this side and that on his bed ; and his thoughts and 
 purposes ran athwart each other in the strangest perplexity, till, 
 towards morning, wearied out by this internal tumult, he fell into 
 a dead sleep. He dreamed that his fairest front-tooth had dropped 
 out, at which he felt great grief and heaviness of heart ; but on 
 looking at the gap in the mirror, to see whether it deformed him 
 much, a fresh tooth had grown forth in its place, fair and white 
 as the rest, and the loss could not be observed. So soon as he 
 awoke, he felt a wish to have his dream interpreted. The met- 
 tled Kurt soon hunted out a prophetic Gipsy, who by trade read 
 fortunes from the hand and brow, and also had the talent of 
 explaining dreams. The Count related his to her in all its cir- 
 cumstances ; and the dingy wrinkled Pythoness, after meditating 
 long upon it, opened her puckered mouth, and said : "What was 
 dearest to thee death has taken away, but fate will soon supply 
 thy loss." 
 
 Now, then, it was plain that the sage Squire's suppositions 
 had been no idle fancies, but that the good Ottilia, from sorrow 
 at the loss of her beloved husband, had gone down to the grave. 
 The afflicted widower, who as little doubted of this tragic circum- 
 stance as if it had been notified to him on black-edged paper with 
 seal and signature, felt all that a man who values the integrity of 
 his jaw must feel when he loses a tooth, which bountiful Nature 
 is about to replace by another ; and comforted himself under this 
 dispensation with the well-known balm of widowers : "It is the 
 will of God; I must submit to it !" And now, holding himself 
 free and disengaged, he bent all his sails, hoisted his flags and 
 streamers, and steered directly for the haven of happy love. At 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 139 
 
 - the next interview, ho thought the Princess lovelier than ever ; 
 his looks languished towards her, and her slender form enchanted 
 his eye, and her light soft gait was like the gait of a goddess, 
 though she actually moved the one foot past the other, in mortal 
 wise, and did not, in the style of goddesses, come hovering along 
 the variegated sand-walk with unbent limbs. "Bostangi," said 
 she, with melodious voice, "hast thou spoken to the Iman ?" 
 The Count was silent for a moment ; he cast down his beaming 
 eyes, laid his hand submissively on his breast, and sank on his 
 knee before her. In this humble attitude, he answered resolutely: 
 " Exalted daughter of the Sultan ! my life is at thy nod, but not 
 my faith. The former I will joyfully offer up to thee ; but leave 
 me the latter, which is so interwoven with my soul, that only 
 death can part them." From this, it was apparent to the Princess 
 that her fine enterprise was verging towards shipwreck ; where- 
 fore she adopted a heroical expedient, undoubtedly of far more 
 certain effect than our animal magnetism, with all its renowned 
 virtues : she unveiled her face. There stood she, in the full 
 radiance of beauty, like the Sun when he first raised his head 
 from Chaos to hurl his rays over the gloomy Earth. Soft blushes 
 overspread her cheeks, and higher purple glowed upon her lips ; 
 two beautifully-curved arches, on which love was sporting like 
 the many-coloured Iris on the rainbow, shaded her spirit-speak- 
 ing eyes ; and two golden tresses kissed each other on her lily 
 breast. The Count was astonished and speechless ; the Princess 
 addressed him, and said : 
 
 ' ' See, Bostangi, whether this form pleases thy eyes, and 
 whether it deserves the sacrifice which I require of thee." 
 
 " It is the form of an Angel," answered he, with looks of the 
 highest rapture, " and deserves to shine, encircled with a glory, 
 in the courts of the Christian Heaven,, compared with which, the 
 delights of the Prophet's Paradise are empty shadows." 
 
 These words, spoken with warmth and visible conviction, 
 found free entrance into the open heart of the Princess : espe- 
 cially, the glory, it appeared to her, must be a sort of head-dress 
 that would sit not ill upon the face. Her quick fancy fastened on 
 this idea, which she asked to have explained ; and the Count with 
 all eagerness embraced this opportunity of painting the Christian 
 . Heaven to her as charming as he possibly could ; he chose the 
 loveliest images his mind would suggest ; and spoke with as much 
 confidence as if he had descended directly from the place on a 
 
140 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 mission to the Princess. Now, as it has pleased the Prophet to 
 endow the fair sex with very scanty expectations in the other 
 world, our apostolic preacher failed the less in his intentions ; 
 though it cannot he asserted that he was preeminently qualified 
 for the missionary duty. But whether it were that Heaven itself 
 favoured the work of conversion, or that the foreign tastes of the 
 Princess extended to the spiritual conceptions of the Western 
 nations, or that the person of this Preacher to the Heathen mixed 
 in the effect, certain it is she was all ear, and would have listened 
 to her pedagogue with pleasure for many hours longer, had not 
 the approach of night cut short their lesson. For the present, 
 she hastily dropped her veil, and retired to the Seraglio. 
 
 It is a well-known fact, that the children of princes are always 
 very docile, and make giant steps in every branch of profitable 
 knowledge, as our Journals often plainly enough testify ; while 
 the other citizens of this world must content themselves with 
 dwarf steps. It was not surprising, therefore, that the Sultan 
 of Egypt's daughter had in a short space mastered the whole 
 synopsis of Church doctrine as completely as her teacher could 
 impart it, bating a few heresies, which, in his inacquaintance with 
 the delicate shades of faith, he had undesignedly mingled with it. 
 Nor did this acquisition remain a dead letter with her ; it awak- 
 ened the most zealous wish for proselytising. Accordingly, the 
 plan of the Princess had now in so far altered, that she no longer 
 insisted on converting the Count, but rather felt inclined to let 
 herself be converted by him ; and this not only in regard to unity 
 in faith, but also to the purposed unity in love. The whole ques- 
 tion now was, by what means this intention could be realised. 
 She took counsel with Bostangi, he with the mettled Kurt, in 
 their nocturnal deliberations on this weighty matter ; and tihe 
 latter voted distinctly to strike the iron while it was hot ; to in- 
 form the fair proselyte of the Count's rank and birth; propose to 
 her to run away with him ; instantly to cross the water for the 
 European shore ; and live together in Thuringia as Christian man 
 and wife. 
 
 The Count clapped loud applause to this well-grounded scheme 
 of his wise Squire ; it was as if the mettled Kurt had read it in his 
 master's eyes. Whether the fulfilment of it might be clogged with 
 difficulties or not, was a point not taken into view in the first fire 
 of the romantic project : Love removes all mountains, overleaps 
 walls and trenches, bounds across abyss and chasm, and steps the 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 141 
 
 barrier of a city as lightly as it does a straw. At the next lecture, 
 the Count disclosed the plan to his beloved catechumena. 
 
 " Thou reflection of the Holy Virgin, " said he, " chosen of 
 Heaven from an outcast people, to gain the victory over prejudice 
 and error, and acquire a lot and inheritance in the Abodes of Feli- 
 city, hast thou the courage to forsake thy native country, then pre- 
 pare for speedy flight. I will guide thee to Kome, where dwells 
 the Porter of Heaven, St. Peter's deputy, to whom are committed 
 the keys of Heaven's gate; that he may receive thee into the bosom 
 of the Church, and bless the covenant of our love. Fear not that 
 thy father's potent arm may reach us ; every cloud above our heads 
 will be a ship manned with angelic hosts, with diamond shields 
 and flaming swords ; invisible indeed to mortal eye, but armed 
 with heavenly might, and appointed to watch and guard thee. Nor 
 will I conceal any longer, that I am, by birth and fortune, all that 
 the Sultan's favour could make me; a Count, that is a Bey born, 
 who rules over land and people. The limits of my lordship in- 
 clude towns and villages, palaces also and strongholds. Knights 
 and squires obey me ; horses and carriages stand ready for my 
 service. In my native land, thou thyself, enclosed by no walls 
 of a seraglio, shalt live and rule in freedom as a queen." 
 
 This oration of the Count the Princess thought a message 
 from above ; she entertained no doubts of his truth ; and it 
 seemed to please her that the Ringdove was to nestle, not beside 
 a Linnet, but beside a bird of the family of the Eagle. Her warm 
 fancy was filled with such sweet anticipations, that she consented, 
 with all the alacrity of the Children of Israel, to forsake the land 
 of Egypt, as if a new Canaan, in another quarter of the world, 
 had been waiting her beyond the sea. Confident in the protection 
 of the unseen life-guard promised to her, she would have followed 
 her conductor from the precincts of the Palace forthwith, had he 
 not instructed her that many preparations were required, before 
 the great enterprise could be engaged in with any hope of a happy 
 issue. 
 
 Among all privateering transactions by sea or land, there is 
 none more ticklish, or combined with greater difficulties, than that 
 of kidnapping the Grand Signior's favourite from his arms. Such 
 a masterstroke could only be imagined by the teeming fancy of 
 a W*z*l, 9 nor could any but a Kakerlak achieve it. Yet the 
 
 9 J. K. Wetzel, author of some plays and novels; among the latter, of 
 Kakerlak. — Ed. 
 
142 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 undertaking of Count Ernst of Gleichen to carry off the Sultan of 
 Egypt's daughter, was environed with no fewer difficulties ; and 
 as these two heroes come, to a certain extent, into competition in 
 this matter, we must say, that the adventure of the Count was in- 
 finitely bolder, seeing everything proceeded merely by the course 
 of Nature, and no serviceable Fairy put a finger in the pie : never- 
 theless, the result of both these corresponding enterprises, in the 
 one as well as in the other, came about entirely to the wish of 
 parties. The Princess filled her jewel-box sufficiently with pre- 
 cious stones ; changed her royal garment with a Kaftan ; and one 
 evening, under the safe-conduct of her beloved, his trusty Squire 
 and the phlegmatic Water-drawer, glided forth from the Palace 
 into the Garden, unobserved, to enter on her far journey to the 
 West. Her absence could not long remain concealed; her women 
 sought her, as the proverb runs, like a lost pin ; and as she did 
 not come to light, the alarm in the Seraglio became boundless. 
 Hints here and there had already been dropped, and surmises 
 made, about the private audiences of the Bostangi ; supposition 
 and fact were strung together ; and the whole produced, in sooth, 
 no row of pearls, but the horrible discovery of the real nature of 
 the case. The Divan of Dames had nothing for it but to send 
 advice of the occurrence to the higher powers. Father Sultan, 
 whom the virtuous Melechsala, everything considered, might have 
 spared this pang, and avoided flying her country to make purchase 
 of a glory, demeaned himself at this intelligence like an infuriated 
 lion, who shakes his brown mane with dreadful bellowing, when 
 by the uproar of the hunt, and the baying of the hounds, he is 
 frightened from his den. He swore by the Prophet's beard that 
 he would utterly destroy every living soul in the Seraglio, if at 
 sunrise the Princess were not again in her father's power. The 
 Mameluke guard had to mount, and gallop towards the four winds, 
 in chase of the fugitives, by every road from Cairo; and a thousand 
 oars were lashing the broad back of the Nile, in case she might 
 have taken a passage by water. 
 
 Under such efforts, to elude the far-stretching arm of the 
 Sultan was impossible, unless the Count possessed the secret of 
 rendering himself and his travelling party invisible ; or the mira- 
 culous gift of smiting all Egypt with blindness. But of these 
 talents neither had been lent him. Only the mettled Kurt had 
 taken certain measures, which, in regard to their effect, might 
 supply the place of .miracles. He had rendered his flying caravan 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 143 
 
 invisible, by the darkness of an unlighted cellar in the house of 
 Adullam the sudorific Hebrew. This Jewish Hermes did not 
 satisfy himself with practising the healing art to good advantage, 
 but drew profit likewise from the gift which he had received by 
 inheritance from his fathers ; and thus honoured Mercury in all 
 his three qualities, of Patron to Doctors, to Merchants, and to 
 Thieves. He drove a great trade in spiceries and herbs with the 
 Venetians, from which he had acquired much wealth ; and he dis- 
 dained no branch of business whereby anything was to be made. 
 This worthy Israelite, who for money and money's worth, stood 
 ready, without investigating moral tendencies, for any sort of deed, 
 the trusty Squire had prevailed on, by a jewel from the casket 
 of the Princess, to undertake the transport of the Count, whose 
 rank and intention were not concealed from him, with three ser- 
 vants, to a Venetian ship that was loading at Alexandria ; but it 
 had prudently been hidden from him, that in the course of this 
 contraband transaction, he must smuggle out his master's daughter. 
 On first inspecting his cargo, the figure of the fair youth struck 
 him somewhat ; but he thought no ill of it, and took him for a 
 page of the Count's. Ere long the report of the Princess Melech- 
 sala's disappearance sounded over all the city : then Adullam' s 
 eyes were opened ; deadly terror took possession of his heart, so 
 that his gray beard began to stir, and he wished with all his soul 
 that his hands had been free of this perilous concern. But now 
 it was too late ; his own safety required him to summon all his 
 cunning, and conduct this breakneck business to a happy end. 
 In the first place, he laid his subterranean lodgers under rigorous 
 quarantine ; and then, after the sharpest of the search was over, 
 the hope of finding the Princess considerably faded, and the zeal 
 in seeking for her cooled, he packed the whole caravan neatly up 
 in four bales of herbs, put them on board a Nile-boat, and sent 
 them with a proper invoice, under God's guidance, safe and sound 
 to Alexandria ; where so soon as the Venetian had gained the 
 open sea, they were liberated, all and sundry, from their strait 
 confinement in the herb -sacks. 10 
 
 Whether the celestial body-guard, with diamond shields and 
 
 10 The invention of travelling in a sack was several times employed during 
 the Crusades. Dietrich the Hard-bested, Markgraf of Meissen (Misnia), re- 
 turned from Palestine to his hereditary possessions, under this incognito, and 
 bo escaped the snares of the Emperor Henry VI., who had an eye to the pro- 
 ductive mines of Freyberg. — M. 
 
144 
 
 MUBiBUS. 
 
 flaming swords, ported on a gorgeous train of clouds, did follow 
 the swift ship, could not now, as they were invisible, be properly 
 substantiated in a court of justice ; yet there are not wanting 
 symptoms in the matter which might lead to some such conjec- 
 ture. All the four winds of Heaven seem to have combined to 
 make the voyage prosperous ; the adverse held their breath ; and 
 the favourable blew so gaily in the sails, that the vessel ploughed 
 the soft-playing billows with the speed of an arrow. The friendly 
 moon was stretching her horns from the clouds for the second 
 time, when the Venetian, glad in heart, ran into moorings in the 
 harbour of his native town. 
 
 Countess Ottilia's watchful spy was still at Venice ; undis- 
 mayed by the fruitless toil of vain inquiries, from continuing his 
 diets of examination, and diligently questioning all passengers 
 from the Levant. He was at his post when the Count, with the 
 fair Melechsala, came on land. His master's physiognomy was 
 so stamped upon his memory, that he would have undertaken to 
 discover it among a thousand unknown faces. Nevertheless the 
 foreign garb, and the finger of Time, which in seven years pro- 
 duces many changes, made him for some moments doubtful. To 
 be certain of his object, he approached the stranger's suite, made 
 up to the trusty Squire, and asked him : " Comrade, whence 
 come you ?" 
 
 The mettled Kurt rejoiced to meet a countryman, and hear 
 the sound of his mother-tongue ; but saw no profit in submitting 
 his concerns to the questioning of a stranger, and answered briefly : 
 " From sea." 
 
 " Who is the gentleman thou followest ?" 
 
 "My master." 
 
 " From what country come you 7" 
 
 "From the East." 
 
 " Whither are you going ?" 
 
 "To the West." 
 
 " To what province ?" 
 
 " To our home." 
 
 " Where is it?" 
 
 " Miles of road from this." 
 
 " What is thy name?" 
 
 " Start-the-game, that is my name. Strike-for-a-word, people 
 call my sword. Sorrow-of-life, so hight my wife. Rise, Lig-a- 
 bed, she cries to her maid. Still-at-a-stand, that is my man. 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 145 
 
 Hobbletehoy, I christened my boy. Lank-i'-the-bag, I scold my 
 nag. Shamble-and-stalk, we call his walk. Trot-i'-the-bog, I 
 whistle my dog. Saw-ye-that, so jumps my cat. Snug-in-the- 
 rug, he is my bug. Now thou knowest me, with wife and child, 
 and all my household." 
 
 " Thou seemest to me to be a queer fellow." 
 
 " I am no fellow at all, for I follow no handicraft." 
 
 " Answer me one question." 
 
 " Let us hear it." 
 
 " Hast thou any news of Count Ernst of Gleichen, from the 
 East ?" 
 
 " Wherefore dost thou ask ?" 
 " Therefore." 
 
 " Twiddle, twaddle ! Wherefore, therefore !" 
 
 " Because I am sent into all the world by the Countess Ot- 
 tilia his wife, to get her word whether her husband is still living, 
 and in what corner of the Earth he may be found." 
 
 This answer put the mettled Kurt into some perplexity ; and 
 tuned him to another key. " Wait a little, neighbour," said he ; 
 " perhaps my master knows about the thing." Thereupon he ran 
 to the Count, and whispered the tidings in his ear. The feeling 
 they awoke was complex ; made up in equal proportions of joy 
 and consternation. Count Ernst perceived that his dream, or 
 the interpretation of it, had misled him ; and that the conceit of 
 marrying his fair travelling companion might easily be baulked. 
 On the spur of the moment he knew not how he should get out 
 of this embroiled affair : meanwhile, the desire to learn how mat- 
 ters stood at home outweighed all scruples. He beckoned to the 
 emissary, whom he soon recognised for his old valet ; and who 
 wetted with joyful tears the hand of his recovered master, and 
 told in many words what jubilee the Countess would make, when 
 she received the happy message of her husband's return. The 
 Count took him with the rest to the inn ; and there engaged in 
 earnest meditation on the singular state of his heart, and con- 
 sidered deeply what was to be done with his engagements to the 
 fair Saracen. Without loss of time the watchful spy was dis- 
 patched to the Countess with a letter, containing a true state- 
 ment of the Count's fortunes in slavery at Cairo, and of his 
 deliverance by means of the Sultan's daughter; how she had 
 abandoned throne and country for his sake, under the condition 
 that he was to marry her, which he himself, deceived by a dream, 
 
 VOL. III. L 
 
146 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 had promised. By this narrative he meant not only to prepare 
 his wife for a participatress in her marriage rights ; but also en- 
 deavoured, in the course of it, by many sound arguments, to gain 
 her own consent to the arrangement. 
 
 Countess Ottilia was standing at the window in her mourning 
 weeds, as the news-bringer for the last time gave his breathless 
 horse the spur, to hasten it up the steep Castle-path. Her sharp 
 eye recognised him in the distance ; and he too being nothing of 
 a blinkard, — a class of persons very rare in the days of the Cru- 
 sades, — recognised the Countess also, raised the letter-bag aloft 
 over his head, and waved it like a standard in token of good 
 news ; and the lady understood his signal, as well as if the Hanau 
 Synthematograph had been on duty there. " Hast thou found 
 him, the husband of my heart?" cried she, as he approached. 
 "Where lingers he, that I may rise and wipe the sweat from 
 his brow, and let him rest in my faithful arms from his toilsome 
 journeying?" — "Joy to you, my lady," said the post; "his 
 lordship is well. I found him in the Port of Venice, from which 
 he sends you this under his hand and seal, to announce his arri- 
 val himself." The Countess could not hastily enough undo the 
 seal ; and at sight of her husband's hand, she felt as if the breath 
 of life were coming back to her. Three times she pressed the 
 letter to her beating heart, and three times touched it with her 
 languishing hps. A shower of joyful tears streamed over the 
 parchment, as she began reading : but the farther she read, the 
 drops fell the slower ; and before the reading was completed, the 
 fountain of tears had dried up altogether. 
 
 The contents of the letter could not all interest the good lady 
 equally ; her husband's proposed partition treaty of his heart had 
 not the happiness to meet with her approval. Greatly as the 
 spirit of partition has acquired the upper hand nowadays, so that 
 parted love and parted provinces have become the device of our 
 century ; these things were little to the taste of old times, when 
 every heart had its own key, and a master-key that would open 
 several was regarded as a scandalous thief-picklock. The intoler- 
 ance of the Countess in this point was at least a proof of her 
 unvarnished love: "Ah! that doleful Crusade," cried she, "is 
 the cause of it all. I lent the Holy Church a Loaf, of which the 
 Heathen have eaten ; and nothing but a Crust of it returns to 
 me." A vision of the night, however, soothed her troubled mind, 
 and gave her whole view of the affair another aspect. She dreamed 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 147 
 
 that there came two pilgrims from the Holy Sepulchre up the 
 winding Castle-road, and begged a lodging, which she kindly- 
 granted them. One of them threw off his cloak, and behold it 
 was the Count her lord ! She joyfully embraced him, and was 
 in raptures at his return. The children too came in, and he 
 clasped them in his paternal arms, pressed them to his heart, and 
 praised their looks and growth. Meanwhile his companion laid 
 aside his travelling pouch ; drew from it golden chains and pre- 
 cious strings of jewelry, and hung them round the necks of the 
 little ones, who showed delighted with these glittering presents. 
 The Countess was herself surprised at this munificence, and asked 
 the stranger who he was. He answered : "I am the Angel Ra- 
 phael, the guide of the loving, and have brought thy husband to 
 thee out of foreign lands." His pilgrim garments melted away; 
 and a shining angel stood before her, in an azure robe, with two 
 golden wings on his shoulders. Thereupon she awoke, and, in 
 the absence of an Egyptian Sibyl, herself interpreted the dream 
 according to her best skill ; and found so many points of simi- 
 larity between the Angel Kaphael and the Princess Melechsala, 
 that she doubted not the latter had been shadowed forth to her 
 in vision under the figure of the former. At the same time she 
 took into consideration the fact that, without her help, the Count 
 could scarcely ever have escaped from slavery. And as it be- 
 hoves the owner of a lost piece of property to deal generously 
 with the finder, who might have kept it all to himself, she no 
 longer hesitated to resolve on the surrender. The water-bailiff, 
 well rewarded for his watchfulness, was therefore dispatched forth- 
 with back into Italy, with the formal consent of the Countess for 
 her husband to complete the trefoil of his marriage without loss 
 of time. 
 
 The only question now was, whether Father Gregory at Rome 
 would give his benediction to this matrimonial anomaly ; and be 
 persuaded, for the Count's sake, to refound, by the word of his 
 mouth, the substance, form and essence of the Sacrament of Mar- 
 riage. The pilgrimage accordingly set forth from Venice to Rome, 
 where the Princess Melechsala solemnly abjured the Koran, and 
 entered into the bosom of the Church. At this spiritual conquest 
 the Holy Father testified as much delight as if the kingdom of 
 Antichrist had been entirely destroyed, or reduced under subjec- 
 tion to the Romish chair ; and after the baptism, on which occa- 
 sion she had changed her Saracenic name for the more orthodox 
 
148 
 
 MUS2EUS. 
 
 Angelica, he caused a pompous Te-deum to be celebrated m St. 
 Peter's. These happy aspects Count Ernst endeavoured to im- 
 prove for his purpose, before the Pope's good -humour should 
 evaporate. He brought his matrimonial concern to light without 
 delay : but, alas ! no sooner asked than rejected. The conscience 
 of St. Peter's Yicar was so tender in this case, that he reckoned it 
 a greater heresy to advocate triplicity in marriage than Tritheism 
 itself. Many plausible arguments as the Count brought forward 
 to accomplish an exception from the common rule in his own 
 favour, they availed no jot in moving the exemplary Pope to 
 wink with one eye of his conscience, and vouchsafe the peti- 
 tioned dispensation : a result which cut Count Ernst to the 
 heart. His sly counsel, the mettled Kurt, had in the mean 
 time struck out a bright expedient for accomplishing the mar- 
 riage of his master with the fair convert, to the satisfaction of 
 the Pope and Christendom in general; only he had not risked 
 disclosing it, lest it might cost him his master's favour. Yet 
 at last he found his opportunity, and put the matter into words. 
 "Dear master," said he, "do not vex yourself so much about 
 the Pope's perverseness. If you cannot get round him on the 
 one side, you must try him on the other : there are more roads 
 to the wood than one. If the Holy Father has too tender a con- 
 science to permit your taking two wives, then it is fair for you 
 also to have a tender conscience, though you are no priest but a 
 layman. Conscience is a cloak that covers every hole, and has 
 withal the quality that it can be turned according to the wind : 
 at present, when the wind is cross, you must put the cloak on 
 the other shoulder. Examine whether you are not related to 
 the Countess Ottilia within the prohibited degrees : if so, as will 
 surely be the case, if you have a tender conscience, then the game 
 is your own. Get a divorce ; and who the deuce can hinder you 
 from wedding the Princess then ?" 
 
 The Count had listened to his Squire till the sense of his 
 oration was completely before him ; then he answered it with two 
 words, shortly and clearly: "Peace, Dog !" In the same moment,, 
 the mettled Kurt found himself lying at full length without the 
 door, and seeking for a tooth or two which had dropped from him 
 in this rapid transit. " Ah ! the precious tooth," cried he from 
 without, "has been sacrificed to my faithful zeal!" This tooth 
 monologue reminded the Count of his dream. " Ah ! the cursed 
 tooth," cried he from within, "which I dreamed of losing, has 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 149 
 
 been the cause of all this mischief!" His heart, between self- 
 reproaches for unfaithfulness to his amiable wife, and for pro- 
 hibited love to the charming Angelica, kept wavering like a bell, 
 which yields a sound on both sides, when set in motion. Still 
 more than the flame of his passion, the fire of indignation burnt 
 and gnawed him, now that he saw the visible impossibility of 
 ever keeping his word to the Princess, and taking her in wedlock. 
 All which distresses, by the way, led him to the just experimental 
 conclusion, that a parted heart is not the most desirable of things ; 
 and that the lover, in these circumstances, but too much resembles 
 the Ass Baldwin between his two bundles of hay. 
 
 In such a melancholy posture of affairs, he lost his jovial 
 humour altogether, and wore the aspect of an atrabiliar, whom in 
 bad weather the atmosphere oppresses till the spleen is like to 
 crush the soul out of his body. Princess Angelica observed that 
 her lover's looks were no longer as yesterday, and ere-yesterday : 
 it grieved her soft heart, and moved her to resolve on making 
 trial whether she should not be more successful, if she took the 
 dispensation business in her own hand. She requested audience 
 of the conscientious Gregory ; and appeared before him closely 
 veiled, according to the fashion of her country. No Koman eye 
 had yet seen her face, except the priest who baptised her. His 
 Holiness received the new-born daughter of the Church with all 
 suitable respect, offered her the palm of his right hand to kiss, 
 and not his perfumed slipper. The fair stranger raised her veil 
 a little to touch the sacred hand with her lips ; then opened her 
 mouth, and clothed her petition in a touching address. Yet this 
 insinuation through the Papal ear seemed not sufficiently to know 
 the interior organisation of the Head of the Church ; for instead 
 of taking the road to the heart, it passed through the other ear 
 out into the air. Father Gregory expostulated long with the 
 lovely supplicant ; and imagined he had found a method for in 
 some degree contenting her desire of union with a bridegroom, 
 without offence to the ordinations of the Church : he proposed to 
 her a spiritual wedlock, if she could resolve on a slight change 
 of the veil, the Saracenic for the Nun's. This proposal suddenly 
 awakened in the Princess such a horror at veils, that she directly 
 tore away her own ; sank full of despair before the holy footstool, 
 and with uplifted hands and tearful eyes, conjured the venerable 
 Father by his sacred slipper, not to do violence to her heart, and 
 constrain her to bestow it elsewhere. 
 
150 
 
 MUS^US. 
 
 The sight of her heauty was more eloquent than her lips ; it 
 enraptured all present ; and the tear which gathered in her hea- 
 venly eye fell like a burning drop of naphtha on the Holy Father's 
 heart, and kindled the small fraction of earthly tinder that still 
 lay hid there, and warmed it into sympathy for the petitioner. 
 " Rise, beloved daughter," said he, " and weep not ! What has 
 been determined in Heaven, shall be fulfilled in thee on Earth. 
 In three days thou shalt know whether this thy first prayer to 
 the Church can be granted by that gracious Mother, or must be 
 denied." Thereupon he summoned an assembly of all the Casu- 
 ists in Rome ; had a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine distributed 
 to each ; and locked them up in the Rotunda, with the warning 
 that no one of them should be let out again till the question had 
 been determined unanimously. So long as the loaves and wine 
 held out, the disputes were so violent, that all the Saints, had 
 they been convened in the church, could not have argued with 
 greater noise. But so soon as the Digestive Faculty began to 
 have a voice in the meeting, he was listened to with the deepest 
 attention, and happily he spoke in favour of the Count, who had 
 got a sumptuous feast made ready for the entertainment of the 
 casuistic Doctors, when the Papal seal should be removed from 
 their door. The Bull of Dispensation was drawn out in proper 
 form of law ; in furtherance of which the fair Angelica had, not 
 at all reluctantly, inflicted a determined cut upon the treasures of 
 Egypt. Father Gregory bestowed his benediction on the noble 
 pair, and sent them away betrothed. They lost no time in leaving 
 Peter's Patrimony for the territories of the Count, to celebrate 
 their nuptials on arriving. 
 
 When Count Ernst, on this side the Alps, again inhaled his 
 native air, and felt it come soft and kindly round his heart, he 
 mounted his steed ; galloped forward, attended only by the heavy 
 Groom, and left the Princess, under the escort of the mettled 
 Kurt, to follow him by easy journeys. 
 
 His heart beat high within him, when he saw in azure dist- 
 ance the three towers of Gleichen. He meant to take his gentle 
 Countess by surprise ; but the news of his approach had preceded 
 him, as on the wings of the wind ; she went forth with man 
 and maid, and met her husband a furlong from the Castle, in a 
 pleasant green, which, in memory of this event, is called the 
 Freudenthal, or Valley of Joy, to this day. The meeting on both 
 sides was as trustful and tender, as if no partition treaty had ever 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 151 
 
 been thought of : for Countess Ottilia was a proper pattern of the 
 pious wife, that obeys without commentary the marriage precept 
 of subjecting her will to the will of her husband. If at times 
 there did arise some small sedition in her heart, she did not on 
 the instant ring the alarm-bell ; but she shut door and window, 
 that no mortal eye might look in and see what passed; and 
 then summoned the rebel Passion to the bar of Eeason, gave it 
 over in custody to Prudence, and imposed on herself a voluntary 
 penance. 
 
 She could not pardon her heart for having murmured at the 
 rival sun that was to shine beside her on the matrimonial horizon ; 
 and to expiate the offence, she had secretly commissioned a triple 
 bedstead, with stout fir posts, painted green, the colour of Hope ; 
 and a round vaulted tester, in the form of a dome, adorned with 
 winged puffy-cheeked heads of angels. On the silken coverlet, 
 which lay for show over the downy quilts, was exhibited in fine 
 embroidery, the Angel Raphael, as he had appeared to her in 
 vision, beside the Count in pilgrim weeds. This speaking proof 
 of her ready matrimonial complaisance affected her husband to 
 the soul. He clasped her to his breast, and overpowered her 
 with kisses, at the sight of this arrangement for the completion 
 of his wedded joys. 
 
 " Glorious wife!" cried he with rapture, " this temple of love 
 exalts thee above thousands of thy sex; as an honourable me- 
 morial, it will transmit thy name to future ages ; and while a 
 splinter of this wood remains, husbands will recount to their 
 wives thy exemplary conduct." 
 
 In a few days afterwards, the Princess also arrived in safety, 
 and was received by the Count in full gala. Ottilia came to meet 
 her with open arms and heart, and conducted her into the Palace, 
 as the partner in all its privileges. The double bridegroom then 
 set out to Erfurt, for the Bishop to perform the marriage ceremony. 
 This pious prelate was extremely shocked at the proposal, and 
 signified, that in his diocese no such scandal could be tolerated. 
 But, on Count Ernst's bringing out the papal dispensation, signed 
 and sealed in due form, it acted as a lock on his Reverence's 
 lips ; though his doubting looks, and shaking of the head, still 
 indicated that the Steersman of the bark of the universal Church 
 had bored a hole in the keel, which bade fair to swamp the vessel, 
 and send it to the bottom of the sea. 
 
 The nuptials were celebrated with becoming pomp and splen- 
 
152 
 
 MUSiEUS. 
 
 dour; Countess Ottilia, who acted as mistress of the ceremonies, 
 had invited widely; and the counts and knights, over all Thu- 
 ringia, far and wide, came crowding to assist at this unusual 
 wedding. Before the Count led his bride to the altar, she opened 
 her jewel-box, and consigned to him all its treasures that remained 
 from the expenses of the dispensation, as a dowry; in return for 
 which, he conferred on her the lands of Ehrenstein, by way of 
 jointure. The chaste myrtle twined itself about the golden crown, 
 which latter ornament the Sultan's daughter, as a testimony of 
 her high birth, retained through life ; and was, in consequence, 
 invariably named the Queen by her subjects, and by her domes- 
 tics reverenced and treated like a queen. 
 
 If any of my readers ever purchased for himself, for fifty 
 guineas, the costly pleasure of resting a night in Doctor Graham's 
 Celestial Bed at London, he may form some slender conception 
 of the Count's delight, when the triple bed at Gleichen opened 
 its elastic bosom to receive the twice -betrothed, with both his 
 spouses. Seven days long the nuptial festivities continued ; and 
 the Count declared himself richly compensated by them for the 
 seven dreary years which he had been obliged to spend in the 
 Grated Tower at Grand Cairo. Nor would this appear to have 
 been an empty compliment on his part to his two faithful wives, 
 if the experimental apophthegm is just, that a single day of 
 gladness sweetens into oblivion the bitter dole and sorrow of a 
 troublous year. 
 
 Next to the Count, there was none who relished this exhila- 
 rating period better than his trusty Squire, the mettled Kurt, 
 who, in the well- stored kitchen and cellar, found the elements of 
 royal cheer, and stoutly emptied the cup of joy which circulated 
 fast among the servants ; while the full table pricked up their 
 ears as he opened his lips, his inner man once satisfied with good 
 things, and began to recount them his adventures. But when the 
 Gleichic economy returned to its customary frugal routine, he 
 requested permission to set out for Ordruff, to visit his kind wife, 
 and overwhelm her with joy at his unexpected return. During 
 his long absence, he had constantly maintained a rigorous fidelity, 
 and he now longed for the just reward of so exemplary a walk and 
 conversation. Fancy painted to his mind's eye the image of his 
 virtuous Bebecca in the liveliest colours ; and the nearer he 
 approached the walls which enclosed her, the brighter grew these 
 hues. Ho saw her stand before him in the charms which had 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 153 
 
 delighted him on his wedding-day ; he saw how excess of joy at 
 his happy arrival would overpower her spirits, and she would 
 sink in speechless rapture into his arms. 
 
 Encircled with this fair retinue of dreams, he arrived at the 
 gate of his native town, without observing it, till the watchful 
 guardian of public tranquillity let down his beam in front of him, 
 and questioned the stranger, Who he was, what business had 
 brought him to the town, and whether his intentions were peace- 
 able or not ? The mettled Kurt gave ready answer ; and now 
 rode along the streets at a soft pace, lest his horse's tramp might 
 too soon betray the secret of his coming. He fastened his beast 
 to the door-ring, and stole, without noise, into the court of his 
 dwelling, where the old chained house-dog first received him with 
 joyful bark. Yet he wondered somewhat at the sight of two 
 lively chub-faced children, like the Angels in the Gleichen bed- 
 tester, frisking to and fro upon the area. He had no time to 
 speculate on the phenomenon, for the mistress of the house, in 
 her carefulness, stept out of doors to see who was there. Alas, 
 what a difference between ideal and original ! The tooth of Time 
 had, in these seven years, been mercilessly busy with her charms ; 
 yet the leading features of her physiognomy had been in so far 
 spared, that to the eye of the critic she was still recognisable, 
 like the primary stamp of a worn coin. Joy at meeting somewhat 
 veiled this want of beauty from the mettled Kurt, and the thought 
 that sorrow for his absence had so furrowed the smooth face of 
 his consort put him into a sentimental mood ; he embraced her 
 with great cordiality, and said : " Welcome, dear wife of my 
 heart ! Forget all thy sorrow. See, I am still alive ; thou hast 
 got me back !" 
 
 The pious Rebecca answered this piece of tenderness by a 
 heavy thwack on the short ribs, which thwack made the mettled 
 Kurt stagger to the wall ; then raised loud shrieks, and shouted 
 to her servants for help against violence, and scolded and stormed 
 like an Infernal Fury. The loving husband excused this unloving 
 reception, on the score of his virtuous spouse's delicacy, which his 
 bold kiss of welcome had offended, she not knowing who he was ; 
 and tore his lungs with bawling to undo this error; but his preach- 
 ing was to deaf ears, and he soon found that there was no misun- 
 derstanding in the case. " Thou shameless varlet," cried she, in 
 shrieking treble, " after wandering seven long years up and down 
 the world, following thy wicked courses with other women, dost 
 
154 
 
 MUS^EUS. 
 
 thou think that I will take thee back to my chaste bed ? Off with 
 thee ! Did not I publicly cite thee at three church-doors, and 
 wert not thou, for thy contumacious non-appearance, declared to 
 be dead as mutton ? Did not the High Court authorise me to put 
 aside my widow's chair, and marry Burgermeister Wipprecht ? 
 Have not we lived six years as man and wife, and received these 
 children as a blessing of our wedlock ? And now comes the Mar- 
 peace to perplex my house ! Off with thee ! Pack, I say, this 
 instant, or the Amtmann shall crop thy ears, and put thee in the 
 pillory, to teach such vagabonds, that run and leave their poor 
 tender wives." This welcome from his once-loved helpmate was 
 a sword's-thrust through the heart of the mettled Kurt ; but the 
 gall poured itself as a defence into his blood. 
 
 " 0 thou faithless strumpet!" answered he; " what holds me 
 that I do not take thee and thy bastards, and wring your necks 
 this moment ? Dost thou recollect thy promise, and the oath thou 
 hast so often sworn in the trustful marriage-bed, that death itself 
 should not part thee from me? Didst thou not engage, unasked, 
 that should thy soul fly up directly from thy mouth to Heaven, 
 and I were roasting in Purgatory, thou wouldst turn again from 
 Heaven's gate, and come down to me, to fan cool air upon me till 
 I were delivered from the flames ? Devil broil thy false tongue, 
 thou gallows carrion !" 
 
 Though the Prima Donna of Ordruff was endowed with a glib 
 organ, which, in the faculty of cursing, yielded no whit to that of 
 the tumultuous pretender, she did not judge it good to enter into 
 farther debate with him, but gave her menials an expressive sign; 
 and, in an instant, man and maid seized hold of the mettled Kurt, 
 and brevi manu ejected his body from the house ; in which act of 
 domestic jurisdiction Dame Eebecca herself bore a hand with the 
 besom, and so swept away this discarded helpmate from the pre- 
 mises. The mettled Kurt, half-broken on the wheel, then mounted 
 his horse, and dashed full gallop down the street, which he had 
 rode along so gingerly some minutes before. 
 
 As his blood, when he was on the road home, began to cool, 
 he counted loss and gain, and found himself not ill contented with 
 the balance ; for he found, that except the comfort of having cool 
 air fanned upon his soul in Purgatory after death, his smart 
 amounted to nothing. He never more returned to Ordruff, but 
 continued with the Count at Gleichen all his life, and was an eye- 
 witness of the most incredible occurrence, that two ladies shared 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 155 
 
 the love of one man without quarrelling or jealousy, and this even 
 under one bed-tester ! The fair Angelica continued childless, yet 
 she loved and watched over her associate's children as if they had 
 been her own, and divided with Ottilia the care of their education. 
 In the trefoil of this happy marriage, she was the first leaf which 
 faded away in the autumn of life. Countess Ottilia soon followed 
 her; and the afflicted widower, now all too lonely in his large castle 
 and wide bed, lingered but a few months longer. The firmly- 
 established arrangement of these noble spouses in the marriage- 
 bed through life, was maintained unaltered after their death. They 
 rest all three in one grave, in front of the Gleichen Altar, in St. 
 Peter's Church at Erfurt, on the Hill; where their place of sepul- 
 ture is still to be seen, overlaid with a stone, on which the noble 
 group are sculptured after the life. To the right lies the Countess 
 Ottilia, with a mirror in her hand, the emblem of her praiseworthy 
 prudence ; on the left Angelica, adorned with a royal crown ; and 
 in the midst, the Count reposing on his coat-of-arms, the lion- 
 leopard. 11 Their famous triple bedstead is still preserved as a 
 relic in the old Castle ; it stands in the room called the Junkern- 
 kammer, or Knight's Chamber ; and a splinter of it, worn by way 
 of busk in a lady's bodice, is said to have the virtue of dispelling 
 every movement of jealousy from her heart. 
 
 11 A plate of this tombstone may be seen in Falkenstein's Analecta Nord- 
 gaviensia. — M. 
 
LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
THE FAIR-HAIRED ECKBERT. 1 
 
 In a district of the Harz dwelt a Knight, whose common desig- 
 nation in that quarter was the Fair-haired Eckhert. He was ahout 
 forty years of age, scarcely of middle stature, and short light- 
 coloured locks lay close and sleek round his pale and sunken 
 countenance. He led a retired life, had never interfered in the 
 feuds of his neighbours ; indeed, beyond the outer wall of his 
 castle he was seldom to be seen. His wife loved solitude as much 
 as he ; both seemed heartily attached to one another ; only now 
 and then they would lament that Heaven had not blessed their 
 marriage with children. 
 
 Few came to visit Eckbert ; and when guests did happen to 
 be with him, their presence made but little alteration in his cus- 
 tomary way of life. Temperance abode in his household, and 
 Frugality herself appeared to be the mistress of the entertain- 
 ment. On these occasions Eckbert was always cheerful and 
 lively ; but when he was alone, you might observe in him a cer- 
 tain mild reserve, a still, retiring melancholy. 
 
 His most frequent guest was Philip Walther; a man to whom 
 he had attached himself, from having found in him a way oi 
 thinking like his own. Walther' s residence was in Franconia ; 
 but he would often stay for half a year in Eckbert's neighbour- 
 hood, gathering plants and minerals, and then sorting and ar- 
 ranging them. He lived on a small independency, and was 
 connected with no one. Eckbert frequently attended him in his 
 sequestered walks ; year after year a closer friendship grew be- 
 twixt them. 
 
 1 Prefatory Introduction to Tieck, supra, at p. 330, Vol. VI. of Works (Vol, I. 
 of Miscellanies). 
 
160 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 There are hours in which a man feels grieved that he should 
 have a secret from his friend, which, till then, he may have kept 
 with niggard anxiety ; some irresistible desire lays hold of our 
 heart to open itself wholly, to disclose its inmost recesses to our 
 friend, that so he may become our friend still more. It is in such 
 moments that tender souls unveil themselves, and stand face to 
 face ; and at times it will happen, that the one recoils affrighted 
 from the countenance of the other. 
 
 It was late in Autumn, when Eckbert, one cloudy evening, 
 was sitting, with his friend and his wife Bertha, by the parlour 
 fire. The flame cast a red glimmer through the room, and 
 sported on the ceiling ; the night looked sullenly in through the 
 windows, and the trees without rustled in wet coldness. Walther 
 complained of the long road he had to travel ; and Eckbert pro- 
 posed to him to stay where he was, to while away half of the 
 night in friendly talk, and then to take a bed in the house till 
 morning. Walther agreed, and the whole was speedily arranged : 
 by and by wine and supper were brought in ; fresh wood was laid 
 upon the fire ; the talk grew livelier and more confidential. 
 
 The cloth being removed, and the servants gone, Eckbert took 
 his friend's hand, and said to him : ' ' Now you must let my wife 
 tell you the history of her youth ; it is curious enough, and you 
 should know it." " With all my heart," said Walther; and the 
 party again drew round the hearth. 
 
 It was now midnight ; the moon looked fitfully through the 
 breaks of the driving clouds. " You must not reckon me a bab- 
 bler," began the lady. " My husband says you have so generous 
 a mind, that it is not right in us to hide aught from you. Only 
 do not take my narrative for a fable, however strangely it may 
 sound. 
 
 " I was born in a little village ; my father was a poor herds- 
 man. Our circumstances were not of the best ; often we knew 
 not where to find our daily bread. But what grieved me far more 
 than this, were the quarrels which my father and mother often 
 had about their poverty, and the bitter reproaches they cast on 
 one another. Of myself too, I heard nothing said but ill ; they 
 were forever telling me that I was a silly stupid child, that I 
 could not do the simplest turn of work ; and in truth I was ex- 
 tremely inexpert and helpless; I let things fall; I neither learned 
 to sew nor spin ; I could be of no use to my parents ; only their 
 straits I understood too well. Often I would sit in a corner, and 
 
THE FAIR -HAIRED ECKBERT. 
 
 161 
 
 fill my little heart with dreams, how I would help them, if I should 
 all at once grow rich ; how I would overflow them with silver 
 and gold, and feast myself on their amazement ; and then spirits 
 came hovering up, and showed me buried treasures, or gave me 
 little pebbles which changed into precious stones ; in short, the 
 strangest fancies occupied me, and when I had to rise and help 
 with anything, my inexpertness was still greater, as my head 
 was giddy with these motley visions. 
 
 4 £ My father in particular was always very cross to me ; he 
 scolded me for being such a burden to the house ; indeed he 
 often used me rather cruelly, and it was very seldom that I got a 
 friendly word from him. In this way I had struggled on to near 
 the end of my eighth year ; and now it was seriously fixed that 
 I should begin to do or learn something. My father still main- 
 tained that it was nothing but caprice in me, or a lazy wish to 
 pass my days in idleness : accordingly he set upon me with furious 
 threats ; and as these made no improvement, he one day gave me 
 a most cruel chastisement, and added that the same should be re- 
 peated day after day, since I was nothing but a useless sluggard. 
 
 " That whole night I wept abundantly ; I felt myself so 
 utterly forsaken, I had such a sympathy with myself that I even 
 longed to die. I dreaded the break of day ; I knew not on earth 
 what I was to do or try. I wished from my very heart to be 
 clever, and could not understand how I should be worse than the 
 other children of the place. I was on the borders of despair. 
 
 " At the dawn of day I arose, and scarcely knowing what I 
 did, unfastened the door of our little hut. I stept upon the open 
 field ; next minute I was in a wood, where the light of the morn- 
 ing had yet hardly penetrated. I ran along, not looking round ; 
 for I felt no fatigue, and I still thought my father would catch me, 
 and in his anger at my flight would beat me worse than ever. 
 
 " I had reached the other side of the forest, and the sun was 
 risen a considerable way ; I saw something dim lying before me, 
 and a thick fog resting over it. Ere long my path began to mount, 
 at one time I was climbing hills, at another winding among rocks ; 
 and I now guessed that I must be among the neighbouring Moun- 
 tains ; a thought that made me shudder in my loneliness. For, 
 living in the plain country, I had never seen a hill ; and the very 
 word Mountains, when I heard talk of them, had been a sound 
 of terror to my young ear. I had not the heart to go back, my 
 fear itself drove me on j often I looked round affrighted when the 
 
 VOL. III. M 
 
162 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 breezes rustled over me among the trees, or the stroke of some 
 distant woodman sounded far through the still morning. And 
 when I began to meet with charcoal-men and miners, and heard 
 their foreign way of speech, I had nearly fainted for terror. 
 
 ' ' I passed through several villages ; begging now and then, for 
 I felt hungry and thirsty ; and fashioning my answers as I best 
 could when questions were put to me. In this manner I had 
 wandered on some four days, when I came upon a little footpath, 
 which led me farther and farther from the highway. The rocks 
 about me now assumed a different and far stranger form. They 
 were cliffs so piled on one another, that it looked as if the first 
 gust of wind would hurl them all this way and that. I knew not 
 whether to go on or stop. Till now I had slept by night in the 
 woods, for it was the finest season of the year, or in some remote 
 shepherd's hut ; but here I saw no human dwelling at all, and 
 could not hope to find one in this wilderness ; the crags grew 
 more and more frightful ; I had many a time to glide along by 
 the very edge of dreadful abysses ; by degrees my footpath be- 
 came fainter, and at last all traces of it vanished from beneath me. 
 I was utterly comfortless ; I wept and screamed ; and my voice 
 came echoing back from the rocky valleys with a sound that ter- 
 rified me. The night now came on, and I sought out a mossy 
 nook to lie down in. I could not sleep ; in the darkness I heard 
 the strangest noises ; sometimes I took them to proceed from 
 wild-beasts, sometimes from wind moaning through the rocks, 
 sometimes from unknown birds. I prayed ; and did not sleep 
 till towards morning. 
 
 " When the light came upon my face, I awoke. Before me 
 was a steep rock ; I clomb up, in the hope of discovering some 
 outlet from the waste, perhaps of seeing houses or men. But 
 when I reached the top, there was nothing still, so far as my eye 
 could reach, but a wilderness of crags and precipices ; all was 
 covered with a dim haze ; the day was gray and troubled, and no 
 tree, no meadow, not even a bush could I find, only a few shrubs 
 shooting up stunted and solitary in the narrow clefts of the rocks. 
 I cannot utter what a longing I felt but to see one human crea- 
 ture, any living mortal, even though I had been afraid of hurt 
 from him. At the same time I was tortured by a gnawing hun- 
 ger ; I sat down, and made up my mind to die. After a while, 
 however, the desire of living gained the mastery ; I roused my* 
 self, and wandered forward amid tears and broken sobs all day ; 
 
THE FAIR-HATRED ECXBERT. 
 
 168 
 
 in the end, I hardly knew what I was doing ; I was tired and 
 spent ; I scarcely wished to live, and yet I feared to die. 
 
 "Towards night the country seemed to grow a little kindlier; 
 my thoughts, my desires revived, the wish for life awoke in all 
 my veins. I thought I heard the rushing of a mill afar off; I re- 
 doubled my steps ; and how glad, how light of heart was I, when 
 at last I actually gained the limits of the barren rocks, and saw 
 woods and meadows lying before me, with soft green hills in the 
 distance ! I felt as if I had stept out of hell into a paradise ; my 
 loneliness and helplessness no longer frightened me. 
 
 " Instead of the hoped-for mill, I came upon a waterfall, which, 
 m truth, considerably damped my joy. I was lifting a drink from 
 it in the hollow of my hand, when all at once I thought I heard a 
 slight cough some little way from me. Never in my life was I so 
 joyfully surprised as at this moment : I went near, and at the 
 border of the wood I saw an old woman sitting resting on the 
 ground. She was dressed almost wholly in black ; a black hood 
 ' covered her head, and the greater part of her face ; in her hand 
 she held a crutch. 
 
 "I came up to her, and begged for help; she made me sit 
 by her, and gave me bread, and a little wine. While I ate, she 
 sang in a screeching tone some kind of spiritual song. When she 
 had done, she told me I might follow her. 
 
 "The offer charmed me, strange as the old woman's voice 
 and look appeared. With her crutch she limped away pretty fast, 
 and at every step she twisted her face so oddly, that at first I was 
 like to laugh. The wild rocks retired behind us more and more : 
 I never shall forget the aspect and the feeling of that evening. 
 All things were as molten into the softest golden red ; the trees 
 were standing with then tops in the glow of the sunset ; on the 
 fields lay a mild brightness ; the woods and the leaves of the trees 
 were standing motionless ; the pure sky looked out like an opened 
 paradise, and the gushing of the brooks, and, from time to time, 
 the rustling of the trees, resounded through the serene stillness, 
 as in pensive joy. My young soul was here first taken with a 
 forethought of the world and its vicissitudes. I forgot myself and 
 my conductress ; my spirit and my eyes were wandering among 
 the shining clouds. 
 
 " We now mounted an eminence planted with birch-trees ; 
 from the top we looked into a green valley, likewise full of birches ; 
 and down below, in the middle of them, was a little hut. A glad 
 
164 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 barking reached us, and immediately a little nimble dog came 
 springing round the old woman, fawned on her, and wagged its 
 tail ; it next came to me, viewed me on all sides, and then turned 
 back with a friendly look to its old mistress. 
 
 * i On reaching the bottom of the hill, I heard the strangest 
 song, as if coming from the hut, and sung by some bird. It ran 
 thus : 
 
 Alone in wood so gay 
 "lis good to stay, 
 Morrow like today, 
 Forever and aye : 
 0, I do love to stay 
 Alone in wood so gay. 
 
 " These few words were continually repeated, and to describe 
 the sound, it was as if you heard forest-horns and shalms sounded 
 together from a far distance. 
 
 " My curiosity was wonderfully on the stretch ; without wait- 
 ing for the old woman's orders, I stept into the hut. It was al- 
 ready dusk ; here all was neatly swept and trimmed ; some bowls 
 were standing in a cupboard, some strange-looking casks or pots 
 m a table ; in a glittering cage, hanging by the window, was a 
 bird, and this in fact proved to be the singer. The old woman 
 coughed and panted : it seemed as if she never would get over 
 her fatigue : she patted the little dog, she talked with the bird, 
 which only answered her with its accustomed song ; and for me, 
 she did not seem to recollect that I was there at all. Looking at 
 her so, many qualms and fears came over me ; for her face was 
 in perpetual motion ; and, besides, her head shook from old age, 
 so that, for my life, I could not understand what sort of counte- 
 nance she had. 
 
 "Having gathered strength again, she lit a candle, covered 
 a very small table, and brought out supper. She now looked 
 round for me, and bade me take a little cane-chair. I was thus 
 sitting close fronting her, with the light between us. She folded 
 her bony hands, and prayed aloud, still twisting her countenance, 
 so that I was once more on the point of laughing ; but I took 
 strict care that I might not make her angry. 
 
 " After supper she again prayed, then showed me a bed in a 
 low narrow closet ; she herself slept in the room. I did not watch 
 long, for I was half stupefied ; but in the night I now and then 
 awoke, and heard the old woman coughing, and between whiles 
 
THE FAIR -HAIRED ECKBERT. 
 
 1G5 
 
 talking with her dog and her bird, which last seemed dreaming, 
 and replied with only one or two words of its rhyme. This, with 
 the birches rustling before the window, and the song of a distant 
 nightingale, made such a wondrous combination, that I never 
 fairly thought I was awake, but only falling out of one dream into 
 another still stranger. 
 
 " The old woman awoke me in the morning, and soon after 
 gave me work. I was put to spin, which I now learned very 
 easily ; I had likewise to take charge of the dog and the bird. 
 I soon learned my business in the house : I now felt as if it all 
 must be so ; I never once remembered that the old woman had 
 so many singularities, that her dwelling was mysterious, and lay 
 apart from all men, and that the bird must be a very strange crea- 
 ture. Its beauty, indeed, always struck me, for its feathers glit- 
 tered with all possible colours; the fairest deep blue, and the 
 most burning red, alternated about his neck and body ; and when 
 singing, he blew himself proudly out, so that his feathers looked 
 still finer. 
 
 " My old mistress often went abroad, and did not come again 
 till night ; on these occasions I went out to meet her with the 
 dog, and she used to call me child and daughter. In the end I 
 grew to like her heartily ; as our mind, especially in childhood, 
 will become accustomed and attached to anything. In the even- 
 ings, she taught me to read ; and this was afterwards a source of 
 boundless satisfaction to me in my solitude, for she had several 
 ancient-written books, that contained the strangest stories. 
 
 ' ' The recollection of the life I then led is still singular to me : 
 Visited by no human creature, secluded in the circle of so small a 
 family ; for the dog and the bird made the same impression on me 
 which in other cases long-known friends produce. I am surprised 
 that I have never since been able to recall the dog's name, a very 
 odd one, often as I then pronounced it. 
 
 " Four years I had passed in this way (I must now have been 
 nearly twelve), when my old dame began to put more trust in me, 
 and at length told me a secret. The bird, I found, laid every day 
 an egg, in which there was a pearl or a jewel. I had already 
 noticed that she often went to fettle privately about the cage, but 
 I had never troubled myself farther on the subject. She now gave 
 me charge of gathering these eggs in her absence, and carefully 
 storing them up in the strange -looking pots. She would leave 
 me food, and sometimes stay away longer, for weeks, for months. 
 
166 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 My little wheel kept humming round, the dog barked, the bird 
 sang ; and withal there was such a stillness in the neighbourhood, 
 that I do not recollect of any storm or foul weather all the time I 
 stayed there. No one wandered thither ; no wild-beast came near 
 our dwelling : I was satisfied, and worked along in peace from day 
 to day. One would perhaps be very happy, could he pass his life 
 so undisturbedly to the end. 
 
 " From the little that I read, I formed quite marvellous notions 
 of the world and its people ; all taken from myself and my society. 
 When I read of witty persons, I could not figure them but like the 
 little shock ; great ladies, I conceived, were like the bird ; all old 
 women like my mistress. I had read somewhat of love, too ; and 
 often, in fancy, I would sport strange stories with myself. I figured 
 out the fairest knight on Earth ; adorned him with all perfections, 
 without knowing rightly, after all my labour, how he looked : but 
 I could feel a hearty pity for myself when he ceased to love me ; 
 I would then, in thought, make long melting speeches, or perhaps 
 aloud, to try if I could win him back. You smile ! These young 
 days are, in truth, far away from us all. 
 
 " I now liked better to be left alone, for I was then sole mis- 
 tress of the house. The dog loved me, and did all I wanted ; the 
 bird replied to all my questions with his rhyme ; my wheel kept 
 briskly turning, and at bottom I had never any wish for change. 
 When my dame returned from her long wanderings, she would 
 praise my diligence ; she said her house, since I belonged to it, 
 was managed far more perfectly ; she took a pleasure in my growth 
 and healthy looks ; in short, she treated me in all points like her 
 daughter. 
 
 " ' Thou art a good girl, child,' said she once to me, in her 
 creaking tone ; 1 if thou continuest so, it will be well with thee : 
 but none ever prospers when he leaves the straight path ; punish- 
 ment will overtake him, though it may be late.' I gave little heed 
 to this remark of hers at the time, for in all my temper and move- 
 ments I was very lively; but by night it occurred to me again, 
 and I could not understand what she meant by it. I considered 
 all the words attentively ; I had read of riches, and at last it struck 
 me that her pearls and jewels might perhaps be something preci- 
 ous. Ere long this thought grew clearer to me. But the straight 
 path, and leaving it ? What could she mean by this ? 
 
 " I was now fourteen ; it is the misery of man that he arrives 
 at understanding through the loss of innocence. I now saw well 
 
THE FAIR-HAIRED ECKBERT. 
 
 167 
 
 enough that it lay with me to take the jewels and the bird in the 
 old woman's absence, and go forth with them and see the world 
 which I had read of. Perhaps, too, it would then be possible that 
 I might meet that fairest of all knights, who forever dwelt in my 
 memory. 
 
 " At first this thought was nothing more than any other 
 thought ; but when I used to be sitting at my wheel, it still re- 
 turned to me, against my will ; and I sometimes followed it so far, 
 that I already saw myself adorned in splendid attire, with princes 
 and knights around me. On awakening from these dreams, I 
 would feel a sadness when I looked up, and found myself still 
 in the little cottage. For the rest, if I went through my duties, 
 the old woman troubled herself little about what I thought or 
 felt. 
 
 ' ' One day she went out again, telling me that she should be 
 away on this occasion longer than usual ; that I must take strict 
 charge of everything, and not let the time hang heavy on my 
 hands. I had a sort of fear on taking leave of her, for I felt as if 
 I should not see her any more. I looked long after her, and knew 
 not why I felt so sad ; it was almost as if my purpose had already 
 stood before me, without myself being conscious of it. 
 
 * ' Never did I tend the dog and the bird with such diligence 
 as now ; they were nearer to my heart than formerly. The old 
 woman had been gone some days, when I rose one morning in 
 the firm mind to leave the cottage, and set out with the bird to 
 see this world they talked so much of. I felt pressed and ham- 
 pered in my heart ; I wished to stay where I was, and yet the 
 thought of that afflicted me ; there was a strange contention in 
 my soul, as if between two discordant spirits. One moment my 
 peaceful solitude would seem to me so beautiful; the next the 
 image of a new world, with its many wonders, would again en- 
 chant me. 
 
 " I knew not what to make of it; the dog leaped up continually 
 about me ; the sunshine spread abroad over the fields ; the green 
 birch-trees glittered ; I always felt as if I had something I must 
 do in haste ; so I caught the little dog, tied him up in the room, 
 and took the cage with the bird under my arm. The dog writhed 
 and whined at this unusual treatment ; he looked at me with 
 begging eyes, but I feared to have him with me. I also took one 
 pot of jewels, and concealed it by me ; the rest I left. 
 
 " The bird turned its head very strangely when I crossed the 
 
168 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK, 
 
 threshold ; the dog tugged at his cord to follow me, but he was 
 forced to stay. 
 
 " I did not take the road to the wild rocks, hut went in the 
 opposite direction. The dog stilly whined and barked, and it 
 touched me to the heart to hear him ; the bird tried once or 
 twice to sing; but as I was carrying him, the shaking put him out. 
 
 " The farther I went, the fainter grew the barking, and at 
 last it altogether ceased. I wept, and had almost turned back, 
 but the longing to see something new still hindered me. 
 
 " I had got across the hills, and through some forests, when 
 the night came on, and I was forced to turn aside into a village. 
 I blushed exceedingly on entering the inn ; they showed me to a 
 room and bed ; I slept pretty quietly, only that I dreamed of the 
 old woman, and her threatening me. 
 
 " My journey had not much variety ; the farther I went, the 
 more was I afflicted by the recollection of my old mistress and 
 the little dog ; I considered that in all likelihood the poor shock 
 would die of hunger, and often in the woods I thought my dame 
 would suddenly meet me. Thus amid tears and sobs I went 
 along ; when I stopped to rest, and put the cage on the ground, 
 the bird struck up his song, and brought but too keenly to my 
 mind the fair habitation I had left. As human nature is forget- 
 ful, I imagined that my former journey, in my childhood, had 
 not been so sad and woful as the present ; I wished to be as I 
 was then. 
 
 " I had sold some jewels; and now, after wandering on for 
 several days, I reached a village. At the very entrance I was 
 struck with something strange ; I felt terrified and knew not 
 why ; but I soon bethought myself, for it was the village where 
 I was born ! How amazed was I ! How the tears ran down my 
 cheeks for gladness, for a thousand singular remembrances ! 
 Many things were changed : new houses had been built, some 
 just raised when I went away, were now fallen, and had marks 
 of fire on them ; everything was far smaller and more confined 
 than I had fancied. It rejoiced my very heart that I should see 
 my parents once more after such an absence. I found their little 
 cottage, the well-known threshold ; the door-latch was standing 
 as of old ; it seemed to me as if I had shut it only yesternight. 
 My heart beat violently, I hastily lifted that latch ; but faces I 
 had never seen before looked up and gazed at me. I asked for 
 the shepherd Martin ; they told me that his wife and he were 
 
THE FAIR-HAIRED ECKBERT. 
 
 169 
 
 dead three years ago, I drew back quickly, and left the village 
 weeping aloud. 
 
 " I had figured out so beautifully how I would surprise them 
 with my riches : by the strangest chance, what I had only dreamed 
 in childhood was become reality ; and now it was all in vain, they 
 could not rejoice with me, and that which had been my first hope 
 in life was lost forever. 
 
 "In a pleasant town I hired a small house and garden, and 
 took to myself a maid. The world, in truth, proved not so won- 
 derful as I had painted it : but I forgot the old woman and my 
 former way of life rather more, and, on the whole, I was con- 
 tented. 
 
 " For a long while the bird had ceased to sing ; I was there- 
 fore not a little frightened, when one night he suddenly began 
 again, and with a different rhyme. He sang : 
 
 Alone in wood so gay, 
 Ah, far away ! 
 But thou wilt say 
 Some other day, 
 'Twere best to stay 
 Alone in wood so gay. 
 
 " Throughout the night I could not close an eye ; all things 
 again occurred to my remembrance ; and I felt, more than ever, 
 that I had not acted rightly. When I rose, the aspect of the bird 
 distressed me greatly ; he looked at me continually, and his pre- 
 sence did me ill. There was now no end to his song ; he sang 
 it louder and more shrilly than he had been wont. The more 
 I looked at him, the more he pained and frightened me ; at 
 last I opened the cage, put in my hand, and grasped his neck ; I 
 squeezed my fingers hard together, he looked at me, I slackened 
 them ; but he was dead. I buried him in the garden. 
 
 " After this, there often came a fear over me for my maid ; 
 I looked back upon myself, and fancied she might rob me or 
 murder me. For a long while I had been acquainted with a 
 young knight, whom I altogether liked : I bestowed on him my 
 hand; and with this, Sir Walther, ends my story." 
 
 " Ay, you should have seen her then," said Eckbert warmly ; 
 " seen her youth, her loveliness, and what a charm her lonely way 
 of life had given her. I had no fortune ; it was through her love 
 these riches came to me ; we moved hither, and our marriage has 
 at no time brought us anything but good." 
 
170 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 " But with our tattling," added Bertha, " it is growing very 
 late ; we must go to sleep." 
 
 She rose, and proceeded to her chamber ; Walther, with a 
 kiss of her hand, wished her good-night, saying : " Many thanks, 
 noble lady ; I can well figure you beside your singing bird, and 
 how you fed poor little Strohmian." 
 
 Walther likewise went to sleep ; Eckbert alone still walked 
 in a restless humour up and down the room. " Are not men 
 fools ?" said he at last : " I myself occasioned this recital of my 
 wife's history, and now such confidence appears to me improper ! 
 Will he not abuse it ? Will he not communicate the secret to 
 others ? Will he not, for such is human nature, cast unblessed 
 thoughts on our jewels, and form pretexts and lay plans to get 
 possession of them ?" 
 
 It now occurred to his mind that Walther had not taken leave 
 of him so cordially as might have been expected after such a mark 
 of trust : the soul once set upon suspicion finds in every trifle 
 something to confirm it. Eckbert, on the other hand, reproached 
 himself for such ignoble feelings to his worthy friend ; yet still 
 he could not cast them out. All night he plagued himself with 
 such uneasy thoughts, and got very little sleep. 
 
 Bertha was unwell next day, and could not come to break- 
 fast ; Walther did not seem to trouble himself much about her 
 illness, but left her husband also rather coolly. Eckbert could 
 not comprehend such conduct ; he went to see his wife, and found 
 her in a feverish state ; she said her last night's story must have 
 agitated her. 
 
 From that day, Walther visited the castle of his friend but 
 seldom ; and when he did appear, it was but to say a few un- 
 meaning words and then depart. Eckbert was exceedingly dis- 
 tressed by this demeanour : to Bertha or Walther he indeed said 
 nothing of it ; but to any person his internal disquietude was 
 visible enough. 
 
 Bertha's sickness wore an aspect more and more serious; the 
 Doctor grew alarmed ; the red had vanished from his patient's 
 cheeks, and her eyes were becoming more and more inflamed. 
 One morning she sent for her husband to her bedside ; the nurses 
 were ordered to withdraw. 
 
 " Dear Eckbert," she began, " I must disclose a secret to 
 thee, which has almost taken away my senses, which is ruining 
 my health, unimportant trifle as it may appear. Thou mayest 
 
THE FAIR-HAIRED ECKBERT. 
 
 171 
 
 remember, often as I talked of my childhood, I could never call 
 to mind the name of the dog that was so long beside me : now, 
 that night on taking leave, Walther all at once said to me : * I 
 can well figure you, and how you fed poor little Strohmian.' Is 
 it chance ? Did he guess the name ; did he know it, and speak 
 it on purpose ? If so, how stands this man connected with my 
 destiny ? At times I struggle with myself, as if I but imagined 
 this mysterious business ; but, alas ! it is certain, too certain. 
 I felt a shudder that a stranger should help me to recall the memory 
 of my secrets. What sayest thou, Eckbert ?" 
 
 Eckbert looked at his sick and agitated wife with deep emo- 
 tion ; he stood silent and thoughtful ; then spoke some words of 
 comfort to her, and went out. In a distant chamber, he walked 
 to and fro in indescribable disquiet. Walther, for many years, 
 had been his sole companion ; and now this person was the only 
 mortal in the world whose existence pained and oppressed him. 
 It seemed as if he should be gay and light of heart, were that one 
 thing but removed. He took his bow, to dissipate these thoughts ; 
 and went to hunt. 
 
 It was a rough stormy winter-day ; the snow was lying deep 
 on the hills, and bending down the branches of the trees. He 
 roved about ; the sweat was standing on his brow ; he found no 
 game, and this embittered his ill-humour. All at once he saw 
 an object moving in the distance ; it was Walther gathering moss 
 from the trunks of trees. Scarce knowing what he did, he bent 
 his bow ; Walther looked round, and gave a threatening gesture, 
 but the arrow was already flying, and he sank transfixed by it. 
 
 Eckbert felt relieved and calmed, yet a certain horror drove 
 him home to his castle. It was a good way distant ; he had wan- 
 dered far into the woods. On arriving, he found Bertha dead : 
 before her death, she had spoken much of Walther and the old 
 woman. 
 
 For a great while after this occurrence, Eckbert lived in the 
 deepest solitude : he had all along been melancholy, for the 
 strange history of his wife disturbed him, and he dreaded some 
 unlucky incident or other ; but at present he was utterly at vari- 
 ance with himself. The murder of his friend arose incessantly 
 before his mind ; he lived in the anguish of continual remorse. 
 
 To dissipate his feelings, he occasionally moved to the neigh- 
 bouring town, where he mingled in society and its amusements. 
 He longed for a friend to fill the void in his soul ; and jet, when 
 
172 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 he remembered Walther, he would shudder at the thought of meet- 
 ing with a friend ; for he felt convinced that, with any friend, he 
 must be unhappy. He had lived so long with his Bertha in lovely 
 calmness ; the friendship of Walther had cheered him through so 
 many years ; and now both of them were suddenly swept away. 
 As he thought of these things, there were many moments when 
 his life appeared to him some fabulous tale, rather than the actual 
 history of a living man. 
 
 A young knight, named Hugo, made advances to the silent 
 melancholy Eckbert, and appeared to have a true affection for 
 him. Eckbert felt himself exceedingly surprised ; he met the 
 knight's friendship with the greater readiness, the less he had 
 anticipated it. The two were now frequently together; Hugo 
 showed his friend all possible attentions ; one scarcely ever went 
 to ride without the other ; in all companies they got together. 
 In a word, they seemed inseparable. 
 
 Eckbert was never happy longer than a few transitory mo- 
 ments : for he felt too clearly that Hugo loved him only by mis- 
 take ; that he knew him not, was unacquainted with his history ; 
 and he was seized again with the same old longing to unbosom 
 himself wholly, that he might be sure whether Hugo was his 
 friend or not. But again his apprehensions, and the fear of being 
 hated and abhorred, withheld him. There were many hours in 
 which he felt so much impressed with his entire worthlessness, 
 that he believed no mortal not a stranger to his history, could 
 entertain regard for him. Yet still he was unable to withstand 
 himself: on a solitary ride, he disclosed his whole history to 
 Hugo, and asked if he could love a murderer. Hugo seemed 
 touched, and tried to comfort him. Eckbert returned to town 
 with a lighter heart. 
 
 But it seemed to be his doom that, in the very hour of con- 
 fidence, he should always find materials for suspicion. Scarcely 
 had they entered the public hall, when, in the glitter of the many 
 lights, Hugo's looks had ceased to satisfy him. He thought he 
 noticed a malicious smile ; he remarked that Hugo did not speak 
 to him as usual ; that he talked with the rest, and seemed to pay 
 no heed to him. In the party was an old knight, who had always 
 shown himself the enemy of Eckbert, had often asked about his 
 riches and his wife in a peculiar style. With this man Hugo was 
 conversing; they were speaking privately, and casting looks at 
 Eckbert. The suspicions of the latter seemed confirmed ; he 
 
THE FAIR-HAIRED ECKBERT. 
 
 173 
 
 thought himself betrayed, and a tremendous rage took hold of 
 him. As he continued gazing, on a sudden he discerned the 
 countenance of Walther, all his features, all the form so well 
 known to him ; he gazed, and looked, and felt convinced that it 
 was none but Walther who was talking to the knight. His horror 
 cannot be described ; in a state of frenzy he rushed out of the 
 hall, left the town overnight, and after many wanderings, returned 
 to his castle. 
 
 Here, like an unquiet spirit, he hurried to and fro from room 
 to room ; no thought would stay with him ; out of one frightful 
 idea he fell into another still more frightful, and sleep never 
 visited his eyes. Often he believed that he was mad, that a dis- 
 turbed imagination was the origin of all this terror ; then, again, 
 he recollected Walther's features, and the whole grew more and 
 more a riddle to him. He resolved to take a journey, that he 
 might reduce his thoughts to order ; the hope of friendship, the 
 desire of social intercourse, he had now forever given up. 
 
 He set out, without prescribing to himself any certain route ; 
 indeed, he took small heed of the country he was passing through. 
 Having hastened on some days at the quickest pace of his horse, 
 he, on a sudden, found himself entangled in a labyrinth of rocks, 
 from which he could discover no outlet. At length he met an 
 old peasant, who took him by a path leading past a waterfall : he 
 offered him some coins for his guidance, but the peasant would 
 not have them. "What use is it?" said Eckbert. "I could 
 believe that this man, too, was none but Walther." He looked 
 round once more, and it was none but Walther. Eckbert 
 spurred his horse as fast as it could gallop, over meads and 
 forests, till it sank exhausted to the earth. Kegardless of this, 
 he hastened forward on foot. 
 
 In a dreamy mood he mounted a hill : he fancied he caught 
 the sound of lively barking at a little distance ; the birch-trees 
 whispered in the intervals, and in the strangest notes he heard 
 this song : 
 
 Alone in wood so gay, 
 Once more I stay; 
 None dare me slay, 
 The evil far away : 
 Ah, here I stay, 
 Alone in wood so gay. 
 
 The sense, the consciousness of Eckbert had departed ; it was 
 
174 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 a riddle which he could not solve, whether he was dreaming now, 
 or had hefore dreamed of a wife and friend. The marvellous was 
 mingled with the common : the world around him seemed en- 
 chanted, and he himself was incapable of thought or recollection. 
 
 A crooked, bent old woman, crawled coughing up the hill with 
 a crutch. " Art thou bringing me my bird, my pearls, my dog ?" 
 cried she to him. " See how injustice punishes itself! No one 
 but I was Walther, was Hugo." 
 
 "God of Heaven !" said Eckbert, muttering to himself; " in 
 what frightful solitude have I passed my life ?" 
 
 "And Bertha was thy sister." 
 
 Eckbert sank to the ground. 
 
 ' 1 Why did she leave me deceitfully ? All would have been 
 fair and well; her time of trial was already finished. She was 
 the daughter of a knight, who had her nursed in a shepherd's 
 house ; the daughter of thy father." 
 
 "Why have I always had a forecast of this dreadful thought?" 
 cried Eckbert. 
 
 " Because in early youth thy father told thee : he could not 
 keep this daughter by him for his second wife, her stepmother." 
 
 Eckbert lay distracted and dying on the ground. Faint and 
 bewildered, he heard the old woman speaking, the dog barking, 
 and the bird repeating its song. 
 
THE TRUSTY EOKART. 
 
 Brave Burgundy no longer 
 Could fight for fatherland; 
 
 The foe they were the stronger, 
 Upon the hloody sand. 
 
 He said: " The foe prevaileth, 
 My friends and followers fiy, 
 
 My striving naught availeth, 
 My spirits sink and die. 
 
 No more can I exert me, 
 
 Or sword and lance can wield ; 
 
 0, why did he desert me, 
 E chart, our trusty shield ! 
 
 In fight he used to guide me, 
 
 In danger was my stay ; 
 Alas, he's not heside me, 
 
 But stays at home today! 
 
 The crowds are gathering faster, 
 
 Took captive shall I be? 
 I may not run like dastard, 
 
 I'll die like soldier free." 
 
 Thus Burgundy so bitter, 
 
 Has at his breast his sword; 
 
 When, see, breaks-in the Bitter 
 Eckart, to save his lord! 
 
 With cap and armour glancing,, 
 
 Bold on the foe he rides, 
 His troop behind him prancing, 
 
 And his two sons besides. 
 
 Burgundy sees their token, 
 
 And cries : " Now, God be praised I 
 Not yet we're beat or broken, 
 
 Since Eckart's flag is raised." 
 
LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 Tlien like a true knight, Eckart 
 Dash'd gaily through the foe : 
 
 But with his red blood flecker'd, 
 His little son lay low. 
 
 And when the fight was ended, 
 Then Burgundy he speaks : 
 " Thou hast me well befriended, 
 Yet so as wets my cheeks. 
 
 The foe is smote and flying ; 
 
 Thou'st saved my land and lift 
 But here thy boy is lying, 
 
 Beturns not from the strife." 
 
 Then Eckart wept almost, 
 The tear stood in his eye ; 
 
 He clasp'd the son he'd lost, 
 Close to his breast the boy. 
 
 51 Why diedst thou, Heinz, so early, 
 And scarce wast yet a man ? 
 Thou'rt fallen in battle fairly ; 
 For thee I'll not complain. 
 
 Thee, Prince, we have deliver'd; 
 
 From danger thou art f.ree : 
 The boy and I are sever'd ; 
 
 I give my son to thee." 
 
 Then Burgundy our chief, 
 
 His eyes grew moist and dim j 
 
 He felt such joy and grief, 
 So great that love to him. 
 
 His heart was melting, flaming, 
 
 He fell on Eckart's breast, 
 With sobbing voice exclaiming : 
 " Eckart, my champion best, 
 
 Thou stoodst when every other 
 Had fled from me away ; 
 
 Therefore thou art my brother 
 Forever from this day. 
 
 The people shall regard thee 
 As wert thou of my line ; 
 
 And could I more reward thee. 
 How gladly were it thine 1" 
 
 And when we heard the same, 
 We joy'd as did our prince; 
 
 And Trusty Eckart is the name 
 We've call'd him ever since. 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKAftT* 
 
 177 
 
 The voice of an old peasant sounded over the rocks, as he 
 sang this ballad ; and the Trusty Eckart sat in his grief, on the 
 declivity of the hill, and wept aloud. His youngest boy was 
 standing by him : " Why weepest thou aloud, my father Eckart ?" 
 said he : ' ' Art thou not great and strong, taller and braver than 
 any other man? Whom, then, art thou afraid of?" 
 
 Meanwhile the Duke of Burgundy was moving homewards to 
 his Tower. Burgundy was mounted on a stately horse, with splen- 
 did trappings ; and the gold and jewels of the princely Duke were 
 glittering in the evening sun ; so that little Conrad could not sate 
 himself with viewing and admiring the magnificent procession. 
 The Trusty Eckart rose, and looked gloomily over it ; and young 
 Conrad, when the hunting train had disappeared, struck up this 
 stave : 
 
 On good steed, 
 Sword and shield 
 Wouldst thou wield, 
 With spear and arrow; 
 Then had need 
 That the marrow 
 In thy arm, 
 
 That thy heart and blood, 
 Be good, 
 
 To save thy head from harm. 
 
 The old man clasped his son to his bosom, looking with wist- 
 ful tenderness on his clear blue eyes. "Didst thou hear that 
 good man's song?" said he. 
 
 " Ay, why not 1 " answered Conrad : " he sang it loud enough, 
 and thou art the Trusty Eckart thyself, so I liked to listen." 
 
 " That same Duke is now my enemy," said Eckart ; " he 
 keeps my other son in prison, nay has already put him to death, 
 if I may credit what the people say." 
 
 " Take down thy broad-sword, and do not suffer it," cried 
 Conrad; "they will tremble to see thee, and all the people in 
 the whole land will stand by thee, for thou art their greatest hero 
 in the land." 
 
 "Not so, my son," said the other; "I were then the man 
 my enemies have called me ; I dare not be unfaithful to my liege ; 
 no, I dare not break the peace which I have pledged to him, and 
 promised on his hand." 
 
 "But what wants he with us, then]" said Conrad, impa- 
 tiently. 
 
 vol. in. N 
 
178 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 Eckart sat down again, and said : " My son, the entire story 
 of it would be long, and thou wouldst scarcely understand it. 
 The great have always their worst enemy in their own hearts, 
 and they fear it day and night ; so Burgundy has now come to 
 think that he has trusted me too far ; that he has nursed in me 
 a serpent in his bosom. People call me the stoutest warrior in 
 our country ; they say openly that he owes me land and life ; I 
 am named the Trusty Eckart ; and thus oppressed and suffering 
 persons turn to me, that I may get them help. All this he can- 
 not suffer. So he has taken up a grudge against me ; and every 
 one that wants to rise in favour with him increases his distrust ; 
 so that at last he has quite turned away his heart from me." 
 
 Hereupon the hero Eckart told, in smooth words, how Bur- 
 gundy had banished him from his sight, how they had become 
 entire strangers to each other, as the Duke suspected that he 
 even meant to rob him of his dukedom. In trouble and sorrow, 
 he proceeded to relate how the Duke had cast his son into con- 
 finement, and was threatening the life of Eckart himself, as of a 
 traitor to the^and. 
 
 But Conrad said to his father: ' 1 Wilt thou let me go, my 
 old father, and speak with the Duke, to make him reasonable and 
 kind to thee ? If he has killed my brother, then he is a wicked 
 man, and thou must punish him ; but that cannot be, for he could 
 not so falsely forget the great service thou hast done him." 
 
 " Dost thou know the old proverb ?" said Eckart : 
 
 " Doth the king require thy aid, 
 Thou'rt a friend can ne'er be paid ; 
 Hast thou help'd him through his trouble 
 Friendship's grown an empty bubble. 
 
 Yes ; my whole life has been wasted in vain. Why did he make 
 me great, to cast me down the deeper ? The friendship of princes 
 is like a deadly poison, which can only be employed against our 
 enemies, and with which at last we unwarily kill ourselves." 
 
 " I will to the Duke," cried Conrad : " I will call back into 
 his soul all that thou hast done, that thou hast suffered for him; 
 and he will again be as of old." 
 
 " Thou hast forgot," said Eckart, " that they look on us as 
 traitors. Therefore let us fly together to some foreign country, 
 where a better fortune may betide us." 
 
 " At thy age," said Conrad, " wilt thou turn away thy face 
 from thy kind home ? I will to Burgundy ; I will quiet him, and 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 
 
 179 
 
 reconcile him to thee. What can he do to me, even though he 
 still hate and fear thee ?" 
 
 " I let thee go unwillingly," said Eckart ; "for my soul fore- 
 bodes no good ; and yet I would fain be reconciled to him, for he 
 is my old friend ; and fain save thy brother, who is pining in the 
 dungeon beside him." 
 
 The sun threw his last mild rays on the green Earth : Eckart 
 sat pensively leaning back against a tree ; he looked long at Con- 
 rad, then said : " If thou wilt go, my little boy, go now, before 
 the night grow altogether dark. The windows in the Duke's 
 Castle are already glittering with lights, and I hear afar off the 
 sound of trumpets from the feast ; perhaps his son's bride may 
 have arrived, and his mind may be friendlier to us." 
 
 Unwillingly he let him go, for he no longer trusted to his 
 fortune: but Conrad's heart was light; for he thought it would 
 be an easy task to turn the mind of Burgundy, who had played 
 with him so kindly but a short while before. " Wilt thou come 
 back to me, my little boy?" sobbed Eckart : " if I lose thee, no 
 other of my race remains." The boy consoled him ; flattered 
 him with caresses : at last they parted. 
 
 Conrad knocked at the gate of the Castle, and was let in ; old 
 Eckart stayed without in the night alone. " Him too have I 
 lost," moaned he in his solitude; "I shall never see his face 
 again." 
 
 Whilst he so lamented, there came tottering towards him a 
 gray-haired man ; endeavouring to get down the rocks ; and seem- 
 ing, at every step, to fear that he should stumble into the abyss. 
 Seeing the old man's feebleness, Eckart held out his hand to him, 
 and helped him to descend in safety. 
 
 " Which way come ye ?" inquired Eckart. 
 
 The old man sat down, and began to weep, so that the tears 
 came running over his cheeks. Eckart tried to soothe him and 
 console him with reasonable words ; but the sorrowful old man 
 seemed not at all to heed these well-meant speeches, but to yield 
 himself the more immoderately to his sorrows. 
 
 "What grief can it be that lies so heavy on you as to over- 
 power you utterly?" said Eckart. 
 
 " Ah, my children !" moaned the old man. 
 
 Then Eckart thought of Conrad, Heinz and Dietrich, and was 
 himself altogether comfortless. " Yes," said he, "if your chil- 
 dren are dead, your misery in truth is very great." 
 
180 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 "Worse than dead," replied the old man, with his mournful 
 voice ; " for they are not dead, but lost forever to me. 0, would 
 to Heaven that they were but dead !" 
 
 These strange words astonished Eckart, and he asked the 
 old man to explain the riddle ; whereupon the latter answered : 
 " The age we live in is indeed a marvellous age, and surely the 
 last days are at hand ; for the most dreadful signs are sent into 
 the world, to threaten it. Every sort of wickedness is casting off 
 its old fetters, and stalking bold and free about the Earth ; the 
 fear of Grod is drying up and dispersing, and can find no channel 
 to unite in ; and the Powers of Evil are rising audaciously from 
 their dark nooks, and celebrating their triumph. Ah, my dear 
 sir ! we are old, but not old enough for such prodigious things. 
 You have doubtless seen the Comet, that wondrous light in the 
 sky, that shines so prophetically down upon us ? All men pre- 
 dict evil ; and no one thinks of beginning the reform with him- 
 self, and so essaying to turn off the rod. Nor is this enough ; 
 but portents are also issuing from the Earth, and breaking mys- 
 teriously from the depths below, even as the light shines fright- 
 fully on us from above. Have you never heard of the Hill, which 
 people call the Hill of Yenus ?" 
 
 " Never," said Eckart, " far as I have travelled." 
 
 " I am surprised at that," replied the old man ; "for the 
 matter is now grown as notorious as it is true. To this Moun- 
 tain have the Devils fled, and sought shelter in the desert centre 
 of the Earth, according as the growth of our Holy Faith has cast 
 down the idolatrous worship of the Heathen. Here, they say, 
 before all others, Lady Yenus keeps her court, and all her hellish 
 hosts of worldly Lusts and forbidden Wishes gather round her, 
 so that the Hill has been accursed since time immemorial." 
 
 " But in what country lies the Hill ?" inquired Eckart. 
 
 " There is the secret," said the old man, " that no one can 
 tell this, except he have first given himself up to be Satan's ser- 
 vant ; and, indeed, no guiltless person ever thinks of seeking it 
 out. A wonderful Musician on a sudden issues from below, whom 
 the Powers of Hell have sent as their ambassador ; he roams 
 through the world, and plays, and makes music on a pipe, so 
 that his tones sound far and wide. And whoever hears these 
 sounds is seized by him with visible yet inexplicable force, and 
 drawn on, on, into the wilderness ; he sees not the road he tra- 
 vels ; he wanders, and wanders, and is not weary ; his strength 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 
 
 and his speed go on increasing ; no power can restrain him ; but 
 he runs frantic into the Mountain, from which he can nevermore 
 return. This power has, in our day, been restored to Hell ; and 
 in this inverse direction, the ill-starred, perverted pilgrims are 
 travelling to a Shrine where no deliverance awaits them, or can 
 reach them any more. For a long while, my two sons had given 
 me no contentment ; they were dissolute and immoral ; they de- 
 spised r their parents, as they did religion ; but now the Sound 
 has caught and carried them off, they are gone into unseen king- 
 doms ; the world was too narrow for them, they are seeking room 
 in Hell." 
 
 " And what do you intend to do in such a mystery ?" said 
 Eckart. 
 
 " With this crutch I set out," replied the old man, " to wan- 
 der through the world, to find them again, or die of weariness 
 and woe." 
 
 So saymg, he tore himself from his rest with a strong effort ; 
 and hastened forth with his utmost speed, as if he had found 
 himself neglecting his most precious earthly hope ; and Eckart 
 looked with compassion on his vain toil, and rated him in his 
 thoughts as mad. 
 
 It had been night, and was now day, and Conrad came not 
 back. Eckart wandered to and fro among the rocks, and turned 
 his longing eyes on the Castle ; still he did not see him. A crowd 
 came issuing through the gate ; and Eckart no longer heeded to 
 conceal himself; but mounted his horse, which was grazing in 
 freedom ; and rode into the middle of the troop, who were now 
 proceeding merrily and carelessly across the plain. On his reach- 
 ing them, they recognised him ; but no one laid a hand on him, 
 or said a hard word to him ; they stood mute for reverence, sur- 
 rounded him in admiration, and then went their way. One of the 
 squires he called back, and asked him: " Where is my Conrad?" 
 
 " 0 ! ask me not," replied the squire ; " it would but cause 
 you sorrow and lamenting." 
 
 " And Dietrich !" cried the father. 
 
 " Name not their names any more," said the aged squire, 
 " for they are gone ; the wrath of our master was kindled against 
 them, and he meant to punish you in them." 
 
 A hot rage mounted up in Eckart's soul ; and, for sorrow and 
 fury, he was no longer master of himself. He dashed the spurs 
 into his horse, and rode through the Castle -gate. All drew back, 
 
182 
 
 LTJDWIG TIECK. 
 
 with timid reverence, from his way ; and thus he rode on to the 
 front of the Palace. He sprang from horseback, and mounted the 
 great steps with wavering pace. " Am I here in the dwelling of 
 the man," said he, within himself, " who was once my friend ?" 
 He endeavoured to collect his thoughts ; hut wilder and wilder 
 images kept moving in his eye, and thus he stept into the Prince's 
 chamber. 
 
 Burgundy's presence of mind forsook him, and he trembled 
 as Eckart stood in his presence. " Art thou the Duke of Bur- 
 gundy ?" said Eckart to him. To which the Duke answered, 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And thou hast killed my son Dietrich ?" The Duke said, 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " And my little Conrad too," cried Eckart, in his grief, "was 
 not too good for thee, and thou hast killed him also?" To which 
 the Duke again answered, " Yes." 
 
 Here Eckart was unmanned, and said, in tears: "0! answer 
 me not so, Burgundy ; for I cannot bear these speeches. TeD 
 me but that thou art sorry, that thou wishest it were yet undone, 
 and I will try to comfort myself ; but thus thou art utterly offen- 
 sive to my heart." 
 
 The Duke said: "Depart from my sight, false traitor; for 
 thou art the worst enemy I have on Earth." 
 
 Eckart said : " Thou hast of old called me thy friend ; but 
 these thoughts are now far from thee. Never did I act against 
 thee ; still have I honoured and loved thee as my prince ; and 
 God forbid that I should now, as I well might, lay my hand upon 
 my sword, and seek revenge of thee. No, I will depart from thy 
 sight, and die in solitude." 
 
 So saying, he went out ; and Burgundy was moved in his 
 mind ; but at his call, the guards appeared with their lances, who 
 encircled him on all sides, and motioned to drive Eckart from the 
 chamber with their weapons. 
 
 To horse the hero springs, 
 
 Wild through the hills he rideth: 
 " Of hope in earthly things, 
 
 Now none with me ahideth. 
 
 My sons are slain in youth, 
 
 I have no child or wife ; 
 The Prince suspects my truth, 
 
 Has sworn to take my life.'* 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 
 
 183 
 
 Then to the wood he turns him, 
 
 There gallops on and on ; 
 The smart of sorrow burns him, 
 
 He cries : "They're gone, they're gOD© 
 
 All living men from me are fled, 
 
 New friends I must provide me, 
 To the oaks and firs beside me, 
 
 Complain in desert dead. 
 
 There is no child to cheer me, 
 
 By cruel wolves they're slain; 
 Once three of them were near me, 
 
 I see them not again." 
 
 As Eckart cried thus sadly, 
 
 His sense it pass'd away; 
 He rides in fury madly 
 
 Till dawning of the day. 
 
 His horse in frantic speed 
 
 Sinks down at last exhausted; 
 And naught does Eckart heed, 
 
 Or think or know what caused it ; 
 
 But on the cold ground lie, 
 
 Not fearing, loving longer ; 
 Despair grows strong and stronger, 
 
 He wishes but to die. 
 
 No one about the Castle knew whither Eckart had gone ; for 
 he had lost himself in the waste forests, and let no man see him. 
 The Duke dreaded his intentions ; and he now repented that he 
 had let him go, and not laid hold of him. So, one morning, he 
 set forth with a great train of hunters and attendants, to search 
 the woods, and find out Eckart ; for he thought, that till Eckart 
 were destroyed, there could be no security. All were unwearied, 
 and regardless of toil ; but the sun set without their having found 
 a trace of Eckart. 
 
 A storm came on, and great clouds flew blustering over the 
 forest ; the thunder rolled, and lightning struck the tall oaks : 
 all present were seized with an unquiet terror, and they gradually 
 dispersed among the bushes, or the open spaces of the wood. 
 The Duke's horse plunged into the thicket ; his squires could 
 not follow him : the gallant horse rushed to the ground ; and 
 Burgundy in vain called through the tempest to his servants ; for 
 there was no one that could hear him. 
 
 Like a wild man had Eckart roamed about the woods, uncon > 
 scious of himself or his misfortunes ; he had lost all thought, and 
 in blank stupefaction satisfied his hunger with roots and herbs : 
 
184 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 the hero could not now he recognised by any one, so sore had the 
 days of his despair defaced him. As the storm came on, he awoke 
 from his stupefaction, and again felt his existence and his woes, 
 and saw the misery that had befallen him. He raised a loud cry 
 of lamentation for his children ; he tore his white hair ; and called 
 out, in the bellowing of the storm : " Whither, whither are ye 
 gone, ye parts of my heart ? And how is all strength departed 
 from me, that I could not even avenge your death ? Why did I 
 hold back my arm, and did not send to death him who had given 
 my heart these deadly stabs ? Ha, fool, thou deservest that the 
 tyrant should mock thee, since thy powerless arm and thy silly 
 heart withstood not the murderer. Now, 0 now were he with 
 me ! But it is in vain to wish for vengeance, when the moment 
 is gone by." 
 
 Thus came on the night, and Eckart wandered to and fro in 
 his sorrow. From a distance he heard as it were a voice calling 
 for help. Directing his steps by the sound, he came up to a man 
 in the darkness, who was leaning on the stem of a tree, and mourn- 
 fully entreating to be guided to his road. Eckart started at the 
 voice, for it seemed familiar to him ; but he soon recovered, and 
 perceived that the lost wayfarer was the Duke of Burgundy. Then 
 he raised his hand to his sword, to cut down the man who had 
 been the murderer of his children ; his fury came on him with new 
 force, and he was upon the point of finishing his bloody task, when 
 all at once he stopped, for his oath and the word he had pledged 
 came into his mind. He took his enemy's hand, and led him to 
 the quarter where he thought the road must be. 
 
 The Duke foredone and weary 
 Sank in the wilder'd hreaks ; 
 
 Hirri in the tempest dreary- 
 He on his shoulders takes. 
 
 Said Burgundy: "I'm giving 
 
 Much toil to thee, I fear." 
 Eckart replied : " The living 
 
 On Earth have much to hear." 
 
 " Yet," said the Duke, " helieve me, 
 Were we out of the wood, 
 Since now thou dost relieve me, 
 Thy sorrows I'll make good." 
 
 The hero at this promise 
 
 Felt on his cheek the tear; 
 Said he : " Indeed I nowise 
 
 Do look for payment here." 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 
 
 185 
 
 " Harder our plight is growing," 
 
 The Duke cries, dreading scath, 
 " Now whither are we going? 
 
 Who art thou? Art thou Death ?" 
 
 " Not Death," said he, still weeping, 
 " Or any fiend am I ; 
 Thy life is in God's keeping, 
 Thy ways are in his eye." 
 
 " Ah," said the Duke, repenting, 
 " My breast is foul within; 
 I tremble, while lamenting, 
 Lest God requite my sin. 
 
 My truest friend I've banish'd, 
 
 His children have I slain, 
 In wrath from me he vanish'd, 
 
 As foe he comes again. 
 
 To me he was devoted, 
 
 Through good report and bad ; 
 My rights he .still promoted, 
 
 The truest man I had. 
 
 Me he can never pardon, 
 
 I kill'd his children dear; 
 This night, to pay my guerdon, 
 
 I' th' wood he lurks, I fear. 
 
 This does my conscience teach me, 
 
 A threat'ning voice within ; 
 If here to-night he reach me, 
 
 I die a child of sin." 
 
 Said Eckart : " The beginning 
 
 Of our woes is guilt ; 
 My grief is for thy sinning, 
 
 And for the blood thou'st spilt. 
 
 And that the man will meet thee 
 
 Is likewise surely true ; 
 Yet fear not, I entreat thee, 
 
 He'll harm no hair of you." 
 
 Thus were they going forward talking, when another person in 
 the forest met them ; it was Wolfram, the Duke's Squire, who had 
 long been looking for his master. The dark night was still lying 
 over them, and no star twinkled from between the wet black clouds. 
 The Duke felt weaker, and longed to reach some lodging, where 
 he might sleep till day; besides, he was afraid that he might 
 meet with Eckart, who stood like a spectre before his soul. He 
 imagined he should never see the morning ; and shuddered anew 
 when the wind again rustled through the high trees, and the storm 
 
186 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 came down from the hollows of the mountains, and went rushing 
 over his head. " Wolfram," cried the Duke, in his anguish, 
 " climb one of these tall pines, and look about if thou canst spy 
 no light, no house or cottage, whither we may turn." 
 
 The Squire, at the hazard of his life, clomb up a lofty pine, 
 which the storm was waving from the one side to the other, and 
 ever and anon bending down the top of it to the very ground ; so 
 that the Squire wavered to and fro upon it like a little squirrel. 
 At last he reached the top, and cried: " Down there, in the valley, 
 I see the glimmer of a candle ; thither must we turn." So he 
 descended and showed the way; and in a while, they all perceived 
 the cheerful light ; at which the Duke once more took heart. 
 Eckart still continued mute, and occupied within himself; he 
 spoke no word, and looked at his inward thoughts. On arriving 
 at the hut, they knocked ; and a little old housewife let them in : 
 as they entered, the stout Eckart set the Duke down from his 
 shoulders, who threw himself immediately upon his knees, and in 
 a fervent prayer thanked God for his deliverance. Eckart took 
 his seat in a dark corner ; and there he found fast asleep the poor 
 old man, who had lately told him of his great misery about his 
 sons, and the search he was making for them. 
 
 When the Duke had done praying, he said: "Very strange 
 have my thoughts been this night, and the goodness of God and 
 his almighty power never showed themselves so openly before to 
 my obdurate heart : my mind also tells me that I have not long 
 to live ; and I desire nothing save that God would pardon me my 
 manifold and heavy sins. You two, also, who have led me hither, 
 I could wish to recompense, so far as in my power, before my end 
 arrive. To thee, Wolfram, I give both the castles that are on 
 these hills beside us ; and in future, in remembrance of this 
 awful night, thou shalt call them the Tannenhauser, or Pine- 
 houses. But who art thou, strange man," continued he, "that 
 hast placed thyself there in the nook, apart ? Come forth, that 
 I may also pay thee for thy toil." 
 
 Then rose the hero from his place, 
 And stept into the light hef ore them ; 
 Deep lines of woe were on his face, 
 But with a patient mind he bore them. 
 
 And Burgundy, his heart forsook him, 
 To see that mild old gray-hair'd man ; 
 His face grew pale, a trembling took him, 
 He swoon'd and sank lo earth again. 
 
THE TKUSTY ECKART. 
 
 187 
 
 0, saints of heaven," he wakes and cries, 
 44 Is't thou that art hefore my eyes? 
 How shall I fly ? Where shall I hide me ? 
 Was't thou that in the wood didst guide me ? 
 I kill'd thy children young and fair, 
 Me in thy arms how couldst thou hear ?" 
 
 Thus Burgundy goes on to wail, 
 And feels the heart within him fail ; 
 Death is at hand, remorse pursues him, 
 With streaming eyes he sinks on Eckart's boson* ; 
 And Eckart whispers to him low : 
 " Henceforth I have forgot the slight, 
 So thou aDd all the world may know, 
 Eckart was still thy trusty knight." 
 
 Thus passed the hours till morning, when some other servants 
 of the Duke arrived, and found their dying master. They laid 
 him on a mule, and took him hack to his castle. Eckart he 
 could not suffer from his side ; he would often take his hand and 
 press it to his hreast, and look at him with an imploring look. 
 Then Eckart would embrace him, and speak a few kind words 
 to him, and so the Prince would feel composed. At last he sum- 
 moned all his Council, and declared to them that he appointed 
 Eckart, the trusty man, to be guardian of his sons, seeing he had 
 proved himself the noblest of all. And thus he died. 
 
 Thenceforward Eckart took on him the government with all 
 zeal ; and every person in the land admired his high manly spirit. 
 Not long afterwards a rumour spread abroad in all quarters, of a 
 strange Musician, who had come from Venus-Hill, who was tra- 
 velling through the whole land, and seducing men with his play- 
 ing, so that they disappeared, and no one could find any traces 
 of them. Many credited the story, others not ; Eckart recollected 
 the unhappy old man. 
 
 " I have taken you for my sons," said he to the young Princes, 
 as he once stood with them on the hill before the Castle ; ' ' your 
 happiness must now be my posterity ; when dead, I shall still live 
 in your joy." They lay down on the slope, from which the fair 
 country was visible for many a league ; and here Eckart had to 
 guard himself from speaking of his children ; for they seemed as 
 if coming towards him from the distant mountains, while he heard 
 afar off a lovely sound. 
 
 " Comes it not like dreams 
 
 Stealing o'er the vales and streams ? 
 Out of regions far from this, 
 Like the song of souls in bliss 
 
188 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 This to the youths did Eckavt say, 
 
 And caught the sound from far away; 
 
 And as the magic tones came nigher, 
 
 A wicked strange desire 
 
 Awakens in the breasts of these pure hoys, 
 
 That drives them forth to seek for unknown joys. 
 
 " Come, let's to the fields, to the meadows and mountains, 
 The forests invite us, the streams and the fountains 3 
 Soft voices in secret for loitering chide us, 
 Away to the Garden of Pleasure they'll guide us." 
 
 The Player comes in foreign guise, 
 Appears before their wondering eyes ; 
 And higher swells the music's sound, 
 And brighter glows the emerald ground ; 
 The flowers appear as drunk, 
 Twilight red has on them sunk ; 
 
 And through the green grass play, with airy lightness, 
 
 Soft, fitful, blue and golden streaks of brightness. 
 
 Like a shadow, melts and flits away 
 
 All that bound men to this world of clay ; 
 
 In Earth all toil and tumult cease, 
 
 Like one bright flower it blooms in peace ; 
 
 The mountains rock in purple light, 
 
 The valleys shout as with delight ; 
 
 All rush and whirl in the music's noise, 
 
 And long to share of these offer'd joys ; 
 
 The soul of man is allured to gladness, 
 
 And lies entranced in that blissful madness. 
 
 The Trusty Eckart felt it, 
 
 But wist not of the cause ; 
 His heart the music melted, 
 
 He wondered what it was. 
 
 The world seems new and fairer, 
 
 All blooming like the rose ; 
 Can Eckart be a sharer 
 
 In raptures such as those ? 
 
 " Ha ! Are those tones restoring 
 My wife and bonny sons ? 
 All that I was deploring, 
 My lost beloved ones?" 
 
 Yet soon his sense collected 
 
 Brought doubt within his breast j 
 
 These hellish arts detected, 
 A horror him possessed. 
 
 And now he sees the raging 
 
 Of his young princes dear ; 
 Themselves to Hell engaging, 
 
 His voice no more they hear. 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKAttT. 
 
 And forth, in wild commotion, 
 They rush, not knowing where ; 
 
 In tumult like the ocean, 
 When mad his hillows are. 
 
 Then, as these things assail'd him, 
 
 He wist not what to do ; 
 His knighthood almost fail'd him 
 
 Amid that hellish crew. 
 
 Then to his soul appeareth 
 The hour the Duke did die ; 
 
 His friend's faint prayer he heareth, 
 He sees his fading eye. 
 
 And so his mind's in armour, 
 And hope is conquering fear ; 
 
 When see, the fiendish Charmer 
 Himself comes piping near ! 
 
 His sword to draw he essayeth, 
 And smite the caitiff dead ; 
 
 But as the music playeth, 
 
 His strength is from him fled. 
 
 And from the mountains issue 
 Crowds of distorted forms, 
 
 Of Dwarfs a boundless tissue 
 
 Come simmering round in swarms. 
 
 The youths, possess'd, are running 
 
 As frantic in the crowd : 
 In vain is force or cunning ; 
 
 In vain to call aloud. 
 
 And hurries on by castle, 
 
 By tower and town, the rout ; 
 
 Like imps in hellish wassail, 
 
 With cackling laugh and shout. 
 
 He too is in the rabble ; 
 
 May not resist their force, 
 Must hear their deafening babble, 
 
 Attend their frantic course. 
 
 But now the Hill appeareth, 
 And music comes thereout ; 
 
 And as the Phantoms hear it, 
 They halt, and raise a shout. 
 
 The Mountain starts asunder, 
 
 A motley crowd is seen ; 
 This way and that they wander, 
 
 In red unearthly sheen. 
 
LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 Then Mb broad-sword he drew it, 
 
 And says : " Still true, though lost 1" 
 
 And with mad force he heweth 
 Through that Infernal host. 
 
 His youths he sees (how gladly !) 
 
 Escaping through the vale ; 
 The Fiends are fighting madly, 
 
 And threatening to prevail. 
 
 The Dwarfs, when hurt, fly downward, 
 
 And rise up cured again ; 
 And other crowds rush onw T ard, 
 
 And fight with might and main. 
 
 Then saw he from a distance 
 The children safe, and cried: 
 <s They need not my assistance, 
 I care not what betide." 
 
 His good broad-sw 7 ord doth glitter 
 And flash i' th' noontide ray; 
 
 The Dwarfs, with wailing bitter, 
 And howls, depart away. 
 
 Safe at the valley's ending, 
 The youths far off he spies ; 
 
 Then faint and wounded, bending, 
 The hero falls and dies. 
 
 So his last hour o'ertook him, 
 
 Fighting like lion brave ; 
 His truth, it ne'er forsook him, 
 
 He was faithful to the grave. 
 
 Now Eckart having perish'd, 
 
 The eldest son bore sway ; 
 His memory still he cherish'd, 
 
 With grateful heart would say: 
 
 " From foes and wreck to save me, 
 Like lion grim he fought ; 
 My throne, my life, he gave me, 
 
 And with his heart's blood bought,* 
 
 And soon a wondrous rumour 
 The country round did fill, 
 
 That when a desp'rate humour 
 Doth send one to the Hill, 
 
 There straight a Shape will meet him 
 The Trusty Eckart' s ghost, 
 
 And wistfully entreat him 
 To turn, and not be lost. 
 
 There he, though dead, yet ever 
 True watch and ward doth hold; 
 
 Upon the Earth shall never 
 Be man so true and bold. 
 
THE TEUSTY ECKAIiT. 
 
 191 
 
 PART II. 
 
 More than four centuries had elapsed since the Trusty Eck- 
 art's death, when a noble Tannenhauser, in the station of Imperial 
 Counsellor, was living at Court in the highest estimation. The 
 son of this knight surpassed in beauty all the other nobles of the 
 land, and on this account was loved and prized by every one. 
 Suddenly, however, after some mysterious incidents had been 
 observed to happen to him, the young man disappeared ; and no 
 one knew or guessed what was become of him. Since the times 
 of the Trusty Eckart, there had always been a story current in 
 the land about the Venus-Hill ; and many said that he had wan- 
 dered thither, and was lost forever. 
 
 One of those that most lamented him was his young friend 
 Friedrich von Wolfsburg. They had grown up together, and 
 their mutual attachment seemed to each of them to have become 
 a necessary of life. Tannenhauser' s old father died : Friedrich 
 married some years afterwards ; already was a ring of merry 
 children round him, and still he heard no tidings of his youthful 
 friend ; so that, in the end, he was forced to conclude him dead. 
 
 He was standing one evening under the gate of his Castle, 
 when he perceived afar off a pilgrim travelling towards the man- 
 sion. The wayfaring man was clad in a strange garb ; and his 
 gait and gestures the Knight thought extremely singular. On 
 his approaching nearer, Wolfsburg thought that he knew him ; 
 and at last he became convinced that the stranger was no other 
 than his long-lost friend, the Tannenhauser. He felt amazed, 
 and a secret horror took possession of him, as he recognised dis- 
 tinctly these much-altered features. 
 
 The two friends embraced ; then started back next moment ; 
 and gazed astonished at each other as at unknown beings. Of 
 questions, of perplexed replies, were many. Friedrich often shud- 
 dered at the wild look of his friend, which seemed to burn as with 
 unearthly light. The Tannenhauser had reposed himself a day 
 or two, when Friedrich learned that he was on a pilgrimage to 
 Rome. 
 
 The two friends by and by renewed their former intimacy ; 
 took up their old topics, and told stories to each other of their 
 youth ; but the Tannenhauser always carefully concealed where 
 he had been since then. Friedrich, however, pressed him to 
 
192 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 disclose it, now that they were once more on their ancient con- 
 fidential footing : the other long endeavoured to ward off the 
 friendly prayer ; but at last he exclaimed : " Well, be it so ; thy 
 will be done ! Thou shalt know all ; but cast no reproaches on 
 me after, should the story fill thee with inquietude and horror." 
 
 They went into the open air, and walked a little in a green 
 wood of the pleasure-grounds, where at last they sat down ; and 
 now the Tannenhauser hid his face among the grass, and, with 
 load sobs, held back his right hand to his friend, who pressed it 
 tenderly in his. The woe- worn pilgrim raised himself, and began 
 his story in the following words : 
 
 " Believe me, Wolfsburg, many a man has, at his birth, an 
 Evil Spiiit linked to him, that vexes him through life, and never 
 lets him rest, till he has reached his black destination. So has 
 it been with me ; my whole existence has been but a continuing 
 birth-pain, and my awakening will be in Hell. For this have I 
 already wandered so many weary steps, and have so many yet 
 before me on the pilgrimage which I am making to the Holy 
 Father, that I may endeavour to obtain forgiveness at Home. In 
 his presence will I lay down the heavy burden of my sins ; or fall 
 beneath it, and die despairing." 
 
 Friedrich attempted to console him, but the Tannenhauser 
 seemed to pay little heed to what he said ; and, after a short 
 while, he proceeded in the following words : " There is an old 
 legend of a Knight who is said to have lived many centuries ago, 
 under the name of the Trusty Eckart. They tell how, in those 
 days, a Musician issued from some marvellous Hill; and, by his 
 magic tones, awoke in the hearts of all that heard him so deep 
 a longing, such wild wishes, that he led them irresistibly along 
 with his music, and forced them to rush in with him to the Hill. 
 Hell had then opened wide her gates to poor mortals, and enticed 
 them in with seductive music. In boyhood I often heard this 
 story, and at first without particularly minding it ; yet ere long 
 it so took hold of me, that all Nature, every sound, every flower, 
 recalled to me the story of these heart- subduing tones. I cannot 
 tell thee what a sadness, what an unutterable longing used to 
 seize me, when I looked on the driving of the clouds, and saw 
 the light lordly blue peering out between them ; or what remem- 
 brances the meadows and the woods would awaken in my deepest 
 heart. Oftentimes the loveliness and fulness of royal Nature so 
 affected me, that I stretched out my arms, as if to fly away with 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 
 
 193 
 
 wings ; that I might pour myself out like the Spirit of Nature 
 over mountain and valley; that I might brood over grass and 
 forest, and inhale the riches of her blessedness. And if by day 
 the free landscape charmed me, by night dark dreaming fantasies 
 tormented me ; and set themselves in louring grimness before 
 me, as if to shut up my path of life forever. Aboye all, there was 
 one dream that left an ineffaceable impression on my feelings, 
 though I never could distinctly call the forms of it to memory. 
 Methought there was a vast tumult in the streets ; I heard con- 
 fused unintelligible speaking ; it was dark night ; I went to my 
 parents' house ; none but my father was there, and he sick. Next 
 morning I clasped my parents in my arms, and pressed them with 
 melting tenderness to my breast, as if some hostile power had 
 been about to tear them from me. f Am I to lose thee ?' said I 
 to my father. ' 0 ! how wretched and lonely were I without thee 
 in this world !' They tried to comfort me, but could not wipe 
 away the dim image from my remembrance. 
 
 < ' I grew older, still keeping myself apart from other boys of 
 my age. I often roamed solitary through the fields : and it hap- 
 pened one morning, in my rambles, that I had lost my way ; and 
 so was wandering to and fro in a thick wood, not knowing whither 
 to turn. After long seeking vainly for a road, I at last on a sud- 
 den came upon an iron- grated fence, within which lay a garden. 
 Through the bars, I saw fair shady walks before me ; fruit-trees 
 and flowers ; and close by me were rose-bushes glittering in the 
 sun. A nameless longing for these roses seized me ; I could not 
 help rushing on ; I pressed myself by force through between the 
 bars, and was now standing in the garden. Immediately I sank 
 on my knees ; clasped the bushes in my arms ; kissed the roses 
 on their red lips, and melted into tears. I had knelt a while, 
 absorbed in a sort of rapture, when there came two maidens 
 through the alleys ; the one of my own years, the other elder. 
 I awoke from my trance, to fall into a higher ecstasy. My eye 
 lighted on the younger, and I felt at this moment as if all my 
 unknown woe was healed. They took me to the house ; their 
 parents, having learned my name, sent notice to my father, who, 
 in the evening, came himself, and brought me back. 
 
 ' ' From this day, the uncertain current of my life had got a 
 fixed direction ; my thoughts forever hastened back to the castle 
 and the maiden ; for here, it seemed to me, was the home of all 
 my wishes. I forgot my customary pleasures, I forsook my play- 
 
 VOL. III. o 
 
194 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 mates, and often visited the garden, the castle and Emma. Here 
 I had, in a little time, grown, as it were, an inmate of the house, 
 so that they no longer thought it strange to see me ; and Emma 
 was becoming dearer to me every day. Thus passed my hours ; 
 and a tenderness had taken my heart captive, though I myself 
 was not aware of it. My whole destination seemed to me ful- 
 filled ; I had no wish but still to come again ; and when I went 
 away, to have the same prospect for the morrow. 
 
 " Matters were in this state, when a young knight became 
 acquainted in the family ; he was a friend of my parents ; and he 
 soon, like me, attached himself to Emma. I hated him, from 
 that moment, as my deadly enemy ; but nothing can describe my 
 feelings, when I fancied I perceived that Emma liked him more 
 than me. From this hour, it was as if the music, which had 
 hitherto accompanied me, went silent in my bosom. I meditated 
 but on death and hatred ; wild thoughts now awoke in my breast, 
 when Emma sang her well-known songs to her lute. Nor did I 
 hide the aversion which I felt ; and when my parents tried to 
 reason and remonstrate with me, I grew fierce and contradictory. 
 
 "I now roved about the woods and rocky wastes, infuriated 
 against myself. The death of my rival was a thing I had deter- 
 mined on. The young knight, after some few months, made a 
 formal offer of himself to the parents of my mistress, and she was 
 betrothed to him. All that was rare and beautiful in Nature, all 
 that had charmed me in her magnificence, had been united in my 
 soul with Emma's image ; I fancied, knew or wished for no other 
 happiness but Emma ; nay I had wilfully determined that the 
 day, which brought the loss of her, should also bring my own 
 destruction. 
 
 "My parents sorrowed in heart at such perversion; my mo- 
 ther had fallen sick, but I paid no heed to this ; her situation 
 gave me little trouble, and I saw her seldom. The wedding-day 
 of my enemy was coming on ; and with its approach increased 
 the agony of mind which drove me over woods and mountains. 
 I execrated Emma and myself with the most horrid curses. At 
 this time I had no friend ; no man would take any charge of me, 
 for all had given me up for lost. 
 
 " The fearful marriage-eve came on. I had wandered deep 
 among the cliffs, I heard the rushing of the forest-streams below ; 
 I often shuddered at myself. When the morning came, I saw my 
 enemy proceeding down the mountains : I assailed him with in- 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 
 
 195 
 
 jurious speeches; he replied; we drew our swords, and he soon 
 fell beneath my furious strokes. 
 
 ' ' I hastened on, not looking after him, hut his attendants 
 took the corpse away. At night, I hovered round the dwelling 
 which enclosed my Emma ; and a few days afterwards, I heard 
 in the neighbouring cloister the sound of the funeral-bell, and the 
 grave-song of the nuns. I inquired ; and was told that Fraulein 
 Emma, out of sorrow for her bridegroom's death, was dead. 
 
 ' 1 1 could stay no longer ; I doubted whether I was living, 
 whether it was all truth or not. I hastened back to my parents ; 
 and came next night, at a late hour, to the town where they lived. 
 Here all was in confusion ; horses and military wagons filled the 
 streets, soldiers were jostling one another this way and that, and 
 speaking in disordered haste : the Emperor was on the point of 
 undertaking a campaign against his enemies. A solitary light was 
 burning in my father's house when I entered ; a strangling op- 
 pression lay upon my breast. As I knocked, my father himself, 
 with slow, thoughtful steps, advanced to meet me ; and immedi- 
 ately I recollected the old dream of my childhood ; and felt, with 
 cutting emotion, that now it was receiving its fulfilment. In per- 
 plexity, I asked : ' Why are you up so late, Father ?' He led me 
 in, and said : ' I may well be up, for thy mother is even now dead.' 
 
 "His words struck through my soul like thunderbolts. He 
 took a seat with a meditative air ; I sat down beside him. The 
 corpse was lying in a bed, and strangely wound in linen. My 
 heart was like to burst. ' I wake here,' said the old man, ' for 
 my wife is still sitting by me.' My senses failed; I fixed my 
 eyes upon a corner ; and, after a little while, there rose, as it were, 
 a vapour ; it mounted and wavered ; and the well-known figure of 
 my mother gathered itself visibly together from the midst of it, 
 and looked at me with an earnest mien. I wished to go, but I 
 could not ; for the form of my mother beckoned to me, and my 
 father held me in his arms, and whispered to me, in a low voice : 
 ' She died of grief for thee.' I embraced him with a childlike 
 transport of affection ; I poured burning tears on his breast. He 
 kissed me ; and I shuddered ; for his Hps, as they touched me, 
 were cold, like the lips of one dead. ' How art thou, Father ?' 
 cried I, in horror. He writhed painfully together, and made no 
 reply. In a few moments, I felt him growing colder ; I laid my 
 hand on his heart, but it was still ; and, in wailing delirium, I 
 held the body fast clasped in my embrace. 
 
196 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK, 
 
 " As it were a gleam, like the first streak of dawn, went through 
 the dark room ; and behold, the spirit of my father sat beside my 
 mother's form ; and both looked at me compassionately, as I held 
 the dear corpse in my arms. After this my consciousness was 
 over : exhausted and delirious, the servants found me next morn- 
 ing in the chamber of the dead." 
 
 So far the Tannenhauser had proceeded with his narrative : 
 Friedrich was listening to him with the deepest astonishment, 
 when all on a sudden he broke off, and paused with an expression 
 of the keenest pain. Friedrich felt embarrassed and immersed 
 in thought ; they both returned in company to the Castle, but 
 stayed in the same room apart from others. 
 
 The Tannenhauser had kept silence for a while, then he again 
 began : " The remembrance of those hours still agitates me 
 deeply: I understand not how I have survived them. The world, 
 and its life, now appeared to me as if dead and utterly desolate ; 
 without thoughts or wishes I lived on from day to day. I then 
 became acquainted with a set of wild young people ; and endea- 
 voured, in the whirl of pleasure and intoxication, to lay the tu- 
 multuous Evil Spirit that was in me. My ancient burning impa- 
 tience again awoke ; and I could no longer understand myself or 
 my wishes. A debauchee, named Rudolf, had become my con- 
 fidant ; he, however, always laughed to scorn my longings and 
 complaints. About a year had passed in this way, when my 
 misery of spirit rose to desperation ; there was something drove 
 me onwards, onwards, into unknown space ; I could have dashed 
 myself down from the high mountains into the glowing green of 
 the meadows, into the cool rushing of the waters, to slake the 
 burning thirst, to stay the insatiability of my soul : I longed for 
 annihilation ; and again, like golden morning clouds, did hope 
 and love of life arise before me, and entice me on. The thought 
 then struck me, that Hell was hungering for me, and was sending 
 me my sorrows as well as my pleasures to destroy me ; that some 
 malignant Spirit was directing all the powers of my soul to the 
 Infernal Abode ; and leading me, as with a bridle, to my doom. 
 And I surrendered to him ; that so these torments, these alter- 
 nating raptures and agonies, might leave me. In the darkest 
 night, I mounted a lofty hill ; and called on the Enemy of God 
 and man, with all the energies of my heart, so that I felt he 
 would be forced to hear me. My words brought him : he stood 
 suddenly before me, and I felt no horror. Then in talking with 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 
 
 197 
 
 him, the belief in that strange Hill again rose within me ; and 
 he taught me a Song, which of itself would lead me by the straight 
 road thither. He disappeared, and for the first time since I had 
 begun to live, I was alone with myself ; for I now understood my 
 wandering thoughts, which rushed as from a centre to find out 
 another world. I set forth on my journey ; and the Song, which 
 I sang with a loud voice, led me over strange deserts ; but all 
 other things besides myself I had forgotten. There was some- 
 thing carrying me, as on the strong wings of desire, to my home : 
 I wished to escape the shadow which, amid the sunshine, threatens 
 us ; the wild tones which, amid the softest music, chide us. So 
 travelling on, I reached the Mountain, one night when the moon 
 was shining faintly from behind dim clouds. I proceeded with 
 my Song ; and a giant form stood by me, and beckoned me back 
 with his staff. I went nearer : ' I am the Trusty Eckart,' said 
 the superhuman figure ; ' by God's goodness, I am placed here 
 as watchman, to warn men back from their sinful rashness.' — 
 I pressed through. 
 
 " My path was now as in a subterraneous mine. The passage 
 was so narrow, that I had to press myself along ; I caught the 
 gurgling of hidden waters ; I heard spirits forming ore, and gold 
 and silver, to entice the soul of man ; I found here concealed and 
 separate the deep sounds and tones from which earthly music 
 springs : the farther I went, the more did there fall, as it were, 
 a veil from my sight. 
 
 "I rested, and saw other forms of men come gliding to- 
 wards me ; my friend Rudolf was among the number. I could 
 not understand how they were to pass me, so narrow was the 
 way ; but they went along, through the middle of the rock, with- 
 out perceiving me. 
 
 " Anon I heard the sound of music ; but music altogether dif- 
 ferent from any that had ever struck my ear before. My thoughts 
 within me strove towards the notes : I came into an open space ; 
 and strange radiant colours glittered on me from every side. This 
 it was that I had always been in search of. Close to my heart I 
 felt the presence of the long-sought, now-discovered glory ; and its 
 ravishments thrilled into me with all their power. And then the 
 whole crowd of jocund Pagan gods came forth to meet me, Lady 
 Venus at their head, and all saluted me. They have been banished 
 thither by the power of the Almighty ; their worship is abolished 
 from the Earth ; and now they work upon us from their concealment. 
 
198 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 " All pleasures that Earth affords I here -possessed and par- 
 took of in their fullest bloom ; insatiable was my heart, and end- 
 less my enjoyment. The famed Beauties of the ancient world 
 were present ; what my thought coveted was mine ; one delirium 
 of rapture was followed by another ; and day after day, the world 
 appeared to burn round me in more glorious hues. Streams of 
 the richest wine allayed my fierce thirst ; and beauteous forms 
 sported in the air, and soft eyes invited me ; vapours rose en- 
 chanting around my head : as if from the inmost heart of blissful 
 Nature, came a music and cooled with its fresh waves the wild 
 tumult of desire ; and a horror, that glided faint and secret over 
 the rose-fields, heightened the delicious revel. How many years 
 passed over me in this abode I know not : for here there was no 
 time and no distinctions ; the flowers here glowed with the charms 
 of women ; and in the forms of the women bloomed the magic of 
 flowers ; colours here had another language ; the whole world of 
 sense was bound together into one blossom, and the spirits within 
 it forever held their rejoicing. 
 
 " Now, how it happened, I can neither say nor comprehend; 
 but so it was, that in all this pomp of sin, a love of rest, a long- 
 ing for the old innocent Earth, with her scanty joys, took hold 
 of me here, as keenly as of old the impulse which had driven me 
 hither. I was again drawn on to live that life which men, in 
 their unconsciousness, go on leading : I was sated with this 
 splendour, and gladly sought my former home once more. An 
 unspeakable grace of the Almighty permitted my return ; I found 
 myself suddenly again in the world ; and now it is my intention 
 to pour out my guilty breast before the chair of our Holy Father 
 in Rome ; that so he may forgive me, and I may again be reck- 
 oned among men." 
 
 The Tannenhauser ceased ; and Friedrich long viewed him 
 with an investigating look, then took his hand, and said: " I 
 cannot yet recover from my wonder, nor can I understand thy 
 narrative ; for it is impossible that all thou hast told me can be 
 aught but an imagination. Emma still lives, she is my wife ; 
 thou and I never quarrelled, or hated one another, as thou think - 
 est : yet before our marriage, thou wert gone on a sudden from 
 the neighbourhood ; nor didst thou ever tell me, by a single hint, 
 that Emma was dear to thee." 
 
 Hereupon he took the bewildered Tannenhauser by the hand, 
 and led him into another room to his wife, who had just then re- 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 
 
 199 
 
 turned from a visit to her sister, which had kept her for the last 
 few days from home. The Tannenhauser spoke not, and seemed 
 immersed in thought ; he viewed in silence the form and face of 
 the lady, then shook his head, and said: "By Heaven, that is 
 the strangest incident of all !" 
 
 Friedrich, with precision and connectedness, related all that 
 had befallen him since that time ; and tried to make his friend 
 perceive that it had been some singular madness which had, in 
 the mean while, harassed him. " I know very well how it stands," 
 exclaimed the Tannenhauser. " It is now that I am crazy; and 
 Hell has cast this juggling show before me, that I may not go to 
 Rome, and seek the pardon of my sins." 
 
 Emma tried to bring his childhood to his recollection ; but 
 the Tannenhauser would not be persuaded. He speedily set out 
 on his journey ; that he might the sooner get his absolution from 
 the Pope. 
 
 Friedrich and Emma often spoke of the mysterious pilgrim. 
 Some months had gone by, when the Tannenhauser, pale and 
 wasted, in a tattered pilgrim's dress, and barefoot, one morning 
 entered Friedrich' s chamber, while the latter was in bed asleep. 
 He kissed his lips, and then said, in breathless haste : " The 
 Holy Father cannot, and will not, forgive me ; I must back to 
 my old dwelling." And with this he went hurriedly away. 
 
 Friedrich roused himself; but the ill-fated pilgrim was already 
 gone. He went to his lady's room ; and her maids rushed out 
 to meet him, crying that the Tannenhauser had pressed into the 
 apartment early in the morning, with the words : ' ' She shall not 
 obstruct me in my course !" — Emma was lying murdered. 
 
 Friedrich had not yet recalled his thoughts, when a horror 
 came over him : he could not rest ; he ran into the open air. 
 They wished to keep him bs-ck ; but he told them that the pil- 
 grim had kissed his lips, and that the kiss was burning him till 
 he found the man again. And so, with inconceivable rapidity, 
 he ran away to seek the Tannenhauser, and the mysterious Hill ; 
 and, since that day, he was never seen any more. People say, 
 that whoever gets a kiss from any emissary of the Hill, is thence- 
 forth unable to withstand the lure that draws him with magic 
 force into the subterraneous chasm. 
 
THE RUNENBERG. 
 
 A young hunter was sitting in the heart of the Mountains, in a 
 thoughtful mood, beside his fowling-floor, while the noise of the 
 waters and the woods was sounding through the solitude. He 
 was musing on his destiny ; how he was so young, and had for- 
 saken his father and mother, and accustomed home, and all his 
 comrades in his native village, to seek out new acquaintances, to 
 escape from the circle of returning habitude ; and he looked up 
 with a sort of surprise that he was here, that he found himself 
 in this valley, in this employment. Great clouds were passing 
 over him, and sinking behind the mountains ; birds were singiug 
 from the bushes, and an echo was replying to them. He slowly 
 descended the hill ; and seated himself on the margin of a brook, 
 that was gushing down among the rocks with foamy murmur. 
 He listened to the fitful melody of the water ; and it seemed to 
 him as if the waves were saying to him, in unintelligible words, 
 a thousand things that concerned him nearly ; and he felt an in- 
 ward trouble that he could not understand their speeches. Then 
 again he looked aloft, and thought that he was glad and happy ; 
 so he took new heart, and sang aloud this hunting-song : 
 
 Blithe and cheery through the mountains 
 
 Goes the huntsman to the chase, 
 By the lonesome shady fountains, 
 
 Till he finds the red-deer's trace. 
 
 Hark ! his trusty dogs are haying 
 
 Through the hright-green solitude ; 
 Through the groves the horns are playing: 
 
 0, thou merry gay green wood ! 
 
 In some dell, when luck hath hlest him, 
 
 And his shot hath stretch'd the deer, 
 Lies he down, content, to rest him, 
 
 While the hrooks are murmuring clear, 
 
THE RUNENBERG. 
 
 201 
 
 Leave the husbandman his sowing, 
 
 Let the shipman sail the sea ; 
 None, when bright the morn is glowing, 
 
 Sees its red so fair as he, 
 
 Wood and wold and game that prizes, 
 
 While Diana loves his art ; 
 And, at last, some bright face rises : 
 
 Happy huntsman that thou art ! 
 
 Whilst he sung, the sun had sunk deeper, and broad shadows 
 fell across the narrow glen. A cooling twilight glided over the 
 ground ; and now only the tops of the trees, and the round sum- 
 mits of the mountains, were gilded by the glow of evening. Chris- 
 tian's heart grew sadder and sadder : he could not think of going 
 back to his birdfold, and yet he could not stay ; he felt himself 
 alone, and longed to meet with men. ' He now remembered with 
 regret those old books, which he used to see at home, and would 
 never read, often as his father had advised him to it : the habita- 
 tion of his childhood came before him, his sports with the youth 
 of the village, his acquaintances among the children, the school 
 that had afflicted him so much ; and he wished he were again 
 amid these scenes, which he had wilfully forsaken, to seek his 
 fortune in unknown regions, in the mountains, among strange 
 people, in a new employment. Meanwhile it grew darker ; and 
 the brook rushed louder ; and the birds of night began to shoot, 
 with fitful wing, along their mazy courses. Christian still sat 
 disconsolate, and immersed in sad reflection ; he was like to 
 weep, and altogether undecided what to do or purpose. Un- 
 thinkingly, he pulled a straggling root from the earth ; and on 
 the instant, heard, with affright, a stifled moan underground, 
 which winded downwards in doleful tones, and died plaintively 
 away in the deep distance. The sound went through his inmost 
 heart ; it seized him as if he had unwittingly touched the wound, 
 of which the dying frame of Nature was expiring in its agony. 
 He started up to fly ; for he had already heard of the mysterious 
 mandrake-root, which, when torn, yields such heart-rending moans, 
 that the person who has hurt it runs distracted by its wailing. As 
 he turned to go, a stranger man was standing at his back, who 
 looked at him with a friendly countenance, and asked him whither 
 he was going. Christian had been longing for society, and yet he 
 started in alarm at this friendly presence. 
 
 " Whither so fast ?" said the stranger again. 
 
 The young hunter made an effort to collect himself, and told 
 
202 
 
 LTJDWIG TIECK. 
 
 how all at once the solitude had seemed so frightful to him, he 
 had meant to get away ; the evening was so dark, the green 
 shades of the wood so dreary, the "brook seemed uttering lament- 
 ations, and his longing drew him over to the other side of the 
 hills. 
 
 " You are but young," said the stranger, " and cannot yet 
 endure the rigour of solitude : I will accompany you, for you will 
 find no house or hamlet within a league of this ; and in the way 
 we may talk, and tell each other tales, and so your sad thoughts 
 will leave you : in an hour the moon will rise behind the hills ; 
 its light also will help to chase away the darkness of your mind." 
 
 They went along, and the stranger soon appeared to Christian 
 as if he had been an old acquaintance. "Who are you?" said 
 the man ; " by your speech I hear that you belong not to this 
 part." 
 
 " Ah !" replied the other, " upon this I could say much, and 
 yet it is not worth the telling you, or talking of. There was some- 
 thing dragged me, with a foreign force, from the circle of my 
 parents and relations ; my spirit was not master of itself : like a 
 bird which is taken in a net, and struggles to no purpose, so my 
 soul was meshed in strange imaginations and desires. We dwelt 
 far hence, in a plain, where all round you could see no hill, scarce 
 even a height : few trees adorned the green level ; but meadows, 
 fertile corn-fields, gardens stretched away as far as the eye could 
 reach ; and a broad river glittered like a potent spirit through the 
 midst of them. My father was gardener to a nobleman, and meant 
 to breed me to the same employment. He delighted in plants and 
 flowers beyond aught else, and could unweariedly pass day by day 
 in watching them and tending them. Nay he went so far as to 
 maintain, that he could almost speak with them ; that he got 
 knowledge from their growth and spreading, as well as from the 
 varied form and colour of their leaves. To me, however, garden- 
 ing was a tiresome occupation; and the more so as my father kept 
 persuading me to take it up, or even attempted to compel me to it 
 with threats. I wished to be a fisherman, and tried that business 
 for a time ; but a life on the waters would not suit me : I was then 
 apprenticed to a tradesman in the town ; but soon came home from 
 this employment also. My father happened to be talking of the 
 Mountains, which he had travelled over in his youth ; of the sub- 
 terranean mines and their workmen ; of hunters and their occupa- 
 tion ; and that instant there arose in me the most decided wish. 
 
THE RUNENBERG. 
 
 203 
 
 the feeling that at last I had found out the way of life which would 
 entirely fit me. Day and night I meditated on the matter; repre- 
 senting to myself high mountains, chasms and pine-forests ; my 
 imagination shaped wild rocks ; I heard the tumult of the chase, 
 the horns, the cry of the hounds and the game ; all my dreams 
 were filled with these things, and they left me neither peace nor 
 rest any more. The plain, our patron's castle, and my father's 
 little hampered garden, with its trimmed flower-heds ; our narrow 
 dwelling ; the wide sky which stretched ahove us in its dreary 
 vastness, embracing no hill, no lofty mountain, all became more 
 dull and odious to me. It seemed as if the people about me were 
 living in most lamentable ignorance ; that every one of them would 
 think and long as I did, should the feeling of their wretchedness 
 but once arise within their souls. Thus did I bait my heart with 
 restless fancies; till one morning I resolved on leaving my father's 
 house directly and forever. In a book I had found some notice 
 of the nearest mountains, some charts of the neighbouring dis- 
 tricts, and by them I shaped my course. It was early in spring, 
 and I felt myself cheerful, and altogether light of heart. I hastened 
 on, to get away the faster from the level country ; and one even- 
 ing, in the distance, I descried the dim outline of the Mountains, 
 lying on the sky before me. I could scarcely sleep in my inn, so 
 impatient did I feel to have my foot upon the region which I re- 
 garded as my home : with the earliest dawn I was awake, and 
 again in motion. By the afternoon, I had got among my beloved 
 hills; and here, as if intoxicated, I went on, then stopped a while, 
 looked back ; and drank, as in inspiring draughts, the aspect of 
 these foreign yet well-known objects. Ere long, the plain was 
 out of sight ; the forest-streams were rushing down to meet me ; 
 the oaks and beeches sounded to me from their steep precipices 
 with wavering boughs ; my path led me by the edge of dizzy 
 abysses; blue hills were standing vast and solemn in the distance. 
 A new world was opened to me ; I was never weary. Thus, after 
 some days, having roamed over great part of the Mountains, I 
 reached the dwelling of an old forester, who consented, at my 
 urgent request, to take me in, and instruct me in the business of 
 the chase. It is now three months since I entered his service. I 
 took possession of the district where I was to live, as of my 
 kingdom. I got acquainted with every cliff and dell among the 
 mountains ; in my occupation, when at dawn of day we moved to 
 the forest, when felling trees in the wood, when practising my 
 
204 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 fowling-piece, or training my trusty attendants, our dogs, to do 
 their feats, I felt completely happy. But for the last eight days I 
 have stayed up here at the fowling-floor, in the loneliest quarter of 
 the hills ; and tonight I grew so sad as I never was in my life 
 before ; I seemed so lost, so utterly unhappy ; and even yet I 
 cannot shake aside that melancholy humour." 
 
 The stranger had listened with attention, while they both 
 wandered on through a dark alley of the wood. They now came 
 out into the open country, and the light of the moon, which was 
 standing with its horns over the summit of the hill, saluted them 
 like a friend. In undistinguishahle forms, and many separated 
 masses, which the pale gleam again perplexingly combined, lay 
 the cleft mountain -range before them ; in the background a steep 
 hill, on the top of which an antique weathered ruin rose ghastly 
 in the white light. " Our roads part here," said the stranger ; 
 " I am going down into this hollow ; there, by that old mine- 
 shaft, is my dwelling : the metal ores are my neighbours ; the 
 mine-streams tell me winders in the night ; thither thou canst 
 not follow me. But look, there stands the Runenberg, with its 
 wild ragged walls ; how beautiful and alluring the grim old rock 
 looks down on us ! Wert thou never there ?" 
 
 "Never," said the hunter. " Once I heard my old forester 
 relating strange stories of that hill, which I, like a fool, have for- 
 gotten ; only I remember that my mind that night was full of 
 dread and unearthly notions. I could like to mount the hill some 
 time ; for the colours there are of the fairest, the grass must be 
 very green, the world around one very strange ; who knows, too, 
 but one might chance to find some curious relic of the ancient 
 time up there ?" 
 
 "You could scarcely fail," replied the stranger; "whoever 
 knows how to seek, whoever feels his heart drawn towards it with 
 a right inward longing, will find friends of former ages there, and 
 glorious things, and all that he wishes most." With these words 
 the stranger rapidly descended to a side, without bidding his com- 
 panion farewell ; he soon vanished in the tangles of the thicket, 
 and after some few instants, the sound of his footsteps also died 
 away. The young hunter did not feel surprised, he but went on 
 with quicker speed towards the Runenberg : thither all things 
 seemed to beckon him ; the stars w T ere shining towards it ; the 
 moon pointed out as it were a bright road to the ruins ; light 
 clouds rose up to them ; and from the depths, the waters and 
 
THE RUNENBERG. 
 
 205 
 
 mounding woods spoke new courage into him. His steps were as 
 if winged ; his heart throbbed ; he felt so great a joy within him, 
 that it rose to pain. He came into places he had never seen be- 
 fore ; the rocks grew steeper ; the green disappeared ; the bald 
 cliffs called to him, as with angry voices, and a lone moaning wind 
 drove him on before it. Thus he hurried forward without pause ; 
 and late after midnight he came upon a narrow footpath, which 
 ran along by the brink of an abyss. He heeded not the depth 
 which yawned beneath, and threatened to swallow him forever ; 
 so keenly was he driven along by wild imaginations and vague 
 wishes. At last his perilous track led him close by a high wall, 
 which seemed to lose itself in the clouds ; the path grew narrower 
 every step ; and Christian had to cling by projecting stones to 
 keep himself from rushing down into the gulf. Ere long, he could 
 get no farther ; his path ended underneath a window : he was 
 obliged to pause, and knew not whether he should turn or stay. 
 Suddenly he saw a light, which seemed to move within the ruined 
 edifice. He looked towards the gleam ; and found that he could 
 see into an ancient spacious hall, strangely decorated, and glitter- 
 ing in manifold splendour, with multitudes of precious stones and 
 crystals, the hues of which played through each other in myste- 
 rious changes, as the light moved to and fro ; and this was in the 
 hand of a stately female, who kept walking with a thoughtful 
 aspect up and down the apartment. She seemed of a different 
 race from mortals ; so large, so strong was her form, so earnest 
 her look ; yet the enraptured huntsman thought he had never 
 seen or fancied such surpassing beauty. He trembled, yet secretly 
 wished she might come near the window and observe him. At 
 last she stopped, set down the light on a crystal table, looked 
 aloft, and sang with a piercing voice : 
 
 What can the Ancient keep 
 
 That they come not at my call ? 
 
 The crystal pillars weep, 
 
 From the diamonds on the wall 
 
 The trickling tear-drops fall ; 
 
 And within is heard a moan, 
 
 A chiding fitful tone : 
 
 In these waves of hrightness, 
 
 Lovely changeful lightness, 
 
 Has the Shape heen form'd, 
 
 By which the souj-is charm'd, 
 
 And the longing heart is warm'd- 
 
 Come, ye Spirits, at my call, 
 
 Haste ye to the Golden Hall; * 
 
206 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 Baise, from your abysses gloomy, 
 
 Heads that sparkle; faster 
 
 Come, ye Ancient Ones, come to mo ! 
 
 Let your power be master 
 
 Of the longing hearts and souls, 
 
 Where the flood of passion rolls, 
 
 Let your power be master ! 
 
 On finishing the song, she "began undressing ; laying her ap- 
 parel in a costly press. First, she took a golden veil from her 
 head ; and her long black hair streamed down in curling fulness 
 over her loins : then she loosed her bosom-dress ; and the youth 
 forgot himself and all the world in gazing at that more than 
 earthly beauty. He scarcely dared to breathe, as by degrees she 
 laid aside her other garments : at last she walked about the cham- 
 ber naked ; and her heavy waving locks formed round her, as it 
 were, a dark billowy sea, out of which, like marble, the glancing 
 limbs of her form beamed forth, in alternating splendour. After 
 a while, she went forward to another golden press ; and took from 
 it a tablet, glittering with many inlaid stones, rubies, diamonds 
 and all kinds of jewels ; and viewed it long with an investigating 
 look. The tablet seemed to form a strange inexplicable figure, 
 from its individual lines and colours ; sometimes, when the glance 
 of it came towards the hunter, he was painfully dazzled by it ; 
 then, again, soft green and blue playing over it, refreshed his 
 eye : he stood, however, devouring the objects with his looks, 
 and at the same time sunk in deep thought. Within his soul, 
 an abyss of forms and harmony, of longing and voluptuousness, 
 was opened : hosts of winged tones, and sad and joyful melodies 
 flew through his spirit, which was moved to its foundations : he 
 saw a world of Pain and Hope arise within him ; strong towering 
 crags of Trust and defiant Confidence, and deep rivers of Sadness 
 flowing by. He no longer knew himself : and he started as the 
 fair woman opened the window ; handed him the magic tablet of 
 stones, and spoke these words : " Take this in memory of me !" 
 He caught the tablet ; and felt the figure, which, unseen, at once 
 went through his inmost heart ; and the light, and the fair woman, 
 and the wondrous hall, had disappeared. As it were, a dark night, 
 with curtains of cloud, fell down over his soul : he searched for 
 his former feelings, for that inspiration and unutterable love ; he 
 looked at the precious tablet, and the sinking moon was imaged 
 in it faint and bluish. - 
 
 He had still the tablet firmly grasped in his hands when the 
 
THE RUNENBERG. 
 
 207 
 
 morning dawned ; and he, exhausted, giddy and half-asleep, fell 
 headlong down the precipice. — 
 
 The sun shone bright on the face of the stupefied sleeper ; 
 and, awakening, he found himself upon a pleasant hill. He looked 
 round, and saw far behind him, and scarce discernible at the ex- 
 treme horizon, the ruins of the Eunenberg ; he searched for his 
 tablet, and could find it nowhere. Astonished and perplexed, he 
 tried to gather his thoughts, and connect together his remem- 
 brances ; but his memory was as if filled with a waste haze, in 
 which vague irrecognisable shapes were wildly jostling to and fro. 
 His whole previous life lay behind him, as in a far distance ; the 
 strangest and the commonest were so mingled, that all his efforts 
 could not separate them. After long struggling with himself, he 
 at last concluded that a dream, or sudden madness, had come 
 over him that night ; only he could never understand how he had 
 strayed so far into a strange and remote quarter. 
 
 Still scarcely waking, he went down the hill ; and came upon 
 a beaten way, which led him out from the mountains into the 
 plain country. All was strange to him : he at first thought that 
 he would find his old home ; but the country which he saw was 
 quite unknown to him ; and at length he concluded that he must 
 be upon the south side of the Mountains, which, in spring, he had 
 entered from the north. Towards noon, he perceived a little 
 town below him : from its cottages a peaceful smoke was mount- 
 ing up ; children, dressed as for a holiday, were sporting on the 
 green ; and from a small church came the sound of the organ, 
 and the singing of the congregation. All this laid hold of him 
 with a sweet, inexpressible sadness ; it so moved him, that he 
 was forced to weep. The narrow gardens, the little huts with 
 their smoking chimneys, the accurately-parted corn-fields, re- 
 minded him of the necessities of poor human nature ; of man's 
 dependence on the friendly Earth, to whose benignity he must 
 commit himself ; while the singing, and the music of the organ, 
 filled the stranger's heart with a devoutness it had never felt be- 
 fore. The desires and emotions of the bygone night seemed reck- 
 less and wicked ; he wished once more, in childlike meekness, 
 helplessly and humbly to unite himself to men as to his brethren, 
 and fly from his ungodly purposes and feelings. The plain, with 
 its little river, which, in manifold windings, clasped itself about 
 the gardens and meadows, seemed to him inviting and delightful : 
 he thought with fear of his abode among the lonely mountains 
 
208 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 amid waste rocks ; he wished that he could he allowed to live in 
 this peaceful village ; and so feeling, he went into its crowded 
 church. 
 
 The psalm was just over, and the preacher had hegun his ser- 
 mon. It was on the kindness of God in regard to Harvest ; how 
 His goodness feeds and satisfies all things that live ; how marvel- 
 lously He has, in the fruits of the Earth, provided support for 
 men; how the love of God incessantly displays itself in the bread 
 He sends us ; and how the humble Christian may therefore, with 
 a thankful spirit, perpetually celebrate a Holy Supper. The con- 
 gregation were affected ; the eyes of the hunter rested on the 
 pious priest, and observed, close by the pulpit, a young maiden, 
 who appeared beyond all others reverent and attentive. She was 
 slim and fair ; her blue eye gleamed with the most piercing soft- 
 ness ; her face was as if transparent, and blooming in the ten- 
 derest colours. The stranger youth had never been as he now 
 was ; so full of charity, so calm, so abandoned to the stillest, 
 most refreshing feelings. He bowed himself in tears, w T hen the 
 clergyman pronounced his blessing ; he felt these holy words 
 thrill through him like an unseen power ; and the vision of the 
 night drew back before them to the deepest distance, as a spectre 
 at the dawn. He issued from the church ; stopped beneath a 
 large lime-tree ; and thanked God, in a heartfelt prayer, that He 
 had saved him, sinful and undeserving, from the nets of the 
 Y/icked Spirit. 
 
 The people were engaged in holding harvest-home that day, 
 and every one was in a cheerful mood ; the children, with their 
 gay dresses, were rejoicing in the prospect of the sweetmeats and 
 the dance ; in the village square, a space encircled with young 
 trees, the youths were arranging the preparations for their harvest 
 sport ; the players were seated, and essaying their instruments. 
 Christian went into the fields again, to collect his thoughts and 
 pursue his meditations ; and on his returning to the village, all 
 had joined in mirth, and actual celebration of their festival. The 
 fair-haired Elizabeth was there, too, with her parents ; and the 
 stranger mingled in the jocund throng. Elizabeth was dancing ; 
 and Christian, in the mean time, had entered into conversation 
 with her father, a farmer, and one of the richest people in the 
 village. The man seemed pleased with his youth and way of 
 speech ; so, in a short time, both of them agreed that Christian 
 should remain with him as gardener. This office Christian could 
 
THE RUNENBEEG. 
 
 209 
 
 engage with ; for he hoped that now the knowledge and employ- 
 ments, which he had so much despised at home, would stand him 
 in good stead. 
 
 From this period a new life began for him. He went to live 
 with the farmer, and was numbered among his family. With his 
 trade, he likewise changed his garb. He was so good, so helpful 
 and kindly ; he stood to his task so honestly, that ere long every 
 member of the house, especially the daughter, had a friendly feel- 
 ing to him. Every Sunday, when he saw her going to church, he 
 was standing with a fair nosegay ready for Elizabeth ; and then 
 she used to thank him with blushing kindliness : he felt her ab- 
 sence, on days when he did not chance to see her ; and at night, 
 she would tell him tales and pleasant histories. Day by day they 
 grew more necessary to each other ; and the parents, who observed 
 it, did not seem to think it wrong ; for Christian was the most 
 industrious and handsomest youth in the village. They them- 
 selves had, at first sight, felt a touch of love and friendship for 
 him. After half a year, Elizabeth became his wife. Spring was 
 come back ; the swallows and the singing-birds had revisited the 
 land ; the garden was standing in its fairest trim ; the marriage 
 was celebrated with abundant mirth ; bride and bridegroom seemed 
 intoxicated with their happiness. Late at night, when they re- 
 tired to their chamber, the husband whispered to his wife : " No, 
 thou art not that form which once charmed me in a dreara, and 
 which I never can entirely forget ; but I am happy beside thee, 
 and blessed that thou art mine." 
 
 How delighted was the family, when, within a year, it became 
 augmented by a little daughter, who was baptised Leonora. Chris- 
 tian's looks, indeed, would sometimes take a rather grave expres- 
 sion as he gazed on the child ; but his youthful cheeriness con- 
 tinually returned. He scarcely ever thought of his former way of 
 life, for he felt himself entirely domesticated and contented. Yet, 
 some months afterwards, his parents came into his mind ; and he 
 thought how much his father, in particular, would be rejoiced to 
 see his peaceful happiness, his station as husbandman and gar- 
 dener ; it grieved him that he should have utterly forgotten his 
 father and mother for so long a time ; his own only child made 
 known to him the joy which children afford to parents ; so at last 
 he took the resolution to set out, and again revisit home. 
 
 Unwillingly he left his wife ; all wished him speed ; and the 
 season being fine, he went off on foot. Already at the distance of 
 
 vol. in. p 
 
210 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 a few miles, he felt how much the parting grieved him ; for the 
 first time in his life, he experienced the pains of separation ; the 
 foreign objects seemed to him almost savage ; he felt as if he had 
 been lost in some unfriendly solitude. Then the thought came 
 on him, that his youth was over ; that he had found a home to 
 which he now belonged, in which his heart had taken root ; he 
 was almost ready to lament the lost levity of younger years ; and 
 his mind was in the saddest mood, when he turned aside into a 
 village inn to pass the night. He could not understand how he 
 had come to leave his kind wife, and the parents she had given 
 him ; and he felt dispirited and discontented, when he rose next 
 morning to pursue his journey. 
 
 His pain increased as he approached the hills : the distant 
 ruins were already visible, and by degrees grew more distinguish- 
 able ; many summits rose defined and clear amid the blue vapour. 
 His step grew timid ; frequently he paused, astonished at his fear ; 
 at the horror which, with every step, fell closer on him. " Mad- 
 ness !" cried he, "I know thee well, and thy perilous seductions ; 
 but I will withstand thee manfully. Elizabeth is no vain dream ; 
 I know that even now she thinks of me, that she waits for me, 
 and fondly counts the hours of my absence. Do I not already see 
 forests like black hair before me ? Do not the glancing eyes look 
 to me from the brook ? Does not the stately form step towards 
 me from the mountains ?" So saying, he was about to lay him- 
 self beneath a tree, and take some rest ; when he perceived an 
 old man seated in the shade of it, examining a flower with ex- 
 treme attention ; now holding it to the sun, now shading it with 
 his hands, now counting its leaves ; as if striving in every way to 
 stamp it accurately in his memory. On approaching nearer, he 
 thought he knew the form ; and soon no doubt remained that the 
 old man with the flower was his father. With an exclamation of 
 the liveliest joy, he rushed into his arms ; the old man seemed 
 delighted, but not much surprised, at meeting him so suddenly. 
 
 " Art thou with me already, my son ?" said he : " I knew 
 that I should find thee soon, but I did not think such joy had 
 been in store for me this very day." 
 
 " How did you know, father, that you would meet me ?" 
 
 " By this flower," replied the old gardener ; " all my days I 
 have had a wish to see it ; but never had I the fortune ; for it is 
 very scarce, and grows only among the mountains. I set out to 
 seek thee, for thy mother is dead, and the loneliness at home 
 
THE RUNENBERG. 
 
 211 
 
 made me sad and heavy. I knew not whither I should turn my 
 steps ; at last I came among the mountains, dreary as the jour- 
 ney through them had appeared to me. By the road, I sought 
 for this flower, but could find it nowhere ; and now, quite unex- 
 pectedly, I see it here, where the fair plain is lying stretched 
 before me. From this I knew that I should meet thee soon ; 
 and, lo, how true the fair flower's prophecy has proved !" 
 
 They embraced again, and Christian wept for his mother ; 
 but the old man grasped his hand, and said : " Let us go, that 
 the shadows of the mountains may be soon out of view ; it always 
 makes me sorrowful in the heart to see these wild steep shapes, 
 these horrid chasms, these torrents gurgling down into their ca- 
 verns. Let us get upon the good, kind, guileless level ground 
 again." 
 
 They went back, and Christian recovered his cheerfulness. 
 He told his father of his new fortune, of his child and home : his 
 speech made himself as if intoxicated ; and he now, in talking 
 of it, for the first time truly felt that nothing more was wanting 
 to his happiness. Thus, amid narrations sad and cheerful, they 
 returned into the village. All were delighted at the speedy end- 
 ing of the journey; most of all, Elizabeth. The old father stayed 
 with them, and joined his little fortune to their stock; they formed 
 the most contented and united circle in the world. Their crops 
 were good, their cattle throve ; and in a few years Christian's 
 house was among the wealthiest in the quarter. Elizabeth had 
 also given him several other children. 
 
 Five years had passed away in this manner, when a stranger 
 halted from his journey in their village ; and took up his lodging 
 in Christian's house, as being the most respectable the place con- 
 tained. He was a friendly, talking man ; he told them many 
 stories of his travels ; sported with the children, and made pre- 
 sents to them : in a short time, all were growing fond of him. 
 He liked the neighbourhood so well, that he proposed remaining 
 in it for a day or two ; but the days grew weeks, and the weeks 
 months. No one seemed to wonder at his loitering ; for all of 
 them had grown accustomed to regard him as a member of the 
 family. Christian alone would often sit in a thoughtful mood ; 
 for it seemed to him as if he knew this traveller of old, and yet 
 he could not think of any time when he had met with him. Three 
 months had passed away, when the stranger at last took his leave, 
 and said : " My dear friends, a wondrous destiny, and singular 
 
212 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 anticipations, drive me to the neighbouring mountains ; a magic 
 image, not to be withstood, allures me : I leave you now, and I 
 know not whether I shall ever see you any more. I have a sum 
 of money by me, which in your hands will be safer than in mine ; 
 so I ask you to take charge of it ; and if within a year I come 
 not back, then keep it, and accept my thanks along with it for 
 the kindness you have shown me." 
 
 So the traveller went his way, and Christian took the money 
 in charge. He locked it carefully up ; and now and then, in the 
 excess of his anxiety, looked over it ; he counted it to see that 
 none was missing, and in all respects took no little pains with 
 it. " This sum might make us very happy," said he once to his 
 father; " should the stranger not return, both we and our chil- 
 dren were well provided for." 
 
 "Heed not the gold," said the old man; "not in it can 
 happiness be found : hitherto, thank God, we have never wanted 
 aught ; and do thou put away such thoughts far from thee." 
 
 Christian often rose in the night to set his servants to their 
 labour, and look after everything himself : his father was afraid 
 lest this excessive diligence might harm his youth and health ; so 
 one night he rose to speak with him about remitting such unrea- 
 sonable efforts ; when, to his astonishment, he found him sitting 
 with a little lamp at his table, and counting, with the greatest 
 eagerness, the stranger's gold. "My son," said the old man, 
 full of sadness, ' £ must it come to this with thee ? Was this 
 accursed metal brought beneath our roof to make us wretched ? 
 Bethink thee, my son, or the Evil One will consume thy blood 
 and life out of thee." 
 
 "Yes," replied he; " it is true, I know myself no more; 
 neither day nor night does it give me any rest : see how it looks 
 on me even now, till the red glance of it goes into my very heart ! 
 Hark how it clinks, this go]den stuff! It calls me when I sleep ; 
 I hear it when music sounds, when the wind blows, when people 
 speak together on the street ; if the sun shines, I see nothing 
 but these yellow eyes, with which it beckons to me, as it were, 
 to whisper words of love into my ear : and therefore I am forced 
 to rise in the night-time, though it were but to satisfy its eager- 
 ness ; and then I feel it triumphing and inwardly rejoicing when 
 I touch it with my fingers ; in its joy it grows still redder and 
 lordlier. Do but look yourself at the glow of its rapture !" The 
 old man, shuddering and weeping, took his son in his arms ; he 
 
THE RUNENBERG. 
 
 213 
 
 said a prayer, and then spoke : " Christel, thou must turn again 
 to the Word of God ; thou must go more zealously and reverently 
 to church, or else, alas ! my poor child, thou wilt droop and die 
 away in the most mournful wretchedness." 
 
 The money was again locked up ; Christian promised to take 
 thought and change his conduct, and the old man was composed. 
 A year and more had passed, and no tidings had been heard of 
 the stranger : the old man at last gave in to the entreaties of his 
 son ; and the money was laid out in land, and other property. 
 The young farmer's riches soon became the talk of the village ; 
 and Christian seemed contented and comfortable, and his father 
 felt delighted at beholding him so well and cheerful ; all fear had 
 now vanished from his mind. What then must have been his 
 consternation, when Elizabeth one evening took him aside ; and 
 told him, with tears, that she could no longer understand her 
 husband ; how he spoke so wildly, especially at night ; how he 
 dreamed strange dreams, and would often in his sleep walk long 
 about the room, not knowing it ; how he spoke strange things to 
 her, at which she often shuddered. But what terrified her most, 
 she said, was his pleasantry by day ; for his laugh was wild and 
 hollow, his look wandering and strange. The father stood amazed, 
 and the sorrowing wife proceeded : " He is always talking of the 
 traveller, and maintaining that he knew him formerly, and that 
 the stranger man was in truth a woman of unearthly beauty ; nor 
 will he go any more into the fields or the garden to work, for he 
 says he hears underneath the ground a fearful moaning when he 
 but pulls out a root ; he starts and seems to feel a horror at all 
 plants and herbs." 
 
 " Good God !" exclaimed the father, " is the frightful hunger 
 in him grown so rooted and strong, that it is come to this ? Then 
 is his spell-bound heart no longer human, but of cold metal ; he 
 who does not love a flower, has lost all love and fear of God." 
 
 Next day the old man went to walk with his son, and told 
 him much of what Elizabeth had said ; calling on him to be pious, 
 and devote his soul to holy contemplations. " Willingly, my 
 father," answered Christian; "and I often do so with success, 
 and all is well with me : for long periods of time, for years, I can 
 forget the true form of my inward man, and lead a life that is 
 foreign to me, as it were, with cheerfulness : but then on a sud- 
 den, like a new moon, the ruling star, which I myself am, arises 
 again in my heart, and conquers this other influence. I might 
 
214 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK, 
 
 be altogether happy; but once, in a mysterious night, a secret 
 sign was imprinted through my hand deep on my soul ; frequently 
 the magic figure sleeps and is at rest ; I imagine it has passed 
 away; but in a moment, like a poison, it darts up and lives over 
 all its lineaments. And then I can think or feel nothing else but 
 it ; and all around me is transformed, or rather swallowed up, by 
 this subduing shape. As the rabid man recoils at the sight of 
 water, and the poison in him grows more fell ; so too it is with 
 me at the sight of any cornered figure, any line, any gleam of 
 brightness ; anything will then rouse the form that dwells in me, 
 and make it start into being ; and my soul and body feel the 
 throes of birth ; for as my mind received it by a feeling from 
 without, she strives in agony and bitter labour to work it forth 
 again into an outward feeling, that she may be rid of it, and at 
 rest." 
 
 " It was an evil star that took thee from us to the Moun- 
 tains," said the old man ; "thou wert born for calm life, thy mind 
 inclined to peace and the love of plants ; then thy impatience 
 hurried thee away to the company of savage stones : the crags, 
 the torn cliffs, with their jagged shapes, have overturned thy soul, 
 and planted in thee the wasting hunger for metals. Thou shouldst 
 still have been on thy guard, and kept thyself away from the view 
 of mountains ; so I meant to bring thee up, but it has not so been 
 to be. Thy humility, thy peace, thy childlike feeling, have been 
 thrust away by scorn, boisterousness and caprice." 
 
 " No," said the son ; " I remember well that it was a plant 
 which first made known to me the misery of the Earth ; never, 
 till then, did I understand the sighs and lamentations one may 
 hear on every side, througnout the whole of Nature, if one but 
 give ear to them. In plants and herbs, in trees and flowers, it 
 is the painful writhing of one universal wound that moves and 
 works ; they are the corpse of foregone glorious worlds of rock, 
 they offer to our eye a horrid universe of putrefaction. I now see 
 clearly it was this, which the root with its deep-drawn sigh was 
 saying to me ; in its sorrow it forgot itself, and told me all. It 
 is because of this that all green shrubs are so enraged at me, and 
 lie in wait for my life ; they wish to obliterate that lovely figure 
 in my heart ; and every spring, with their distorted deathlike 
 looks, they try to win my soul. Truly it is piteous to consider 
 how they have betrayed and cozened thee, old man ; for they 
 have gained complete possession of thy spirit. Do but question 
 
THE RUNENBERG. 
 
 215 
 
 the rocks, and thou wilt be amazed when thou shalt hear them 
 speak." 
 
 The father looked at him a long while, and could answer no- 
 thing. They went home again in silence, and the old man was as 
 frightened as Elizabeth at Christian's mirth ; for it seemed a thing 
 quite foreign ; and as if another being from within were working 
 out of him, awkwardly and ineffectually, as out of some machine. 
 
 The harvest-home was once more to be held ; the people went 
 to church, and Elizabeth, with her little ones, set out to join the 
 service ; her husband also seemed intending to accompany them, 
 but at the threshold of the church he turned aside ; and with an 
 air of deep thought, walked out of the village. He set himself 
 on the height, and again looked over upon the smoking cottages ; 
 he heard the music of the psalm and organ coming from the little 
 church; children, in holiday dresses, were dancing and sporting 
 on the green. " How have I lost my life as in a dream !" said 
 he to himself: " years have passed away since I went down this 
 hill to the merry children ; they who were then sportful on the 
 green, are now serious in the church ; I also once went into it, 
 but Elizabeth is now no more a blooming childlike maiden ; her 
 youth is gone ; I cannot seek for the glance of her eyes with the 
 longing of those days ; I have wilfully neglected a high eternal 
 happiness, to win one which is finite and transitory." 
 
 With a heart full of wild desire, he walked to the neighbour- 
 ing wood, and immersed himself in its thickest shades. A ghastly 
 silence encompassed him ; no breath of air was stirring in the 
 leaves. Meanwhile he saw a man approaching him from a dist- 
 ance, whom he recognised for the stranger ; he started in affright, 
 and his first thought was, that the man would ask him for his 
 money. But as the form came nearer, he perceived how greatly 
 he had been mistaken ; for the features, which he had imagined 
 known to him, melted into one another ; an old woman of the 
 utmost hideousness approached ; she was clad in dirty rags ; a 
 tattered clout bound up her few gray hairs ; she was limping on 
 a crutch. With a dreadful voice she spoke to him, and asked his 
 name and situation ; he replied to both inquiries, and then said, 
 4 'But who art thou?" 
 
 " I am called the Woodwoman," answered she ; " and every 
 child can tell of me. Didst thou never see me before ?" With 
 the last words she whirled about, and Christian thought he recog- 
 nised among the trees the golden veil, the lofty gait, the large 
 
 / 
 
216 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 stately form which he had once beheld of old. He turned to 
 hasten after her, but nowhere was she to be seen. 
 
 Meanwhile something glittered in the grass, and drew his eye 
 to it. He picked it up ; it was the magic tablet with the coloured 
 jewels, and the wondrous figure, which he had lost so many years 
 before. The shape and the changeful gleams struck over all his 
 senses with an instantaneous power. He grasped it firmly, to 
 convince himself that it was really once more in his hands, and 
 then hastened back with it to the village. His father met him. 
 " See," cried Christian, " the thing which I was telling you about 
 so often, which I thought must have been shown to me only in a 
 dream, is now sure and true." 
 
 The old man looked a long while at the tablet, and then said : 
 "My son, I am struck with horror in my heart when I view 
 these stones, and dimly guess the meaning of the words on them. 
 Look here, how cold they glitter, what cruel looks they cast from 
 them, bloodthirsty, like the red eye of the tiger ! Cast this writ- 
 ing from thee, which makes thee cold and cruel, which will turn 
 thy heart to stone : 
 
 See the flowers, when morn is beaming, 
 
 Waken in their dewy place ; 
 And, like children roused from dreaming, 
 
 Smiling look thee in the face. 
 
 By degrees, that way and this, 
 
 To the golden Sun they're turning, 
 Till they meet his glowing kiss, 
 
 And their hearts with love are burning : 
 
 For, with fond and sad desire, 
 
 In their lover's looks to languish, 
 On his melting kisses to expire, 
 
 And to die of love's sweet anguish : 
 
 This is what they joy in most ; 
 
 To depart in fondest weakness ; 
 In their lover's being lost, 
 
 Faded stand in silent meekness. 
 
 Then they pour away the treasure 
 
 Of their perfumes, their soft soul8, 
 And the air grows drunk with pleasure, 
 
 As in wanton floods it rolls. 
 
 Love comes to us here below, 
 
 Discord harsh away removing ; 
 And the heart cries : Now I know 
 
 Sadness, Fondness, Pain of Loving." 
 
THE RUNENBERG. 
 
 217 
 
 " What wonderful incalculable treasures," said the other, 
 " must there still be in the depths of the Earth ! Could one but 
 sound into their secret beds and raise them up, and snatch them 
 to one's-self ! Could one but clasp this Earth like a beloved 
 bride to one's bosom, so that in pain and love she would willingly 
 grant one her costliest riches ! The Woodwoman has called me ; 
 I go to seek for her. Near by is an old ruined shaft, which some 
 miner has hollowed out many centuries ago ; perhaps I shall find 
 her there !" 
 
 He hastened off. In vain did the old man strive to detain 
 him ; in a few moments Christian had vanished from his sight. 
 Some hours afterwards, the father, with a strong effort, reached 
 the ruined shaft : he saw footprints in the sand at the entrance, 
 and returned in tears ; persuaded that his son, in a state of mad- 
 ness, had gone in and been drowned in the old collected waters 
 and horrid caves of the mine. 
 
 From that day his heart seemed broken, and he was inces- 
 santly in tears. The whole neighbourhood deplored the fortune 
 of the young farmer. Elizabeth was inconsolable, the children 
 lamented aloud. In half a year the aged gardener died ; the 
 parents of Elizabeth soon followed him ; and she was forced her- 
 self to take charge of everything. Her multiplied engagements 
 helped a little to withdraw her from her sorrow ; the education of 
 her children, and the management of so much property, left little 
 time for mourning. After two years, she determined on a new 
 marriage ; she bestowed her hand on a young light-hearted man, 
 who had loved her from his youth. But, ere long, everything in 
 their establishment assumed another form. The cattle died ; men 
 and maid servants proved dishonest ; barns full of grain were 
 burnt ; people in the town who owed them sums of money, fled 
 and made no payment. In a little while, the landlord found 
 himself obliged to sell some fields and meadows ; but a mildew, 
 and a year of scarcity, brought new embarrassments. It seemed 
 as if the gold, so strangely acquired, were taking speedy flight in 
 all directions. Meanwhile the family was on the increase ; and 
 Elizabeth, as well as her husband, grew reckless and sluggish in 
 this scene of despair : he fled for consolation to the bottle, he was 
 often drunk, and therefore quarrelsome and sullen ; so that fre- 
 quently Elizabeth bewailed her state with bitter tears. As their 
 fortune declined, their friends in the village stood aloof from them 
 more and more ; so that after some few years they saw themselves 
 
218 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 entirely forsaken, and were forced to struggle on, in penury and 
 straits, from week to week. 
 
 They had nothing but a cow and a few sheep left them ; these 
 Elizabeth herself, with her children, often tended at their grass. 
 She was sitting one day with her work in the field, Leonora at 
 her side, and a sucking child on her breast, when they saw from 
 afar a strange-looking shape approaching towards them. It was 
 a man with a garment all in tatters, barefoot, sunburnt to a 
 black-brown colour in the face, deformed still farther by a long 
 matted beard : he wore no covering on his head ; but had twisted 
 a garland of green branches through his hair, which made his 
 wild appearance still more strange and haggard. On his back 
 he bore some heavy burden in a sack, very carefully tied, and as 
 he walked he leaned upon a young fir. 
 
 On coming nearer, he put down his load, and drew deep 
 draughts of breath. He bade Elizabeth good-day; she shuddered 
 at the sight of him, the girl crouched close to her mother. Having 
 rested for a little while, he said : " I am getting back from a very 
 hard journey among the wildest mountains of the Earth ; but to 
 pay me for it, I have brought along with me the richest treasures 
 which imagination can conceive, or heart desire. Look here, and 
 wonder ! ' ' Thereupon he loosed his sack, and shook it empty : 
 it was full of gravel, among which were to be seen large bits of 
 chuck-stone, and other pebbles. " These jewels," he continued, 
 " are not ground and polished yet, so they want the glance and 
 the eye ; the outward fire, with its glitter, is too deeply buried in 
 their inmost heart ; yet you have but to strike it out and frighten 
 them, and show that no deceit will serve, and then you see what 
 sort of stuff they are." So saying, he took a piece of flinty stone, 
 and struck it hard against another, till they gave red sparks be- 
 tween them. " Did you see the glance?" cried he. " Ay, they are 
 all fire and light ; they illuminate the darkness with their laugh, 
 though as yet it is against their will." With this he carefully 
 repacked his pebbles in the bag, and tied it hard and fast. " I 
 know thee very well," said he then, with a saddened tone; " thou 
 art Elizabeth." The woman started. 
 
 " How comest thou to know my name?" cried she, with a 
 forecasting shudder. 
 
 " Ah, good God !" said the unhappy creature, " I am Christian, 
 he that was a hunter : dost thou not know me, then ?" 
 
 She knew not, in her horror and deepest compassion, what to 
 
THE RUNENBERG. 
 
 219 
 
 say. He fell upon her neck and kissed her. Elizabeth exclaimed : 
 " 0 Heaven ! my husband is coming !" 
 
 "Be at thy ease," said he ; "I am as good as dead to thee : 
 in the forest, there, my fair one waits for me ; she that is tall 
 and stately, with the black hair and the golden veil. This is my 
 dearest child, Leonora. Come hither, darling : come, my pretty 
 child ; and give me a kiss, too ; one kiss, that I may feel thy 
 mouth upon my lips once again, and then I leave you." 
 
 Leonora wept ; she clasped close to her mother, who, in sobs 
 and tears, half held her towards the wanderer, while he half drew 
 her towards him, took her in his arms, and pressed her to his 
 breast. Then he went away in silence, and in the wood they saw 
 him speaking with the hideous Woodwoman. 
 
 "What ails you ?" said the husband, as he found mother and 
 daughter pale and melting in tears. Neither of them answered. 
 
 The ill-fated creature was never seen again from that day. 
 
THE ELVES. 
 
 " Where is our little Mary ?" said the father. 
 
 " She is playing out upon the green there with our neigh- 
 bour's boy," replied the mother. 
 
 "I wish they may not run away and lose themselves," said 
 he ; " they are so thoughtless." 
 
 The mother looked for the little ones, and brought them their 
 evening luncheon. " It is warm," said the boy ; " and Mary had 
 a longing for the red cherries." 
 
 " Have a care, children," said the mother, " and do not run 
 too far from home, and not into the wood ; Father and I are 
 going to the fields." 
 
 Little Andres answered : " Never fear, the wood frightens 
 us ; we shall sit here bv the house, where there are people near 
 us." 
 
 The mother went in, and soon came out again with her hus- 
 band. They locked the door, and turned towards the fields to 
 look after their labourers, and see their hay-harvest in the mea- 
 dow. Their house lay upon a little green height, encircled by a 
 pretty ring of paling, which likewise enclosed their fruit and 
 flower garden. The hamlet stretched somewhat deeper down, 
 and on the other side lay the castle of the Count. Martin rented 
 the large farm from this nobleman ; and was living in content- 
 ment with his wife and only child; for he yearly saved some 
 money, and had the prospect of becoming a man of substance 
 by his industry, for the ground was productive, and the Count 
 not illiberal. 
 
 As he walked with his wife to the fields, he gazed cheerfully 
 
THE ELVES. 
 
 221 
 
 round, and said : " What a different look this quarter has, Bri- 
 gitta, from the place we lived in formerly ! Here it is all so 
 green ; the whole village is bedecked with thick- spreading fruit- 
 trees ; the ground is full of beautiful herbs and flowers ; all the 
 houses are cheerful and cleanly, the inhabitants are at their ease : 
 nay I could almost fancy that the woods are greener here than 
 elsewhere, and the sky bluer ; and, so far as the eye can reach, 
 you have pleasure and delight in beholding the bountiful Earth." 
 
 " And whenever you cross the stream," said Brigitta, " you 
 are, as it were, in another world, all is so dreary and withered ; 
 but every traveller declares that our village is the fairest in the 
 country far and near." 
 
 " All but that fir-ground," said her husband; " do but look 
 back to it, how dark and dismal that solitary spot is lying in the 
 gay scene : the dingy fir-trees with the smoky huts behind them, 
 the ruined stalls, the brook flowing past with a sluggish melan- 
 choly." 
 
 "It is true," replied Brigitta ; "if you but approach that 
 spot, you grow disconsolate and sad, you know not why. What 
 sort of people can they be that live there, and keep themselves 
 so separate from the rest of us, as if they had an evil con- 
 science ?" 
 
 "A miserable crew," replied the young Farmer: "gipsies, 
 seemingly, that steal and cheat in other quarters, and have their 
 hoard and hiding-place here. I wonder only that his Lordship 
 suffers them." 
 
 " Who knows," said the wife, with an accent of pity, " but 
 perhaps they may be poor people, wishing, out of shame, to con- 
 ceal their poverty ; for, after all, no one can say aught ill of 
 them ; the only thing is, that they do not go to church, and none 
 knows how they live ; for the little garden, which indeed seems 
 altogether waste, cannot possibly support them ; and fields they 
 have none." 
 
 " God knows," said Martin, as they went along, " what trade 
 they follow ; no mortal comes to them ; for the place they live in 
 is as if bewitched and excommunicated, so that even our wildest 
 fellows will not venture into it." 
 
 Such conversation they pursued, while walking to the fields. 
 That gloomy spot they spoke of lay aside from the hamlet. In a 
 dell, begirt with firs, you might behold a hut, and various ruined 
 office-houses ; rarely was smoke seen to mount from it, still more 
 
222 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 rarely did men appear there ; though at times curious people, ven- 
 turing somewhat nearer, had perceived upon the hench before the 
 hut, some hideous women, in ragged clothes, dandling in their 
 arms some children equally dirty and ill - favoured ; black dogs 
 were running up and down upon the boundary; and, of an even- 
 ing, a man of monstrous size was seen to cross the footbridge 
 of the brook, and disappear in the hut ; and, in the darkness, 
 various shapes were observed, moving like shadows round a fire in 
 the open air. This piece of ground, the firs and the ruined huts, 
 formed in truth a strange contrast with the bright green land- 
 scape, the white houses of the hamlet, and the stately new-built 
 castle. 
 
 The two little ones had now eaten their fruit ; it came into 
 their heads to run races ; and the little nimble Mary always got 
 the start of the less active Andres. "It is not fair," cried Andres 
 at last: " let us try it for some length, then we shall see who 
 wins." 
 
 "As thou wilt," said Mary; " only to the brook we must 
 not run." 
 
 " No," said Andres ; " but there, on the hill, stands the large 
 pear-tree, a quarter of a mile from this. I shall run by the left, 
 round past the fir-ground ; thou canst try it by the right over the 
 fields ; so we do not meet till we get up, and then we shall see 
 which of us is swifter." 
 
 " Done," cried Mary, and began to run ; "for we shall not 
 mar one another by the way, and my father says it is as far to 
 the hill by that side of the Gipsies' house as by this." 
 
 Andres had already started, and Mary, turning to the right, 
 could no longer see him. "It is very silly," said she to herself: 
 " I have only to take heart, and run along the bridge, past the 
 hut, and through the yard, and I shall certainly be first." She 
 was already standing by the brook and the clump of firs. " Shall 
 I ? No ; it is too frightful," said she. A little white dog was 
 standing on the farther side, and barking with might and main. 
 In her terror, Mary thought the dog some monster, and sprang 
 back. " Fy ! fy !" said she : " the dolt is gone half way by this 
 time, while I stand here considering." The little dog kept bark- 
 ing, and, as she looked at it more narrowly, it seemed no longer 
 frightful, but, on the contrary, quite pretty : it had a red collar 
 round its neck, with a glittering bell ; and as it raised its head, 
 and shook itself in barking, the little bell sounded with the finest 
 
THE ELVES. 
 
 223 
 
 tinkle. " Well, I must risk it !" cried she : " I will run for life ; 
 quick, quick, I am through ; certainly to Heaven, they cannot 
 eat me up alive in half a minute !" And with this, the gay, 
 courageous little Mary sprang along the footbridge ; passed the 
 dog, which ceased its barking and began to fawn on her ; and in 
 a moment she was standing on the other bank, and the black firs 
 all round concealed from view her father's house, and the rest of 
 the landscape. 
 
 But what was her astonishment when here ! The loveliest, 
 most variegated flower-garden, lay round her ; tulips, roses and 
 lilies were glittering in the fairest colours ; blue and gold-red 
 butterflies were wavering in the blossoms ; cages of shining wire 
 were hung on the espaliers, with many-coloured birds in them, 
 singing beautiful songs ; and children, in short white frocks, with 
 flowing yellow hair and brilliant eyes, were frolicking about; some 
 playing with lambkins, some feeding the birds, or gathering flowers, 
 and giving them to one another ; some, again, were eating cher- 
 ries, grapes and ruddy apricots. No hut was to be seen ; but 
 instead of it, a large fair house, with a brazen door and lofty 
 statues, stood glancing in the middle -of the space. Mary was 
 confounded with surprise, and knew not what to think ; but, not 
 being bashful, she went right up to the first of the children, held 
 out her hand, and wished the little creature good-even. 
 
 " Art thou come to visit us, then?" said the glittering child; 
 " I saw thee running, playing on the other side, but thou wert 
 frightened at our little dog." 
 
 " So you are not gipsies and rogues," said Mary, " as Andres 
 always told me ? He is a stupid thing, and talks of much he 
 does not understand." 
 
 " Stay with us," said the strange little girl ; " thou wilt like 
 it well." 
 
 " But we are running a race." 
 
 " Thou wilt find thy comrade soon enough. There, take and 
 eat." 
 
 Mary ate, and found the fruit more sweet than any she had 
 ever tasted in her life before ; and Andres, and the race, and the 
 prohibition of her parents, were entirely forgotten. 
 
 A stately woman, in a shining robe, came towards them, and 
 asked about the stranger child. " Fairest lady," said Mary, " I 
 came running hither by chance, and now they wish to keep me." 
 
 " Thou art aware, Zerina," said the lady, "that she can be 
 
224 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 here but for a little while ; besides, thou shouldst have asked my 
 leave." 
 
 " I thought," said Zerina, " when I saw her admitted across 
 the bridge, that I might do it ; we have often seen her running 
 in the fields, and thou thyself hast taken pleasure in her lively 
 temper. She will have to leave us soon enough." 
 
 " No, I will stay here," said the little stranger; " for here 
 it is so beautiful, and here I shall find the prettiest playthings, 
 and store of berries and cherries to boot. On the other side it is 
 not half so grand." 
 
 The gold-robed lady went away with a smile ; and many of 
 the children now came bounding round the happy Mary in their 
 mirth, and twitched her, and incited her to dance; others brought 
 her lambs, or curious playthings ; others made music on instru- 
 ments, and sang to it. 
 
 She kept, however, by the playmate who had first met her ; 
 for Zerina was the kindest and loveliest of them all. Little Mary 
 cried and cried again : ' ' I will stay with you forever ; I will stay 
 with you, and you shall be my sisters;" at which the children all 
 laughed, and embraced her. " Now we shall have a royal sport," 
 said Zerina. She ran into the Palace, and returned with a little 
 golden box, in which lay a quantity of seeds, like glittering dust. 
 She lifted of it with her little hand, and scattered some grains on 
 the green earth. Instantly the grass began to move, as in waves; 
 and, after a few moments, bright rose-bushes started from the 
 ground, shot rapidly up, and budded all at once, while the sweetest 
 perfume filled the place. Mary also took a little of the dust, and, 
 having scattered it, she saw white lilies, and the most variegated 
 pinks, pushing up. At a signal from Zerina, the flowers disap- 
 peared, and others rose in their room. "Now," said Zerina, "look 
 for something greater." She laid two pine-seeds in the ground, 
 and stamped them in sharply with her foot. Two green bushes 
 stood before them. " Grasp me fast," said she ; and Mary threw 
 her arms about the slender form. She felt herself borne upwards; 
 for the trees were springing under them with the greatest speed ; 
 the tall pines waved to and fro, and the two children held each 
 other fast embraced, swinging this way and that in the red clouds 
 of the twilight, and kissed each other; while the rest were climb- 
 ing up and down the trunks with quick dexterity, pushing and 
 teasing one another with loud laughter when they met ; if any one 
 fell down in the press, it flew through the air, and sank slowly and 
 
THE ELVES. 
 
 225 
 
 surely to the ground. At length Mary was beginning to be fright- 
 ened ; and the other little child sang a few loud tones, and the 
 trees again sank down, and set them on the ground as gradually 
 as they had lifted them before to the clouds. 
 
 They next went through the brazen door of the palace. Here 
 many fair women, elderly and young, were sitting in the round 
 hall, partaking of the fairest fruits, and listening to glorious in- 
 visible music. In the vaulting of the ceiling, palms, flowers and 
 groves stood painted, among which little figures of children were 
 sporting and winding in every graceful posture ; and with the tones 
 of the music, the images altered and glowed with the most burn- 
 ing colours ; now the blue and green were sparkling like radiant 
 light, now these tints faded back in paleness, the purple flamed 
 up, and the gold took fire ; and then the naked children seemed 
 to be alive among the flower-garlands, and to draw breath, and 
 emit it through their ruby-coloured lips ; so that by fits you could 
 see the glance of their little white teeth, and the lighting up of 
 their azure eyes. 
 
 From the hall, a stair of brass led down to a subterranean 
 chamber. Here lay much gold and silver, and precious stones of 
 every hue shone out between them. Strange vessels stood along 
 the walls, and all seemed filled with costly things. The gold was 
 worked into many forms, and glittered with the friendliest red. 
 Many little dwarfs were busied sorting the pieces from the heap, 
 and putting them in the vessels ; others, hunchbacked and bandy- 
 legged, with long red noses, were tottering slowly along, half- 
 bent to the ground, under full sacks, which they bore as millers 
 do their grain ; and, with much panting, shaking out the gold- 
 dust on the ground. Then they darted awkwardly to the right 
 and left, and caught the rolling balls that were like to run away; 
 and it happened now and then that one in his eagerness overset 
 the other, so that both fell heavily and clumsily to the ground. 
 They made angry faces, and looked askance, as Mary laughed at 
 their gestures and their ugliness. Behind them sat an old crum- 
 pled little man, whom Zerina reverently greeted; he thanked her 
 with a grave inclination of his head. He held a sceptre in his 
 hand, and wore a crown upon his brow, and all the other dwarfs 
 appeared to regard him as their master, and obey his nod. 
 
 "What more wanted?" asked he, with a surly voice, as the 
 children came a little nearer. Mary was afraid, and did not speak ; 
 but her companion answered, they were only come to look about 
 
 vol. in. Q 
 
226 
 
 LUDWIG TIEGK. 
 
 them in the chambers. " Still your old child's tricks !" replied 
 the dwarf: "Will there never be an end to idleness?" With 
 this, he turned again to his employment, kept his people weigh- 
 ing and sorting the ingots ; some he sent away on errands, some 
 he chid with angry tones. 
 
 "Who is the gentleman?" said Mary. 
 
 " Our Metal-Prince," replied Zerina, as they walked along. 
 
 They seemed once more to reach the open air, for they were 
 standing by a lake, yet no sun appeared, and they saw no sky 
 above their heads. A little boat received them, and Zerina steered 
 it diligently forwards. It shot rapidly along. On gaining the 
 middle of the lake, the stranger saw that multitudes of pipes, 
 channels and brooks, were spreading from the little sea in every 
 direction. " These waters to the right," said Zerina, ' ' flow be- 
 neath your garden, and this is why it blooms so freshly ; by the 
 other side we get down into the great stream." On a sudden, 
 out of all the channels, and from every quarter of the lake, came 
 a crowd of little children swimming up ; some wore garlands of 
 sedge and water-lily ; some had red stems of coral, others were 
 blowing on crooked shells ; a tumultuous noise echoed merrily 
 from the dark shores ; among the children might be seen the fair- 
 est women sporting in the waters, and often several of the children 
 sprang about some one of them, and with kisses hung upon her 
 neck and shoulders. All saluted the strangers ; and these steered 
 onwards through the revelry out of the lake, into a little river, 
 which grew narrower and narrower. At last the boat came 
 aground. The strangers took their leave, and Zerina knocked 
 against the cliff. This opened like a door, and a female form, 
 all red, assisted them to mount. " Are you all brisk here ?" in- 
 quired Zerina. " They are just at work," replied the other, " and 
 happy as they could wish ; indeed, the heat is very pleasant." 
 
 They went up a winding stair, and on a sudden Mary found 
 herself in a most resplendent hall, so that as she entered, her 
 eyes were dazzled by the radiance. Flame - coloured tapestry 
 covered the walls with a purple glow; and when her eye had 
 grown a little used to it, the stranger saw, to her astonishment, 
 that, in the tapestry, there were figures moving up and down in 
 dancing joyfulness ; in form so beautiful, and of so fair propor- 
 tions, that nothing could be seen more graceful ; their bodies 
 were as of red crystal, so that it appeared as if the blood were 
 visible within them, flowing and playing in its courses. They 
 
THE ELVES. 
 
 227 
 
 smiled on the stranger, and saluted her with various bows ; hut 
 as Mary was about approaching nearer them, Zerina plucked 
 her sharply back, crying: " Thou wilt burn thyself, my little 
 Mary, for the whole of it is fire." 
 
 Mary felt the heat. " Why do the pretty creatures not come 
 out," said she, " and play with us ?" 
 
 " As thou livest in the Air," replied the other, " so are they 
 obliged to stay continually in Fire, and would faint and languish 
 if they left it. Look now, how glad they are, how they la^gh and 
 shout ; those down below spread out the fire-floods everywhere 
 beneath the earth, and thereby the flowers, and fruits, and wine, 
 are made to flourish ; these red streams again, are to run beside 
 the brooks of water ; and thus the fiery creatures are kept ever 
 busy and glad. But for thee it is too hot here ; let us return to 
 the garden." 
 
 In the garden, the scene had changed since they left it. The 
 moonshine was lying on every flower ; the birds were silent, and 
 the children were asleep in complicated groups, among the green 
 groves. Mary and her friend, however, did not feel fatigue, but 
 walked about in the warm summer night, in abundant talk, till 
 morning. 
 
 When the day dawned, they refreshed themselves on fruit 
 and milk, and Mary said : ' ' Suppose we go, by way of change, to 
 the firs, and see how things look there ?" 
 
 4 * With all my heart," replied Zerina; " thou wilt see our 
 watchmen too, and they will surely please thee ; they are stand- 
 ing up among the trees on the mound." The two proceeded 
 through the flower-garden by pleasant groves, full of nightingales ; 
 then they ascended a vine-hill ; and at last, after long following 
 the windings of a clear brook, arrived at the firs, and the height 
 which bounded the domain. "How does it come," said Mary, 
 " that we have to walk so far here, when without, the circuit is 
 so narrow ?" 
 
 " I know not," said her friend; "but so it is." 
 
 They mounted to the dark firs, and a chill wind blew from 
 without in their faces ; a haze seemed lying far and wide over 
 the landscape. On the top were many strange forms standing ; 
 with mealy, dusty faces ; their misshapen heads not unlike those 
 of white owls ; they were clad in folded cloaks of shaggy wool ; 
 they held umbrellas of curious skins stretched out above them ; 
 and they waved and fanned themselves incessantly with large bat's 
 
228 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 wings, which flared out curiously heside the woollen roquelaures. 
 " I could laugh, yet I am frightened," cried Mary. 
 
 " These are our good trusty watchmen," said her playmate; 
 ' 1 they stand here and wave their fans, that cold anxiety and inex- 
 plicable fear may fall on every one that attempts to approach us. 
 They are covered so, because without it is now cold and rainy, 
 which they cannot bear. But snow, or wind, or cold air, never 
 reaches down to us ; here is an everlasting spring and summer : 
 yet if these poor people on the top were not frequently relieved, 
 they would certainly perish." 
 
 "But who are you, then ?" said Mary, while again descend- 
 ing to the flowery fragrance ; <£ or have you no name at all ?" 
 
 "We are called the Elves," replied the friendly child; 
 "people talk about us in the Earth, as I have heard." 
 
 They now perceived a mighty bustle on the green. " The 
 fair Bird is come !" cried the children to them : all hastened to 
 the hall. Here, as they approached, young and old were crowd- 
 ing over the threshold, all shouting for joy; and from within 
 resounded a triumphant peal of music. Having entered, they 
 perceived the vast circuit filled with the most varied forms, and 
 all were looking upwards to a large Bird with glancing plumage, 
 that was sweeping slowly round in the dome, and in its stately 
 flight describing many a circle. The music sounded more gaily 
 than before ; the colours and lights alternated more rapidly. At 
 last the music ceased ; and the Bird, with a rustling noise, floated 
 down upon a glittering crown that hung hovering in air under the 
 high window, by which the hall was lighted from above. His 
 plumage was purple and green, and shining golden streaks played 
 through it ; on his head there waved a diadem of feathers, so 
 resplendent that they glanced like jewels. His bill was red, and 
 his legs of a glancing blue. As he moved, the tints gleamed 
 through each other, and the eye was charmed with their radiance. 
 His size was as that of an eagle. But now he opened his glitter- 
 ing beak ; and sweetest melodies came pouring from his moved 
 breast, in finer tones than the lovesick nightingale gives forth ; 
 still stronger rose the song, and streamed like floods of Light, so 
 that all, the very children themselves, were moved by it to tears 
 of joy and rapture. When he ceased, all bowed before him; he 
 again flew round the dome in circles, then darted through the 
 door, and soared into the light heaven, where he shone far up 
 like a red point, and then soon vanished from their eyes. 
 
THE ELVES. 
 
 229 
 
 ''Why are ye all so glad?" inquired Mary, bending to her 
 fair playmate, who seemed smaller than yesterday. 
 
 " The King is coming!" said the little one; "many of us 
 have never seen him, and whithersoever he turns his face, there 
 is happiness and mirth ; we have long looked for him, more 
 anxiously than you look for spring when winter lingers with you ; 
 and now he has announced, by his fair herald, that he is at hand. 
 This wise and glorious Bird, that has been sent to us by the 
 King, is called Phoenix ; he dwells far off in Arabia, on a tree, 
 which there is no other that resembles on Earth, as in like manner 
 there is no second Phoenix. When he feels himself grown old, 
 he builds a pile of balm and incense, kindles it, and dies singing ; 
 and then from the fragrant ashes, soars up the renewed Phoenix 
 with unlessened beauty. It is seldom he so wings his course that 
 men behold him ; and when once in centuries this does occur, 
 they note it in their annals, and expect remarkable events. But 
 uow, my friend, thou and I must part ; for the sight of the King 
 is not permitted thee." 
 
 Then the lady with the golden robe came through the throng, 
 and beckoning Mary to her, led her into a sequestered walk. 
 " Thou must leave us, my dear child," said she ; "the King is 
 to hold his court here for twenty years, perhaps longer ; and fruit- 
 fulness and blessings will spread far over the land, but chiefly 
 here beside us ; all the brooks and rivulets will become more 
 bountiful, all the fields and gardens richer, the wine more gener- 
 ous, the meadows more fertile, and the woods more fresh and 
 green ; a milder air will blow, no hail shall hurt, no flood shall 
 threaten. Take this ring, and think of us : but beware of telling 
 any one of our existence ; or we must fly this land, and thou and 
 all around will lose the happiness and blessing of our neighbour- 
 hood. Once more, kiss thy playmate, and farewell." They issued 
 from the walk ; Zerina wept, Mary stooped to embrace her, and 
 they parted. Already she was on the narrow bridge ; the cold 
 air was blowing on her back from the firs ; the little dog barked 
 with all its might, and rang its little bell ; she looked round, then 
 hastened over, for the darkness of the firs, the bleakness of the 
 ruined huts, the shadows of the twilight, were filling her with 
 terror. 
 
 " What a night my parents must have had on my account !" 
 said she within herself, as she stept on the green ; " and I dare 
 not tell them where I have been, or what wonders I have wit- 
 
230 
 
 LUDWIG TxECK, 
 
 nessed, nor indeed would they believe me." Two men passing by 
 saluted her ; and as they went along, she heard them say : "What 
 a pretty girl ! Where can she come from ?" With quickened steps 
 she approached the house : but the trees which were hanging last 
 night loaded with fruit, were now standing dry and leafless ; the 
 house was differently painted, and a new barn had been built 
 beside it. Mary was amazed, and thought she must be dream- 
 ing. In this perplexity she opened the door ; and behind the 
 table sat her father, between an unknown woman and a stranger 
 youth. "Good God ! Father," cried she, " where is my mother?" 
 
 " Thy mother !" said the woman, with a forecasting tone, and 
 sprang towards her : "Ha, thou surely canst not — Yes, indeed, 
 indeed thou art my lost, long-lost dear, only Mary!" She had 
 recognised her by a little brown mole beneath the chin, as well 
 as by her eyes and shape. All embraced her, all were moved with 
 joy, and the parents wept. Mary was astonished that she almost 
 reached to her father's stature ; and she could not understand 
 how her mother had become so changed and faded ; she asked 
 the name of the stranger youth. "It is our neighbour's Andres," 
 said Martin. " How comest thou to us again, so unexpectedly, 
 after seven long years ? Where hast thou been ? Why didst thou 
 never send us tidings of thee ?" 
 
 " Seven years !" said Mary, and could not order her ideas and 
 recollections. " Seven whole years ?" 
 
 " Yes, yes," said Andres, laughing, and shaking her trust- 
 fully by the hand ; "I have won the race, good Mary ; I was at 
 the pear-tree and back again seven years ago, and thou, sluggish 
 creature, art but just returned !" 
 
 They again asked, they pressed her ; but remembering her 
 instruction, she could answer nothing. It was they themselves 
 chiefly that, by degrees, shaped a story for her : How, having lost 
 her way, she had been taken up by a coach, and carried to a 
 strange remote part, where she could not give the people any 
 notion of her parents' residence ; how she was conducted to a 
 distant town, where certain worthy persons brought her up and 
 loved her ; how they had lately died, and at length she had recol- 
 lected her birthplace, and so returned. " No matter how it is !" 
 exclaimed her mother; "enough, that we have thee again, my 
 little daughter, my own, my all !" 
 
 Andres waited supper, and Mary could not be at home in 
 anything she saw. The house seemed small and dark ; she felt 
 
THE ELVES. 
 
 231 
 
 astonished at her dress, which was clean and simple, but appeared 
 quite foreign ; she looked at the ring on her finger, and the gold 
 of it glittered strangely, enclosing a stone of burning red. To her 
 father's question, she replied that the ring also was a present 
 from her benefactors. 
 
 She was glad when the hour of sleep arrived, and she hastened 
 to her bed. Next morning she felt much more collected ; she had 
 now arranged her thoughts a little, and could better stand the 
 questions of the people in the village, all of whom came in to bid 
 her welcome. Andres was there too with the earliest, active, glad, 
 and serviceable beyond all others. The blooming maiden of fifteen 
 had made a deep impression on him ; he had passed a sleepless 
 night. The people of the castle likewise sent for Mary, and she 
 had once more to tell her story to them, which was now grown 
 quite familiar to her. The old Count and his Lady were surprised 
 at her good-breeding ; she was modest, but not embarrassed ; she 
 made answer courteously in good phrases to all their questions ; 
 all fear of noble persons and their equipage had passed away from 
 her ; for when she measured these halls and forms by the wonders 
 and the high beauty she had seen with the Elves in their hidden 
 abode, this earthly splendour seemed but dim to her, the presence 
 of men was almost mean. The young lords were charmed with 
 her beauty. 
 
 It was now February. The trees were budding earlier than 
 usual ; the nightingale had never come so soon ; the spring rose 
 fairer in the land than the oldest men could recollect it. In 
 every quarter, little brooks gushed out to irrigate the pastures 
 and meadows ; the hills seemed heaving, the vines rose higher 
 and higher, the fruit-trees blossomed as they had never done ; 
 and a swelling fragrant blessedness hung suspended heavily in 
 rosy clouds over the scene. All prospered beyond expectation : 
 no rude day, no tempest injured the fruits ; the wine flowed 
 blushing in immense grapes ; and the inhabitants of the place 
 felt astonished, and were captivated as in a sweet dream. The 
 next year was like its forerunner ; but men had now become 
 accustomed to the marvellous. In autumn, Mary yielded to the 
 pressing entreaties of Andres and her parents ; she was betrothed 
 to him, and in winter they were married. 
 
 She often thought with inward longing of her residence behind 
 the fir-trees ; she continued serious and still. Beautiful as all 
 that lay around her was, she knew of something yet more beauti- 
 
232 
 
 LTJDWIG TIECK. 
 
 ful ; and from the remembrance of this, a faint regret attuned her 
 nature to soft melancholy. It smote her painfully when her father 
 and mother talked about the gipsies and vagabonds, that dwelt in 
 the dark spot of ground. Often she was on the point of speaking 
 out in defence of those good beings, whom she knew to be the 
 benefactors of the land ; especially to Andres, who appeared to 
 take delight in zealously abusing them : yet still she repressed 
 the word that was struggling to escape her bosom. So passed 
 this year ; in the next, she was solaced by a little daughter, whom 
 she named Elfrida, thinking of the designation of her friendly 
 Elves. 
 
 The young people lived with Martin and Brigitta, the house 
 being large enough for all ; and helped their parents in conduct- 
 ing their now extended husbandry. The little Elfrida soon dis- 
 played peculiar faculties and gifts ; for she could walk at a very 
 early age, and could speak perfectly before she was a twelvemonth 
 old ; and after some few years, she had become so wise and clever, 
 and of such wondrous beauty, that all people regarded her with 
 astonishment ; and her mother could not keep away the thought 
 that her child resembled one of those shining little ones in the 
 space behind the Firs. Elfrida cared not to be with other chil- 
 dren ; but seemed to avoid, with a sort of horror, their tumultuous 
 amusements ; and liked best to be alone. She would then retire 
 into a corner of the garden, and read, or work diligently with her 
 needle ; often also you might see her sitting, as if deep sunk in 
 thought ; or violently walking up and down the alleys, speaking 
 to herself. Her parents readily allowed her to have her will in 
 these things, for she was healthy, and waxed apace ; only her 
 strange sagacious answers and observations often made them 
 anxious. " Such wise children do not grow to age," her grand- 
 mother, Brigitta, many times observed; "they are too good for 
 this world; the child, besides, is beautiful beyond nature, and 
 will never find its proper place on Earth." 
 
 The little girl had this peculiarity, that she was very loath to 
 let herself be served by any one, but endeavoured to do every- 
 thing herself. She was almost the earliest riser in the house ; she 
 washed herself carefully, and dressed without assistance : at night 
 she was equally careful ; she took special heed to pack up her 
 clothes and washes with her own hands, allowing no one, not even 
 her mother, to meddle with her articles. The mother humoured 
 her in this caprice, not thinking it of any consequence. But what 
 
THE ELVES. 
 
 233 
 
 was her astonishment, when, happening one holiday to insist, re- 
 gardless of Elfrida's tears and screams, on dressing her out for a 
 visit to the castle, she found upon her breast, suspended by a 
 string, a piece of gold of a strange form, which she directly recog- 
 nised as one of that sort she had seen in such abundance in the 
 subterranean vault ! The little thing was greatly frightened ; and 
 at last confessed that she had found it in the garden, and as she 
 liked it much, had kept it carefully : she at the same time prayed 
 so earnestly and pressingly to have it back, that Mary fastened 
 it again on its former place, and, full of thoughts, went out with 
 her in silence to the castle. 
 
 Sidewards from the farmhouse lay some offices for the storing 
 of produce and implements ; and behind these there was a little 
 green, with an old grove, now visited by no one, as, from the new 
 arrangement of the buildings, it lay too far from the garden. In 
 this solitude Elfrida delighted most ; and it occurred to nobody 
 to interrupt her here, so that frequently her parents did not see 
 her for half a day. One afternoon her mother chanced to be in 
 these buildings, seeking for some lost article among the lumber ; 
 and she noticed that a beam of light was coming in, through a 
 chink in the wall. She took a thought of looking through this 
 aperture, and seeing what her child was busied with ; and it hap- 
 pened that a stone was lying loose, and could be pushed aside, so 
 that she obtained a view right into the grove. Elfrida was sitting 
 there on a little bench, and beside her the well-known Zerina ; 
 and the children were playing, and amusing one another, in the 
 kindliest unity. The Elf embraced her beautiful companion, and 
 said mournfully : " Ah ! dear little creature, as I sport with thee, 
 so have I sported with thy mother, when she was a child ; but 
 you mortals so soon grow tall and thoughtful ! It is very hard : 
 wert thou but to be a child as long as I !" 
 
 " Willingly would I do it," said Elfrida ; " but they all say, I 
 shall come to sense, and give over playing altogether ; for I have 
 great gifts, as they think, for growing wise. Ah ! and then I shall 
 see thee no more, thou dear Zerina ! Yet it is with us as with the 
 fruit-tree flowers : how glorious the blossoming apple-tree, with its 
 red bursting buds ! It looks so stately and broad ; and every one, 
 that passes under it, thinks surely something great will come of 
 it ; then the sun grows hot, and the buds come joyfully forth ; 
 but the wicked kernel is already there, which pushes off and casts 
 away the fair flower's dress ; and now, in pain and waxing, it can 
 
234 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 do nothing more, but must grow to fruit in harvest. An apple, to 
 be sure, is pretty and refreshing ; yet nothing to the blossom of 
 spring. So is it also with us mortals : I am not glad in the least 
 at growing to be a tall girl. Ah ! could I but once visit you !" 
 
 " Since the King is with us," said Zerina, " it is quite impos- 
 sible ; but I will come to thee, my darling, often, often ; and none 
 shall see me either here or there. I will pass invisible through 
 the air, or fly over to thee like a bird. 0 ! we will be much, much 
 together, while thou art still little. What can I do to please 
 thee?" 
 
 " Thou must like me very dearly," said Elfrida, " as I like 
 thee in my heart. But come, let us make another rose." 
 
 Zerina took the well-known box from her bosom, threw two 
 grains from it on the ground ; and instantly a green bush stood 
 before them, with two deep-red roses, bending their heads, as if 
 to kiss each other. The children plucked them smiling, and the 
 bush disappeared. "0 that it would not die so soon!" said 
 Elfrida ; " this red child, this wonder of the Earth !" 
 
 " Give it me here," said the little Elf; then breathed thrice 
 upon the budding rose, and kissed it thrice. " Now," said she, 
 giving back the rose, " it will continue fresh and blooming till 
 winter." 
 
 " I will keep it," said Elfrida, " as an image of thee ; I will 
 guard it in my little room, and kiss it night and morning, as if it 
 were thyself." 
 
 " The sun is setting," said the other; "I must home." 
 They embraced again, and Zerina vanished. 
 
 In the evening, Mary clasped her child to her breast, with a 
 feeling of alarm and veneration. She henceforth allowed the good 
 little girl more liberty than formerly ; and often calmed her hus- 
 band, when he came to search for the child ; which for some time 
 he was wont to do, as her retiredness did not please him; and he 
 feared that, in the end, it might make her silly, or even pervert 
 her understanding. The mother often glided to the chink ; and 
 almost always found the bright Elf beside her child, employed iD 
 sport, or in earnest conversation. 
 
 " Wouldst thou like to fly?" inquired Zerina once. 
 
 " 0 well ! How well !" replied Elfrida ; and the fairy clasped 
 her mortal playmate in her arms, and mounted with her from the 
 ground, till they hovered above the grove. The mother, in alarm, 
 forgot herself, and pushed out hur head in terror to look after 
 
THE ELVES. 
 
 235 
 
 them ; when Zerina, from the air, held up her finger, and threat- 
 ened yet smiled ; then descended with the child, embraced her, 
 and disappeared. After this, it happened more than once that 
 Mary was observed by her ; and every time, the shining little 
 creature shook her head, or threatened, yet with friendly looks. 
 
 Often, in disputing with her husband, Mary had said in her 
 zeal : " Thou dost injustice to the poor people in the hut !" But 
 when Andres pressed her to explain why she differed in opinion 
 from the whole village, nay from his Lordship himself; and how 
 she could understand it better than the whole of them, she still 
 broke off embarrassed, and became silent. One day, after dinner, 
 Andres grew more violent than ever ; and maintained that, by 
 one means or another, the crew must be packed away, as a 
 nuisance to the country ; when his wife, in anger, said to him : 
 " Hush ! for they are benefactors to thee and to everyone of us." 
 
 "Benefactors!" cried the other, in astonishment: "These 
 rogues and vagabonds ?" 
 
 In her indignation, she was now at last tempted to relate to 
 him, under promise of the strictest secrecy, the history of her 
 youth : and as Andres at every word grew more incredulous, and 
 shook his head in mockery, she took him by the hand, and led 
 him to the chink ; where, to his amazement, he beheld the glit- 
 tering Elf sporting with his child, and caressing her in the grove. 
 He knew not what to say ; an exclamation of astonishment es- 
 caped him, and Zerina raised her eyes. On the instant she grew 
 pale, and trembled violently ; not with friendly, but with indig- 
 nant looks, she made the sign of threatening, and then said to 
 Elfrida : " Thou canst not help it, dearest heart ; but they will 
 never learn sense, wise as they believe themselves." She em- 
 braced the little one with stormy haste ; and then, in the shape of 
 a raven, flew with hoarse cries over the garden, towards the Firs. 
 
 In the evening, the little one was very still ; she kissed her 
 rose with tears; Mary' felt depressed and frightened, Andres 
 scarcely spoke. It grew dark. Suddenly there went a rustling 
 through the trees ; birds flew to and fro with wild screaming, 
 thunder was heard to roll, the Earth shook, and tones of lamenta- 
 tion moaned in the air. Andres and his wife had not courage to 
 rise ; they shrouded themselves within the curtains, and with fear 
 and trembling awaited the day. Towards morning, it grew calmer ; 
 and all was silent when the Sun, with his cheerful light, rose over 
 the wood. 
 
236 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 Andres dressed himself; and Mary now observed that the 
 stone of the ring upon her finger had become quite pale. On open- 
 ing the door, the sun shone clear on their faces, but the scene 
 around them they could scarcely recognise. The freshness of the 
 wood was gone ; the hills were shrunk, the brooks were flowing 
 languidly with scanty streams, the sky seemed gray ; and when 
 you turned to the Firs, they were standing there no darker or 
 more dreary than the other trees. The huts behind them were 
 no longer frightful ; and several inhabitants of the village came 
 and told about the fearful night, and how they had been across 
 the spot where the gipsies had lived ; how these people must 
 have left the place at last, for their huts were standing empty, 
 and within had quite a common look, just like the dwellings of 
 other poor people : some of their household gear Was left behind. 
 
 Elfrida in secret said to her mother : { ' I could not sleep last 
 night ; and in my fright at the noise, I was praying from the bot- 
 tom of my heart, when the door suddenly opened, and my play- 
 mate entered to take leave of me. She had a travelling-pouch 
 slung round her, a hat on her head, and a large staff in her hand. 
 She was very angry at thee ; since on thy account she had now 
 to suffer the severest and most painful punishments, as she had 
 always been so fond of thee ; for all of them, she said, were very 
 loath to leave this quarter." 
 
 Mary forbade her to speak of this ; and now the ferryman 
 came across the river, and told them new wonders. As it was 
 growing dark, a stranger man of large size had come to him, and 
 hired his boat till sunrise ; and with this condition, that the boat- 
 man should remain quiet in his house, at least should not cross 
 the threshold of his door. "I was frightened," continued the 
 old man, " and the strange bargain would not let me sleep. I 
 slipped softly to the window, and looked towards the river. Great 
 clouds were driving restlessly through the sky, and the distant 
 woods were rustling fearfully ; it was as if my cottage shook, and 
 moans and lamentations glided round it. On a sudden, I per- 
 ceived a white streaming light, that grew broader and broader, 
 like many thousands of falling stars; sparkling and waving, it pro- 
 ceeded forward from the dark Fir-ground, moved over the fields, 
 and spread itself along towards the river. Then I heard a tramp- 
 ling, a jingling, a bustling, and rushing, nearer and nearer ; it 
 went forwards to my boat, and all stept into it, men and women, 
 as it seemed, and children ; and the tall stranger ferried them 
 
THE ELVES. 
 
 237 
 
 over. In the river were by the boat swimming many thousands 
 of glittering forms ; in the air white clouds and lights were waver- 
 ing ; and all lamented and bewailed that they must travel forth 
 so far, far away, and leave their beloved dwelling. The noise of 
 the rudder and the water creaked and gurgled between whiles, and 
 then suddenly there would be silence. Many a time the boat 
 landed, and went back, and was again laden ; many heavy casks, 
 too, they took along with them, which multitudes of horrid-look- 
 ing little fellows carried and rolled ; whether they were devils or 
 goblins, Heaven only knows. Then came, in waving brightness, 
 a stately freight ; it seemed an old man, mounted on a small 
 white horse, and all were crowding round him. I saw nothing of 
 the horse but its head; for the rest of it was covered with costly 
 glittering cloths and trappings : on his brow the old man had a 
 crown, so bright that, as he came across, I thought the sun was 
 rising there, and the redness of the dawn glimmering in my eyes. 
 Thus it went on all night; I at last fell asleep in the tumult, 
 half in joy, half in terror. In the morning all was still ; but the 
 river is, as it were, run off, and I know not how I am to steer 
 my boat in it now." 
 
 The same year there came a blight; the woods died away, 
 the springs ran dry ; and the scene, which had once been the joy 
 of every traveller, was in autumn standing waste, naked and bald ; 
 scarcely showing here and there, in the sea of sand, a spot or two 
 where grass, with a dingy greenness, still grew up. The fruit- 
 trees all withered, the vines faded away, and the aspect of the 
 place became so melancholy, that the Count, with his people, 
 next year left the castle, which in time decayed and fell to ruins. 
 
 Elfrida gazed on her rose day and night with deep longing, 
 and thought of her kind playmate ; and as it drooped and withered, 
 so did she also hang her head ; and before the spring, the little 
 maiden had herself faded away. Mary often stood upon the spot 
 before the hut, and wept for the happiness that had departed. 
 She wasted herself away like her child, and in a few years she too 
 was gone. Old Martin, with his son-in-law, returned to the 
 quarter where he had lived before. 
 
THE GOBLET. 
 
 The forenoon bells were sounding from the high cathedral. Over 
 the wide square in front of it were men and women walking to 
 and fro, carriages rolling along, and priests proceeding to their 
 various churches. Ferdinand was standing on the broad stair, 
 with his eyes over the multitude, looking at them as they came 
 up to attend the service. The sunshine glittered on the white 
 stones, all were seeking shelter from the heat. He alone had 
 stood for a long time leaning on a pillar, amid the burning beams, 
 without regarding them; for he was lost in the remembrances 
 which mounted up within his mind. He was calling back his 
 bygone life ; and inspiring his soul with the feeling which had 
 penetrated all his being, and swallowed up every other wish in 
 itself. At the same hour, in the past year, had he been standing 
 here, looking at the women and the maidens coming to mass ; 
 with indifferent heart, and smiling face, he had viewed the varie- 
 gated procession ; many a kind look had roguishly met his, and 
 many a virgin cheek had blushed ; his busy eye had observed the 
 pretty feet, how they mounted the steps, and how the wavering 
 robe fell more or less aside, to let the dainty little ankles come 
 to sight. Then a youthful form had crossed the square : clad in 
 black ; slender, and of noble mien, her eyes modestly cast down 
 before her, carelessly she hovered up the steps with lovely grace ; 
 the silken robe lay round that fairest of forms, and rocked itself 
 as in music about the moving limbs ; she was mounting the high- 
 est step, when by chance she raised her head, and struck his eye 
 with a ray of the purest azure. He was pierced as if by light- 
 ning. Her foot caught the robe ; and quickly as he darted to- 
 
THE GOBLET. 
 
 239 
 
 wards her, he could not prevent her having, for a moment, in the 
 most charming posture, lain kneeling at his feet. He raised her; 
 she did not look at him, she was all one blush ; nor did she ans- 
 wer his inquiry whether she was hurt. He followed her into the 
 church : his soul saw nothing but the image of that form kneeling 
 before him, and that loveliest of bosoms bent towards him. Next 
 day he visited the threshold of the church again ; for him that 
 spot was consecrated ground. He had been intending to pursue 
 his travels, his friends were expecting him impatiently at home ; 
 but from henceforth his native country was here, his heart and 
 its wishes were inverted. He saw her often, she did not shun 
 him ; yet it was but for a few separate and stolen moments ; for 
 her wealthy family observed her strictly, and still more a powerful 
 and jealous bridegroom. They mutually confessed their love, but 
 knew not what to do ; for he was a stranger, and could offer his 
 beloved no such splendid fortune as she was entitled to expect. 
 He now felt his poverty ; yet when he reflected on his former way 
 of life, it seemed to him that he was passing rich ; for his exist- 
 ence was rendered holy, his heart floated forever in the fairest 
 emotion ; Nature was now become his friend, and her beauty lay 
 revealed to him ; he felt himself no longer alien from worship and 
 religion ; and he now crossed this threshold, and the mysterious 
 dimness of the temple, with far other feelings than in former days 
 of levity. He withdrew from his acquaintances, and lived only 
 to love. When he walked through her street, and saw her at the 
 window, he was happy for the day. He had often spoken to her 
 in the dusk of the evening ; her garden was adjacent to a friend's, 
 who, however, did not know his secret. Thus a year had passed 
 away. 
 
 All these scenes of his new existence again moved through 
 his remembrance. He raised his eyes ; that noble form was even 
 then gliding over the square ; she shone out of the confused mul- 
 titude like a sun. A lovely music sounded in his longing heart ; 
 and as she approached, he retired into the church. He offered 
 her the holy water ; her white fingers trembled as they touched 
 his, she bowed with grateful kindness. He followed her, and 
 knelt down near her. His whole heart was melting in sadness* 
 and love ; it seemed to him as if, from the wounds of longing, 
 his being were bleeding away in fervent prayers ; every word of 
 the priest went through him, every tone of the music poured new 
 devotion into his bosom; his lips quivered, as the fair maideia 
 
240 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 pressed the crucifix of her rosary to her ruby mouth. How dim 
 had been his apprehension of this Faith and this Love before ! 
 The priest elevated the Host, and the bell sounded ; she bowed 
 more humbly, and crossed her breast ; and, like a flash, it struck 
 through all his powers and feelings, and the image on the altar 
 seemed alive, and the coloured dimness of the windows as a light 
 of paradise ; tears flowed fast from his eyes, and allayed the 
 swelling fervour of his heart. 
 
 The service was concluded. He again offered her the conse- 
 crated font ; they spoke some words, and she withdrew. He stayed 
 behind, in order to excite no notice ; he looked after her till the 
 hem of her garment vanished round the corner ; and he felt like 
 the wanderer, weary and astray, from whom, in the thick forest, 
 the last gleam of the setting sun departs. He awoke from his 
 dream, as an old withered hand slapped him on the shoulder, and 
 some one called him by name. 
 
 He started back, and recognised his friend, the testy old Al- 
 bert, who lived apart from men, and whose solitary house was 
 open to Ferdinand alone : "Do you remember our engagement ?" 
 said the hoarse husky voice. " 0 yes," said Ferdinand : " and 
 will you perform your promise today?" 
 
 " This very hour," replied the other, "if you like to follow 
 me." 
 
 They walked through the city to a remote street, and there 
 entered a large edifice. " Today," said the old man, " you must 
 push through with me into my most solitary chamber, that we 
 may not be disturbed." They passed through many rooms, then 
 along some stairs ; they wound their way through passages : and 
 Ferdinand, who had thought himself familiar with the house, was 
 now astonished at the multitude of apartments, and the singular 
 arrangement of the spacious building ; but still more that the old 
 man, a bachelor, and without family, should inhabit it by himself, 
 with a few servants, and never let out any part of the superfluous 
 room to strangers. Albert at length unbolted the door, and said : 
 " Now, here is the place." They entered a large high chamber, 
 hung round with red damask, which was trimmed with golden 
 listings ; the chairs were of the same stuff ; and, through heavy 
 red silk curtains covering the windows, came a purple light. 
 "Wait a little," said the old man, and went into another room. 
 Ferdinand took up some books : he found them to contain strange 
 unintelligible characters, circles and lines, with many curious 
 
THE GOBLET. 
 
 241 
 
 plates ; and from the little he could read, they seemed to be 
 works on alchemy ; he was aware already that the old man had 
 the reputation of a gold-maker. A lute was lying on the table, 
 singularly overlaid with mother-of-pearl, and coloured wood ; and 
 representing birds and flowers in very splendid forms. The star 
 in the middle was a large piece of mother-of-pearl, worked in the 
 most skilful manner into many intersecting circular figures, al- 
 most like the centre of a window in a Gothic church. "You are 
 looking at my instrument, ' ' said Albert, coming back ; * ' it is 
 two hundred years old : I brought it with me as a memorial of 
 my journey into Spain. But let us leave all that, and do you 
 take a seat." 
 
 They sat down beside the table, which was likewise covered 
 with a red cloth ; and the old man placed upon it something 
 which was carefully wrapped up. "From pity to your youth,'' 
 he began, " I promised lately to predict to you whether you could 
 ever become happy or not ; and this promise I will in the present 
 hour perform, though you hold the matter only as a jest. You 
 need not be alarmed ; for what I purpose will take place without 
 danger ; no dread invocations shall be made by me, nor shall any 
 horrid apparition terrify your senses. The business I am on may 
 fail in two ways : either if you do not love so truly as you have 
 been willing to persuade me ; for then my labour is in vain, and 
 nothing will disclose itself ; or, if you shall disturb the oracle and 
 destroy it by a useless question, or a hasty movement, should you 
 leave your seat and dissipate the figure ; you must therefore pro- 
 mise me to keep yourself quite still." 
 
 Ferdinand gave his word, and the old man unfolded from its 
 cloths the packet he had placed on the table. It was a golden 
 goblet, of very skilful and beautiful workmanship. Bound its 
 broad foot ran a garland of flowers, intertwined with myrtles, and 
 various other leaves and fruits, worked out in high chasing with 
 dim and with brilliant gold. A corresponding ring, but still 
 richer, with figures of children, and wild little animals playing 
 with them, or flying from them, wound itself about the middle of 
 the cup. The bowl was beautifully turned ; it bent itself back 
 at the top as if to meet the lips ; and within, the gold sparkled 
 with a red glow. Old Albert placed the cup between him and 
 the youth, whom he then beckoned to come nearer. " Do you 
 not feel something," said he, " when your eye loses itself in this 
 splendour ?" 
 
 VOL. III. R 
 
242 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 "Yes," answered Ferdinand, "this brightness glances into 
 my inmost heart ; I might almost say I felt it like a kiss in my 
 longing bosom." 
 
 "It is right, then !" said the old man. " Now let not yonr 
 eyes wander any more, but fix them steadfastly on the glittering 
 of this gold, and think as intensely as you can of the woman 
 whom you love." 
 
 Both sat quiet for a while, looking earnestly upon the gleam- 
 ing cup. Ere long, however, Albert, with mute gestures, began, 
 at first slowly, then faster, and at last in rapid movements, to 
 whirl his outstretched finger in a constant circle round the glitter 
 of the bowl. Then he paused, and recommenced his circles in 
 the opposite direction. After this had lasted for a little, Ferdi- 
 nand began to think he heard the sound of music ; it came as 
 from without, in some distant street, but soon the tones ap- 
 proached, they quivered more distinctly through the air ; and at 
 last no doubt remained with him that they were flowing from the 
 hollow of the cup. The music became stronger, and of such 
 piercing power, that the young man's heart was throbbing to the 
 notes, and tears were flowing from his eyes. Busily old Albert's 
 hand now moved in various lines across the mouth of the goblet ; 
 and it seemed as if sparks were issuing from his fingers, and 
 darting in forked courses to the gold, and tinkling as they met 
 it. The glittering points increased ; and followed, as if strung 
 on threads, the movements of his finger to and fro ; they shone 
 with various hues, and crowded more and more together till they 
 joined in unbroken lines. And now it seemed as if the old man, 
 in the red dusk, were stretching a wondrous net over the gleam- 
 ing gold ; for he drew the beams this way and that at pleasure, 
 and wove up with them the opening of the bowl ; they obeyed 
 him, and remained there like a cover, wavering to and fro, and 
 playing into one another. Having so fixed them, he again de- 
 scribed the circle round the rim ; the music then moved oft, grew 
 fainter and fainter, and at last died away. While the tones de- 
 parted, the sparkling net quivered to and fro as in pain. In its 
 increasing agitation it broke in pieces ; and the beaming threads 
 rained down in drops into the cup ; but as the drops fell, there 
 arose from them a ruddy cloud, which moved within itself in 
 manifold eddies, and mounted over the brim like foam. A bright 
 point darted with exceeding swiftness through the cloudy circle, 
 and began to form the Image in the midst of it. On a sudden 
 
THE GOBLET. 
 
 243 
 
 there looked out from the vapour as it were an eye ; over this 
 came a playing and curling as of golden locks ; and soon there 
 went a soft blush up and down the shadow, and Ferdinand beheld 
 the smiling face of his beloved, the blue eyes, the tender cheeks, 
 the fair red mouth. The head waved to and fro ; rose clearer and 
 more visible upon the slim white neck, and nodded towards the 
 enraptured youth. Old Albert still kept casting circles round the 
 cup ; and out of it emerged the glancing -shoulders ; and as the 
 fair form mounted more and more from its golden couch, and bent 
 in lovely kindness this way and that, the soft curved parted breasts 
 appeared, and on their summits two loveliest rose-buds glancing 
 with sweet secret red. Ferdinand fancied he felt the breath, as 
 the beloved form bent waving towards him, and almost touched 
 him with its glowing lips ; in his rapture he forgot his promise 
 and himself ; he started up and clasped that ruby mouth to him 
 with a kiss, and meant to seize those lovely arms, and lift the 
 enrapturing form from its golden prison. Instantly a violent 
 trembling quivered through the lovely shape ; the head and body 
 broke away as in a thousand lines ; and a rose was lying at the 
 bottom of the goblet, in whose redness that sweet smile still 
 seemed to play. The longing young man caught it and pressed 
 it to his lips ; and in his burning ardour it withered and melted 
 into air. 
 
 " Thou hast kept thy promise badly," said the old man, with 
 an angry tone ; " thou hast none but thyself to blame." He again 
 wrapped up the goblet, drew aside the curtains, and opened a 
 window : the clear daylight broke in ; and Ferdinand, in sadness, 
 and with many fruitless excuses, left old Albert still in anger. 
 
 In an agitated mood, he hastened through the streets of the 
 city. Without the gate, he sat down beneath the trees. She had 
 told him in the morning that she was to go that night, with some 
 relations, to the country. Intoxicated with love, he rose, he sat, 
 he wandered in the wood : that fair kind form was still before 
 him, as it flowed and mounted from the glowing gold ; he looked 
 that she would now step forth to meet him in the splendour of 
 her beauty, and again that loveliest image broke away in pieces 
 irom his eyes ; and he was indignant at himself that, by his rest- 
 less passion and the tumult of his senses, he should have de- 
 stroyed the shape, and perhaps his hopes, forever. 
 
 As the walk, in the afternoon, became crowded, he withdrew 
 deeper into the thickets ; but he still kept the distant highway 
 
244 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 in his eye ; and every coach that issued from the gate was care- 
 fully examined by him. 
 
 The night approached. The setting sun was throwing forth 
 its red splendour, when from the gate rushed out the richly gilded 
 coach, gleaming with a fiery brightness in the glow of evening. 
 He hastened towards it. Her eye had already seized him. Kindly 
 and smilingly she leaned her glittering bosom from the window ; 
 he caught her soft salutation and signal ; he was standing by the 
 coach, her full look fell on his, and as she drew back to move 
 away, the rose which had adorned her bosom flew out, and lay at 
 his feet. He lifted it, and kissed it ; and he felt as if it presaged 
 to him that he should not see his loved one any more, that now 
 his happiness had faded away from him forever. 
 
 Hurried steps were passing up stairs and down ; the whole 
 house was in commotion ; all was bustle and tumult, preparing 
 for the great festivities of the morrow. The mother was the 
 gladdest and most active ; the bride heeded nothing, but retired 
 into her chamber to meditate upon her changing destiny. The 
 family were still looking for their elder son, the captain, with his 
 wife ; and for two elder daughters, with their husbands : Leo- 
 pold, the younger, was maliciously busied in increasing the dis- 
 order, and deepening the tumult ; perplexing all, while he pre- 
 tended to be furthering it. Agatha, his still unmarried sister, 
 was in vain endeavouring to make him reasonable, and persuade 
 him simply to do nothing, and to let the rest have peace ; but 
 her mother said : ' ' Never mind him and his folly ; for today a 
 little more or less of it amounts to nothing ; only this I beg of 
 one and all of you, that as I have so much to think about already, 
 you would trouble me with no fresh tidings, unless it be of some- 
 thing that especially concerns us. I care not whether any one 
 have let some china fall, whether one spoon or two spoons are 
 wanting, whether any of the stranger servants have been break- 
 ing windows ; with all such freaks as these, I beg you would not 
 vex me by recounting them. Were these days of tumult over, 
 we will reckon matters ; not till then." 
 
 " Bravely spoken, mother!" cried her son; " these sentiments 
 are worthy of a governor. And if it chance that any of the maids 
 should break her neck; the cook get tipsy, or set the chimney on 
 
THE GOBLET. 
 
 245 
 
 fire; the butler, for joy, let all the malmsey run upon the floor, or 
 down his throat, you shall not hear a word of such small tricks. 
 If, indeed, an earthquake were to overset the house ! that, my 
 dear mother, could not be kept secret." 
 
 " When will he leave his folly !" said the mother : " What 
 must thy sisters think, when they find thee every jot as riotous 
 as when they left thee two years ago ?" 
 
 " They must do justice to my force of character," said Leo- 
 pold, " and grant that I am not so changeable as they or their 
 husbands, who have altered so much within these few years, and 
 so little to their advantage." 
 
 The bridegroom now entered, and inquired for the bride. Her 
 maid was sent to call her. " Has Leopold made my request to 
 you, my dear mother?" said he. 
 
 " I did, forsooth !" said Leopold. " There is such confusion 
 here among us, not one of them can think a reasonable thought." 
 
 The bride entered, and the young pair joyfully saluted one 
 another. " The request I meant," continued the bridegroom, " is 
 this : That you would not take it ill, if I should bring another 
 guest into your house, which, in truth, is full enough already." 
 
 " You are aware yourself," replied the mother, "that ex- 
 tensive as it is, I could scarcely find another chamber." 
 
 " Notwithstanding, I have partly managed it already," cried 
 Leopold ; " I have had the large apartment furbished up." 
 
 " Why, that is quite a miserable place," replied the mother; 
 " for many years it has been nothing but a lumber-room." 
 
 "But it is splendidly repaired," said Leopold; "and our 
 friend, for whom it is intended, does not mind such matters, he 
 desires nothing but our love. Besides, he has no wife, and likes 
 to be alone ; it is the very place for him. We have had enough 
 of trouble in persuading him to come, and show himself again 
 among his fellow-creatures." 
 
 " Not your dismal conjuror and gold-maker, certainly?" cried 
 Agatha. 
 
 " No other," said the bridegroom, " if you will still call 
 him so." 
 
 " Then do not let him, mother," said the sister. " What 
 should a man like that do here ? I have seen him on the street 
 with Leopold, and I was positively frightened at his face. The 
 old sinner, too, almost never goes to church ; he loves neither 
 God nor man ; and it cannot come to good to bring such infidels 
 
216 
 
 LTJDWIG TIECK. 
 
 under the roof, on a solemnity like this. Who knows what may 
 be the consequence !" 
 
 " To hear her talk !" said Leopold, in anger. " Thou con- 
 demnest without knowing him ; and because the cut of his nose 
 does not please thee, and he is no longer young and handsome, 
 thou concludest him a wizard, and a servant of the t Devil." 
 
 " Grant a place in your house, dear mother," said the bride- 
 groom, " to our old friend, and let him take a part in our general 
 joy. He seems, my dear Agatha, to have endured much suffering, 
 which has rendered him distrustful and misanthropic ; he avoids 
 all society, his only exceptions are Leopold and myself. I owe 
 him much ; it was he that first gave my mind a good direction ; 
 nay, I may say, it is he alone that has rendered me perhaps 
 worthy of my Julia's love." 
 
 " He lends me all his books," continued Leopold; "and, what 
 is more, his old manuscripts ; and what is more still, his money, 
 on my bare word. He is a man of the most christian turn, my 
 little sister. And who knows, when thou hast seen him better, 
 whether thou wilt not throw off thy coyness, and take a fancy to 
 him, ugly as he now appears to thee ?" 
 
 " Well, bring him to us," said the mother; " I have had to 
 hear so much of him from Leopold already, that I have a curi- 
 osity to be acquainted with him. Only you must answer for it, 
 that I cannot lodge him better." 
 
 Meantime strangers were announced. They were members 
 of the family, the married daughters, and the officer ; they had 
 brought their children with them. The good old lady was de- 
 lighted to behold her grandsons ; all was welcoming, and joyful 
 talk ; and Leopold and the bridegroom, having also given and re- 
 ceived their greeting, went away to seek their ancient melancholic 
 friend. 
 
 The latter lived most part of the year in the country, about a 
 league from town ; but he also kept a little dwelling for himself 
 in a garden near the gate. Here, by chance, the young men had 
 become acquainted with him. They now found him in a coffee- 
 house, where they had previously agreed to meet. As the evening 
 had come on, they brought him, after some little conversation, 
 directly to the house. 
 
 The stranger met a kindly welcome from the mother ; the 
 daughters stood a little more aloof from him. Agatha especially 
 was shy, and carefully avoided his looks. But the first general 
 
THE GOBLET. 
 
 247 
 
 compliments were scarcely over, when the old man's eye appeared 
 to settle on the bride, who had entered the apartment later ; he 
 seemed as if transported, and it was observed that he was strug- 
 gling to conceal a tear. The bridegroom rejoiced in his joy, and 
 happening sometime after to be standing with him by a side at 
 the window, he took his hand, and asked him : "Now, what think 
 you of my lovely Julia ? Is she not an angel?" 
 
 " 0 my friend !" replied the old man, with emotion, " such 
 grace and beauty I have never seen ; or rather, I should say (for 
 that expression was not just), she is so fair, so ravishing, so 
 heavenly, that I feel as if I had long known her ; as if she were 
 to me, utter stranger though she is, the most familiar form of my 
 imagination, some shape which had always been an inmate of my 
 heart." 
 
 "I understand you," said the young man : " yes, the truly 
 beautiful, the great and sublime, when it overpowers us with as- 
 tonishment and admiration, still does not surprise us as a thing 
 foreign, never heard of, never seen ; but, on the other hand, our 
 own inmost nature in such moments becomes clear to us, our 
 deepest remembrances are awakened, our dearest feelings made 
 alive." 
 
 The stranger, during supper, mixed but little in the conver- 
 sation ; his looks were fixed on the bride, so earnestly and con- 
 stantly, that she at last became embarrassed and alarmed. The 
 captain told of a campaign which he had served in ; the rich 
 merchant of his speculations and the bad times ; the country 
 gentleman of the improvements which he meant to make in his 
 estate. 
 
 Supper being done, the bridegroom took his leave, returning 
 for the last time to his lonely chamber ; for in future it was set- 
 tled that the married pair were to live in the mother's house, 
 their chambers were already furnished. The company dispersed, 
 and Leopold conducted the stranger to his room. "You will ex- 
 cuse us," said he, as they went along, "for having been obliged 
 to lodge you rather far away, and not so comfortably as our mother 
 wished ; but you see, yourself, how numerous our family is, and 
 more relations are to come tomorrow. For one thing, you will 
 not run away from us ; there is no finding of your course through 
 this enormous house." 
 
 They went through several passages, and Leopold at last took 
 leave, and bade his guest good-night. The servant placed two 
 
248 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 wax-lights on the table ; then asked the stranger whether he 
 should help him to undress, and as the latter waived his help in 
 that particular, he also went away, and the stranger found him- 
 self alone. 
 
 "How does it chance, then," said he, walking up and down, 
 ' 1 that this Image springs so vividly from my heart today ? I 
 forgot the long past, and thought I saw herself. I was again 
 young, and her voice sounded as of old ; I thought I was awaken- 
 ing from a heavy dream ; but no, I am now awake, and those 
 fair moments were but a sweet delusion." 
 
 He was too restless to sleep ; he looked at some pictures on 
 the walls, and then round on the chamber. " Today," cried he, 
 " all is so familiar to me, I could almost fancy I had known this 
 house and this apartment of old." He tried to settle his remem- 
 brances, and lifted some large books which were standing in a 
 corner. As he turned their leaves, he shook his head. A lute- 
 case was leaning on the wall ; he opened it, and found a strange 
 old instrument, time-worn, and without the strings. "No, I am 
 not mistaken !" cried he, in astonishment; " this lute is too re- 
 markable ; it is the Spanish lute of my long-departed friend, old 
 Albert ! Here are his magic books ; this is the chamber where 
 he raised for me that blissful vision ; the red of the tapestry is 
 faded, its golden hem is become dim ; but strangely vivid in my 
 heart is all pertaining to those hours. It was for this the fear 
 went over me as I was coming hither, through these long com- 
 plicated passages where Leopold conducted me. 0 Heaven ! On 
 this very table did the Shape rise budding forth, and grow up as 
 if watered and refreshed by the redness of the gold. The same 
 image smiled upon me here, which has almost driven me crazy 
 in the hall tonight ; in that hall where I have walked so often in 
 trustful speech with Albert !" 
 
 He undressed, but slept very little. Early in the morning he 
 was up, and looking at the room again ; he opened the window, 
 and the same gardens and buildings were lying before him as of 
 old, only many other houses had been built since then. " Forty 
 years have vanished," sighed he, "since that afternoon; and 
 every day of those bright times has a longer life than all the 
 intervening space." 
 
 He was called to the company. The morning passed in varied 
 talk : at last the bride entered in her marriage-dress. As the old 
 man noticed her, he fell into a state of agitation, such that every 
 
THE GOBLET. 
 
 249 
 
 one observed it. They proceeded to the church, and the mar- 
 riage-ceremony was performed. The party was again at home, 
 when Leopold inquired : "Now, mother, how do you like our 
 friend, the good morose old gentleman?" 
 
 " I had figured him, by your description," said she, " much 
 more frightful ; he is mild and sympathetic, and might gain from 
 one an honest trust in him." 
 
 " Trust?" cried Agatha; "in these burning frightful eyes, 
 these thousandfold wrinkles, that pale sunk mouth, that strange 
 laugh of his, which looks and sounds so mockingly ? No ; God 
 keep me from such friends ! If evil spirits ever take the shape 
 of men, they must assume some shape like this." 
 
 "Perhaps a younger and more handsome one," replied the 
 mother; " but I cannot recognise the good old man in thy de- 
 scription. One easily observes that he is of a violent tempera- 
 ment, and has inured himself to lock up his feelings in his own 
 bosom ; perhaps, too, as Leopold was saying, he may have en- 
 countered many miseries ; so he is grown mistrustful, and has 
 lost that simple openness, which is especially the portion of the 
 happy." 
 
 The rest of the party entered, and broke off their conversa- 
 tion. Dinner was served up ; and the stranger sat between 
 Agatha and the rich merchant. When the toasts were begin- 
 ning, Leopold cried out : " Now, stop a little, worthy friends ; 
 we must have the golden goblet down for this, then let it travel 
 round." 
 
 He was rising, but his mother beckoned him to keep his seat : 
 " Thou wilt not find it," said she, " for the plate is all stowed 
 elsewhere." She walked out rapidly to seek it herself. 
 
 " How brisk and busy is our good old lady still !" observed 
 the merchant. " See how nimbly she can move, with all her 
 breadth and weight, and reckoning sixty by this time of day. 
 Her face is always bright and joyful, and today she is particularly 
 happy, for she sees herself made young again in Julia." 
 
 The stranger gave assent, and the lady entered with the gob- 
 let. It was filled with vine, and began to circulate, each toast- 
 ing what was dearest and most precious to him. Julia gave the 
 welfare of her husband, he the love of his fair Julia ; and thus 
 did every one as it became his turn. The mother lingered, as 
 the goblet came to her. 
 
 " Come, quick with it," said the captain, somewhat hastily 
 
250 
 
 LUDWIG TTEOK. 
 
 and rudely; "we know, you reckon all men faithless, and not one 
 among them worthy of a woman's love. What, then, is dearest 
 to you ?" 
 
 His mother looked at him, while the mildness of her brow 
 was on a sudden overspread with angry seriousness. " Since my 
 son," said she, "knows me so well, and can judge my mind so 
 rigorously, let me be permitted not to speak what I was thinking 
 of, and let him endeavour, by a life of constant love, to falsify 
 what he gives out as my opinion." She pushed the goblet on, 
 without drinking, and the company was for a while embarrassed 
 and disturbed. 
 
 " It is reported," said the merchant, in a whisper, turning to 
 the stranger, "that she did not love her husband; but another, 
 who proved faithless to her. She was then, it seems, the finest 
 woman in the city." 
 
 When the cup reached Ferdinand, he gazed upon it with 
 astonishment ; for it was the very goblet out of which old Albert 
 had called forth to him the lovely shadow. He looked in upon 
 the gold, and the waving of the wine ; his hand shook ; it would 
 not have surprised him, if from the magic bowl that glowing Form 
 had again mounted up, and brought with it his vanished youth. 
 " No !" said he, after some time, half- aloud, " it is wine that is 
 gleaming here !" 
 
 "Ay, what else?" cried the merchant, laughing: "Drink 
 and be merry." 
 
 A thrill of terror passed over the old man ; he pronounced 
 the name " Francesca" in a vehement tone, and set the goblet 
 to his lips. The mother cast upon him an inquiring and aston- 
 ished look. 
 
 " Whence is this bright goblet ?" said Ferdinand, who also 
 felt ashamed of his embarrassment. 
 
 " Many years ago, long ere I was born," said Leopold, " my 
 father bought it, with this house and all its furniture, from an 
 old solitary bachelor ; a silent man, whom the neighbours thought 
 a dealer in the Black Art." 
 
 The stranger did not say that he had known this old man ; 
 for his whole being was too much perplexed, too like an enig- 
 matic dream, to let the rest look into it, even from afar. 
 
 The cloth being withdrawn, he was left alone with the mother, 
 as the young ones had retired to make ready for the ball. " Sit 
 down by me," said the mother; " we will rest, for our dancing 
 
THE GOBLET. 
 
 251 
 
 years are past ; and if it is not rude, allow me to inquire whether 
 you have seen our goblet elsewhere, or what it was that moved 
 you so intensely ?" 
 
 " 0 my lady," said the old man, " pardon my foolish violence 
 and emotion ; but ever since I crossed your threshold, I feel as 
 if I were no longer myself ; every moment I forget that my head 
 is gray, that the hearts which loved me are dead. Your beauti- 
 ful daughter, who is now celebrating the gladdest day of her 
 existence, is so like a maiden whom I knew and adored in my 
 youth, that I could reckon it a miracle. Like, did I say? No, 
 she is not like ; it is she herself ! In this house, too, I have 
 often been ; and once I became acquainted with this cup in a 
 manner I shall not forget." Here he told her his adventure. 
 " On the evening of that day," concluded he, "in the park, I 
 saw my loved one for the last time, as she was passing in her 
 coach. A rose fell from her bosom ; this I gathered ; she her- 
 self was lost to me, for she proved faithless, and soon after 
 married." 
 
 " God in Heaven !" cried the lady, violently moved, and 
 starting up, " thou art not Ferdinand ?" 
 " It is my name," replied he. 
 " I am Francesca," said the lady. 
 
 They sprang forward to embrace, then started suddenly back. 
 Each viewed the other with investigating looks : both strove again 
 to evolve from the ruins of Time those lineaments which of old 
 they had known and loved in one another ; and as, in dark tem- 
 pestuous nights, amid the flight of black clouds, there are mo- 
 ments when solitary stars ambiguously twinkle forth, to disappear 
 next instant, so to these two was there shown now and then from 
 the eyes, from the brow and lips, the transitory gleam of some 
 well-known feature ; and it seemed as if their Youth stood in the 
 distance, weeping smiles. He bowed down, and kissed her hand, 
 while two big drops rolled from his eyes. They then embraced 
 each other cordially. 
 
 " Is thy wife dead ?" inquired she. 
 
 " I was never married," sobbed the other. 
 
 "Heavens !" cried she, wringing her hands, "then it is I 
 who have been faithless ! But no, not faithless. On returning 
 from the country, where I stayed two mouths, I heard from every 
 one, thy friends as well as mine, that thou wert long ago gone 
 home, and married in thy own country. They showed me the 
 
252 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 most convincing letters, they pressed me vehemently, they pro- 
 fited by my despondency, my indignation ; and so it was that I 
 gave my hand to another, a deserving husband ; but my heart 
 and my thoughts were always thine." 
 
 " I never left this town," said Ferdinand ; " but after a while 
 I heard that thou wert married. They wished to part us, and 
 they have succeeded. Thou art a happy mother ; I live in the 
 past, and all thy children I will love as if they were my own. But 
 how strange that we should never once have met !" 
 
 " I seldom went abroad," said she ; " and as my husband 
 took another name, soon after we were married, from a property 
 which he inherited, thou couldst have no suspicion that we were 
 so near together." 
 
 " I avoided men," said Ferdinand, " and lived for solitude. 
 Leopold is almost the only one that has attracted me, and led 
 me out amongst my fellows. 0 my beloved friend, it is like a 
 frightful spectre-story, to think how we lost, and have again found 
 each other !" 
 
 As the young people entered, the two were dissolved in tears, 
 and in the deepest emotion. Neither of them told what had oc- 
 curred, the secret seemed too holy. But ever after, the old man 
 was the friend of the house ; and Death alone parted these two 
 beings, who had found each other so strangely, to reunite them 
 in a short time, beyond the power of separation. 
 
JEAN PAUL FBIEDRICH EICHTER. 
 
ARMY-CHAPLAIN SCHMELZLE'S JOURNEY 
 TO FL.ETZ; 
 
 WITH 
 
 A RUNNING COMMENTARY OF NOTES BY JEAN PAUL.* 
 
 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 Fliitz ; 
 after having, in an Introduction, premised some proofs and assurances of his va- 
 lour. Properly speaking, the Journey itself has been written purely with a view 
 that his courageousness, impugned by rumour, may be fully evinced and demon- 
 strated 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 
 Bide : 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 simi- 
 lar 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 dis- 
 close 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 wit- 
 ness, that I acquired this article, at least by more honourable methods than are 
 those of the learned persons who steal with their ears, who, in the character of 
 spiritual auditory-thieves, and classroom cutpurses and pirates, are in the habit 
 of disloading their plundered Lectures, and vending them up and down the coun- 
 try 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 apologise for the singular form of this little 
 
 1 Prefatory Introduction to Richter, supra, at p. 354, Vol. VI. of Works (Vol. 
 I. of Miscellanies). 
 
256 
 
 JEAN PAUL FEIEDBICH EICHTER. 
 
 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 hook, 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 he 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 he 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, pell-mell, 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-pre- 
 cipitate make its appearance. Well, the thing at any rate is done, nay per- 
 petuated, 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 lasio 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 pro- 
 ducing 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 book- 
 seller'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 Fb. Richteb. 
 
 Bayreuth, in the Hay and Peace Month, 1807. 
 
257 
 
 SCHMELZLE'S JOUENEY TO FLMTZ. 
 
 Circular Letter of the proposed Catechetical Professor Attila Schmelzle to his 
 Friends; containing some Account of a Holidays 1 Journey to Fldtz, 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 stigmatising a man as cowardly and hare-hearted, 
 who perhaps is struggling all the while with precisely the oppo- 
 site faults, those of a lion ; though indeed the African lion him- 
 self, since the time of Sparrmann's Travels, passes among us for 
 a poltroon. Yet this case is mine, worthy Friends ; and I pur- 
 pose to say a few words thereupon, before describing my Journey. 
 
 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, w T hen 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 
 the pew, and shout aloud : I am here too, Mr. Parson !" and to 
 paint out this thought in such glowing colours, that for very dread, 
 I have often been obliged to leave the church ! Anything like 
 Eugenda'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 
 favourite 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 
 
 103. 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. 
 
 5. For a good Physician saves, if not always from the disease, at least from 
 a bad Physician. 
 
 VOL. Ill, S 
 
258 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH KICHTEK. 
 
 you, my worthy Friends, will fte the first to recognise 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 
 t)iem into Christian heroes. 
 
 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 
 m 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 Home 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 and Herr Gleim's, 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 sub- 
 mit to be made a Jew of, and then be regaled with hams; though 
 they were ape-hams on the Orinocco (see Humboldt) ? And a 
 thousand such things ; for I have thrown the Consistorial Pre- 
 sident of Flatz out of the Palace window ; those alarm-fulmina- 
 tors, 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. 
 
 But enough ! It is now time briefly to touch that farther 
 slander of my chaplainship, which unhappily has likewise gained 
 some circulation in Flatz, but which, as Caesar did Alexander, I 
 shall now by my touch dissipate into dust. Be what truth in it 
 
 100. In books lie the Phcenix-ashes of a past Millennium and Paradise ; but 
 War blows, and much ashes are scattered away. 
 
 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 ? 
 
SCHMELZLE'S JOURNEY TO FLiETZ. 
 
 259 
 
 fchere can, it is still little or nothing. Your great Minister and 
 General in Flatz (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 rumours are afloat in the Flatz country, that I, on occa- 
 sion 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 what- 
 ever 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. 
 
 It is true, I might perhaps, as expectant Professor of Cate- 
 chetics, 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. 
 
 But for my part I think not so : almost as if the party-spirit 
 influence of my christian name, Attila, had passed into me more 
 strongly than was proper, I feel myself impelled still farther to 
 prove my courageousness ; which, dearest Friends ! I shall here 
 
 86. Very true ! In youth we love and enjoy the most ill-assorted friends, 
 perhaps more than, in old age, the best-assorted. 
 
 128. In Love there are Summer Holidays ; but in Marriage also there are 
 Winter Holidays, I hope. 
 
260 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTEIt. 
 
 in a few lines again do. This proof I conld manage by mere in- 
 ferences 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 
 valour, 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's-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, 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, 2 — does, from a similar idiosyncrasy, attack all warlike arma- 
 ments, both by word and writing. And here I recollect with satis- 
 faction a brave sub -lieutenant, whose confessor I was (he still owes 
 me the confession-money), and who, in respect of stouthearted- 
 ness, 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 
 
 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 celehrate your Sunday on Friday -with the 
 Turks, on Saturday with the Jews, and on Sunday with yourself. 
 
 2 The good Professor of Catechetics is out here. Indignor quandoque lonus 
 dormitat Sclimelzlceus ! — Ed. 
 
schmblzle's journey to fl^tz. 
 
 261 
 
 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. 
 
 Quo, says Livy, xii. 5, and with great justice, quo timoris 
 minus est, eo minus ferine 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-heart- 
 edness 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 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. 
 
 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 Keimarus : 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. 
 
 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. 
 
262 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 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 some- 
 where, when I am out enjoying Nature, shall so fire off his piece, 
 at an angle of 45°, 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 trainbearer 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 ere long (in the midst of his meditation the villanous Satel- 
 lite 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 ! 
 
 Suffice one other story to manifest how ludicrous the most 
 serious foresight, with all imaginable inward courage, often ex- 
 ternally 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-coloured 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 Keichs- 
 hofrath law-suit, or the Daily Postwagen, could not in the least 
 understand the matter, till I cried as if possessed : " Stop him 
 
 34. Women are like precious carved works of ivory ; nothing is whiter and 
 smoother, and nothing sooner grows yellow. 
 
 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. 
 
SCHMELZLE'S JOURNEY TO FLiETZ. 
 
 263 
 
 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 ridi- 
 culous 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-coloured 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 my- 
 self 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-coloured 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. 
 But now at last to my Journey ! 
 
 Journey to Flatz. 
 
 You are aware, my friends, that this Journey to Flatz was 
 necessarily to take place in Vacation time ; not only because the 
 
 35. Bien ecouter c'est presque repondre, says Marivaux justly of social cir- 
 cles : but I extend it to round Councillor-tables and Cabinet-tables, where reports 
 are made, and the Prince listens. 
 
264 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 Cattle - market, and consequently the Minister and General von 
 Sclia backer, 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 Cate- 
 chetical 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 ! Nowadays, alas, these stings shoot forth involuntarily 
 from learned pens, as from the 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 inter- 
 lineation of thoughts, these horizontal note -marks of poetical 
 music-pieces, and these rope-ladders or Achilles' tendons of phi- 
 losophical see -pieces, are at present fashionable and indispens- 
 able : 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. 
 
 First Stage ; from Neusattel to Vierstadten. 
 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 
 
 17. The Bed of Honour, since so frequently whole regiments lie on it, and 
 receive their last unction, and last honour but one, really ought from time to 
 time to he new-filled, beaten and sunned. 
 
SCHMELZLE's JOURNEY TO FL32TZ. 
 
 265 
 
 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 Ke- 
 script, 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, house - breakings, thunder-storms, or 
 transits of troops, it would behove them to do. To my wife I 
 delivered an inventory of the best goods in our little Eegister- 
 ship ; which goods she, in case the house took fire, had, in the 
 first place, to secure. I ordered her, in stormy nights (the pecu- 
 liar thief- weather), to put our Eolian 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 farther 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 ans- 
 wered 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 sunburnt 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." 
 
 120. Many a one becomes a free-spoken Diogenes, not when he dwells in the 
 Cask, but when the Cask dwells in him. 
 
 3. Culture makes whole lands, for instance Germany, Gaul, and others, 
 physically warmer, but spiritually colder. 
 
266 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTEB. 
 
 "0!" answered I, "misfortune may conceal itself like a 
 scorpion in any corner : I might say, we are like children, who, 
 looking at their gaily 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 today ; the dog like the 
 dog, and my sister like a pretty woman : allons done /" It was 
 purely his blame that I, fearing his misconceptions, had not pre- 
 viously made a sort of testament. 
 
 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 jour- 
 neys ; having a rational mistrust against stranger bloodthirsty 
 barbers : but, on this occasion, I retained my beard ; since, how- 
 ever 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 
 
 1. The more Weakness the more Lying: Force goes straight; any cannon- 
 ball with holes or cavities in it goes crooked. 
 
schmelzle's joukney to fl^tz. 
 
 267 
 
 well knowest, thou wild fly, what I will 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. 
 
 Melted into sensibility, I said: "Now, Berga, if there be a 
 reunion appointed for us, surely it is either in Heaven or in Flatz ; 
 and I hope in God, the latter." With these words, we whirled 
 stoutly away. I looked round through the back - window of the 
 coach at my good little village of Neusattel, and it seemed to me, 
 in my melting mood, as if its steeples were rising aloft like an 
 epitaphium over my life, or over my body, perhaps to return a 
 lifeless corpse. " How will it all be," thought I, " when thou at 
 last, after two or three days, comest back ?" And now I noticed 
 my Bergelchen looking after us from the garret-window. I leaned 
 far out from the coach-door, and her falcon eye instantly distin- 
 guished my head ; kiss on kiss she threw with both hands after 
 the carriage, as it rolled down into the valley. " Thou true- 
 hearted wife," thought I, " how is thy lowly birth, by thy spiritual 
 new-birth, made forgettable, nay remarkable !" 
 
 I must confess, the assemblage and conversational picnic of 
 the stage-coach was much less to my taste : the whole of them 
 suspicious, unknown rabble, whom (as markets usually do) the 
 Flatz cattle-market was alluring by its scent. I dislike becoming 
 acquainted with strangers : not so my brother-in-law, the Dra- 
 goon ; who now, as he always does, had in a few minutes elbowed 
 himself into close quarters with the whole ragamuffin posse of 
 them. Beside me sat a person who, in all human probability, 
 was a Harlot ; on her breast, a Dwarf intending to exhibit him- 
 self at the Fair ; on the other side was a Ratcatcher gazing at 
 me ; and a Blind Passenger, 3 in a red mantle, had joined us 
 down in the valley. No one of them, except my brother-in-law, 
 pleased me. That rascals among these people would not study 
 me and my properties and accidents, to entangle me in their 
 
 38. Epictetus advises us to travel, because our old acquaintances, by the in- 
 fluence of shame, impede our transition to higher virtues ; as a bashful man will 
 rather lay aside his provincial accent in some foreign quarter, and then return 
 wholly purified to his own countrymen : in our days, people of rank and virtue 
 follow this advice, but inversely ; and travel because their old acquaintances, by 
 the influence of shame, would too much deter them from new sins. 
 
 » • Live Passenger,' 4 Nip ;' a passenger taken up only by Jarvie's authority, 
 and for Jarvie's profit. — Ed. 
 
268 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 snares, no man could be my surety. In strange places, I even, 
 out of prudence, avoid looking long up at any jail- window ; because 
 some losel, sitting behind the bars, may in a moment call down 
 out of mere malice : " How goes it, comrade Schmelzle ?" or 
 farther, because any lurking eatchpole may fancy I am planning 
 a rescue for some confederate above. From another sort of 
 prudence, little different from this, I also make a point of never 
 turning round when any booby calls, Thief ! behind me. 
 
 As to the Dwarf himself, I had no objection to his travelling 
 with me whithersoever he pleased ; but he thought to raise a par- 
 ticular delectation in our minds, by promising that his Pollux and 
 Brother in Trade, an extraordinary Giant, who was also making 
 for the Fair to exhibit himself, would by midnight, with his ele- 
 phantine pace, infallibly overtake the coach, and plant himself 
 among us, or behind on the outside. Both these noodles, it ap- 
 peared, are in the habit of going in company to fairs, as reciprocal 
 exaggerators of opposite magnitudes : the Dwarf is the convex 
 magnifying-glass of the Giant, the Giant the concave diminishing- 
 glass of the Dwarf. Nobody expressed much joy at the prospect- 
 ive arrival of this Anti-dwarf, except my brother-in-law, who (if I 
 may venture on a play of words) seems made, like a clock, solely 
 for the purpose of striking, and once actually said to me : " That 
 if in the Upper world he could not get a soul to curry and towzle 
 by a time, he would rather go to the Under, where most probably 
 there would be plenty of cuffing and to spare." The Eatcatcher, 
 besides the circumstance that no man can prepossess us much in 
 his favour, who lives solely by poisoning, like this Destroying 
 Angel of rats, this mouse-Atropos ; and also, which is still worse, 
 that such a fellow bids fair to become an increaser of the vermin 
 kingdom, the moment he may cease to be a lessener of it ; besides 
 all this, I say, the present Eatcatcher had many baneful features 
 about him : first, his stabbing look, piercing you like a stiletto ; 
 then the lean sharp bony visage, conjoined with his enumeration 
 of his considerable stock of poisons ; then (for I hated him more 
 and more) his sly stillness, his sly smile, as if in some corner he 
 noticed a mouse, as he would notice a man ! To me, I declare, 
 though usually I take not the slightest exception against people's 
 
 32. Our Age (by some called the Paper Age, as if it were made from the 
 rags of some better-dressed one) is improving in so far, as it now tears its rags 
 rather into Bandages than into Papers ; although, or because, the Eag-hacker 
 (the Devil as they call it) will not altogether be at rest. Meanwhile, if Learned 
 
SCHMELZLE'S JOURNEY TO FLtETZ. 
 
 269 
 
 looks, it seemed at last as if his throat were a Dog-grotto, a 
 Grotta del cane, his cheek-bones cliffs and breakers, his hot 
 breath the wind of a calcining furnace, and his black hairy breast 
 a kiln for parching and roasting. 
 
 Nor was I far wrong, I believe ; for soon after this, he began 
 quite coolly to inform the company, in which were a dwarf and a 
 female, that, in his time, he had, not without enjoyment, run ten 
 men through the body ; had with great convenience hewed off a 
 dozen men's arms ; slowly split four heads, torn out two hearts, 
 and more of the like sort; while none of them, otherwise persons 
 of spirit, had in the least resisted: "but why?" added he, with 
 a poisonous smile, and taking the hat from his odious bald pate : 
 "I am invulnerable. Let any one of the company that chooses 
 lay as much fire on my bare crown as he likes, I shall not mind 
 it." 
 
 My brother-in-law, the Dragoon, directly kindled his tinder- 
 box, and put a heap of the burning matter on the Katcatcher's 
 pole ; but the fellow stood it, as if it had been a mere picture 
 of fire, and the two looked expectingly at one another ; and the 
 former smiled very foolishly, saying : "It was simply pleasant to 
 him, like a good warming-plaster ; for this was always the wintry 
 region of his body." 
 
 Here the Dragoon groped a little on the naked scull, and cried 
 with amazement, that " it was as cold as a knee-pan." 
 
 But now the fellow, to our horror, after some preparations, 
 actually lifted off the quarter- scull and held it out to us, saying : 
 ' ' He had sawed it off a murderer, his own having accidentally 
 been broken;" and withal explained, that the stabbing and arm- 
 cutting he had talked of was to be understood as a jest, seeing he 
 had merely done it in the character of Famulus at an Anatomical 
 Theatre. However, the jester seemed to rise little in favour with 
 any of us ; and for my part, as he put his brain-lid and sham-scull 
 on again, I thought to myself ; ' ' This dungbed-bell has changed 
 its place indeed, but not the hemlock it was made to cover." 
 
 Heads transform themselves into Books, Crowned Heads transform and coin 
 themselves into Government - paper : in Norway, according to the Universal 
 Indicator, the people have even paper-houses ; and in many good German States, 
 the Exchequer Collegium (to say nothing of the Justice Collegium) keeps its own 
 paper-mills, to furnish wrappage enough for the meal of its wind-mills. I could 
 wish, however, that our Collegiums would take pattern from that Glass Manu- 
 factory at Madrid, in which (according to Baumgartner) there were indeed nine- 
 teen clerks stationed, hut also eleven workmen. 
 
270 JEAN PAUL FRIEDMCH KICHTER. 
 
 Farther, I could not but reckon it a suspicious circumstance, 
 that he as well as all the company (the Blind Passenger too) 
 were making for this very Flatz, to which I myself was bound : 
 much good I could not expect of this ; and, in truth, turning 
 home again would have been as pleasant to me as going on, had 
 I not rather felt a pleasure in defying the future. 
 
 I come now to the red-mantled Blind Passenger ; most pro- 
 bably an Emigre or Refugie ; for he speaks German not worse 
 than he does French ; and his name, I think, was Jean Pierre 
 or Jean Paul, or some such thing, if indeed he had any name. 
 His red cloak, notwithstanding this his identity of colour with 
 the Hangman, would in itself have remained heartily indifferent 
 to me, had it not been for this singular circumstance, that he 
 had already five times, contrary to all expectation, come upon 
 me in five different towns (in great Berlin, in little Hof, in 
 Coburg, Meiningen and Bayreuth), and each of these times had 
 looked at me significantly enough, and then gone his ways. 
 Whether this Jean Pierre is dogging me with hostile intent or 
 not, I cannot say ; but to our fancy, at any rate, no object can 
 be gratifying that thus, with corps of observation, or out of loop- 
 holes, holds and aims at us with muskets, which for year after 
 year it shall move to this side and that, without our knowing on 
 whom it is to fire. Still more offensive did Bedcloak become 
 to me, when he began to talk about his soft mildness of soul ; a 
 thing which seemed either to betoken pumping you or under- 
 mining you. 
 
 I replied: " Sir, I am just come, with my brother-in-law 
 here, from the field of battle (the last affair was at Pimpelstadt), 
 and so perhaps am too much of a humour for fire, pluck and war- 
 fury ; and to many a one, who happens to have a roaring water- 
 spout of a heart, it may be well if his clerical character (which is 
 mine) rather enjoins on him mildness than wildness. However, 
 all mildness has its iron limit. If any thoughtless dog chance to 
 anger me, in the first heat of rage I kick my foot through him ; 
 and after me, my good brother here will perhaps drive matters 
 twice as far, 'for he is the man to do it. Perhaps it may be 
 singular ; but I confess I regret to this day, that once when a 
 boy I received three blows from another, without tightly return- 
 
 2. In his Prince, a Boldier reverences and obeys at once his Prince and his 
 Generalissimo ; a Citizen only his Prince. 
 
schmelzle's journey to fl^etz. 
 
 271 
 
 ing them ; and I often feel as if I must still pay them to his 
 descendants. In sooth, if I hut chance to see a child running 
 off like a dastard from the weak attack of a child like himself, I 
 cannot for my life understand his running, and can scarcely keep 
 from interfering to save him by a decisive knock." 
 
 The Passenger meanwhile was smiling, not in the best fashion. 
 He gave himself out for a Legations-Bath, and seemed fox enough 
 for such a post ; but a mad fox will, in the long-run, bite me as 
 rabidly as a mad wolf will. For the rest, I calmly went on with 
 my eulogy on courage ; only that, instead of ludicrous gasconading, 
 which directly betrays the coward, I purposely expressed myself 
 in words at once cool, clear and firm. 
 
 "I am altogether for Montaigne's advice," said I: "Fear 
 nothing but fear." 
 
 " I again," replied the Legations-man, with useless wire- 
 drawing, " I should fear again that I did not sufficiently fear 
 fear, but continued too dastardly." 
 
 " To this fear also," replied I coldly, " I set limits. A man, 
 for instance, may not in the least believe in, or be afraid of 
 ghosts ; and yet by night may bathe himself in cold sweat, and 
 this purely out of terror at the dreadful fright he should be in 
 (especially with what whiffs of apoplexies, falling-sicknesses and 
 so forth, he might be visited), in case simply his own too vivid 
 fancy should create any wild fever-image, and hang it up in the 
 air before him." 
 
 " One should not, therefore," added my brother-in-law the 
 Dragoon, contrary to his custom, moralising a little, "one should 
 not bamboozle the poor sheep, man, with any ghost-tricks ; the 
 hen-heart may die on the spot." 
 
 A loud storm of thunder, overtaking the stage-coach, altered 
 the discourse. You, my Friends, knowing me as a man not quite 
 destitute of some tincture of Natural Philosophy, will easily guess 
 my precautions against thunder. I place myself on a chair in the 
 middle of the room (often, when suspicious clouds are out, I stay 
 whole nights on it), and by careful removal of all conductors, 
 rings, buckles, and so forth, I here sit thunder-proof, and listen 
 with a cool spirit to this elemental music of the cloud-kettledrum. 
 These precautions have never harmed me, for I am still alive at 
 
 45. Our present writers shrug their shoulders most at those on whose shoui* 
 ders they stand ; and exalt those jnost who crawl up along them. 
 
272 
 
 JEAN PAUL FMEDKICH EICHTER. 
 
 this date ; and to the present hour I congratulate myself on once 
 hurrying out of church, though I had confessed but the day pre- 
 vious ; and running, without more ceremony, and before I had 
 received the sacrament, into the charnel-house, because a heavy 
 thunder-cloud (which did, in fact, strike the churchyard linden- 
 tree) was hovering over it. So soon as the cloud had disloaded 
 itself, I returned from the charnel-house into the church, and was 
 happy enough to come in after the Hangman (usually the last), 
 and so still participate in the Feast of Love. 
 
 Such, for my own part, is my manner of proceeding : but in 
 the full stage-coach I met with men to whom Natural Philosophy 
 was no philosophy at all. For when the clouds gathered dread- 
 fully together over our coach-canopy, and sparkling, began to play 
 through the air like so many fire-flies, and I at last could not but 
 request that the sweating coach- conclave would at least bring out 
 their watches, rings, money and suchlike, and put them all into 
 one of the carriage-pockets, that none of us might have a .con- 
 ductor on his body; not only would no one of them do it, but my 
 own brother-in-law the Dragoon even sprang out, with naked 
 drawn sword, to the coach-box, and swore that he would conduct 
 the thunder all away himself. Nor do I know whether this des- 
 perate mortal was not acting prudently ; for our position within 
 was frightful, and any one of us might every moment be a dead 
 man. At last, to crown all, I got into a half altercation with two 
 of the rude members of our leathern household, the Poisoner and 
 the Harlot ; seeing, by their questions, they almost gave me to 
 understand that, in our conversational picnic, especially with the 
 Blind Passenger, I had not always come off with the best share. 
 Such an imputation wounds your honour to the quick; and in my 
 breast there was a thunder louder than that above us : however, 
 I was obliged to carry on the needful exchange of sharp words as 
 quietly and slowly as possible ; and I quarrelled softly, and in a 
 low tone, lest in the end a whole coachful of people, set in arms 
 against each other, might get into heat and perspiration ; and so, 
 by vapour steaming through the coach-roof, conduct the too-near 
 thunderbolt down into the midst of us. At last, I laid before the 
 
 103. The Great perhaps take as good charge of their posterity as the Ants : 
 the eggs once laid, the male and female Ants fly about their business, and con- 
 fide them to the trusty working-Ants. 
 
 10. And does Life offer us, in regard to our ideal hopes and purposes, any- 
 thing but a prosaic, unrhymed, unmetrical Translation ? 
 
SCHMELZLE's JOURNEY TO FLJET'Z. 
 
 273 
 
 Company the whole theory of Electricity, in clear words, but low 
 and slow (striving to avoid all emission of vapour) ; and especially 
 endeavoured to frighten them away from fear. For indeed, through 
 fear, the stroke — nay two strokes, the electric or the apoplectic 
 — might hit any one of us ; since in Erxleben and Reimarus, it 
 is sufficiently proved, that violent fear, by the transpiration it 
 causes, may attract the lightning. I accordingly, in some fear 
 of my own and other people's fear, represented to the passengers 
 that now, in a coach so hot and crowded, with a drawn sword on 
 the coach-box piercing the very lightning, with the thunder-cloud 
 hanging over us, and even with so many transpirations from in- 
 cipient fear ; in short, with such visible danger on every hand, 
 they must absolutely fear nothing, if they would not, all and sun- 
 dry, be smitten to death in a few minutes. 
 
 " 0 Heaven !" cried I, " Courage ! only courage ! No fear, 
 not even fear of fear ! "Would you have Providence to shoot you 
 here sitting, like so many hares hunted into a pinfold ? Fear, if 
 you like, when you are out of the coach; fear to your heart's 
 content in other places, where there is less to be afraid of ; only 
 not here, not here !" 
 
 I shall not determine — since among millions scarcely one 
 man dies by thunder-clouds, but millions perhaps by snow-clouds, 
 and rain-clouds, and thin mist — whether my Coach-sermon could 
 have made any claim to a prize for man-saving ; however, at last, 
 all uninjured, and chiving towards a rainbow, we entered the town 
 of Vierstadten, where dwelt a Postmaster, in the only street which 
 the place had. 
 
 Second Stage ; from Vierstadten to Niederschdna. 
 The Postmaster was a churl and a striker ; a class of mortals 
 whom I inexpressibly detest, as my fancy always whispers to me, 
 in their presence, that by accident or dislike I might happen to 
 put on a scornful or impertinent look, and hound these mastiffs 
 on my own throat ; and so, from the very first, I must inces- 
 santly watch them. Happily, in this case (supposing I even had 
 
 78. Our German frame of Government, cased in its harness, had much diffi- 
 culty in moving, for the same reason why Beetles cannot fly, when their loings 
 have wing -shells, of very sufficient strength, and — grown together. 
 
 8. Constitutions of Government are like highways : on a new and quite un- 
 trodden one, where every carriage helps in the process of bruising aud smooth- 
 ing, you are as much jolted and pitched as on an old worn-out cue, full of holeB ? 
 What is to be done then ? Travel on. 
 
 VOL. III. T 
 
274 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 made a wrong face), I could have shielded myself with the Dra- 
 goon ; for whose giant force such matters are a tidbit. This 
 brother-in-law of mine, for example, cannot pass any tavern where 
 he hears a sound of battle, without entering, and, as he crosses 
 the threshold, shouting : " Peace, dogs !" — and therewith, under 
 show of a peace -deputation, he directly snatches up the first chair- 
 leg in his hand, as if it were an American peace-calumet, and 
 cuts to the right and left among the belligerent powers, or he 
 gnashes the hard heads of the parties together (he himself takes 
 no side), catching each by the hind-lock ; in such cases the rogue 
 is in Heaven ! 
 
 I, for my part, rather avoid discrepant circles than seek them ; 
 as I likewise avoid all dead or killed people : the prudent man 
 easily foresees what is to be got by them ; either vexatious and 
 injurious witnessing, or often even (when circumstances conspire) 
 painful investigation, and suspicions of your being an accomplice. 
 
 In Vierstadten, nothing of importance presented itself, except 
 - — to my horror — a dog without tail, which came running along 
 the town or street. In the first fire of passion at this sight, I 
 pointed it out to the passengers, and then put the question, Whe- 
 ther they could reckon a system of Medical Police well arranged, 
 which, like this of Vierstadten, allowed dogs openly to scour 
 about, when their tails were wanting? "What am I to do," 
 said I, " when this member is cut away, and any such beast 
 comes running towards me, and I cannot, either by the tail being 
 cocked up or being drawn in, since the whole is snipt off, come 
 to any conclusion whether the vermin is mad or not ? In this 
 way, the most prudent man may be bit, and become rabid, and so 
 make shipwreck purely for want of a tail-compass." 
 
 The Blind Passenger (he now got himself inscribed as a See-' 
 ing one, God knows for what objects) had heard my observation ; 
 which he now spun out in my presence almost into ridicule, and 
 at last awakened in me the suspicion, that by an overdone flattery 
 in imitating my style of speech, he meant to banter me. " The 
 Dog-tail," said he, "is, in truth, an alarm-beacon, and finger- 
 post for us, that we come not even into the outmost precincts of 
 
 3. In Criminal Courts, murdered children are often represented as still-born; 
 in Anticritiques, still-born as murdered. 
 
 J 01. Not only were the Rhodians, from their Colossus, called Colossians ; but 
 also innumerable Germans are, from their Luther, called Lutherans. 
 
schmelzle's journey to flietz. 
 
 275 
 
 madness : cut away from Comets their tails, from Bashaws theirs, 
 from Crabs theirs (outstretched it denotes that they are burst) ; 
 and in the most dangerous predicaments of life we are left with- 
 out clew, without indicator, without hand in margine ; and we 
 perish, not so much as knowing how," 
 
 For the rest, this stage passed over without quarrelling or 
 peril. About ten o'clock, the whole party, including even the 
 Postillion, myself excepted, fell asleep. I indeed pretended to be 
 sleeping, that I might observe whether some one, for his own 
 good reasons, might not also be pretending it ; but all continued 
 snoring ; the moon threw its brightening beams on nothing but 
 down-pressed eyelids. 
 
 I had now a glorious opportunity of following Lavater's coun- 
 sel, to apply the physiognomical ellwand specially to sleepers, 
 since sleep, like death, expresses the genuine form in coarser 
 lines. Other sleepers not in stage-coaches I think it less advis- 
 able to mete with this ellwand ; having always an apprehension 
 lest some fellow, but pretending to be asleep, may, the instant 
 I am near enough, start up as in a dream, and deceitfully plant 
 such a knock on the physiognomical mensurator's own facial struc- 
 ture, as to exclude it forever from appearing in any Physiognomi- 
 cal Fragments (itself being reduced to one), either in the stippled 
 or line style. Nay, might not the most honest sleeper in the 
 world, just while you are in hand with his physiognomical dissec- 
 tion, lay about him, spurred on by honour in some cudgelling- 
 scene he may be dreaming ; and in a few instants of clapper- 
 clawing, and kicking, and trampling, lull you into a much more 
 lasting sleep than that out of which he was awakened ? 
 
 In my Adumbrating Magic -lantern, as I have named the 
 Work, the whole physiognomical contents of this same sleeping 
 stage-coach will be given to the world : there I shall explain to 
 you at large how the Poisoner, with the murder-cupola, appeared 
 to me devil-like ; the Dwarf old- childlike ; the Harlot languidly 
 shameless ; my Brother-in-law peacefully satisfied, with revenge 
 or food; and the Legations -Kath, Jean Pierre, Heaven only 
 
 88. Hitherto I have always regarded the Polemical writings of our present 
 philosophic and aesthetic Idealist Logic-huffers, — in which, certainly, a few con- 
 tumelies, and misconceptions, arid misconclusions do make their appearance, — 
 rather on the fair side ; observing in it merely an imitation of classical Anti- 
 quity, in particular of the ancient Athletes, who (according to Schottgen) be- 
 smeared their bodies with mud, that they might not be laid hold of ; and filled 
 their hands with sand, that they might lay hold of their antagonists. 
 
276 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDBICH RICHTER. 
 
 knows why, like a half angel, — though, perhaps, it might he 
 because only the fair body, not the other half, the soul, which 
 had passed away in sleep, was affecting me. 
 
 I had almost forgotten to mention, that in a little village, 
 while my Brother-in-law and the Postillion were sitting at their 
 liquor, I happily fronted a small terror, Destiny having twice been 
 on my side. Not far from a Hunting Box, beside a pretty clump 
 of trees, I noticed a white tablet, with a black inscription on it. 
 This gave me hopes that perhaps some little monumental piece, 
 some pillar of honour, some battle memento, might here be await- 
 ing me. Over an untrodden flowery tangle, I reach the black on 
 white ; and to my horror and amazement, I decipher in the moon- 
 shine : Beware of Spring-guns ! Thus was I standing perhaps 
 half a nail's breadth from the trigger, with which, if I but stirred 
 my heel, I should shoot myself off like a forgotten ramrod, into 
 the other world, beyond the verge of Time ! The first thing I 
 did was to cramp-down my toe-nails, to bite, and, as it were, eat 
 myself into the ground with them ; since I might at least con- 
 tinue in warm life so long as I pegged my body firmly in beside 
 the Atropos-scissors and hangman's block, which lay beside me ; 
 then I endeavoured to recollect by what steps the fiend had let 
 me hither unshot, but in my agony I had perspired the whole of 
 it, and could remember nothing. In the Devil's village close at 
 hand, there was no dog to be seen and called to, who might have 
 plucked me from the water ; and my Brother-in-law and the 
 Postillion were both carousing with full can. However, I sum- 
 moned my courage and determination ; wrote down on a leaf of 
 my pocket-book my last will, the accidental manner of my death, 
 and my dying remembrance of Berga ; and then, with full sails, 
 flew helterskelter through the midst of it the shortest way ; ex- 
 pecting at every step to awaken the murderous engine, and thus 
 to clap over my still long candle of life the bonsoir, or extin- 
 guisher, with my own hand. However, I got off without shot. 
 In the tavern, indeed, there was more than one fool to laugh at 
 
 103. Or are all Mosques, Episcopal-churches, Pagodas, Chapels-of-Ease, 
 Tabernacles and Pantheons, anything else than the Ethnic Forecourt of the 
 Invisible Temple and its Holy of Holies ? 
 
 40. The common man is copious only in narration, not in reasoning; the 
 cultivated man is brief only in the former, not in the latter : because the com- 
 mon man's reasons are a sort of sensations, which, as well as things visible, he 
 merely looks at ; by the cultivated man, again, both reasons and things visible 
 are rather thought than looked at. 
 
schmelzle's journey to fl^jtz. 
 
 277 
 
 me ; because, forsooth, what none but a fool could know, this 
 Notice had stood there for the last ten years, without any gun, 
 as guns often do without any notice. But so it is, my Friends, 
 with our game-police, which warns against all things, only not 
 against warnings. 
 
 For the rest, throughout the whole stage, I had a constant 
 source of altercation with the coachman, because he grudged 
 stopping perhaps once in the quarter of an hour, when I chose 
 to come out for a natural purpose. Unhappily, in truth, one has 
 little reason to expect water-doctors among the postillion class, 
 since Physicians themselves have so seldom learned from Haller's 
 large Physiology, that a postponement of the above operation will 
 precipitate devilish stoneware, and at last precipitate the proprietor 
 himself ; this stone-manufactory being generally concluded, not by 
 the Lithotomist, but by Death. Had postillions read that Tycho 
 Brahe died like a bombshell by bursting, they would rather pull 
 up for a moment ; with such unlooked-for knowledge, they would 
 see it to be reasonable that a man, though expecting some time 
 to carry his death-stone on him, should not incline, for the time 
 being, to carry it in him. Nay, have I not often, at Weimar, in 
 the longest concluding scenes of Schiller, run out with tears in 
 my eyes ; purely that, while his Minerva was melting me on the 
 whole, I might not by the Gorgon's head on her breast be par- 
 tially turned to stone ? And did I not return to the weeping 
 playhouse, and fall into the general emotion so much the more 
 briskly, as now I had nothing to give vent to but my heart ? 
 
 Deep in the dark we arrived at Niederschona. 
 
 Third Stage ; from Niederschona to Flatz. 
 While I am standing at the Posthouse musing, with my eye 
 fixed on my portmanteau, comes a beast of a watchman, and 
 bellows and brays in his night-tube so close by my ear, that I 
 start back in trepidation, I whom even a too hasty accosting will 
 vex. Is there no medical police, then, against such efflated hour 
 fulminators and alarm-cannon, by which notwithstanding no gun- 
 powder cannon are saved? In my opinion, nobody should be 
 invested with the watchman-horn but some reasonable man, who 
 
 9. In any national calamity, the ancient Egyptians took revenge on the god 
 Typhon, whom they blamed for it, by hurling his favourites, the Asses, down 
 over rocks. In similar wise have countries of a different religion now and then 
 taken their revenge. 
 
278 
 
 JEAN PAUL FBIEDRICH EICHTER. 
 
 had already blown himself into an asthma, and who would conse- 
 quently be in case to sing out his hour-verse so low, that you 
 could not hear it. 
 
 What I had long expected, and the Dwarf predicted, now took 
 place : deeply stooping, through the high Posthouse door, issued 
 the Giant, and raised, in the open air, a most unreasonably high 
 figure, heightened by the ell-long bonnet and feather on his huge 
 jobber-nowl. My Brother-in-law, beside him, looked but like his 
 son of fourteen years ; the Dwarf like his lap-dog waiting for him 
 on its two hind legs. " Good friend," said my bantering Brother- 
 in-law, leading him towards me and the stage-coach, "just step 
 softly in, we shall all be happy to make room for you. Fold your- 
 self neatly together, lay your head on your knee, and it will do." 
 The unseasonable banterer would willingly have seen the almost 
 stupid Giant (of whom he had soon observed that his brain was 
 no active substance, but in the inverse ratio of his trunk) squeezed 
 in among us in the post- chest, and lying kneaded together like a 
 sand-bag before him. " Won't do ! Won't do !" said the Giant, 
 looking in. " The gentleman perhaps does not know," said the 
 Dwarf, " how big the Giant is ; and so he thinks that because I 
 go in — But that is another story ; I will creep into any hole, do 
 but tell me where." 
 
 In short, there was no resource for the Postmaster and the 
 Giant, but that the latter should plant himself behind, in the 
 character of luggage, and there lie bending down like a weeping 
 willow over the whole vehicle. To me such a back- wall and rear- 
 guard could not be particularly gratifying : and I may refer it, I 
 hope, to any one of you, ye Friends, if with such ware at your 
 back, you would not, as clearly and earnestly as I, have considered 
 what manifold murderous projects a knave of a Giant behind you, 
 a pursuer in all senses, might not maliciously attempt ; say, that 
 he broke in and assailed you by the back- window, or with Titanian 
 strength laid hold of the coach -roof and demolished the whole 
 party in a lump. However, this Elephant (who indeed seemed 
 to owe the similarity more to his overpowering mass than to his 
 
 70. Let Poetry veil itself in Philosophy, hut only as the latter does in the 
 former. Philosophy in poetised Prose resembles those tavern drinking-glasses, 
 encircled with parti-coloured wreaths of figures, which disturb your enjoyment 
 both of the drink, and (often awkwardly eclipsing and covering each other) of 
 the carving also. 
 
SCHmelzle's journey to fl^tz. 
 
 279 
 
 quick light of inward faculty), crossing his arms over the top of 
 the vehicle, soon began to sleep and snore above us ; an Elephant, 
 of whom, as I more and more joyfully observed, my Brother-in- 
 law the Dragoon could easily be the tamer and bridle -holder, nay 
 had already been so. 
 
 As more than one person now felt inclined to sleep, but I, on 
 the contrary, as was proper, to wake, I freely offered my seat of 
 honour, the front place in the coach (meaning thereby to abolish 
 many little flaws of envy in my fellow-passengers), to such persons 
 as wished to take a nap thereon. The Legations-man accepted the 
 offer with eagerness, and soon fell asleep there sitting, under the 
 Titan. 4 To me this sort of coach-sleeping of a diplomatic charge 
 d'affaires remained a thing incomprehensible. A man that, in 
 the middle of a stranger and often barbarously-minded company, 
 permits himself to slumber, may easily, supposing him to talk in 
 his sleep and coach (think of the Saxon minister 5 before the 
 Seven- Years War!), blab out a thousand secrets, and crimes, 
 some of which, perhaps, he has not committed. Should not 
 every minister, ambassador, or other man of honour and rank, 
 really shudder at the thought of insanity or violent fevers ; seeing 
 no mortal can be his surety that he shall not in such cases publish 
 the greatest scandals, of which, it may be, the half are lies ? 
 
 At last, after the long July night, we passengers, together with 
 Aurora, arrived in the precincts of Flatz. I looked with a sharp 
 yet moistened eye at the steeples : I believe, every man who has 
 anything decisive to seek in a town, and to whom it is either to 
 be a judgment-seat of his hopes, or their anchoring-station, either 
 a battle-field or a sugar-field, first and longest directs his eye on 
 the steeples of the town, as upon the indexes and balance-tongues 
 of his future destiny ; these artificial peaks, which, like natural 
 ones, are the thrones of our Future. As I happened to express 
 myself on this point perhaps too poetically to Jean Pierre, he 
 answered, with sufficient want of taste : " The steeples of such 
 towns are indeed the Swiss Alpine peaks, on which we milk and 
 manufacture the Swiss cheese of our Future." Did the Legations- 
 Peter mean with this style to make me ridiculous, or only him- 
 self ? Determine ! 
 
 4 Titan is also the title of this Legations-Rath Jean Pierre or Jean Paul 
 (Friedrich Richter)'s chief novel. — Ed. 
 
 5 Briihl, I suppose ; but the historical edition of the matter is, that Bruhl's 
 treasonable secrets were come at by the more ordinary means of wax impressions 
 of his keys. — Ed, 
 
280 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 " Here is the place, the town," said I in secret, " where today 
 much and for many years is to be determined ; where thou, this 
 evening, about five o'clock, art to present thy petition and thyself : 
 May it prosper ! May it be successful ! Let Flatz, this arena of 
 thy little efforts among the rest, become a building-space for fair 
 castles and air-castles to two hearts, thy own and thy Berga's !" 
 
 At the Tiger Inn I alighted. 
 
 First Bay in Flatz. 
 No mortal, in my situation at this Tiger-hotel, would have 
 triumphed much in his more immediate prospects. I, as the only 
 man known to me, especially in the way of love (of the runaway 
 Dragoon anon !), looked out from the windows of the overflowing 
 Inn, and down on the rushing sea of marketers, and very soon 
 began to reflect, that except Heaven and the rascals and mur- 
 derers, none knew how many of the latter two classes were float- 
 ing among the tide ; purposing perhaps to lay hold of the most 
 innocent strangers, and in part cut their purses, in part their 
 throats. My situation had a special circumstance against it. My 
 Brother-in-law, who still comes plump out with everything, had 
 mentioned that I was to put up at the Tiger : 0 Heaven, when 
 will such people learn to be secret, and to cover even the meanest 
 pettinesses of life under mantles and veils, were it only that a 
 silly mouse may as often give birth to a mountain, as a mountain 
 to a mouse ! The whole rabble of the stage-coach stopped at the 
 Tiger ; the Harlot, the Batcatcher, Jean Pierre, the Giant, who 
 had dismounted at the Gate of the town, and carrying the huge 
 block-head of the Dwarf on his shoulders as his own (cloaking 
 over the deception by his cloak), had thus, like a ninny, exhibited 
 himself gratis by half a dwarf more gigantic than he could be seen 
 for money. 
 
 158. Governments should not too often change the penny-trumps and child's- 
 drums of the Poets for the regimental trumpet and fire-drum : on the other hand, 
 good subjects should regard many a princely drum-tendency simply as a disease, 
 in which the patient, by air insinuating under the skin, has got dreadfully 
 swoln. 
 
 89. In great towns, a stranger, for the first day or two after his arrival, lives 
 purely at his own expense in an inn ; afterwards, in the houses of his friends, 
 without expense : on the other hand, if you arrive at the Earth, as, for instance, 
 I have done, you are courteously maintained, precisely for the first few years, 
 free of charges ; hut in the next and longer series — for you often stay sixty — you 
 are actually obliged (I have the documents in my hands) to pay for every drop 
 and morsel, as if you were in the great Earth Inn, which indeed you are. 
 
schmelzle's joukney to fl^tz, 
 
 281 
 
 And now for each of the Passengers, the question was, how 
 he could make the Tiger, the heraldic emblem of the Inn, his 
 prototype ; and so, what lamb he might suck the blood of, and 
 tear in pieces, and devour. My Brother-in-law too left me, hav- 
 ing gone in quest of some horse-dealer ; but he retained the 
 chamber next mine for his sister : this, it appeared, was to de- 
 note attention on his part. I remained solitary, left to my own 
 intrepidity and force of purpose. 
 
 Yet among so many villains, encompassing if not even belea- 
 guering me, I thought warmly of one far distant, faithful soul, of 
 my Berga in Neusattel ; a true heart of pith, which perhaps with 
 many a weak marriage -partner might have given protection rather 
 than sought it. 
 
 "Appear, then, quickly tomorrow at noon, Berga," said my 
 heart; "and if possible before noon, that I may lengthen thy 
 market paradise so many hours as thou arrivest earlier !" 
 
 A clergyman, amid the tempests of the world, readily makes 
 for a free harbour, for the church : the church-wall is his case- 
 mate-wall and fortification ; and behind are to be found more 
 peaceful and more accordant souls than on the market-place : in 
 short, I went into the High Church. However, in the course of 
 the psalm, I was somewhat disturbed by a Heiduc, who came up 
 to a well-dressed young gentleman sitting opposite me, and tore 
 the double opera-glass from his nose, it being against rule in 
 Flatz, as it is in Dresden, to look at the Court with glasses which 
 diminish and approximate. I myself had on a pair of spectacles, 
 but they were magnifiers. It was impossible for me to resolve 
 on taking them off; and here again, I am afraid, I shall pass for 
 a foolhardy person and a desperado ; so much only I reckoned 
 fit, to look invariably into my psalm-book ; not once lifting my 
 eyes while the Court was rustling and entering, thereby to denote 
 
 107. Germany is a long lofty mountain — under the sea. 
 
 144. The Reviewer does not in reality employ his pen for writing ; but he 
 burns it, to awaken weak people from their swoons, with the smell ; he tickles 
 with it the throat of the plagiary, to make him render back ; and he picks with 
 it his own teeth. He is the only individual in the whole learned lexicon that can 
 never exhaust himself, never write himself out, let him sit before the ink-glass 
 for centuries or tens of centuries. For while the Scholar, the Philosopher, and 
 the Poet, produce their new book solely from new materials and growth, the Re- 
 viewer merely lays his old gage of taste and knowledge on a thousand new 
 works ; and his light, in the ever-passing, ever- differently-cut glass-world which 
 * he elucidates, is still refracted into new colours. 
 
282 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEICH RICHTEE. 
 
 that my glasses were ground convex. For the rest, the sermon 
 was good, if not always finely conceived for a Court-church ; it 
 admonished the hearers against innumerable vices, to whose coun- 
 terparts, the virtues, another preacher might so readily have ex- 
 horted us. During the whole service, I made it my business to 
 exhibit true deep reverence, not only towards God, but also to- 
 wards my illustrious Prince. For the latter reverence I had my 
 private reason : I wished to stamp this sentiment strongly and 
 openly as with raised letters on my countenance, and so give the 
 lie to any malicious imp about Court, by whom my contravention 
 of the Panegyric on Nero, and my free German satire on this real 
 tyrant himself, which I had inserted in the Fltitz Weekly Journal, 
 might have been perverted into a secret characteristic portrait of 
 my own Sovereign. We live in such times at present, that scarcely 
 can we compose a pasquinade on the Devil in Hell, but some 
 human Devil on Earth will apply it to an angel. 
 
 When the Court at last issued from church, and were getting 
 into their carriages, I kept at such a distance that my face could 
 not possibly be noticed, in case I had happened to assume no 
 reverent look, but an indifferent or even proud one. God knows, 
 who has kneaded into me those mad desperate fancies and crot- 
 chets, which perhaps would sit better on a Hero Schabacker than 
 on an Army- chaplain under him. I cannot here forbear recording 
 to you, my Friends, one of the maddest among them, though at 
 first it may throw too glaring a light on me. It was at my ordi- 
 nation to be Army - chaplain, while about to participate in the 
 Sacrament, on the first day of Easter. Now, here while I was 
 standing, moved into softness, before the balustrade of the altar, 
 in the middle of the whole male congregation, — nay, I perhaps 
 more deeply moved than any among them, since, as a person 
 going to war, I might consider myself a half-dead man, that was 
 now partaking in the last Feast of Souls, as it were like a person 
 to be hanged on the morrow, — here then, amid the pathetic 
 effects of the organ and singing, there rose something — were it 
 the first Easter- day which awoke in me what primitive Christians 
 called their Easter-laughter, or merely the contrast between the 
 
 71. The Youth is singular from caprice, and takes pleasure in it ; the Man 
 is so from constraint, unintentionally, and feels pain in it. 
 
 198. The Populace and Cattle grow giddy on the edge of no ahyss ; with tho 
 Man it is otherwise. 
 
SCHMELZLE'S JOURNEY TO FLiETZ. 
 
 283 
 
 most devilish predicaments and the most holy, — in short there 
 rose something in me (for which reason, I have ever since taken 
 the part of every simple person, who might ascrihe such things to 
 the Devil), and this something started the question : " Now, could 
 there be aught more diabolical than if thou, just in receiving the 
 Holy Supper, wert madly and blasphemously to begin laughing?" . 
 Instantly I took to wrestling with this hell-dog of a thought ; 
 neglected the most precious feelings, merely to keep the dog in 
 my eye, and scare him away ; yet was forced to draw back from 
 him, exhausted and unsuccessful, and arrived at the step of the 
 altar with the mournful certainty that in a little while I should, 
 without more ado, begin laughing, let me weep and moan in- 
 wardly as I liked. Accordingly, while I and a very worthy old 
 Biirgermeister were bowing down together before the long parson, 
 and the latter (perhaps kneeling on the low cushion, I fancied 
 him too long) put the wafer in my clenched mouth, I felt all the 
 muscles of laughter already beginning sardonically to contract ; 
 and these had not long acted on the guiltless integument, till an 
 actual smile appeared there ; and as we bowed the second time, 
 I was grinning like an ape. My companion the Biirgermeister 
 justly expostulated with me, in a low voice, as we walked round 
 behind the altar : " In Heaven's name, are you an ordained 
 Preacher of the Gospel, or a Merry-Andrew ? Is it Satan that 
 is laughing out of you ?" 
 
 "Ah, Heaven! who else?" said I; and this being over, I 
 finished my devotions in a more becoming fashion. 
 
 From the church (I now return to the Flatz one), I pro- 
 ceeded to the Tiger Inn, and dined at the table-dlwte, being at 
 no time shy of encountering men. Previous to the second course, 
 a waiter handed me an empty plate, on which, to my astonish- 
 ment, I noticed a French verse scratched-in with a fork, contain- 
 ing nothing less than a lampoon on the Commandant of Flatz. 
 Without ceremony, I held out the plate to the company; saying, 
 I had just, as they saw, got this lampooning cover presented to 
 me, and must request them to bear witness that I had nothing 
 
 11. The Golden Calf of Self-love soon waxes to bo a burning Phalaris' Bull, 
 which reduces its father and adorer to ashes. 
 
 103. The male Beau-crop which surrounds the female Roses and Lilies, must 
 (if I rightly comprehend its flatteries) most probably presuppose in the fair the 
 manners of the Spaniards and Italians, who offer any valuable, by way of pre- 
 sent, to the man who praises it excessively. 
 
284 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 to do with the matter. An officer directly changed plates with 
 me. During the fifth course, I could not but admire the chemico- 
 medical ignorance of the company ; for a hare, out of which a 
 gentleman extracted and exhibited several grains of shot, that is 
 to say, therefore, of lead alloyed with arsenic, and then cleaned 
 by hot vinegar, did, nevertheless, by the spectators (I excepted) 
 continue to be pleasantly eaten. 
 
 In the course of our table-talk, one topic seized me keenly by 
 my weak side, I mean by my honour. The law custom of the 
 city happened to be mentioned, as it affects natural children ; and 
 I learned that here a loose girl may convert any man she pleases 
 to select into the father of her brat, simply by her oath. " Hor- 
 rible!" said I, and my hair stood on end. "In this way may 
 the worthiest head of a family, with a wife and children, or a clergy- 
 man lodging in the Tiger, be stript of honour and innocence, by 
 any wicked chambermaid whom he may have seen, or who may 
 have seen him, in the course of her employment !" 
 
 An elderly officer observed : " But will the girl swear herself 
 to the Devil-so readily?" 
 
 What logic ! " Or suppose," continued I, without answer, 
 " a man happened to be travelling with that Vienna Locksmith, 
 who afterwards became a mother, and was brought to bed of a 
 baby son ; or with any disguised Chevalier d'Eon, who often 
 passes the night in his company, whereby the Locksmith or the 
 Chevalier can swear to their private interviews : no delicate man 
 of honour will in the end risk travelling with another ; seeing he 
 knows not how soon the latter may pull off his boots, and pull on 
 his women's-pumps, and swear his companion into fatherhood, 
 and himself to the Devil !" 
 
 Some of the company, however, misunderstood my oratorical 
 fire so much, that they, sheep-wise, gave some insinuations as if 
 I myself were not strict in this point, but lax. By Heaven ! I 
 no longer knew what I was eating or speaking. Happily, on the 
 
 199. But not many existing Governments, I believe, do behead under pre- 
 text of trepanning ; or sew (in a more choice allegory) the people's lips together, 
 under pretence of sewing the harelips in them. 
 
 67. Hospitable Entertainer, wouldst thou search into thy guest? Accom- 
 pany him to another Entertainer, and listen to him. Just so : Wouldst thou 
 become better acquainted with Mistress in an hour, than by living with her for 
 a month? Accompany her among her female friends and female enemies (if 
 that is no pleonasm), and look at her 1 
 
schmelzle's journey to fl^tz. 
 
 285 
 
 opposite side of the table, some lying story of a French defeat 
 was started : now, as I had read on the street-corners that French 
 and German Proclamation, calling before the Court Martial any 
 one who had heard war-rumours (disadvantageous, namely), with- 
 out giving notice of them, — I, as a man not willing ever to for- 
 get himself, had nothing more prudent to do in this case, than 
 to withdraw with empty ears, telling none but the landlord why. 
 
 It was no improper time ; for I had previously determined to 
 have my beard shaven about half-past four, that so, towards five 
 I might present myself with a chin just polished by the razor 
 smoothing-iron, and sleek as wove-paper, without the smallest 
 root-stump of a hair left on it. By way of preparation, like Pitt 
 before Parliamentary debates, I poured a devilish deal of Pontac 
 into my stomach, with true disgust, and contrary to all sanitary 
 rules : not so much for fronting the light stranger Barber, as the 
 Minister and General von Schabacker, with whom I had it in view 
 to exchange perhaps more than one fiery statement. 
 
 The common Hotel Barber was ushered in to me ; but at first 
 view you noticed in his polygonal zigzag visage, more of a man 
 that would finally go mad, than of one growing wiser. Now, 
 madmen are a class of persons whom I hate incredibly ; and no- 
 thing can take me to see any madhouse, simply because the first 
 maniac among them may clutch me in his giant fists if he like ; 
 and because, owing to infection, I cannot be sure that I shall 
 ever get out again with the sense which I brought in. In a 
 general way, I sit (when once I am lathered) in such a posture 
 on my chair as to keep both my hands (the eyes I fix intently on 
 the barbering countenance) lying clenched along my sides, and 
 pointed directly at the midriff of the barber ; that so, on the 
 smallest ambiguity of movement, I may dash in upon him, and 
 overset him in a twinkling. 
 
 I scarce know rightly how it happened ; but here, while I am 
 anxiously studying the foolish twisted visage of the shaver, and 
 
 80. In the summer of life, men keep digging and filling ice-pits as well as 
 circumstances will admit ; that so, in their Winter, they may have something in 
 store to give them coolness. 
 
 28. It is impossible for me, amid the tendril-forest of allusions (even this 
 again is a tendril-twig) , to state and declare on the spot whether all the Courts 
 or Heights, the (Bougouer) Snowline of Europe, have ever been mentioned in 
 my Writings or not ; but I could wish for information on the subject, that if 
 not, I may try to do it still. 
 
286 
 
 JEAN PAUL FKIEDRICH RICHTEB. 
 
 he just then chanced to lay his long-whetted weapon a little too 
 abruptly against my bare throat, I gave him such a sudden bounce 
 on the abdominal viscera, that the silly varlet had well-nigh sui- 
 cidally slit his own windpipe. For me, truly, nothing remained 
 but to indemnify the man ; and then, contrary to my usual prin- 
 ciples, to tie round a broad stuffed cravat, by way of cloak to 
 what remained unshorn. 
 
 And now at last I sallied forth to the General, drinking out 
 the remnant of the Pontac, as I crossed the threshold. I hope, 
 there were plans lying ready within me for answering rightly, 
 nay for asking. The Petition I carried in my pocket, and in my 
 right hand. In the left I had a duplicate of it. My fire of spirit 
 easily helped over the living fence of ministerial obstructions ; 
 and soon I unexpectedly found myself in the ante-chamber, among 
 his most distinguished lackeys ; persons, so far as I could see, 
 not inclined to change flour for bran with any one. Selecting 
 the most respectable individual of the number, I delivered him 
 my paper request, accompanied with the verbal one that he would 
 hand it in. He took it, but ungraciously : I waited in vain till 
 far in the sixth hour, at which season alone the gay General can 
 safely be applied to. At last I pitch upon another lackey, and 
 repeat my request : he runs about seeking his runaway brother, 
 or my Petition ; to no purpose, neither of them could be found. 
 How happy was it that in the midst of my Pontac, before shav- 
 ing, I had written out the duplicate of this paper ; and therefore 
 ■ — simply on the principle that you should always keep a second 
 wooden leg packed into your knapsack when you have the first on 
 your body — and out of fear that if the original petition chanced 
 to drop from me in the way between the Tiger and Schabacker's, 
 my whole journey and hope would melt into water — and there- 
 fore, I say, having stuck the repeating work of that original paper 
 into my pocket, I had, in any case, something to hand in, and 
 that something truly a Ditto. I handed it in. 
 
 36. And so I should like, in all cases, to be the First, especially in Begging. 
 The first prisoner-of-war, the first cripple, the first man ruined by burning (like 
 him who brings the first fire-engine), gains the head-subscription and the heart ; 
 the next-comer finds nothing but Duty to address ; and at last, in this melodious 
 mancando of sympathy, matters sink so far, that the last (if the last but one 
 may at least have retired laden with a rich " God help you !") obtains from the 
 benignant hand nothing more than its fist. And as in Begging the first, so in 
 Giving I should like to be the last : one obliterates the other, especially the last 
 the first. So, however, is the world ordered. 
 
SCHMELZLE'S JOUHNEt TO Ft^ET2. 
 
 287 
 
 Unhappily six o'clock was already past. The lackey, how- 
 ever, did not keep me long waiting ; but returned with — I may 
 say, the text of this whole Circular — the almost rude answer 
 (which you, my Friends, out of regard for me and Schabacker, 
 will not divulge) that : ' ' In case I were the Attila Schmelzle of 
 Schabacker's Kegiment, I might lift my pigeon-liver flag again, 
 and fly to the Devil, as I did at Pimpelstadt." Another man 
 would have dropt dead on the spot : I, however, walked quite 
 stoutly off, answering the fellow: "With great pleasure indeed, 
 I fly to the Devil ; and so Devil a fly I care." On the road home 
 I examined myself whether it had not been the Pontac that spoke 
 out of me (though the very examination contradicted this, for 
 Pontac never examines) ; but I found that nothing but I, my 
 heart, my courage perhaps, had spoken : and why, after all, any 
 whimpering ? Does not the patrimony of my good wife endow 
 me better than ten Catechetical Professorships ? And has she 
 not furnished all the corners of my book of Life with so many 
 golden clasps, that I can open it forever without wearing it ? Let 
 henhearts cackle and pip ; I flapped my pinions, and said : "Dash 
 boldly through it, come what may!" I felt myself excited and 
 exalted ; I fancied Republics, in which I, as a hero, might be at 
 home ; I longed to be in that noble Grecian time, when one hero 
 readily put up with bastinadoes from another, and said : " Strike, 
 but hear!" and out of this ignoble one, where men will scarcely 
 put up with hard words, to say nothing of more. I painted out 
 to my mind how I should feel, if, in happier circumstances, I were 
 uprooting hollow Thrones, and before whole nations mounting on 
 mighty deeds as on the Temple-steps of Immortality; and in 
 gigantic ages, finding quite other men to outman and outstrip, 
 than the mite-populace about me, or, at the best, here and there 
 a Yulcanello. I thought and thought, and grew wilder and wilder, 
 and intoxicated myself (no Pontac intoxication therefore, which, 
 you know, increases more by continuance than cessation of drink- 
 ing), and gesticulated openly, as I put the question to myself: 
 "Wilt thou be a mere state-lapdog ? A dog's-dog, a jpium deside- 
 rium of an impium desiderium, an Ex-Ex, a Nothing VNothing? 
 — Fire and Fury !" With this, however, I dashed down my hat 
 
 136. If you mount too high above your time, your ears (on the side of Fame) 
 are little better off than if you sink too deep below it : in truth, Charles up in 
 his Balloon, and Halley down in his Diving-bell, felt equally the game strange 
 pain in their ears. 
 
288 
 
 JEAN FAUL FR1EPR1CH RICHTER. 
 
 into the mud of the market. On lifting and cleaning this old 
 servant, I could not but perceive how worn and faded it was ; 
 and I therefore determined instantly to purchase a new one, and 
 carry the same home in my hand. 
 
 I accomplished this ; I bought one of the finest cut. Strangely 
 enough, by this hat, as if it had been a graduation-hat, was my 
 head tried and examined, in the Ziegengasse or Goat-gate of 
 Flatz. For as General Schabacker came driving along that street 
 in his carriage, and I (it need not be said) was determined to 
 avenge myself, not by vulgar clownishness, but by courtesy, I 
 had here got one of the most ticklish problems imaginable to 
 solve on the spur of the instant. You observe, if I swung only 
 the fine hat which I earned in my hand, and kept the faded one 
 on my head, — I might have the appearance of a perfect clown, 
 who does not doff at all : if, on the other hand, I pulled the old 
 hat from my head, and therewith did my reverence, then two 
 hats, both in play at once (let me swing the other at the same 
 time or not), brought my salute within the verge of ridicule. 
 Xow do you, my Friends, before reading farther, bethink you 
 how a man was to extricate himself from such a plight, without 
 losing head ! I think, perhaps, by this means : by merely losing 
 hat. In one word, then, I simply dropped the new hat from my 
 hand into the mud, to put myself in a condition for taking off the 
 old hat by itself, and swaying it in needful courtesy, without any 
 shade of ridicule. 
 
 Arrived at the Tiger, — to avoid misconstructions, I first had 
 the glossy, fine and superfine hat cleaned, and some time after- 
 wards the mud-hat or rubbish-hat. 
 
 And now, weighing my momentous Past in the adjusting bal- 
 ance within me, I walked in fiery mood to and fro. The Pontac 
 must — I know that there is no unadulterated liquor here below 
 — have been more than usually adulterated; so keenly did it 
 chase my fancy out of one fire into the other. I now looked forth 
 into a wide glittering life, in which I lived without post, merely 
 on money ; and which I beheld, as it were, sowed with the Del- 
 phic caves, and Zenonic walks, and Muse-hills of all the Sciences, 
 
 25. In youth, like a blind man just couched (and what is birth but a couch- 
 ing of the sight?), you take the Distant for the Near, the starry heaven for tan- 
 gible room-furniture, pictures for objects ; and. to the young man. the whole 
 world is sitting on his very nose, till repeated bandaging and unbandaging have 
 at last taught him, like the blind patient, to estimate Distance and App>aranc4. 
 
schmelzle's journey to fl^jtz. 289 
 
 which I might now cultivate at my ease. In particular, I should 
 have it in my power to apply more diligently to writing Prize - 
 essays for Academies ; of which (that is to say, of the Prize- 
 essays) no author need ever be ashamed, since, in all cases, there 
 is a whole crowning Academy to stand and blush for the crownee. 
 And even if the Prize-marksman does not hit the crown, he still 
 continues more unknown and more anonymous (his Device not 
 being unsealed) than any other author, who indeed can publish 
 some nameless Long-ear of a book, but not hinder it from being, 
 by a Literary Ass-burial (sepultura asinina), publicly interred, 
 in a short time, before half the world. 
 
 Only one thing grieved me by anticipation ; the sorrow of my 
 Berga, for whom, dear tired wayfarer, I on the morrow must over- 
 cloud her arrival, and her shortened market - spectacle, by my 
 negatory intelligence. She would so gladly (and who can take it 
 ill of a rich farmer's daughter ?) have made herself somebody in 
 Neusattel, and overshone many a female dignitary ! Every mortal 
 longs for his parade-place, and some earlier living honour than 
 the last honours. Especially so good a lowly-born housewife as 
 my Berga, conscious perhaps rather of her metallic than of her 
 spiritual treasure, would still wish at banquets to be mistress of 
 some seat or other, and so in place to overtop this or that plucked 
 goose of the neighbourhood. 
 
 It is in this point of view that husbands are so indispensable. 
 I therefore resolved to purchase for myself, and consequently for 
 her, one of the best of those titles, which our Courts in Germany 
 (as in a Leipzig sale-room) stand offering to buyers, in all sizes 
 and sorts, from Noble and Half-noble down to Rath or Councillor ; 
 and once invested therewith, to reflect from my own Quarter- 
 nobility such an Eighth-part-nobility on this true soul, that many 
 a Neusattelitess (I hope) shall half burst with envy, and say and 
 cry : " Pooh, the stupid farmer thing ! See how it wabbles and 
 bridles ! It has forgot how matters stood when it had no money- 
 bag, and no Hofrath !" For to the Hofrathship I shall before 
 this have attained. 
 
 But in the cold solitude of my room, and the fire of my re- 
 
 125. In the long-run, out of mere fear and necessity, we shall become the 
 warmest cosmopolites I know of ; so rapidly do ships shoot to and fro, and, like 
 shuttles, weave Islands and Quarters of the World together. For, let but the 
 political weatherglass fall today in South America, tomorrow we in Europe have 
 storm and thunder. 
 
 VOL. III. U 
 
290 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDMCH RICHTEB. 
 
 membrances, I longed unspeakably for my Bergelchen : I and my 
 heart were wearied with the foreign busy day ; no one here said 
 a kind word to me, which he did not hope to put in the bill. 
 Friends ! I languished for my friend, whose heart would pour 
 out its blood as a balsam for a second heart; I cursed my over- 
 prudent regulations, and wished that, to have the good Berga at 
 my side, I had given up the stupid houseware to all thieves and 
 fires whatsoever : as I walked to and fro, it seemed to me easier 
 and easier to become all things, an Exchequer-Rath, an Excise- 
 Rath, any Rath in the world, and whatever she required when 
 she came. 
 
 " See thou take thy pleasure in the town !" had Bergelchen 
 kept saying the whole week through. But how, without her, can 
 I take any ? Our tears of sorrow friends dry up, and accompany 
 with their own : but our tears of joy we find most readily repeated 
 in the eyes of our wives. Pardon me, good Friends, these liba- 
 tions of my sensibility ; I am but showing you my heart and my 
 Berga. If I need an Absolution-merchant, the Pontac-merchant 
 is the man. 
 
 First Night in Flatz. 
 
 Yet the wine did not take from me the good sense to look 
 under the bed, before going into it, and examine whether any one 
 was lurking there ; for example, the Dwarf, or the Ratcatcher, or 
 the Legations-Rath ; also to shove the key under the latch (which 
 I reckon the best bolting arrangement of all), and then, by way 
 of farther assurance, to bore my night-screws into the door, and 
 pile all the chairs in a heap behind it ; and, lastly, to keep on 
 my breeches and shoes, wishing absolutely to have no care upon 
 my mind. 
 
 But I had still other precautions to take in regard to sleep- 
 walking. To me it has always been incomprehensible how so 
 
 19. It is easier, they say, to climb a hill when yon ascend back foremost. 
 This, perhaps, might admit of application to political eminences ; if yon still 
 turned towards them that part of the body on which you sit, and kept your face 
 directed down to the people ; all the while, however, removing and mounting. 
 
 26. Few German writers are not original, if we may ascribe originality (as is 
 at least the conversational practice of all people) to a man, who merely dishes 
 out his own thoughts without foreign admixture. For as, between their Memory, 
 where their reading or foreign matter dwells, and their Imagination or Produc- 
 tive Power, where their writing or own peculiar matter originates, a sufficient 
 space intervenes, and the boundary- stones are fixed-in so conscientiously and 
 firmly that nothing foreign may pass over into their own, or inversely, so that 
 they may really read a hundred works without losing their own primitive flavour, 
 
schmelzle's journey to fl^tz. 
 
 291 
 
 many men can go to bed, and lie down at their ease there, with- 
 out reflecting that perhaps, in the first sleep, they may get up 
 again as Somnambulists, and crawl over the tops of roofs and the 
 like ; awakening in some spot where they may fall in a moment 
 and break their necks. While at home, there is little risk in my 
 sleep : because, my right toe being fastened every night with 
 three ells of tape (I call it in jest our marriage-tie) to my wife's 
 left hand, I feel a certainty that, in case I should start up from 
 this bed-arrest, I must with the tether infallibly awaken her, and 
 so by my Berga, as by my living bridle, be again led back to bed. 
 But here in the Inn, I had nothing for it but to knot myself once 
 or twice to the bed - foot, that I might not wander ; though in 
 this way, an irruption of villains would have brought double peril 
 with it. — Alas ! so dangerous is sleep at all times, that every 
 man, who is not lying on his back a corpse, must be on his guard 
 lest with the general system some limb or other also fall asleep ; 
 in which case the sleeping limb (there are not wanting examples 
 of it in Medical History) may next morning be lying ripe for 
 amputation. For this reason, I have myself frequently awakened, 
 that no part of me fall asleep. 
 
 Having properly tied myself to the bed-posts, and at length 
 got under the coverlid, I now began to be dubious about my Pon- 
 tac Fire-bath, and apprehensive of the valorous and tumultuous 
 dreams too likely to ensue ; which, alas, did actually prove to be 
 nothing better than heroic and monarchic feats, castle-stormings, 
 rock-thro wings, and the like. This point also I am sorry to see 
 so little attended to in medicine. Medical gentlemen, as well as 
 their customers, all stretch themselves quietly in their beds, with- 
 out one among them considering whether a furious rage (suppos- 
 ing him also directly after to drink cold water in his dream), or 
 a heart-devouring grief, all which he may undergo in vision, does 
 harm to life or not. 
 
 or even altering it, — their individuality may, I believe, be considered as secured ; 
 and their spiritual nourishment, their pancakes, loaves, fritters, caviare and 
 meat-balls, are not assimilated to their system, but given back pure and un- 
 altered. Often in my own mind I figure such writers as living but thousandfold 
 more artificial Ducklings from Vaucanson's Artificial Duck of Wood. For in 
 fact they are not less cunningly put together than this timber Duck, which will 
 gobble meat, and apparently void it again, under show of having digested it, 
 and derived from it blood and juices ; though the secret of the business is, the 
 artist has merely introduced an ingenious compound ejective matter behind, with 
 which concoction and nourishment have nothing to do, but which the Duck 
 illusorily gives forth and publishes to the world. 
 
292 
 
 JEAN PAUL FMEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 Shortly before midnight, I awoke from a heavy dream, to 
 encounter a ghost -trick much too ghostly for my fancy. My 
 Brother-in-law, who manufactured it, deserves for such vapid 
 cookery to be named before you without reserve, as the malt- 
 master of this washy brewage. Had suspicion been more com- 
 patible with intrepidity, I might perhaps, by his moral maxim 
 about this matter, on the road, as well as by his taking up the 
 side - room, at the middle door of which stood my couch, have 
 easily divined the whole. But now, on awakening, I felt myself 
 blown upon by a cold ghost-breath, which I could nowise deduce 
 from the distant bolted window ; a point I had rightly decided, 
 for the Dragoon was producing the phenomenon, through the key- 
 hole, by a pair of bellows. Every sort of coldness, in the night- 
 season, reminds you of clay - coldness and spectre -coldness. I 
 summoned my resolution, however, and abode the issue : but now 
 the very coverlid began to get in motion ; I pulled it towards me ; 
 it would not stay ; sharply I sit upright in my bed, and cry : 
 " What is that ?" No answer ; everywhere silence in the Inn ; 
 the whole room full of moonshine. And now my drawing-plaster, 
 my coverlid, actually rose up, and let in the air ; at which I felt 
 like a wounded man whose cataplasm you suddenly pull off. In 
 this crisis, I made a bold leap from this Devil's -torus, and, leap- 
 ing, snapped asunder my somnambulist tether. " Where is the 
 silly human fool," cried I, " that dares to ape the unseen sublime 
 world of Spirits, which may, in the instant, open before him?" 
 But on, above, under the bed, there was nothing to be heard or 
 seen. I looked out of the window : everywhere spectral moon- 
 light and street-stillness ; nothing moving except (probably from 
 the wind), on the distant Gallows-hill, a person lately hanged. 
 
 Any man would have taken it for self-deception as well as I : 
 therefore I again wrapped myself in my passive lit de justice and 
 air-bed, and waited with calmness to see whether my fright would 
 subside or not. 
 
 15. After the manner of the fine polished English folding-knives, there are 
 now also folding- war-swords, or in other words — Treaties of Peace. 
 
 13. Omnibus una salus Sanctis, sed gloria dispar : that is to say (as Divines 
 once taught) according to Saint Paul, we have all the same Beatitude in Heaven, 
 but different degrees of Honour. Here, on Earth, we find a shadow of this in 
 the writing world; for the Beatitude of authors once beatified by Criticism, whe- 
 ther they be genial, good, mediocre, or poor, is the same throughout ; they all 
 obtain the same pecuniary Felicity, the same slender profit But, Heavens ! in 
 regard to the degrees of Fame, again, how far (in spite of the same emolument 
 
schmelzle's journey to fl^tz. 
 
 293 
 
 In a few minutes, the coverlid, the infernal Faust's -mantle, 
 again began flying and towing ; also, by way of change, the invi- 
 sible bed-maker again lifted me up. Accursed hour ! — I should 
 beg to know whether, in the whole of cultivated Europe, there is 
 one cultivated or uncultivated man, who, in a case of this kind, 
 would not have lighted on ghost- devilry ? I lighted on it, under 
 my piece of (self) movable property, my coverlid : and thought 
 Berga had died suddenly, and was now, in spirit, laying hold 
 of my bed. However, I could not speak to her, nor as little 
 to the Devil, who might well be supposed to have a hand in the 
 game ; but I turned myself solely to Heaven, and prayed aloud : 
 " To thee I commit myself; thou alone heretofore hast cared for 
 thy weak servant ; and I swear that I will turn a new leaf," — a 
 promise which shall be kept nevertheless, though the whole was 
 but stupid treachery and trick. 
 
 My prayer had no effect with the unchristian Dragoon, who 
 now, once for all, had got me prisoner in the dragnet of a cover- 
 lid ; and heeded little whether a guest's bed were, by his means, 
 made a state-bed and death-bed or not. He span out my nerves, 
 like gold-wire through smaller and smaller holes, to utter inani- 
 tion and evanition ; for the bed-clothes at last literally marched 
 off to the door of the room. 
 
 Now was the moment to rise into the sublime ; and to trouble 
 myself no longer about aught here below, but softly to devote 
 myself to death. " Snatch me away," cried I, and, without 
 thinking, cut three crosses; " quick, dispatch me, ye ghosts: I 
 die more innocent than thousands of tyrants and blasphemers, to 
 whom ye yet appear not, but to unpolluted me." Here I heard 
 a sort of laugh, either on the street or in the side-room : at this 
 warm human tone, I suddenly bloomed up again, as at the com- 
 ing of a new Spring, in every twig and leaf. Wholly despising 
 the winged coverlid, which was not now to be picked from the 
 door, I laid myself down uncovered, but warm and perspiring from 
 other causes, and soon fell asleep. For the rest, I am not the 
 
 and sale) will a Dunce, even in his lifetime, be put below a Genius ! Is not a 
 shallow writer frequently forgotten in a single Fair, while a deep writer, or even 
 a writer of genius, will blossom through fifty Fairs, and so may celebrate his 
 Twenty-five Years' Jubilee, before, late forgotten, he is lowered into the German 
 Temple of Fame ; a Temple imitating the peculiarity of the Padri Lucchesi 
 churches in Naples, which (according to Volkmann) permit burials under their 
 roofs, but no tombstone. 
 
294 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 least ashamed, in the face of all refined capital cities, — though 
 they were standing here at my hand, — that by this Devil-belief 
 and Devil-address I have attained some likeness to our great 
 German Lion, to Luther. 
 
 Second Day in Fldtz. 
 
 Early in the morning, I felt myself awakened by the well- 
 known coverlid ; it had laid itself on me like a nightmare : I 
 gaped up ; quiet, in a corner of the room, sat a red, round, bloom- 
 ing, decorated girl, like a full-blown tulip in the freshness of life, 
 and gently rustling with gay ribbons as with leaves. 
 
 " Who's there — how came you in ?" cried I, half-blind. 
 
 "I covered thee softly, and thought to let thee sleep," said 
 Bergelchen ; "I have walked all night to be here early ; do but 
 look!" 
 
 She showed me her boots, the only remnant of her travelling- 
 gear, which, in the moulting process of the toilette, she had not 
 stript at the gate of Flatz. 
 
 "Is there," said I, alarmed at her coming six hours sooner, 
 and the more, as I had been alarmed all night and was still so, 
 at her mysterious entrance, — " is there some fresh woe come over 
 us, fire, murder, robbery ?" 
 
 She answered : " The old Eat thou hast chased so long died 
 yesterday ; farther, there was nothing of importance." 
 
 "And all has been managed rightly, and according to my 
 Letter of Instructions, at home ?" inquired I. 
 
 " Yes, truly," answered she ; " only I did not see the Letter ; 
 it is lost ; thou hast packed it among thy clothes." 
 
 Well, I could not but forgive the blooming brave pedestrian 
 all omissions. Her eye, then her heart was bringing fresh cool 
 morning air and morning red into my sultry hours. And yet, 
 for this kind soul, looking into life with such love and hope, I 
 must in a little while overcloud the merited Heaven of today, 
 with tidings of my failure in the Catechetical Professorship ! I 
 dallied and postponed to the utmost. I asked how she had got 
 
 79. Weak and wrong heads are the hardest to change ; and their inward man 
 acquires a scanty covering : thus capons never moult. 
 
 89. In times of misfortune, the Ancients supported themselves with Philo- 
 sophy or Christianity; the moderns again (for example, in the reign of Terror), 
 take to Pleasure ; as the wounded Buffalo, for bandage and salve, rolls himself 
 in the mire. 
 
SCHMELZLE'S JOURNEY TO FLiETZ. 
 
 295 
 
 in, as the whole chevaux-de-frise barricado of chairs was still 
 standing fast at the door. She laughed heartily, curtseying in 
 village fashion, and said, she had planned it with her brother the 
 day before yesterday, knowing my precautions in locking, that 
 he should admit her into my room, that so she might cunningly 
 awaken me. And now bolted the Dragoon with loud laughter 
 into the apartment, and cried : " Slept well, brother?" 
 
 In this wise truly the whole ghost- story was now solved and 
 expounded, as if by the pen of a Biester or a Hennings ; I in- 
 stantly saw through the entire ghost-scheme, which our Dragoon 
 had executed. With some bitterness I told him my conjecture, 
 and his sister my story. But he lied and laughed ; nay, at- 
 tempted shamelessly enough to palm spectre- notions on me a 
 second time, in open day. I answered coldly, that in me he had 
 found the wrong man, granting even that I had some similarity 
 with Luther, with Hobbes, with Brutus, all of whom had seen 
 and dreaded ghosts. He replied, tearing the facts away from 
 their originating causes : " All he could say was, that last night 
 he had heard some poor sinner creaking and lamenting dolefully 
 enough ; and from this he had inferred, it must be an unhappy 
 brother set upon by goblins." 
 
 In the end, his sister's eyes also were opened to the low 
 character which he had tried to act with me : she sharply flew 
 at him, pushed him with both hands out of his and my door, 
 and called after him : " Wait, thou villain, I will mind it !" 
 
 Then hastily turning round, she fell on my neck, and (at the 
 wrong place) into laughter, and said : " The wild fool ! But I 
 could not keep my laugh another minute, and he was not to see 
 it. Forgive the ninny, thou a learned man, his ass pranks : what 
 can one expect ?" 
 
 I inquired whether she, in her nocturnal travelling, had not 
 met with any spectral persons ; though I knew that to her, a wild 
 beast, a river, a half abyss, are nothing. No, she had not ; but 
 the gay-dressed town's-people, she said, had scared her in the 
 
 181. God be thanked that we live nowhere forever except in Hell or Heaven ; 
 on Earth otherwise we should grow to be the veriest rascals, and the World a 
 House of Incurables, for want of the dog-doctor (the Hangman), and the issue- 
 cord (on the Gallows), and the sulphur and chalybeate medicines (on Battle- 
 fields). So that we too find our gigantic moral force dependent on the Debt of 
 Nature which we have to pay, exactly as your politicians (for example, the Author 
 of the New Leviathan) demonstrate that the English have their National Debt 
 to thank for their superiority. 
 
296 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 morning. 0 ! how I do love these soft Harmonica-quiverings of 
 female fright ! 
 
 At last, however, I was forced to bite or cut the colo quint a- 
 apple, and give her the half of it ; I mean the news of my re- 
 jected petition for the Catechetical Professorship. Wishing to 
 spare this joyful heart the rudeness of the whole truth, and to 
 subtract something from a heavy burden, more fit for the shoul- 
 ders of a man, I began: " Bergelchen, the Professorship affair 
 is taking another, though still a good enough course : the General, 
 whom may the Devil and his Grandmother teach sense, will not 
 be taken except by storm ; and storm he shall have, as certainly 
 as I have on my nightcap." 
 
 " Then, thou art nothing yet ?" inquired she. 
 
 "For the moment, indeed, not !" answered I. 
 
 "But before Saturday night?" said she. 
 
 " Not quite," said I. 
 
 " Then am I sore stricken, and could leap out of the window," 
 said she, and turned away her rosy face, to hide its wet eyes, and 
 was silent very long. Then, with painfully quivering voice, she 
 began : c ' Good Christ stand by me at Neusattel on Sunday, when 
 these high-prancing prideful dames look at me in church, and I 
 grow scarlet for shame !" 
 
 Here in sympathetic woe I sprang out of bed to the dear soul, 
 over whose brightly blooming cheeks warm tears were rolling, and 
 cried : " Thou true heart, do not tear me in pieces so ! May I 
 die, if yet in these dog-days I become not all and everything that 
 thou wishest ! Speak, wilt thou be Mining-rathin, Build-rathin, 
 Court-rathin, War-rathin, Chamber-rathin, Commerce-rathin, Le- 
 gations -rathin, or Devil and his Dam's rathin : I am here, and 
 will buy it, and be it. Tomorrow I send riding posts to Saxony 
 and Hessia, to Prussia and Eussia, to Friesland and Katzenellen- 
 bogen, and demand patents. Nay, I will carry matters farther 
 than another, and be all things at once, Flachsenfingen Court- 
 rath, Scheerau Excise -rath, Haarhaar Building - rath, Pestitz 6 
 
 63. To apprehend danger from the Education of the People, is like fearing 
 lest the thunderholt strike into the house hecause it has windows ; whereas the 
 lightning never comes through these, but through their lead framing, or down 
 by the smoke of the chimney. 
 
 6 Cities of Richter's romance kingdom. Flachsenfingen he sometimes calls 
 Klein-Wien, Little Vienna. — Ed. 
 
SCHMELZLE'S JOURNEY TO FLiETZ. 
 
 297 
 
 Chamber-rath (for we have the cash) ; and thus, alone and single- 
 handed, represent with one podex and corpus a whole Eath- ses- 
 sion of select Kaths ; and stand, a complete Legion of Honour, 
 on one single pair of legs : the like no man ever did." 
 
 " 0 ! now thou art angel-good !" said she, and gladder tears 
 rolled down ; ' ' thou shalt counsel me thyself which are the finest 
 Raths, and these we will be." 
 
 " No," continued I, in the fire of the moment, " neither shall 
 this serve us : to me it is not enough that to Mrs. Chaplain thou 
 canst announce thyself as Building-rathin, to Mrs. Town-parson 
 as Legations-rathin, to Mrs. Biirgermeister as Court-rathin, to 
 Mrs. Eoad-and-toll-surveyor as Commerce - ra thin, or how and 
 where thou pleasest " 
 
 " Ah ! my own too good Attelchen !" said she. 
 
 " — But," continued I, " I shall likewise become correspond- 
 ing member of the several Learned Societies in the several best 
 capital cities (among which I have only to choose) ; and truly no 
 common actual member, but a whole honorary member ; then 
 thee, as another honorary member, growing out of my honorary 
 membership, I uplift and exalt." 
 
 Pardon me, my Friends, this warm cataplasm, or deception- 
 balsam for a wounded breast, whose blood is so pure and pre- 
 cious, that one may be permitted to endeavour, with all possible 
 stanching - lints and spider-webs, to drive it back into the fair 
 heart, its home. 
 
 But now came bright and brightest hours. I had conquered 
 Time, I had conquered myself and Berga : seldom does a con- 
 queror, as I did, bless both the victorious and the vanquished 
 party. Berga called back her former Heaven, and pulled off 
 her dusty boots, and on her flowery shoes. Precious morning 
 beverage, intoxicating to a heart that loves ! I felt (if the low 
 figure may be permitted) a double-beer of courage in me, now 
 that I had one being more to protect. In general it is my nature 
 — which the honourable Premier seems not to be fully aware of 
 — to grow bolder not among the bold, but fastest among pol- 
 troons, the bad example acting on me by the rule of contraries. 
 Little touches may in this case shadow forth man and wife, with- 
 out casting them into the shade : When the trim waiter with his 
 
 76. Your economical, preaching Poetry, apparently supposes that a surgical 
 Stone-cutter is an Artistical one ; and a Pulpit or a Sinai a Hill of the Muses. 
 
298 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTEIt. 
 
 green silk apron brought up cracknels for breakfast, and I told 
 him : " Johann, for two !" Berga said : " He would oblige her very 
 much," and called him Herr Johann. 
 
 Bergelchen, more familiar with rural burghs than capital cities, 
 felt a good deal amazed and alarmed at the coffee-trays, dressing- 
 tables, paper-hangings, sconces, alabaster inkholders, with Egyp- 
 tian emblems, as well as at the gilt bell-handle, lying ready for any 
 one to pull out or to push in. Accordingly, she had not courage 
 to walk through the hall, with its lustres, purely because a whist- 
 ling, whiffling Cap-and-feather was gesturing up and down in it. 
 Nay, her poor heart was like to fail when she peeped out of the 
 window at so many gay promenading town's-people (I was briskly 
 whistling a Gascon air down over them) ; and thought that in a 
 little while, at my side, she must break into the middle of this 
 dazzling courtly throng. In a case like this, reasons are of less 
 avail than examples. I tried to elevate my Bergelchen, by re- 
 citing some of my nocturnal dream-feats ; for example, how, riding 
 on a whale's back, with a three-pronged fork, I had pierced and 
 eaten three eagles ; and by more of the like sort : but I produced 
 no effect ; perhaps, because to the timid female heart the battle- 
 field was presented rather than the conqueror, the abyss rather 
 than the overleaper of it. 
 
 At this time a sheaf of newspapers was brought me, full of 
 gallant decisive victories. And though these happen only on one 
 side, and on the other are just so many defeats, yet the former 
 somehow assimilate more with my blood than the latter, and in- 
 spire me (as Schiller's Robbers used to do) with a strange inclina- 
 tion to lay hold of some one, and thrash and curry him on the 
 spot. Unluckily for the waiter, he had chanced, even now, like 
 a military host, to stand a triple bell-order for march, before he 
 would leave his ground and come up. " Sir," began I, my head 
 full of battle-fields, and my arm of inclination to baste him ; and 
 Berga feared the very worst, as I gave her the well-known anger 
 and alarm signal, namely, shoved up my cap to my hindhead — 
 " Sir, is this your way of treating guests ? Why don't you come 
 promptly? Don't come so again; and now be going, friend!" 
 
 115. According to Smith, the universal measure of economical value is Labour. 
 This fact, at least in regard to spiritual and poetical value, we Germans had dis- 
 covered before Smith ; and to my knowledge we have always pref erred the learned 
 poet to the poet of genius, and the heavy book full of labour to the light one full 
 of sport. 
 
schmelzle's journey to fl^etz. 
 
 299 
 
 Although his retreat was my victory, I still kept briskly cannon- 
 ading on the field of action, and fired the louder (to let him hear 
 it), the more steps he descended in his flight. Bergelchen, — who 
 felt quite horrorstruck at my fury, particularly in a quite strange 
 house, and at a quality waiter with silk apron, — mustered all her 
 soft words against the wild ones of a man-of-war, and spoke of 
 dangers that might follow. " Dangers," answered I, "are just 
 what I seek ; but for a man there are none ; in all cases he will 
 either conquer or evade them, either show them front or back." 
 
 I could scarcely lay aside this indignant mood, so sweet was it 
 to me, and so much did I feel refreshed by the fire of rage, and 
 quickened in my breast as by a benignant stimulant. It belongs 
 certainly to the class of Unrecognised Mercies (on which, in 
 ancient times, special sermons were preached), that one is never 
 more completely in his Heaven and Monplaisir (a pleasure-palace) 
 than while in the midst of right hearty storming and indignation. 
 Heavens ! what might not a man of weight accomplish in this new 
 walk of charity ! The gall-bladder is for us the chief swimming- 
 bladder and Montgolfier ; and the filling of it costs us nothing but 
 a contumelious word or two from some bystander. And does not 
 the whirlwind Luther, with whom I nowise compare myself, con- 
 fess, in his Table-talk, that he never preached, sung, or prayed 
 so well, as while in a rage ? Truly, he was a man sufficient of 
 himself to rouse many others into rage. 
 
 The whole morning till noon now passed in viewing sights, 
 and trafficking for wares ; and indeed, for the greatest part, in the 
 broad street of our Hotel. Berga needed but to press along with 
 me into the market throng ; needed but to look, and see that she 
 was decorated more according to the fashion than hundreds like 
 her. But soon, in her care for household gear, she forgot that of 
 dress, and in the potter-market the toilette -table faded from her 
 thoughts. 
 
 I, for my share, full of true tedium, while gliding after her 
 through her various marts, with their long cheapenings and chaf- 
 ferings, merely acted the Philosopher hid within me : I weighed 
 
 4. The Hypocrite does not imitate the old practice, of cutting fruit by a 
 knife poisoned only on the one side, and giving the poisoned side to the victim, 
 the cutter eating the sound side himself ; on the contrary, he so disinterestedly 
 inverts this practice, that to others he shows and gives the sound moral half, or 
 side, and retains for himself the poisoned one. Heavens ! compared with such 
 a man, how wicked does the Devil seem ! 
 
300 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDKICH KICHTEB. 
 
 this empty Life, and the heavy value which is put upon it, and 
 the daily anxiety of man lest it, this lightest down-feather of the 
 Earth, fly off, and feather him, and take him with it. These 
 thoughts, perhaps, I owe to the street-fry of boys, who were turn- 
 ing their market-freedom to account, by throwing stones at one 
 another all round me : for, in the midst of this tumult, I vividly 
 figured myself to be a man who had never seen war ; and who, 
 therefore, never having experienced, that often of a thousand bul- 
 lets not one will hit, feels apprehensive of these few silly stones 
 lest they beat-in his nose and eyes. 0 ! it is the battle-field alone 
 that sows, manures and nourishes true courage, courage even for 
 daily, domestic and smallest perils. For not till he comes from 
 the battle-field can a man both sing and cannonade ; like the 
 canary-bird, which, though so melodious, so timid, so small, so 
 tender, so solitary, so soft-feathered, can yet be trained to fire off 
 cannon, though cannon of smaller calibre. 
 
 After dinner (in our room), we issued from the Purgatory of 
 the market -tumult, — where Berga, at every booth, had something 
 to order, and load her attendant maid with, — into Heaven, into 
 the Dog Inn, as the best Flatz public and pleasure-house without 
 the gates is named, where, in market-time, hundreds turn in, and 
 see thousands going by. On the way thither, my little wife, my 
 elbow-tendril, as it were, had extracted from me such a measure 
 of courage, that, while going through the Gate (where I, aware of 
 the military order that you must not pass near the sentry, threw 
 myself over to the other side), she quietly glided on, close by the 
 very guns and fixed bayonets of the City Guard. Outside the 
 wall, I could direct her with my finger, to the bechained, begrated, 
 gigantic Schabacker-Palace, mounting up even externally on stairs, 
 where I last night had called and (it may be) stormed: "I had 
 rather take a peep at the Giant," said she, " and the Dwarf : why 
 else are we under one roof with them ?" 
 
 In the pleasure-house itself we found sufficient pleasure ; en- 
 circled, as we were, with blooming faces and meadows. In my 
 secret heart, I all along kept looking down, with success, on Scha- 
 backer's refusal ; and till midnight made myself a happy day of it: 
 
 67. Individual Minds, nay Political Bodies, are lite organic bodies: extract 
 the interior air from them, the atmosphere crushes them together ; pnmp off 
 under the bell the exterior resisting air, the interior inflates and bursts them. 
 Therefore, let every State keep up its internal and its external resistance both 
 fit once. 
 
schmelzle's journey to fljetz. 
 
 801 
 
 I had deserved it, Berga still more. Nevertheless, ahout one in 
 the morning, I was destined to find a windmill to tilt with ; a wind- 
 mill, which truly lays ahout it with somewhat longer, stronger and 
 more numerous arms than a giant, for which Don Quixote might 
 readily enough have taken it. On the market-place, for reasons 
 more easily fancied than specified in words, I let Berga go along 
 some twenty paces before me ; and I myself, for these foresaid 
 reasons, retire without malice behind a covered booth, the tent 
 most probably of some rude trader ; and linger there a moment 
 according to circumstances : lo ! steering hither with dart and 
 spear, comes the Booth-watcher, and coins and stamps me, on 
 the spot, into a filcher and housebreaker of his Booth - street ; 
 though the simpleton sees nothing but that I am standing in the 
 corner, and doing anything but — taking. A sense of honour with- 
 out callosity is never blunted for such attacks. But how in the 
 dead of night was a man of this kind, who had nothing in his 
 head — at the utmost beer, instead of brains — to be enlightened 
 on the truth of the matter ? 
 
 I shall not conceal my perilous resource : I seized the fox by 
 the tail, as we say ; in other words, I made as if I had been 
 muddled, and knew not rightly, in my liquor, what I was about : 
 I therefore mimicked everything I was master of in this depart- 
 ment ; staggered hither and thither ; splayed out my feet like a 
 dancing-master ; got into zigzag in spite of all efforts at the straight 
 line ; nay, I knocked my good head (perhaps one of the clearest 
 and emptiest of the night), like a full one, against real posts. 
 
 However, the Booth-bailiff, who probably had been oftener 
 drunk than I, and knew the symptoms better, or even felt them 
 in himself at this moment, looked upon the whole exhibition as 
 mere craft, and shouted dreadfully: " Stop, rascal; thou art no 
 more drunk than I ! I know thee of old. Stand, I say, till I 
 speak to thee ! Wouldst have thy long finger in the market, too ? 
 Stand, dog, or I'll make thee !" 
 
 You see the whole nodus of the matter : I whisked away zig- 
 zag among the booths as fast as possible, from the claws of this 
 
 8. In great Saloons, the real stove is masked into a pretty ornamented sham 
 stove ; so likewise, it is fit and pretty that a virgin Love should always hide 
 itself in an interesting virgin Friendship. 
 
 12. Nations — unlike rivers, which precipitate their impurities in level places 
 and when at rest — drop their baseness just whilst in the most violent motion ; 
 and become the dirtier the farther they flow along through lazy flats. 
 
302 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH BICHTER. 
 
 rude Tosspot ; yet he still hobbled after me. But my Teutoberga, 
 who had heard somewhat of it, came running back ; clutched the 
 tipsy market-warder by the collar, and said (shrieking, it is true, 
 in village- wise) : " Stupid sot, go sleep the drink out of thy head, 
 or I'll teach thee ! Dost know, then, whom thou art speaking 
 to ? My husband, Army-chaplain Schmelzle under General and 
 Minister von Schabacker at Pimpelstadt, thou blockhead ! — Fye! 
 Take shame, fellow!" The watchman mumbled: "Meant no 
 harm," and reeled about his business. " 0 thou Lioness !" said 
 I, in the transport of love, "why hast thou never been in any 
 deadly peril, that I might show thee the Lion in thy husband ?" 
 
 Thus lovingly we both reached home ; and perhaps in the 
 sequel of this Fair day might still have enjoyed a glorious after- 
 midnight, had not the Devil led my eye to the ninth volume of 
 Lichtenberg's Works, and the 206th page, where this passage oc- 
 curs : " It is not impossible that at a future period, our Chemists 
 may light on some means of suddenly decomposing the Atmo- 
 sphere by a sort of Ferment. In this way the world may be de- 
 stroyed." Ah ! true indeed ! Since the Earth-ball is lapped up 
 in the larger Atmospheric ball, let but any chemical scoundrel, in 
 the remotest scoundrel-island, say in New Holland, devise some 
 decomposing substance for the Atmosphere, like what a spark of 
 fire would be for a powder-wagon : in a few seconds, the mon- 
 strous devouring world-storm catches me and you in Flatz by 
 the throat ; my breathing, and the like, in this choke-air is over, 
 and the whole game ended ! The Earth becomes a boundless 
 gallows, where the very cattle are hanged : worm -powder, and 
 bug -liquor, Bradly ant -ploughs, and rat -poison, and wolf- traps 
 are, in this universal world-trap and world-poison, no longer spe- 
 cially needful; and the Devil takes the whole, in the Bartholomew- 
 night, when this cursed " Ferment" is invented. 
 
 From the true soul, however, I concealed these deadly Night 
 Thoughts ; seeing she would either painfully have sympathised in 
 
 28. When Nature takes the huge old Earth-round, the Earth-loaf, and kneads 
 it up again, for the purpose of introducing under this pie-crust new stuffing and 
 Dwarfs, — she then, for most part, as a mother when baking will do to her daugh- 
 ters, gives in jest a little fraction of the dough (two or three thousand square 
 leagues of such dough are enough for a child) to some Poetical or Philosophical, 
 or Legislative polisher, that so the little elf may have something to be shaping 
 and manufacturing beside its mother. And when the other young ones get a 
 taste of sisterkin's baking, they all clap hands, and cry: "Aha, Mother! canst 
 bake like Suky here ?" 
 
schmelzle's journey to flmtz. 
 
 303 
 
 them, or else mirthfully laughed at them. I merely gave orders 
 that next morning (Saturday) she was to be standing booted and 
 ready, at the outset of the returning coach ; if so were she would 
 have me speedily fulfil her wishes in regard to that stock of 
 Bathships which lay so near her heart. She rejoiced in my 
 purpose, gladly surrendering the market for such prospects. I 
 too slept sound, my great toe tied to her finger, the whole night 
 through. 
 
 The Dragoon, next morning, twitched me by the ear, and 
 secretly whispered into it that he had a pleasant fairing to give 
 his sister ; and so would ride off somewhat early, on the nag 
 he had yesterday purchased of the horse-dealer. I thanked him 
 beforehand. 
 
 At the appointed hour, all gaily started from the Staple, I 
 excepted ; for I still retained, even in the fairest daylight, that 
 nocturnal Devil's -Ferment and Decomposition (of my cerebral 
 globe as well as of the Earth-globe) fermenting in my head ; a 
 proof that the night had not affected me, or exaggerated my fear. 
 The Blind Passenger, whom I liked so ill, also mounted along 
 with us, and looked at me as usual, but without effect ; for on 
 this occasion, when the destruction not of myself only, but of 
 worlds, was occupying my thoughts, the Passenger was nothing 
 to me but a joke and a show : as a man, while his leg is being 
 sawed off, does not feel the throbbing of his heart ; or amid the 
 humming of cannon, does not guard himself from that of wasps ; 
 so to me any Passenger, with all the fire-brands he might throw 
 into my near or distant Future, could appear but ludicrous, at a 
 time when I was reflecting that the " Ferment" might, even in 
 my journey between Flatz and Neusattel, be, by some American 
 or European man of science, quite guiltlessly experimenting and 
 decomposing, hit upon by accident and let loose. The question, 
 nay prize-question now, however, were this : "In how far, since 
 Lichtenberg's threatening, it may not appear world - murderous 
 and self-murderous, if enlightened Potentates of chemical nations 
 do not enjoin it on their chemical subjects, who in their decom- 
 positions and separations may so easily separate the soul from 
 their body, and unite Heaven with Earth, — not in future to 
 make any other chemical experiments than those already made, 
 which hitherto have profited the State rather than harmed it?" 
 
 Unfortunately, I continued sunk in this Domsday of the Fer- 
 ment with all my thoughts and meditations, without, in the whole 
 
804 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDMCH RICHTER. 
 
 course of our return from Flatz to Neusattel, suffering or observing 
 anything, except that I actually arrived there, and at the same 
 time saw the Blind Passenger once more go his ways. 
 
 My Bergelchen alone had I constantly looked at by the road, 
 partly that I might still see her, so long as life and eyes endured ; 
 partly that, even at the smallest danger to her, be it a great, or 
 even all-over-sweeping Deluge and World' s-ddoni, I might die, if 
 not for her, at least by her, and so united with that stanch true 
 heart, cast away a plagued and plaguing life, in which, at any 
 rate, not half of my wishes for her have been fulfilled. 
 
 So then were my Journey over, — crowned with some Histo- 
 riolce ; and in time coming, perhaps, still more rewarded through 
 you, ye Friends about Flatz, if in these pages you shall find any 
 well-ground pruning-knives, whereby you may more readily out- 
 root the weedy tangle of Lies, which for the present excludes me 
 from the gallant Schabacker : — Only this cursed Ferment still 
 sits in my head. Farewell then, so long as there are Atmo- 
 spheres left us to breathe. I wish I had that Ferment out of my 
 head. 
 
 Yours always, 
 
 Attila Schmelzle. 
 
 P.S. — My Brother-in-law has kept his promise well, and 
 Berga is dancing. Particulars in my next ! 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS 
 
 FIXLEIN, 
 
 DOWN TO OUE OWN TIMES; 
 EXTRACTED FROM 
 
 FIFTEEN LETTER-BOXES BY JEAN PAUL. 
 
 LETTER TO MY FRIENDS, 
 
 INSTEAD OF PKEFACE. 
 
 Merchants, Authors, young Ladies and Quakers, call all persons, with whom 
 they have any business, Friends ; and my readers accordingly are my table and 
 college Friends. Now, at this time, I am about presenting so many hundred 
 Friends with just as many hundred gratis copies ; and my Bookseller has orders 
 to supply each on request, after the Fair, with his copy — in return for a trifling 
 consideration and don gratuit to printers, pressmen and other such persons. But 
 as I could not, like the French authors, send the whole Edition to the binder, the 
 blank leaf in front was necessarily wanting ; and thus to write a complimentary 
 word or two upon it was out of my power. I have therefore caused a few white 
 leaves to be inserted directly after the title-page : on these we are now printing. 
 
 My Book contains the Life of a Schoolmaster, extracted and compiled from 
 various public and private documents. With this Biography, dear Friends, it is 
 the purpose of the Author not so much to procure you a pleasure, as to teach you 
 how to enjoy one. In truth, King Xerxes should have offered his prize-medals 
 not for the invention of new pleasures, but for a good methodology and directory 
 to use the old ones. 
 
 Of ways for becoming happier (not happy) I could never inquire out more 
 than three. The first, rather an elevated road, is this : To soar away so far 
 above the clouds of life, that you see the whole external world, with its wolf- 
 dens, charnel-houses and thunder-rods, lying far down beneath you, shrunk into 
 a little child's garden. The second is : Simply to sink down into this little gar- 
 den ; and there to nestle yourself so snugly, so homewise, in some furrow, that 
 in looking out from your warm lark-nest, you likewise can discern no wolf-dens, 
 charnel-houses or thunder-rods, but only blades and ears, every one of which, for 
 the nest-bird, is a tree, and a sun-screen, and rain-screen. The third, finally, 
 which I look upon as the hardest and cunningest, is that of alternating between 
 the other two. 
 
 YOL. in. X 
 
806 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 This I shall now satisfactorily expound to men at large. 
 
 The Hero, the Reformer, your Brutus, your Howard, your Republican, ho 
 whom civic storm, or genius, poetic storm, impels ; in short, every mortal with a 
 great Purpose, or even a perennial Passion (were it but that of writing the largest 
 folios), all these men fence themselves in by their internal world against the 
 frosts and heats of the external, as the madman in a worse sense does : every 
 fixed idea, such as rules every genius, every enthusiast, at least periodically, 
 separates and elevates a man above the bed and board of this Earth, above its 
 Dog's-grottoes, buckthorns and Devil's-walls ; like the Bird of Paradise, he slum- 
 bers flying ; and on his outspread pinions, oversleeps unconsciously the earth- 
 quakes and conflagrations of Life, in his long fair dream of his ideal Motherland. 
 — Alas ! to few is this dream granted ; and these few are so often awakened by 
 Flying Dogs I 1 
 
 This skyward track, however, is fit only for the winged portion of the human 
 species, for the smallest. What can it profit poor quill-driving brethren, whose 
 souls have not even wing-shells, to say nothing of wings ? Or these tethered 
 persons with the best back, breast and neck fins, who float motionless in the 
 wicker Fish-box of the State, and are not allowed to swim, because the Box or 
 State, long ago tied to the shore, itself swims in the name of the Fishes ? To 
 the whole standing and writing host of heavy-laden State-domestics, Purveyors, 
 Clerks of all departments, and all the lobsters packed together heels over head 
 into the Lobster-basket of the Government office-rooms, and for refreshment, 
 sprinkled over with a few nettles ; to these persons, what way of becoming happy 
 here, can I possibly point out ? 
 
 My second merely ; and that is as follows : To take a compound microscope, 
 and with it to discover, and convince themselves, that their drop of Burgundy is 
 properly a Red Sea, that butterfly-dust is peacock-feathers, mouldiness a flowery- 
 field, and sand a heap of jewels. These microscopic recreations are more lasting 
 than all costly watering-place recreations. — But I must explain these metaphors 
 by new ones. The purpose, for which I have sent Fixlein's Life into the Messrs. 
 Liibeks' Warehouse, is simply that in this same Life, — therefore in this Preface 
 it is less needful, — I may show to the whole Earth that we ought to value little 
 joys more than great ones, the nightgown more than the dresscoat ; that Plutus' 
 heaps are worth less than his handfuls, the plum than the penny for a rainy 
 day ; and that not great, but little good-haps can make us happy. — Can I accom- 
 plish this, I shall, through means of my Book, bring up for Posterity, a race of 
 men finding refreshment in all things ; in the warmth of their rooms and of 
 their nightcaps ; in their pillows ; in the three High Festivals ; in mere Apostles' 
 days ; in the Evening Moral Tales of their wives, when these gentle persons 
 have been forth as ambassadresses visiting some Dowager Residence, whither 
 the husband could not be persuaded; in the bloodletting-day of these their news- 
 bringers ; in the day of slaughtering, salting, potting against the rigour of grim 
 winter ; and in all such days. You perceive, my drift is that man must become 
 a little Tailor-bird, which, not amid the crashing boughs of the storm-tost, roar- 
 
 1 So are the Vampires called. 
 
LETTER TO MY FRIENDS. 
 
 807 
 
 Ing, immeasurable tree of Life, but on one of its leaves, sews itself a nest toge- 
 ther, and there lies snug. The most essential sermon one could preach to our 
 century, were a sermon on the duty of staying at home. 
 
 The third skyward road is the alternation between the other two. The fore- 
 going second way is not good enough for man, who here on Earth should take 
 into his hand not the Sickle only, but also the Plough. The first is too good for 
 him. He has not always the force, like Rugendas, in the midst of the Battle to 
 compose Battle-pieces ; and, like Backhuysen in the Shipwreck, to clutch at no 
 board but the drawing-board to paint it on. And then his pains are not less 
 lasting than his fatigues. Still oftener is Strength denied its Arena : it is but 
 the smallest portion of life that, to a working soul, offers Alps, Revolutions, 
 Rhine-falls, Worms Diets, and Wars with Xerxes ; and for the whole it is better 
 so : the longer portion of life is a field beaten flat as a threshing-floor, without 
 lofty Gothard Mountains ; often it is a tedious ice-field, without a single glacier 
 tinged with dawn. 
 
 But even by walking, a man rests and recovers himself for climbing ; by little 
 joys and duties, for great. The victorious Dictator must contrive to plough down 
 his battle Mars-field into a flax and carrot field ; to transform his theatre of war 
 into a parlour theatre, on whLh his children may enact some good pieces from 
 the Children's Friend. Can he accomplish this, can he turn so softly from the 
 path of poetical happiness into that of household happiness, — then is he little 
 different from myself, who even now, though modesty might forbid me to disclose 
 it — who even now, I say, amid the creation of this Letter, have been enabled to 
 reflect, that when it is done, so also will the Roses and Elder-berries of pastry 
 be done, which a sure hand is seething in butter for the Author of this Work. 
 
 As I purpose appending to this Letter a Postscript (at the end of the Book), I 
 reserve somewhat which I had to say about the Third 2 half-satirical half -philo- 
 sophical part of the Work, till that opportunity. 
 
 Here, out of respect for the rights of a Letter, the Author drops his half 
 anonymity, 3 and for the first time subscribes himself with his whole true name, 
 
 Jean Paul Eriedkich Richtee. 
 
 Hof in Voigtland, 29th June 1795. 
 
 2 Fixlein stands in the middle of the volume ; preceded by Finer Mustheil 
 fur Mddchen (A Jelly-course for Young Ladies) ; and followed by Some Jus de 
 Tablette for Men. A small portion of the Preface relating to the first I have 
 already omitted. Neither of the two has the smallest relation to Fixlein. — Ed. 
 
 3 J. P. H., Jean Paul Hasus, Jean Paul, &c. have in succession been Richter's 
 signatures. At present even, his German designation, either in writing or speech, 
 is never Bidder, but Jean Paul. — En. 
 
308 
 
 LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN 
 
 FIRST LETTER-BOX. 
 
 Dog-days Vacation. Visits. An Indigent of Quality. 
 
 Egidius Zebed^eus Fixlein had just for eight days been Quintus, 4 
 and fairly commenced his teaching duties, when Fortune tabled 
 out for him four refreshing courses and collations, besprinkled 
 with flowers and sugar. These were the four canicular weeks. I 
 could find in my heart, at this hour, to pat the cranium of that 
 good-man who invented the Dog-days Vacation : I never go to 
 walk in that season, without thinking how a thousand down- 
 pressed pedagogic persons are now erecting themselves in the 
 open air ; and the stiff knapsack is lying unbuckled at their feet, 
 and they can seek whatsoever their soul desires ; butterflies, — or 
 roots of numbers, — or roots of words, — or herbs, — or their native 
 villages. 
 
 The last did our Fixlein. He moved not, however, till Sun- 
 day, — for you like to know how holidays taste in the city ; and 
 then, in company with his Shock and a Quintaner, or Fifth -Form 
 boy, who carried his Green nightgown, he issued through the gate 
 in the morning. The dew was still lying ; and as he reached the 
 back of the gardens, the children of the Orphan Hospital were 
 uplifting with clear voices their morning hymn. The city was 
 Flachsenfingen, the village Hukelum, the dog Schil, and the year 
 of Grace 1791. 
 
 4 For understanding many little hints which occur in this Life of Fixlein, it 
 will be necessary to hear in mind the following particulars : A German Gymna- 
 sium, in its complete state, appears to include eight Masters ; Rector, Conrector, 
 Suhrector, Quintus, Quartus, Tertius, &c, to the first or lowest. The forms, or 
 classes, again, are arranged in an inverse order ; the Primaner (boys of the 
 Prima, or first form) being the most advanced, and taught by the Rector ; the 
 Sccundaner, by the Conrector, &c, and therefore the Quartaner by the Quintus. 
 In many cases, it would seem, the number of Teachers is only six ; but, in this 
 Flachsenfingen Gymnasium, we have express evidence that there was no curtail- 
 ment. — Ed. 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 309 
 
 "Manikin," said he to the Quintaner, for he liked to speak 
 as Love, children, and the people of Vienna do, in diminutives, 
 "Manikin, give me the bundle to the village: run about, and 
 seek thee a little bird, as thou art thyself, and so have something 
 to pet too in vacation-time." For the manikin was at once his 
 page, lackey, room-comrade, train-bearer and gentleman-in-wait- 
 ing ; and the Shock also was his manikin. 
 
 He stept slowly along, through the crisped cole-beds, over- 
 laid with coloured beads of dew ; and looked at the bushes, out of 
 which, when the morning wind bent them asunder, there seemed 
 to start a flight of jewel- colibri, so brightly did they glitter. From 
 time to time he drew the bell-rope of his — whistle, that the mani- 
 kin might not skip away too far ; and he shortened his league 
 and half of road, by measuring it not in leagues, but in villages. 
 It is more pleasant for pedestrians — for geographers it is not — 
 to count by wersts than by miles. In walking, our Quintus far- 
 thermore got by heart the few fields, on which the grain was 
 already reaped. 
 
 But now roam slower, Fixlein, through his Lordship's garden 
 of Hukelum ; not, indeed, lest thy coat sweep away any tulip- 
 stamina, but that thy good mother may have time to lay her Cu- 
 pid' s-band of black taffeta about her smooth brow, i am grieved 
 to think my fair readers take it ill of her, that she means first to 
 iron this same band : they cannot know that she has no maid ; 
 and that today the whole Preceptorial dinner — the money purvey- 
 ances the guest has made over to her three days before — is to be 
 arranged and prepared by herself, without the aid of any Mistress 
 of the Household whatever ; for indeed she belongs to the Tiers 
 Etat, being neither more nor less than a gardener's widow. 
 
 You can figure how this true, warm-hearted mother may have 
 lain in wait all morning for her Schoolman, whom she loved as 
 the apple of her eye ; since, on the whole populous Earth, she 
 had not (her first son, as well as her husband, was dead) any 
 other for her soul, which indeed overflowed with love ; not any 
 other but her Zebedaus. Could she ever tell you aught about 
 him, I mean aught joyful, without ten times wiping her eyes ? 
 Nay, did she not once divide her solitary Kirmes (or Churchale) 
 cake between two mendicant students, because she thought Hea- 
 ven would punish her for so feasting, while her boy in Leipzig 
 had nothing to feast on, and must pass the cake-garden like other 
 gardens, merely smelling at it ? 
 
310 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 "Dickens ! Thou already, Zebedaus !" said the mother, giv- 
 ing an embarrassed smile, to keep from weeping, as the son, who 
 had ducked past the window, and crossed the grassy threshold 
 without knocking, suddenly entered. For joy she forgot to put 
 the heater into the smoothing-iron, as her illustrious scholar, 
 amid the loud boiling of the soup, tenderly kissed her brow, and 
 even said Mamma ; a name which lighted on her breast like 
 downy silk. All the windows were open ; and the garden, with 
 its flower-essences, and bird-music, and butterfly-collections, was 
 almost half within the room : but I suppose I have not yet men- 
 tioned that the little garden-house, rather a chamber than a house, 
 was situated on the western cape of the Castle garden. The 
 owner had graciously allowed the widow to retain this dowager- 
 mansion ; as indeed the mansion would otherwise have stood 
 empty, for he now kept no gardener. 
 
 But Fixlein, in spite of his joy, could not stay long with her ; 
 being bound for the Church, which, to his spiritual appetite, was 
 at all times a king's kitchen ; a mother's. A sermon pleased 
 him simply because it was a sermon, and because he himself had 
 once preached one. The mother was contented he should go : 
 these good women think they enjoy their guests, if they can only 
 give them aught to enjoy. 
 
 In the choir, this Free-haven and Ethnic Forecourt of stranger 
 church-goers, he smiled on all parishioners ; and, as in his child- 
 hood, standing under the wooden wing of an archangel, he looked 
 down on the coifed parterre. His young years now enclosed him 
 like children in their smiling circle ; and a long garland wound 
 itself in rings among them, and by fits they plucked flowers from 
 it, and threw them in his face : Was it not old Senior Astman 
 that stood there on the pulpit Parnassus, the man by whom he 
 had been so often flogged, while acquiring Greek with him from 
 a grammar written in Latin, which he could not explain, yet was 
 forced to walk by the light of? Stood there not behind the 
 pulpit-stairs the sacristy-cabin, and in this was there not a church- 
 library of consequence — no schoolboy could have buckled it wholly 
 in his book- strap — lying under the minever cover of pastil dust ? 
 And did it not consist of the Polyglott in folio, which he, spurred 
 on by Pfeiffer's Critica Sacra, had turned up leaf by leaf, in his 
 early years, excerpting therefrom the literce inversce, majusculce, 
 minuscules, and so forth, with an immensity of toil ? And could 
 he not at present, the sooner the more readily, have wished to 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 311 
 
 cast this alphabetic soft-fodder into the Hebrew letter -trough, 
 whereto your Oriental Rhizophagi (Root-eaters) are tied, espe- 
 cially as here they get so little vowel hard-fodder to keep them 
 in heart? — Stood there not close by him the organ-stool, the 
 throne to which, every Apostle- day, the Schoolmaster had by 
 three nods elevated him, thence to fetch down the sacred hyssop, 
 the sprinkler of the Church ? 
 
 My readers themselves will gather spirits when they now hear 
 that our Quintus, during the outshaking of the poor-bag, was 
 invited by the Senior to come over in the afternoon ; and to them, 
 it will be little less gratifying than if he had invited themselves. 
 But what will they say, when they get home with him to mother 
 and dinner-table, both already clad in their white Sunday dress ; 
 and behold the large cake which Fraulein Thiennette (Stephanie) 
 has rolled from her peel ? In the first place, however, they will 
 wish to know who she is ? 
 
 She is, — for if (according to Lessing) in the very excellence 
 of the Iliad, we neglect the personalities of its author ; the same 
 thing will apply to the fate of several authors, for instance to my 
 own ; but an authoress of cakes must not be forgotten in the ex- 
 cellence of her baking, — Thiennette is a poor, indigent, insolvent 
 young lady ; has not much, except years, of which she counts 
 five-and-twenty ; no near relations living now ; no acquirements 
 (for in literature she does not even know Werter) except econo- 
 mical ; reads no books, not even mine ; inhabits, that is, watches 
 like a wardeness, quite alone, the thirteen void disfurnished cham- 
 bers of the Castle of Hukelum, which belongs to the Dragoon 
 Rittmeister Auf hammer, at present resident in his other mansion 
 of Schadeck : on occasion, she commands and feeds his soccagers 
 and handmaids ; and can write herself By the grace of God, — 
 which, in the thirteenth century, the country nobles did as well as 
 princes, — for she lives by the grace of man, at least of woman, 
 the Lady Rittmeisterinn Auf hammer's grace, who, at all times, 
 blesses those vassals whom her husband curses. But, in the 
 breast of the orphaned Thiennette lay a sugared marchpane heart, 
 which, for very love, you could have devoured : her fate was hard, 
 but her soul was soft ; she was modest, courteous and timid, but 
 too much so ; — cheerfully and coldly she received the most cut- 
 ting humiliations in Schadeck, and felt no pain, and not till some 
 days after did she see it all clearly, and then these cuts began 
 sharply to bleed, and she wept in her loneliness over her lot. 
 
312 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 It is hard for me to give a light tone, after this deep one, 
 and to add, that Fixlein had been almost brought up beside her, 
 and that she, his school-moiety over with the Senior, while the 
 latter was training him for the dignities of the Third Form, had 
 learned the Verba Anomala along with him. 
 
 The Achilles' -shield of the cake, jagged and embossed with 
 carved work of brown scales, was whirling round in the Quintus 
 like a swing- wheel of hungry and thankful ideas. Of that philo- 
 sophy which despises eating, and of that high breeding which 
 wastes it, he had not so much about him as belongs to the un- 
 gratefulness of such cultivated persons ; but for his platter of 
 meat, for his dinner of herbs, he could never give thanks enough. 
 
 Innocent and contented, the quadruple dinner-party, — for the 
 Shock with his cover under the stove cannot be omitted, — now 
 began their Feast of Sweet Bread, their Feast of Honour for 
 Thiennette, their Grove-feast in the garden. It may truly be 
 a subject of wonder how a man who has not, like the King of 
 France, four hundred and forty-eight persons (the hundred and 
 sixty-one Gargons de la Maison-bouche I do not reckon) in his 
 kitchen, nor a Fruiterie of thirty-one human bipeds, nor a Pastry- 
 cookery of three-and-twenty, nor a daily expenditure of 387 livres 
 21 sous, — how such a man, I say, can eat with any satisfaction. 
 Nevertheless, to me, a cooking mother is as dear as a whole royal 
 cooking household, given rather to feed upon me than to feed 
 me. — The most precious fragments which the Biographer and 
 the World can gather from this meal, consist of here and there 
 an edifying piece of table-talk. The mother had much to tell. 
 Thiennette is this night, she mentions, for the first time, to put 
 on her morning promenade-dress of white muslin, as also a satin 
 girdle and steel buckle : but, adds she, it will not sit her ; as the 
 Rittmeisterinn (for this lady used to hang her cast clothes on 
 Thiennette, as Catholics do their cast crutches and sores on their 
 patron Saints) was much thicker. Good women grudge each 
 other nothing, save only clothes, husbands and flax. In the fancy 
 of the Quintus, by virtue of this apparel, a pair of angel pinions 
 were sprouting forth from the shoulder-blades of Thiennette : for 
 him a garment was a sort of hollow half-man, to whom only the 
 nobler parts and the first principles were wanting : he honoured 
 these wrappages and hulls of our interior, not as an Elegant, or 
 a Critic of Beauty, but because it was not possible for him to 
 despise aught which he saw others honouring. Farther, the 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN* 
 
 313 
 
 good mother read to him, as it were, the monumental inscrip- 
 tion of his father, who had sunk into the arms of Death in the 
 thirty-second year of his age, from a cause which I explain not 
 here, but in a future Letter-box, having too much affection for 
 the reader. Our Quintus could not sate himself with hearing of 
 his father. 
 
 The fairest piece of news was, that Fraulein Thiennette had 
 sent word today : "he might visit Her Ladyship tomorrow, as 
 My Lord, his godfather, was to be absent in town." This, how- 
 ever, I must explain. Old Auf hammer was called Egidius, and 
 was Fixlein's godfather : but he, — though the Rittmeisterinn duly 
 covered the cradle of the child with nightly offerings, with flesh- 
 tithes and grain-tithes, — had frugally made him no christening 
 present, except that of his name, which proved to be the very 
 balefulest. For, our Egidiits Fixlein, with his Shock, which, by 
 reason of the French convulsions, had, in company with other 
 emigrants, run off from Nantes, was but lately returned from col- 
 lege, — when he and his dog, as ill luck would have it, went to 
 walk in the Hukelum wood. Now, as the Quintus was ever and 
 anon crying out to his attendant : " Coosh, Schil" (Couche, 
 Gilles), it must apparently have been the Devil that had just 
 then planted the Lord of Auf hammer among the trees and bushes 
 in such a way, that this whole travestying and docking of his 
 name, — for Gilles means Egidius, — must fall directly into his 
 ear. Fixlein could neither speak French, nor any offence to 
 mortal : he knew not head or tail of what couche signified ; a 
 word, which, in Paris, even the plebeian dogs are now in the 
 habit of saying to their valets de chiens. But there were three 
 things which Von Auf hammer never recalled ; his error, his anger 
 and his word. The provokee, therefore, determined that the ple- 
 beian provoker and honour - stealer should never more speak to 
 him, or — get a doit from him. 
 
 I return. After dinner he gazed out of the little window into 
 the garden, and saw his path of life dividing into four branches, 
 leading towards just as many skyward Ascensions ; towards the 
 Ascension into the Parsonage, and that into the Castle to Thien- 
 nette, for this day ; and towards the third into Schadeck for the 
 morrow ; and lastly, into every house in Hukelum as the fourth. 
 And now when the mother had long enough kept cheerfully glid- 
 ing about on tiptoe, "not to disturb him in studying his Latin 
 Bible'' (the Vulgata), that is, in reading the Litteratur-zeitung , 
 
814 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 he at last rose to his own feet ; and the humble joy of the mother 
 ran long after the courageous son, who dared to go forth and speak 
 to a Senior, quite unappalled. Yet it was not without reverence 
 that he entered the dwelling of his old, rather gray than bald- 
 headed teacher, who was not only Virtue itself, but also Hunger, 
 eating frequently, and with the appetite of Pharaoh's lean kine. 
 A schoolman, that expects to become a professor, will scarcely 
 deign to cast an eye on a pastor ; but one, who is himself looking 
 up to a parsonage as to his working-house and breeding-house, 
 knows how to value such a character. The new parsonage, — as 
 if it had, like a Casa Santa, come flying out of Erlangen, or the 
 Berlin Friedrichs-strasse, and alighted in Hukelum, — was for the 
 Quintus a Temple of the Sun, and the Senior a Priest of the 
 Sun. To be Parson there himself, was a thought overlaid with 
 virgin honey; such a thought as occurs but one other time in 
 History, namely, in the head of Hannibal, when he projected 
 stepping over the Alps, that is to say, over the threshold of 
 Rome. 
 
 The landlord and his guest formed an excellent "bureau 
 & 'esprit . people of office, especially of the same office, have more 
 to tell each other, namely, their own history, than your idle 
 May-chafers and Court-celestials, who must speak only of other 
 people's. — The Senior made a soft transition from his iron-ware 
 (in the stable furniture), to the golden age of his Academic life, 
 of which such people like as much to think, as poets do of their 
 childhood. So good as he was, he still half joyfully recollected 
 that he had once been less so : but joyful remembrances of wrong 
 actions are their half repetition, as repentant remembrances of 
 good ones are their half abolishment. 
 
 Courteously and kindly did Zebedaus (who could not even 
 enter in his Notebook the name of a person of quality without 
 writing an H. for Herr before it) listen to the Academic Saturnalia 
 of the old gentleman, who in Wittenberg had toped as well as 
 written, and thirsted not more for the Hippocrene than for Guk- 
 guk. 5 
 
 Herr Jerusalem has observed, that the barbarism which often 
 springs up, close on the brightest efflorescence of the sciences, 
 is a sort of strengthening mudbath, good for averting the over- 
 refinement, wherewith such efflorescence always threatens us. I 
 believe that a man who considers how high the sciences have 
 5 A university beer. 
 
LIFE OF QTJINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 315 
 
 mounted with our upper classes, — for instance with every Patri- 
 cian's son in Niirnberg, to whom the public must present 1000 
 florins for studying with, — I believe that such a man will not 
 grudge the Son of the Muses a certain barbarous Middle-age (the 
 Burschen or Student Life, as it is called), which may again so 
 case-harden him that his refinement shall not go beyond the 
 limits. The Senior, while in Wittenberg, had protected the one 
 hundred and eighty Academic Freedoms, — so many of them has 
 Petrus Rebuffus summed up, 6 — against prescription, and lost none 
 except his moral one, of which truly a man, even in a convent, 
 can seldom make much. This gave our Quintus courage to relate 
 certain pleasant somersets of his own, which at Leipzig, under 
 the Incubus-pressure of poverty, he had contrived to execute. Let 
 us hear him : His landlord, who was at the same time Professor 
 and Miser, maintained in his enclosed court a whole community 
 of hens: Fixlein, in ( company with three room-mates, without 
 difficulty mastered the rent of a chamber, or closet : in general 
 their main equipments, like Phoenixes, existed but in the singular 
 number ; one bed, in which always the one pair slept before mid- 
 night, the other after midnight, like nocturnal watchmen ; one 
 coat, in which one after the other they appeared in public, and 
 which, like a watch-coat, was the national uniform of the com- 
 pany ; and several other ones, Unities both of Interest and Place. 
 Nowhere can you collect the stress-memorials and siege-medals 
 of Poverty more pleasantly and philosophically than at College ; 
 the Academic burgher exhibits to us how many humorists and 
 Diogeneses Germany has in it. Our Unitarians had just one 
 thing four times, and that was hunger. The Quintus related, 
 perhaps with a too pleasurable enjoyment of the recollection, how 
 one of this famishing coro invented means of appropriating the 
 Professor's hens as just tribute, or subsidies. He said (he was a 
 Jurist), they must once for all borrow a legal fiction from the 
 Feudal code, and look on the Professor as the soccage tenant, to 
 whom the usufruct of the hen-yard and hen-house belonged ; but 
 
 6 From Peter I will copy one or two of these privileges ; the whole of which 
 were once, at the origin of universities, in full force. For instance, a student 
 can compel a citizen to let him his house and his horse ; an injury, done even to 
 his relations, must be made good fourfold ; he is not obliged to fulfil the written 
 commands of the Pope ; the neighbourhood must indemnify him for what is stolen 
 from him ; if he and a non-student are living at variance, the latter only can be 
 expelled from the boarding-house ; a Doctor is obliged to support a poor student ; 
 if he. is killed, the next ten houses are laid under interdict till the murderer is 
 discovered; his legacies are not abridged byfalcidia, &c. &c. 
 
316 
 
 JEAN PAUL FMEDMCH RICHTER. 
 
 on themselves, as the feudal superiors of the same, to whom 
 accordingly the vassal was bound to pay his feudal dues. And 
 now, that the Fiction might follow Nature, continued he, — "ftctio 
 sequitur naturam" — it behoved them to lay hold of said Yule- 
 hens, by direct personal distraint. But into the court-yard there 
 was no getting. The feudalist, therefore, prepared a fishing-line ; 
 stuck a bread-pill on the hook, and lowered his fishing-tackle, 
 anglerwise, down into the court. In a few seconds the barb stuck 
 in a hen's throat, and the hen now communicating with its feudal 
 superior, could silently, like ships by x^rchimedes, be heaved aloft 
 to the hungry air -fishing society, where, according to circum- 
 stances, the proper feudal name and title of possession failed not 
 to be awaiting her : for the updrawn fowls were now denominated 
 Christmas -fowls, now Forest -hens, Bailiff-hens, Pentecost and 
 Summer-hens. " I begin," said the angling lord of the manor, 
 " with taking Rutcher-dues, for so we call the triple and quintuple 
 of the original quit-rent, when the vassal, as is the case here, has 
 long neglected payment." The Professor, like any other prince, 
 observed with sorrow the decreasing population of his hen-yard, 
 for his subjects, like the Hebrews, were dying by enumeration. 
 At last he had the happiness, while reading his lecture, — he was 
 just come to the subject of Forest Salt and Coin Regalities, — 
 to descry, through the window of his auditorium, a quit-rent hen 
 suspended, like Ignatius Loyola in prayer, or Juno in her punish- 
 ment, in middle air : he followed the incomprehensible direct 
 ascension of the aeronautic animal, and at last descried at the 
 upper window the attracting artist, and animal-magnetiser, who 
 had drawn his lot for dinner from the hen-yard below. Contrary 
 to all expectation, he terminated this fowling sport sooner than 
 his Lecture on Kegalities. 
 
 Fixlein walked home, amid the vesperal melodies of the steeple 
 sounding-holes ; and by the road, courteously took off his hat be- 
 fore the empty windows of the Castle : houses of quality were to 
 him like persons of quality, as in India the Pagoda at once repre- 
 sents the temple and the god. To the mother he brought feigned 
 compliments, which she repaid with authentic ones ; for this after- 
 noon she had been over, with her historical tongue and nature- 
 interrogating eye, visiting the white -muslin Thiennette. The 
 mother was wont to show her every spare penny which he dropped 
 into her large empty purse, and so raise him in the good graces 
 of the Fraulein ; for women feel their hearts much more attracted 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 317 
 
 towards a son, who tenderly reserves for a mother some of his 
 benefits, than we do to a daughter anxiously caring for her father; 
 perhaps from a hundred causes, and this among the rest, that in 
 their experience of sons and husbands they are more used to find 
 these persons mere six-feet thunder- clouds, forked waterspouts, 
 or even reposing tornadoes. 
 
 Blessed Quintus ! on whose Life this other distinction like 
 an order of nobility does also shine, that thou canst tell it over to 
 thy mother ; as, for example, this past afternoon in the parson- 
 age. Thy joy flows into another heart, and streams back from 
 it, redoubled, into thy own. There is a closer approximating of 
 hearts, and also of sounds, than that of the Echo ; the highest 
 approximation melts Tone and Echo into Resonance together. 
 
 It is historically certain that both of them supped this even- 
 ing ; and that instead of the whole dinner fragments which to- 
 morrow might themselves represent a dinner, nothing but the 
 cake-offering or pudding was laid upon the altar of the table. 
 The mother, who for her own child would willingly have neglected 
 not herself only, but all other people, now made a motion that to 
 the Quintaner, who was sporting out of doors and baiting a bird 
 instead of himself, there should no crum of the precious pastry 
 be given, but only table-bread without the crust. But the School- 
 man had a Christian disposition, and said that it was Sunday, 
 and the young man liked something delicate to eat as well as he. 
 Fixlein, — the counterpart of great men and geniuses, — was in- 
 clined to treat, to gift, to gratify a serving house-mate, rather 
 than a man who is for the first time passing through the gate, 
 and at the next post- stage will forget both his hospitable landlord 
 and the last postmaster. On the whole, our Quintus had a touch 
 of honour in him, and notwithstanding his thrift and sacred re- 
 gard for money, he willingly gave it away in cases of honour, and 
 unwillingly in cases of overpowering sympathy, which too pain- 
 fully filled the cavities of his heart, and emptied those of his 
 purse. Whilst the Quintaner was exercising the jus compascui 
 on the cake, and six arms were peacefully resting on Thiennette's 
 free-table, Fixlein read to himself and the company the Flachs- 
 enfingen Address-calendar ; any higher thing, except Meusel's 
 Gelehrtes Deutschland, 7 he could not figure : the Kammerherrs 
 and Raths of the Calendar went tickling over his tongue like the 
 
 7 Literary Germany ; a work (I believe of no great merit) which Eichter often 
 twitches in the same style. — Ed. 
 
818 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 raisins of the cake ; and of the more rich church-livings he, by 
 reading, as it were levied a tithe. 
 
 He purposely remained his own Edition in Sunday Wove- 
 paper ; I mean, he did not lay away his Sunday coat, even when 
 the Prayer-bell tolled ; for he had still much to do. 
 
 After supper, he was just about visiting the Fraulein, when 
 he descried her in person, like a lily dipt in the red twilight, in 
 the Castle-garden, whose western limit his house constituted, the 
 southern one being the Chinese wall of the Castle .... By the 
 way, how I got to the knowledge of all this, what Letter-boxes 
 are, whether I myself was ever there, &c. &c, — the whole of this 
 shall, upon my life, be soon and faithfully communicated to the 
 reader, and that too in the present Book. 
 
 Fixlein hopped forth like a Will-o'-wisp into the garden, whose 
 flower-perfume was mingling with his supper-perfume. No one 
 bowed lower to a nobleman than he, not out of plebeian servility, 
 nor of self-interested cringing, but because he thought " a noble- 
 man was a nobleman." But in this case his bow, instead of fall- 
 ing forwards, fell obliquely to the right, as it were after his hat : 
 for he had not risked taking a stick with him ; and hat and stick 
 were his proppage and balance-wheel, in short, his bowing-gear, 
 without which it was out of his power to produce any courtly bow, 
 had you offered him the High Church of Hamburg for so doing. 
 Thiennette's mirthfulness soon unfolded his crumpled soul into 
 straight form, and into the proper tone. He delivered her a long 
 neat Thanksgiving and Harvest sermon for the scaly cake ; which 
 appeared to her at once kind and tedious. Young women with- 
 out the polish of high life reckon tedious pedantry, merely like 
 snuffing, one of the necessary ingredients of a man : they rever- 
 ence us infinitely ; and as Lambert could never speak to the King 
 of Prussia, by reason of his sun-eyes, except in the dark, so they, 
 I believe, often like better, — also by reason of our sublime air, — 
 if they can catch us in the dark too. Him Thiennette edified by 
 the Imperial History of Herr von Auf hammer and Her Ladyship 
 his spouse, who meant to put him, the Quintus, in her will : her 
 he edified by his Literary History, as relating to himself and the 
 Subrector ; how, for instance, he was at present vicariating in 
 the Second Form, and ruling over scholars as long in stature as 
 himself. And thus did the two in happiness, among red bean- 
 blossoms, red may-chafers, before the red of the twilight burning 
 lower and lower on the horizon, walk to and fro in the garden ; 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 319 
 
 and turn always with a smile as they approached the head of the 
 ancient gardeneress, standing like a window -bust through the 
 little lattice, which opened in the bottom of a larger one. 
 
 To me it is incomprehensible he did not fall in love. I know 
 his reasons, indeed : in the first place, she had nothing ; secondly, 
 he had nothing, and school-debts to boot ; thirdly, her genealo- 
 gical tree was a boundary-tree and warning-post; fourthly, his 
 hands were tied up by another nobler thought, which, for good 
 cause, is yet reserved from the reader. Nevertheless — Fixlein ! 
 I durst not have been in thy place ! I should have looked at her, 
 and remembered her virtues and our school-years, and then have 
 drawn forth my too fusible heart, and presented it to her as a bill 
 of exchange, or insinuated it as a summons. For I should have 
 considered that she resembled a nun in two senses, in her good 
 heart and in her good pastry ; that, in spite of her intercourse 
 with male vassals, she was no Charles Genevieve Louise Auguste 
 Timothe Eon de Beaumont, 8 but a smooth, fair-haired, white- 
 capped dove ; that she sought more to please her own sex than 
 ours ; that she showed a melting heart, not previously borrowed 
 from the Circulating Library, in tears, for which in her innocence 
 she rather took shame than credit. — At the very first cheapen- 
 ing, I should, on these grounds, have been out with my heart. — 
 Had I fully reflected, Quintus ! that I knew her as myself; that 
 her hands and mine (to wit, had I been thou) had both been guided 
 by the same Senior to Latin penmanship ; that we two, when 
 little children, had kissed each other before the glass, to see 
 whether the two image -children would do it likewise in the mirror ; 
 that often we had put hands of both sexes into the same muff, 
 and there played with them in secret ; had I, lastly, considered 
 that we were here standing before the glass-house, now splendent 
 in the enamel of twilight, and that on the cold panes of this 
 glass-house we two (she within, I without) had often pressed our 
 warm cheeks together, parted only by the thickness of the glass, 
 — then had I taken this poor gentle soul, pressed asunder by 
 Fate, and seeing, amid her thunder-clouds, no higher elevation 
 to part them and protect her than the grave, and had drawn her 
 to my own soul, and warmed her on my heart, and encompassed 
 her about with my eyes. 
 
 In truth, the Quintus would have done so too, had not the 
 above-mentioned nobler thought, which I yet disclose not, kept 
 8 See SchmelzU's Journey, p. 284. — Ed. 
 
320 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 him back. Softened, without knowing the cause — (accordingly 
 he gave his mother a kiss) — aud blessed without having had a 
 literary conversation ; and dismissed with a freight of humble 
 compliments, which he was to disload on the morrow before the 
 Dragoon Kittmeisterinn, he returned to his little cottage, and 
 looked yet a long while out of its dark windows, at the light ones 
 of the Castle. And then, when the first quarter of the moon was 
 setting, that is, about midnight, he again, in the cool sigh of a 
 mild, fanning, moist and directly heart-addressing night-breeze, 
 
 opened the eyelids of a sight already sunk in dreaming 
 
 Sleep, for today thou hast done naught ill ! I, whilst the 
 drooping shut flower-bell of thy spirit sinks on thy pillow, will 
 look forth into the breezy night over thy morning footpath, 
 which, through the translucent little wood, is to lead thee to Scha- 
 deck, to thy patroness. All prosperity attend thee, thou foolish 
 Quintus ! — 
 
 SECOND LETTER-BOX. 
 
 Frau von Auf hammer. Childhood-Resonance. Authorcraft. 
 
 The early piping which the little thrush last night adopted 
 by the Quintaner from its nest, started for victual about two 
 o'clock, soon drove our Quintus into his clothes ; whose calender- 
 press and parallel-ruler the hands of his careful mother had been, 
 for she would not send him to the Kittmeisterinn ' ' like a runa- 
 gate dog." The Shock was incarcerated, the Quintaner taken 
 with him, as likewise many wholesome rules from Mother Fix- 
 lein, how to conduct himself towards the Kittmeisterinn. But 
 the son answered : " Mamma, when a man has been in company, 
 like me, with high people, with a Fraulein Thiennette, he soon 
 knows whom he is speaking to, and what polished manners and 
 Saver di veaver (Savoir vivre) require." 
 
 He arrived with the Quintaner, and green fingers (dyed with 
 the leaves he had plucked on the path), and with a half- nibbled 
 rose between his teeth, in presence of the sleek lackeys of Scha- 
 deck. — If women are flowers, — though as often silk and Italian 
 and gum-flowers as botanical ones, — then was Frau von Auf- 
 hammer a ripe flower, with (adipose) neck-bulb, and tuberosity 
 (of lard). Already, in the half of her body, cut away from life 
 by the apoplexy, she lay upon her lard-pillow but as on a softer 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 321 
 
 grave : nevertheless, the portion of her that remained was at once 
 lively, pious and proud. Her heart was a flowing cornucopia to 
 all men, yet this not from philanthropy, but from rigid devotion: 
 the lower classes she assisted, cherished and despised, regarding 
 nothing in them, except it were their piety. She received the 
 bowing Quintus with the back-bowing air of a patroness ; yet she 
 brightened into a look of kindliness at his disloading of the com- 
 pliments from Thiennette. 
 
 She began the conversation, and long continued it alone, and 
 said, — yet without losing the inflation of pride from her counte- 
 nance : " She should soon die ; but the god-children of her hus 
 band she would remember in her will." Farther, she told him 
 directly in the face, which stood there all over- written with the 
 Fourth Commandment before her, that " he must not build upon 
 a settlement in Hukelum ; but to the Flachsenfingen Conrectorate 
 (to which the Biirgermeister and Council had the right of nomina- 
 tion), she hoped to promote him, as it was from the then Biirger- 
 meister that she bought her coffee, and from the Town- Syndic 
 (he drove a considerable wholesale and retail trade in Hamburg 
 candles) that she bought both her wax and tallow lights." 
 
 And now by degrees he arrived at his humble petition, when 
 she asked him sick-news of Senior Astmann, who guided himself 
 more by Luther's Catechism than by the Catechism of Health. 
 She was Astmann' s patroness in a stricter than ecclesiastical 
 sense ; and she even confessed that she would soon follow this 
 true shepherd of souls, when she heard, here at Shadeck, the 
 sound of his funeral-bell. Such strange chemical affinities exist 
 between our dross and our silver veins ; as, for example, here 
 between Pride and Love : and I could wish that we would pardon 
 this hypostatic union in all persons, as readily as we do it in the 
 fair, who, with all their faults, are nevertheless by us, — as, ac- 
 cording to Du Fay, iron, though mixed with any other metal, is, 
 by the magnet, — attracted and held fast. 
 
 Supposing even that the Devil had, in some idle minute, 
 sown a handful or two of the seeds of Envy in our Quintus' soul, 
 yet they had not sprouted; and today especially they did not, 
 when he heard the praises of a man who had been his teacher, 
 and who, — what he reckoned a Titulado of the Earth, not from 
 vanity but from piety, — was a clergyman. So much, however, is, 
 according to History, not to be denied : That he now straight- 
 way came forth with his petition to the noble lady, signifying 
 
 vol. in, y 
 
322 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 that " indeed he would cheerfully content himself for a few years 
 in the school ; but yet in the end he longed to be in some small 
 quiet priestly office." To her question, " But was he orthodox?" 
 he answered, that " he hoped so; he had in Leipzig, not only 
 attended all the public lectures of Dr. Burscher, but also had 
 taken private instructions from several sound teachers of the 
 faith, well knowing that the Consistorium, in its examinations 
 as to purity of doctrine, was now more strict than formerly." 
 
 The sick lady required him to make a proof-shot, namely, to 
 administer to her a sick-bed exhortation. By Heaven ! he admin- 
 istered to her one of the best. Her pride of birth now crouched 
 before his pride of office and priesthood ; for though he could not, 
 with the Dominican monk, Alanus de Rupe, believe that a priest 
 was greater than God, inasmuch as the latter could only make a 
 World, but the former a God (in the mass) ; yet he could not 
 but fall-in with Hostiensis, who shows that the priestly dignity is 
 seven thousand six hundred and forty-four times greater than the 
 kingly, the Sun being just so many times greater than the Moon. 
 — But a Rittmeisterinn — she shrinks into absolute nothing before 
 a parson. 
 
 In the servants' hall he applied to the lackeys for the last 
 annual series of the Hamburg Political Journal; perceiving, that 
 with these historical documents of the time, they were scandal- 
 ously papering the buttons of travelling raiment. In gloomy 
 harvest evenings, he could now sit down and read for himself 
 what good news were transpiring in the political world — twelve 
 months ago. 
 
 On a Triumphal Car, full -laden with laurel, and to which 
 Hopes alone were yoked, he drove home at night, and by the 
 road advised the Quintaner not to be puffed up with any earthly 
 honour, but silently to thank God, as himself was now doing. 
 
 The thickset blooming grove of his four canicular weeks, and 
 the flying tumult of blossoms therein, are already painted on three 
 of the sides. I will now clutch blindfold into his days, and bring 
 out one of them : one smiles and sends forth its perfumes like 
 another. 
 
 Let us take, for instance, the Saint's day of his mother, 
 Clara, the twelfth of August. In the morning., he had perennial, 
 fireproof joys, that is to say, Employments. For he was writing, 
 as I am doing, Truly, if Xerxes proposed a prize for the in- 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 323 
 
 vention of a new pleasure, any man who had sat down to write 
 his thoughts on the prize-question, had the new pleasure already 
 among his fingers. I know only one thing sweeter than making 
 a book, and that is, to project one. Fixlein used to write little 
 works, of the twelfth part of an alphabet in size, which in their 
 manuscript state he got bound by the bookbinder in gilt boards, 
 and betitled with printed letters, and then inserted them among 
 the literary ranks of his book-board. Every one thought they 
 were novelties printed in writing types. He had laboured, — I 
 shall omit his less interesting performances, — at a Collection of 
 Errors of the Press, in German writings : he compared Errata 
 with each other ; showed which occurred most frequently ; ob- 
 served that important results were to be drawn from this, and 
 advised the reader to draw them. 
 
 Moreover, he took his place among the German Masorites. 
 He observes with great justice in his Preface : " The Jews had 
 their Masora to show, which told them how often every letter 
 was to be found in their Bible ; for example, the Aleph (the A) 
 42,377 times; how many verses there are in which all the con- 
 sonants appear (there are 26 verses), or only eighty (there are 3) ; 
 how many verses we have into which 42 words and 160 con- 
 sonants enter (there is just one, Jeremiah xxi. 7) ; which is the 
 middle letter in certain books (in the Pentateuch, it is in Levi- 
 ticus xi. 42, the noble V 9 ), or in the whole Bible itself. But 
 where have we Christians any similar Masora for Luther's Bible 
 to show ? Has it been accurately investigated which is the middle 
 word, or the middle letter here, which vowel appears seldomest, 
 and how often each vowel ? Thousands of Bible- Christians go out 
 of the world, without ever knowing that the German A occurs 
 323,015 times (therefore above 7 times oftener than the Hebrew 
 one) in their Bible." 
 
 I could wish that inquirers into Biblical Literature among 
 our Reviewers would publicly let me know, if on a more accurate 
 summation they find this number incorrect. 10 
 
 9 As in the State. — [V. or Von, de, of, being the symbol of the nobility, the 
 middle order of the State. — Ed.] 
 
 10 In Erlang, my petition has been granted. The Bible Institution of that 
 town have found instead of the 116,301 A's, which Fixlein at first pretended with 
 such certainty to find in the Bible-books (which false number was accordingly 
 given in the first Edition of this Work, p. 81), the above-mentioned 323,015 ; 
 which (uncommonly singular) is precisely the sum of all the letters iu the Koraat 
 put together. See Ludeke's Beschr. des Turk. Beichs (Ludeke's Description of 
 the Turkish Empire. New edition, 1780). 
 
324 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDItlCH RICHTER. 
 
 Much also did the Quintus collect: he had a fine Almanac 
 Collection, a Catechism and Pamphlet Collection ; also a Col- 
 lection of Advertisements, which he began, is not so incomplete 
 as you most frequently see such things. He puts high value on 
 his Alphabetical Lexicon of German Subscribers for Books, where 
 my name also occurs among the J's. 
 
 But what he liked best to produce were Schemes of Books. 
 Accordingly, he sewed together a large work, wherein he merely 
 advised the Learned of things they ought to introduce in Literary 
 History, which History he rated some ells higher than Universal 
 or Imperial History. In his Prolegomena to this performance, 
 he transiently submitted to the Literary republic that Hommel 
 had given a register of Jurists who were sons of wh — , of others 
 who had become Saints ; that Baillet enumerates the Learned 
 who meant to write something ; and Ancillon those who wrote 
 nothing at all ; and the Liibeck Superintendent Gotze, those who 
 were shoemakers, those who were drowned ; and Bernhard those 
 whose fortunes and history before birth were interesting. This 
 (he could now continue) should, as it seems, have excited us to 
 similar muster-rolls and matriculations of other kinds- of Learned ; 
 whereof he proposed a few : for example, of the Learned, who 
 were unlearned ; of those who were entire rascals ; of such as 
 wore their own hair, — of cue - preachers, cue - psalmists, cue- 
 annalists, and so forth ; of the Learned who had worn black 
 leather breeches, of others who had worn rapiers ; of the Learned 
 who had died in their eleventh year, — in their twentieth — 
 twenty -first, &c, — in their hundred and fiftieth, of which he 
 knew no instance, unless the Beggar Thomas Parr might be 
 adduced ; of the Learned who wrote a more abominable hand 
 than the other Learned (whereof we know only Kolfinken and his 
 letters, which were as long as his hands 11 ) ; or of the Learned who 
 had dipt nothing from each other but the beard (whereof no in- 
 stance is known, save that of Philelphus and Timotheus 12 ). 
 
 Such by- studies did he carry on along with his official labours : 
 but I think the State in viewing these matters is actually mad ; it 
 compares the man who is great in Philosophy and Belles Lettres 
 at the expense of his jog-trot officialities, to concert-clocks, which, 
 
 11 Paravicini Singularia de viris Claris. Cent. I. 2 
 
 12 Ejusd. Cent. II. Philelphus quarrelled with the Greek ahout the quantity 
 of a syllable : the prize or bet was the beard of the vanquished. Timotheus 
 lost his. 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 325 
 
 though striking their hours in flute-melodies, are worse time- 
 keepers than your gross stupid steeple-clocks. 
 
 To return to St. Clara's day. Fixlein, after such mental 
 exertions, bolted out under the music-bushes and rustling-trees ; 
 and returned not again out of warm Nature, till plate and chair 
 were already placed at the table. In the course of the repast, 
 something occurred which a Biographer must not omit : for his 
 mother had, by request, been wont to map out for him, during 
 the process of mastication, the chart of his child's- world, relating 
 all the traits which in any way prefigured what he had now grown 
 to. This perspective sketch of his early Past, he committed to 
 certain little leaves, which merit our undivided attention. For 
 such leaves exclusively, containing scenes, acts, plays of his 
 childhood, he used chronologically to file and arrange in sepa- 
 rate drawers in a little child' s-desk of his ; and thus to divide 
 his Biography, as Moser did his Publicistic Materials, into sepa- 
 rate letter-boxes. He had boxes or drawers for memorial-letters 
 of his twelfth, of his thirteenth, fourteenth, &c. of his twenty- 
 first year, and so on. Whenever he chose to conclude a day of 
 pedagogic drudgery by an evening of peculiar rest, he simply 
 pulled out a letter- drawer, a register-bar in his Life-hand-organ, 
 and recollected the whole. 
 
 And here must I in reference to those reviewing Mutes, who 
 may be for casting the noose of strangulation round my neck, 
 most particularly beg, that, before doing so on account of my 
 Chapters being called Letter-boxes, they would have the good- 
 ness to look whose blame it was, and to think whether I could 
 possibly help it, seeing the Quintus had divided his Biography 
 into such Boxes himself: they have Christian bowels. 
 
 But about his elder brother he put no saddening question to 
 his mother : this poor boy a peculiar Fate had laid hold of, and 
 with all his genial endowment, dashed to pieces on the iceberg of 
 Death. For he chanced to leap on an ice-board that had jammed 
 itself among several others ; but these recoiled, and his shot forth 
 with him ; melted away as it floated under his feet, and so sunk 
 his heart of fire amid the ice and waves. It grieved his mother 
 that he was not found, that her heart had not been harrowed by 
 the look of the swoln corpse. — 0 good mother, rather thank God 
 for it!— 
 
 After breakfast, to fortify himself with new vigour for his desk, 
 
326 
 
 JEAN PAUL FMEDEICH RICHTER. 
 
 he for some time strolled idly over the house, and, like a Police 
 Fire-inspector, visited all the nooks of his cottage, to gather from 
 them here and there a live ember from the ash-covered rejoicing- 
 fire of his childhood. He mounted to the garret, to the empty 
 bird-coops of his father, who in winter had been a birder ; and he 
 transiently reviewed the lumber of his old playthings, which were 
 lying in the netted enclosure of a large canary breeding-cage. In 
 the minds of children, it is regular little forms, such as those of 
 balls and dies, that impress and express themselves most forcibly. 
 From this may the reader explain to himself Fixlein's delight in 
 the red acorn-blockhouse, in the sparwork glued together out of 
 white chips and husks of potato - plums, in the cheerful glass- 
 house of a cube-shaped lantern, and other the like products of his 
 early architecture. The following, however, I explain quite dif- 
 ferently : he had ventured, without leave given from any lord of 
 the manor, to build a clay house ; not for cottagers, but for flies ; 
 and which, therefore, you could readily enough have put in your 
 pocket. This fly-hospital had its glass windows, and a red coat 
 of colouring, and very many alcoves, and three balconies : bal- 
 conies, as a sort of house within a house, he had loved from of 
 old so much, that he could scarcely have liked Jerusalem well, 
 where (according to Lightfoot) no such thing is permitted to be 
 built. From the glistening eyes, with which the architect had 
 viewed his tenantry creeping about the windows or feeding out of 
 the sugar-trough, — for, like the Count St. Germain, they ate 
 nothing but sugar, — from this joy an adept in the art of educa- 
 tion might easily have prophesied his turn for household contrac- 
 tion ; to his fancy, in those times, even gardeners '-huts were like 
 large waste Arks and Halls, and nothing bigger than such a fly- 
 Louvre seemed a true, snug, citizen's -house. He now felt and 
 handled his old high child's-stool, which had, in former days, 
 resembled the Secies Exploratoria of the Pope ; he gave his 
 child's-coach a tug and made it run ; but he could not understand 
 what balsam and holiness so much distinguished it from all other 
 child's-coaches. He wondered that the real sports of children 
 should not so delight him, as the emblems of these sports, when 
 the child that had carried them on was standing grown up to 
 manhood in his presence. 
 
 Before one article in the house he stood heart-melted and 
 sad ; before a little angular clothes-press, which was no higher 
 than table, and which had belonged to his poor drowned bro- 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 327 
 
 ther. When the boy with the key of it was swallowed by the 
 waves, the excruciated mother had made a vow that this toy-press 
 of his should never be broken up by violence. Most probably 
 there is nothing in it, but the poor soul's playthings. Let us 
 look away from this bloody urn. 
 
 Bacon reckons the remembrances of childhood among whole- 
 some medicinal things ; naturally enough, therefore, they acted 
 like a salutary digestive on the.Quintus. He could now again 
 betake him with new heart to his desk, and produce something 
 quite peculiar — petitions for church -livings. He took the Address- 
 calendar, and for every country parish that he found in it, got a 
 petition in readiness ; which he then laid aside, till such time as 
 the present incumbent should decease. For Hukelum alone he 
 did not solicit. — It is a pretty custom in Flachsenfingen that for 
 every office which is vacant, you are required, if you want it, to 
 sue. As the higher use of Prayer consists not in its fulfilment, 
 but in its accustoming you to pray ; so likewise petitionary papers 
 ought to be given in, not indeed that you may get the office, — 
 this nothing but your money can do, — but that you may learn to 
 write petitions. In truth, if among the Calmucks, the turning 
 of a calabash 13 stands in the place of Prayer, a slight movement 
 of the purse may be as much as if you supplicated in words. 
 
 Towards evening — it was Sunday — he went out roving over 
 the village ; he pilgrimed to his old sporting-places, and to the 
 common where he had so often driven his snails to pasture ; vi- 
 sited the peasant, who, from school-times upwards, had been wont, 
 to the amazement of the rest, to thou u him ; went, an Academic 
 Tutor, to the Schoolmaster ; then to the Senior ; then to the 
 Episcopal-barn or church. This last no mortal understands, till 
 I explain it. The case was this : some three-and-forty years ago, 
 
 13 Their prayer-barrel, Kiiriidu, is a hollowed shell, a calabash, full of un- 
 rolled formulas of prayer ; they sway it from side to side, and then it works. 
 More philosophically viewed, since in prayer the feeling only is of consequence, 
 it is much the same whether this express itself by motion of the mouth or of the 
 calabash. 
 
 14 In German, as in some other languages, the common mode of address is by 
 the third person : plural, it indicates respect ; singular, command : the second 
 person is also used ; plural, it generally denotes indifference ; singular, great 
 familiarity, and sometimes its product, contempt. Dutzenfreund, Thouing -friend, 
 is the strictest term of intimacy ; and among the wild Bnrschen (Students) many 
 a duel (happily, however, often ending like the Polem -Midinia in one drop of 
 blood) has been fought, in consequence of saying Du (th u) and Sie (they) in th* 
 wrong place. — Ed. 
 
328 
 
 JEAN PAVli ERIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 a fire had destroyed the church (not the steeple), the parsonage, 
 and — what was not to be replaced — the church-records. (For 
 this reason, it was only the smallest portion of the Hukelum 
 people that knew exactly how old they were ; and the memory of 
 our Quintus himself vibrated between adopting the thirty-third 
 year and the thirty-second.) In consequence, the preaching had 
 now to be carried on where formerly there had been thrashing ; 
 and the seed of the divine word to be turned over on the same 
 threshing-floor with natural corn -seed. The Chanter and the 
 Schoolboys took up the threshing-floor; the female mother-church- 
 people stood on the one sheaves-loft, the Schadeck womankind 
 on the other ; and their husbands clustered pyramidically, like 
 groschen and farthing-gallery men, about the barn- stairs ; and 
 far up on the straw-loft, mixed souls stood listening. A little 
 flute was their organ, an upturned beer-cask their altar, round 
 which they had to walk. I confess, I myself could have preached 
 in such a place, not without humour. The Senior (at that time 
 still a Junior), while the parsonage was building, dwelt and taught 
 in the Castle : it was here, accordingly, that Fixlein had learned 
 the Irregular Verbs with Thiennette. 
 
 These voyages of discovery completed, our Hukelum voyager 
 could still, after evening prayers, pick leaf-insects, with Thien- 
 nette, from the roses ; worms from the beds, and a Heaven of 
 joy from every minute. Every dew-drop was coloured as with 
 oil of cloves and oil of gladness ; every star was a sparkle from 
 the sun of happiness ; and in the closed heart of the maiden, 
 there lay near to him, behind a little wall of separation (as near, 
 to the Kighteous man behind the thin wall of Life), an out- 
 stretched blooming Paradise I mean, she loved him a 
 
 little. 
 
 He might have known it, perhaps. But to his compressed 
 delight he gave freer vent, as he went to bed, by early recollec- 
 tions on the stair. For in his childhood he had been accustomed, 
 by way of evening-prayer, to go over, under his coverlid, as it 
 were, a rosary, including fourteen Bible Proverbs, the first verse 
 of the Psalm, " All people that on Earth," the Tenth Command- 
 ment, and, lastly, a long blessing. To get the sooner done with 
 it, he had used to begin his devotion, not only on the stair, but 
 before leaving that place where Alexander studied men, and Sem- 
 ler stupid books. Moored in the haven of the down waves, he 
 was already over with his evening supplication , and could now, 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 329 
 
 without farther exertion, shut his eyes and plump into sleep. 
 
 Thus does there lurk, in the smallest homunculus, the model of 
 — the Catholic Church. 
 
 So far the Dog-days of Quintus Zebedaus Egidius Fixlein. — 
 I, for the second time, close a Chapter of this Life, as Life itself 
 is closed, with a sleep. 
 
 THIRD LETTER-BOX. 
 
 Christmas Recollections. New Occurrence. 
 
 For all of us the passage to the grave is, alas ! a string of 
 empty insipid days, as of glass pearls, only here and there divided 
 by an orient one of price. But you die murmuring, unless, like the 
 Quintus, you regard your existence as a drum : this has only one 
 single tone, but variety of time gives the sound of it cheerfulness 
 enough. Our Quintus taught in the Fourth Class ; vicariated in 
 the Second ; wrote at his desk by night ; and so lived on in the 
 usual monotonous fashion — all the time from the Holidays — till 
 Christmas-eve, 1791 ; and nothing was remarkable in his history 
 except this same eve, which I am now about to paint. 
 
 But I shall still have time to paint it, after, in the first place, 
 explaining shortly how, like birds of passage, he had contrived 
 to soar away over the dim cloudy Harvest. The secret was, he 
 set upon the Hamburg Political Journal, with which the lackeys 
 of Schadeck had been for papering their buttons. He could now 
 calmly, with his back at the stove, accompany the winter cam- 
 paigns of the foregoing year ; and fly after every battle, as the 
 ravens did after that of Pharsalia. On the printed paper he could 
 still, with joy and admiration, walk round our German triumphal 
 arches and scaffoldings for fireworks : while to the people in the 
 town, who got only the newest newspapers, the very fragments 
 of these our trophies, maliciously torn down by the French, were 
 scarcely discernible ; nay, with old plans he could drive back and 
 discomfit the enemy, while later readers in vain tried to resist 
 them with new ones. 
 
 Moreover, not only did the facility of conquering the French 
 prepossess him in favour of this journal ; but also the circum- 
 stance that it — cost him nothing. His attachment to gratis read- 
 ing was decided. And does not this throw light on the fact, that 
 
3B0 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 he, as Morhof advised, was wont sedulously to collect the sepa- 
 rate leaves of waste-paper books as they came from the grocer, 
 and to rake among the same, as Virgil did in Ennius ? Nay, for 
 him the grocer was a Fortius (the scholar), or a Frederick (the 
 king), both which persons were in the habit of simply cutting 
 from complete books such leaves as contained anything. It was 
 also this respect for all waste-paper that inspired him with such 
 esteem for the aprons of French cooks, which it is well known 
 consist of printed paper ; and he often wished some German would 
 translate these aprons : indeed I am willing to believe that a good 
 version of more than one of such paper aprons might contribute 
 to elevate our Literature (this Muse a belles f esses), and serve 
 her in place of drivel-bib. — On many things a man puts a pretium 
 affectionis, simply because he hopes he may have half stolen 
 them : on this principle, combined with the former, our Quintus 
 adopted into his belief anything he could snap away from an open 
 Lecture, or as a visitor in class-rooms ; opinions only for which 
 the Professor must be paid, he rigorously examined. — I return to 
 the Christmas -eve. 
 
 At the very first, Egidius was glad, because out of doors 
 millers and bakers were at fisty- cuffs (as we say of drifting snow 
 in large flakes), and the ice-flowers of the window were blossom- 
 ing ; for external frost, with a snug warm room, was what he 
 liked. He could now put fir-wood into his stove, and Mocha 
 coffee into his stomach ; and shove his right foot (not into the 
 slipper, but) under the warm side of his Shock, and also on the 
 left keep swinging his pet Starling, which was pecking at the 
 snout of old Schil ; and then with the right hand — with the left 
 he was holding his pipe — proceed, so undisturbed, so intrenched, 
 so cloud-capt, without the smallest breath of frost, to the highest 
 enterprise which a Quintus can attempt, — to writing the Class- 
 prodromus of the Flachsenfingen Gymnasium, namely, the eighth 
 part thereof. I hold the first printing in the history of a literary 
 man to be more important than the first printing in the history 
 of Letters : Fixlein could not sate himself with specifying what 
 he purposed, God willing, in the following year, to treat of; and 
 accordingly, more for the sake of printing than of use, he farther 
 inserted three or four pedagogic glances at the plan of operations 
 to be followed by his schoolmaster colleagues as a body. 
 
 He lastly introduced a few dashes, by way of hooking his 
 thoughts together ; and then laid aside the Opus, and would no 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 331 
 
 longer look at it, that so, when printed, he might stand aston- 
 ished at his own thoughts. And now he could take the Leipzig 
 Fair Catalogue, which he purchased yearly, instead of the books 
 therein, and open it without a sigh : he too was in print, as well 
 as I am. 
 
 The happy fool, while writing, had shaken his head, rubbed 
 his hands, hitched about on his chair, puckered his face, and 
 sucked the end of his cue. — He could now spring up about five 
 o'clock in the evening, to recreate himself; and across the magic 
 vapour of his pipe, like a new-caught bird, move up and down in 
 his cage. On the warm smoke, the long galaxy of street-lamps 
 was gleaming ; and red on his bed- curtains lay the fitful reflection 
 of the blazing windows, and illuminated trees in the neighbour- 
 hood. And now he shook away the snow of Time from the winter- 
 green of Memory ; and beheld the fair years of his childhood, 
 uncovered, fresh, green and balmy, standing afar off before him. 
 From his distance of twenty years, he looked into the quiet cot- 
 tage of his parents, where his father and his brother had not yet 
 been reaped away by the sickle of Death. He said to himself : 
 " I will go through the whole Christmas-eve from the very dawn, 
 as I had it of old." 
 
 At his very rising he finds spangles on the table ; sacred 
 spangles from the gold-leaf and silver-leaf, with which the Christ- 
 child 15 has been emblazoning and coating his apples and nuts, the 
 presents of the night. — On the mint-balance of joy, this metallic 
 foam pulls heavier than the golden calves, and golden Pytha- 
 goras'- legs, and golden Philistine - mice of wealthier capitalists. 
 — Then came his mother, bringing him both Christianity and 
 clothes : for in drawing on his trousers, she easily recapitulated 
 the Ten Commandments, and, in tying his garters, the Apostles' 
 Creed. So soon as candle-light was over, and day-light come, 
 he clambers to the arm of the settle, and then measures the 
 nocturnal growth of the yellow wiry grove of Christmas-Birch ; 
 and devotes far less attention than usual to the little white win- 
 ter - flowerage, which the seeds shaken from the bird-cage are 
 sending forth in the wet joints of the window-panes. — I nowise 
 
 15 These antique Christmas festivities Richter describes with equal gusto in 
 another work {Brief e und Zukunftige Lebenslemf) ; where the Christ-child (falsely 
 reported to the young ones, to have been seen flying through the ah*, with gold 
 wings) ; the Birch-bough fixed in a corner of the room, and by him made to 
 grow ; the fruit, of gilt sweetmeats, apples, nuts, which (for good boys) it sud- 
 denly produces, &c. &c. are specified with the same fidelity as here. — Ed. 
 
332 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH R1CHTER. 
 
 grudge J. J. Rousseau his Flora Petrinsularis ; 16 but let liim also 
 pJlow oui Quintus his Window -flora. — There was no such thing 
 as school all day ; so he had time enough to seek his Butcher 
 (his brother), and commence (when could there be finer frost for 
 it ?) the slaughtering of their winter-meat. Some days before, 
 the brother, at the peril of his life and of a cudgelling, had caught 
 their stalled-beast — so they called the sparrow — under a window- 
 sill in the Castle . Their slaughtering wants not an axe (of wood), 
 nor puddings, nor potted meat. — About three o'clock the old 
 Gardener, whom neighbours have to call the Professor of Garden- 
 ing, takes his place on his large chair, with his Cologne tobacco- 
 pipe ; and after this no mortal shall work a stroke. He tells 
 nothing but lies ; of the aeronautic Christ-child, and the jingling 
 Ruprecht with his bells. In the dusk, our little Quintus takes 
 an apple ; divides it into all the figures of stereometry, and spreads 
 the fragments in two heaps on the table : then as the lighted 
 candle enters, he starts up in amazement at the unexpected pre- 
 sent, and says to his brother : " Look what the good Christ-child 
 has given thee and me ; and I saw one of his wings glittering." 
 And for this same glittering he himself lies in wait the whole 
 evening. 
 
 About eight o'clock, — here he walks chiefly by the chronicle 
 of his letter-drawer, — both of them, with necks almost excoriated 
 with washing, and in clean linen, and in universal anxiety lest 
 the Holy Christ-child find them up, are put to bed. What a magic 
 night ! — What tumult of dreaming hopes ! — The populous, motley, 
 glittering cave of Fancy opens itself, in the length of the night, 
 and in the exhaustion of dreamy effort, still darker and darker, 
 fuller and more grotesque ; but the awakening gives back to the 
 thirsty heart its hopes. All accidental tones, the cries of animals, 
 of watchmen, are, for the timidly devout Fancy, sounds out of 
 Heaven; singing voices of Angels in the air, church-music of the 
 morning worship. 
 
 Ah ! it was not the mere Lubberland of sweetmeats and play- 
 things which then, with its perspective, stormed like a river of 
 joy against the chambers of our hearts ; and which yet, in the 
 moonlight of memory, with its dusky landscapes, melts our souls 
 in sweetness. Ah ! this was it, that then for our boundless wishes 
 there were still boundless hopes : but now reality is round us, and 
 the wishes are all that we have left ! 
 i fi Which he purposed to make for his Island of St. Pierre in the Bienne Lake. 
 
LIFE OF Q T JFNTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 333 
 
 At last came rapid lights from the neighbourhood playing 
 through the window on the walls, and the Christmas trumpets, 
 and the crowing from the steeple, hurries both the boys from 
 their bed. With their clothes in their hands, without fear for the 
 darkness, without feeling for the morning-frost, rushing, intoxi- 
 cated, shouting, they hurry down- stairs into the dark room. Fancy 
 riots in the pastry and fruit-perfume of the still eclipsed trea- 
 sures, and paints her air-castles by the glimmering of the Hes- 
 perides-fruit with which the Birch-tree is loaded. While their 
 mother strikes a light, the falling sparks sportfully open and 
 shroud the dainties on the table, and the many-coloured grove 
 on the wall ; and a single atom of that fire bears on it a hanging 
 garden of Eden. 
 
 — On a sudden all grew light ; and the Quintus got — the 
 Conrectorship, and a table-clock. 
 
 FOURTH LETTER-BOX. 
 
 Office -brokage. Discovery of the promised Secret. Hans von Fiichslein. 
 
 For while the Quintus, in his vapoury chamber, was thus run- 
 ning over the sounding-board of his early years, the Rathsdiener, 
 or City-officer, entered with a lantern and the Presentation ; and 
 behind him the courier of the Frau von Aufhammer with a note 
 and a table-clock. The Rittmeisterinn had transformed her pay- 
 ment for the Dog-days sickbed-exhortation into a Christmas pre- 
 sent ; which consisted, first, of a table-clock, with a wooden ape 
 thereon, starting out when the hours struck, and drumming along 
 with every stroke ; secondly, of the Conrectorate, which she had 
 procured for him. 
 
 As in the public this appointment from the private Flachsen- 
 fingen Council has not been judged of as it deserved, I consider 
 it my duty to offer a defence for the body corporate ; and that 
 rather here, than in the Reichsanzeiger, or Imperial Indicator. 
 — I have already mentioned, in the Second Letter-Box, that the 
 Town- Syndic drove a trade in Hamburg candles ; and the then 
 Biirgermeister in coffee-beans, which he sold as well whole as 
 ground. Their joint traffic, however, which they carried on ex- 
 clusively, was in the eight School- offices of Flachsenfingen : the 
 other members of the Council acting only as bale-wrappers, shop- 
 
334 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH EICHTEK. 
 
 men and accountants in the Council wareroom. A Council-house, 
 indeed, is like an India-house, where not only resolutions or ap- 
 pointments, but also shoes and cloth, are exposed to sale. Pro- 
 perly speaking, the Councillor derives his freedom of office-trading 
 from that principle of the Roman law : Cuijus est donandi, eidem 
 et vendendi jus est, that is to say, He who has the right of giv- 
 ing anything away, has also a right to dispose of it for money, if 
 he can. Now as the Council-members have palpably the right of 
 conferring offices gratis, the right of selling them must follow of 
 course. 
 
 Short Extra-xcord on Appointment-bro Jeers in general. 
 
 My chief anxiety is lest the Acaclemy-product-sale-Commis- 
 sion 17 of the State carry on its office-trade too slackly. And what 
 but the commonweal must suffer in the long-run, if important 
 posts are distributed, not according to the current cash, which is 
 laid down for them, but according to connexions, relationships, 
 party recommendations, and bowings and cringings ? Is it not a 
 contradiction, to charge titulary offices dearer than real ones ? 
 Should not one rather expect that the real Hofrath would pay 
 higher by the alterum tantum than the mere titulary Hofrath ? — 
 Money, among European nations, is now the equivalent and re- 
 presentative of value in all things, and consequently in under- 
 standing ; the rather as a head is stamped on it : to pay down 
 the purchase-money of an office is therefore neither more nor less 
 than to stand an examen rigorosum, which is held by a good 
 schema examinandi. To invert this, to pretend exhibiting your 
 qualifications, in place of these their surrogates, and assignates 
 and monnoie de confiance, is simply to resemble the crazy philo- 
 sophers in Gulliver's Travels, who, for social converse, instead 
 of names of things, brought the things themselves tied up in a 
 bag ; it is, indeed, plainly as much as trying to fall back into the 
 barbarous times of trade by barter, when the Romans, instead of 
 the figured cattle on their leather money, drove forth the beeves 
 themselves. 
 
 From all such injudicious notions I myself am so far removed, 
 that often when I used to read that the King of France was de- 
 vising new offices, to stand and sell them under the booth ox his 
 Baldaquin, I have set myself to do something of the like. This 
 I shall now at least calmly propose ; not vexing my heart whether 
 
 17 Borrowed from the " Imperial Mine-product-sale-Commission," in Vienna: 
 in their very names these Vienna people show taste. 
 
Life of quintus fixlein. 
 
 835 
 
 Governments choose to adopt it or not. As our Sovereign will 
 not allow us tc multiply offices purely for sale, nay, on the con- 
 trary, is clay and night (like managers of strolling companies) 
 meditating how to give more parts to one State-actor ; and thus 
 to the Three Stage Unities to add a Fourth, that of Players ; as 
 the ahove French method, therefore, will not apply, could not we 
 at least contrive to invent some Virtues harmonising with the 
 offices, along with which they might be sold as titles ? Might we 
 not, for instance, with the office of a Referendary, put off at the 
 same time a titular Incorruptibility, for a fair consideration ; and 
 so that this virtue, as not belonging to the office, must be sepa- 
 rately paid for by the candidate ? Such a market-title and patent 
 of nobility could not but be ornamental to a Referendary. We 
 forget that in former times such high titles were appended to all 
 posts whatsoever : the scholastic Professor then wrote himself 
 (besides his official designation) " The Seraphic/' " The Incon- 
 trovertible," " The Penetrating;" the King wrote himself " The 
 Great," " The Bald," " The Bold," and so also did the Rabbins. 
 Could it be unpleasant to gentlemen in the higher stations of 
 Justice, if the titles of Impartiality, Rapidity, &c. might be con- 
 ferred on them by sale, as well as the posts themselves ? Thus 
 with the appointment of a Kammerrath, or Councillor of Revenue, 
 the virtue of Patriotism might fitly be conjoined ; and I believe, 
 few Advocates would grudge purchasing the title of Integrity (as 
 well as their common one of Government-advocacy), were it to be 
 had in the market. If, however, any candidate chose to take his 
 post without the virtues, then it would stand with himself to do 
 so, and in the adoption of this reflex morality, Government should 
 not constrain him. 
 
 It might be that, as, according to Tristram Shandy, clothes ; 
 according to Walter Shandy and Lavater, proper names exert an 
 influence on men, appellatives would do so still more ; since, on 
 us, as on testaceous animals, the foam so often hardens into 
 shell: but such internal morality is not a thing the State can 
 have an eye to; for, as in the fine arts, it is not this, but the 
 representation of it, which forms her true aim. 
 
 I have found it rather difficult to devise for our different offices 
 different verbal - virtues ; but I should think there might many 
 such divisions of Virtue (at this moment, Love of Freedom, 
 Public -spirit, Sincerity and Uprightness occur to me) be hunted 
 out ; were but some well-disposed minister of state to appoint a 
 
336 
 
 JEA.N PAUL FBIEDRICH RICHTEIt. 
 
 Virtue-board or Moral Address Department, with some half dozen 
 secretaries, who, for a small salary, might devise various virtues 
 for the various posts. Were I in their place, I should hold a 
 good prism before the white ray of Virtue, and divide it com- 
 pletely. Pity that it were not crimes we wanted — their sub- 
 division I mean ; — our country Judges might then be selected for 
 this purpose. For in their tribunals, where only inferior jurisdic- 
 tion, and no penalty above five 'florins Frankish, is admitted, they 
 have a daily training how out of every mischief to make several 
 small ones, none of which they ever punish to a greater amount 
 than their five florins. This is a precious moral Rolfinkenism, 
 which our Jurists have learned from the great Sin- cutters, St. 
 Augustin and his Sorbonne, who together have carved more sins 
 on Adam's Sin-apple than ever Rolfinken did faces on a cherry- 
 stone. How different one of our Judges from a Papal Casuist, 
 who, by side- scrapings, will rasp you down the best deadly sin 
 into a venial ! — 
 
 School-offices (to come to these) are a small branch of traffic 
 certainly ; yet still they are monarchies, — school-monarchies, to 
 wit, — resembling the Polish crown, which, according to Pope's 
 verse, is twice exposed to sale in the century ; a statement, I 
 need hardly say, arithmetically false, Newton having settled the 
 average duration of a reign at twenty- two years. For the rest, 
 whether the city Council bring the young of the community a 
 Hameln Rat-and-Child-catcher ; or a Weisse's Child's -friend, — 
 this to the Council can make no difference ; seeing the School- 
 master is not a horse, for whose secret defects the horse-dealer is 
 to be responsible. It is enough if Town- Syndic and Co. cannot 
 reproach themselves with having picked out any fellow of genius ; 
 for a genius, as he is useless to the State, except for recreation 
 and ornament, would at the very least exclude the duller, cooler 
 head, who properly forms the true care and profit of the State ; 
 as your costly carat-pearl is good for show alone, but coarse grain- 
 pearls for medicine. On the whole, if a schoolmaster be adequate 
 to flog his scholars, it should suffice ; and I cannot but blame 
 our Commission of Inspectors when they go examining schools, 
 that they do not make the schoolmaster go through the duty of 
 firking one or two young persons of his class in their presence, 
 by way of trial, to see what is in him. 
 
 Wnd of the Extra-word on Appointment-brokers in general. 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 337 
 
 Now again to our history ! The Councillor Heads of the Firm 
 had conferred the Conrectorate on my hero, not only with a view 
 to the continued consumpt of candles and beans, but also on the 
 strength of a quite mad notion : they believed, the Quintus would 
 very soon die. 
 
 — And here I have reached a most important circumstance in 
 this History, and one into which I have yet let no mortal look : 
 now, however, it no longer depends on my will whether I shall 
 shove aside the folding- screen from it or not ; but I must posi- 
 tively lay it open, nay hang a reverberating-lamp over it. 
 
 In medical history, it is a well-known fact that in certain 
 families the people all die precisely at the same age, just as 
 in these families they are all born at the same age (of nine 
 months) ; nay, from Voltaire, I recollect one family, the members 
 of which at the same age all killed themselves. Now, in the Fix- 
 leinic lineage, it was the custom that the male ascendants uni- 
 formly on Cantata- Sunday, in their thirty- second year, took to 
 bed and died : every one of my readers would do well to insert 
 in his copy of the Thirty -Years War, Schiller having entirely 
 omitted it, the fact, that in the course thereof, one Fixlein died 
 of the plague, another of hunger, another of a musket-bullet ; all 
 in their thirty-second year. True Philosophy explains the matter 
 thus : " The first two or three times, it happened purely by acci- 
 dent ; and the other times, the people died of sheer fright : if 
 not so, the whole fact is rather to be questioned." 
 
 But what did Fixlein make of the affair ? Little or nothing : 
 the only thing he did was, that he took little or no pains to fall 
 in love with Thiennette ; that so no other might have cause for 
 fear on his account. He himself, however, for five reasons, minded 
 it so little, that he hoped to be older than Senior Astmann before 
 he died : First, because three Gipsies, in three different places 
 and at three different times, had each shown him the same long 
 vista of years in her magic mirror. Secondly, because he had a 
 sound constitution. Thirdly, because his own brother had formed 
 an exception, and perished before the thirties. Fourthly, on this 
 ground : When a boy he had fallen sick of sorrow, on the very 
 Cantata- Sunday when his father was lying in the winding-sheet, 
 and only been saved from death by his playthings ; and with this 
 Cantata-sickness, he conceived that he had given the murderous 
 Genius of his race the slip. Fifthly, the church -books being 
 destroyed, and with them the certainty of his age, -he could neve* 
 
 VOL. III. z 
 
338 
 
 JEAM PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 fall into a right definite deadly fear: " It maybe," said he, " that 
 I have got whisked away over this whoreson year, and no one 
 the wiser." I will not deny that last year he had fancied he was 
 two-and- thirty : " however," said he, 4 £ if I am not to he so till, 
 God willing, the next (1792), it may run away as smoothly as 
 the last ; am I not always in His keeping ? And were it unjust 
 if the pretty years that were broken off from the life oi my brother 
 should be added to mine ?" — Thus, under the cold snow of the 
 Present, does poor man strive to warm himself, or to mould out 
 of it a fair snow-man. 
 
 The Councillor Oligarchy, however, built upon the opposite 
 opinion ; and, like a Divinity, elevated our Quintus all at once 
 from the Quintusship to the Conrectorate ; swearing to them- 
 selves, that he would soon vacate it again. Properly speaking, 
 by school- seniority, this holy chair should have belonged to the 
 Subrector Hans von Fiichslein ; but he wished it not ; being 
 minded to become Hukelum Parson ; especially, as Astmann's 
 Death -angel, according to sure intelligence, was opening more 
 and more widely the door of this spiritual sheepfold. * ' If the 
 fellow weather another year, 'tis more than I expect," said Hans. 
 
 This Hans was such a churl, that it is pity he had not been 
 a Hanoverian Postboy ; that so, by the Mandate of the Hanoverian 
 Government, enjoining on all its Post-officers an elegant style oi 
 manners, he might have somewhat refined himself. To our poor 
 Quintus, whom no mortal disliked, and who again could hate no 
 mortal, he alone bore a grudge ; simply because Fixlein did not 
 write himself Fiichslein, and had not chosen along with him to 
 purchase a Patent of Nobility. The Subrector, on this his Patent 
 triumphal chariot, drawn by a team of four specified ancestors, 
 was obliged to see the Quintus, who was related to him, clutching 
 by the lackey-straps behind the carriage ; and to hear him, in the 
 most despicable raiment, saying to the train : ' ' He that rides there 
 is my cousin, and a mortal, and I always remind him of it." The 
 mild compliant Quintus never noticed this large wasp-poisonbag 
 in the Subrector, but took it for a honeybag ; nay, by his brotherly 
 warmness, which the nobleman regarded as mere show, he con- 
 creted these venomous juices into still feller consistency. The 
 Quintus, in his simplicity, took Fiichslein' s contempt for envy oi 
 Ids pedagogic talents. 
 
 A Catherinenhof, an Annenhof, an Elizabethhof, Stralenhof 
 r.nd Petershof, all these Kussian pleasure palaces, a man can dis- 
 
LIFE OF Ql T INTUS FIXLZIN. 
 
 389 
 
 pense with (if not despise), who has a room, in which on Christ- 
 mas-eve he walks about with a Presentation in his hand. The 
 new Conrector now longed for nothing but — daylight : joys always 
 (cares never) nibbled from him, like sparrows, his sleep -grains ; 
 and tonight, moreover, the registrator of his glad time, the clock- 
 ape, drummed out every hour to him, which, accordingly, he spent 
 in gay dreaming, rather than in sound snoring. 
 
 On Christmas-morn, he looked at his Class -prodromus, and 
 thought but little of it ; he scarcely knew what to make of his last 
 night's foolish inflation about his Quintusship : " the Quintus- 
 post," said he to himself, " is not to be named in the same day 
 with the Conrectorate ; I wonder how I could parade so last night 
 before my promotion ; at present, I had more reason." Today he 
 ate, as on all Sundays and holydays, with the Master-Butcher 
 Steinberger, his former Guardian. To this man, Fixlein was, 
 what common people are always, but polished philosophical and 
 sentimental people very seldom are, — thankful: a man thanks 
 you the less for presents, the more inclined he is to give presents 
 of his own ; and the beneficent is rarely a grateful person. Meister 
 Steinberger, in the character of store-master, had introduced into 
 the wire-cage of a garret, where Fixlein, while a Student at Leipzig, 
 was suspended, many a well-filled trough with good canary-meat, 
 of hung-beef, of household bread and Sauerkraut. Money indeed 
 was never to be wrung from him : it is well known that he often 
 sent the best calfskins gratis to the tanner, to be boots for our 
 Quintus ; but the tanning-charges the Ward himself had to bear. 
 — On Fixlein' s entrance, as was at all times customary, a smaller 
 damask table-cloth was laid upon the large coarser one ; the arm- 
 chair ; silver implements, and a wine-stoup were handed him ; 
 mere waste, which, as the Guardian used to say, suited well 
 enough for a Scholar ; but for a Flesher not at all. Fixlein first 
 took his victuals, and then signified that he was made Conrector. 
 1 ' Ward," said Steinberger; " if you are made that, it is well. — 
 Seest thou, Eva, I cannot buy a tail of thy cows now ; I must 
 have smelt it beforehand." He was hereby informing his daughter 
 that the cash set apart for the fatted cattle must now be applied 
 to the Conrectorate ; for he was in the habit of advancing all in- 
 stalment-dues to his ward, at an interest of four and a half per 
 cent. Fifty gulden he had already lent the Quintus on his ad 
 vancement to the Quintusship : of these the interest had to be 
 duly paid ; yet, on the day of payment, the Quintus alwaj 4 got 
 
340 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 some abatement ; being wont every Sunday after dinner to instruct 
 his guardian's daughter in arithmetic, writing and geography. 
 Steinberger with justice required of his own grown-up daughter 
 that she should know all the towns, where he in his wanderings 
 as a journeyman had slain fat oxen ; and if she slipped, or wrote 
 crookedly, or subtracted wrong, he himself, as Academical Senate 
 and Justiciary, was standing behind her chair, ready, so to speak, 
 with the forge-hammer of his fist to beat out the dross from her 
 brain, and at a few strokes hammer it into right ductility. The 
 soft Quintus, for his part, had never struck her. On this account 
 she had perhaps, with a few glances, appointed him executor and 
 assignee of her heart. The old Flesher — simply because his wife 
 was dead — had constantly been in the habit of searching with 
 mine-lamps and pokers into all the corners of Eva's heart ; and 
 had in consequence long ago observed — what the Quintus never 
 did — that she had a mind for the said Quintus. Young women 
 conceal their sorrows more easily than their joys : today at the 
 mention of this Conrectorate, Eva had become unusually red. 
 
 When she went after breakfast to bring in coffee, which the 
 Ward had to drink down to the grounds : " I beat Eva to death if 
 she but look at him," said he. Then addressing Fixlein: " Hear 
 you, Ward, did you never cast an eye on my Eva ? She can suffer 
 you, and if you want her, you get her ; but we have done with one 
 another: for a learned man needs quite another sort of thing." 
 
 ' ' Herr Regiments -Quartermaster," said Fixlein (for this post 
 Steinberger filled in the provincial Militia), " such a match were 
 far too rich, at any rate, for a Schoolman." The Quartermaster 
 nodded fifty times ; and then said to Eva, as she returned, — at the 
 same time taking down from the shelf a wooden crook, on which 
 he used to rack out and suspend his slain calves : " Stop ! — Hark, 
 dost wish the present Herr Conrector here for thy husband ?" » 
 
 " Ah, good Heaven !" said Eva. 
 
 " Mayst wish him or not," continued the Flesher ; ' ' with this 
 crook, thy father knocks thy brains out, if thou but think of a 
 learned man. Now make his coffee." And so by the dissevering 
 stroke of this wooden crook was a love easily smitten asunder, 
 which in a higher rank, by such cutting through it with the sword, 
 would only have foamed and hissed the keenlier. 
 
 Fixlein might now, at any hour he liked, lay hold oi fifty florins 
 Frankish, and clutch the pedagogic sceptre, and become coadjutor 
 of the Rector, that is, Conrector. We may assert, that it is with 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLETN. 
 
 841 
 
 debts, as with proportions in Architecture ; of which Wolf has 
 shown that those are the best, which can be expressed in the 
 smallest numbers. Nevertheless, the Quartermaster cheerfully 
 took learned men under his arm : for the notion that his debtoi 
 would decease in his thirty- second year, and that so Death, as 
 creditor in the first rank, must be paid his Debt of Nature, before 
 the other creditors could come forward with their debts — this 
 notion he named stuff and oldwifery ; he was neither superstitious 
 nor fanatical, and he walked by firm principles of action, such as 
 the common man much oftener has than your vapouring man of 
 letters, or your empty dainty man of rank. 
 
 As it is but a few clear Ladydays, warm Mayday-nights, at the 
 most a few odorous Rose-weeks, which I am digging from this 
 Fixleinic Life, embedded in the dross of week-day cares ; and as 
 if they were so many veins of silver, am separating, stamping, 
 smelting and burnishing for the reader, — I must now travel on 
 with the stream of his history to Cantata- Sunday, 1792, before I 
 can gather a few handfuls of this gold-dust, to carry in and wash 
 in my biographical gold-hut. That Sunday, on the contrary, is 
 very metalliferous : do but consider that Fixlein is yet uncertain 
 (the ashes of the Church-books not being legible) whether it is 
 conducting him into his thirty-second or his thirty-third year. 
 
 From Christmas till then he did nothing, but simply became 
 Conrector. The new chair of office was a Sun-altar, on which, 
 from his Quintus-ashes, a young Phoenix combined itself together. 
 Great changes — in offices, marriages, travels — make us younger ; 
 we always date our history from the last revolution, as the French 
 have done from theirs. A colonel, who first set foot on the ladder 
 of seniority as corporal, is five times younger than a king, who in 
 his whole life has never been aught else except a — crown-prince. 
 
 FIFTH LETTER-BOX. 
 
 Cantata- Sunday. Two Testaments. Pontac ; Blood ; Love. 
 
 The Spring months clothe the earth in new variegated hues ; 
 but man they usually dress in black. Just when our icy regions 
 are becoming fruitful, and the flower-waves of the meadows are 
 rolling together over our quarter of the globe, we on all hands 
 meet with men in sables, the beginning of whose Spring is full 
 
342 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 of tears. But, on the other hand, this very uphlooming of the 
 renovated earth is itself the best balm for sorrow over those who 
 lie under it ; and graves are better hid by blossoms than by snow. 
 
 In April, which is no less deadly than it is fickle, old Senior 
 Astmann, our Conrector's teacher, was overtaken by death. His 
 departure it was meant to hide from the Kittmeisterinn ; but the 
 unusual ringing of funereal peals carried his swan- song to her 
 heart ; and gradually set the curfew-bell of her life into similar 
 movement. Age and sufferings had already marked out the first 
 incisions for Death, so that he required but little effort to cut her 
 down ; for it is with men as with trees, they are notched long 
 before felling, that their life-sap may exude. The second stroke 
 of apoplexy was soon followed by the last : it is strange that 
 Death, like criminal courts, cites the apoplectic thrice. 
 
 Men are apt to postpone their last will as long as their better 
 one : the Eittmeisterinn would perhaps have let all her hours, till 
 the speechless and deaf one, roll away without testament, had 
 not Thiennette, during the last night, before from sick-nurse she 
 became corpse - watcher, reminded the patient of the poor Con- 
 rector, and of his meagre hunger - bitten existence, and of the 
 scanty aliment and board-wages which Fortune had thrown him, 
 and of his empty Future, where, like a drooping yellow plant in 
 the parched deal -box of the schoolroom between scholars and 
 creditors, he must languish to the end. Her own poverty offered 
 her a model of his ; and her inward tears were the fluid tints with 
 which she coloured her picture. As the Eittmeisterinn 's testa- 
 ment related solely to domestics and dependents, and as she 
 began with the male ones, Fixlein stood at the top ; and Death, 
 who must have been a special friend of the Conrector's, did not 
 lift his scythe and give the last stroke till his protegee had been 
 with audible voice declared testamentary heir; then he cut all 
 away, life, testament and hopes. 
 
 When the Conrector, in a wash-bill from his mother, received 
 these two Death's-posts and Job's-posts in his class, the first 
 thing he did was to dismiss his class -boys, and break into tears 
 before reaching home. Though the mother had informed him that 
 he had been remembered in the will (I could wish, however, that 
 the Notary had blabbed how much it was), yet almost with every 
 O which he masoretically excerpted from his German Bible, and 
 entered in his Masoretic Work, great drops fell down on his pen, 
 and made his black ink pale. His sorrow was not the gorgeous 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 343 
 
 bOirow of the Poet, who veils the gaping wounds of the departed 
 in the winding-sheet, and breaks the cry of anguish in soft tones 
 of plaintiveness ; nor the sorrow of the Philosopher, who, through 
 one open grave, must look into the whole catacomb-Necropolis of 
 the Past, and before whom the spectre of a friend expands into 
 the spectral Shadow of this whole Earth : but it was the woe of 
 a child, of a mother, whom this thought itself, without subsidiary 
 reflections, bitterly cuts asunder: " So I shall never more see 
 thee ; so must thou moulder away, and I shall never see thee, 
 thou good soul, never, never any more !" — And even because he 
 neither felt the philosophical nor the poetical sadness, every trifle 
 could make a division, a break in his mourning ; and, like a wo- 
 man, he was that very evening capable of sketching some plans 
 for the future employment of his legacy. 
 
 Four weeks after, to wit, on the 5th of May, the testament was 
 unsealed ; but not till the 6th (Cantata- Sunday) did he go down 
 to Hukelum. His mother met his salutations with tears ; which 
 she shed, over the corpse for grief, over the testament for joy. — To 
 the now Conrector Egidius Zebedaus was left: In the first place, 
 a large sumptuous bed, with a mirror-tester, in which the giant 
 Goliath might have rolled at his ease, and to which I and my fair 
 readers will by and by approach nearer, to examine it ; secondly, 
 there was devised to him, as unpaid Easter-godckild- ir oney, for 
 every year that he had lived, one ducat ; thirdly, all the admit- 
 tance and instalment dues, which his elevation to the Quintate 
 and Conrectorate had cost him, were to be made good to the ut- 
 most penny. "And dost thou know, then," proceeded the mother, 
 " what the poor Fraulein has got ? Ah Heaven ! Nothing ! Not 
 one brass farthing !" For Death had stiffened the hand which was 
 just stretching itself out to reach the poor Thiennette a little rain- 
 screen against the foul weather of life. The mother related this 
 perverse trick of Fortune with true condolence ; which in women 
 dissipates envy, and comes easier to them than congratulation, a 
 feeling belonging rather to men. In many female hearts sym- 
 pathy and envy are such near door-neighbours that they could 
 be virtuous nowhere except in Hell, where men have such fright- 
 ful times of it; and vicious nowhere except in Heaven, where 
 people have more happiness than they know what to do with. 
 
 The Conrector was now enjoying on Earth that Heaven to 
 which his benefactress had ascended. First of all, he started off 
 — without so much as putting up his handkerchief, in which lay 
 
344 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 his emotion — up-stairs to see the legacy-bed unshrouded ; for he 
 had a female predilection for furniture. I know not whether the 
 reader ever looked at or mounted any of these ancient chivalric 
 beds, into which, by means of a little stair without balustrades, 
 you can easily ascend ; and in which you, properly speaking, sleep 
 always at least one story above ground. Nazianzen informs us 
 (Orat. XVI.) that the Jews, in old times, had high beds with cock- 
 ladders of this sort ; but simply because of vermin. The legacy 
 bed- Ark was quite as large as one of these ; and a flea would have 
 measured it not in Diameters of the Earth, but in Distances of 
 Sirius. When Fixlein beheld this colossal dormitory, with the 
 curtains drawn asunder, and its canopy of looking-glass, he could 
 have longed to be in it; and had it been in his power to cut from 
 the opaque hemisphere of Night, at that time in America, a small 
 section, he would have established himself there along with it, 
 just to swim about, for one half hour, with his thin lath figure, in 
 this sea of down. The mother, by longer chains of reasoning and 
 chains of calculation than the bed was, had not succeeded in per- 
 suading him to have the broad mirror on the top cut in pieces, 
 though his large dressing-table had nothing to see itself in but a 
 mere shaving-glass : he let the mirror lie where it was for this 
 reason : " Should I ever, God willing, get married," said he, "I 
 shall then, towards morning, be able to look at my sleeping wife, 
 without sitting up in bed." 
 
 As to the second article of the testament, the godchild Easter- 
 pence, his mother had, last night, arranged it perfectly. The 
 Lawyer took her evidence on the years of the heir; and these she 
 had stated at exactly the teeth-number, two-and-thirty. She 
 would willingly have lied, and passed off her son, like an Inscrip- 
 tion, for older than he was : but against this venia cetatis, she 
 saw too well, the authorities would have taken exception, "that 
 it was falsehood and cozenage; had the son been two-and-thirty, 
 he must have been dead some time ago, as it could not but be 
 presumed that he then was." 
 
 And just as she was recounting this, a servant from Schadeck 
 called, and delivered to the Conrector, in return for a discharge and 
 ratification of the birth-certificate given out by his mother, a gold 
 bar of two-and-thirty ducat age-counters, like a helm-bar for the 
 voyage of his life : Herr von Auf hammer was too proud to engage 
 in any pettifogging discussion over a plebeian birth -certificate. 
 
 And thus, by a proud open-handedness, was one of the best 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 345 
 
 lawsuits thrown to the dogs : seeing this gold bar might, in the 
 wire-mill of the judgment-bench, have been drawn out into the 
 finest threads. From such a tangled lock, which was not to be 
 unravelled — for, in the first place, there was no document to prove 
 Fixlein's age ; in the second place, so long as he lived, the neces- 
 sary conclusion was, that he was not yet thirty-two 18 — from such 
 a lock, might not only silk and hanging-cords, but whole drag- 
 nets have been spun and twisted. Clients in general would have 
 less reason to complain of their causes, if these lasted longer : 
 Philosophers contend for thousands of years over philosophical 
 questions ; and it seems an unaccountable thing, therefore, that 
 Advocates should attempt to end their juristical questions in a 
 space of eighty, or even sometimes of sixty years. But the pro- 
 fessors of law are not to blame for this : on the other hand, as 
 Lessing asserts of Truth, that not the finding but the seeking of 
 it profits men, and that he himself would willingly make over his 
 claim to all truths in return for the sweet labour of investigation, 
 so is the professor of Law not profited by the finding and decid- 
 ing, but by the investigation of a juridical truth, — which is called 
 pleading and practising, — and he would willingly consent to ap- 
 proximate to Truth forever, like an hyperbola to its asymptote, 
 without ever meeting it, seeing he can subsist as an honourable 
 man with wife and child, let such approximation be as tedious as 
 it likes. 
 
 The Schadeck servant had, besides the gold legacy, a farther 
 commission from the Lawyer, whereby the testamentary heir was 
 directed to sum up the mint-dues which he had been obliged to 
 pay while lying under the coining-press of his superiors, as Quin- 
 tus and Conrector ; the which, properly documented and authen- 
 ticated, were forthwith to be made good to him. 
 
 Our Conrector, who now rated himself among the great capi- 
 talists of the world, held his short gold-roll like a sceptre in his 
 hand ; like a basket-net lifted from the sea of the Future, which 
 was now to run on, and bring him all manner of fed-fishes, well- 
 washed, sound and in good season. . 
 
 I cannot relate all things at once ; else I should ere now have 
 told the reader, who must long have been waiting for it, that to 
 
 18 As, by the evidence at present before us, we can found on no other pre- 
 sumption, than that he must die in his thirty- second year ; it would follow, that, 
 in case he died two-and-thirty years after the death of the testatrix, no farthing 
 cculd be claimed by him ; since, according to our fiction, at the making of the 
 testament he was not even one year old. 
 
346 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 the moneyed Conrector his two -and -thirty godchild-pennies but 
 
 too much prefigured the two-and-thirty years of his age ; besides 
 which, today the Cantata- Sunday, this Bartholomew-night and 
 Second of September of his family, came in as a farther aggra- 
 vation. The mother, who should have known the age of her 
 child, said she had forgotten it ; but durst wager he was thirty- 
 two a year ago ; only the Lawyer was a man you could not speak 
 to. "I could swear it myself," said the capitalist ; "I recollect 
 how stupid I felt on Cantata- Sunday last year." Fixlein beheld 
 Death, not as the poet does, in the up-towering, asunder-driving 
 concave -mirror of Imagination ; but as the child, as the savage, 
 as the peasant, as the woman does, in the plane octavo -mirror 
 on the board of a Prayer-book ; and Death looked to him like an 
 old white-headed man, sunk down into slumber in some latticed 
 pew. — 
 
 And yet he thought oftener of him than last year : for joy 
 readily melts us into softness ; and the lackered Wheel of For- 
 tune is a cistern-wheel that empties its water in our eyes 
 
 But the friendly Genius of this terrestrial, or rather aquatic Ball, 
 — for, in the physical and in the moral world, there are more 
 tear-seas than firm land, — has provided for the poor water-insects 
 that float about in it, for us namely, a quite special elixir against 
 spasms in the soul : I declare this same Genius must have studied 
 the whole pathology of man with care ; for to the poor devil who 
 is no Stoic, and can pay no Soul-doctor, that for the fissures of 
 his cranium and his breast might prepare costly prescriptions of 
 simples, he has stowed up cask-wise in all cellarages a precious 
 wound-water, which the patient has only to take and pour over 
 his slashes and bone-breakages — gin-twist, I mean, or beer, or a 
 
 touch of wine By Heaven ! it is either stupid ingratitude 
 
 towards this medicinal Genius on the one hand, or theological 
 confusion of permitted tippling with prohibited drunkenness on 
 the other, if men do not thank God that they have something at 
 hand, which, in the nervous vertigos of life, will instantly supply 
 the place of Philosophy, Christianity, Judaism, Paganism and 
 Time ; — liquor, as I said. 
 
 The Conrector had long before sunset given the village post 
 three groschens of post-money, and commissioned, — for he had a 
 whole cabinet of ducats in his pocket, which all day he was sur- 
 veying in the dark with his hand, — three thalers' worth of Pontac 
 from the town. " I must have a Cantata merrying-making," said 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 347 
 
 he; " if it be my last day, let it be my gayest too 1" I could 
 wish he had given a larger order ; but he kept the bit of modera- 
 tion between his teeth at all times; even in a threatened sham- 
 death - night, and in the midst of jubilee. The question is, 
 Whether he would not have restricted himself to a single bottle, 
 if he had not wished to treat his mother and the Fraulein. Had 
 he lived in the tenth century, when the Day of Judgment was 
 thought to be at hand, or in other centuries, when new Noah's 
 Deluges were expected, and when, accordingly, like sailors in a 
 shipwreck, people bouzed up all, — he would not have spent one 
 kreutzer more on that account. His joy was, that with his 
 legacy he could now satisfy his head-creditor Steinberger, and 
 leave the world an honest man : just people, who make much 
 of money, pay their debts the most punctually. 
 
 The purple Pontac arrived at a time when Fixlein could com- 
 pare the red-chalk-drawings and red-letter-titles of joy, which it 
 would bring out on the cheeks of its drinker and drinkeresses, — 
 with the Evening-carnation of the last clouds about the Sun. . . . 
 
 I declare, among all the spectators of this History, no one 
 can be thinking more about poor Thiennette than I ; neverthe- 
 less, it is not permitted me to bring her out from her tiring-room 
 to my historical scene, before the time. Poor girl ! The Con- 
 rector cannot wish more warmly than his Biographer, that, in the 
 Temple of Nature as in that of Jerusalem, there were a special 
 door — besides that of Death — standing open, through which only 
 the afflicted entered, that a Priest might give them solace. But 
 Thiennette's heart-sickness over all her vanished prospects, over 
 her entombed benefactress, over a whole life enwrapped in the 
 pall, had hitherto, in a grief which the stony Kittmeister rather 
 made to bleed than alleviated, swept all away from her, occupa- 
 tions excepted ; had fettered all her steps which led not to some 
 task, and granted to her eyes nothing to dry them or gladden 
 them, save down-falling eyelids full of dreams and sleep. 
 
 All sorrow raises us above the civic Ceremonial - law, and 
 makes the Prosaist a Psalmist : in sorrow alone have women 
 courage to front opinion. Thiennette walked out only in the 
 evening, and then only in the garden. 
 
 The Conrector could scarcely wait for the appearance of his 
 fair friend, to offer his thanks, — and tonight also — his Pontac. 
 Three Pontac decanters and three wine-glasses were placed out- 
 side on the projecting window-sill of his cottage ; and every time 
 
348 
 
 JEAN PAUL FPiIEDMCH RICHTER. 
 
 he returned from the dusky covered-way amid the flower-forests, 
 he drank a little from his glass, — and the mother sipped now and 
 then from within through the opened window. 
 
 I have already said, his Life-laboratory lay in the south west 
 corner of the garden or park, over against the Castle-Escurial, 
 which stretched hack into the village. In the north-west corner 
 bloomed an acacia-grove, like the floral crown of the garden. Fix- 
 lein turned his steps in that direction also ; to see if, perhaps, 
 he might not cast a happy glance through the wide -latticed grove 
 over the intervening meads to Thiennette. He recoiled a little 
 before two stone steps leading down into a pond before this grove, 
 which were sprinkled with fresh blood. On the flags, also, there 
 was blood hanging. Man shudders at this oil of our life's lamp 
 where he finds it shed : to him it is the red death -signature of 
 the Destroying Angel. Fixlein hurried apprehensively into the 
 grove ; and found here his paler benefactress leaning on the flower- 
 bushes ; her hands with their knitting- ware sunk into her bosom, 
 her eyes lying under their lids as if in the bandage of slumber ; 
 her left arm in the real bandage of blood-letting ; and with cheeks 
 to which the twilight was lending as much red, as late wound- 
 in gs — this day's included — had taken from them. Fixlein, after 
 his first terror — not at this flower's-sleep, but at his own abrupt 
 entrance — began to unrol the spiral butterfly's-sucker of his vision, 
 and to lay it on the motionless leaves of this same sleeping flower. 
 At bottom, I may assert, that this was the first time he had ever 
 looked at her : he was now among the thirties ; and he still con- 
 tinued to believe, that, in a young lady, he must look at the 
 clothes only, not the person, and wait on her with his ears, not 
 with his eyes. 
 
 I impute it to the elevating influences of the Pontac, that the 
 Conrector plucked up courage to — turn, to come back, and em- 
 ploy the resuscitating means of coughing, sneezing, trampling and 
 calling to his Shock, in stronger and stronger doses on the fair 
 sleeper. To take her by the hand, and, with some medical apo- 
 logy, gently pull her out of sleep, this was an audacity of which 
 the Conrector, so long as he could stand for Pontac, and had any 
 grain of judgment left, could never dream. 
 
 However, he did awake her, by those other means. 
 
 Wearied, heavy-laden Thiennette ! how slowly does thy eye 
 open ! The warmest balsam of this earth, soft sleep has shifted 
 aside, and the night-air of memory is again blowing on thy naked 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 349 
 
 wounds ! — And yet was the smiling friend of thy youth the fairest 
 object which thy eye could light on, when it sank from the hang- 
 ing garden of Dreams into this lower one round thee. 
 
 She herself was little conscious, — and the Conrector not at 
 all, — that she was bending her flower-leaves imperceptibly to- 
 wards a terrestrial body, namely towards Fixlein : she resembled 
 an Italian flower, that contains cunningly concealed within it a 
 newyear's gift, which the receiver knows not at first how to ex- 
 tract. But now the golden chain of her late kind deed attracted 
 her as well towards h,im, as him towards her. — She at once gave 
 her eye and her voice a mask of joy ; for she did not put her 
 tears, as Catholics do those of Christ, in relic-vials, upon altars 
 to be worshiped. He could very suitably preface his invitation 
 to the Pontac festival, with a long acknowledgment of thanks for 
 the kind intervention which had opened to him the sources for 
 procuring it. She rose slowly, and walked with him to the ban- 
 quet of wine ; but he was not so discreet, as at first to attempt 
 leading her, or rather not so courageous ; he could more easily 
 have offered a young lady his hand (that is, with marriage ring) 
 than offered her his arm. One only time in his life had he 
 escorted a female, a Lombard Countess from the theatre; a thing 
 truly not to be believed, were not this the secret of it, that he 
 was obliged ; for the lady, a foreigner, parted in the press from 
 all her people, in a bad night, had laid hold of him as a sable 
 Abbe by the arm, and requested him to take her to her inn. He, 
 however, knew the fashions of society, and attended her no far- 
 ther than the porch of his Quintus-mansion, and there directed 
 her with his finger to her inn, which, with thirty blazing windows, 
 was looking down from another street. 
 
 These things he cannot help. But tonight he had scarcely, 
 with his fair faint companion, reached the bank of the pond, into 
 which some superstitious dread of water-sprites had lately poured 
 the pure blood of her left arm, — when, in his terror lest she fell 
 in, with the rest of her blood, over the brink, he quite valiantly 
 laid hold of the sick arm. Thus will much Pontac and a little 
 courage at all times put a Conrector in case to lay hold of a Frau- 
 lein. I aver, that, at the banquet-board of the wine, at the win- 
 dow-sill, he continued in the same conducting position. What 
 a soft group in the penumbra of the Earth, while Night, with its 
 dusky waters, was falling deeper and deeper, and the silver-light 
 of the Moon was already glancing back from the copper-ball of 
 
350 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 the steeple ! I call the group soft, because it consists of a maiden 
 that in two senses has been bleeding ; of a mother again with 
 tears giving her thanks for the happiness of her child ; and of a 
 pious, modest man, pouring wine, and drinking health to both, 
 and who traces in his veins a burning lava-stream, which is boil- 
 ing through his heart, and threatening piece by piece to melt it 
 and bear it away. — A candle stood without among the three 
 bottles, like Beason among the Passions ; on this account the 
 Conrector looked without intermission at the window-panes, for 
 on them (the darkness of the room served as mirror-foil) was 
 painted, among other faces which Fixlein liked, the face he liked 
 best of all, and which he dared to look at only in reflection, the 
 face of Thiennette. 
 
 Every minute was a Federation-festival, and every second a 
 Preparation- Sabbath for it. The Moon was gleaming from the 
 evening dew, and the Pontac from their eyes, and the bean-stalks 
 were casting a shorter grating of shadow. — The quicksilver -drops 
 of stars were hanging more and more continuous in the sable of 
 night. — The warm vapour of the wine set our two friends (like 
 steam-engines) again in motion. 
 
 Nothing makes the heart fuller and bolder than walking to 
 and fro in the night. Fixlein now led the Fraulein in his arm 
 without scruple. By reason of her lancet-wound, Thiennette 
 could only put her hand, in a clasping position, in his arm ; and 
 he, to save her the trouble of holding fast, held fast himself, and 
 pressed her fingers as well as might be with his arm to his heart. 
 It would betray a total want of polished manners to censure his. 
 At the same time, trifles are the provender of Love ; the fingers 
 are electric dischargers of a fire sparkling along every fibre ; sighs 
 are the guiding tones of two approximating hearts ; and the worst 
 and most effectual thing of all in such a case is some misfortune ; 
 for the fire of Love, like that of naphtha, likes to swim on water. 
 Two teardrops, one in another's, one in your own eyes, compose, 
 as with two convex lenses, a microscope which enlarges every- 
 thing, and changes all sorrows into charms. Good sex ! I too 
 consider every sister in misfortune as fair ; and perhaps thou 
 wouldst deserve the name of the Fair, even because thou art the 
 Suffering sex ! 
 
 And if Professor Hunczogsky in Vienna modelled all the 
 wounds of the human frame in wax, to teach his pupils how to 
 cure them, I also, thou good sex, am representing in little figures 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 351 
 
 the cuts and scars of thy spirit, though only to keep away rude 
 hands from inflicting new ones 
 
 Thiennette felt not the loss of the inheritance, but of her that 
 should have left it ; and this more deeply for one little trait, 
 which she had already told his mother, as she now told him : In 
 the last two nights of the Rittmeisterinn, when the feverish watch- 
 ing was holding up to Thiennette' s imagination nothing but the 
 winding-sheet and the mourning-coaches of her protectress ; while 
 she was sitting at the foot of the bed, looking on those fixed eyes, 
 unconsciously quick drops often trickled over her cheeks, while in 
 thought she prefigured the heavy, cumbrous dressing of her be- 
 nefactress for the coffin. Once, after midnight, the dying lady 
 pointed with her finger to her own lips. Thiennette understood 
 her not ; but rose and bent over her face. The Enfeebled tried 
 to lift her head, but could not, — and only rounded her lips. At 
 last, a thought glanced through Thiennette, that the Departing, 
 whose dead arms could now press no beloved heart to her own, 
 wished that she herself should embrace her. 0 then, that in- 
 stant, keen and tearful she pressed her warm lips on the colder, — 
 and she was silent like her that was to speak no more, — and she 
 embraced alone and was not embraced. About four o'clock, the 
 finger waved again ; — she sank down on the stiffened lips — but 
 this had been no signal, for the lips of her friend under the long 
 kiss had grown stiff and cold 
 
 How deeply now, before the infinite Eternity's- countenance of 
 Night, did the cutting of this thought pass through Fixlein's warm 
 soul : "0 thou forsaken one beside me ! No happy accident, no 
 twilight hast thou, like that now glimmering in the heavens, to 
 point to the prospect of a sunny day : without parents art thou, 
 without brother, without friend; here alone on a disblossomed, 
 emptied corner of the Earth ; and thou, left Harvest-flower, must 
 wave lonely and frozen over the withered stubble of the Past." 
 That was the meaning of his thoughts, whose internal words 
 were : " Poor young lady ! Not so much as a half-cousin left ; 
 no nobleman will seek her, and she grows old so forgotten, and 
 she is so good from the very heart — Me she has made happy — 
 Ah, had I the presentation to the parish of Hukelum in my 
 pocket, I should make a trial." .... Their mutual lives, which 
 a straitcutting bond of Destiny was binding so closely together, 
 now rose before him overhung with sable, — and he forthwith con- 
 ducted his friend (for a bashful man may in an hour and a half be 
 
352 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 transformed into the boldest, and then continues so) back to the 
 last flask, that all these upsprouting thistles and passion-flowers 
 of "sorrow might therewith be swept away. I remark, in passing, 
 that this was stupid : the torn vine is full of water- veins as well 
 as grapes; and a soft oppressed heart the beverage of joy can 
 melt only into tears. 
 
 If any man disagree with me, I shall desire him to look at 
 the Conrector, who demonstrates my experimental maxim like a 
 very sjdlogism. — One might arrive at some philosophic views, if 
 one traced out the causes, why liquors — that is to say, in the 
 long-run, more plentiful secretion of the nervous spirits — make 
 men at once pious, soft and poetical. The Poet, like Apollo his 
 father, is forever a youth; and is, what other men are only once, 
 namely in love, — or only after Pontac, namely intoxicated, — all 
 his life long. Fixlein, who had been no poet in the morning, now 
 became one at night : wine made him pious and soft ; the Har- 
 monica-bells in man, which sound to the tones of a higher world, 
 must, like the glass Harmonica-bells, if they are to act, be kept 
 moist. 
 
 He was now standing with her again beside the wavering pond, 
 in which the second blue hemisphere of heaven, with dancing 
 stars and amid quivering trees, was playing ; over the green hills 
 ran the white crooked footpaths dimly along ; on the one moun- 
 tain was the twilight sinking together, on the other was the mist 
 of night rising up ; and over all these vapours of life, hung motion- 
 less and flaming the thousand-armed lustre of the starry heaven, 
 and every arm held in it a burning galaxy 
 
 It now struck eleven Amid such scenes, an unknown 
 
 hand stretches itself out in man, and writes in foreign language 
 on his heart, a dread Mene Mens Tekel Upharsin. ' 'Perhaps 
 by twelve I am dead," thought our friend, in whose soul the 
 Cantata- Sunday, with all its black funeral piles, was mounting up. 
 
 The whole future Crucifixion-path of his friend lay prickly 
 and bethorned before him ; and he saw every bloody trace from 
 which she lifted her foot, — she who had made his own way soft 
 with flowers and leaves. He could no longer restrain himself; 
 trembling in his whole frame, and with a trembling voice, he 
 solemnly said to her : "If the Lord this night call me away, let 
 the half of my fortune be yours ; for it is your goodness I must 
 thank that I am free of debts, as few Teachers are." 
 
 Thiennette, unacquainted with our sex, naturally mistook this 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 853 
 
 speech for a proposal of marriage ; and the fingers of her wounded 
 arm, tonight for the first time, pressed suddenly against the arm 
 in which they lay ; the only living mortal's arm, by which Joy, 
 Love and the Earth, were still united with her bosom. The Con- 
 rector, rapturously terrified at the first pressure of a female hand, 
 bent over his right to take hold of her left ; and Thiennette, ob- 
 serving his unsuccessful movement, lifted her fingers, and laid her 
 whole wounded arm in his, and her whole left hand in his right. 
 Two lovers dwell in the Whispering-gallery, 19 where the faintest 
 breath bodies itself forth into a sound. The good Conrector re- 
 ceived and returned this blissful love-pressure, wherewith our poor 
 powerless soul, stammering, hemmed in, longing, distracted, seeks 
 for a warmer language, which exists not : he was overpowered ; 
 he had not the courage to look at her ; but he looked into the 
 gleam of the twilight, and said (and here for unspeakable love the 
 tears were running warm over his cheeks) : " Ah, I will give you 
 all; fortune, life and all that I have, my heart and my hand." 
 
 She was about to answer, but casting a side-glance, she cried, 
 with a shriek: "Ah, Heaven!" He started round; and per- 
 ceived the white muslin sleeve all dyed with blood ; for in putting 
 her arm into his, she had pushed away the bandage from the 
 open vein. With the speed of lightning, he hurried her into the 
 acacia-grove ; the blood was already running from the muslin ; he 
 grew paler than she, for every drop of it was coming from his 
 heart. The blue-white arm was bared ; the bandage was put on; 
 he tore a piece of gold from his pocket ; clapped it, as one does 
 with open arteries, on the spouting fountain, and bolted with this 
 golden bar, and with the bandage over it, the door out of which 
 her afflicted life was hurrying. — 
 
 When it was over, she looked up to him ; pale, languid, but 
 her eyes were two glistening fountains of an unspeakable love, full 
 of sorrow and full of gratitude. — The exhausting loss of blood was 
 spreading her soul asunder in sighs. Thiennette was dissolved 
 into inexpressible softness ; and the heart, lacerated by so many 
 years, by so many arrows, was plunging with all its wounds in 
 warm streams of tears, to be healed ; as chapped flutes close 
 together by lying in water, and get back their tones. — Before 
 such a magic form, before such a pure heavenly love, her sym- 
 pathising friend was melted between the flames of joy and grief ; 
 
 lt In St. Paul's Church at London, where the slightest whisper sounds over 
 across a space of 143 feet. 
 
 VOL. III. A A 
 
 r 
 
354 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 and sank, with stifled voice, and bent down by love and rapture, 
 on the pale angelic face, the lips of which he timidly pressed, but 
 did not kiss, till all-powerful Love bound its girdles round them, 
 and drew the two closer and closer together, and their two souls, 
 like two tears, melted into one. 0 now, when it struck twelve, 
 the hour of death, did not the lover fancy that her lips were 
 drawing his soul away, and all the fibres and all the nerves of 
 his life closed spasmodically round the last heart in this world, 
 round the last rapture of existence ? . . . . Yes, happy man, 
 thou didst express thy love ; for in thy love thou thoughtest to 
 die 
 
 However, he did not die. After midnight, there floated a 
 balmy morning air through the shaken flowers, and the whole 
 spring was breathing. The blissful lover, setting bounds even to 
 his sea of joy, reminded his delicate beloved, who was now his 
 bride, of the dangers from night-cold ; and himself of the longer 
 night-cold of Death, which was now for long years passed over. — 
 Innocent and blessed, they rose from the grove of their betroth- 
 ment, from its dusk broken by white acacia-flowers and straggling 
 moonbeams. And without, they felt as if a whole wide Past had 
 sunk away in a convulsion of the world ; all was new, light and 
 young. The sky stood full of glittering dewdrops from the ever- 
 lasting Morning; and the stars quivered joyfully asunder, and 
 sank, resolved into beams, down into the hearts of men. — The 
 Moon, with her fountain of light, had overspread and kindled all 
 the garden ; and was hanging above in a starless Blue, as if she 
 had consumed the nearest stars ; and she seemed like a smaller 
 wandering Spring, like a Christ's-face smiling in love of man. — 
 
 Under this light they looked at one another for the first time, 
 after the first words of love ; and the sky gleamed magically down 
 on the disordered features with which the first rapture of love was 
 still standing written on their faces 
 
 Dream, ye beloved, as ye wake, happy as in Paradise, innocent 
 as in Paradise ! 
 
 SIXTH LETTER-BOX. 
 
 Office-impost. One of the most important of Petitions. 
 
 The finest thing was his awakening in his European Settle - 
 ment in the giant Schadeck bed !— With the inflammatory, tick- 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 355 
 
 ling, eating fever of love in his breast ; with the triumphant 
 feeling, that he had now got the introductory program of love 
 put happily by ; and with the sweet resurrection from his living 
 prophetic burial ; and with the joy that now, among his thirties, 
 he could, for the first time, cherish hopes of a longer life (and 
 did not longer mean at least till seventy ?) than he could ten 
 years ago; — with all this stirring life-balsam, in which the living 
 fire-wheel of his heart was rapidly revolving, he lay here, and 
 laughed at his glancing portrait in the bed- canopy ; but he could 
 not do it long, he was obliged to move. For a less happy man, 
 it would .have been gratifying to have measured, — as pilgrims 
 measure the length of their pilgrimage, — not so much by steps 
 as by body-lengths, like Earth-diameters, the superficial content 
 of the bed. But Fixlein, for his own part, had to launch from 
 his bed into warm billowy Life, he had now his dear good Earth 
 again to look after, and a Conrectorship thereon, and a bride to 
 boot. Besides all this, his mother downstairs now admitted that 
 he had last night actually glided through beneath the scythe of 
 Death, like supple-grass, and that yesterday she had not told him 
 merely out of fear of his fear. Still a cold shudder went over 
 him, — especially as he was sober now, — when he looked round 
 at the high Tarpeian Rock, four hours' distance behind him, on 
 the battlements of which he had last night walked hand in hand 
 with Death. 
 
 The only thing that grieved him was, that it was Monday, 
 and that he must back to the Gymnasium. Such a freightage of 
 joys he had never taken with him on his road to town. After 
 four he issued from his house, satisfied with coffee (which he 
 drank in Hukelum merely for his mother's sake, who, for two 
 days after, would still have portions of this woman's- wine to draw 
 from the lees of the pot-sediment) into the cooling dawning May- 
 morning (for joy needs coolness, sorrow sun) ; his Betrothed comes 
 — not indeed to meet him, but still — into his hearing, by her dis- 
 tant morning hymn ; he makes but one momentary turn into the 
 blissful haven of the blooming acacia-grove, which still, like the 
 covenant sealed in it, has no thorns ; he dips his warm hand in 
 the cold-bath of the dewy leaves ; he Wades with pleasure through 
 the beautifying-water of the dew, which, as it imparts colour to 
 faces, eats it away from boots ("but with thirty ducats, a Con- 
 rector may make shift to keep two pairs of boots on the hook"). 
 — And now the Moon, as it were the hanging seal of his last 
 
356 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDMCH RICHTER. 
 
 night's happiness, dips* down into the West, like an emptied 
 bucket of light, and in the East the other overrunning bucket, 
 the Sun, mounts up, and the gushes of light flow broader and 
 broader. — 
 
 The city stood in the celestial flames of Morning. Here his 
 divining-rod (his gold-roll, which, excepting one sixteenth of an 
 inch broken off from it, he carried along with him) began to quiver 
 over all the spots where booty and silver-veins of enjoyment were 
 concealed ; and our rod-diviner easily discovered that the city and 
 the future were a true entire Potosi of delights. 
 
 In his Conrectorate closet he fell upon his knees, and thanked 
 God — not so much for his heritage and bride as — for his life : for 
 he had gone away on Sunday morning with doubts whether he 
 should ever come back ; and it was purely out of love to the 
 reader, and fear lest he might fret himself too much with appre- 
 hension, that I cunningly imputed Fixlein's journey more to his 
 desire of knowing what was in the will, than of making his own 
 will in presence of his mother. Every recovery is a bringing back 
 and palingenesia of our youth : one loves the Earth and those 
 that are on it with a new love. — The Conrector could have found 
 in his heart to take all his class by the locks, and press them to 
 his breast ; but he only did so to his adjutant, the Quartaner, 
 who, in the first Letter-box, was still sitting in the rank of a 
 Quintaner 
 
 His first expedition, after school-hours, was to the house of 
 Meister Steinberger, where, without speaking a word, he counted 
 down fifty florins cash, in ducats, on the table : "At last I repay 
 you," said Fixlein, " the moiety of my debt, and give you many 
 thanks." 
 
 " Ey, Herr Conrector," said the Quartermaster, and continued 
 calmly stuffing puddings as before, "in my bond it is said, 'pay- 
 able at three months' mutual notice. How could a man like me 
 go on, else ? — However, I will change you the gold pieces." 
 Thereupon he advised him that it might be more judicious to 
 take back a florin or two, and buy himself a better hat, and 
 whole shoes: "if you like," added he, "to get a calfskin and 
 half a dozen hareskins dressed, they are lying upstairs." — I 
 should think, for my own part, that to the reader it must be 
 as little a matter of indifference as it was to the Butcher, whether 
 the hero of such a History appear before him with an old tattered 
 potlid of a hat, and a pump -sucker and leg-Larness pair of boots, 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 357 
 
 or in suitable apparel. — In short, before St. John's day, the man 
 was dressed with taste and pomp. 
 
 But now came two most peculiarly important papers — at 
 bottom only one, the Petition for the Hukelum parsonship — to 
 be elaborated ; in regard to which I feel as if I myself must 
 assist. ... It were a simple turn, if now at least the assembled 
 public did not pay attention. 
 
 In the first place, the Conrector searched out and sorted all 
 the Consistorial and Councillor quittances, or rather the toll-bills 
 of the road-money, which he had been obliged to pay, before the 
 toll-gates at the Quintusship and Conrectorship had been thrown 
 open : fdr the executor of the Schadeck testament had to reim- 
 burse him the whole, as his discharge would express it, "to penny 
 and farthing." Another would have summed up this post- excise 
 much more readily ; by merely looking what he — owed ; as these 
 debt-bills and those toll-bills, like parallel passages, elucidate and 
 confirm each other. But in Fixlein's case, there was a small cir- 
 cumstance of peculiarity at work ; which I cannot explain till after 
 what follows. 
 
 It grieved him a little that for his two offices he had been 
 obliged to pay and to borrow no larger a sum than 135 florins, 
 41 kreutzers and one halfpenny. The legacy, it is true, was to 
 pass directly from the hands of the testamentary executor into 
 those of the Regiments - Quartermaster ; but yet he could have 
 liked well, had he — for man is a fool from the very foundation 
 of him — had more to pay, and therefore to inherit. The whole 
 Conrectorate he had, by a slight deposit of 90 florins, plucked, 
 as it were, from the Wheel of Fortune ; and so small a sum must 
 surprise my reader : but what will he say, when I tell him that 
 there are countries where the entry-money into schoolrooms is 
 even more moderate ? In Scherau, a Conrector is charged only 
 88 florins, and perhaps he may have an income triple of thi3 
 sum. Not to speak of Saxony (what, in truth, was to be ex- 
 pected from the cradle of the Reformation, in Religion and Polite 
 Literature), where a schoolmaster and a parson have nothing to 
 pay, — even in Bayreuth, for exampie, in Hof, the progress of 
 improvement has been such,- that a Quartus — a Quartus do I 
 say, — a Tertius — a Tertius do I say, — a Conrector, at entrance 
 on his post, is not required to pay down more than : 
 
358 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 EL rhen. 
 
 Kr. rhen. 
 
 49 For taking the oaths at the Consistorium. 
 0 To the Syndic for the Presentation. 
 0 To the then Bin-germeister. 
 7i For the Government sanction. 
 
 30 
 4 
 2 
 
 45 
 
 Total 81 fl. 56£ kr. 
 
 If the printing-charges of a Rector do stand a little higher in 
 some points, yet, on the other hand, a Tertius, Quartus &c. come 
 cheaper from the press than even a Conrector. Now it is clear 
 that in this case a schoolmaster can subsist ; since, in the course 
 of the very first year, he gets an overplus beyond this dock-money 
 of his office. A schoolmaster must, like his scholars, have been 
 advanced from class to class, before these his loans to Govern- 
 ment, together with the interest for delay of payment, can jointly 
 amount to so much as his yearly income in the highest class. 
 Another thing in his favour is, that our institutions do not — as 
 those of Athens did — prohibit people from entering on office whils 
 in debt ; but every man, with his debt-knapsack on his shoulders, 
 mounts up, step after step, without obstruction. The Pope, in 
 large benefices, appropriates the income of the first year under 
 the title of Annates, or First Fruits ; and accordingly he, in all 
 cases, bestows any large benefice on the possessor of a smaller 
 one, thereby to augment both his own revenues and those of 
 others ; but it shows, in my opinion, a bright distinction between 
 Popery and Lutheranism, that the Consistoriums of the latter 
 abstract from their school - ministers and church - ministers not 
 perhaps above two - thirds of their first yearly income ; though 
 they too, like the Pope, must naturally have an eye to vacancies. 
 
 It may be that I shall here come in collision with the Elector 
 of Mentz, when I confess, that in Schmausen's Corp. Jur. Pub. 
 Germ. I have turned up the Mentz-Imperial-Court-Chancery-tax- 
 ordinance of the 6th January 1659 ; and there investigated how 
 much this same Imperial-Court-Chancery demands, as contrasted 
 with a Consistorium. For example, any man that wishes to be 
 baked or sodden into a Poet Laureate, has 50 florins tax-dues, 
 and 20 florins Chancery-dues to pay down ; whereas, for 20 florins 
 more, he might have been made a Conrector, who is a poet of 
 this species, as it were by the by and ex officio. — The institution 
 of a Gymnasium is permitted for 1000 florins; an extraordinary 
 sum, with which the whole body of the teachers in th<> instituted 
 Gymnasium might with us clear off the entrymoneys of their 
 
LIFE OF QUINTU3 FIXLE1N. 359 
 
 schoolrooms. Again, a Freiherr, who, at any rate, often enough 
 grows old without knowing how, must purchase the venia cetatis 
 with 200 hard florins ; while with the half sum he might have 
 become a schoolmaster, and here age would have come of its own 
 accord. — And a thousand such things ! — T.Ley prove, however, 
 that matters can be at no bad pass in ouv Governments and 
 Circles, where promotions are sold dearer to Folly than to Dili- 
 gence, and where it costs more to institute a school than to serve 
 in one. 
 
 The remarks I made on this subject to a Prince, as well as 
 the remarks a Town- Syndic made on it to myself, are too remark- 
 able to be omitted for mere dread of digressiveness. 
 
 The Syndic — a man of enlarged views, and of fiery patriotism, 
 the warmth of which was the more beneficent that he collected all 
 the beams of it into one focus, and directed them to himself and 
 his family — gave me (I had perhaps been comparing the School- 
 bench and the School- stair to the bench and the ladder, on which 
 people are laid when about to be tortured) the best reply: "If 
 a schoolmaster consume nothing but 30 reichsthalers ; 20 if he 
 annually purchase manufactured goods, according as Political 
 Economists have calculated for each individual, namely, to the 
 amount of 5 reichsthalers ; and no more hundredweights of victual 
 than these assume, namely 10 ; in short, if he live like a sub- 
 stantial wood-cutter, — then the Devil must be in it, if he cannot 
 yearly lay by so much net profit, as shall, in the long-run, pay 
 the interest of his entry-debts." 
 
 The Syndic must have failed to convince me at the time, 
 since I afterwards told the Flachsenfingen Prince : 21 " Illustrious 
 Sir, you know not, but I do — not a player in your Theatre would 
 act the Schoolmaster in Engel's Prodigal Son, three nights run- 
 ning, for such a sum as every real Schoolmaster has to take for 
 acting it all the days of the year.« — In Prussia, Invalids are made 
 Schoolmasters; with us, Schoolmasters are made Invalids." . . . 
 
 But to our story ! Fixlein wrote out the inventory of his 
 
 20 So much, according to Political Economists, a man yearly requires in Ger- 
 many. 
 
 21 This singular tone of my address to a Prince can only he excused hy the 
 equally singular relation, wherein the Biographer stands to the Flachsenfingen 
 Sovereign, and which I would willingly unfold here, were it not that, in my Book, 
 which, under the title of Dog -post-days, I mean to give to the world at Easter- 
 fair 1795, I hoped to expound the matter to universal satisfaction. 
 
s j 
 
 Crown-debts ; but with quite ft iliffcwnt purpose fha-n the reader 
 will guess, who has still the Sch&deck testament in his head. In 
 :-i w;ri. -ir_:el :: zi Firs:- :: H^el^n. T: :e s clergy- 
 man, and in the place where Ins cradle stood, and all the little 
 gardens of his childhood, his mother also, and the grove of be- 
 trothment, — this was an open gate into a New Jerusalem, sup- 
 posing even that the firing had been nothing but a meagre peni- 
 tentiary. Ike main point was, he might marry, if he were 
 appointed. For, in the capacity of lank Connector , supported only 
 by the strengthening-girth of his waistcoat, and with emoluments 
 whereby scarcely the purchase-money of a — purse was to be come 
 at ; in this way he was more like collecting wick and tallow for 
 his burial-torch than for his bridal one. 
 
 For the Schoolmaster class are, in well -ordered States, as 
 little permitted to marry as the Soldiery. In Conringius aV An- 
 iiquitatibus Aeademicis, where in every leaf it is proved that all 
 cloisters were originally schools, I hit upon the reason. Our 
 schools are now cloisters, and consequently we endeavour to main- 
 tain in our teachers at least an imitation of the Three Monastic 
 Yo^s. Tie w« of Obedience m%bt jerhaps be sufficiently en- 
 forced by School-Inspectors : but the second vow, that of Celibacy , 
 would be more hard of attainment, were it not that, by one of the 
 lest political arrangements, the third tow, I mean a beautiful 
 equality in Poverty, is so admirably attended to, that no man who 
 has made it needs any farther testimonium paupertatis g — and 
 now let this man, if he likes, lay hold of a matrimonial half, when 
 of the two halves each has a whole stomach, and nothing for it 
 but half-coins and half-beer ! . . . . 
 
 I know well, millions of my readers would themselves com- 
 pose this Petition for the Conrector, and ride with it to Schadeck 
 to his Lordship, that so the poor rogue might get the sheepfold, 
 with the annexed wedding-mansion : for they see dearly enough, 
 that directly thereafter one of the best Letter -Boxes would be 
 written that ever came from such a repository. 
 
 Fixlein s Petition was particularly good and striking : it sub- 
 mitted to the Eittmeister four grounds of preference : 1. " He 
 was a native of the parish : his patents and ancestors had already 
 done HiLkclun service ; therefore he prayed," &c. 
 
 2. '* The here-documented official debts of 135 florins, 41 
 kreutzers and one halfpenny, the cancelling of which a never-to- 
 be -forgotten testament secured him, he himself could dear, in 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 361 
 
 case he obtained the living, and so hereby give up his claim to 
 the legacy," &c. 
 
 Voluntary Note by me. It is plain he means to bribe his 
 Godfather, whom the lady's testament has put into a fume. But, 
 gentle reader, blame not without mercy a poor, oppressed, heavy- 
 laden school-man and school-horse for an indelicate insinuation, 
 which truly was never mine. Consider, Fixlein knew that the 
 Rittmeister was a cormorant towards the poor, as he was a squan- 
 derer towards the rich. It may be, too, the Conrector might 
 once or twice have heard, in the Law Courts, of patrons, by 
 whom not indeed the church and churchyard — though these things 
 are articles of commerce in England — so much as the true man- 
 agement of them had been sold, or rather farmed to farming- 
 candidates. I know from Lange, 22 that the Church must support 
 its patron, when he has nothing to live upon : and might not a 
 nobleman, before he actually began begging, be justified in taking 
 a little advance, a fore-payment of his alimentary moneys, from 
 the hands of his pulpit-farmer ? — 
 
 3. " He had lately betrothed himself with Fraulein von Thien- 
 nette, and given her a piece of gold, as marriage - pledge ; and 
 could therefore wed the said Fraulein were he once provided 
 for," &c. 
 
 Voluntary Note by me. I hold this ground to be the strongest 
 in the whole Petition. In the eyes of Herr von Auf hammer, 
 Thiennette's genealogical tree was long since stubbed, disleaved, 
 worm-eaten and full of millepedes : she was his (Economa, his 
 Castle-Stewardess and Legatess a Latere for his domestics ; and 
 with her pretensions for an alms - coffer, was threatening in the 
 end to become a burden to him. His indignant wish that she 
 had been provided for with Fixlein's legacy might now be ful- 
 filled. In a word, if Fixlein become Parson, he will have the 
 third ground to thank for it ; not at all the mad fourth 
 
 4. " He had learned with sorrow, that the name of his Shock, 
 which he had purchased from an Emigrant at Leipzig, meant 
 Egidius in German ; and that the dog had drawn upon him the 
 displeasure of his Lordship. Far be it from him so to designate 
 the Shock in future ; but he would take it as a special grace, if 
 for the dog, which he at present called without any name, his 
 Lordship would be pleased to appoint one himself." 
 
 My Voluntary Note. The dog then, it seems, to which the 
 
 22 His Clerical Law, p. 551. 
 
362 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 nobleman has hitherto been godfather, is to receive its name a 
 second time from him ! — But how can the famishing gardener's 
 son, whose career never mounted higher than from the school- 
 bench to the school - chair, and who never spoke with polished 
 ladies, except singing, namely in the church, how can he be 
 expected, in fingering such a string, to educe from it any finer 
 tone than the pedantic one ? And yet the source of it lies deeper : 
 not the contracted situation, but the contracted eye, not a favourite 
 science, but a narrow plebeian soul, makes us pedantic, a soul that 
 cannot measure and separate the concentric circles of human 
 knowledge and activity, that confounds the focus of universal 
 human life, by reason of the focal distance, with every two or 
 three converging rays ; and that cannot see all, and tolerate all 
 In short, the true Pedant is the Intolerant. 
 
 The Conrector wrote out his petition splendidly in five propi- 
 tious evenings ; employed a peculiar ink for the purpose ; worked 
 not indeed so long over it as the stupid Manucius over a Latin 
 letter, namely, some months, if Scioppius' word is to be taken ; 
 still less so long as another scholar at a Latin epistle, who — truly 
 we have nothing but Morhof 's word for it — hatched it during four 
 whole months ; inserting his variations, adjectives, feet, with the 
 authorities for his phrases, accurately marked between the lines. 
 Fixlein possessed a more thorough-going genius, and had com- 
 pletely mastered the whole enterprise in sixteen days. While 
 sealing, he thought, as we all do, how this cover was the seed- 
 husk of a great entire Future, the rind of many sweet or bitter 
 fruits, the swathing of his whole after-life. 
 
 Heaven bless his cover ; but I let you throw me from the 
 Tower of Babel, if he get the parsonage : can't you see, then, 
 that Auf hammer's hands are tied ? In spite of all his other 
 faults, or even because of them, he will stand like iron by his 
 word, which hs has given so long ago to the Subrector. It were 
 another mattei had he been resident at Court ; for there, where 
 old German manners still are, no promise is kept ; for as, ac- 
 cording to Moser, the Ancient Germans kept only such promises 
 as they made in the forenoon (in the afternoon they were all 
 dead-drunk) , — so the Court Germans likewise keep no afternoon 
 promise ; forenoon ones they would keep if they made any, which, 
 however, cannot possibly happen, as at those hours they are — 
 sleeping. 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 363 
 
 SEVENTH LETTER-BOX. 
 
 Sermon. ScJwol-Exhibition. Splendid Mistake. 
 
 The Conrector received his 135 florins, 43 kreutzers, one 
 halfpenny Frankish ; hnt no answer : the dog remained without 
 name, his master without parsonage. Meanwhile the summer 
 passed away ; and the Dragoon Eittmeister had yet drawn out no 
 pike from the Candidate breeding-pond, and thrown him into the 
 feeding-pond of the Hukelum parsonage. It gratified him to be 
 behung with prayers like a Spanish guardian Saint ; and he post- 
 poned (though determined to prefer the Subrector) granting any 
 one petition, till he had seven-and-thirty dyers', buttonmakers', 
 tinsmiths' sons, whose petitions he could at the same time refuse. 
 Grudge not him of Auf hammer this outlengthening of his elec- 
 toral power ! He knows the privileges of rank ; feels that a 
 nobleman is like Timoleon, who gained his greatest victories on 
 his birthday, and had nothing more to do than name some squire ss, 
 countess, or the like, as his mother. A man, however, who has 
 been exalted to the Peerage, while still a foetus, may with more 
 propriety be likened to the spinner, which, contrariwise to all 
 other insects, passes from the chrysalis state, and becomes a per- 
 fect insect in its mother's womb. — 
 
 But to proceed ! Fixlein was at present not without cash. It 
 will be the same as if I made a present of it to the reader, when 
 I reveal to him, that of the legacy, which was clearing off old 
 scores, he had still thirty-five florins left to himself, as allodium 
 and pocket - money, wherewith he might purchase whatsoever 
 seemed good to him. And how came he by so large a sum, by 
 so considerable a competence ? Simply by this means : Every 
 time he changed a piece of gold, and especially at every payment 
 he received, it had been his custom to throw in, blindly at ran- 
 dom, two, three, or four small coins, among the papers of his 
 trunk. His purpose was to astonish himself one day, when he 
 summed up and took possession of this sleeping capital. And, 
 by Heaven ! he reached it too, when on mounting the throne of 
 his Conrectorate, he drew out these funds from among his papers, 
 and applied them to the coronation charges. For the present, he 
 sowed them in again among his waste letters. Foolish Fixlein ! 
 I mean, had he not luckily exposed his legacy to jeopardy, having 
 offered it as bounty-money, and luck-penny to the patron, this 
 false clutch of his at the knocker of the Hukelum church. - door 
 
364 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 would certainly have vexed him ; hut now if he had missed the 
 knocker, he had the luck-penny again, and could be merry. 
 
 I now advance a little way in his History, and hit, in the rock 
 of his Life, upon so fine a vein of silver, I mean upon so fine a 
 day, that I must (I believe) content myself even in regard to the 
 twenty-third of Trinity -term, when he preached a vacation sermon 
 in his dear native village, with a brief transitory notice. 
 
 In itself the sermon was good and glorious ; and the day a 
 rich day of pleasure ; but I should really need to have more hours 
 at my disposal than I can steal from May, in which I am at pre- 
 sent living and writing ; and more strength than wandering through 
 this fine weather has left me for landscape pictures of the same, 
 before I could attempt, with any well-founded hope, to draw out 
 a mathematical estimate of the length and thickness, and the 
 vibrations and accordant relations to each other, of the various 
 strings, which combined together to form for his heart a Music 
 of the Spheres, on this day of Trinity-term, though such a thing 
 
 would please myself as much as another Do not ask me ! 
 
 In my opinion, when a man preaches on Sunday before all the 
 peasants, who had carried him in their arms when a gardener's 
 boy; farther, before his mother, who is leading off her tears 
 through the conduit of her satin muff ; farther, before his Lord- 
 ship, whom he can positively command to be blessed ; and finally, 
 before his muslin bride, who is already blessed, and changing 
 almost into stone, to find that the same lips can both kiss and 
 preach : in my opinion, I say, when a man effects all this, he has 
 some right to require of any Biographer who would paint his 
 situation, that he — hold his jaw ; and of the reader who would 
 sympathise with it, that he open his, and preach himself. 
 
 But what I must ex officio depict, is the day to which this 
 Sunday was but the prelude, the vigil and the whet ; I mean the 
 prelude, the vigil and the whet to the Martini Actus, or Martin- 
 mas Exhibition, of his school. On Sunday was the Sermon, on 
 Wednesday the Actus, on Tuesday the Kehearsal. This Tuesday 
 shall now be delineated to the universe. 
 
 I count upon it that I shall not be read by mere people of the 
 world alone, to whom a School-Actus cannot truly appear much 
 better, or more interesting, than some Investiture of a Bishop, or 
 the opera seria of a Frankfort Coronation ; but that I likewise 
 have people before me, who have been at schools, and who know 
 how the school-drama of an Actus, and the stage-manager, and 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLETN. 
 
 865 
 
 the playbill (the Program) thereof are to be estimated, still with- 
 out overrating their importance. 
 
 Before proceeding to the Kehearsal of the Martini Actus, I 
 impose upon myself, as dramaturgist of the play, the duty, if not 
 of extracting, at least of recording the Conrector's Letter of In- 
 vitation. In this composition he said many things ; and (what 
 an author likes so well) made proposals rather than reproaches ; 
 interrogatively reminding the public, Whether in regard to the 
 well-known head-breakages of Priscian on the part of the Mag- 
 nates in Pest and Poland, our school-houses were not the best 
 quarantine and lazar-houses to protect us against infectious bar- 
 barisms ? Moreover, he defended in schools what could be de- 
 fended (and nothing in the world is sweeter or easier than a de- 
 fence) ; and said, Schoolmasters, who not quite justifiably, like 
 certain Courts, spoke nothing, and let nothing be spoken to them 
 but Latin, might plead the Romans in excuse, whose subjects, 
 and whose kings, at least in their epistles and public transactions, 
 were obliged to make use of the Latin tongue. He wondered why 
 only our Greek, and not also our Latin Grammars, were com- 
 posed in Latin, and put the pregnant question : Whether the 
 Romans, when they taught their little children the Latin tongue, 
 did it in any other than in this same ? Thereupon he went over 
 to the Actus, and said what follows, in his own words : 
 
 "I am minded to prove, in a subsequent Invitation, that 
 everything which can be said or known about the great founder 
 of the Reformation, the subject of our present Martini Prolusions, 
 has been long ago exhausted, as well by Seckendorf as others. 
 In fact, with regard to Luther's personalities, his table-talk, in- 
 comes, journeys, clothes, and so forth, there can now nothing new 
 be brought forward, if at the same time it is to be true. Never- 
 theless, the field of the Reformation history is, to speak in a 
 figure, by no means wholly cultivated ; and it does appear to me 
 as if the inquirer even of the present day might in vain look 
 about for correct intelligence respecting the children, grandchil- 
 dren and children's children, down to our own times, of this great 
 Reformer ; all of whom, however, appertain, in a more remote 
 degree, to the Reformation history, as he himself in a nearer. 
 Thou shalt not perhaps be threshing, said I to myself, altogether 
 empty straw, if, according to thy small ability, thou bring for- 
 ward and cultivate this neglected branch of History. And so have 
 I ventured, with the last male descendant of Luther, namely, with 
 
966 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 the Advocate Martin Gottlob Luther, who practised in Dresden, 
 and deceased there in 1759, to make a beginning of a more spe- 
 cial Eeformation history. My feeble attempt, in regard to this 
 Reformationary Advocate, will be sufficiently rewarded, should it 
 excite to better works on the subject : however, the little which 
 I have succeeded in digging up and collecting with regard to him 
 I here submissively, obediently, and humbly request all friends 
 and patrons of the Flachsenfingen Gymnasium to listen to, on the 
 14th of November, from the mouths of six well-conditioned pero- 
 rators. In the first place, shall 
 
 " Gottlieb Spiesglass, a Flachsenfinger, endeavour to show, 
 in a Latin oration, that Martin Gottlob Luther was certainly de- 
 scended of the Luther family. After him strives 
 
 " Friedrich Christian Krabbler, from Hukelum, in German 
 prose, to appreciate the influence which Martin Gottlob Luther 
 exercised on the then existing Reformation ; whereupon, after 
 him, will 
 
 "Daniel Lorenz Stenzinger deliver, in Latin verse, an ac- 
 count of Martin Gottlob Luther's lawsuits ; embracing the pro- 
 bable merits of Advocates generally, in regard to the Reforma- 
 tion. Which then will give opportunity to 
 
 " Nikol Tobias Pfizman to come forward in French, and re- 
 count the most important circumstances of Martin Gottlob 
 Luther's school-years, university-life and riper age. And now, 
 when 
 
 "Andreas Eintarm shall have endeavoured, in German verse, 
 to apologise for the possible failings of this representative of the 
 great Luther, will 
 
 "Justus Strobel, in Latin verse according to ability, sing his 
 uprightness and integrity in the Advocate profession ; whereafter 
 I myself shall mount the cathedra, and most humbly thank all 
 the patrons of the Flachsenfingen School, and then farther bring 
 forward those portions in the life of this remarkable man, of which 
 we yet know absolutely nothing, they being spared Deo volente 
 for the speakers of the next Martini Actus." 
 
 The day before the Actus offered as it were the proof-shot 
 and sample-sheet of the Wednesday. Persons who on account 
 of dress could not be present at the gredl school-festival, espe- 
 
LIFE OF QTJINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 367 
 
 cially ladies, made their appearance on Tuesday, during the six 
 proof-orations. No one can be readier than I to Subordinate the 
 proof -Actus to the Wednesday- Actus ; and I do anything but 
 need being stimulated suitably to estimate the solemn feast of a 
 School ; but on the other hand I am equally convinced that no 
 one, who did not go to the real Actus of Wednesday, could pos- 
 sibly figure anything more splendid than the proof-day preceding ; 
 because he could have no object wherewith to compare the pomp 
 in which the Primate of the festival drove in with his triumphal 
 chariot and six — to call the six brethren-speakers coach-horses 
 — next morning in presence of ladies and Councillor gentlemen. 
 Smile away, Fixlein, at this astonishment over thy today's Ova- 
 tion, which is leading on tomorrow's Triumph : on thy dissolving 
 countenance quivers happy Self, feeding on these incense-fumes ; 
 but a vanity like thine, and that only, which enjoys without com- 
 paring or despising, can one tolerate, will one foster. But what 
 flowed over all his heart, like a melting sunbeam over wax, was 
 his mother, who after much persuasion had ventured in her Sun- 
 day clothes humbly to place herself quite low down, beside the 
 door of the Prima class-room. It were difficult to say who is 
 happier, the mother, beholding how he whom she has borne un- 
 der her heart can direct such noble young gentlemen, and hearing 
 how he along with them can talk of these really high things and 
 understand them too ; — or the son, who, like some of the heroes 
 of Antiquity, has the felicity of triumphing in the lifetime of his 
 mother. I have never in my writings or doings cast a stone upon 
 the late Burchardt Grossmann, who under the initial letters of 
 the stanzas in his song, " Brick an, du liebe Morgenrothe," in- 
 serted the letters of his own name ; and still less have I ever 
 censured any poor herbwoman for smoothing out her winding- 
 sheet, while still living, and making herself one-twelfth of a dozen 
 of grave -shifts. Nor do I regard the man as wise — though in- 
 deed as very clever and pedantic — who can fret his gall-bladder 
 full because every one of us leaf-miners views the leaf whereon 
 he is mining as a park-garden, as a fifth Quarter of the World 
 (so near and rich is it) ; the leaf-pores as so many Valleys of 
 Tempe, the leaf-skeleton as a Liberty-tree, a Bread-tree and Life- 
 tree, and the dew-drops as the Ocean. We poor day-moths, 
 evening-moths and night-moths, fall universally into the same 
 error, only on different leaves ; and whosoever (as I do) laughs 
 at the important airs with which the schoolmaster issues his 
 
368 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 programs, the dramaturgist his playbills, the classical variation- 
 alms-gatherer his alphabetic letters, — does it, if he is wise (as is 
 the case here), with the consciousness of his own similar folly; 
 and laughs in regard to his neighbour, at nothing but mankind 
 and himself. 
 
 The mother was not to be detained ; she must off, this very 
 night, to Hukelum, to give the Fraulein Thiennette at least some 
 tidings of this glorious business. — 
 
 And now the World will bet a hundred to one, that I forth- 
 with take biographical wax, and emboss such a wax-figure cabinet 
 of the Actus itself as shall be single of its kind. 
 
 But on Wednesday morning, while the hope-intoxicated Con- 
 rector was just about putting on his fine raiment, something 
 knocked. 
 
 It was the well-known servant of the Eittmeister, carrying 
 the Hukelum Presentation for the Subrector Fiichshm in his 
 pocket. To the last-named gentleman he had been sent with 
 this call to the parsonage : but he had distinguished ill betwixt 
 Sub and Corrector; and had besides his own good reasons for 
 directing his steps to the latter ; for he thought : " Who can it 
 be that gets it, but the parson that preached last Sunday, and 
 that comes from the village, and is engaged to our Fraulein 
 Thiennette, and to whom I brought a clock and a roll of ducats 
 already?" That his Lordship could pass over his own godson, 
 never entered the man's head. 
 
 Fixlein read the address of the Appointment : "To the Ke- 
 verend the Parson Fixlein of Hukelum." He naturally enough 
 made the same mistake as the lackey ; and broke up the Pre- 
 sentation as his own : and finding moreover in the body of the 
 paper no special mention of persons, but only of a Schul-unter- 
 befehlshaber or School-undergo vernor (instead of Subrector), he 
 could not but persist in his error. Before I properly explain why 
 the Rittmeister's Lawyer, the framer of the Presentation, had so 
 designated a Subrector — we two, the reader and myself, will keep 
 an eye for a moment on Fixlein's joyful saltations — on his grate- 
 fully-streaming eyes — on his full hands so laden with bounty — 
 on the present of two ducats, which he drops into the hands of 
 the mitre-bearer, as willingly as he will soon drop his own peda- 
 gogic office. Could he tell what to think (of the Rittmeister), or 
 to write (to the same), or to table (for the lackey)? Did he not 
 ask tidings of the noble health of his benefactor over and over, 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 369 
 
 though the servant answered him with all distinctness at the very 
 first ? And was not this same man, who belonged to the nose- 
 upturning, shoulder-shrugging, shoulder-knotted, toad-eating spe- 
 cies of men, at last so moved by the joy which he had imparted, 
 that he determined on the spot, to bestow his presence on the 
 new clergyman's School- Actus, though no person of quality what- 
 ever was to be there? Fixlein, in the first place, sealed his 
 letter of thanks ; and courteously invited this messenger of good 
 news to visit him frequently in the Parsonage ; and to call this 
 evening in passing at his mother's, and give her a lecture for not 
 staying last night, when she might have seen the Presentation 
 from his Lordship arrive today. 
 
 The lackey being gone, Fixlein for joy began to grow scep- 
 tical — and timorous (wherefore, to prevent filching, he stowed his 
 Presentation securely in his coffer, under keeping of two padlocks) ; 
 and devout and softened, since he thanked God without scruple 
 for all good that happened to him, and never wrote this Eternal 
 Name but in pulpit characters and with coloured ink, as the Jew- 
 ish copyists never wrote it except in ornamental letters and when 
 newly washed; 23 — and deaf also did the parson grow, so that he 
 scarcely heard the soft wooing-hour of the Actus — for a still 
 softer one beside Thiennette, with its rose-bushes and rose-honey, 
 would not leave his thoughts. He who of old, when Fortune 
 made a wry face at him, was wont, like children in their sport at 
 one another, to laugh at her so long till she herself was obliged 
 to begin smiling, — he was now flying as on a huge seesaw higher 
 and higher, quicker and quicker aloft. 
 
 But before the Actus, let us examine the Schadeck Lawyer. 
 Fixlein instead of Fiichslein u he had written from uncertainty 
 about the spelling of the name ; the more naturally as in tran- 
 scribing the Kittmeisterinn's will, the former had occurred so often. 
 Von, this triumphal arch he durst not set up before Fuchslein's 
 new name, because Aufhammer forbade it, considering Hans 
 Fuchslein as a mushroom who had no right to vons and titles oi 
 nobility, for all his patents. In fine, the Presentation-writer was 
 possessed with Campe's 25 whim of Germanising everything, mind- 
 
 23 Eichhorn's Einleit. ins A. T. (Introduction to the Old Testament), vol. ii. 
 
 24 Both have the same sound. Fiichslein means Foxling, Foxwhelp. — Ed . 
 
 s;i Campe, a German philologist, who, along with several others of that class, 
 has really proposed, as represented in the Text, to substitute for all Greek or 
 Latin derivatives corresponding German terms of the like import. Geography, 
 which may be Erdbeschreibung (Earth-description), was thenceforth to be no- 
 VOL. in. BB 
 
370 
 
 JE<LN PAUL FKIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 ing little though when Germanised it should cease to be intelli- 
 gible ; — as if a word needed any better act of naturalisation than 
 that which universal intelligibility imparts to it. In itself it is 
 the same — the rather as all languages, like all men, are cognate, 
 intermarried and intermixed — whether a word was invented by a 
 savage or a foreigner ; whether it grew up like moss amid the 
 German forests, or like street-grass, in the pavement of the Ro- 
 man forum. The Lawyer, on the other hand, contended that it 
 was different ; and accordingly he hid not from any of his clients 
 that Tagefarth (Day-turn) meant Term, and that Appealing was 
 Berufen (Becalling). On this principle he dressed the word Sub- 
 rector in the new livery of School-under governor. And this ver- 
 sion farther converted the Schoolmaster into Parson : to such a 
 degree does our civic fortune — not our personal well-being, which 
 supports itself on our own internal soil and resources — grow 
 merely on the drift-mould of accidents, connexions, acquaintances, 
 and Heaven or the Devil knows what ! — 
 
 By the by, from a Lawyer, at the same time a Country Judge, 
 I should certainly have looked for more sense ; I should (I may 
 be mistaken) have presumed he knew that the Acts or Reports, 
 which in former times (see Hoffmann's German or un-German 
 Law-practice) were written in Latin, as before the times of Joseph 
 the Hungarian, — are now, if we may say so without offence, per- 
 haps written fully more in the German dialect than in the Latin; 
 and in support of this opinion, I can point to whole lines of Ger- 
 man language, to be found in these Imperial-Court-Confessions. 
 However, I will not believe that the Jurist is endeavouring, be- 
 cause Imhofer declares the Roman tongue to be the mother tongue 
 in the other world, to disengage himself from a language, by 
 means of which, like the Roman Eagle, or later, like the Roman 
 Fish-heron (Pope), he has clutched such abundant booty in his 
 talons. 
 
 Toll, toll your bell for the Actus ; stream in, in to the cere- 
 mony : who cares for it ? Neither I nor the Ex-Conrector. The 
 six pigmy Ciceros will in vain set forth before us in sumptuous 
 dress their thoughts and bodies. The draught-wind of Chance 
 has blown away from the Actus its powder-nimbus of glory ; and 
 
 thing else ; a Geometer "became an Earthmeasurer, &c. &c. School-undergo- 
 vernor, instead of Subrector, is by no means the happiest example of the system, 
 and seems due rather to the Schadeck Lawyer tlian to Campe, whom our Author 
 has elsewhere more than once eulogised for his project in similar style. — Ed. 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 371 
 
 the Conrector that was has discovered how small a matter a ca- 
 thedra is, and how great a one a pulpit : "I should not have 
 thought," thought he now, " when I became Conrector, that 
 there could be anything grander, I mean a Parson." Man, be- 
 hind his everlasting blind, which he only colours differently, and 
 makes no thinner, carries his pride with him from one step to 
 another ; and, on the higher step, blames only the pride of the 
 lower. 
 
 The best of the Actus was, that the Kegiments- Quartermaster, 
 and Master Butcher, Steinberg, attended there, embaled in a 
 long woollen shag. During the solemnity, the Subrector Hans 
 von Fiichslein cast several gratified and inquiring glances on the 
 Schadeck servant, who did not once look at him : Hans would 
 have staked his head, that after the Actus, the fellow would wait 
 upon him. When at last the sextuple cockerel-brood had on their 
 dunghill done crowing, that is to say, had perorated, the scholas- 
 tic cocker, over whom a higher banner was now waving, himself 
 came upon the stage ; and delivered to the School-Inspectorships, 
 to the Subrectorship, to the Guardianship and the Lackeyship, 
 his most grateful thanks for their attendance ; shortly announcing 
 to them at the same time, " that Providence had now called him 
 from his post to another ; and committed to him, unworthy as he 
 was, the cure of souls in the Hukelum parish, as well as in the 
 Schadeck chapel of ease." 
 
 This little address, to appearance, well-nigh blew up the then 
 Subrector Hans von Fiichslein from his chair ; and his face looked 
 of a mingled colour, like red bole, green chalk, tinsel-vellow and 
 vomissement de la reine. 
 
 The tall Quartermaster erected himself considerably in his 
 shag, and hummed loud enough in happy forgetfulness : " The 
 Dickens ! — Parson ?" 
 
 The Subrector dashed-by like a comet before the lackey : or- 
 dered him to call and take a letter for his master ; strode home, 
 and prepared for his patron, who at Schadeck was waiting for a 
 long thanksgiving psalm, a short satirical epistle, as nervous as 
 haste would permit, and mingled a few nicknames and verbal 
 injuries along with it. 
 
 The courier handed in, to his master, Fixlein's song of grati- 
 tude, and Fiichslein's invectives, with the same hand. The Dra- 
 goon Rittmeister, incensed at the ill-mannered churl, and bound 
 to his word, which Fixlein had publicly announced in his Actus, 
 
372 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 forthwith wrote back to the new Parson an acceptance and ratifi- 
 cation ; and Fixlein is and remains, to the joy of us all, incon- 
 testable ordained parson of Hukelum. 
 
 His disappointed rival has still this consolation, that he holds 
 a seat in the wasp-nest of the Neue Allgemeine Deutsche Biblio- 
 thek. 26 Should the Parson ever chrysalise himself into an author, 
 the watch-wasp may then buzz out, and dart its sting into the 
 chrysalis, and put its own brood in the room of the murdered 
 butterfly. As the Subrector everywhere went about, and threat- 
 ened in plain terms that he would review his colleague, let not 
 the public be surprised that Fixlein's Errata, and his Masoretic 
 Exercitationes , are to this hour withheld from it. 
 
 In spring, the widowed church receives her new husband ; 
 and how it will be, when Fixlein, under a canopy of flower-trees, 
 takes the Sponsa Christi in one hand, and his own Sponsa in the 
 other, — this, without an Eighth Letter-Box, which, in the pre- 
 sent case, may be a true jewel-box and rainbow -key, 27 can no 
 mortal figure, except the Sponsus himself. 
 
 EIGHTH LETTEK-BOX. 
 
 Instalment in the Parsonage. 
 
 On the 15th of April 1793, the reader may observe, far down 
 in the hollow, three baggage-wagons groaning along. These bag- 
 gage-wagons are transporting the house-gear of the new Parson 
 to Hukelum : the proprietor himself, with a little escort of his 
 parishioners, is marching at their side, that of his china sets and 
 household furniture there may be nothing broken in the eighteenth 
 century, as the whole came down to him unbroken from the seven- 
 teenth. Fixlein hears the School-bell ringing behind him ; but 
 this chime now sings to him, like a curfew, the songs of future 
 rest : he is now escaped from the Death-valley of the Gymnasium, 
 and admitted into the abodes of the Blessed. Here dwells no 
 envy, no colleague, no Subrector ; here in the heavenly country, 
 no man works in the New Universal German Library ; here, in 
 
 26 New Universal German Library, a reviewing periodical ; in those days con- 
 ducted by Nicolai, a sworn enemy to what has since been called the New School. 
 (See Tieck, ante) — Ed. 
 
 37 Superstition declares, that on the spot where the rainbow rises, a golden 
 key is left. 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 373 
 
 the heavenly Hukelumic Jerusalem, they do nothing I lit sing 
 praises in the church ; and here the Perfected requires no more 
 increase of knowledge .... Here too one need not sorrow that 
 Sunday and Saint's day so often fall together into one. 
 
 Truth to tell, the Parson goes too far : hut it was his way 
 from of old never to paint out the whole and half shadows of a 
 situation, till he was got into a new one ; the beauties of which 
 he could then enhance by contrast with the former. For it re- 
 quires little reflection to discover that the torments of a school- 
 master are nothing so extraordinary ; but, on the contrary, as in 
 the Gymnasium, he mounts from one degree to another, not very 
 dissimilar to the common torments of Hell, which, in spite of 
 their eternity, grow weaker from century to century. Moreover, 
 since, according to the saying of a Frenchman, deux afflictions 
 mises ensemble peuvent devenir une consolation, a man gets afflic- 
 tions enow in a school to console him ; seeing out of eight com- 
 bined afflictions — I reckon only one for every teacher — certainly 
 more comfort is to be extracted than out of two. The only pity 
 is, that school-people will never act towards each other as court- 
 people do : none but polished men and polished glasses will readily 
 cohere. In addition to all this, in schools — and in offices gener- 
 ally — one is always recompensed : for, as in the second life, a 
 greater virtue is the recompense of an earthly one, so, in the 
 Schoolmaster's case, his merits are always rewarded by more op- 
 portunities for new merits ; and often enough he is not dismissed 
 from his post at all. — 
 
 Eight Gymnasiasts are trotting about in the Parsonage, set- 
 ting up, nailing to, hauling in. I think, as a scholar of Plutarch, 
 I am right to introduce such seeming minutice. A man whom 
 grown-up people love, children love still more. The whole school 
 had smiled on the smiling Fixlein, and liked him in their hearts, 
 because he did not thunder, but sport with them ; because he 
 said Sie (They) to the Secundaners, and the Subrector said Ihr 
 (Ye) ; because his uprearing forefinger was his only sceptre and 
 baculus ; because in the Secunda he had interchanged Latin epis- 
 tles with his scholars ; and in the Quinta, had taught not with 
 Napier's Eods (or rods of a sharper description), but with sticks 
 of barley-sugar. 
 
 Today his churchyard appeared to him so solemn and festive, 
 that he wondered (though it was Monday) why his parishioners 
 were not in their holiday, but merely in their weekday drapery. 
 
874 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 Under the door of the Parsonage stood a weeping woman ; for 
 she was too happy, and he was her — son. Yet the mother, in 
 ' the height of her emotion, contrives quite readily to call upon 
 the carriers, while disloading, not to twist off the four corner 
 globes from the old Frankish chest of drawers. Her son now 
 appeared to her as venerable, as if he had sat for one of the 
 copperplates in her pictured Bible ; and that simply, because he 
 had cast off his pedagogue hair-cue, as the ripening tadpole does 
 its tail ; and was now standing in a clerical periwig before her : 
 he was now a Comet, soaring away from the profane Earth, 
 and had accordingly changed from a stella caudata into a stella 
 crinita. 
 
 His bride also had, on former days, given sedulous assistance 
 in this new improved edition of his house, and laboured faithfully 
 among the other furnishers and furbishers. But today she kept 
 aloof; for she was too good to forget the maiden in the bride. 
 Love, like men, dies oftener of excess than of hunger ; it lives 
 on love, but it resembles those Alpine flowers, which feed them- 
 selves by suction from the wet clouds, and die if you besprinkle 
 them.- — 
 
 At length the Parson is settled, and of course he must — for 
 I know my fair readers, who are bent on it as if they were bride- 
 maids — without delay get married. But he may not : before 
 Ascension-day there can nothing be done, and till then are full 
 four weeks and a half. The matter was this : He wished in the 
 first place to have the murder- Sunday, the Cantata, behind him ; 
 not indeed because he doubted of his earthly continuance, but be- 
 cause he would not (even for the bride's sake) that the slightest 
 apprehension should mingle with these weeks of glory. 
 
 The main reason was, He did not wish to marry till he were 
 betrothed : which latter ceremony was appointed, with the Intro- 
 duction Sermon, to take place next Sunday. It is the Cantata- 
 Sunday. Let not the reader afflict himself with fears. Indeed, 
 I should not have molested an enlightened century with this 
 Sunday -Wauwau at all, were it not that I delineate with such 
 extreme fidelity. Fixlein himself — especially as the Quarter- 
 master asked him if he was a baby— at last grew so sensible, that 
 he saw the folly of it ; nay, he went so far, that he committed a 
 greater folly. For as dreaming that you die signifies, according 
 to the exegetic rule of false, nothing else than long life and wel- 
 fare, so did Fixlein easily infer that his death -imagination was 
 
LIFE OF QUIKTUa FIXLEIH. 
 
 375 
 
 just such a lucky dream ; the rather as it was precisely on this 
 Cantata- Sunday that Fortune had turned up her cornucopia over 
 him, and at once showered down out of it a "bride, a presentation 
 and a roll of ducats. Thus can Superstition imp its wings, let 
 Chance favour it or not. 
 
 A Secretary of State, a Peace-treaty writer, a Notary, any 
 such incarcerated Slave of the Desk, feels excellently well how 
 far he is beneath a Parson composing his inaugural serruon. The 
 latter (do but look at my Fixlein > lays himself heartily over the 
 paper — injects the venous system of his sermon-preparation with 
 coloured ink — has a Text -Concordance on the right side, and a 
 Song- Concordance on the left ; is there digging out a marrowy 
 sentence, here chpping off a song-blossom, with both to garnish 
 his homiletic pastry ; — sketches out the finest plan of operations, 
 not, like a man of the world, to subdue the heart of one woman, 
 but the hearts of all women that hear him, and of their husbands 
 to boot ; — draws every peasant passing by his window into some 
 niche of his discourse, to cooperate with the result ; — and, finally, 
 scoops out the butter of the smooth soft hymn-book, and there- 
 with exquisitely fattens the black broth of his sermon, which is 
 to feed five thousand men. 
 
 At last, in the evening, as the red sun is dazzling him at the 
 desk, he can rise with heart free from guilt ; and, amid twittering 
 sparrows and finches, over the cherry-trees encircling the parson- 
 age, look toward the west, till there is nothing more in the sky 
 but a faint gleam among the clouds. And then when Fixlein, 
 amid the tolling of the evening prayer-bell, shirty descends the 
 stair to his cooking mother, there must be some miracle in the 
 case, if for him whatever has been done or baked, or served up in 
 
 the lower regions, is not right and good A bound, after 
 
 supper, into the Castle ; a look into a pure loving eye ; a word 
 without falseness to a bride without falseness ; and then under 
 the coverlid, a soft-breathing breast, in which there is nothing 
 but Paradise, a sermon and evening prayer ...... I swear, with 
 
 this I will satisfy a Mythic God, who has left his Heaven, and is 
 seeking a new one among ns here below ! 
 
 Can a mortal, can a Me in the wet clay of Earth, which Death 
 will soon dry into dust, ask more in one week than Fixlein is 
 gathering into his heart ? I see not how : At least I should sup- 
 pose, if such a dust-framed being, after such a twenty-thousand 
 prize from the Lottery ot Chance, could require aught more, it 
 
376 JEAN PAUL FEIEDEICH RICHTEJEfc. 
 
 would at most be the twenty - one - thousand prize, namely, the 
 inaugural discourse itself. 
 
 And this prize our Zebedaus actually drew on Sunday: he 
 
 preached — he preached with unction, he did it before the 
 
 crowding, rustling press of people ; before his Guardian, and be- 
 fore the Lord of Auf hammer, the godfather of the priest and the 
 dog; — a flock with whom in childhood he had driven out the 
 Castle herds about the pasture, he was now, himself a spiritual 
 sheep-smearer, leading out to pasture ; — he was standing to the 
 ankles among Candidates and Schoolmasters, for today (what none 
 of them could) at the altar, with the nail of his finger, he might 
 scratch a large cross in the air, baptisms and marriages not once 
 
 mentioned I believe, I should feel less scrupulous than I do 
 
 to chequer this sunshiny esplanade with that thin shadow of the 
 grave, which the preacher threw over it, when, in the application, 
 with wet heavy eyes, he looked round over the mute attentive 
 chinch, as if in some corner of it he would seek the mouldering 
 teacher of his youth and of this congregation, who without, under 
 the white tombstone, the wrong-side of life, had laid away the 
 garment of his pious spirit. And when he, himself hurried on by 
 the internal stream, inexpressibly softened by the farther recol- 
 lections of his own fear of death on this day, of his life now over- 
 spread with flowers and benefits, of his entombed benefactress 
 resting here in her narrow bed — when he now — before the dis- 
 solving countenance of her Mend, his Thiennette — overpowered, 
 motionless and weeping, looked down from the pulpit to the doo' 
 of the Schadeck vault, and said : " Thanks, thou pious soul 5 for 
 the good thou hast done to this flock and to their new teacher ; 
 and, in the fulness of time, may the dust of thy god-fearing and 
 man-loving breast gather itself, transfigured as gold-dust, round 
 thy reawakened heavenly heart," — was there an eye in the audience 
 dry ? Her husband sobbed aloud ; and Thiennette, her beloved, 
 bowed her head, sinking down with inconsolable remembrances, 
 over the front of the seat, like kindred mourners in a funeral 
 train. 
 
 No fairer forenoon could prepare the way for an afternoon in 
 which a man was to betroth himself forever, and to unite the ex- 
 changed rings with the Ring of Eternity. Except the bridal pair, 
 there was none present but an ancient pair ; the mother and the 
 long Guardian. The bridegroom wrote out the marriage-contract 
 or marriage -charter with his own hand ; hereby making over to 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 377 
 
 his bride, from this day, his whole moveable property (not, as yon 
 may suppose, his pocket-library, but his whole library; whereas, 
 in the Middle Ages, the daughter of a noble was glad to get one 
 or two books for marriage - portion) ; — in return for which, she 
 liberally enough contributed — a whole nuptial coach or car, laden 
 as follows : with nine pounds of feathers, not feathers for the cap 
 such as we carry, but of the lighter sort such as carry us ; — with 
 a sumptuous dozen of godchild-plates and godchild- spoons (gifts 
 from Schadeck), together with a fish-knife ; — of silk, not only 
 stockings (though even King Henri II. of France could dress no 
 more than his legs in silk), but whole gowns ; — with jewels and 
 other furnishings of smaller value. Good Thiennette ! in the 
 chariot of thy spirit lies the true dowry ; namely, thy noble, soft, 
 modest heart, the morning-gift of Nature ! 
 
 The Parson, — who, not from mistrust but from "the uncer- 
 tainty of life," could have wished for a notary's seal on every- 
 thing ; to whom no security but a hypothecary one appeared suffi- 
 cient, and who, in the depositing of every barleycorn, required 
 quittances and contracts, — had now, when the marriage -charter 
 was completed, a lighter heart ; and through the whole evening 
 the good man ceased not to thank his bride for what she had given 
 him. To me, however, a marriage- contract were a thing as 
 painful and repulsive, — I confess it candidly, though you should 
 in consequence upbraid me with my great youth, — as if I had to 
 take my love-letter to a Notary Imperial, and make him docket 
 and countersign it before it could be sent. Heavens ! to seethe 
 light flower of Love, whose perfume acts not on the balance, so 
 laid like tulip -bulbs on the hay-beam of Law ; two hearts on the 
 cold councillor- and flesh-beam of relatives and advocates, who 
 are heaping on the scales nothing but houses, fields and tin — 
 this, to the interested party, may be as delightful as, to the in- 
 toxicated suckling and nursling of the Muses and Philosophy, it 
 is to carry the evening and morning sacrifices he has offered up 
 to his goddess into the book-shop, and there to change his devo- 
 tions into money, and sell them by weight and measure. 
 
 From Cantata- Sunday to Ascension, that is, to marriage-day, 
 are one and a half weeks — or one and a half blissful eternities. 
 If it is pleasant that nights or winter separate the days and 
 seasons of joy to a comfortable distance ; if, for example, it is 
 pleasant that birthday, Saint' s-day, betrothment, marriage and 
 baptismal day, do not all occur on the same day (for with very 
 
878 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTETt. 
 
 few do those festivities, like Holiday and Apostle's day, corn- 
 merge), — then is it still more pleasant to make the interval, the 
 flower-border, between betrothment and marriage, of an extra- 
 ordinary breadth. Before the marriage-day are the true honey- 
 weeks ; then come the wax-weeks ; then the honey-vinegar-weeks. 
 
 In the Ninth Letter-Box, our Parson celebrates his wedding ; 
 ?ind here, in the Eighth, I shall just briefly skim over his way 
 and manner of existence till then ; an existence, as might have 
 been expected, celestial enough. To few is it allotted, as it was 
 to him, to have at once such wings and such flowers (to fly over) 
 before his nuptials ; to few is it allotted, I imagine, to purchase 
 flour and poultry on the same day, as Fixlein did ; — to stuff the 
 wedding - turkey with hangman - meals ; — to go every night into 
 the stall, and see whether the wedding-pig, which his Guardian 
 has given him by way of marriage -present, is still standing and 
 eating; — to spy out for his future wife the flax-magazines and 
 clothes-press-niches in the house ; — to lay in new wood-stores in 
 the prospect of winter ; — to obtain from the Consistorium directly, 
 and for little smart-money, their Bull of Dispensation, their re- 
 mission of the threefold proclamation of banns ; — to live not in 
 a city, where you must send to every fool (because you are one 
 yourself;, and disclose to him that you are going to be married; 
 but in a little angular hamlet, where you have no one to tell aught, 
 but simply the Schoolmaster that he is to ring a little later, and 
 put a knee-cushion before the altar. 
 
 0 ! if the Ritter Michaelis maintains that Paradise was little, 
 because otherwise the people would not have found each other, — 
 a hamlet and its joys are little and narrow,' so that some shadow 
 of Eden may still linger on our Ball. 
 
 1 have not even hinted that, the day before the wedding, the 
 Regiments- Quartermaster came uncalled, and killed the pig, and 
 made puddings gratis, such as were never eaten at any Court. 
 
 And besides, dear Fixlein, on this soft rich oil of joy there was 
 also floating gratis a vernal sun, — and red twilights, — and flower- 
 garlands, — and a bursting half world of buds ! . . . . 
 
 How didst thou behave thee in these hot whirlpools of plea- 
 sure ? — Thou movedst thy Fishtail (Reason), and therewith de- 
 scribedst for thyself a rectilineal course through the billows. For 
 even half as much would have hurried another Parson from his 
 study ; but the very crowning felicity of ours was, that he stood 
 as if rooted to the boundary-hill of Moderation, and from thence 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 879 
 
 looked dcwn on what thousands flout away. Sitting opposite the 
 Castle-windows, he was still in a condition to reckon up that Amen 
 occurs in the Bible one hundred and thirty times. Nay, to his 
 old learned laboratory he now appended a new chemical stove : 
 he purposed writing to Niirnberg and Bayreuth, and there offering 
 his pen to the Brothers Senft, not only for composing practical 
 Receipts at the end of their Almanacs, but also for separate Essays 
 in front under the copperplate title of each Month, because he had 
 a thought of making some reformatory cuts at the common peo- 
 ple's mental habitudes And now, when in the capacity of 
 
 Parson he had less to do, and could add to the holy resting-day 
 of the congregation six literary creating-days, he determined (even 
 in these Carnival weeks) to strike his plough into the hitherto 
 quite fallow History of Hukelum, and soon to follow the plough 
 
 with his drill 
 
 Thus roll his minutes, on golden wheels-of-fortune, over the 
 twelve days, which form the glancing star-paved road to the third 
 heaven of the thirteenth, that is to the 
 
 NINTH LETTER-BOX, 
 
 Or to the Marriage. 
 
 Rise, fair Ascension and Marriage day, and gladden readers 
 also ! Adorn thyself with the fairest jewel, with the bride, whose 
 soul is as pure and glittering as its vesture ; like pearl and pearl- 
 muscle, the one as the other, lustrous and ornamental ! And 
 so over the espalier, whose fruit-hedge has hitherto divided our 
 darling from his Eden, every reader now presses after him ! — 
 
 On the 9th of May 1793, about three in the morning, there 
 came a sharp peal of trumpets, like a light-beam, through the 
 dim-red May-dawn : two twisted horns, with a straight trumpet 
 between them, like a note of admiration between interrogation- 
 points, were clanging from a house in which only a parishioner 
 (not the Parson) dwelt and blew : for this parishioner had last 
 night been celebrating the same ceremony which the pastor had 
 this day before him. The joyful tallyho raised our Parson from 
 his broad bed (and the Shock from beneath it, who some weeks 
 ago had been exiled from the white sleek coverlid), and this so 
 early, that in the portraying tester, where on every former mora- 
 
380 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDMCH RICHTEH. 
 
 ing he had observed his ruddy visage and his white bedclothes, 
 all was at present dim and crayonned. 
 
 I confess, the new-painted room, and a gleam of dawn on the 
 wall, made it so light, that he could see his knee-buckles glancing 
 on the chair. He then softly awakened his mother (the other 
 guests were to lie for hours in the sheets), and she had the city 
 cookmaid to awaken, who, like several other articles of wedding- 
 furniture, had been borrowed for a day or two from Flachsenfingen. 
 At two doors he knocked in vain, and without answer ; for all were 
 already down at the hearth, cooking, blowing and arranging. 
 
 How softly does the Spring day gradually fold back its nun- 
 veil, and the Earth grow bright, as if it were the morning of a 
 Eesurrection ! — The quicksilver-pillar of the barometer, the guid- 
 ing Fire-pillar of the weather-prophet, rests firmly on Fixlein's 
 Ark of the Covenant. The Sun raises himself, pure and cool, into 
 the morning-blue, instead of into the morning-red. Swallows, in- 
 stead of clouds, shoot skimming through the melodious air . . . 
 0, the good Genius of Fail' Weather, who deserves many temples 
 and festivals (because without him no festival could be held), 
 lifted an ethereal azure Day, as it were, from the well-clear atmo- 
 sphere of the Moon, and sent it down, on blue butterfly-wings — 
 as if it were a blue Monday — glittering below the Sun, in the zig- 
 zag of joyful quivering descent, upon the narrow spot of Earth, 
 
 which our heated fancies are now viewing And on this 
 
 balmy vernal spot, stand amid flowers, over which the trees are 
 shaking blossoms instead of leaves, a bride and a bridegroom. . . . 
 Happy Fixlein ! how shall I paint thee without deepening the 
 sighs of longing in the fairest souls ? — 
 
 But soft ! we will not drink the magic cup of Fancy to the 
 bottom at six in the morning ; but keep sober till towards night ! 
 
 At the sound of the morning prayer-bell, the bridegroom, for 
 the din of preparation was disturbing his quiet orison, went out 
 into the churchyard, which (as in many other places), together 
 with the church, lay round his mansion like a court. Here on 
 the moist green, over whose closed flowers the churchyard-wall 
 was still spreading broad shadows, did his spirit cool itself from 
 the warm dreams of Earth : here, where the white flat grave-stone 
 of his Teacher lay before him like the fallen-in door on the Janus'- 
 temple of Life, or like the windward side of the narrow house, 
 turned towards the tempests of the world : here, where the little 
 shrunk metallic door on the grated cross of his father uttered to 
 
LIFE OF QU1NTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 381 
 
 him the inscriptions of death, and the year when his parent de- 
 parted, and all the admonitions and mementos, graven on the 
 lead ; — there, I say, his mood grew softer and more solemn ; and 
 he now lifted up by heart his morning prayer, which usually he 
 read ; and entreated God to bless him in his office, and to spare 
 his mother's life ; and to look with favour and acceptance on the 
 purpose of today. — Then over the graves he walked into his 
 fenceless little angular flower-garden; and here, composed and 
 confident in the divine keeping, he pressed the stalks of his tulips 
 deeper into the mellow earth. 
 
 But on returning to the house, he was met on all hands by 
 the bell-ringing and the janissary-music of wedding-gladness ; — 
 the marriage-guests had all thrown off their nightcaps, and were 
 drinking diligently; — there was a clattering, a cooking, a frizzling; 
 — tea-services, coffee-services and warm-beer-services, were ad- 
 vancing in succession ; and plates full of bride-cakes were going 
 round like potter's frames or cistern-wheels. — The Schoolmaster, 
 with three young lads, was heard rehearsing from his own house 
 an Arioso, with which, so soon as they were perfect, he purposed 
 to surprise his clerical superior. — But now rushed all the arms 
 of the foaming joy- streams into one, when the sky- queen be- 
 sprinkled with blossoms, the bride, descended upon Earth in her 
 timid joy, full of quivering humble love ; — when the bells began ; 
 — when the procession-column set forth with the whole village 
 round and before it; — when the organ, the congregation, the 
 officiating priest and the sparrows on the trees of the church- 
 window, struck louder and louder their rolling peals on the drum 
 of the jubilee -festival. . . . The heart of the singing bridegroom 
 was like to leap from its place for joy, " that on his bridal-day 
 it was all so respectable and grand." — Not till the marriage- 
 benediction could he pray a little. 
 
 Still worse and louder grew the business during dinner, when 
 pastry-work and marchpane-devices were brought forward, — when 
 glasses and slain fishes (laid under the napkins to frighten the 
 guests) went round ; — and when the guests rose, and themselves 
 rent round, and at length danced round : for they had instrumental 
 music from the city there. 
 
 One minute handed over to the other the sugar-bowl and 
 bottle-case of joy : the guests heard and saw less and less, and 
 the villagers began to see and hear more and more, and towards 
 night they penetrated like a wedge into tho open door, — nay two 
 
382 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 youths ventured even in the middle of the parsonage-court, to 
 mount a plauk over a beam, and commence seesawing. — Out of 
 doors, the gleaming vapour of the departed Sun was encircling 
 the Earth, the evening-star was glittering over parsonage and 
 churchyard ; no one heeded it. 
 
 However, about nine o'clock, — when the marriage-guests had 
 well-nigh forgotten the marriage -pair, and were chinking or danc- 
 ing along for their own behoof; when poor mortals, in this sun- 
 shine of Fate, like fishes in the sunshine of the sky, were leaping 
 up from their wet cold element ; and when the bridegroom under 
 the star of happiness and love, casting like a comet its long train 
 of radiance over all his heaven, had in secret pressed to his joy- 
 filled breast his bride and his mother, — then did he lock a slice of 
 wedding-bread privily into a press, in the old superstitious belief 
 that this residue secured continuance of bread for the whole mar- 
 riage. As he returned, with greater love for the sole partner of 
 his life, she herself met him with his mother, to deliver him in 
 private the bridal-nightgown and bridal-shirt, as is the ancient 
 usage. Many a countenance grows pale in violent emotions, even 
 of joy: Thiennette's wax-face was bleaching still whiter under the 
 sunbeams of Happiness. 0 never fall, thou lily of Heaven, and 
 may four springs instead of four seasons open and shut thy flower- 
 bells to the sun ! — All the arms of his soul, as he floated on the 
 sea of joy, were quivering to clasp the soft warm heart of his be- 
 loved, to encircle it gently and fast, and draw it to his own 
 
 He led her from the crowded dancing -room into the cool 
 evening. Why does the evening, does the night put warmer 
 love in our hearts ? Is it the nightly pressure of helplessness ; 
 or is it the exalting separation from the turmoil of life ; that 
 veiling of the world, in which for the soul nothing more remains 
 but souls ; — is it therefore, that the letters in which the loved 
 name stands written on our spirit appear, like phosphorus-writ- 
 ing, by night in fire, while by day in their cloudy traces they but 
 smoke ? 
 
 He walked with his bride into the Castle -garden : she hast- 
 ened quickly through the Castle, and past its servants' -hall, where 
 the fair flowers of her young life had been crushed broad and dry, 
 under a long dreary pressure ; and her soul expanded and breathed 
 in the free open garden, on whose flowery soil destiny had cast 
 forth the first seeds of the blossoms which today were gladdening 
 her existence. Still Eden ! green flower-chequered chiaroscuro! 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEES . 
 
 383 
 
 — The moon is sleeping underground like a dead one ; but beyond 
 the garden the sun's red evening- clouds have fallen down like rose- 
 leaves ; and the evening-star, the brideman of the sun, hovers, like 
 a glancing butterfly, above the rosy red, and, modest as a bride, 
 deprives no single starlet of its light. 
 
 The wandering pair arrived at the old gardener's hut ; now 
 standing locked and dumb, with dark windows in the light garden, 
 like a fragment of the Past surviving in the Present. Bared twigs 
 of trees were folding, with clammy half - formed leaves, over the 
 thick intertwisted tangles of the bushes. — The Spring was stand- 
 ing, like a conqueror, with Winter at his feet. — In the blue 
 pond, now bloodless, a dusky evening-sky lay hollowed out, and 
 the gushing waters were moistening the flower-beds. — The silver 
 sparks of stars were rising on the altar of the East, and falling 
 down extinguished in the red sea of the West. 
 
 The wind whirred, like a night-bird, louder through the trees ; 
 and gave tones to the acacia-grove, and the tones called to the 
 pair who had first become happy within it : " Enter, new mortal 
 pair, and think of what is past, and of my withering and your 
 own ; and be holy as Eternity, and weep not only for joy, but for 
 gratitude also !" — And the wet-eyed bridegroom led his wet-eyed 
 bride under the blossoms, and laid his soul, like a flower, on her 
 heart, and said : "Best Thiennette, I am unspeakably happy, and 
 would say much, and cannot. — Ah, thou Dearest, we will live like 
 angels, like children together ! Surely I will do all that is good to 
 thee ; two years ago I had nothing, no nothing ; ah, it is through 
 thee, best Love, that I am happy. I call thee Thou, now, thou 
 dear good soul!" She drew him closer to her, and said, though 
 without kissing him : "Call me Thou always, Dearest !" 
 
 And as they stept forth again from the sacred grove into the 
 magic-dusky garden, he took off his hat ; first, that he might in- 
 ternally thank God, and secondly, because he wished to look into 
 this fairest evening sky. 
 
 They reached the blazing, rustling marriage-house, but their 
 softened hearts sought stillness ; and a foreign touch, as in the 
 blossoming vine, would have disturbed the flower-nuptials of their 
 souls. They turned rather, and winded up into the churchyard to 
 preserve their mood. Majestic on the groves and mountains stood 
 the Night before man's heart, and made it also great. Over the 
 white steeple- obelisk the sky rested bluer and darker,- and behind 
 it wavered the withered summit of the May-pole with faded flag. 
 
384 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 The son noticed his father's grave, on which the wind was open- 
 ing and shutting, with harsh noise, the little door of the metal 
 cross, to let the year of his death be read on the brass plate 
 within. An overpowering sadness seized his heart with violent 
 streams of tears, and drove him to the sunk hillock, and he led 
 his bride to the grave, and said: "Here sleeps he, my good 
 father ; in his thirty- second year, he was carried hither to his 
 long rest. 0 thou good, dear father, couldst thou today but see 
 the happiness of thy son, like my mother ! But thy eyes are 
 empty, and thy breast is full of ashes, and thou seest us not." — 
 He was silent. The bride wept aloud ; she saw the mouldering 
 coffins of her parents open, and the two dead arise and look round 
 for their daughter, who had stayed so long behind them, forsaken 
 on the Earth. She fell upon his heart, and faltered: "0 beloved, 
 I have neither father nor mother, do not forsake me !" 
 
 0 thou who hast still a father and a mother, thank God for 
 it, on the day when thy soul is full of joyful tears, and needs a 
 bosom wherein to shed them 
 
 And with this embracing at a father's grave, let this day of 
 ioy be holily concluded. — 
 
 TENTH LETTEK-BOX. 
 
 St. Thomas's Day and Birthday. 
 
 An Author is a sort of bee-keeper for his reader-swarm ; in 
 whose behalf he separates the Flora kept for their use into differ- 
 ent seasons, and here accelerates, and there retards, the blossom- 
 ing of many a flower, that so in all chapters there be blooming. 
 
 The goddess of Love and the angel of Peace conducted our 
 married pair on tracks running over full meadows, through the 
 Spring ; and on footpaths hidden by high cornfields, through the 
 Summer ; and Autumn, as they advanced towards Winter, spread 
 her marbled leaves under their feet. And thus they arrived before 
 the low dark gate of Winter, full of life, full of love, trustful, con- 
 tented, sound and ruddy. 
 
 On St. Thomas's day was Thiennette's birthday as well as 
 Winter's. About a quarter past nine, just when the singing 
 ceases in the church, we shall take a peep through the window 
 into the interior of the parsonage. There is nothing here but the 
 %1 d mother, who has all day (the son having restricted her to rest, 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FJXLEIN. 
 
 385 
 
 and not work) been gliding about, and brushing, and burnishing, 
 and scouring, and wiping : every carved chair-leg, and every brass 
 nail of the waxcloth-covered table, she has polished into bright- 
 ness ; — everything hangs, as with all married people who have no 
 children, in its right place, brushes, fly-flaps and almanacs ; — the 
 chairs are stationed by the room-police in their ancient corners ; 
 —a flax-rock, encircled with a diadem, or scarf of azure ribbon, 
 is lying in the Schadeckbed, because, though it is a half holiday, 
 some spinning may go on ; — the narrow slips of paper, whereon 
 heads of sermons are to be arranged, lie white beside the sermons 
 themselves, that is, beside the octavo paper - book which holds 
 them, for the Parson and his work-table, by reason of the cold, 
 have migrated from the study to the sitting-room ; — his large 
 furred doublet is hanging beside his clean bridegroom nightgown : 
 there is nothing wanting in the room but He and She. For he 
 had preached her with him tonight into the empty Apostle's-day 
 church, that so her mother, without witnesses — except the two 
 or three thousand readers who are peeping with me through the 
 window — might arrange the provender-baking, and whole com- 
 missariat department of the birthday-festival, and spread out her 
 best table-gear and victual-stores without obstruction. 
 
 The soul-curer reckoned it no sin to admonish, and exhort, 
 and encourage, and threaten his parishioners, till he felt pretty 
 certain that the soup must be smoking on the plates. Then he 
 led his birthday helpmate home, and suddenly placed her before 
 the altar of meat-offering, before a sweet title-page of bread-tart, 
 on which her name stood baked, in true monastic characters, in 
 tooth-letters of almonds. In the background of time and of the 
 room, I yet conceal two — bottles of Pontac. How quickly, under 
 the sunshine of joy, do thy cheeks grow ripe, Thiennette, when 
 thy husband solemnly says : " This is thy birthday; and may the 
 Lord bless thee and watch over thee, and cause his countenance 
 to shine on thee, and send thee, to the joy of our mother and thy 
 husband especially, a happy glad recovery. Amen !" — And when 
 Thiennette perceived that it was the old mistress who had cooked 
 and served up all this herself, she fell upon her neck, as if it had 
 been not her husband's mother, but her own. 
 
 Emotion conquers the appetite. But Fixlein's stomach was 
 as strong as his heart ; and with him no species of movement 
 could subdue the peristaltic. Drink is the friction -oil of the 
 tongue, as eating is its drag. Yet, not till he had eaten ana 
 
 VOL. III. cc 
 
386 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDTtl'CH RICHTER. 
 
 spoken much, did the pastor fill the glasses. Then indeed he 
 drew the cork-sluice from the bottle, and set forth its streams. 
 The sickly mother, of a being still hid beneath her heart, turned 
 her eyes, in embarrassed emotion, on the old woman only ; and 
 could scarcely chide him for sending to the city wine-merchant 
 on her account. He took a glass in each hand, for each of the 
 two whom he loved, and handed them to his mother and his wife, 
 and said : " To thy long, long life, Thiennette! — 'And your health 
 and happiness, Mamma ! — And a glad arrival to our little one, if 
 God so bless us !" — " My son," said the gardeneress, "it is to 
 thy long life that we must drink ; for it is by thee we are sup- 
 ported. God grant thee length of days !" added she, with stifled 
 voice, and her eyes betrayed her tears. 
 
 I nowhere find a livelier emblem of the female sex in all its 
 boundless levity, than in the case where a woman is carrying the 
 angel of Death beneath her heart, and yet in these nine months 
 full of mortal tokens thinks of nothing more important, than of 
 who shall be the gossips, and what shall be cooked at the chris- 
 tening. But thou, Thiennette, hadst nobler thoughts, though 
 these too along with them. The still-hidden darling of thy heart 
 was resting before thy eyes like a little angel sculptured on a 
 grave- stone, and pointing with its small finger to the hour when 
 thou shouldst die ; and every morning and every evening, thou 
 thoughtest of death, with a certainty, of which I yet knew not 
 the reasons ; and to thee it was as if the Earth were a dark 
 mineral cave where man's blood like stalactitic water drops down, 
 and in dropping raises shapes which gleam so transiently, and so 
 quickly fade away ! And that was the cause why tears were con- 
 tinually trickling from thy soft eyes, and betraying all thy anxious 
 thoughts about thy child : but thou repaidst these sad effusions 
 of thy heart by the embrace in which, with new-awakened love, 
 thou fellest on thy husband's neck, and saidst : ' * Be as it may, 
 God's will be done, so thou and my child are left alive ! — But I 
 know well that thou, Dearest, lovest me as I do thee." . . . , 
 Lay thy hand, good mother, full of blessings, on the two ; and 
 thou kind Fate, never lift thine away from them ! — 
 
 It is with emotion and good wishes that I witness the kiss of 
 two fair friends, or the embracing of two virtuous lovers ; and 
 from the fire of their altar sparks fly over to me : but what is this 
 to our sympathetic exaltation, when we dee two mortals, bending 
 under the same burden, bound to the same duties, animated by 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 387 
 
 the same care for the same little darlings — fall on one another's 
 overflowing hearts, in some fair hour ? And if these, moreover, 
 are two mortals who already wear the mourning-weeds of life, I 
 mean old age, whose hair and cheeks are now grown colourless, 
 and eyes grown dim, and whose faces a thousand thorns have 
 marred into images of Sorrow ; — when these two clasp each other 
 with such wearied aged arms, and so near to the precipice of the 
 grave, and when they say or think : " All in us is dead, but not 
 our love — 0, we have lived and suffered long together, and now 
 we will hold out our hands to Death together also, and let him 
 carry us away together," — does not all within us cry: 0 Love, 
 thy spark is superior to Time ; it burns neither in joy nor in the 
 cheek of roses ; it dies not, neither under a thousand tears, nor 
 under the snow of old age, nor under the ashes of thy — beloved ? 
 It never dies : and Thou, All-good ! if there were no eternal love, 
 
 there were no love at all 
 
 To the Parson it was easier than it is to me to pave for him- 
 self a transition from the heart to the digestive faculty. He now 
 submitted to Thiennette (whose voice at once grew cheerful, while 
 her eyes time after time began to sparkle) his purpose to take 
 advantage of the frosty weather, and have the winter meat slaugh- 
 tered and salted : " the pig can scarcely rise," said he ; and 
 forthwith he fixed the determination of the women, farther the 
 butcher, and the day, and all et ceteras ; appointing everything 
 with a degree of punctuality, such as the war-college (when it 
 applies the cupping-glass, the battle-sword, to the overfull system 
 of mankind) exhibits on the previous day, in its arrangements, 
 before it drives a province into the baiting -ring and slaughter- 
 house. 
 
 This settled, he began to talk and feel quite joyously about 
 the course of winter, which had commenced today at two - and- 
 twenty minutes past eight in the morning : " for," said he, " new- 
 year is close at hand ; and we shall not need so much candle 
 tomorrow night as tonight." His mother, it is true, came athwart 
 him with the weapons of her five senses : but he fronted her with 
 his Astronomical Tables, and proved that the lengthening of the 
 day was no less undeniable than imperceptible. In the last place, 
 like most official and married persons, heeding little whether his 
 women took him or not, he informed them in juristico-theological 
 phrase : " That he would put off no longer, but write this very 
 afternoon to the venerable Consistorium, in whose hands lay the 
 
388 
 
 JEAN PAUL FEIEEEICH EICHTEE. 
 
 jus circa sacra, for a new Ball to the church-steeple ; and the 
 rather, as he hoped before newyear's day to raise a bountiful sub- 
 scription from the parish for this purpose. — If God spare us till 
 Spring," added he with peculiar cheerfulness^ " and thou wert 
 happily recovered, I might so arrange the whole that the Ball 
 should be set up at thy first church-going, dame !" 
 
 Thereupon he shifted his chair from the dinner and dessert 
 table to the work-table ; and spent the half of his afternoon oyer 
 the petition for the steeple-ball. As there still remained a little 
 space till dusk, he clapped his tackle to his new learned Opus, of 
 which I must now afford a little glimpse. Out of doors among 
 the snow, there stood near Hukelum an old Bobber-Castle, which 
 Fixlein. every day in Autumn, had hovered round like a revenant, 
 with a view to gauge it, ichnographically to delineate it, to put 
 every window-bar and every bridle-hook of it correctly on paper. 
 He believed he was not expecting too much, if thereby — and by 
 some dra wings of the not so much vertical as horizontal walls — 
 he hoped to impart to his ''Architectural Correspondence of two 
 Friends concerning the Hukelum Roller -Castle" that last polish 
 and labor lime? which contents Beviewers. For towards the cri- 
 tical Starchamber of the Beviewers he entertained not that con- 
 tempt which some authors actually feel — or only affect, as for 
 instance, I. From this mouldered Bobber -Louvre, there grew 
 for him more flowers of joy, than ever in all probability had grown 
 from it of old for its owners. — To my knowledge, it is an anecdote 
 not hitherto made public, that for all this no man but Busching 
 has to answer. Fixlein had not long ago, among the rubbish of 
 the church letter-room, stumbled on a paper wherein the Geogra- 
 pher had been requesting special information about the statistics 
 of the village. Biisching, it is true, had picked up nothing — ac- 
 cordingly, indeed, Hukelum, in his Geography , is still omitted 
 altogether ; — but this pestilential letter had infected Fixlein with 
 the spring-fever of Ambition, so that his palpitating heart was no 
 longer to be stilled or held in check, except by the assafcetida- 
 emulsion of a review. It is with authorcraft as with love : both 
 of them for decades long one may equally desire and forbear : but 
 is the first spark once thrown into the powder-magazine, it burns 
 to the end of the chapter. 
 
 Simply because winter had commenced by the Almanac, the 
 fire must be larger than usual ; for warm rooms, like large furs 
 and bearskin -caps, were things which he loved more than you 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 389 
 
 would figure. The dusk, this fair chiaroscuro of the day, this 
 coloured foreground of the night, he lengthened out as far as 
 possible, that he might study Christmas discourses therein : and 
 yet could his wife, without scruple, just as he was pacing up and 
 down the room, with the sowing-sheet full of divine word-seeds 
 hung round his shoulder, — hold up to him a spoonful of alegar, 
 that he might try the same in his palate, and decide whether she 
 should yet draw it off. Nay, did he not in all cases, though 
 fonder of roe-fishes himself, order a milter to be drawn from the 
 herring-barrel, because his good-wife liked it better ? — 
 
 Here light was brought in ; and as Winter was just now com- 
 mencing his glass-painting on the windows, his ice flower-pieces, 
 and his snow-foliage, our Parson felt that it was time to read 
 something cold, which he pleasantly named his cold collation ; 
 namely, the description of some unutterably frosty land. On the 
 present occasion, it was the winter history of the four Russian 
 sailors on Nova Zembla. I, for my share, do often in summer, 
 when the sultry zephyr is inflating the flower-bells, append cer- 
 tain charts and sketches of Italy, or the East, as additional land- 
 scapes to those among which I am sitting. And yet tonight he 
 farther took up the Weekly Chronicle of Flachsenfingen ; and 
 amid the bombshells, pestilences, famines, comets with long tails, 
 and the roaring of all the Hell-floods of another Thirty-Years 
 War, he could still listen with the one ear towards the kitchen, 
 where the salad for his roast-duck was just a-cutting. 
 
 Good -night, old Fixlein ! I am tired. May kind Heaven 
 send thee with the young year 1794, when the Earth shall again 
 carry her people, like precious night-moths, on leaves and flowers, 
 the new steeple-ball, and a thick handsome — boy to boot ! 
 
 ELEVENTH LETTER-BOX. 
 
 Spring ; Investiture; and Childbirth. 
 
 I have just risen from a singular dream ; but the foregoing 
 Box makes it natural. I dreamed that all was verdant, ail full 
 of odours ; and I was looking up at a steeple-ball glittering in the 
 sun, from my station in the window of a little white garden-house, 
 my eyelids full of flower-pollen, my shoulders full of thin cherry- 
 blossoms, and my ears full of humming from the neighbouring 
 
390 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 bee-hives. Then, methought, advancing slowly through the beds, 
 came the Hukelum Parson, and stept into the garden-house, and 
 solemnly said to me : " Honoured Sir, my wife has just brought 
 me a little boy ; and I make bold to solicit your Honour to do the 
 holy office for the same, when it shall be received into the bosom 
 of the church." 
 
 I naturally started up, and there was — Parson Fixlein stand- 
 ing bodily at my bedside, and requesting me to be godfather : for 
 Thiennette had given him a son last night about one o'clock. The 
 confinement had been as light and happy as could be conceived ; 
 for this reason, that the father had, some months before, been 
 careful to provide one of those Klappersteins , as we call them, 
 which are found in the aerie of the eagle, and therewith to alle- 
 viate the travail : for this stone performs, in its way, all the ser- 
 vice which the bonnet of that old Minorite monk in Naples, of 
 whom Gorani informs us, could accomplish for people in such cir- 
 cumstances, who put it on 
 
 — I might vex the reader still longer ; but I willingly give 
 up, and show him how the matter stood. 
 
 Such a May as the present (of 1794), Nature has not, in the 
 memory of man — begun : for this is but the fifteenth of it. People 
 of reflection have for centuries been vexed once every year, that 
 our German singers should indite May-songs, since several other 
 months deserve such a poetical night-music much better ; and I 
 myself have often gone so far as to adopt the idiom of our market- 
 women, and instead of May butter, to say June butter, as also 
 June, March, April songs. — But thou, kind May of this year, 
 thou deservest to thyself all the songs which were ever made on 
 thy rude namesakes ! By Heaven ! when I now issue from the 
 wavering chequered acacia-grove of the Castle-garden, in which I 
 am writing this Chapter, and come forth into the broad living day, 
 and look up to the warming Heaven, and over its Earth budding 
 out beneath it, — the Spring rises before me like a vast full cloud, 
 with a splendour of blue and green. I see the Sun standing amid 
 roses in the western sky, into which he has thrown his ray-brush, 
 wherewith he has today been painting the Earth ; — and when I 
 look round a little in our picture-exhibition, his enamelling is still 
 hot on the mountains ; on the moist chalk of the moist Earth, the 
 flowers full of sap-colours are laid out to dry, and the forget-me- 
 not with miniature colours ; under the varnish of the streams, the 
 skyey Painter has pencilled his own eye ; and the clouds, like a 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 391 
 
 decoration -painter, he has touched off with wild outlines and single 
 tints ; and so he stands at the border of the Earth, and looks back 
 upon his stately Spring, whose robe-folds are valleys, whose breast- 
 bouquet is gardens, and whose blush is a vernal evening, and who, 
 when she arises, shall be — Summer. 
 
 But to proceed ! Every spring — and especially in such a 
 spring — I imitate on foot our birds of passage ; and travel off the 
 hypochondriacal sediment of winter : but I do not think I should 
 have seen even the steeole-ball of Hukelum, which is to be set up 
 one of these days, to say nothing of the Parson's family, had not 
 I happened to be visiting the Flachsenfingen Superintendent and 
 Consistorialrath. From him I got acquainted with Fixlein's his- 
 tory (every Candidatus must deliver an account of his life to the 
 Consistorium), and with his still madder petition for a steeple- 
 ball. I observed, with pleasure, how gaily the cob was diving 
 and swashing about in his duck-pool and milk-bath of life ; and 
 forthwith determined on a journey to his shore. It is singular, 
 that is to say, manlike, that when we have for years kept prizing 
 and describing some original person or original book, yet the 
 moment we see such, they anger us : we would have them fit us 
 and delight us in all points, as if any originality could do this 
 but our own. 
 
 It was Saturday the third of May, when I, with the Superin- 
 tendent, the Senior Capituli, and some temporal Kaths, mounted 
 and rolled off, and in two carriages were driven to the Parson's 
 door. The matter was, he was not yet — invested, and tomorrow 
 this was to be done. I little thought, while we whirled by the 
 white espalier of the Castle-garden, that there I was to write 
 another book. 
 
 I still see the Parson, in his peruke-minever and head-case, 
 come springing to the coach-door and lead us out ; so smiling — 
 so courteous — so vain of the disloaded freight, and so attentive 
 to it. He looked as if in the journey of life he had never once 
 put on the travelling -gauze of Sorrow : Thiennette again seemed 
 never to have thrown hers back. How neat was everything in 
 the house, how dainty, decorated and polished ! And yet so quiet, 
 without the cursed alarm-ringing of servants' bells, and without 
 the bass-drum tumult of stair-pedaling. Whilst the gentlemen, 
 my road-companions, were sitting in state in the upper room, I 
 flitted, as my way is, like a smell, over the whole house, and my 
 path led me through the sitting-room over the Jdtchen, and at 
 
392 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 last into the churchyard beside the house. Good Saturday ! I 
 will paint thy hours as I may, with the black asphaltos of ink, 
 on the tablets of other souls ! In the sitting-room, I lifted from 
 the desk a volume gilt on the back and edges, and bearing this 
 title : " Holy Sayings, by Fixlein. First Collection." And as 
 I looked to see where it had been printed, the Holy Collection 
 turned out to be in writing. I handled the quills, and dipped 
 into the negro -black of the ink, and I found that all was right 
 and good : with your fluttering gentlemen of letters, who hold 
 only a department of the foreign, and none of the home affairs, 
 nothing (except some other things about them) can be worse than 
 their ink and pens. I also found a little copperplate, to which I 
 shall in due time return. 
 
 In the kitchen, a place not more essential for the writing of 
 an English novel, than for the acting of a German one, I could 
 plant myself beside Thiennette, and help her to blow the fire, and 
 look at once into her face and her burning coals. Though she 
 was in wedlock, a state in which white roses on the cheeks are 
 changed for red ones, and young women are similar to a simili- 
 tude given in my Note ; 28 — and although the blazing wood threw 
 a false rouge over her, I guessed how pale she must have been ; 
 and my sympathy in her paleness rose still higher at the thought 
 of the burden which Fate had now not so much taken from her, 
 as laid in her arms and nearer to her heart. In truth, a man 
 must never have reflected on the Creation-moment, when the 
 Universe first rose from the bosom of an Eternity, if he does not 
 view with philosophic reverence a woman, whose thread of life a 
 secret all-wondrous Hand is spinning to a second thread, and who 
 veils within her the transition from Nothingness to Existence, 
 from Eternity to Time; — but still less can a man have any heart 
 of flesh, if his soul, in presence of a woman, who, to an unknown 
 unseen being, is sacrificing more than we will sacrifice when it 
 is seen and known, namely, her nights, her joys, often her life, 
 does not bow lower, and with deeper emotion, than in presence 
 of a whole nun-orchestra on their Sahara-desert; — and worse 
 than either is the man for whom his own mother has not made 
 all other mothers venerable. 
 
 " It is little serviceable to thee, poor Thiennette," thought I, 
 " that now, when thy bitter cup of sickness is made to run over, 
 
 28 To the Spring, namely, which begins with snowdrops, and ends with rose3 
 and pinks. — 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 393 
 
 thou must have loud festivities come crowding round thee." I 
 meant the Investiture and the Ball-raising. My rank, the diploma 
 of which the reader will find stitched in with the Dog-post-clays, 
 and which had formerly been hers, brought about my ears a host 
 of repelling, embarrassed, wavering titles of address from her ; 
 which people, to whom they have once belonged, are at all times 
 apt to parade before superiors or inferiors, and which it now cost 
 me no little trouble to disperse. Through the whole Saturday 
 and Sunday, I could never get into the right track either with 
 her or him, till the other guests were gone. As for the mother, 
 she acted, like obscure ideas, powerfully and constantly, but out 
 of view : this arose in part from her idolatrous fear of us ; and 
 partly also from a slight shade of care (probably springing from 
 the state of her daughter), which had spread over her like a little 
 cloud 
 
 I cruised about, so long as the moon-crescent glimmered in 
 the sky, over the churchyard ; and softened my fantasies, which 
 are at any rate too prone to paint with the brown of crumbling 
 mummies, not only by the red of twilight, but also by reflecting 
 how easily our eyes and our hearts can become reconciled even 
 to the ruins of Death ; a reflection which the Schoolmaster, whist- 
 ling as he arranged the charnel-house for the morrow, and the 
 Parson's maid singing, as she reaped away the grass from the 
 graves, readily enough suggested to me. And why should not 
 this habituation to all forms of Fate in the other world, also, be 
 a gift reserved for us in our nature by the bounty of our great 
 Preserver ? — I perused the grave-stones ; and I think even now 
 that Superstition 29 is right in connecting with the reading of such 
 things a loss of memory ; at all events, one does forget a thou- 
 sand things belonging to this world 
 
 The Investiture on Sunday (whose Gospel, of the good shep- 
 herd, suited well with the ceremony) I must dispatch in few 
 words ; because nothing truly sublime can bear to be treated of 
 in many. However, I shall impart the most memorable circum- 
 stances, when I say that there was — drinking (in the Parsonage), 
 — music-making (in the Choir), — reading (of the Presentation by 
 the Senior, and of the Ratification-rescript by the lay Rath), — 
 and preaching, by the Consistorialrath, who took the soul-curer 
 by the hand, and presented, made over and guaranteed him to 
 
 29 This Christian superstition is not only a Rabbinical, but also a Roman one. 
 Cicero de Senectute. 
 
394 JEAN PAUL FBIEDR1CH EICHTER. 
 
 the congregation, and them to him. Fixlein felt that he was 
 departing as a high-priest from the church, which he had entered 
 as a country parson ; and all day he had not once the heart to 
 ban. When a man is treated with solemnity, he looks upon 
 himself as a higher nature, and goes through his solemn feasts 
 devoutly. 
 
 This indenturing, this monastic profession, our Head-Rabbis 
 and Lodge -masters (our Superintendents) have usually a taste for 
 putting off till once the pastor has been some years ministering 
 among the people, to whom they hereby present him; as the 
 early Christians frequently postponed their consecration and in- 
 vestiture to Christianity, their baptism namely, till the day when 
 they died : nay, I do not even think this clerical Investiture 
 would lose much of its usefulness, if it and the declaring-vacant 
 of the office were reserved for the same day ; the rather as this 
 usefulness consists entirely in two items ; what the Superintendent 
 and his Raths can eat, and what they can pocket. 
 
 Not till towards evening did the Parson and I get acquainted. 
 The Investiture officials, and elevation pulley-men, had, through- 
 out the whole evening, been very violently — breathing. I mean 
 thus : as these gentlemen could not but be aware, by the most 
 ancient theories and the latest experiments, that air was nothing 
 else than a sort of rarefied and exploded water, it became easy 
 for them to infer that, conversely, water was nothing else than a 
 denser sort of air. Wine -drinking, therefore, is nothing else but 
 the breathing of an air pressed together into proper spissitude, 
 and sprinkled over with a few perfumes. Now, in our days, by 
 clerical persons too much (fluid) breath can never be inhaled 
 through the mouth ; seeing the dignity of their station excludes 
 them from that breathing through the smaller pores, which Aber- 
 nethy so highly recommends under the name of air-bath : and 
 can the Gullet in their case be aught else than door-neighbour to 
 the Windpipe, the consonant and fellow-shoot of the Windpipe ? 
 — I am running astray : I meant to signify, that I this evening 
 had adopted the same opinion ; only that I used this ah* or ether, 
 not like the rest for loud laughter, but for the more quiet con- 
 templation of life in general. I even shot forth at my gossip cer- 
 tain speeches, which betrayed devoutness : these he at first took 
 for jests, being aware that I was from Court, and of quality. But 
 the concave mirror of the wine -mist at length suspended the 
 images of my soul, enlarged and embodied like spiritual shapes, 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 895 
 
 in the air before me. — Life shaded itself off to my eyes like a 
 hasty summer night, which we little fire-flies shoot across with 
 transient gleam ; — I said to him that man must turn himself like 
 the leaves of the great mallow, at the different day-seasons of his 
 life, now to the rising sun, now to the setting, now to the night, 
 towards the Earth and its graves ; — I said, the omnipotence of 
 Goodness was driving us and the centuries of the world towards 
 the gates of the City of God, as, according to Euler, the resist- 
 ance of the Ether leads the circling Earth towards the Sun, 
 &c. &c. 
 
 On the strength of these entremets, he considered me the 
 first theologian of his age ; and had he been obliged to go to war, 
 would previously have taken my advice on the matter, as belli- 
 gerent powers were wont of old from the theologians of the Re- 
 formation. I hide not from myself, however, that what preachers 
 call vanity of the world, is something altogether different from 
 what philosophy so calls. When I, moreover, signified to him 
 that I was not ashamed to be an Author ; but had a turn for 
 working up this and the other biography ; and that I had got a 
 sight of his Life in the hands of the Superintendent ; and might 
 be in case to prepare a printed one therefrom, if so were he would 
 assist me with here and there a tint of flesh-colour, — then was 
 my silk, which, alas ! not only isolates one from electric fire, but 
 also from a kindlier sort of it, the only grate which rose between 
 his arms and me ; for, like the most part of poor country par- 
 sons, it was not in his power to forget the rank of any man, or 
 to vivify his own on a higher one. He said: "He would ac- 
 knowledge it with veneration, if I should mention him in print ; 
 but he was much afraid his life was too common and too poor for 
 a biography." Nevertheless, he opened me the drawer of his 
 Letter-boxes ; and said, perhaps, he had hereby been paving the 
 way for me. 
 
 The main point, however, was, he hoped that his Errata, his 
 Exercitationes, and his Letters on the Robber-Castle, if I should 
 previously send forth a Life of the Author, might be better re- 
 ceived ; and that it would be much the same as if I accompanied 
 them with a Preface. 
 
 In short, when on Monday the other dignitaries with their 
 nimbus of splendour had dissipated, I alone, like a precipitate, 
 abode with him ; and am still abiding, that is, from the fifth of 
 May (the Public should take the Almanac of 1794, and keep it 
 
896 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 open beside them) to the fifteenth : today is Thursday, tomorrow 
 is the sixteenth and Friday, when comes the Spinat-Kirmes, or 
 Spinage-Wake, as they call it, and the uplifting of the steeple- 
 ball, which I just purposed to await before I went. Now, how- 
 ever, I do not go so soon ; for on Sunday I have to assist at the 
 baptismal ceremony, as baptismal agent for my little future god- 
 son. Whoever pays attention to me, and keeps the Almanac 
 open, may readily guess why the christening is put off till Sunday : 
 for it is that memorable Cantata- Sunday, which once, for its mad 
 narcotic hemlock-virtues, was of importance in our History ; but 
 is now so only for the fair betrothment, which after two years we 
 mean to celebrate with a baptism. 
 
 Truly it is not in my power — for want of colours and presses 
 — to paint or print upon my paper the soft balmy flower-garland 
 of a fortnight which has here wound itself about my sickly life ; 
 but with a single day I shall attempt it. Man, I know well, can- 
 not prognosticate either his joys or his sorrows, still less repeat 
 them, either in living or writing. 
 
 The black hour of coffee has gold in its mouth for us and 
 honey ; here, in the morning coolness, we are all gathered ; we 
 maintain popular conversation, that so the parsoness and the gar- 
 deneress may be able to take share in it. The morning- service 
 in the church, where often the whole people 30 are sitting and sing- 
 ing, divides us. While the bell is sounding, I march with my 
 writing-gear into the singing Castle-garden ; and seat myself in 
 the fresh acacia-grove, at the dewy two-legged table. Fixlehrs 
 Letter-boxes I keep by me in my pocket ; and I have only to look 
 and abstract from his what can be of use in my own. — Strange 
 enough ! so easily do we forget a thing in describing it, I reallj 
 did not recollect for a moment that I am now sitting at the very 
 grove-table, of which I speak, and writing all this. — 
 
 My gossip in the mean time is also labouring for the world. 
 His study is a sort of sacristy, and his printing-press a pulpit, 
 wherefrom he preaches to all men ; for an Author is the Town- 
 chaplain of the Universe. A man, who is making a Book, will 
 scarcely hang himself; all rich Lords' -sons, therefore, should 
 labour for the press ; for, in that case, when you awake too early 
 in bed, you have always a plan, an aim, and therefore a cause 
 before you why you should get out of it. Better off too is the 
 author who collects rather than invents, — for the latter with its 
 ao For according to the Jurists, fifteen persons make a people. 
 
LIFE OF QUIXTUS FIXLELX. 
 
 397 
 
 eating fire calcines the heart : I praise the Antiquary, the Herald - 
 ist, Notemaker, Compiler ; I esteem the Title-perch (a fish called 
 Perca-Diagramma, because of the letters on its scales), and the 
 Printer (a chafer, called Scarabceus Typographic, which eats let- 
 ters in the hark of fir), — neither of them needs any greater or 
 fairer arena in the world than a piece of rag-paper, or any other 
 laying-apparatus than a pointed pencil, wherewith to lay his four- 
 and-twenty letter-eggs. — In regard to the catalogue raisonne, 
 which my gossip is now- drawing up of German Errata, I have 
 several times suggested to him, "that it were good if he extended 
 his researches in one respect, and revised the rule, by which it 
 has been computed, that e.g. for a hundredweight of pica black- 
 letter, four hundred and fifty semicolons, three hundred periods, 
 &c. are required; and to recount, and see whether in Political 
 writings and Dedications the fifty notes of admiration for a hun- 
 dredweight of pica black-letter were not far too small an allow- 
 ance, and if so, what the real quantity was ?" 
 
 Several days he wrote nothing ; but wrapped himself in the 
 slough of his parson's-cloak ; and so in his canonicals, beside the 
 Schoolmaster, put the few A-b-c shooters, which were not, lik^ 
 forest-shooters, absent on furlough by reason of the spring, — 
 through their platoon firing in the Hornbook. He never did more 
 than his duty, but also never less. It brought a soft benignant 
 warmth over his heart, to think that he, who had once ducked 
 under a School-inspectorship, was now one himself. 
 
 About ten o'clock, we meet from our different museums, and 
 examine the village, especially the Biographical furniture and 
 holy places, which I chance that morning to have had under my 
 pen or pantagraph ; because I look at them with more interest 
 after my description than before it. 
 
 Next comes dinner. — 
 
 After the concluding grace, which is too long, we both of us 
 set to entering the charitable subsidies, and religious donations, 
 which our parishioners have remitted to the sinking or rather 
 rising fund of the church-box for the purchase of the new steeple- 
 globe, into two ledgers : the one of these, with the names of the 
 subscribers, or (in case they have subscribed for their children) 
 with their children's names also, is to be inurned in a leaden cap- 
 sule, and preserved in the steeple-ball ; the other will remain be- 
 low among the parish Registers. You cannot fancy what con- 
 tributions the ambition of getting into the Ball brings us in ; I 
 
398 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 declare, several peasants who had given and well once already, con- 
 tributed again when they had baptisms : must not little Hans be 
 in the Ball too ? 
 
 After this book-keeping by double -entry, my gossip took to 
 engraving on copper. He had been so happy as to elicit the 
 discovery, that from a certain stroke resembling an inverted 
 Latin S, the capital letters of our German Chancery-hand, beau- 
 tiful and intertwisted as you see them stand in Law-deeds and 
 Letters- of-nobility, may every one of them be composed and spun 
 out, 
 
 "Before you can count sixty," said he to me, "I take my 
 fundamental-stroke and make you any letter out of it." 
 
 I merely inverted this fundamental- stroke, that is, gave him 
 a German S, and counted sixty till he had it done. This line of 
 beauty, when once it has been twisted and flourished into all the 
 capitals, he purposes by copperplates which he is himself engrav- 
 ing, to make more common for the use of Chanceries ; and I may 
 take upon me to give the Russian, the Prussian, and a few other 
 smaller Courts, hopes of proof impressions from his hand : to 
 under- secretaries they are indispensable. 
 
 Now comes evening ; and it is time for us both, here forking 
 about with our fruit-hooks on the literary Tree of Knowledge, at 
 the risk of our necks, to clamber down again into the meadow- 
 flowers and pasturages of rural joy. We wait, however, till the 
 busy Thiennette, whom we are now to receive into our commu- 
 nion, has no more walks to take but the one between us. Then 
 slowly we stept along (the sick lady was weak) through the office- 
 houses; that is to say, through stalls and their population, and 
 past a horrid lake of ducks, and past a little milk-pond of carps, 
 to both of which colonies, I and the rest, like princes, gave bread, 
 seeing we had it in view on the Sunday after the christening, to 
 — take them for bread ourselves. 
 
 The sky is still growing kindlier and redder, the swallows and* 
 the blossom-trees louder, the house -shadows broader, and men 
 more happy. The clustering blossoms of the acacia-grove hang 
 down over our cold collation ; and the ham is not stuck (which 
 always vexes me) with flowers, but beshaded with them from a 
 distance 
 
 And now the deeper evening and the nightingale conspire to 
 soften me ; and I soften in my turn the mild beings round me ; 
 especially the pale Thiennette, to whom, or to whose heart, after 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 399 
 
 the apoplectic crush ings of a downpressed youth, the most violent 
 pulses of joy are heavier than the movements of pensive sadness. 
 And thus heautifully runs our pure transparent life along, under 
 the blooming curtains of May ; and in our modest pleasures we 
 look with timidity neither behind us nor before ; as people who 
 are lifting treasure gaze not round at the road they came, or the 
 road they are going. 
 
 So pass our days. Today, however, it was different : by this 
 time, usually, the evening meal is over ; and the Shock has got 
 the osseous preparation of our supper between his jaws ; but to- 
 night I am still sitting here alone in the garden, writing the 
 Eleventh Letter-Box, and peeping out every instant over the 
 meadows, to see if my gossip is not coming. 
 
 For he is gone to town, to bring a whole magazine of spice- 
 ries : his coat-pockets are wide. Nay, it is certain enough that 
 oftentimes he brings home with him, simply in his coat-pocket, 
 considerable flesh-tithes from his Guardian, at whose house he 
 alights ; though truly intercourse with the polished world and 
 city, and the refinement of manners thence arising, — for he calls 
 on the bookseller, on school-colleagues, and several respectable 
 shopkeepers, — does, much more than fl^sh-fetching, form the ob- 
 ject of these journeys to the city. This morning he appointed me 
 regent head of the house, and delivered me the fasces and curule 
 chair. I sat the whole day beside the young pale mother ; and 
 could not but think, simply because the husband had left me 
 there as his representative, that I liked the fair soul better. She 
 had to take dark colours, and paint out for me the winter land- 
 scape and ice region of her sorrow -wasted youth; but often, 
 contrary to my intention, by some simple elegiac word, I made 
 her still eye wet ; for the too full heart, which had been crushed 
 with other than sentimental woes, overflowed at the smallest 
 pressure. A hundred times in the recital I was on the point of 
 saying: "0 yes, it was with winter that your life began, and 
 the course of it has resembled winter!" — Windless, cloudless 
 day ! Three more words about thee, the world will still not take 
 amiss from me ! 
 
 I advanced nearer and nearer to the heart-central-fire of the 
 women ; and at last they mildly broke forth in censure of the 
 Parson ; the best wives will complain of their husbands to a 
 stranger, without in the smallest liking them the less on that 
 account. The mother and the wife, during dinner, accused him 
 
 \ 
 
400 
 
 JEAN PAUL FEIEDEICH EICHTEE. 
 
 of buying lots at every book-auction ; and, in truth, in such places, 
 he does strive and bid not so much for good or for bad books — or 
 old ones — or new ones — or such as he likes to read — or any sort 
 of favourite books — but simply for books. The mother blamed 
 especially his squandering so much on copperplates; yet some 
 hours after, when the Schultheis, or Mayor, who wrote a beautiful 
 hand, came in to subscribe for the steeple-ball, she pointed out to 
 him how finely her son could engrave, and said that it was well 
 worth while to spend a groschen or two on such capitals as these. 
 
 They then handed me, — for when once women are in the way 
 of a full open-hearted effusion, they like (only you must not- turn 
 the stop-cock of inquiry) to pour out the whole, — a ring-case, in 
 which he kept a Chamberlain's key that he had found, and asked 
 me if I knew who had lost it. Who could know such a thing, when 
 there ure almost more Chamberlains than picklocks among us ? — 
 
 At last I took heart, and asked after the little toy- press of 
 the drowned son, which hitherto I had sought for in vain over all 
 the house. Fixlein himself had inquired for it, with as little 
 success. Thiennette gave the old mother a persuading look full 
 of love ; and the latter led me up-stairs to an outstretched hoop- 
 petticoat, covering the poor press as with a dome. On the way 
 thither the mother told me, she kept it hid from her son, because 
 the recollection of his brother would pain him. When this de- 
 posit-chest of Time (the lock had fallen off) was laid open to me, 
 and I had looked into the little charnel-house, with its wrecks of 
 a childlike sportful Past, I, without saying a word, determined, 
 some time ere I went away, to unpack these playthings of the 
 lost boy, before his surviving brother : Can there be aught finer 
 than to look at these ash-buried, deep-sunk Herculanean ruins of 
 childhood, now dug up and in the open air ? 
 
 Thiennette sent twice to ask me whether he was come. He 
 and she, precisely because they do not give their love the weaken- 
 ing expression of phrases, but the strengthening one of actions, 
 have a boundless feeling of it towards one another. Some wedded 
 pairs eat each other's lips and hearts and love away by kisses, — 
 as in Rome, the statues of Christ (by Angelo) have lost their feet 
 by the same process of kissing, and got leaden ones instead ; in 
 other couples, again, you may see, by mere inspection, the number 
 of their conflagrations and eruptions, as in Vesuvius you can dis- 
 cover his, of which there are now forty-three : but in these two 
 beings rose the Greek fire of a moderate and everlasting love, and 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 401 
 
 gave warmth without casting forth sparks, and fiamed straight vp 
 without crackling. The evening-red is flowing back more magic- 
 ally from the windows of the gardener's cottage into my grove ; 
 and I feel as if I must say to Destiny: "Hast thou a sharp 
 sorrow, then throw it rather into my breast, and strike not with 
 it three good souls, who are too happy not to bleed by it, and too 
 sequestered in their little dim village not to shrink back at the 
 thunderbolt which hurries a stricken spirit from its earthly dwell- 
 ing." 
 
 Thou good Fixlein ! Here comes he hurrying over the par- 
 sonage-green. What languishing looks full of love already rest 
 in the eye of thy Thiennette ! — What news wilt thou bring us 
 tonight from the town ! — How will the ascending steeple-ball 
 refresh thy soul tomorrow ! — 
 
 TWELFTH LETTEE-BOX. 
 
 Steeple-ball-Ascension. The Toy-press. 
 
 How, on this sixteenth of May, the old steeple-ball was 
 twisted-off from the Hukelum steeple, and a new one put on in 
 its stead, will I now describe to my best ability ; but in that 
 simple historical style of the Ancients, which, for great events, 
 is perhaps the most suitable. 
 
 At a very early hour, a coach arrived containing Messrs. 
 Court - Guilder Zeddel and Locksmith Wachser, and the new 
 Peter's-cupola of the steeple. Towards eight o'clock the com- 
 munity, consisting of subscribers to the Globe, was visibly col- 
 lecting. A little later came the Lord Dragoon Rittmeister von 
 Aufhammer, as Patron of the church and steeple, attended by 
 Mr. Church-Inspector Streichert. Hereupon my Reverend Cousin 
 Fixlein and I repaired, with the other persons whom I have already 
 named, into the Church, and there celebrated before innumer- 
 able hearers a weekday prayer -service. Directly afterwards, my 
 Reverend Friend made his appearance above in the pulpit, and 
 endeavoured to deliver a speech which might correspond to the 
 solemn transaction ; — and immediately thereafter, he read aloud 
 the names of the patrons and charitable souls, by whose donations 
 the Ball had been put together ; and showed to the congregation 
 the leaden box in which they were specially recorded ; obseiving, 
 that the book from which he had recited them was to be reposited 
 
 VOL. III. DD 
 
402 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTEB. 
 
 in the Parish Register-office. Next he held it necessary to thank 
 them and God, that he, above his deserts, had been chosen as 
 the instrument and undertaker of such a work. The whole he 
 concluded with a short prayer for Mr. Stechmann the Slater (who 
 was already hanging on the outside on the steeple, and loosening 
 the old shaft) ; and entreated that he might not break his neck, 
 or any of his members. A short hymn was then sung, which the 
 most of those assembled without the church - doors sang along 
 with us, looking up at the same time to the steeple. 
 
 All of us now proceeded out likewise ; and the discarded ball, 
 as it were the amputated cock's-comb of the church, was lowered 
 down and untied. Church - Inspector Streichert drew a leaden 
 case from the crumbling ball, which my Reverend Friend put into 
 his pocket, purposing to read it at his convenience ; I, however, 
 said to some peasants : " See, thus will your names also be pre- 
 served in the new Ball, and when, after long years, it shall be 
 taken down, the box lies within it, and the then parson becomes 
 acquainted with you all." — And now was the new steeple-globe, 
 with the leaden cup in which lay the names of the bystanders, 
 at length full-laden so to speak, and saturated, and fixed to the 
 pulley-rope ; — and so did this the whilom cupping-glass of the 
 community ascend aloft 
 
 By heaven ! the unadorned style is here a thing beyond my 
 power : for when the Ball moved, swung, mounted, there rose a 
 drumming in the centre of the steeple ; and the Schoolmaster, 
 who, till now, had looked down through a sounding-hole directed 
 towards the congregation, now stept out with a trumpet at a side 
 sounding-hole, which the mounting Ball was not to cross. — But 
 when the whole Church rung and pealed, the nearer the capital 
 approached its crown, — and when the Slater clutched it and 
 turned it round, and happily incorporated the spike of it, and 
 delivered down, between Heaven and Earth, and leaning on the 
 Ball, a Topstone-speech to this and all of us, — and when my gos- 
 sip's eyes, in his rapture at being Parson on this great day, were 
 running over, and the tears trickling down his priestly garment ; 
 . — I believe I was the only man, — as his mother was the only 
 woman, — whose souls a common grief laid hold of to press them 
 even to bleeding ; for I and the mother had yesternight, as I shall 
 tell more largely afterwards, discovered in the little chest of the 
 drowned boy, from a memorial in his father's hand, that, on the 
 day after the morrow, on Cantata- Sunday and his bantismal-Sun- 
 
Life of quintus fixlfin. 
 
 409 
 
 day, he would be — two-and-thirty years of age. " 0 !" thought 
 I, while I looked at the blue heaven, the green graves, the glitter- 
 ing ball, the weeping priest, " so, at all times, stands poor man 
 with bandaged eyes before thy sharp sword, incomprehensible 
 Destiny ! And when thou drawest it and brandishest it aloft, 
 he listens with pleasure to the whizzing of the stroke before it 
 falls!"— 
 
 Last night I was aware of it ; but to the reader, whom I was 
 preparing for it afar off, I would tell nothing of the mournful news, 
 that, in the press of the dead brother, I had found an old Bible 
 which the boys had used at school, with a white blank leaf in it, 
 on which the father had written down the dates of his children's 
 birth. And even this it was that raised in thee, thou poor mother, 
 the shade of sorrow which of late we have been attributing to 
 smaller causes ; and thy heart was still standing amid the rain, 
 which seemed to us already past over and changed into a rain- 
 bow ! — Out of love to him, she had yearly told one falsehood, 
 and concealed his age. By extreme good luck, he had not been 
 present when the press was opened. I still purpose, after this 
 fatal Sunday, to surprise him with the parti- coloured reliques of 
 his childhood, and so of these old Christmas-presents to make 
 him new ones. In the mean while, if I and his mother can but 
 follow him incessantly, like fish-hook-floats and foot-clogs, through 
 tomorrow and next day, that no murderous accident lift aside the 
 curtain from his birth-certificate, — all may yet be well. For now, 
 in truth, to his eyes, this birthday, in the metamorphotic mirror 
 of his superstitious imagination, and behind the magnifying magic 
 vapour of his present joys, would burn forth like a red death- 
 warrant But besides all this, the leaf of the Bible is now 
 
 sitting higher than any of us, namely, in the new steeple-ball, 
 into which I this morning prudently introduced it. Properly 
 speaking there is indeed no danger. 
 
 THIRTEENTH LETTER-BOX, 
 
 Christening. 
 
 Today is that stupid Cantata- Sunday ; but nothing now re- 
 mains of it save an hour. — By heaven ! in right spirits were we all 
 today. I believe I have drunk as laithfully as another. — In truth, 
 
404 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRlEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 one should be moderate in all things, in writing, in drinking, in 
 rejoicing ; and as we lay straws into the honey for our bees that 
 they may not drown in their sugar, so ought one at all times to 
 lay a few firm Principles, and twigs from the tree of Knowledge, 
 into the Syrup of life, instead of those same bee-straws, that so 
 one may cling thereto, and not drown like a rat. But now I do 
 purpose in earnest to — write (and also live) with steadfastness ; 
 and therefore, that I may record the christening ceremony with 
 greater coolness, — to besprinkle my fire with the night-air, and to 
 roam out for an hour into the blossom-and-wave-embroidered night, 
 where a lukewarm breath of air, intoxicated with soft odours, is 
 sinking down from the blossom-peaks to the low-bent flowers, and 
 roaming over the meadows, and at last launching on a wave, and 
 with it sailing down the moonshiny brook. 0, without, under the 
 stars, under the tones of the nightingale, which seem to rever- 
 berate, not from the echo, but from the far-off down-glancing 
 worlds ; beside that moon, which the gushing brook in its flicker- 
 ing watery band is carrying away, and which creeps under the 
 little shadows of the bank as under clouds, — 0, amid such forms 
 and tones, the heart of man grows serious ; and as of old an even- 
 ing bell was rung to direct the wanderer through the deep forests 
 to his nightly home, so in our Night are such voices within us 
 and about us, which call to us in our strayings, and make us 
 calmer, and teach us to moderate our own joys, and to conceive 
 those of others. 
 
 I return, peaceful and cool enough, to my narrative. All 
 yesternight I left not the worthy Parson half an hour from my 
 sight, to guard him from poisoning the well of his life. Full of 
 paternal joy, and with the skeleton of the sermon (he was com- 
 mitting it to memory) in his hand, he set before me all that he 
 had ; and pointed out to me the fruit-baskets of pleasures which 
 Cantata- Sunday always plucked and filled for him. He recounted 
 to me, as I did not go away, his baptisms, his accidents of office; 
 told me of his relatives ; and removed my uncertainty with re- 
 gard to the public revenues — of his parish, to the number of his 
 communicants and expected catechumens. At this point, how- 
 ever, I am afraid that many a reader will in vain endeavour to 
 transport himself into my situation, and still be unable to dis- 
 cover why I said to Fixlein : " Worthy gossip, better no man 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 405 
 
 could wish himself." I lied not, for so it is ...... . But look 
 
 in the Note. 31 
 
 At last rose the Sunday, the present ; and on this holy day, 
 simply because my little godson was for going over to Christian- 
 ity, there was a vast racket made : every time a conversion hap- 
 pens, especially of nations, there is an uproaring and a shooting ; 
 I refer to the two Thirty- Years Wars, to the more recent one, 
 and to the earlier, which Charlemagne so long carried on with 
 the heathen Saxons : thus, in the Palais lioyal, the Sun, at his 
 transit over the meridian, fires off a cannon. 32 But this morning 
 the little Unchristian, my godson, was precisely the person least 
 attended to ; for, in thinking of the conversion, they had no time 
 left to think of the convert. Therefore I strolled about with him 
 myself half the forenoon ; and, in our walk, hastily conferred on 
 him a private-baptism ; having named him Jean Paul before the 
 priest did so. At midday, we sent the beef away as it had come ; 
 the Sun of happiness having desiccated all our gastric juices. 
 We now began to look about us for pomp ; I for scientific de- 
 corations of my hair, my godson for his christening- shirt, and his 
 mother for her dress-cap. Yet before the child' s-rattle of the 
 christening-bell had been jingled, I and the midwife, in front of 
 the mother's bed, instituted Physiognomical Travels 33 on the coun- 
 tenance of the small Unchristian, and returned with the discovery, 
 that some features had been embossed by the pattern of the mo- 
 ther, and many firm portions resembled me ; a double similarity, 
 in which my readers can take little interest. Jean Paul looks 
 very sensible for his years, or rather for his minutes, for it is the 
 small one I am speaking of. 
 
 But now I would ask, what German writer durst take it upon 
 him to spread out and paint a large historic sheet, representing 
 the whole of us as we went to church ? Would he not require to 
 draw the father, with swelling canonicals, moving forward slowly, 
 devoutly, and full of emotion ? Would he not have to sketch the 
 
 31 A long philosophical elucidation is indispensahly requisite : which will be 
 found in this Book, under the title : Natural Magic of the Imagination. [A 
 part of the Jus de Tablette appended to this Biography, unconnected with it, and 
 not given here. — Ed.] 
 
 32 This pigmy piece of ordnance, with its cunningly devised burning-glass, is 
 still to be seen on the south side of the Paris Vanity-Fair ; and in fine weather, 
 to be heard, on all sides thereof, proclaiming the conversion (so it seems to 
 Bichter) of the Day from Forenoon to Afternoon. — Ed, 
 
 33 gee Musaus, ante. — Ed. 
 
406 
 
 JEAN PAUL FPJEDRICH BICHTEB. 
 
 godfather, minded this day to lend out his names, which he de- 
 rived from two Apostles (John and Paul), as Julius Caesar lent 
 out his names to two things still living even now (to a month, 
 and a throne) ? — And must he not put the godson on his sheet, 
 with whom even the Emperor Joseph (in his need of nurse-milk) 
 might become a foster-brother, in his old days, if he were still in 
 them ?— 
 
 In my chamber, I have a hundred times determined to smile 
 at solemnities, in the midst of which I afterwards, while assisting 
 at them, involuntarily wore a petrified countenance, full of dignity 
 and seriousness. For, as the Schoolmaster, just before the bap- 
 tism, began to sound the organ, — an honour never paid to any 
 other child in Hukelmn, — and when I saw the wooden christen- 
 ing-angel, like an alighted Genius, with his painted timber arm 
 spread out under the baptismal ewer, and I myself came to stand 
 close by him, under his gilt wing, I protest the blood went slow 
 and solemn, warm and close, through my pulsing head, and my 
 lungs full of sighs ; and, to the silent darling tying in my arms, 
 whose unripe eyes Nature yet held closed from the full perspective 
 of the Earth, I wished, with more sadness than I do to myself, 
 for his Future also as soft a sleep as today ; and as good an angel 
 as today, but a more living one, to guide him into a more living 
 religion, and, with invisible hand, conduct him unlost through the 
 forest of Life, through its falling trees, and Wild Hunters, 34 and 
 
 all its storms and perils Will the world not excuse me, 
 
 if when, by a side-glance, I saw on the paternal countenance 
 prayers for the son, and tears of joy trickling down into the 
 prayer ; and when I noticed on the countenance of the grand- 
 mother far darker and fast-hidden drops, which she could not 
 restrain, while I, in answer to the ancient question, engaged to 
 provide for the child if its parents died, — am I not to be excused 
 if I then cast my eyes deep down on my little godson, merely to 
 hide their ranning over? — For I remembered that his father 
 might perhaps this very day grow pale and cold before a suddenly 
 arising mask of Death ; I thought how the poor little one had 
 only changed his bent posture in the womb with a freer one, to 
 bend and cramp himself ere long more harshly in the strait arena 
 of life ; I thought of his inevitable follies and errors and sins ; 01 
 these soiled steps to the Grecian Temple of our Perfection ; I 
 thought that one day his own fire of genius might reduce himseli 
 54 The "Wild Hunter, Wilde Jciger, is a popular spectre of Germany. — Ed, 
 
LIFE OF QUINTTS FIXLEIN. 
 
 407 
 
 to ashes, as a man that is electrified can kill himself with his own 
 lightning All the theological wishes, which, on the god- 
 son-billet printed over with them, I placed in his young bosom, 
 were glowing written in mine But the white feathered- 
 pink of my joy had then, as it always has, a bloody point within 
 it, — I again, as it always is, went to nest, like a woodpecker, in 
 a skull And as I am doing so even now, let the describ- 
 ing of the baptism be over for today, and proceed again to- 
 morrow. .... 
 
 FOURTEENTH LETTER-BOX. 
 
 0, so is it ever ! So does Fate set fire to the theatre of our little 
 plays, and our bright-painted curtain of Futurity ! So does the 
 Serpent of Eternity wind round us and our joys, and crush, like 
 the royal-snake, what it does not poison ! Thou good Fixlein ! — 
 Ah ! last night, I little thought that thou, mild soul, while I was 
 writing beside thee, wert already journeying into the poisonous 
 Earth-shadow of Death. 
 
 Last night, late as it was, he opened the lead box found in 
 the old steeple-ball ; a catalogue of those w r ho had subscribed to 
 the last repairing of the church was there ; and he began to read 
 it now ; my presence and his occupations having prevented him 
 before. 0, how shall I tell that the record of his birth -year, 
 which I had hidden in the new Ball, was waiting for him in the 
 old one ? that in the register of contributions he found his father's 
 name, with the appendage, " given for his new-born son Egi- 
 dius" ? — 
 
 This stroke sank deep into his bosom, even to the rending of 
 it asunder : in this warm hour, full of paternal joy, after such fair 
 days, after such fair employments, after dread of death so often 
 survived, here, in the bright smooth sea, which is rocking and 
 bearing him along, starts snorting, from the bottomless abyss, 
 the sea-monster Death ; and the monster's throat yawns wide, 
 and the silent sea rushes into it in whirlpools, and hurries him 
 along with it. 
 
 But the patient man, quietly and slowly, and with a heart 
 silent, though deadly coll, laid the leaves together ; — looked softly 
 and firmly over the churchyard, where, in the moonshine, the 
 grave of his father was to be distinguished ; — gazed timidly up to 
 
408 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTE3o 
 
 the sky, full of stars, which a white overarching laurel-tree half 
 screened from his sight and though he longed to be in bed, to 
 settle there and sleep it off, yet he paused at the window to pray 
 for his wife and child, in case this night were his last. 
 
 At this moment the steeple-clock struck twelve ; but from 
 the breaking of a pin, the weights kept rolling down, and the 
 clock-hammer struck without stopping, — and he heard with horror 
 the chains and wheels rattling along ; and he felt as if Death 
 were hurling forth in a heap all the longer hours which he might 
 yet have had to live, — and now to his eyes, the churchyard began 
 to quiver and heave, the moonlight flickered on the church-win- 
 dows, and in the church there were lights flitting to and fro, and 
 in the charnel-house there was a motion and a tumult. 
 
 His heart fainted within him, and he threw himself into bed, 
 and closed his eyes that he might not see ; — but Imagination in 
 the gloom now blew aloft the dust of the dead, and whirled it 
 into giant shapes, and chased these hollow fever -born masks 
 alternately into lightning and shadow. Then at last from trans- 
 parent thoughts grew coloured visions, and he dreamed this 
 dream : He was standing at the window looking out into the 
 churchyard ; and Death, in size as a scorpion, was creeping over 
 it, and seeking for his bones. Death found some arm-bones and 
 thigh-bones on the graves, and said : " They are my bones and 
 he took a spine and the bone-legs, and stood with them, and the 
 two arm-bones and clutched with them, and found on the grave 
 of Fixlein's father a skull, and put it on. Then he lifted a scythe 
 beside the little flower-garden, and cried: " Fixlein, where art 
 thou ? My finger is an icicle and no finger, and I will tap on 
 thy heart with it." The skeleton, thus piled together, now looked 
 for him who was standing at the window, and powerless to stir 
 from it ; and carried in the one hand, instead of a sandglass, the 
 ever-striking steeple-clock, and held out the finger of ice, like a 
 dagger, far into the air 
 
 Then he saw his victim above at the window, and raised him- 
 self as high as the laurel-tree to stab straight into his bosom with 
 the finger, — and stalked towards him. But as he came nearer, 
 his pale bones grew redder, and vapours floated woolly round his 
 haggard form. Flowers started up from the ground ; and he stood 
 transfigured and without the clam of the grave, hovering above 
 them, and the balm-breath from the flower-cups wafted him gently 
 on ; — and as he came nearer, the scytho and cloak were gone. 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 409 
 
 and in his bony breast he had a heart, and on his bony head red 
 lips ; — and nearer still, there gathered on him soft, transparent, 
 rosebalm-dipt flesh, like the splendour of an Angel flying hither 
 from the starry blue ; — and close at hand, he was an Angel with 
 shut snow-white eyelids 
 
 The heart of my friend, quivering like a Harmonica-bell, now 
 melted in bliss in his clear bosom ; — and when the Angel opened 
 its eyes, his were pressed together by the weight of celestial rap- 
 ture, and his dream fled away. 
 
 But not his life : he opened his hot eyes, and — his good wife 
 had hold of his feverish hand, and was standing in room of the 
 Angel. 
 
 The fever abated towards morning : but the certainty of dying 
 still throbbed in every artery of the hapless man. He called for 
 his fair little infant into his sick-bed, and pressed it silently, 
 though it began to cry, too hard against his paternal heavy-laden 
 breast. Then towards noon his soul became cool, and the sultry 
 thunder-clouds within it drew back. And here he described to us 
 the previous (as it were, arsenical) fantasies of his usually quiet 
 head. But it is even those tense nerves, which have not quivered 
 at the touch of a poetic hand striking them to melody of sorrow, 
 that start and fly asunder more easily under the fierce hand of 
 Fate, when with sweeping stroke it smites into discord the firm- 
 set strings. 
 
 But towards night his ideas again began rushing in a torch - 
 dance, like fire-pillars round his soul : every artery became a 
 burning-rod, and the heart drove flaming naphtha-brooks into the 
 brain. All within his soul grew bloody : the blood of his drowned 
 brother united itself with the blood which had once flowed from 
 Thiennette's arm, into a bloody rain ; — he still thought he was 
 in the garden in the night of betrothment, he still kept calling 
 for bandages to stanch blood, and was for hiding his head in the 
 ball of the steeple. Nothing afflicts one more than to see a rea- 
 sonable moderate man, who has been so even in his passions, 
 raving in the poetic madness of fever. And yet if nothing save 
 this mouldering corruption can soothe the hot brain ; and if, while 
 the reek and thick vapour of a boiling nervous-spirit, and the 
 hissing water-spouts of the veins are encircling and eclipsing the 
 stifled soul, a higher Finger presses through the cloud, and sud- 
 denly lifts the poor bewildered spirit from amid the smoke to a 
 sun — is it more just to complain, than to reflect that Fate is like 
 
410 
 
 JEAN PAUL FPIEDPJCH PICHTER. 
 
 the oculist, who, when about to open to a blind eye the world of 
 light, first bandages and darkens the other eye that sees ? 
 
 But the sorrow does affect me, which I read on Thiennette's 
 pale lips, though do not hear. It is not the distortion of an ex- 
 cruciating agony, nor the burning of a dried-up eye, nor the loud 
 lamenting or violent movement of a tortured frame that I see in 
 her ; but what I am forced to see in her, and what too keenly 
 cuts the sympathising heart, is a pale, still, unmoved; undistorted 
 face, a pale bloodless head, which Sorrow is as it were holding up 
 after the stroke, like a head just severed by the axe of the heads- 
 man ; for, 0 ! on this form the wounds, from which the three- 
 edged dagger had been drawn, are all fallen firmly together, and 
 the blood is flowing from them in secret into the choking heart. 
 0 Thiennette, go away from the sick-bed, and hide that face which 
 is saying to us: "Now do I know that I shall not have any 
 happiness on Earth ; now do I give over hoping — would this life 
 were but soon done." 
 
 You will not comprehend my sympathy, if you know not what, 
 some horns ago, the too loud lamenting mother told me. Thien- 
 nette, who of old had always trembled for his thirty- second year, 
 had encountered this superstition with a nobler one : she had 
 purposely stood farther back at the marriage -altar, and in the 
 bridal-night fallen sooner asleep than he ; thereby — as is the 
 popular belief — so to order it that she might also die sooner. 
 Nay, she has determined if he die, to lay with his corpse a piece 
 of her apparel, that so she may descend the sooner to keep him 
 company in his narrow house. Thou good, thou faithful wife, but 
 thou unhappy one ! — 
 
 CHAPTER LAST. 
 
 I have left Hukelum, and my gossip his bed ; and the one is 
 as sound as the other. The cure was as foolish as the malady. 
 
 It first occurred to me, that as Boerhaave used to remedy 
 convulsions by convulsions, one fancy might in my gossip's case 
 be remedied by another ; namely, by the fancy that he was yet 
 no man of thirty- two, but only a man of six or nine. Deliriums 
 are dreams not encircled by sleep ; and all dreams transport us 
 back into youth, why not deliriums too ? I accordingly directed 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 411 
 
 every one to leave the patient : only his mother, while the fiercest 
 meteors were dancing and hissing before his fevered soul, was to 
 sit down by him alone, and speak to him as if he were a child of 
 eight years. The bed-mirror also I directed her to cover. She 
 did so ; she spoke to him as if he had the small-pox fever ; and 
 when he cried : " Death is standing with two-and-thirty pointed 
 teeth before me, to eat my heart," she said to him: "Little dear, 
 I will give thee thy roller -hat, and thy copybook, and thy case, 
 and thy hussar-cloak again, and more too, if thou wilt be good." 
 A reasonable speech he would have taken up and heeded much 
 less than he did this foolish one. 
 
 At last she said, — for to women in the depth of sorrow, dis- 
 simulation becomes easy : ' ' Well, I will try it this once, and give 
 thee thy playthings : but do the like again, thou rogue, and roll 
 thyself about in the bed so, with the small-pox on thee !" And 
 with this, from her full apron she shook out on the bed the whole 
 stock of playthings and dressing-ware, which I had found in the 
 press of the drowned brother. First of all his copybook, where 
 Egidius in his eighth year had put down his name, which he 
 necessarily recognised as his own handwriting ; then the black 
 velvet fall -hat or roller -cap; then the red and white leading- 
 strings ; his knife-case, with a little pamphlet of tin-leaves ; his 
 green hussar-cloak, with its stiff facings ; and a whole orbis p ictus 
 or fetus of Niirnberg puppets. . . . 
 
 The sick man recognised 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 ol his father, and was cured by his playthings, over- 
 flowed his soul with splendour and lights, and presence of the 
 past. 
 
 And so Deliriujn dyed lor itself rosy wings in the Aurora of 
 
412 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDKICH RICHTER. 
 
 life, and fanned the panting soul, — and shook lown golden butter- 
 fly-dust from its plumage on the path, on the flowerage of the suf- 
 fering man; — in the far distance rose lovely tones, in the distance 
 floated lovely clouds, — 0, 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 dewdrops for the cups 
 of joy-blossoms, into blooddrops for loving hearts ; his soul was 
 floating, palpitating, drinking and swimming in the warm relax- 
 ing 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, than 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 Quarter- 
 master. 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. Kegiments- 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 con- 
 tributed a good deal ; for I swore I would hold him as no right 
 gossip, and edite 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 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 413 
 
 Saturday, and at the altar next day he dispensed the Sacrament. 
 Service ended, the feast of his recovery was celebrated, my fare- 
 well-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 pantagraph 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 catechising; 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, 35 and wrote down what I was there 
 — thinking. I was well aware, that when I today, on the twenty- 
 fifth of May, retired from this Salemic 36 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 Kules 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 buz about our room, we should, 
 like Domitian, amuse ourselves with flies, or, like a certain still 
 living Elector, 37 feed them. — For civic life and its micrologies, 
 for which the Parson has & natural taste, we must acquire an 
 artificial one; must learn to love without esteeming it; learn, 
 
 * s Indicating to the congregation what Psalm is to be sung. — Ed. 
 
 36 Salerno was once famous for its medical science ; but here, as in many 
 other cases, we could desire the aid of Herr Reinhold with his Lexicon-Commen- 
 tary. — Ed. 
 
 37 This hospitable Potentate is as unknown to me as to any of my readers, 
 —Ed. 
 
414 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 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 Pre- 
 sent 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 neighbourhood of thy 
 life ; every shelf, every nook of thy abode ; and nestling in, quar- 
 ter 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 neigh- 
 bours 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 behove 
 me not to make so much of this Biography ; but once for all, like 
 a moderate man, to let it sound out. 
 
 After the Catechising, 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 man- 
 aging 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 La- 
 rater, 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 oi a Court Lady there, 
 
LIFE OP QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 415 
 
 but also in his Hand-Library ,- 38 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 Bio- 
 grapher at length got his way, all doctors' regulations notwith- 
 standing. 
 
 I then constrained the Parson to put on his Krautermiitze, 39 
 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 Car- 
 dinals 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 Bobber- 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 Auf hammer, his intention of dedicating 
 the description to the Kittmeister : 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 Fiichslein 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 Mend the Editor of 
 the Litter aturzeitung at my side, who will gladly permit me to 
 give ananticritique, on paying the insertion- dues !" — I especially 
 
 35 A little work printed in manuscript types ; and seldom given by him to any 
 but Princes. This piece of print-writing he intentionally passes off to the great 
 as a piece of hand- writing ; these persons being both more habituated and in- 
 clined to the reading of manuscript than of print. 
 
 99 Thus defined by Adelung in his Lexicon : " Krautermiitze, in Medicine, a 
 cap with various dried herbs sewed into it, and which is worn for all manner cf 
 troubles in the head." — Ed. 
 
416 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 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. 4 'Neither 
 to my godson, worthy gossip, will it do any harm that he is pre- 
 sented, 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 colours 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 an- 
 other 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 man- 
 ner, I say, a little jar of marmalade were standing by me, namely, 
 a sw T eetened, dainty, lovely face, and out of measure fond of the 
 Letter-Box-writer, gossip ! Your marriage will resemble the Aca- 
 cia-grove we are now going to, the leaves of which grow thicker 
 wdth 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 hap- 
 pily 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 
 p.ge 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 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 417 
 
 chill in the evening dew. In confused mood, I invited the Par- 
 son 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 reflexion 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 escort- 
 ing 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 Flachs- 
 enfingen highway. I often abruptly turned round my head be- 
 tween 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 con- 
 tented 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 affec- 
 tionate 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 gaily 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 beam 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 
 
 VOL. III. EE 
 
418 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEICH EICHTER. 
 
 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 hy the Water-clock of 
 falling tears, but by the Floicer-clock 40 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 stream- 
 ing eyes over these two loved ones, as over their corpses — ad- 
 dress myself, and say: Far too soft, Jean Paid, 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 con- 
 fess 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, " niay 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 — 
 0, all that you deserve — may this be given you ; and when you 
 see me again, then say to me, 1 1 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 Eolian Harp of the Crea- 
 tion to tremble and to sound, blown on from above, and my im- 
 mortal soul was a string in this Harp. — The heart oi a brother 
 
 40 Linne formed in Upsal a flower-clock, the flowers of which, by their dif- 
 ferent times of falling asleep, indicated the hours of the day. 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 419 
 
 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 ham- 
 lets, and close by their outer churchyards, where crumbled upcast 
 coffin-boards were glimmering, while the once bright eyes that 
 had laid 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 be- 
 low ; 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 returned 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 !" — 
 
 THE END. 
 
Richaed Clay & Sons, Limited, 
 e;.ial street hill, e.c. ; AM5 
 
 EOfGAT, SUFFOLK.