v^3 
 
 CORNELL 
 UNWERSiTY 
 LIBRARY . 
 
 fROM 
 H.B.Lord 
 
DATE DUE 
 
 CORNELL UNIVERSnv LIBRARY 
 
 3 1924 082 667 217 
 
TEANSLATIONS FEOM THE GERMAN 
 
 THOMAS ^ARLYLE. 
 
 MUS^US, TIECK, RICHTER. 
 
 (1827.) 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193 PICCADILLY. 
 
 M.DCOO.LVm. 
 
f\.31l^o^ 
 
 LOHDON : 
 PniKTED BT LEVEY, UOnSON, AND PRANKLYS, 
 
 Great Now Street and^Fetter Lane. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 MUS^US : 
 
 rAon 
 
 Dumb Love 3 
 
 LiBUSSA 53 
 
 Meleohsala 90 
 
 TIECK : 
 
 The FAin-HAtBED Eckbebt 145 
 
 The Teustt Eokaet 160 
 
 The Kunenbero . . 185 
 
 The Elves . . 204 
 
 The Goblet 221 
 
 EICHTEE : 
 
 schmelzle's joubnet to elibtz 237 
 
 Life oe Qdiittus Fixlein . 284 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924082667217 
 
MUS^US. 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 Thebe was once a wealthy merchant, Melohior of Bremen by 
 name, who used to stroke his beard with a contemptuous grin, 
 when he heard the Rich 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 cei-tain 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 speculation 
 than to mere yain-gloiy. The cunning Bremer easily observed, that 
 •those who grudged and blamed this seeming vanity, would but dif- 
 fuse 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. 
 
 Melohior 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 talce possession of his inherit- 
 ance. Franz Melcherson, was a brilliant youth, endued by nature 
 with the best capacities. His exterior was gracefully fonned, yet 
 firm and sinewy withal; his temper was cheery and jovial, as if 
 hung-beef and old French wine had joined to influence his forma- 
 tion. On liis cheeks bloomed health; and from his 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 frait 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 Eich 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 super- 
 fluity with his; and never while the town of Bremen 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 Kmsel-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 joviaUty, no thought was cast upon 
 the Balancing of Entries, which, in those days, was the merchant's 
 vademecum, though in our times it is going out of fashion, and for 
 want of it the tongue of the commercial beam too frequently de- 
 clines 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 company 
 of jesters, gamesters, parasites, and all who had their living by the 
 prodigal son, took special care to keep reflection at a distance from 
 him; they hurried him from one enjoyment to another; kept 
 him constantly in play, lest in some sober moment Beason 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 ser- 
 vant, 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 condition 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. 
 
 , Bill-brokers, usurers and money-changers now came into plaj'. 
 For high interest, fresh sums were poured into the empty coffei-s ; 
 the silver flooring of the dining-room was then more potent in the 
 eyes of creditors, than in these times of ours the promissory obliga- 
 tion 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 
 
DUMB lOVE. ' 
 
 its stead. The matter was immediately, by application of the lend- 
 ers, legally inquired into, and discovered to be actually so. Now, 
 it could not be denied, that a marble-floor, worked into nice Mo- 
 saic, looked much better in a parlour, than a sheet of dirty, tar- 
 nished 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 bankruptcy; 
 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 entei-ed 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 ior 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 understsCnd 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 
 never shone throughout the yeai-, 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 fonner friends there w^s 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 tb lodge in empty heads. T|here 
 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, Seyfiied with the Horns, Eennewart the. 
 Strong, were following their snake and dragon hunt, and killing 
 giants and dwarfs of twelve men's strength. The venerable epos, 
 Theuerdanlc, was the loftiest ide^l 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 insti- 
 tuted 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. Mean- 
 while his turn for- observation ere long found another sort of nour- 
 ishment, by which the vacant space in his head and heart was 
 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, inight have been begirt. 
 These two spinners had not been bbrn for the wheel ; they were 
 of good descent, and had lived of old in pleasant affluence. The 
 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 tad sunk the vessel, " with man and mouse," and a rich 
 cargo, into the abysses of the ocean, before Meta had passed the 
 yeai's of her childhood. The mother, a staid and reasonable wo- 
 man, 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 ; consi- 
 dering it as shameful alms, so long as she believed, tliat 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 
 
DUMB LOVE. 1 
 
 depending upon no one, and owing no mortal any obligation. By 
 and by she trained her growing daughter to the same employment ; 
 and lived so thriftily, tliat 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 ra- 
 tional 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 heart 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 education suit- 
 able 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 witl* 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 the household. The fair 
 Meta, it is true, bloomed only like a precious rare flower in the 
 green-house, not under the gay, free sky ; she lived in maternal 
 oversight and keeping, sequestered and still; was iSeeu 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 contra- 
 dict her mother's principle. The old Lady E * * of Memel un- 
 derstood 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 purpose fully. How many hearts 
 did the wandering nymph set on fire, how many suitors courted 
 her ! Had she staid at home, as a domestic modest maiden, she 
 might have bloomed away in the remoteness of her virgin cell, 
 vrithout even malting a conquest of Kubbuz the schoolma,ster. 
 Other times, other manners. Daughters with us are a sleeping 
 capital, which must be put in circulation if it is to yield any inter- 
 est; 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 window, 
 making observations on the weather, he perceived the charming 
 Meta coming with her mother from church, whither she went daily, 
 to attend mass. In the times of his abundance, the unstable vo- 
 luptuary 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 hy the aspect of this, the 
 loveliest female figure that had ever flitted past him. He aban- 
 doned fi-om that hour the barren study of the winds and clouds, 
 and now instituted quite another set of Observations for the fur- 
 therance of Moral Science, and one which afibrded to himself 
 much finer occupation. He soon extracted from his landlord in- 
 telligence of this fair neighbour, and learned most part of whafwe 
 know already. 
 
 Now rose on him the first repentant thought for his heedless 
 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 
 dow^ered with it. His garret in the narrow lane was now so dear 
 to him, that he would not have exchanged it with the Schudding 
 itself' 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-observations, 
 and ere long discovered what the lounger on the other sidb was 
 driving at; and as Franz, in the capacity of spendthrift, already 
 stood in veiy bad esteem with her, this daily gazing angered her 
 so much, that she shrouded her lattice as with a cloud, and drew 
 the curtains close together. Meta had the strictest ordera 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 tlmt penetration was his master fa- 
 
 ' One of the lavgest buildings iu Brsraen, where the raeetinga of the mer- 
 chants are usually held. 
 
DCMB LOVE. 9 
 
 oulty ; but Love awakens all the talents of the mind. He observed, 
 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 Venerabih itself were cai-ried by. On 
 the other hand, he meditated some invention for proceeding with 
 his observations in a private manner; and without great labour, 
 his combining spirit mastered it. 
 
 He hired the largest looking-glass tliat 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 neigh- 
 bours. Here, as for several days the watcher did not come to 
 light, the screens by degrees went asunder ; and the broad miiTor 
 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,' 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 state of her 
 opinions. The commonest and readiest way which lovers, under 
 such a constellation of their wishes, strike into, was in his posi- 
 tion inaccessible. In those modest ages, it was always difficult 
 for Paladins in love to introduce themselves to daughteis of the 
 family ; toilette calls were not in fashfon ; trustful interviews tete- 
 Hrtete 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 forwarding sweet court- 
 ship, had not then been hit upon ; yet, notwithstanding, all things 
 went their course, much as they do with us. Gossijiings, weddings, 
 lykewakes, were, especially in our Imperial Cities, privileged vehi- 
 cles for carrying on soft secrets, and expediting marriage contracts ; 
 hence the old proverb. One wedding makes a score. But a poor run- 
 agate 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 yam trade 
 passed through no hands but her own; and she abode by her 
 daughter as closely as her shadow. 
 
 In these circumstances, it was cleai:ly impossible for neighbour 
 Franz to disclose his heart to the fair Meta, either verbally or in 
 writing, tere 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 har- 
 
10 . MUS^US. 
 
 monies, in serenades beneath tli6 balconies of theii- 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 subduing, than of yoi'e the 
 oratoiy of the reverend Chrysostom, or the pleadings of Demos- 
 thenes and TuUy. But of all this the simple Bremer had not heard 
 a syllable; and consequently the invention of expressing his emo- 
 tions 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 the lane were all 
 ear, every time the dilettante stmck a note. Mothers hushed 
 theh 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 eai-, 
 his voluntaries whirled along in gay allegro, or skipped away in 
 mirthful jigs ; but if the turning of the spindle, or her thi-ifty 
 mother, kepfher 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 hermeneutio 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 innocent amusement was a 
 
DUMB LOVE. II 
 
 light tiling for tho mother, who no longer feared the coney-catch- 
 ing neighbour, now that she no longer saw him witli 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- 
 getlier 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 
 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 aiid 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 defended 
 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 pre- 
 sent of a piece of stuff, from an unknown hand, would scai'cely 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 afibrded 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 bi-anoh of industiy 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 now 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 sundiy, had it been permitted 
 him to choose a heart's-mate from among them, and fixed upon 
 the chaiming Meta. 
 
 But just as he was triumphing in the result of his innocent de- 
 ceit, the secret was betrayed. Mother Brigitta had resolved to do 
 tlie fl;ax-retailer, who had brought her that rich gain, a kindness 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 fe- 
 male secrecy gave way. Meta gi-ew pale with affright at the disco- 
 very, which would have chai-med 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 preservation 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 iiftpression on her daughter's heart, 
 which would derange her whole calculations. She resolved, there- 
 fore, to root out the still tender germ of this weed, in the veiy 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 speculation, 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 tlie real po- 
 sition 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. 
 
 Meanwlule, 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 
 
DUMB LOVE. 13 
 
 stormy night, she did appear, her countenance was troubled, the 
 fire of her eyes was extinguished, and it seemed to him, that, at 
 times, with her finger, she pressed away a pearly tear. This seized 
 him sharply by the heart ; and his lute resounded melancholy 
 sympathy in soft Lydian mood. He grieved, and meditated to 
 discover why his love ivas sad ; but all his thinking and imagining 
 were vain. After some days were past, he noticed, to his con- 
 sternation, 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 imputed 
 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 extra- 
 vagance, 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 iiTCcoverably. 
 
 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 efifected 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 
 symboUc responses of the fair Meta, with her flower-pots, to his 
 
,14 Mus^ns. 
 
 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 efiect. 
 
 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 
 iformer taught her, by a secret instinct, the existence of emotions, 
 for which she had no namfi, and eulogised them as the panacea of 
 .life ; the latter warned her to beware of the surprisals of a passion, 
 fwhich 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 be- 
 seemed 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 mo- 
 thers gave the tractable heart of the daughter the direction of a 
 ship which ia 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. "^vAnd 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 
 beautiful eyes ; for this that, when the watchful Franz saluted her 
 as she came from church, she tlianked him so kindly, and grew 
 scarlet to the ears. The lovers had in truth never spoken any 
 word to one another; but he unders.tood her, and she him, so 
 perfectly, that in the most secret interview they could not have 
 
DUMB I,OVE. 15 
 
 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. Olu-istopher, to offer him a wax-taper as long as a hop- 
 pole, and as thick as a mashiug-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,! and demanded payment of his debt. To the quick 
 widower this seemed a heavenly call to east out the net without 
 delay. Early in the morning he sent for tlie brokers of the town, 
 ,and commissioned them to buy bleached wax; then decked him- 
 self like a Syndic, and set forth to e^edite his marriage specula- 
 tion. He had no musical talents, and in the secret symbolic lan- 
 guage 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 
 W eser, and a farm without the gates. With such recommendations 
 he might have reckoned on a prosperous issue to his courtship, 
 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 
 christian intentions towards her virtuous and honourable daugh- 
 ter. No angel's visit eould 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- 
 
 * St. Chriatopher 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 wiuiqw. 
 
16 musjEus. 
 
 bour Fmnz, who had given occasion to it. Though Franz was not 
 exactly her bosom-youth, she silently resolved to gladden him, fl.s 
 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 decomm did not permit these rash proceedings in a 
 matter of such moment. She therefore let the motion lie ad referen- 
 dum,, 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 proceeding, 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 witliout accusation being lodged against them, 
 were consigned, like some luckless Parliainent of Paris, to disgi-ace, 
 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 prin- 
 cesses are still ; they were not asked about their inclination, 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 
 bram, and she sank fainting in her mother's ai-ms. When her 
 senses were recalled by the sprinkling of cold water, and she had 
 m some degree recovered strength, her eyes ovei-flowed with tears, 
 as if a heavy misfortune had befallen her. From all these symp- 
 toms, the sagacious mother easily perceived th.it the man-iage-trade 
 was not to her taste; at which she wondered not a little, sparmg 
 
DUMB LOVE. 17 
 
 neither prayers nor admoniljons to lier 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 lier happi- 
 ness depended on a match, to wliieh her lieart 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 ap- 
 proaching ; the sacred taper for St. Christopher, which Og King of 
 Bashan need not have disdained had it been lit for him as a marri- 
 age-torch athis espousals, stood in readiness, all beautifully painted 
 with living flowers like a many-ooloured 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 sultiy heat, she was drooping together, and visibly fading 
 away. Hidden grief was gnawing at her heart; she had prescribed 
 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 indul- 
 gence plied into the daughter's will. It cost her much constraint,. 
 indeed, and many hard battles, to turn away so advantageous an 
 offer; yet at last, according to established order in household 
 governments, she yielded unconditionally to the inclination of 
 her child, and remonstrated no more with her beloved patient on 
 the subject. As the stout widower announced himself on the 
 appointed day, in the full trust that his heavenly deputy had ar- 
 ranged it all according to his wish, he received, quite unexpectedly, 
 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 aoconimOdated 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 daughters^ who come up to the 
 Solomonic sketch, and are ready tO' make perfect spouses ; besides, 
 notwithstanding this unprospered courtship, 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 
 planted with much pomp his devoted taper at the friendly shrine. 
 
 
 
18 MUSiE0S, 
 
 Mother Brigitta was now fain to recall the exiled spiuning- 
 taokle 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, a,nd 
 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 fortune. Meta 
 looked at the bridal-pomp with great equanimity ; even the royal 
 onjainents, 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 Pai-is cap, or any other meteor in the gallery of Mode, will 
 so fi-equently derange the contentment and domestic peace of an 
 entire parish. Nothing but th« 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 succeeded that the good 
 lady grew a little more communicative. 
 
 In the evening, when the wedding-dance began, she said, " Ah, 
 child ! this merry dance it might have been thy part to lead off. 
 What a pleasvu-e, hadst tliou 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 aim to attend thee to the altar." — 
 " Dear motiier," 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 gh-ls without dowry there is no press of 
 wooers ; they are heavy ware to trade with. Nowadays the bache- 
 lors are mighty stin^ ; they court to be happy, not to make happy. 
 Besides, thy pljanet bodes thee no good ; thou wert bora in April. 
 Let us see how it is written in the Calendar ; ' A damsel born in 
 this month is comely of countenance, 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 min'd 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 
 
DUMB LOVE. 10 
 
 oom-age by the labour of my bands, and stand by you, and nurse 
 you in your old age, as beseems a good daughter. But if the man 
 of my heart do nome, then bless my choice, tliat 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 bi-ead 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 be would be the 
 tree for rooting in the lovely Meta's heart. She had looked upon 
 him only as a wild tendril, that stretches out towards every neigh- 
 bouring twig, to clamber up by means of it. This discoveiy pro- 
 cured her little joy; but she gave nc^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 dis- 
 lodged. 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 frorn 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 Miystery'for 
 him. •Love'had already changed a spendthrift into a dilettante ; 
 but this for a bride-seeker was the very smallest of recommenda- 
 tions, a gift which in those rude times was rewarded neither with 
 such praise nor with such pudding, as it is in our luxurious cen- 
 tury. 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 sttidents, whose squeaking symphonies 
 
20 MusiEns. 
 
 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 touching monodrama did he begin with 
 an and an All, 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 saorificest thyself to a wretch, to a beggar, 
 who has nothing in the worid but a heart full of love, and despair 
 that he can offer thee no happiness such as thou deservest." In- 
 numerable times, in the paroxysms of these pathetic humours, he 
 struck his brow in fury, with the repentant exclamation: " O fool ! 
 O madman ! thou art wise too late." 
 
 Love, however, did not leave its working incomjjlete. It had 
 already brought about a wholesome fermentation in his spiiit, a, 
 desire to put in use his powers and activity, to tiy if he might 
 struggle up from his present nothingness : it now incited him to 
 the attempt of executing these good purposes. Among many spe- 
 culations he had entertained for the recruiting of his wrecked 
 finances, the most rational and promising was tliis : To mn over 
 his father's ledgers, and there note down any small escheats which 
 had been marked as lost, with a view of going through the land, 
 and gleaning, if so were that a lock of wheat might still be 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 fi-eighted with his pro- 
 perty. He proceeded rapidly to execute his purpose ; changed the 
 last golden fragment of his heritage, his father's hour-egg,' 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 heai-t. 
 " What will she think," said he to himself, " of this sudden disap- 
 pearance, when thou shalt no more meet her in the ohurch-waj' ? 
 Will she not regard thee as faithless, and banish thee from her 
 heart ?" This tliought afflicted him exceedingly ; and for a great 
 while he could think of no expedient for explaining to her his 
 intention. But at last inventive Love suggested the idea of sig- 
 nifying to her from the pulpit itself his absence and its purpose. 
 With this view, in the church, which had already favoured the se- 
 cret understanding of the lovers, he bought a Prayer " for a young 
 
 ' The oldest watches, from the shape they had, were named hour-eggs. 
 
DUMB LOVE. 21 
 
 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 resen-e than before; so that she blushed deeply; and 
 Mother Brigitta found opportunity for various marginal notes, 
 which indicated her displeasui-e 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 
 it, for her heart was troubled because her lover had become invi- 
 sible. This disappearance was inexplicable to her ; she Isnew not 
 what to think of it. After the lapse of some months, when time 
 had a little softened her secret cai-e, and she was suffering his 
 absence with a calmer mind, it happened once, as the last appear- 
 ance of her love was hovering upon her fancy, that this same 
 Prayer strack 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 al^ough 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, in- 
 asmuch 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 tlie 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 tliis invisible guidance, Franz was journeying towards 
 Brabant, to call in some considerable sums tliat were due him at 
 Antweip. A journey from Bremen to Antwerp, in the time when 
 road-blockades were still in fashion, and eveiy 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 Kamtsehatka : for the 
 Land-fried (or Act for suppressing Private Wars), which the Em- 
 peror Maximilian had proclaimed, was in force through the Empire, 
 rather as a law than an observance. Nevertlieless our solitary tra- 
 veller succeeded in arriving at the goal of his pilgrimage, 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 
 
22 MUB^ns. 
 
 clouds towered up at the horizon, and a heavy rain wetted him to 
 the Bkin. lo the fondhng, 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 Ught in the distance ; and soon after, reached 
 a mean peasant hovel, which afforded him but htUe consolation. 
 The house was more like a cattle-stall than a human habitation ; 
 and the unfriendly landlord refused him fire and water, as if he 
 had been an outlaw. For the man was just about to stretch him- 
 self upon the straw among his steers; and too tired to relig:ht the 
 fire on his hearth, for the sake of a stranger. Franz in his des- 
 pondency uplifted a mournful miserere, and cursed the Westphalian 
 isteppes with strong maledictions : but the peasant took it all in 
 good part ; and blew out his Hght with great composure, troubling 
 himself no farthej- about the stranger ; for in the laws of hospitality 
 he was altogether iminstructed. 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 seeling 
 here. But ride there to the left hand, through the bushes ; a little 
 ■way behind, lies the Castle of the valiant Eberhard Bronlihorst, e 
 knight who lodges every traveller, as a Hospitaller does the pil- 
 igrims 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 eheer prodigiously." 
 
 To buy a mess of pottage, and a stoop of wine, by surrender- 
 ing one's ribs to the bastinado, is in truth no job for eveiy man, 
 •lihough your spungers and plate-lickers let themselves be tweaked 
 and snubbed, and fi-om rich ai'tists willingly endure all kinds of 
 star-and-feathering, so their palates be but tickled for the seiTJce. 
 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 Bitter Broukhorst? 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 ai-rived before a cafetle-gate of 
 old Gothic architecture; knocked pretty plainly on the iron door, 
 and an equally distinct "Who's there?" resounded fi-om within. 
 To the freezing passenger, the long entrance ceremonial of this 
 door-keeper preqognition was as inconvenient, as ai-e similar delays 
 to travellers who, at barriers and gates of towns, bewail or execrate 
 
DUMB LOVE. 28 
 
 the despotism of guwds and tollmen. Nevertheless he must sub- 
 mit to use and wont, and patiently wait to see whether the philan- 
 thropist in the Castle was disposed that night for cudgelling a 
 guest, or would choose rather to assign him a couch under the 
 open canopy. 
 
 The possessor of this ancient tower had served, in his youth, 
 as a stout soldier in the Emperor's army, under the bold Georg 
 von Fronsbea'g, 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 wai- ; 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 tlie 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 deplore the 
 entering stranger. Franz felt one cold shudder after the other 
 iTjnning down his back, as he passed in; nevertheless he was hand- 
 somely received ; some servants hastened to assist him in dis- 
 mounting ; speedily unbuckled his Ijjggage, 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 hke 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 Ufe, fuU of fii-e and strength, — put 
 the timorous wanderer into such a teiTor, that he could not hide 
 his apprehensions, and began to tremble over all his body. 
 
 "What ails you, my young master," asked the Eitter, with a 
 voice of thunder, "that you quiver like an aspen-leaf, and look as 
 pale as if Death had you by the liu-oat ?" 
 
 Fi-anz plucked up a spirit ; and considering that his shoulder? 
 had at all events the score to pay, his poltroonery passed into a 
 spedles 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 ale- 
 beny, to drive away the ag««-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." 
 
24 Mus^us. 
 
 Franz made himself be served like a bashaw ; and having 
 nothing else but currying to expect, he determined to deserve it ; 
 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 bums 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 thTOUgh with their 
 commands, and calhng them a pack of blockheads, who were fit to 
 serve no stranger. The table being furnished, the Bitter and his 
 guest sat down to it, and both heartily enjoyed their alebeny. The 
 Bitter 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 per- 
 ceive; if your cellar corresponds to it, I shall almost praise your 
 house keeping." 
 
 Bronkhorst nodded to his Butler, who directly filled the cup of 
 welcome with common table wine, tasted, and presented it to his 
 master, and tlie latter cleared it at a draught to the health of his 
 guest. Franz pledged him honestly, and Bronkhorst asked : " Now, 
 fair sir, whatt 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," repHed the Bitter : " Here, Butler, biing us 
 of the mother-cask." 
 
 The Butler put a stoop upon the table, as a sample, and Franz 
 having tasted it, said, "Ay, this is genuine last year's growth; we 
 will sticlt by this.'' 
 
 The Bitter made avast 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 encattiped 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 enthusdasm, that he hewed down bottles and glasses, 
 brandishing ihe oai-ving-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. 
 
DUMB LOVE. 25 
 
 It grew late, but no sleep came into the eyes of the Ritter ; 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, his 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 natieum. Contrary to his expectation, 
 the request was granted without remonstrance ; the Ritter instantly 
 cut asunder the thread of his narrative, and said : " Time will wait 
 on no one ; more of it tomorrow !" 
 
 " Pardon me, Herr Ritter," answered Fi-anz, " tomoiTow 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 Ritter; " 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 pf 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 estab- 
 lished ritual. He ordered his servants to undress the stranger, 
 and put him in tlie guest's-bed ; where Franz, once settled on elas- 
 tic 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 of 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 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 sonorous voice and clanking spurs 
 of the Ritter, 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. 
 
26 Musa:us. 
 
 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 di-essing him. The Eitter led him into the parlour, whei-e a 
 small well-furnished table waited them ; but now, when tlie 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 tlie raw foggy morning." 
 
 " Hen- Eitter," 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, weU 
 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 Eitter 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 hainned. 
 
 A heavy stone was lifted from his heart as he found himself in 
 safety, and saw that h« had got away with a whole skin. He 
 could not understand how the landlord had tmsted him the shot, 
 which, as he imagined, must have run pi-etty 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 
 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 sti-anger 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 
 
DDMB LOVE. 87 
 
 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 Ritter answered : " Report has nowise told j'ou lies ; there 
 is no saying that circulates among the people but contains in it 
 some grain of truth. Let me tell you accurately how tJie matter 
 stands. I lodge every stranger iliat 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 smirkings, and bows, 
 and crouchings ; put all their words to the torture ; make a deal 
 of tallc 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, theyjjick you a fraction fi-om 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 soriy rabble carry lihings 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 
 witli every guest that plagues me with these fi;eaks. But a man 
 of your stamp is always welaome : j'ou told me plump out in plain 
 German what you thought, as is tlie fashion with the Bremers. 
 Call on me boldly again, if your road lead you hither. And so, 
 God be with you." 
 
 Fianz now moved on, with a joyful humour, towards Antweip ; 
 and he wished that he might everywhere find such a reception as 
 he had met with from the Ritter Eberliard Bronkhoi'st. On ap- 
 proaching the ancient queen of the riemish cities, the sail of his 
 hope was swelled by a propitious bre.eze. Riches and superfluity 
 met him in evei-y street ; and it seemed as if seai-city 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 substan- 
 tiate my claims. After resting for a while from his fatigues, he set 
 
28 MCS^US. 
 
 about obtaining, in the inn where he was quartered, some prelimi- 
 nary imowledge 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 ?" 
 
 " O ! there is no end to Fabian's wealth. He is a Councillor; 
 his woollen manufactories are thriving incredibly." 
 
 " Has Jonathan Frischlder 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.' 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, tliough in his father's time they 
 had " failed," were now standing iirmly 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 mightily : 
 he hastened to put his documents in order, and submit them to 
 the proper parties. But with the Antwerpers, he fared as his itin- 
 erating countrymen do with shopkeepers in the German towns : 
 they find everywhere a friendly welcome at their first appcai-ancej 
 but are looked upon with cheerfulness nowhere when they come 
 collecting debts. Some would have nothing to do with these for- 
 mer sins ; and were of opinion, that by the tender of the legal 
 flve-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 covmter-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 fortune, 
 ' Anne of Brittany. 
 
DUMB LOVE. 29 
 
 and now saw the fair soap-bubble vanis!^ quite away. In his strait 
 confinement, he felt himself in the condition of a soul in Purga- 
 tory, 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 whirlpool which had sunlc 
 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 eveiy one, 
 so ready as the shmnk 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 er 
 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 tlie victual, his inferior max- 
 illary jaw to get in motion, and itself accomplished the usual func- 
 tions of digestion, unordered. Thug did this last resolve make 
 shipwreck, on a hard bread-crust ; for, in the seven-and-twentieth 
 year of life, it has a 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 hoarder for life, true it is, tliat 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 terri- 
 tory 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 heai-t, 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 undeter- 
 mined what to do, or rather altogether without thought, he plodded 
 through the streets to the neai'est gate, not minding whither the 
 
so musjEus. 
 
 road into which chance conducted him might lead. He saluted 
 no travelleF, he asked four no inn, except when fatigue or hungesr 
 forced him to lift up his eyes, and look around for some churchr 
 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 be was tra- 
 velling. 
 
 He halted instantlj', 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 
 smd miagnifloence. 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 aooompamy him with jibes and 
 mockery through the streets. His purpose was formed : he would 
 maike for the nearest seaport in tJie 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 fer into the baekground, 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 tliinking that she was a^ain intenvoven with the scheme 
 of Ms life; and he took large steps, as if byiliis 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 Bheinberg, in a little hamlet, Rummels- 
 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 refeiTed 
 him to the next to^vn ; the rather that he did not draw too flatter- 
 ing a presage from his present vagabond physiognomy, and held 
 him to be a thieves' pui-veyor, 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 heai-t, the 
 
DUMB LOTE. 31 
 
 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 oppo- 
 site the inn, from which it was divided merely by the highway, 
 and a little gurgling brook. The situation being so agreeable, the 
 edifice was still kept in repair, and well provided with 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 noctm-nal sprite was 
 not without advantages, for the great ^ecurity it gave from thievesi 
 The Count could have appointed no trustier or more watchful 
 keeper over the Castle, than this same Spectre, for the rashest 
 troop of robbers aever ventured to a^pproach its station. Accord- 
 ingly he Imew of no safer place for laying up his valuables, than 
 this old tower, in the hamlet of Rummelsburg, near Bheinberg. 
 
 The sunshine had sunk, the dark night was comimg 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 mai-ked 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 staid 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 superfluity 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 ej-es." 
 
 " I will not hide from you," replied the Landlord, "that a story 
 runs of there being mischief in the Castle, and a Goblin that fre- 
 quents it. You, however, need not let the thing disturb you ; we 
 ai-e near enough, you see, for you to call us, should you, meet with 
 
32 Mus^ns. 
 
 aught unnatural ; I and my folks will be at your hand in a twink- 
 ling, to assist you. Down in the house there we keep astir all 
 night througlij 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-burly in g at nights, it is 
 nothing but cats and martins rummaging about the granaiy. 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 
 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 
 Bitter Eberhaf d Bronkhorst, from whose heavy ai-m 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 galleiy, 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 eveiy 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-belUed flask was an antidote to thirst. So long 
 as his teeth were in full occupation, he had no time to think of the 
 leported devilry in the Castle. If aught now and tlien 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 
 
DUMB LOVE. 33 
 
 other five exclusively upon the sense of hearing ; and akeady Feai- 
 was whispering three timid tlioughts into the Ustener's ear, before 
 Courage had time to answer once. 
 
 As the first resource, he looked the door, .and bolted it; made 
 his i-etreat to the walled seat in the vault of the window. He 
 opened tliis, and to dissipate his thoughts a little, looked out on 
 the spangled sky, gazed at the corroded moon, and counted how 
 often the stars snuflfed 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 Ughts out, and everything as still as in a 
 sepulchre; On the other hand, the watchman blew his horn, mak- 
 ing 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 easilj' 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. 
 
 In 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 Solitude, 
 to decorate her as the loveUest playmate of the human spirit, to 
 view her under all her advantageous aspects, and long for her en- 
 joyment as for hidden treasure. But in scenes where she is no 
 exotic, in the isle of Juan Fernandez, where a solitary eremite, es- 
 caped 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 m the ruinous turret ; there, in good 
 sooth, she is not the most agreeable companion for the timid an- 
 chorite tliat has to pass his time in her abode, especially if he is 
 every moment looking for the entrance of a specti-e to augment 
 the party. In such a case it may easily chance that a window 
 conversation with the watchman shall afford a richer entertain- 
 ment for the spirit and the heart, than a reading of the most 
 attractive eulogy on solitude. If Eitter Zimmerman had been, in 
 Franz's j)lace, in the castle of Rummelsburg, on the Westphalian 
 marches, he would doubtless in this position have struck out the 
 fundamental topics of as interesting a treatise on Society, as, in- 
 spired to all appearance by the irksomeness of some ceremonious 
 assembly, he has poured out from the fulness of his heai't in praise 
 of Solititde. 
 
 Midnight is the hour at which the world of spirits acquires ac- 
 tivity and life, when hebetated animal nature lies entombed in deep 
 
84: mdsjEus. 
 
 slumber. Franz inclined getting tlirough 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; snuflFed the hglits to make them bum 
 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 palpita- 
 tion at the heart, which he ascribed to a tumult in the blood, aris- 
 ing from the sultriness of the day, kept him waldng 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 pro- 
 duced tbe usual effect, that he softly fell asleep while saying it. 
 
 After about an hour, as he supposed, he started up with a sud- 
 den terror ; a thing not at all sui-prising 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. "Alakel 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 fore- 
 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 resolntion. The 
 qualdng 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, d-oor to, with hideous 
 uproar; and at last it reached the bed-room. It jerked shai-ply 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 
 
DUMB LOVE. 36 
 
 brow. Over his riglit 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 un- 
 der 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 iii mortal agony under his coverlet; recom- 
 mended himself to the keeping of the Virgin ; and anxiously 
 speculated on the object of this maao3uvre, 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 sil- 
 ver, and with his skinny hand lathered the soap into light foam ; 
 then set a chair, and beckoned with a solemn look to the qualdng 
 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 Gord, to take delivery of his head. The most rati- 
 onal procedure that can be adopted in this critical case, is to com- 
 ply with necessity, put a good face on a bad business, and with 
 stoical composure let one's throat be ijoosed. 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 Psydhological Journal could explain the matter till it seemed 
 quite natural. 
 
 Immediately the Goblin Bai-ber 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 tlie beard, 
 next the eyebrows, at last tlie 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-pouoh ; wrapped himself 
 in his scarlet mantle, and made for departing. The consecrated 
 tapers had burnt with an exquisite brightness through the whole 
 transaction ; and Franzi 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 
 now took fresh breath, as he observed that with this saerifice the 
 account was settled, and the Ghost had no more power over him. 
 
 So it was in fact ; Eedeloak 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 
 perhaps he was expecting the very service he himself had just 
 performed. 
 
 As the Ghost, notivithstanding 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 
 himself 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 
 carefully observed the same procedure which the Spectre had ob- 
 served 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 hand- 
 ling 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 him- 
 self was. 
 
 Hitherto the scene between the Spectre and the traveller had 
 been played pantomimioally ; 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 virhich my departed soul was doomed, till a mortal 
 hand should consent to retaliate on me what I practised on others 
 in my lifetime. 
 
 " 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 
 beneath his roof, the needy man who asked a charitable ahns of 
 him, he never sent away unvisited by wicked joke. I was his 
 
DUMB LOVB. 87 
 
 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, look- 
 ing from the window, see with pleasure how the foxes' whelps of 
 children gathered from the hamlet to assail the outcast, and to cry 
 as once their fellows to Elijah : " Baldhead ! Baldhead !" In this 
 the scoifer 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 oan-ied, 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 ci-ust 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 oflfhim. 
 Then the pious pilgrim spoke a heavy malison upon me : ' Know, 
 accursed man, that when thou diest. Heaven, and Hell, and Pur- 
 gatory'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 tliis Castle, as the saint had doomed it. In vain I 
 stiTiggled 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 mournful occupation 
 I had followed in my lifetime. Alas ! my uproar soon made deso- 
 late this house ! But seldom came a pilgrim here to lodge. And 
 though I treated all like thee, no one would understand me, and 
 perform, as thou, the service which has freed my soul from bond- 
 age. 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 Iteeper 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 heard and looks again shall cover chin 
 and scalp ; then turn thee homewards to thy native town ; and on 
 the Weser-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, Messing and ahundance 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."' 
 
 With these words the Ghost, having by his copiousness of tallc 
 satisfactorily attested his former existence as court-barbe?- in the 
 Castle of Eummelsburg, vanished into air, and left his deliverer 
 full of wonder at the strange adventure. He stood for a long while 
 motionless ; in doubt whether the whole matter had actually hap- 
 pened, or an unquiet dream had deluded his senses ; but his bald 
 head convinced him that here had been a real occurrence. He 
 returned to bed, and slept, after the fright he had undergone, tiU 
 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 liim to a jelly 
 perhaps, or so frightened him that he had died of terror ; and to 
 cai-ry his wanton revenge to such a length as this had not been 
 his intention. He therefore rang his people together, hastened 
 out vrith 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 of the Goblin, Fiunz 
 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 gatliered him- 
 self up and opened the room. 
 
 With seeming horror at the sight of him. Mine Host, striking 
 his hands together, exclaimed : " By Heaven and all the saints ! 
 Eedcloak" (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 stoiy 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 answer : 
 " The Goblin looked like a man in a red cloak ; what he did is not 
 
 > I know not whether the reader has observed that our Author makes the 
 fapeotre speak in zamOics, a whim which here and there comes over him in other 
 tales also.— WiELAND. 
 
DUMB LOVE. 30 
 
 hidden from you, and what he said I well remember : ' Stranger,' 
 said he, ' trust no innkeeper who is a Turk in grain. What would 
 befall thee here he li.new. Be wise and happy. I withdraw from 
 this my ancient dwelling, for my time is I'un. 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 lodging till brown 
 locks again shall cluster round thy head.' "^ 
 
 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 tliis 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 jjlaoe, 
 having learned that Bedcloak no longer walked in Rummelsburg, 
 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 overhjs temples, and he girded. up 
 his knapsack ; for all his thoughts and meditations were turned 
 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. 
 Wlien 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 sti-anger, 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 ahve 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 impa- 
 tience made every intervening day a year. At last the long-wished- 
 for tei-m appeared. The night before, he could not close an eye, 
 
 ' Here, too, on the spectre's score, Franz makes extempore iambics. — WiK- 
 
 lAND. 
 
40 iinSiEus. 
 
 for thinking of the wonders that were coming. The blood was 
 whirling and beating in his arteries, as it had done at the Castle 
 of Eumraelsburg, when he lay in expectation of his spectre visi- 
 tant. 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 oifers to the human 
 soul the full measure of highest and most heartfelt satisfaction. 
 He foi-med many projects as to how he should present himself to 
 his beloved Meta, when 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 tibie 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 happi- 
 ness? And will this way be short or long, easy or toilsome? To 
 the whole of which Reason, in spite of all her thinking and spe- 
 culating, 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 tliis 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 tlie tattered 
 cohort that applied for alms to the jovial promenader, from whose 
 eyes gay hope laughed forth, was a dischai-ged 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 coun- 
 try, as the recompense of his valour, with the privilege of begging 
 wbere he pleased; and who now, in the capacity of physiognomist, 
 pursued the study of man upon the Weser-bridg«, with such suc- 
 cess, that he very seldom failed in his attempts for charity. Nor 
 did his exploratoiy 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, 
 
DUMB LOVE. 41 
 
 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 passen- 
 gers 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; tlie 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 scrtiple 
 to do the same ; and, not being furnished with provisions, he pur- 
 chased some fruit, and took his dinner inter a/mbulandum. 
 
 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 
 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-bailifi', The physiognomist with the timber-toe, 
 however, noticed that his countenance was Hot now so gay as in 
 the morning; he appeai-edto be reflecting eamestlj'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 afiairs, 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 \vould 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 becom- 
 ing longer, the crowd upon the Bridge diminished ; and the beg- 
 gar-piquet by degrees drew back into th^ir barracks in the Matten- 
 burg. A deep sadness sajik upon the hopeless Franz, when he 
 
43 mus;eij3. 
 
 saw his expectation mocked, and the lordly prospect which had 
 lain before him in the morning, vanish from his eyes at evening. 
 He fell into a sort of sulky desperation ; was on the point of spiing- 
 ing over the parapet, and dashing himself down from the Bridge 
 into the river. But the thought of Meta kept him back, and in- 
 duced 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 dehght 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 
 pikemau 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 
 him out ; but as the matter hung too long upon the pegs, curiosity 
 incited him to turn to tlie youth himself, and question him respect- 
 ing it. 
 
 " No offence, young gentleman," said he : " allow me to ask you 
 a question." 
 
 Franz, who was not jn 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 i-ather tes- 
 tily : " Well, then, what is it ? Speak, old graybeard !" 
 
 "We two," said tlie other, "were the iirst upon the Bridge to- 
 day, 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 hei-e 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 reward you ; 
 but your countenance at night was not so cheerful as in the morn- 
 ing, 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." 
 
DUMB LOTE. 43 
 
 " 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. 
 
 ■• All ! that is anotlier story,'' said the beggar ; " if you build 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 worthlessness : 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 meri-y 
 banquet." « 
 
 " The issue shows that thou art light, 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 treasui-e appointed 
 thee, which thou shalt dig, to comfort thy heart withal for the re- 
 maining days of thy life. TomoiTow, about evening, when the 
 sun is going down, take spade and shovel on thy shoulder; go 
 forth from the Mattenburg on the right, across the Tieber, by the 
 Balkenbriieke, past the Cloister of St. John's, and on to the Great 
 Eoland.l Then take thy way over the Court of the Cathedral, 
 
 ' The rude figure of a man in armour, usually erected in the public square 
 or markefc-place of old German towns, is called the Rolandsdule, or RuUand- 
 sUule, from its supposed reference to Boland the famous peer of Charle- 
 
44 Aitjsffius. 
 
 through the Schiisselkorb, till thou awive 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; 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 be- 
 fore 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 be- 
 neath 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 
 father. It had been the good man's hobby in his life ; but on this 
 account had little pleased his son ; according to the mle 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 ti-unk. Father Melchior 
 had himself laid out this gai-den, altogether to his own taste, in a 
 style as wonderful and varied as that of his great-greatgrandson, 
 who has immortalised his paradise by an original description in 
 Hirschfeld's Oarden-Oalendar. 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'^ fi-om every 
 eye, and had hid in their iron case beneath the ground. This pa- 
 tei-nal Tempe the wasteful son, in the days of his extravagance, 
 had sold for an old song. 
 
 To Franz the pikeman had at once become extremely interest- 
 ing, as he perceived that this was the veiy 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 
 
 magne. The proper and ancient name, it seems, is RUgelandsltuU, or Pillar of 
 Judgment ; and the stone indicated, of old, that the town possessed an inde- 
 pendent jurisdiction. — Ed. 
 
DUMB LOVE. 45 
 
 more advisable to keep Ms thoughts about this piece of news to 
 himself. So he said : " Well, this is what I call a circumstantial 
 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 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, be 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 soared away my ill hu- 
 mour. 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 alms for 
 many a day, as he was now possessed of; he blessed 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 equipments, conjurations, ma- 
 gic-formulas, magic-girdles, hieroglyphic characters, and such like, 
 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 under gi-ound. 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 fii-m conviction that the Goblin in the Castle, and the 
 Friend on the Bridge, would prove no liars to him. With longing 
 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, tliat 
 Death had escorted the testator out of the world in another way 
 than said testator had expected. He had been completely con- 
 
4(5 Mus^ns. 
 
 vinced, tliat 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 usage 
 of the Church, extreme unction should have been dispensed to 
 him, to call his beloved son to his bed-side, having previously dis- 
 missed all bystanders; there to give him the paternal blessing, 
 and by way of farewell memorial direct him to tliis 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 snuifed him out at a 
 feast, 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 bethought 
 him how the treasure was to be transported, safe and unobserved, 
 into the narrow alley. The burden was too heavy to be carried 
 without help ; thus, with the possession of I'iches, all the cares 
 attendant on them were awakened. The new Ci'ossus 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 
 
DUMB LOVE. 47 
 
 branch of trade wliiclx in a few iveeks extended to tlie great scale ; 
 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 sutfoeated him 
 with assurances of friendship, and joy-wishings 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 which in some inexplicable manner he had 
 realised, as was supposed, in foreign parts, was the subjectmatter 
 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 contentednes^ 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,' the baleful Harpy, fluttered 
 round her little room by night, and when sleep was 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, which, like a feather, is the sport of eveiy wind. 
 He loved thee, and was faithful to thee, while 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 words : ' For thee; 
 God's garden blossoms in thy native town : friend, thou hast now 
 
 * 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. 
 
48 MUS.EUS. 
 
 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 withhold his darling daughter. Take 
 happiness and honour with the fairest; liltewise 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 lier circumstances; and the result was far from favourable. 
 The first tidings of her lover's change of situation had in secret 
 charmed her ; not in the selfish view of becoming participatress 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 success ; but ra- 
 ther 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 con- 
 ceal an inward care : Mother Brigitta soon observed the trouble of 
 her daughter; and without the use of any great penetration, Uke- 
 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 escape 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 opportu- 
 nity to mother and daughter for a full, fair and free discussion of 
 this delicate affair. Brigitta made her no reproaches on the sub- 
 ject; she believed that what was done could not be undone; and 
 directed all her eloquanoe 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 
 moral a, b, ab ; discoursing thus : " My child, thou hast already 
 said a, thou must now say h 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 ; 
 
DUMB LOVE. 49 
 
 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 fortune 
 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. Motlier Brigitta was in truth philosophising 
 from the heart. After her scheme for the restoration of her foi-mer 
 aflBuence had gone to ruin, she had so simplified the plan of her 
 life, that Fate could not pei-plex it any more. But Meta was still 
 far from this philosophical centre of indifference ; and hence this 
 doctrine, consolation, and encouragement, affected her quite other- 
 wise 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 maternsil scheme of 
 marriage, and had reckoned only upon bread and salt in her future 
 wedlock ; yet, on hearing of her lover's riches and spreading com- 
 merce, 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 oqce more planted in her pre- 
 vious abundance. 
 
 This fair dream now vanished by degrees, as Franz continued 
 silent. To make matters worse, there spread a ramour 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 already 
 on her way to Bremen. This Job's-news drove the lovely maiden 
 from her last defence : she passed on the apostate sentence of 
 banishment from her heait ; and vowed from that hour never more 
 to think of him ; and as she did so, wetted the twining 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 : 
 ''Spin, danghterkin, spin, 
 Thy sweetheart's within J" 
 
 which she always recollected when her rock was done; and along 
 with it the memoiy 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 with- 
 out. And who could it be ? Who else but neighbour Franz, from 
 the alley? He had decked himself with a gallant wooing-suit; 
 
'50 MWSJJBS. 
 
 and his well-dressed, thick brown locks shook forth perfume. This 
 stately decoration boded, at all events, something else than flax- 
 deaUng. 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 in fonner 
 days trilled forth to her, he now appended a suitable text, and ex- 
 plained his dumb love in clear words. Thereupon he made solemn 
 application for her to the mother ; justifying 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 i-un- 
 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 oocuiTed, since Franz's entrance, an import- 
 ant revolution. His presence here was the most speaking pi-oof 
 of his innocence ; and as, in the course of conversation, it dis- 
 tinctly 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-bom Son of the Church with an exiled Parliament ; recalled 
 him with honour to her high-beating heart, and reinstated him in 
 all his former rights and privileges there. The decisive three-let- 
 tered little word, that ratifies the happiness of love, came gUding 
 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 deciphering 
 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 
 chai-ming bride, as on the day when he set out on his crusade to 
 Antwerp. However, he had an important walk to taJke ; so at last 
 it became time to withdraw. 
 
DDMB lOVE. 51 
 
 This walk was directed to the Weser-bridge, to find Timbertoe, 
 wliom he had not foi-gotten, though he had long delayed to keep 
 his word to him. Sharply as the physiognomist, ever since his in- 
 terview with the open-handed Bridge-bailiflf, had been on the out- 
 look, 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 memory. The 
 moment he perceived the fair-apparelled youth from a distance, he 
 stilted towards him, and gave him kindly welcome. Franz an- 
 swered 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-oomraon ;' for the wooden leg, you must 
 know, has this good property, it never tires. But excuse me n 
 little while till Graycloak is come : he never misses to pass along 
 the Bridge between day and night." 
 
 "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 
 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 Gray- 
 cloak 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 
 
 ' There is an old tradition, that a neighhouring Covmtess 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 crip- 
 ple crawled so well, that the town obtained this large common by means of 
 him. 
 
52 Mus^us. 
 
 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 convenience and 
 comfortable living. The grayhead was so astonished at his for- 
 tune, that he could not understand or even believe it. That a rich 
 man should take such pity on a poor one, was incomprehensible : 
 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, satisfied with this, 
 did not wait till he should recover from his amazement and thank 
 him in words, but, after doing this angel-messager vanished from 
 the old man's eyes, as angels are wont; and left him to piece to- 
 gether the affair as he best could. 
 
 Next morning, in the habitation of the lovely Meta, all was as 
 a fair. Franz despatched to her a crowd of merchants, jewellers, 
 milliners, lace-dealers, tailors, sutors and semstresses, in part to 
 offer her all sorts of wares, in part their own good services. 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 from her the model for a 
 Goddess of Love. Meanwhile the bridegroom 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-sum- 
 mer in propitious affluence ; and deserved this satisfaction, as a 
 recompense for one praiseworthy quality which she possessed; 
 She was the most tolerable mother-in-law that has ever been dis- 
 covered. 
 
LIBUSSA.i 
 
 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, aiiy 
 and avoiding light, incorporeal also, more delicately fasliioned 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 undis- 
 tui-bed ; 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 seques- 
 tered wildernesses. One solitaiy Elf could not resolve to leave 
 her darling oak ; and as the wood began here and there to be felled 
 for tlie 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 
 intrusted, which at times he drove far into the fi)rest for their 
 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 
 
 ' From Jo. Duhuviz ffistoria Sohemica and .Mnea Sylvii Cardinalia de 
 Bohemarum Origine ac Qestis Historia, 
 
54 Mus^us. 
 
 thoughts, he failed not to see in vision the mai-ks 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 motionless, 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 dehghting 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. Eepay this favour by a service which I now require of 
 thee ; be the Protector of this tree, which has so often screened 
 thee froru the shower and the scorching heat ; and guard the mur- 
 derous axes of thy brethren, which lay waste the forest, that tliey 
 harm not this venerable trunk." 
 
 The young warrior, restored to self-possession by this soft still 
 voice, made answer : " Goddess or mortal, whoever thou mayest 
 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 oommandest me, I will I'enounce the service of princes, 
 . and dwell under the shadow of thy oak, and guard it while I live." 
 
 " Do BO," 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 
 
LIBHSSA. 65 
 
 entangled in tliem, and had stirred the leaves. Krokus, for a while, 
 stood eni-aptured at the heavenly form which had appeared to him. 
 So soft a female, of such slender shape and royal hearing, 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 dis- 
 charge, packed up his war-accoutrements, and, with rapid steps, 
 his burden on his shoulders, and his head full of glowing enthu- 
 siasm, 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 gi-eedy 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 tlie 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 disco- 
 ver 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 i 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 protec- 
 tion. Like a fury he rushed upon the wood-cutters, with pike and 
 sword, and scared them from their work ; for they concluded h& 
 must be a forest^demon, and fled in great precipitation. 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 shadowj' 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 
 
66 MTIS^CS. 
 
 the wasteful ai-ms of thy brethren from 1-uining this tree, with 
 which my Ufe is united. For thou shalt know that Mother Nature, 
 who has granted to my race sucli varied powers and influences, 
 Las 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 appointed 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 en- 
 joyment 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 embarrassment ; 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 taJie one without a choice. In the first, lie Honour 
 and Renown ; in the second. Riches and the wise enjoyment of 
 them ; in the thii-d 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 desu-e 
 of my heai-t, know that it lies not in these three stalks which thou 
 ofierest'me ; the recompense I aim at is higher. What is Honour 
 but the fuel of Pride? whart; are Riches but the root of Avai-ice? 
 and what is Love but the trap-door of Passion, to ensnare the noble 
 freedom of the heart.? Grant me my wish, to rest under the sha- 
 dow 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 
 theam the secrets of the future." 
 
 " Thy i-equest," replied the Elf, "is great; but thy deserving 
 toward me is not less so : be it then as thou hast asked. Nor, 
 wiffli .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 without poisoning 
 it by polluted lips." 
 
UBUSSA. 97 
 
 So saying, slie again presented him the three reed-stalks, and 
 vanished from his sight. 
 
 Tlie young Eremite prepared his bed of moss, heneath tlie 
 oak, exceedingly content with the reception which the Elf had 
 given him. Sleep came upon hira 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 began his 
 day's work ; ere long he had built himself a pleasant hermit's-cot- 
 tage; had dug his garden, and planted in it roses and lilies, with 
 other odoriferous flowers and herbs ; not forgetting pulse and cole, 
 and a suflBciency of fruit-trees. The Elf never failed to visit him 
 at twilight; she rejoiced in the prospering of his labours; walked 
 with him, hand in hand, by the sedgy border of the lake ; and the 
 wavering reeds, as the wind passed tlirough 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 
 gi'ew refined 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 
 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 
 Eeed-stalk had appointed him; and did not repent that by the 
 trapdoor 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 in- 
 wardly, got no rickets ; had no smaU-pox, and, of course, no scars, 
 
58' musjEus. 
 
 no scum-eycs, 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 pi-edicting what was 
 future. 
 
 Krokus himself, by the aid of time, grew skilful in these mys- 
 teries also. When the wolf had scattered the flocks tlirough the 
 forest, and the herdsmen were seeking for their sheep and horses ; 
 when the woodman missed an axe or bill, thej' took counsel from 
 the wise Krokus, who showed them where to find what they had 
 lost. .When a wicked prowler had abstracted aught from tlie com- 
 mon stock ; had by night broken into tlie pinfold, or the dwelhng 
 of his neighbour, and robbed or slain him, and none could guess 
 the malefactor, the wise Krokus was consulted. He led the peo- 
 ple to a green; made them form a ring; then stept into the midst 
 of them, set the faithful sieve a-mnning, and so failed not to dis- 
 cover the misdoer. By such acts his fame spread over all the 
 country of Bohemia ; and whoever had a weighty care, or nn im- 
 portant undertaking, took counsel from the wise Krokus about its 
 issue. The lame and the sick, too, required from him 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 Schiorbaoh. By these means 
 the concourse of the people to him grew more frequent, day by 
 day, no othenvise than if the Tripod of the Delphic Apollo had 
 been transfen-ed to the Bohemian forest: and though Krokus an- 
 swered 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 testimo- 
 nies of their good-will. It was he that first disclosed the mystery 
 of washing gold from the sands of the Elbe ; and for his recom- 
 pense 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 pasturages, fields and 
 woods ; and thus found himself imperceptibly possessed of all the 
 Riches which the beneficently foreboding Elf had enclosed for him 
 in the Second Reed. 
 
 One fine summer evening, when Krokus with his b-ain was re- 
 turning from an excursion, having by special request been settling 
 the disputed marches of two townships, he perceived his spouse 
 on the margin of the sedgy lake, where she had first appeai-ed to 
 him. She waved him with her hand ; so he dismissed his ser- 
 vants, and hastened to clasp her in his arms. She received him, 
 
LIBTJSSA. &9 
 
 as usual, witli tender love ; but her heart was sad and oppressed ; 
 from her eyes trickled down ethei'eal 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 appear- 
 ance ; he had never seen his wife's fair eyes otherwise than cheer- 
 ful, and sparkling with youthful gaiety. " What ails thee, beloved 
 ef my heart?" said he, " black forebodings overcast my soul. 
 Speak, say what mean those tears." 
 
 The Elf sobbed, leaned her head soi-rowfully on his shoulderi 
 and said: " Beloved husband, in thy absence I have looked into 
 the Book of Destiny ; a doleful chance overhangs my life-free ; 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 ? Behold 
 its sound boughs, how they stretch forth loaded with fruit and 
 leaves, and how it raises its top to the clouds. While this ai-m 
 can move, it shall defend thy ti-ee from any miscreant that pre- 
 sumes 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 eairthly worms. But what can 
 the mightiest among you do against the workings of Nature, or the 
 unalterable decisions of Fate ? The Idngs 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 woi-m is 
 gnawing in its man-ow, canst thou draw it out, and tread it under 
 foot?" 
 
 Amid such conversation they arrived at the Castle. The slen- 
 der 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 embroideries, 
 to prove their diligence : but now the hour of household happiness 
 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 instractions 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 
 
60 MPS^ns. 
 
 with mournful tenderness; and at dawn of day retired, 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; hut heavy- 
 black clouds soon veiled his beaming head. The day grew sultiy 
 and oppressive ; the whole atmosphei-e was electric. Distant 
 tliunder came rolling over the forest; and the hundred -voiced 
 Echo repeated, in the winding valleys, its baleful sound. At the 
 noontide, a forky 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 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 i-ound, 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 house- 
 hold, 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. Xet soon their vanity awoke at the 
 voice of flatteiy ; word-catchers eagerly laid hold of every sound 
 proceeding from their lips ; Seladons noted down every look, spied 
 out the faintest smile, explored the aspect of their eyes, and drew 
 from it more or less favourable pi'ognostios, 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 hoi-oscope 
 of the eyes the rising or declining of their stai- 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. Friiulein 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 
 
LIBUSSA. (51 
 
 them poisons and antidotes ; and farther, 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 aetlier, from beyond the Moon, and they 
 became her subjects, that with their flue organs they might be 
 allowed to snufl" these delicious vapours : and when she scattered 
 Yillanous perfumes upon the coals, she could have smoked away 
 with it the very Zihim and the Ohim from the Wilderness. 
 
 Frilulein Therba was inventive as Circe in devising magic for- 
 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 tlie weather 
 more according to the wish and taste of men than wise old Nature 
 does. Two brothers quaiTelled 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 Ki'okus ; and»submitted 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 de- 
 mands of each ; she made rain fall on the seed-lands of the culti- 
 vator ; 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 festivals and divertisements there was no end. 
 The gallants, who sohcited 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, hasteningfrom 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 
 
62 yiusMVS. 
 
 and oppressed ; and all from good-will, without remuneration.' 
 Her temper was soft and modest, and her 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 exerting his privileges on the coy ; and often 
 hurls his burning torch upon the lowly straw-roof, when he means 
 to set on iire 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 huntingrspear 
 and a practised arm, for the sustenance of his gray-haired father. 
 The injustice of their neighbour stimulated him to revenge, and 
 he had been prepared for resisting force by force ; but the com- 
 mand of the anxious father, unwilling to expose his son to danger, 
 had disarmed him. Yet ere long he resumed his former pui'pose. 
 Then the father called him to his presence, and said : 
 
 " Pass over, my son, to the wise Krokus, or to the cunning vir- 
 gins his daughters, and ask counsel whether the gods approve thy 
 undertaldng, 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 Eela's palace, a building 
 like a temple for the habitation of a goddess. He Imocked at the 
 door, and desired to be admitted ; but the porter observing that he 
 
 ' Nulla Crocco mrilis sexus proles fait, sed moriturus ires a morte sudjUias 
 ■superstites reliquit, omnes vl ipse erat fatidicus, vel magas potius, gualis Medea 
 et Circe fuerant. Nam Bela natufiliaram vuiscima, herbis incantaTulis Medeam 
 invUabaitir, Tetcha {Therba) nafu miTiory carminibus magicis Circem reddebat. 
 Adutramquefreqaensmultitudinis concursus; dum alii amores sibi conciliare, 
 alii cum bond vaJetudine in gratiam redire, alii res amissas recuperare cupiunt. 
 Ilia, arcem Belinam, hcec altera arcem Tlietin ex mercenarid pecunid, nihil enim, 
 gratuito faciebant, ced-^canda/m curavit. Liberalior in hoc re Lybussa natu 
 minima apparuit, ut quae a nemine quidquam extorquebat, et potiv^fata pvjilica 
 omnibus, quam privata singulis, pr<scinebat : qud tiberalitate, et quia non gra- 
 tuiidaolii/m sed kia/m minus fallace pradictione utebatur, assecuia est ut in locum 
 patris Crocci subrogaretw, — Ddbbavius. 
 
LIBIISSA. fi3 
 
 came empty-handed, dismissed him as a heggar, 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 : " It 
 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 for- 
 tune 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 tliird 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 pheno- 
 menon, 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 Hhe 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. " 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; h^ disclosed his 
 ease to her in modest words ; not hiding how disgracefully her 
 sisters had dismissed him, or how the treatment had afilicted 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." 
 
 The young man did as he was oi'dered. 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 
 chai-med 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 
 
64 ' MCS^ns. 
 
 might not for a moment lose from his thoughts the delightful 
 events of the day. Fraulein Libussa, on the contraiy, enjoyed soft 
 slumber : for seclusion from the influences of the extei-nal 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 afiairs 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 pro- 
 phetic faculty, and were entitled to no heed from her. Yet a dim 
 feeling signified that this creation of her fancy was not idle dream- 
 ing; 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 in-- 
 stantly 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: " Stay 
 till sunrise ;" and next morning : " Wait another day ;" and the third 
 day : " Have patience till tomorrow." On the fourtli day she at 
 last dismissed him ; finding no more pretexts 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 bear and sufier is the lot of 
 the weaker. Return to thy father; be the comfort of his old age; 
 and support him by the labour of thy diligent hand. Take two 
 white Steers as a present from my herd ; and this Stafi' 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 
 
XIBVSSA. 65 
 
 gift; and blushed that he should receive it and make no return. 
 With ineloquent lips, but with looks so much the more eloquent, 
 he took mournful leave of her ; and a,t the gate below found two 
 white Steers awaiting him, as sleek and glittering as of old the 
 godlilce 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 lin- 
 gered 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 commonly can master : for 
 they were fiery and impetuous, as the Bull is- painted in the Al- 
 manac, where he rushes from the clouds in the Sign of April ; not 
 sluggish and heavy like the Ox, who plods on with his holy con- 
 sorts, in our Gospel-Book, phlegmatically, as- a Dulich 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 tempei's 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 
 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 
 
 r 
 
66 nvsMxis. 
 
 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 ap- 
 plauded the proposal. A meeting of Estates was convoked ; and 
 the choice unanimously fell upon the wise Krokus. An embassy 
 of honour was appointed, inviting him to take possession 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 Regent. 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 Sarmatie Princes, 
 incessantly at feud with one another, brought their contention 
 from afar before his judgment-seat. He weighed it with the un- 
 deceitful weights of natui-al 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 end of liis 
 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 
 thi-ee they had not yet determined. Fraulein Bela had, on the 
 whole, the fewest adherents; for her heai-t 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, 
 
LIBU33A. 67 
 
 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 
 Libussa's turn. No sooner was this name pronounced, than a 
 confidential hum was heard throughout the electing circle; the 
 solemn visages uuwrinkled 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 
 thu'd 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 ofhis mistress, 
 it remains still doubtful whether she. is really the possessor of a 
 single one among them ; but tlie public seldom errs on the favour- 
 able side, however often on the other, in the judgments it pro- 
 nounces on good fame. With so many universally acknowledged 
 praiseworthy qualities, Fraulein Libussa was undoubtedly the far 
 voured candidate, at least in petto, of the sage Electors : but the 
 preference of the younger sister to the elder has so frequently, in 
 the affair of mariiage, 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 con- 
 clusion 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 spn, the worthy 
 Krokua could have wished well that love would unite this pair ; 
 but the coyness of the maiden was insuperable, and he would in 
 
68 Mus^ns. 
 
 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 heai-t 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 appealing 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 heai-t 
 or activity in honey-making, and their trade and sustenance fell 
 into decay. Therefore they resolved upon a new sovereign, to 
 rule over their community, that discipline and order might not be 
 lost from among them. Then came the Wasp flying towards them, i 
 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 j'ou ; for, 
 lo, the dangerous sting is altogether wanting. I am soft of tem- 
 per, a friend of order and thrift, can guide your honey-making, 
 and further your labour.' '' Then,' said the Bees, ' thou art worthy 
 ■to rule over us :■ we obey thee ; be our Queen.' " 
 
LIBUSSA. 69 
 
 Wladomir was silent. The whole assemhly 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 oroaldng raven flew over their heads : this evil omen inter- 
 rupted 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 opei'ations, 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 consultation 
 with her sister Therba ; when it was determined to take vengeance 
 on their common slanderer, and to despatch 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 otherwise^ 
 than they were meant ; for of all the sciences, there is none so de- 
 ceitful as the science of expounding in matters of love: here errors, 
 as it were, have their home. The enaanoured 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 bosom, 
 as a proof that my last thought was directed to thy gentle mis^ 
 tress." In an instant all was light about his heart ; the heavy In- 
 cubus could not withstand the magic force of the flowed; his crush- 
 ing weight would not now have balanced a feather ; his antipathy 
 to the perfume soon scared him from the chamber ; and the nar- 
 cotic virtue of this rose-odour again lulled the Knight into refresh- 
 ing sleep. He rose with the sun next morning, fresh ai)d alert, 
 and rode to the field, to see what impression his similitude had 
 made on the Electors, and to watch what course the business was 
 about to take ; determined at aU hazards, should a contrary wind 
 
70 MtrsjEcs. 
 
 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 parahle, 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 enamoured 
 Wladomir, was endeavouring to snatch away, or at least to share 
 with him, the honoiir of exalting Fraulein Libussa to the throne. 
 He stept forth, and drew his sword, and with a loud voice pro- 
 claimed Libussa Duchess ofBohemia, calling upon all who thought 
 as he did, to draw their swords and justify the choice. In a mo- 
 ment hundreds of swords were gleaming through the field ; a loud 
 huzza announced the new Regent, and on all sides arose the joy- 
 ful shout : " Libussa be our Duchess !" A commission was ap- 
 pointed, 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 pro- 
 duce a hurtful fermentation in the state, yet Libussa was enabled 
 wisely to encounter this unsisterly procedure, and to ruin all the 
 hostile projects, magical or otherwise, of liiese 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 wistful 
 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 Li- 
 bussa had enjoined them strict silence respecting the feelings 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 
 
LIBUSSA. 71 
 
 play in silence the part of a sighing shepherd, and to watoli what 
 Time and Chance might in the long-run do to help him. The un- 
 quiet Mizisla pursued hia courtship with far more vivacity : he 
 pressed forwai-d on every occasion where he could obtain her no- 
 tice. At the coronation, he had been the first that took the oath 
 of fealty to the Princess; he followed her inseparably, as the 
 Moon does the Earth, to express by unbidden offices of zeal his 
 devotion to her person ; and on public solemnities and proces- 
 sions, 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 obelisk is once standing perpendicular, one heeds not the levers 
 and iihplements 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 yfiai'S, the colours of imaginar 
 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, thejr 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 Ohloes. 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 re- 
 frained from infidelity when the conquerors of their hearts had got 
 beyond the Black Buoy, these, it is said, preserved their vow un- 
 broken till the return of the heroic host into their German native 
 countiy ; and are still expecting from the hand of Love the recom- 
 pense of their unwearied perseverance. 
 
 It is therefore less surprising that the fair Libussa, under these 
 circumstances, could withstand the courting of the brilliant chiv- 
 
72 Mnsa;us. 
 
 airy 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 situations 
 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 estimated by 
 parchments and genealogical trees, as the chaffers were 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 edges. A mis-assortment 
 of marriage fi-om a difference of rank an inch in breadth, excited, 
 it is true, less uproar than in these our classic times ; yet a differ- 
 ence of an ell in breadth, especially when rivals occupied the in- 
 terstice, 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 au- 
 dience, 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 tortui'ing suspicion in then- 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 Fraulein Lifeussa weighed out her scanty graces 
 to the two valiant Ritters 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 Wladomir was 
 an oppi-ession to all his vassals and his neighbours ; and Ritter Mi- 
 zisla, 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 mischief; for who 
 
LIBUSSA. 78 
 
 would willingly give judgment against the stronger? And so tlie 
 suiferings of the people never reached the throne of the Duchess. 
 By the virtue of her second - sight, however, no injustice done 
 within the wide limits of her sway could escape her observation ; 
 and the disposition of her mind being soft, like the 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 suggested an 
 imitation of the gods, who, in their judicial procedure, do not fall 
 upon the ci-iminal, and cut him off as it were with the red hand ; 
 though vengeance, following with slow steps, sooner or later over- 
 takes him. The young Princess appointed a general Convention of 
 her Chivalry and States, and made proclamation, that whoever had 
 a grievance or a wrong to be righted, should come forward free 
 and fearless, under her safe-conduct. Thereupon, from every end 
 and corner of her dominions, the maltreated and oppressed crowded 
 towards her; the wranglers also, and litigious persons, and whoever 
 had a legal cause against his neighbour. Libussa sat upon her 
 throne, like the goddess Themis, and passed sentence, without 
 respect of persons, with unerring judgment; for the labyrinthio 
 mazes of chicane could not lead her astray, as they do thp thick 
 heads of city magistrates; and all men were astonished at the 
 wisdom with which she unravelled the perplexed hanks of pro- 
 cesses for Tiieum and tuum, and at her unwearied patience in pick- 
 ing 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 di- 
 minished, and the sittings were about to be concluded, on the 
 last day 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 
 watei-s 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 earned 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 malicious wasting of 
 
74 Mus^us. 
 
 his strong neighbour, the raging of whose waves he himself es- 
 caped with difficulty. Puissant daughter of the wise Krokus, the 
 poor planter entreats of thee to command the haughty river no 
 longer to roll its proud billows over the field of the toilsome hus- 
 bandman, 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 pri- 
 vileges. A dike, which it shall not overpass, shall set bounds to the 
 tumultuous river; and from its fishes thou shalt be i-epaid seven- 
 fold 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 spokesman, " 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 TOth 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 dai-ed not venture to appeal from 
 the judgmentseat of the Princess to the people, since the sen- 
 tence passed upon them had excited universal joy, tliey 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. 
 Libussa, at tlie same time, pointed out to them a more respect- 
 
LIBCSSA. 75 
 
 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 arrhy, which she was despatching 
 to encounter Zornebook, 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 invul- 
 nerable to mortal weapons, as Achilles the Hero ; and as nimble, 
 quick and dextrous, as AohiUes 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. Zomebock fell be- 
 neath the strong dints of their falchions ; they returned in triumph 
 with the stipulated spoils to Vizegrad ; and the spots and blem- 
 ishes, 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, dismissed them to their 
 homes when the army was discharged; and gave tliem, as a new 
 token of her favour, a purple-red ajiple 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 consulted together how the 
 parting of it might be prudently effected, according to the mean- 
 ing 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 Tfxis 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 allotted by 
 the fortune of arms. But a shepherd driving his flock overtook 
 them as they stood debating; him they selected (apparently in 
 imitation of the Three Goddesses, who also applied to a shepherd 
 to decide their famous apple-quan-el), and made arbiter of their 
 
dispute, and laid the business in detail before him. The shephefd 
 thought a little, then said : " In the gift of this apple lies a deepr 
 hidden meaning ; but who can bring it out, save the sage Virgin 
 who hid it there ? For myself, I conceive the apple is a treach- 
 erous fruit, that has grown upon the Tree of Discord, and its 
 purple skin may prefigure bloody feud between your worshipful 
 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 paii; 
 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 having failed in this, she now anns 
 our hands with the weapons of discord 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 herdsman 
 consumed the objectum litis with all the composure and conveniency 
 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 peo- 
 ple, their ill humour grew more deep and rancorous. They entered 
 into a league ofiensive 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 calum- 
 niate the government of women. " Shame ! Shame !" 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 with- 
 out a Duke to go before his warriors, but a helpless trunk witho\it 
 a head ? V 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 
 
LIBUSSA. 77 
 
 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 unconstrained 
 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 conducting the govern- 
 ment, 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 
 tilings 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 cove- 
 nant, 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 government 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 sly Doe is 
 loth to quit the fat pastures ; but the hunter's horn shall sound yet 
 louder, and scare her forth."' 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 un- 
 expected 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, 
 
 * Invita de latioribus pasmis, autor sediHon-is inqidt, hucula ista decedit j 
 sedjam vi inde deturhanda est, si suA s;ponte loco suo concedereviro alicui prin- 
 cijJi noluerit, — Dubravius, 
 
78 MUS/EUS. 
 
 she should detei-mine upon subjecting her inclination to her state- 
 policy, she could only give her hand to one suitor, and she saw 
 well that all the remaining candidates would taie 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 endea- 
 voured prudently to turn aside this importunate demand of the 
 States; and again attempted to persuade them altogether to re- 
 nounce their schemes of innovation. " 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 then- 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-cook, 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 
 warUke 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 
 subjects, in deeds of tyranny and caprice : he plucked th« feathers 
 from the larger fowls, and eat the little songsters." 
 
 Significant as this oration was, it made but a small impressioa 
 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 shou'ld 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 sighing. He 
 came to Court, and required audience of the Duchess. 
 
 " Gracious ruler of thy people and my heart," thus he addressed 
 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. 
 Grrant me the merit of retaining thee upon it by the bond of tender 
 
LIBUSSA. 79 
 
 affection : let us divide tlie possession of thy throne and thy heart ; 
 the first be tlxine, the second he mine, and my happiness ■will be 
 exalted beyond the lot of mortals." 
 
 Friiulein 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 Eing-dove, queen of the air, must 
 no longer, as tjiou 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 plunder- 
 ing 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 an4 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 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 ob- 
 taining me the princely crown of Bohemia, which my father Ki-o- 
 kus 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 feeUngs. 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 appro- 
 
80 musjEus. 
 
 priating to himself this gift, which could not be divided. Now tell 
 me without delay, In whose hands is the apple ? Whichever of you 
 has won it from the other, let him from this hour receive my throne 
 and my heart as the prize of his skill." 
 
 The two rivals looked a.t 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 lan- 
 tern in the hand of the blind. O Princess, be not wroth with us, 
 that we neither knew the use nor the value of thy gift; we misinter- 
 preted thy purpose ; thought that thou hadst cast an apple of con- 
 tention on our path, to awaken us to strife and deadly feud ; there- 
 fore 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 respjBnse she dismissed the Knights, who now la- 
 mented that they had given ear to the unwise arbiter, and thought- 
 lessly cast away the pledge of love, which, as it appeared, had been 
 the casket of their fairest hopes. They meditated severally 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 idle- 
 ness the three days given her for consideration ; but diligently 
 taiing 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 Lottei-y ; the debtor in tlie 
 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 witliout the enjoy- 
 
LIBU3SA, 81 
 
 ment of a secret satisfaction. The gift of pi-opiieGy 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 dififerent turn to the romance : she equipped her 
 dai'Iing 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 
 Friend Oberon did his ward. But when Common Sense again got 
 possession of the maiden's soul, the many-oolomred forms of the 
 magic lantern waxed pale in the beam of prudence, and the fair 
 vision %'anished into air. She then bethought her what hazards 
 would attend such an enterprise ; what mischief for her people, 
 when jealousy and envy raised the heai-ts 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 fonn : 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," tlius she 
 spoke, " the lot of your destiny still lies untouched in the um 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 fof the choice of a spouse, j'our hot desire for a Prince 
 to rule over you has cooled, and given place to more calm sci-utiny 
 
 G 
 
83 Mus^ns. 
 
 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 spealcer ratified the conclusion, 
 that the vote was still for a Duke. " Th«n 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 
 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 Pi-ince, at the time when you approach Mm, will be eating 
 his repast on an iron table, under the open sky, in the shadow of a 
 solitai-y 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 caa-iying 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 
 Biitish 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 in- 
 herited 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 destinar 
 
LIEDS9A. 83 
 
 tion : and she herself, now that all combined t6 the fulfihnent of 
 her wishes, awaited its returning rider with tender longing. 
 
 The messengers had in the mean time been soundly galloped ; 
 ah'eady they had travelled many leagues, up hill and down dale ; 
 had swam across the Elbe and the Moldau; and as their gastric 
 juices made them think of dinner, they recalled to jnind 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 
 itV our sharp galloping will bring us nothing but mockei-y 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 fru- 
 gal 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 quadru- 
 ped, 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 up- 
 turned plough, and eating his black bread from the ii-on plough- 
 shai-e, 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, of- 
 fered it a bit of bread, and it eat from his hand. The Embassy, 
 of course, was much surprised at this phenomenon ; nCvei-theless, 
 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 Idng- 
 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, es- 
 pecially as he supposed that they had guessed his love-secret, and 
 were now come to mock his weakness. Therefore he answered 
 somewhat stoutly, to meet mockery with mockery: "But is your 
 dukedom worth this plough ? If the prince cannot eat with bet- 
 ter relish, drink more joyously, or sleep more soundly than the 
 peasant, then in sooth it is not worth while to change, this kindly 
 
84 Mus^ns. 
 
 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 iins for swimming; 
 and the barn-door cook, 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 prej'. Have eyes for seeing, 
 feet for going, fins for swimming, and pinions for flight been al- 
 lotted 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 sufiioes 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, recognised 
 his faithfulness and constancy : and was about to recompense 
 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 fulfilled. In- 
 stantly 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 t\vigs 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 Bo- 
 hemian people, hear the words of Primislaus the son of Mnatha, 
 the stout-hearted Knight, for Avhom, blown upon by the spirit of 
 
LiBnssA. 85 
 
 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. O that the 
 glebe had been broken by the furrow, to the boundary-stone ; so 
 had Bohemia remained an 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 un- 
 changeable 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 ma- 
 tured, 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,* 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 firma- 
 ment, that he may himself iUuminate 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 wei-e speak- 
 ing by his lips. He himself turned away from them to the two 
 white steers, the associates of his toilsome labour; he unyoked 
 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 witli 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 memo- 
 rial 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 ex- 
 hibiting a pair of wooden shoes befo^^e the Kings of Bohemia on 
 their coronation ; a custom heild in observance till the male Une 
 of Primislaus became extinct. 
 
 ^ Emperor Joseph II, 
 
80 MHSiEUS. 
 
 The planted hazel rod bore fruit and grew ; striking roots out 
 on every side, and sending forth new shoots, till at last the whole 
 field was changed into a hazel copse ; a circumstance of great ad- 
 vantage 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.' 
 
 Though the white courser, which was now proudly carrfing 
 the bridegroom to his mistress, seemed to outrun the winds, Pri- 
 mislaus did not faU 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 
 ilower-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 Vizegrad. 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 gods, veiling the election of 
 her heart under a show of submission to the will of Higher Pow- 
 ers. The eyes of the Court were eagerly du-ected 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 i-uddy 
 lord, rather than the sunburnt ploughman, to assist the Princess 
 in her government. Especially in Wladomir and Mizisla, it was 
 observable that their pretensions were reluctantly withdrawn. It 
 behoved the Fraulein then to vindicate the work of the gods ; and 
 
 ' .£neas Sylviiis affirms that lie saw, with his own eyes, a renewal of this 
 charter from Charles IV. Vidi inter privilegia regai literas Caroli Quarti, 
 Romanorvm Imperatoris, divi Sigismundi patris, in quihus {villeB illius in- 
 colw) libertate donantur; nee plus tributi pendere jubentur, qjtam mtcumillivs 
 arboris exiguam mensuram. 
 
LIBXJSSA. 87 
 
 show that Squire Primislaus had been mdemnifted 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 entei'tained her pious guest ^neas. The cup of welcome 
 passed diligently round, the presents of the Princess 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 deci- 
 sion, all the riddles that were introduced. 
 
 When her own turn came to propose one, she called Piinoe 
 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 ieenest judg- 
 ment. 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 remains, and 
 one over; the third shall again have the half, and three over. 
 Now, if so be that the basket is tlien 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 undertake 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." 
 
 Though, in our days, any man endowed with the arithmetical 
 faculty of a tapster, might have solved this problem wi^iout 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 oompauion of the heavenly Powers," said he, " whoso 
 undertakes to pierce thy high celestial meaning, undertakes 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 i-ead my riddle." 
 
 Thereupon she opened her basket, and counted out fifteen 
 plums, and one over, into Prince Wladomu-'s hat, and fourteen 
 remained. Of these she gave Eitter 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 tlieir 
 suit was voided. Hence comes it, that when a wooer is rejected, 
 people say, Hu loive has given him the basket, even to the present 
 day. 
 
 So soon as all was ready for the nuptials and coronation, both 
 these cereaionies 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 beneficent or prosperous. 
 And if either of the parties had been overreached in any measure, 
 it at least was not the fair Libussa. 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 ; 
 
LIBTTSSA. 89 
 
 and having, as they think, made the fortune of some hapless 
 wight, continually remind him of his wooden shoes : but she re- 
 sembled the renowned Palmyran Queen; and ruled, as Zenobia 
 did her kindly Odonatus, 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 Pri- 
 mislaus 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 multi- 
 tudes of people from all quarters of the empire, drew to it ; so that 
 Vizegrad became too narrow for its inhabitants ; and, in conse- 
 quence, Libus^a c8i,Ued her officers before her, and commanded 
 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 spadfe upon the green with the 
 ploughshare, for the circuit of the city walls. On asking the work- 
 man what he meant to make of his sawed timber, he replied, 
 " Prah," which in the Bohemian language signifies a door-thresh- 
 old. So Libussa called her new city Praha, that is Prague, the 
 well-known capital upon the Moldau. In process of time, Primis- 
 laus's predictions were punctually fulfilled. His spouse became 
 the mother of three Princes ; two died in youtli, but tlie third 
 grew to manhood, and from him went forth a glorious royal line, 
 which flourished for long centuries on the Bohemian throne. 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 Father Gbegobt, 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, but of political chicane, to clip the wings of the 
 German Eagle, lest it rose above the head of his own haughty- 
 Rome. No sooner had the first sunbeam enlightened the vener- 
 able Vatican, than his Holiness summoned his attendant chamber- 
 lain, and ordered him to call a meeting of the Sacred College ; 
 where Father Gregoiy, in his pontifical apparel, celebrated 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 Christendom, 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 pf the Chvu-ch 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 Emperor 
 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 
 efiects on the alimentary canal ; so he turned away from the treach- 
 erous mess, and decUned having any more of it. Then the Le- 
 gate opened his other box, and made it spit some sparks, which 
 singed the Imperial beard, and stung tlie 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 ; therefore plied 
 himself to the purpose, engaged to lead the armies of the Lord 
 against the Unbelievers in the East, and appointed his Princes to 
 assemble for an expedition to the Holy Land. The Princes com- 
 municated the Imperial order to the Counts, the Counts sum- 
 moned out their vassals, the Knights and Nobles ; the Knights 
 
MELECHSALA. 91 
 
 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 Eai-th had employed in watching to produce a 
 i-uinous 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 departure ; 
 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 bride- 
 groom 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 tlie sighing spouses, whom this sleep- 
 less 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 ti'ue, in the odour of sanc- 
 tity, yet in respect of personal endowments, and virtuous conduct, 
 inferior to none of her contemporaries. 
 
 Landgraf Ludwig, a trusty feudatory of the Emperor, had is- 
 sued 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 armory had been de- 
 stroyed by fire. Count Ernst of Gleichen, however, with a little 
 troop of stout retainers, who were free and unencumbered, and 
 took pleasure in the prospect of distant adventures, 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 softly as the dew from 
 the Twilight. A third pledge, which she carried under her heart, 
 was, by virtue of the Pope's insomnolency, 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 tender- 
 ness, when at parting he quitted the embraces of his weeping 
 spouse. As in dumb sorrow he was leaving her, she turned hastily 
 to the cradle of her children ; plucked out of it her sleeping boy ; 
 
93 MDsains. 
 
 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, ujider which there beat a very soft and feeling 
 heart ; kissed them from their sleep, and recommended them, to- 
 gether 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 Gleicheu, she looked 
 after him with desolate sadness, till his banner, upon which she 
 herself had wrought the Red-cross with fine puirple silk, no longer 
 floated in her vision. 
 
 Landgraf Ludwig was exceedingly contented as he saw his 
 stately vassal, and his knights and squires, advancing vidth their 
 flag unfurled ; but on viewing him more narrowly, and noticing his 
 trottble, 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 landgraphio nostrils sniffed displeasure. Count Ernst had 
 a fine pathognomic eye ; he soon observed what ailed his lord, and 
 going boldly up, disclosed to liim the reason of his cloudy mood. 
 His words were as oil on the vinegar of discontent; the Landgraf, 
 with honest frankness, seized his vassal's hajnd, 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 wc are fighting abroad, our wives will be pray- 
 ing at home, that we may return with renown and glory." Such 
 was the custom of the country in those days : while the hus.band 
 took the field, the wife continued in her chamber, solitary and still, 
 fasting and praying, and making vows without end, for his prosper- 
 ous return. This old usage is. not universal in the land at present; 
 as the last crusade of our German warriors to the distant West,* 
 by the rich increase of families during the, absence of their heroic 
 heads, has sufiiciently made manifest. 
 
 The pious Elizabeth felt no less pain at parting from her hus- 
 band tlian her fair companion in distress, the Countess of Gleichen. 
 Though her lord the Lajidgraf was rather of a stormy disposition, 
 she had lived wifth him in the most perfect unity ; and his terrestrial 
 mass was by degi-ees so imbued with the sanctity of his helpmate, 
 that some beneficent historia.ns have appended to him likewise the 
 title of Saint ; which, however, must he looked on rather as a charit- 
 able compliment than a real statement of the truth ; as with us, in 
 > Qf the Hessiaa troops to America, during Oie Keivotationsiry Wai-, — Ed. 
 
51ELE0HSALA. 03 
 
 these times, the epithets of great, magnanimous, immortal, eru- 
 dite, profound, for the most part indicate no more than a little 
 outwai'd edge - gilding. So much appears from all the circum- 
 stances, that the elevated couple did not always harmonise in 
 works of holiness; nay, that the Powers of Heaven had to intei-- 
 fere 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 reserving 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 satisfac- 
 tion, "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 lihe 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 seri- 
 ousness, he strictly forbade his consort this labour of love, which 
 had through time become her spiritual hobby. Nevertheless, one 
 day the impulse of benevolence, 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 un- 
 covering 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. 
 
 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 glid- 
 ing with a heavy load through the postern, he proceeded witli 
 majestic strides across the court-yard, and stept out upon the draw- 
 bridge, as if to take a mouthful of fresh au-. Alas ! The pious lady 
 heard the jingUng of his golden spurs; and fear and teiTor 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 pri- 
 vileges 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 wei-e 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 em- 
 barrassment, 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 
 
 Had the Landgraf been one of our contemporaries, he must 
 have believed his lady on her word of honour, and desisted fi-om 
 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, O 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 whether 
 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 
 Lion. He now turned his tremendous looks on the down-stiioken 
 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 hinj lie and rot. This done, he took a rose from the 
 basket, and stuck it in his hat, in triumph for his lady's innocence. 
 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 hun- 
 gry, were awaiting her, to dole out among them her intended 
 bounty. For she well knew that the miraculous 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. 
 
MELEOHSAIA. 96 
 
 Though now, by the depai-ture of hei- husband, she was to be 
 freed from his rigorous superintendence, and obtain free scoj)e 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 pai-t from him without the deep- 
 est 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 depai'ture, 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 
 bedside; appointed him commander of the troops which he him- 
 self had led thus far, and made him swear that he would not re- 
 turn tiU he had thrice drawn his sword against the Infidel. Then 
 he took the holy viaticum from the hands of his marching chap- 
 lain; 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 Eoman 
 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 httle 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 
 
96 MUS^us. 
 
 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 Nakedness, Perils 
 by land and water and among bad brethren. Frost and Heat, Pes- 
 tilence and malignant Soils; and the grinding Home-siokness also 
 fell at times like a heavy Incubus upon the steel harness, and 
 crushed it together Uke soft pasteboard, and spurred the steed 
 to a quick return. Under these circumstances. Count Ei-nst 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 tlaree days' journey rotind the camp, 
 no Arab archer was to be seen; the weakness of the Christian 
 host lay concealed behind its bulwarks and entrenchments ; they 
 did not venture out to seek the distant enemy, but waited for the 
 slow help of his slumb.ering Holiness, who, since the vrakeful night 
 that gave rise to this Crusade, had enjoyed unbroken sleep, and 
 about the issue of the Holy War had troubled himself veiy little. 
 
 In this inaotion, 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 confeder- 
 ates, moped so long about his fair Briseis, — the chivalry of Chris^ 
 tendom 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 
 wildei-nesses, and pursued the shy chamois into the barren moun- 
 tains. The knights of his train " disagreed" with the glowing sun 
 by dayi 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 faith-- 
 ful 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 home- 
 wards, night came upon him at a distance from the camp. The 
 appearance of some treacherous ignes fatui, which he mistook for 
 the watch-fires, led him off still farther. On discovering his eiTor, 
 he resolved to rest beneath a tree till daybreaJt. The trusty Squire 
 
MELEOHSAIA. 97 
 
 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 him- 
 self, 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 sth-ring, 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 remoteness, like the 
 voice of a forest stream rushing over some steep precipice. The 
 watchful squire listened eagerly, and sent his other senses also 
 out for tidings, as his shai-p eye could not pierce the veil of dark- 
 ness. He hearkened, and snuffed at the same time, like a blood- 
 hound, for a scent came towards him as of. sweet-smelling herbs 
 and trodden grass, and the strange noise appeared to be approach- 
 ing. 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 shfldder 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 morn- 
 ing tinted the eastern hem of the horizon with purple light. The 
 Count now discovered, what he had smticipated, a host of Saracens 
 approaching, all equipped for fight, to snatch some booty from the 
 Christians. To escape their hands was hopeless, and the hospit- 
 able tree in the wide solitary plain gave no shelter to conceal horse 
 and man behind it. Unluckily the massy steed was not a Hippo- 
 gi-yph, 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 servants follow him, and sell 
 their lives as dear as might be. Thereupon he pricked the Fries- 
 lander 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 
 
 H 
 
98 MUSiEtJS. 
 
 rose, and there began an unequal battle, in which valour was sur- 
 passed by number. The Count meanwhile kept plunging yarely 
 through the ranks ; the point of his lance gleamed death and de- 
 struction to the Infidel ; and when it found its man, he flew in- 
 evitably from his saddle. Their Captain himself, 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 Eng- 
 land did the Bragon. The mettled Kurt went on with no less 
 briskness ; though availing little for attack, he was a master in the 
 science of despatching, and sent all to pot who did not make resist- 
 ance ; as a modern critic butchers the 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 titump. The 
 groom, too, did his best to make clear ground about him, and kept 
 his master's back unharmed. But as nine gad-flies will beat the 
 strongest horse; four Caifre bulls an African lion; and, by the 
 common tale, one troop of mice an archbishop, as the Mausetliurm, 
 or Mouse-tower, on the Rhine, by Hubner's account, gives open 
 testimony; so the Count of Gleichen, after doing knightly battle, 
 was at length overpowered 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 valiant arms stormed in on him to wrench 
 away his sword, and his hand had no longer any strength for re- 
 sistance. 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 magnanimously hammered in the Saracenic skulls. He 
 surrendered at discretion, 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 conquered 
 could have expected ; they disarmed their three prisoners of war, 
 and did them no bodily harm whatever. This mUd 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 coirect intelli- 
 gence 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 
 
MEI.ECHSALA. 90 
 
 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 con- 
 firm at Court their description of the Christian resources and posi- 
 tion. 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 the Comte 
 de Grasse in London, where the merry capital emulously 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 Sul- 
 tan'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 requu-ed 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 altftgether; and his 
 piety had well-nigh made shipwreck on this rock of offence. 
 
 In the days of Count Ernst there was current, among anecdotic 
 persons, a wondrous story of Duke Henry the Lion, which at that 
 period, as a thing that had oceun'ed within the memoiy 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, east away upon a desert part of the African coast ; where, 
 escaping alone from shipwreck, he found shelter and succour 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 voratiity. The acquaintance 
 being formed, and mutual confidence established between the 
 parties, the Duke assumed the office of chirurgeon to the royal 
 teast, 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 plunder; and, 
 though a Lion, was as friendly and officious towards him as a lap- 
 dog. 
 
100 Mnsa;us. 
 
 The Duke, however, soon grew weaiy 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 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 im- 
 pudence 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 sorrow, and 
 take thee home to thy wife to sup with her this night in the 
 Castle of Brunswick; for a lordly supper is maldng 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 
 eai', and cut him through the heart like a sharp two-edged sword. 
 Eage burnt in his eyes Hke flames of fire, and desperation uproared 
 in his breast. If Heaven will not help me in this crisis, thought 
 he, then let Hell ] It was one of those entangling situations which 
 the Arch-crimp, with his consummate skill in psychological science, 
 can employ so dextrously when the enUsting 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 tmsty Lion, to Brunswick, before 
 the varlet reach my bed !" — "Well!" answered Blackboard, "but 
 dost thou know the carriage-dues ?" — " Ask what thou wilt !" said 
 Duke Hemy ; " it shall be given thee at thy word." — " Thy soul 
 at sight in the other world," repUed Beelzebub. — " 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 Griflin, 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 pi-oolaim the hour of midnight, and then carol 
 forth a superannuated bridal -song from his rusty mum -washed 
 
MBLECHSALA. 101 
 
 weasand. The duoal 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, unwearied 
 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 hor- 
 rid sound of battle pealed from the tumult in the wedding-hall, 
 up to tlie very Gothic roof, till the walls rang with it, and the 
 thresholds shook. 
 
 The golden-haired bridegroom, and his party-coloured butterflies 
 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 en- 
 trance 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 reproving her in gentle 
 words' for the hurry of her heart, he from that hour entered upon 
 all his foi-mer rights. 
 
 Count Ernst had often hstened 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 loneliness of his 
 Grated Tower, the whole incident acquired a form of possibility; 
 and his wavering nursery beUef 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 midnight, chose to 
 lend his bat-wings for the purpose. Though in obedience to his 
 religious principles, he no night neglected to out a large cross be- 
 fore him as he went to sleep; yet a secret longing awoke in his 
 
102 musjEos. 
 
 heart, without its own distinct consciousness, to accomplish the 
 same adventure. If a wandering mouse in the night-season hap- 
 pened 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 heforehand. 
 But except the illusion of a dream, which juggled him into an 
 aerial journey to his German native land, the Count gained no- 
 thing by his nursery faith, except employing with these fantasies 
 a few vacant hours ; and like a reader of novels, transporting him- 
 self 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 Ukelihood 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 
 Heniy 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 sti- 
 pulated 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 be- 
 come 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 rob- 
 bed and murdered, or taken captive, by some plundering troop of 
 Arabs. In one point all agreed : That he was to be held pro mortuo, 
 dea,d in law, and that the Countess was entirely relieved and en- 
 franchised from her matrimonial engagements. But to the Count- 
 ess herself, a secret foreboding stiU whispered that her lord was 
 aUve notwithstanding. Nor did she by any means repress this 
 thought, which so solaced her heart; for hope is always the stout- 
 est stay of the afflicted, and the sweetest dream of life. To main- 
 tain 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 
 hia bill. Nevertheless the steadfast lady doubted not in the least 
 
MELEOHSALA. 108 
 
 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 vforld without in the catastrophe remember- 
 ing 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 armory by rat- 
 tling of the harness, nor in the gari-et by a rolling joist, nor in the 
 bed-chamber by a faint footstep, or heavy-booted tread. Nor had 
 any nightly moaning chanted its Nimia down from the high bat- 
 tlements of the palace ; nor bad the baleful bird Kreideweiss ever 
 issued its lugubrious death-summons. In the absence of all these 
 signs of evil omen, she inferred 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 Ajristotle'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 important 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, Aa 
 soon gets the snail to his bed as the swalhw; therefore he called at 
 eveiy inn, and treated himself weU. 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 insolent 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 func- 
 tion, will appear in the sequel. 
 
 After a seven years' narrow custody in the Grated Tower at 
 Grand Cairo, — a term which to the Count seemed far longer than 
 to the Seven Sleepers their seventy years' sleep in the Roman 
 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 assistimce 
 from his Guardian Saint was lighter than a mustard-seed. He 
 
104 MUSiEUS. 
 
 vegetated rather than lived; and if in these circumstances any 
 wish arose in him, it was the wish to he 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 FrankUn. A foreboding palpitation of the 
 heart set his stagnant blood in motion; and he expected with im- 
 patient 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 1 One of thy fellow-prisoners has be- 
 trayed 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 Rector of the Sor- 
 bonne, the appointment could not have astonished him more, than 
 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 
 yet 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. 
 
MELECHSALA. 106 
 
 Nevertheless, he did not venture to acknowledge his ignorance, or 
 decline the prefei-ment oifered him; being reasonably apprehen- 
 sive 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 ah-eady, 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 dreaiy 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 censuring any- 
 thing in the arrangement of his Eden did not occur. The Count 
 therefore found himself in no small embarrassment about dis- 
 charging his commission creditably ; he feared that evei-y 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 dffligently stimulating him to 
 begin the work, he required fifty slaves, as necessaiy 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 ponderous 
 Groom, his two companions of misfortune, ranked among the 
 troop ! A hundredweight of lead rolled off his heart, the wrinkle 
 of dejection vanished from his bi-ow, and his eyes were enlight- 
 ened, as if he had dipt his staff in honey and tasted thereof. Hfe 
 led the trusty Squire aside, and frankly iufoi-med 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 speak- 
 ing, 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 
 
106 Mus^ns. 
 
 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 business ; the Sultan, like 
 the great people of the world, has a fancy not for so.methiug 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 de- 
 pend upon it, everything you do or purpose will be right in hia 
 
 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, without 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, nil! he wiU 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 valerian, 
 and exotic shrubs, or scentless amaranths, in their stead. 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 dfeuilh mourante. 
 
 Shiek Kiamel, and the Sultan himself, allowed the Western 
 gardener to take his course, without deranging his conception by 
 their interference or their dictatoriab opinion, and by premature 
 hypercriticism interrupting the procedure of his horticultural ge- 
 nius. In this they acted more wisely than our obstreperous pub- 
 lic, 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 destruction. 
 
MELECHSALA. 107 
 
 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 entitled, after due 
 consideration of the matter, like the Shiek, to shake bis head in 
 silence, to spit a squirt through his teeth, and think within him- 
 self : If this be all, it might have staid 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 perceived that the pro- 
 duce of his genius would now have to stand a rigorous criticism ; 
 however, he had long been ready for this accident. He collected 
 all his presence of mind, and answefed 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 appai'ent 
 warmth and satisfaction of his own performance, 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 inao- 
 quaintance 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 aU 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 ?" 
 
108 MUS^US. 
 
 " What moved thee to desolate the pleasant grove Of dates and 
 tamarinds, which was the wanderer's shelter against the sultry 
 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 ex- 
 hales its balsamic odours when fanned by the cool breeze of even- 
 ing?" 
 
 " 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, overarched 
 with honeysuckle and ivy; or in that cool grotto, where a ciystal 
 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-house by the 
 pond ; nor will any of these secret shrines afford lodging for de- 
 structive 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 gar- 
 den. In Italy, and in the German gardens of the Niirnbergers, 
 no dates are ripened, nor does any balm-tree of Mecca bloom ?" 
 
 To this last ai-gument no answer could be made. As neither 
 the Shiek nor any of the Heathen in Cairo had ever been at Niim- 
 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 thinl that the present horticultui'al 
 reform had been managed by the pattern of the Paradise, ap- 
 pointed by the Prophet for believing Mussulmen ; 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 hquid 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 
 oflfspring. Of princes he had so many, that had eveiy one of them 
 
MELECHSALA. , 109 
 
 been destined to wear a crown, he might have stoclced 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- 
 tanio 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 hy the circumstance, that of all the 
 Sultan's daughters, she alone had remained in life; while Nature 
 had 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 
 every now and then betraying their imperfect culture in this 
 point.l Melechsala was the pride of the Sultan's family; her 
 brothers themselves were unremitting in attentions to her, and 
 in efibrts 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 Kgyptian 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 hori- 
 zon of her brow. 
 
 The first years of childhood she had passed under the superin- 
 tendence of a nurse, who was a Christian, and of Italian extraction. 
 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 another, till at 
 last she had arrived in the palace of the Sultan, where her hale 
 constitution recommended her to this oflSoe, 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 uphfted, with melodious throat, her 
 Marlborough s'en va-t-en guerre ; yet nature had sufficiently indem- 
 nified 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 entertainment for which 
 it would appear the race of Sultans, in the privacy of their sera- 
 gUos, have considerable liking. The Princess, at least, found plear 
 sure 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 
 ' ■ Journal of FasliionB, June 1786. 
 
110 MUSjEUS. 
 
 sees matei;ials 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 superiorities 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 
 
 From youth upwards she had been a great lover of flowers : part 
 of her occupation had consisted in forming, according to the man- 
 ner of the Arabs, a constant succession of significant nosegays and 
 garlands ; with which, in delicate expressiveness, she used to dis- 
 close the emotions of her heart. Nay, she at last grew so inven- 
 tive, that, by combining flowers of various properties, she could 
 compose, and often very happily, whole sentences and texts of the 
 Koran. These she would then submit to her playmates for inter- 
 pretation, which they seldom failed to hit. Thus one day, for ex- 
 ample, she formed with Chalcedomo Lychnis the figure of a heart; 
 surrounded it with white Roses and Lilies ; fastened under it two 
 mounting Kingsweeds, enclosing a beautifully 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 included praise or blame for their re- 
 ceivers. A garland of Peony-roses censured levity; the swelling 
 Poppy, dullness and vanity ; a bunch of odoriferous Hyacinths, with 
 drooping bells, was a panegyric for modesty; the gold LUy, which 
 shuts her leaves at sunset, for prudence; the Marine Convolvulus 
 rebuked eye-service ; 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 decipher- 
 ing 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 
 
MELEOHSALA. Ill 
 
 him So happy, that he lost not a moment in imparting it to his 
 favourite, Shiek JCiamel, and pressing him with the strictest in- 
 junctions to reaUse it as speedily as possible. The Shiek, well 
 knowing that his master's wishes were for him commands, which 
 he must obey without reply, presumed not to mention the difficul- 
 ties which he saw in the attempt. He himself understood as little 
 about European gardens as the Sultan ; and 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 in- 
 spected the procedure of this horticultural 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 approach- 
 ing ; and his Highness had a wish to take a view of everything be- 
 forehand, to get acquainted with the new arrangements ; 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, in 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 ihou 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,' 
 they plant with grass and weeds. For the curse of the Prophet 
 has smitten with perpetual barrenness the plains of the Unbe- 
 liever, and forbidden him any foretaste of Paradise by the perfume 
 of the Mecca balm-tree, or the enjoyment of spicy fruits." 
 
 ' Kalaf, a shrub, from whose blossoms a liquor is extracted, resembling our 
 cherry- water, and much used in domestic medicine. Bahohab, a sort of fruit, 
 in great esteem among the Egyptians. 
 
112 Mus^ns. 
 
 The day was far spent, when the Sultan, attended only by the 
 Shiek, stept into the garden, in high expectation of the wonders he 
 was to behold. A wide unobstructed prospect over a part of the 
 city, and the mirror surface of the Nile with its Musherns, Sham- 
 decks and Sheomeons^ sailing to and fro; in the background, the 
 skyward-pointing pyramids, and a chain of blue vapoury mountains, 
 met his eye from the upper terrace, no longer shrouded in by the 
 leafy gi-ove of palms. A refreshing breath of air was also stirring 
 in' the place, and fanning him agreeably. Crowds of new objects 
 pressed 0]i him from every side. The garden had in truth got a 
 strange foreign aspect; and the old park which had been his pro- 
 menade 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 metamor- 
 phosis 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 unsymmetrical walks, over- 
 laid 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 greensward. He could not 
 satisfy himself with wandering up and down the labyrinthic walks ; 
 and he showed himself especially contented with the rich variety 
 of wild flowers, which had been fostered and cultivated with the 
 gi'eatest 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 pai-k into something singular, and diverse 
 from the fashion of the land ; and now I will not hide my satisfac- 
 tion 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, mar- 
 velled much that all things took so well ; and blessed himself that 
 he had held his tongue, and retained his defensive oration to him- 
 self. 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 of the Faithful, be it known to 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, 
 ' Yarious sorts of sailing craft in use there. 
 
MELECHSALA. 113 
 
 something unexampled, the like of which had never been in Egypt 
 before. Doubtless it was an inspiration of the Prophet that sug- 
 gested 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 inten- 
 tion 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 favoured 
 of fortune, who take their ease in this lower world, he had never 
 troubled himself much about the other. But whenever any Der- 
 vish or Iman, or other spiritual person, mentioned Paradise, some 
 image of his old park used to rise on his fancy ; and the pai-k was 
 not by any means his favourite scene. Now, however, his imagina- 
 tion 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 pre- 
 senting him with a splendid caftan. Your thorough-paced cour- 
 tier belies his nature in no quarter of the world : Kiamel, without 
 the slightest hesitation, modestly appropriated the reward of a 
 service which his functionary had performed; not uttering a syl- 
 lable about him to the Sultan, and thinking him rather too liber- 
 ally rewarded by a few aspers which he added to his daily pay. 
 
 About the time when the Sun enters the Ram, a celestial phe- 
 nomenon, which in our climates is the watch-word for winter to 
 commence his operation ; but under the milder sky of Egypt an- 
 nounces 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. 
 
 According to the custom of the country, every time she entered 
 the garden, aU 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 Prin- 
 
 I 
 
114 MTJSiEnS. 
 
 cess 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 
 io pay it several visits daily, she began to feel obsti-uoted and an- 
 noyed 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, accord- 
 ing 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 flowerpots, 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 instruioting 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 l)y this appearance that he 
 dropped a flower-pot from his hands, forgetful of the precious colo- 
 cassia contained in it, which ended its tender life as tragically as 
 ■the Sieur Pilastre de Hosier, 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 ofi" his nose, as the Turks do with stone 
 statues in temples And gardens, and never have aroused him. 
 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 forward with thy 
 woyk, and order thy -flowers as I shall bid thee." — " Glorious Flower 
 of the World !" replied the gardenei-, "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 Hea- 
 ven. Let thy nod enliven the hand of the happiest among thy 
 slaves, who kisses his fetters, so thou think him worthy to perform 
 
MELEOHSAEA. lift 
 
 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 forra, 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 speannan was lost for every 
 female eye ; all looked on him alone ; and when he closed his hel- 
 met to begin a course, the chastest bosooi heaved higher, and all 
 hearts beat anxious sympathy with the Iprdly Knight. The par- 
 tial 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 
 tjjroughout the long winter in the greenhouse, and at the return 
 pf spring sends fpr^h pew leaves, and ggts ^ 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 agked his own advice 
 respecting it, and talked with him so long ^s any horticultural 
 idea was in her head. She left him at length, but scarcely was 
 she gone five paces when she turned to give him fresh commis- 
 sions ; and as she took a promenade a,long the serpentine-waJk, 
 she called him again to her, and put new questions to him, and 
 proposed new improvement^ 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 bftck 
 into the gai'den. Day after day her love of fresh ftir and awaken- 
 ing flowers increased ; and in these visits she never failed to go 
 directly to the place where her florist wfis labouring, and give him 
 new orders, which he gtrove punctually and speedily to execute. 
 
 One day tho Bostangi,' when she canae to see him, was not to 
 < Head-gardener. 
 
116 Mus^ns. 
 
 be found; she wandered up and down the intertwisted walks, re- 
 gardless 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 expected 
 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 enjoying 
 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 Viet, the Count's Groom, a duU piece of mechan- 
 ism, 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 win 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. IH retiring to the Seraglio, 
 she had plucked a variety of flowers, but all were of a mournful 
 character, and bound with cypress and rosemary, indicating clearly 
 enough the sadness of her mood. She did the same for several 
 days, which brought her council of women into 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 what- 
 ever she expressed the faintest hint of, had so acted on a frame 
 unused to labour, that his health sufliered 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. 
 
MELEOHSALA. X17 
 
 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 infinitely 
 greater service to the world than any Hints for the Instructors of 
 Princes ;' 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 con- 
 fidantes of her heart, Eeason, Prudence and Reflection, to deliber- 
 ate on the business. Had she done so, doubtless the concern 
 she felt in the circumstances of the Bostangi would have indicated 
 to her that the germ of an unknown passion was already vegetat- 
 ing 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 befol-e us : his over-anxious zeal 
 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 allegori- 
 cal 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 aU 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 constantly 
 restrained himself within the bounds of modesty. And as the 
 Princess was entirely inexperienced in the science of coquetry, 
 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 con- 
 tinued so revolving, had not Chance, which we all know com- 
 
 ' Allusion to a small, Treatise, which, about the time Musseus wrote his 
 story, had appeared under that title.— WlBLAMD. 
 
118 MUSaiTJS. 
 
 inonly officiates as primufn tnohile in every change of things, ere 
 long given the scene another form. 
 
 About sunset, one very beautiful day, the Princess visited the 
 garden; hei? soul was as bright as the horizon; she talked deUght- 
 fully with her Bostangi about Inany indiifereilt 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 
 teverence to his fair mistress, fastened it, with a look of surprise 
 and delight, to the breast of his waistcoat, without ever dreaming 
 that the flowers might have a secret import ; for these hierogly- 
 phics were hidden from his eyes, as from the eyes of a discerning 
 public the secret wheel-work of the famous Wooden Chess-playef. 
 And as the Princfess did not afterwards expound that secret impbrt, 
 it has withered away with the blossoms, and been lost to the know- 
 ledge of posterity. Meanwhile she herself supposed that the lan- 
 guage 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 thanks for the praise of his 
 activity and zeal, which, iti all probability, the flowers had been 
 meant to convey. She now took a thb<ight of putting his invent- 
 iveness 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 condescending goodness, darted to the end of 
 the garden, into a remote greenhouse, where he had established 
 his flower-dep6t, and out of which he was in the habit of transfer- 
 ring 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 MusMrum^ by the Arabs, 
 and which hitherto had not appeared in the garden. With this 
 novelty Count Ernst imagined he might give a Uttle hannless plea- 
 sure to his fair florist; and accordingly, for want of a salver, hav- 
 ing put a broad fig-leaf uiider 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. 
 ' Eyaointhus Muscari, 
 
MEIEOHSAUI. 119 
 
 She hesitated, and seemed embarrassed in accepting it; not deign- 
 ing to oast a look on it, but laying it beside her on the seat. Her 
 gay humour had departed ; she assumed a majestic attitude, an- 
 nouncing haughty earnestness ; and after a few moments left the 
 grove, without taking any farther notice of her favourite, not, how- 
 ever, leaving lier Mnsldrumi beliind her, but carefully concealing 
 it under her veil. 
 
 The Count was tliunderstruok 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, 
 and kept forking about .in the plate, without carrying a morsel to 
 his lips. By this the trusty Bapifer 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 Glei- 
 chen 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 ti'usty 
 hand, privily transmits a Mushirumi flower to his mistress, he gives 
 her ci-edit for penetration enough to discover the only rhyme 
 which exists in the Arabian language for the word. This rhyme 
 is Ydsherumi, which, delicately rendered, means reward of love} To 
 ' HasBelquiat's Travels in PiileBtine. 
 
] 20 Mus^ns. 
 
 this invention it must be conceded, that there cannot be a more 
 compendious method of proceeding in the business than this of 
 the MusUrumi, which might well deserve the imitation of our 
 Western lovers. The whole insipid scribbling oi Billets-douas, 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 Miiaeadine- 
 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- 
 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 veiy 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 pai-t 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 pui-ple 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 Tperplexing 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, iij 
 the first place. But in her solitai-y chamber, tliere doubtless en- 
 sued 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 dui-st not risk 
 disclosing the afi'air to any other, if she would not leave the 
 
MELE0H8ALA. 121 
 
 life of her beloved 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 Se- 
 i-agUo. It is therefore difficult for the historian to determine whe- 
 ther Meleohsala 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 in the Pa- 
 lace, 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 oS the Count's fever in his sweat- 
 bath ; he was now to examine. the pulse of a more deUcate patient. 
 According to the custom of the country, she was lying on a sofa, 
 with a larg& screen -in -front of it, provided with a little opening, 
 through which she stretched- her beautifuUy- turned arm, twice 
 and three times ;wrapt with fine muslin, to protect it from the pro- 
 fane 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 amouse-tail." 
 A.t the same time, with praiotical policy, he shook his head dubi- 
 tatingly, as cunning doctors ate wont ; ordered abundance of Ka- 
 laf and other cordials, and vrith . a shrug of the shoulders pre- 
 dicted a dangerous fe-^er. . . , 
 
 Nevertheless, ■ these alaBming symptoms, which the medical 
 gentleman considered as so many heralds announcing the ap- 
 proach of a iinalignant 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 j3Eseulapius was required merely 
 to keep quiet for a day or two. This space , she employed in ma- 
 turely deliberating her -intrigue,; and devising ways and means for 
 fulfilling the demauds-of the Mushirumi. She was diligently occu- 
 pied, 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 whioh-the boldest imagination could 
 not build a bridge. Yet on all these recks of offence she grounded 
 the firm resolution to obey the feeUngs of her heart, come what 
 
122 Mus^us. 
 
 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 holted gate of the SeragUo at last went up, and the fair Me- 
 lechsala again passed through it into the gatrden, 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 eipdcting 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 circumsfences 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 play- 
 ing 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 ^es, and looked as ruefully as a deliiiquent when the 
 judge is ready to pass sentence 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 wilfof the Pro- 
 phet be done ! I have called on him three days and tlii-ee nights 
 long, to direct me by a sign if my condiict were wavei-ibg between 
 error and folly. He is silent; and approves the purpose of the 
 Ringdove to free the captive Linnet fi-om the chain with which he 
 toilsomely draws water, and to nestle by his side. The Daughter 
 of the Sultan has not disdained the Muskirwmi 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 feeal of the Faith- 
 ful. 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 ap- 
 pointed for his daughter." ■' 
 
 Like the conjuration of some potent Faii-y, 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 meaning 
 
MELEOHSALA. 123 
 
 of the speech: but how he was to reach the unexpected honour 
 of becoming the Sultan of Egypt's son-in-law, was an unfathom- 
 able mystery. In this predicament, he certainly, for an accepted 
 wooer, did not make the most imposing figure in the world ; but 
 awakening lote, like the rising sun, coats everything with gold. 
 The Princess took hia 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 expectations 
 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 befoi'e 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 east 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 un- 
 known to me, as its secret import stiU is. Think not that I meant 
 aught with it but to obey thee." 
 
 This response distorted the fair plan of the Princess very con- 
 siderably. 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 dear as day ; but love, which 
 had once for all taken root in her heart, now dextrously winded 
 and turned the matter; as a semstress does a piece of work which 
 she has cut wrong, till at last she makes ends meet notwithstand- 
 ing. The Princess concealed her embarrassment by the playing 
 of her fair hands with the hem of her veil; and, after a few mo- 
 ments' silence, she said, with gentle gracefulness : " Thy modesty 
 resembles the night-violet, which covets not the glitter of the sun, 
 
124 Musains. 
 
 yet is loved for its aromatic odour, A happy chance has been the 
 interpreter of thy heart, and elicited the feelings of 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 connexion 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 Ms 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 over- 
 cloud 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 longei", 
 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 victoiy over himself. The word died 
 away more than once in his mouth ; but at last he took heart, and 
 said ; " The longing of the wanderer, astray in the Libyan wilder- 
 ness, to cool his parched lips in the fountains of the Nile, but 
 aggravates the torments of his thirsty heart, when he must stUl 
 languish in the torrid waste. Therefore think not, O 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 their 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 here 
 he was exceedingly mistaken. The Princess could not bring her- 
 
MKtEOHSALA. 129 
 
 self 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 Prin- 
 cess ; " but behold, in this garden there are many flowers blossom- 
 ing beside me, to delight eye and heart by their variety of loveli- 
 ness ; 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 tliyeye 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 Httle 
 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 Reli- 
 gion; 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, Megsera 
 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 re- 
 move 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 
 
126 Musfius. 
 
 states, where neither party will relinquish his rights, -and the ad- 
 j'ustBient 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 
 Ipipw, had a seat and vote ; his master opened to him in the even- 
 ing the whole progress of his adventure, for he was much dis- 
 quieted ; and it is very possihle that some sparlj 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 ofiered opportunity of occupying the heart as it 
 desires, are three critical circumstances, which, in so active a sub- 
 stance 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 reaUse the Princess's plan ; meanwhile, to do nothing either 
 for it or against it, and leave the issue to Heaven. " You are blot- 
 ted out firom 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, 
 wiU never return to your embraces. If, in seven years, sorrow for 
 your loss has not overpowered her and cut her off, Time has over- 
 powered 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 hus- 
 band 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 rigjit hand nor to the left, nor behind her, like Lot's wife, 
 who was changed into a pillar of salt: for where the husband 
 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 spealdng to persuade his 
 master that he ought not to resist this royal passion, but to forget 
 
MELEOHSALA. 127 
 
 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 re- 
 called to his master's memoiy 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 morn- 
 ing, wearied out by this internal tumult, he fell into a dead sleep. 
 He dreamed that his fairest front-tooth had dropped out, at whjoh 
 he felt great grief and heaviness of heart ; but on looldng 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 mettled 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 circumstances ; and the 
 dingy wrinkled Pythian, after meditating long upon it, opened her 
 puckered mouth, and said : " What was dearest to thee death has 
 taien 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 circumstance 
 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 dis- 
 pensation 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 the next 
 interview, he 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 tlie variegated 
 sand-walk with unbent limbs. " Bostangi," said she, with melo- 
 dious voice, " hast thou spoken to the Iman ?" The Count was 
 silent for a moment; ho 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 
 
128 MUS^US. 
 
 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; wherefore she adopted aheroical ex- 
 pedient, 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-speaking 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 whe- 
 ther it deserves the sacrifice which I require of thee." 
 
 " It is the form otaxi 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 de- 
 lights of the Prophet's Paradise are empty shadows." 
 
 These words, spoken with w^armth and visible conviction, found 
 free entrance into the open heart of the Princess : especially, 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 eager- 
 ness 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 confi- 
 dence as if he had descended directly from the place on a 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 apos- 
 tolic preacher failed the less in his intentions ; though it cannot 
 be 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 tlie 
 other citizens of this world must content themselves with dwarf 
 
MELECHSALA. 139 
 
 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 inaoquaintanee with the deli- 
 cate shades of faith, he had undesignedly mingled with it. Nor 
 did this acquisition remain a dead letter with her; it awakened 
 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 question now 
 was, by what means this intention could be realised. She took 
 counsel with Bostangi, he with the mettled Kurt, in their noc- 
 turnal deliberations on this weighty matter; and the latter 
 voted distinctly to strike the iron while it was hot; to inform 
 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 Euro- 
 pean 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 
 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 Rome, 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 ann 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 bom, 
 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 
 
130 MUSICS. 
 
 sesmce. In my native land, thou thyself, enclosed by no walls of 
 a aeragjio, shalt live and rule in freedom as a queen." 
 
 This oration of the Count the Princess tiaought a message from 
 above; she entertained no doubts of bis truth; and it seemed to 
 please her that the Bing-dove 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 forsaike 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 
 instmoted her that many preparations were required,, before the 
 great enterprise couldi 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 
 ofkidnapping the Grand Signior's favourite from- his arms. Such 
 a masterstroke could only be imagined by the teeming fancy of 
 a ■W*z*l,' nor could any but a Kakerlak adiieve it. Yet the un- 
 dertajdng ; of Count Emst. of Gleiohen to carry off the Sultan of 
 Egyptls daughter; was environedi 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, eveiything proceeded, merely by the course 
 of Nature, and no serviceable. Fairy put a finger in the x>ie : 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, 
 
 ' J. K. Wetzel, author of some plays and novels ; among the latter, of 
 jlfBierio*.— Ed. 
 
MELECH8AU. , 131 
 
 whom the virtuous Meleohsala, everything considered, 'might hdve 
 spared this pan'g, and avoided flying her country to make purchase 
 of a glorj*, demeaned himself at this intelligence like an infuriated 
 lion, who shakes his hrown mane with dreadful hellowing, when 
 hy the' uproai- of the hunt, and the baying ofthd hounds, he is 
 frightened fi'om 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 hfir father's power. The 
 Mameluke guard had' to mount, and gallop towards the four winds, 
 in chase ofthd fugitives j by every r'oad from Cairo; and a thousand 
 oars were lashing the broad back of the Nile, in case she might 
 haYe taken a passage by water. 
 
 Under such efforts, to elude the fal'-stretehing arm of the'Sultan 
 was impossible, unless the Count possessed the secret of rendering 
 himSelf and his travelling party invisible ; or the miraculous gift 
 of smiting all Egypt with blindness: But of these talents neither 
 had been lent him. Only the mettled Kurt had taken, certain mea^ 
 sures, which, in regard to their effect, might supply the place of 
 miracles. He had rendered his flying caravan invisible, by the 
 darkness of an unlighted cellar in tibe house' of AduUam the sudo^ 
 rifle Hebrew. This Jewish Hermes did not satisfy himself with 
 ptaotising the healing art to good' advantage, but drew profit like- 
 wise from the gift which he had received' by inheritance from his' 
 fathers ; aind thus honoured Mercury in all his tUree qualities, of 
 Patron to Dbotors, to Merchants, and to Thifeves. He drove a 
 great trade in spieeries and herbs with the Venetians, fi-om which 
 he had acqtiirBd! much wealth ; and he disdained no branch of 
 business whereby anything wasto bs made. This worthy Israelite,' 
 who for money and money's worth, stood ready, without investi- 
 gating morai tendencies, for any sort of deedi 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 servants, to a Venetian 
 ship that was loading at Alexandiia'; but it had' prudently been 
 hidden from him, that in the course of this contraband transac- 
 tion, he must smuggle out his master's daughter. On first inspect- 
 ing his cargo, the figure of the fair youth'struck him somewhat ; but 
 ho thought no ill of it, and took him for a page of the Count's'. Ere 
 long the report of the Princess Melechsala'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' hand's 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 break- 
 
132 , MUSiBUS. 
 
 neck business' to a happy end. In the first place, he laid his sub- 
 terranean lodgers under rigorous quarantine ; and then, after the 
 sharpest of the search was over, the hope of finding the Piincess 
 considerably faded, and tlie 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.^ 
 
 Whether the celestial body-guard, with diamond shields and 
 flaming swords, posted 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 seemed 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 fiiendly 
 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; undismayed 
 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 Me- 
 leohsala, came on land. His master's physiognomy was so stamped 
 upon his memory, that he would have undertalcen to discover 
 it among a thousand unknown faces. Nevertheless the foreign 
 garb, and the finger of Time, which in seven years produces 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 foUowest?" 
 
 " My master." 
 
 " From what country come you?" 
 
 " From the East." 
 
 ' 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 hereditatr 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. 
 
MELEOHSALA. 133 
 
 " Whither ar^ 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-arstand, that is my man. Hobble- 
 tehoy, 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 
 hug. 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 Ottilia 
 his wife, to get her word whether her husband is still living, and 
 in what comer 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 in- 
 terpretation of it, had misled him ; and that the conceit of many- 
 ing 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 matters 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 considered deeply what was 
 
134 mns/Gus. 
 
 to be done with his engagements to the fair Saracen. Without 
 loss of time the watchful spy was despatched to the (Jouutess 
 with a letter, containing a true statement pf the Count's fortunes 
 in slavery at Cairo, and of his deliverance by means of the Sul- 
 tan'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, had promised. By this narrative he 
 meant not, only to prepare his wife for a participatress in her mar- 
 riage rights ; but also endeavoured, in the course of it, by many 
 sound argunients, to gain her own consent to the arrangement. 
 
 Countess Ottilia was staijdiiig at the window in her rnouming 
 weeds, as the news-bringer for the last time gave his breathless 
 horse the spur, to hasten it up the steep Castle-path. Iler sharp 
 ^ye recognised him in the distance ; a,nd he too being nothing of a 
 blinkard, — a class of persons very rare in the days of the.Crusades, 
 — ^recognised the Countess also, raised the letter-bag aloft over his 
 head, and waved it hke a standard in token of good news; and the 
 lady understood his signal, as well as if the Hanau Synthemato- 
 graph had been on duty there. " Hast thou found him, the hus- 
 band 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 arrival himself." The Countess 
 could not hastily enough undo the seal ; and at sight of her hus- 
 band'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 lips. 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 iDieet 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 thing? 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 I^oaf, of whidh the Heathen 
 
MELECHSALA. 186 
 
 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 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 themihrew off Ins cloak, and behold it was the Count her 
 lord! She joyfully embraced him, and was in raptures at his re- 
 turn. The children too came in, and he clasped them in his pa- 
 ternal aims, 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 precious strings of jewelry, 
 and hung them round the necks of the little ones, who showed 
 delighted with these glittering presents. The Countess was her- 
 self surprised at this munificence, and asked the stranger who he 
 was. He answered : " I am the Angel Raphael, 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 shoul- 
 ders. 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 similarity between the Angel Ea- 
 phael 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 behoves the owner of a lost piece of pro- 
 perty 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 
 despatched forthwith back into Italy, with the formal consent of 
 the Countess for her husband to ooiis^lete the trefoU of his mar- 
 riage without loss of time. 
 
 The only question now was, whether Father Gregory at Bome 
 would give his benediction to this matrimonial anomaly; and be 
 persuaded, for the Count's sake, to lefonnd, 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 Eomish chair ; and after the bapitism, on which ocoar 
 siou she had changed her Saracenic name for the more orthodox 
 .Angelica, he caused a pompous Te^leum to be celebrated in St. 
 
136 Mus^ns. 
 
 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 Vicar 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 far 
 vour, they availed no jot in moving the exemplaiy Pope to wink 
 with one eye of his conscience, and vouchsafe the petitioned dis- 
 pensation : 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 marriage 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 conscience 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 ora- 
 tion was completely before him; then he answered it with two 
 words, shortly and clearly: " Peace, Dog !" In the same moment, 
 the mettled £urt 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 been 
 the cause of all this mischief!" His heart, between self-reproaches 
 for unfaithfulness to his amiable wife, and for prohibited 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 iire of indignation burnt and gnawed him. 
 
MBLEOHSALA. 137 
 
 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 hu- 
 mour altogether, arid wore the aspect of an atrabiliar, whom in 
 bad weather the atmosphere oppresses tiU 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 Roman eye 
 had yet seen her face, except the priest who baptised her. His 
 Holiness received the new-bom 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 sftouohing address. Yet this 
 insinuation through the Papal ear seemed not suificiently 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 aii-. ^Fattier 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 wedlockj^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 on her heart, and 
 constrain her to bestow it elsewhere. 
 
 The sight of her beauty 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 de- 
 termined in Heaven, shall be fulfilled in thee on Earth. In three 
 days thou shalt know whether this thy first prayer to the Church 
 
IBS iiusmns. 
 
 can be granted by that gracious Motiher, or must be denied." 
 Thereupon he summoned an assembly of all the Casuists in Borne ; 
 had a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine distributed to each; and 
 looked them up in the Botunda, with the warning that no one of 
 them should be let out again till the question had been deter- 
 mined unanimously. So long as the loavies and wine held out, the 
 disputes were so violent, that all the Saints, had they been eon- 
 •vened in the church, could not havie 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 hap- 
 jjily 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 ihe noble pair, and sent 
 lihem away betrolihed. They lost no time in leaving Peter's Pa- 
 trimony for the territories of the Count, to celebrate their nuptials 
 on arriving. 
 
 When Count Ernst, on this side th« Alps, again iiAaled his 
 native air, and felt it come soft and kindly round his heart, he 
 mounted his steed ; galloped forward, attended only by the heavy 
 iGroom, and left the Princess, im.der the escort of the mettled 
 Kurt, to follow him by easy journeys. 
 
 His heart beat high within him, when he saw in azure distance 
 the three towers of Gleichen. He meant to take his gentte Covin- 
 tess 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 memoiy of this event, is called the FreudenUial, or 
 Valley of Joy, to this day. The meeting on both sides was as trust- 
 ful and tender, as if no partition treaty had ever 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 Beason, gave it over in custody to 
 V 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 
 
MELEOHSALA. 139 
 
 •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 Eaphael, 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 memorial, 
 it will transmit thy name to future ages ; and while a splinter of 
 this wood remains, husbands will recount to their wives thy exem- 
 plary 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 h'eart, and conducted her into the Palace, 
 as the partner in aji 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 nupt&ls were celebrated with becoming pomp and splen- 
 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 wed- 
 ding. 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 
 wliioh, 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 domestics 
 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 
 
140 MUSiEUS. 
 
 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 apoph- 
 thegm 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 exhilarat- 
 ing 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 Gleiohie 
 economy i-eturned to its customary frugal routine, he requested 
 permission to set out for Ordruflf, to viSit his kind wife, and over- 
 whelm 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 conver- 
 sation. Fancy painted to his mind's eye the image of his virtuous 
 Eebecca in the liveliest colours ; and the nearer he approached the 
 walls which enclosed her, the brighter grew these hues. He saw 
 her stand before him in the charms which had 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 vrith joyful 
 bark. Yet he wondered somewhat at the sight of two lively chub- 
 faced children, like the Angels in the Gleichen bed-tester, Msking 
 to and fro upon the area. He had no time to speculate on the 
 phenomenon, for the mistress of the house, in her cai-efulness, 
 stept out of doors to see who was there. Alas ! what a difference 
 between ideal and original! The tooth of Time had, in these 
 
MELECHSALA. 141 
 
 seven years, been mei-cilessly busy with her charms ; yet the lead- 
 ing 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 cordi- 
 ality, and said : "Welcome, dear wife of my heart! Forget all thy 
 sorrow. See, I am still alive ; thou hast got me back !" 
 
 The pious Bebecca 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 
 shriekingtreble, " after wandering seven long years up and down 
 the world, following thy wicked courses with other women, dost 
 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 thou not, for thy contumacious non-appearance, declared to 
 be dead as mutton ? Did not the High Court authorise me to put 
 aside my vridow's chair, and marry Biirgermeister Wipprecht? 
 Have we not 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 
 Bword's-thrust through the heart of the mettled Kurt; but the gaU 
 poured itself as a defence into his blood. 
 
 "O thou faithless stmmpet!" 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 agaiij 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 !" 
 
142 Mus^us, 
 
 Though' the Prima Donna of Ordhiff 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; 
 audi in an instant, man and maid' seized hold of the mettled Kurtj 
 a,nA brevi nrnnu, ejected his body frdm the house ; in which act of 
 domestic jurisdiction' Dame Rebecca herself bore a hand with ibe 
 besota, 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 fbund 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 OrdruflR but 
 continued -with the Count at Gleichen all his' life, aiid was an eye- 
 witness of the most incredible Occurrence, that two ladies shared 
 the love of one man, -without quarrelling or jealousy, and that even 
 under one bed'tester ! The fair Angelica continued childless, yet 
 she loved and watched oirer her associate's children as if they had 
 been' her own, and di-vided -with Ottilia the carB of their education. 
 In the ttefbil' of this happy marriage, she was the first leaf which 
 faded' away iu' the autumn of life. Govtntess Ottilia soon followed 
 her;;and-the afflicted widower, liowall 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 dfeathi 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 Goutitess 
 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.' Their famouS' triple bedstead is still preserved as a relic 
 in the old Castle'; it stands in'the room called the JiinKemkammer, 
 or Knight's Chamber; and a splinter of it, worii byway of busk 
 in a lady's bodice, is said to have the -virtue of dispelling every 
 movement of jealousy from her heairt. 
 
 ' A plate of this tombstone may be seen in Falkonstein's Analecta Nord- 
 gamensia. — M. 
 
LUDWIG TIEOK. 
 
THE FAIR-HAIRED ECKBERT. 
 
 In a district of the Harz dwelt a Knight, whose common designa- 
 tion in that quarter was the Fair-haired E ckhert. He was about forty 
 years of age, scarcely of middle stature, and short light-colou red 
 locks lay close and sleek round hi s pale a nd sunken countenance. 
 He led a retired life, had never interfered in the feuds of his neigh- 
 bours ; 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 custom- 
 ary way of life. Temperance abode in his household, and Fru- 
 gaUty herself appeared to be the mistress of the entertainment. 
 On these occasions Eckbert was always cheerful and lively ; but 
 when he was alone, you might observe in him a certain mild re- 
 serve, a still, retiring melancholy. 
 
 His most frequent guest was PhiUp Walther ; a man to whom 
 he had attached himself, from having found in him a way of think- 
 ing like his own. Walther's residence was in Franconia ; but he . 
 would often stay for half a year in Eckbert's neighbourhood, gar 
 thering plants and mineraJs, and then sorting and arrane[inp 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 grow betwixt them. 
 
 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. 
 
 fit was late in Autumn, when Eckbert, one cloudy evening, was 
 
146 LUDWIQ IIEOK. 
 
 sitting, with his friend and his wife Bertha, hy the uarlour fire. 
 The flame cast a /re? ^limmer through tha morn, and sported on 
 tfee_ceil^g; the'mffltToofced sullenly in through t he windows , 
 and the tre es without mstled in wet coldness. A Walther com- 
 plamed df the long road he had to travel ; and Eokhert proposed 
 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 ; jfresh wood was laid upon the 
 fire ; the talk grew livelier and more confidential. 
 
 The cloth being removed, and the servants gone, Eckbert took 
 his Mend'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 Hrfiwr ^pnd fh p. hearth. 
 
 It was now^idnigli^ the moon looked fitfullv through the 
 ) brea ks of tiiie driving clouds. , " You; must not reckon me a bab- 
 blerT' began the lady. " My husband says you have so generous 
 a mind, that it ia 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 bom ia a lit tle 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 iny fa,ther 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 
 oould 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 comer, and 
 iUl my Uttle 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 httle 
 pebbles which changed into precious stones ; in short, the strangest 
 fancies occupied me, and when I had to rise and help with any- 
 thing, my inexpertness was still greater, as my head was giddy 
 with these motley visions. 
 
 " 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 
 Mendly word from him. Iil, ttiis way I had struggled on to near 
 
THE rAlE-BAIEED ECKBERT. 14T 
 
 the end of my eighth year ; and now it was seriously fixed that 
 I should begin to do or leam something. . My fether 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 
 repeaited day after day, since I was nothing but a useless sluggard. 
 
 " That whole night I wept abundantly ; I felt myself so utterly 
 forsakeiyl-had such- a-eympa^y^mth myself that I even longed, 
 to die,^_I_dreaded the break of ^ a ^ I knew not on earth what-I^ 
 wasjLado or-^^pTWiahed-froiffimy very heart to be clever, and 
 could not understand how I should be worse than the other chil- 
 dren ot&ej^hjoe. J. was^njflie borders of despair. __ 
 
 "^t the dawn of day I arose, and.scarcely knowing i^at X^3ii 
 (fimastengd the door of our little hut^i I stept upon the open field ; 
 next minuteTwas in a wood, , where l ^h^ ^'K^t, of the mnrning had 
 yet aardly penetrated , i i ra5 along, not looking round; for I felt 
 no latigu'e, and 1 still mought my father would catch me, and in 
 his anger at my flight would beat me worse than ever. 
 
 1 " I had reached t he other side of the forest, a nd the sun 'iyas,, 
 risen a considerable way a I saw so wiMbingr Him ^ymg hpfnr^ nj^ fi , 
 a nd a thick fog Testing over it. Ere htngmynath h ffgun t" Tn""ntrr 
 at one time I was olimbing hdlia, at another winding a mong rggka ; 
 afld"! how gueisea ttiat 1 must beamoS"the heighhouring^M^^^ 
 tamly 'an tenT^lhtHghatTn'Sjpe" me" sTrudder !5"m-y Ibneliness . FiST 
 Tiving i rTffie plain country, I had never seen a hiH; and the very 
 worg Mountains, when I heard tiiLE" ot tnem, h ad been a sound 
 of terror"^Srmy°ySaHg"'6'ar."'l ha3TioOhe heart to go back, my 
 fear iiserf''3TOvll"iSironT' often I looked round affrighted when 
 the_ breezes rustled over me among the trees, or the stroke of 
 som'e"(listSat"'WO'0(ISIanrsounSed far tJirough the'lBirmornLffgr 
 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 throuf h several villages ; begging now alS;^ 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 unon a little footpath. 
 which led me farther . and fart her from the highwa y. The rocks 
 ■ aSout me now assumed a differen t and far st rangerjbga. They 
 wgrftifiTig£jorii1fid ot^, f)}}e; j,nothgr, that it looked as ifthe first 
 ^Bt'bf wind would hurl them aU this wajjind'^Sr' I knewnot 
 whether to go oh 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 hunian dwelling at all, and could 
 
14:8 LUDWIO HECK, 
 
 not hope to find one in this w ilderness ; th e crags grew more and 
 ^ore'fri ghtfiS; I had m any a time 'to'glidealong by tJie very edge 
 o|tlrea3l^/aby|^3f; by degrees myloo5atE"trecaineTarriter, and 
 at last liH trace s of it vanished from be neath me. I was utterly 
 comfortlesil "I wept and screamed; aniTM yTOlee came echoing 
 back from the rocky valleys with a sound tha t terrified m e. The 
 mgETnowoame on, and I sought out a mossy nook to lie down in. 
 I could not sleep ; in the darkness I Eeard the strangest noises ; . 
 sometimes I took them to proceed from wJ J-beasts, sometimes 
 from jv ind moanin g.thrQugbJib e rocks, sometimes fror a_ unknown 
 birdsT fl prayed/ and did not sleep till towards morning. 
 
 gn the light came upon my fane . I awoke. Before me 
 was a steep r ock; I clomb up, in the hope of discovering some 
 outlet from ine Jragifi» perhaps of seeing h ouses or men. But 
 when I reached me top, the re was nothing still, so far as my eye 
 could reach, _b aLa!„wjlderness of craps an d preci pices ; all was 
 cov ered witji a dim haze"; the 3ay was gray and troubled, and n o 
 
 ' tree, no meadow, no t even a bush could I find, onlv a few shrub s 
 shooting up,s.tMCted and s olitar y 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 vyhile, 
 •however, the desire of living gained the mastery ; I roused myself, 
 and wandered forward amid tears and broken sobs all day ; 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. 
 
 " Towa rds night the country seemed tojgrow a httle kindlier ; 
 my thoughts, my desires revived, the wSh for"Bfe awokeinail 
 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 
 atJagt I actually gained the limits of the barren rocks, a nd saw 
 
 /'woods^jand meadgjijajlying before me, with soft. green hitTs in the 
 'distance ! I felt as if I had stept out o f h gjl^ nto a p aradise ; my 
 ISteiiHSss and helplessness no longer frightened me. 
 
 " Instead of the hoped-for mill, I came upon a_waterft^ which, 
 in 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.j i^ever in my life was I so 
 joyfully surprised as at this momenlMj went near, and at the 
 border of the wood I saw an old wo!^ian sitti ng restiag^-MJ^Ae 
 ground, i She was dressed almost w holly in^ BIacF) a black hood 
 wv^e3^^r2^J«ad-tli«-gi-eatWpajr of h^^^eTJnl^ei hand' 
 she held a. crutch."] "" ~ 
 
THE FAIR-HAIBED EOKBEET. 149 
 
 " I came up to her. and begged for help ; she made me sit by 
 her, and gave me ffireay, and a littl e yymej While I ate, she sang 
 ia a screeching tone some kind o f spiritu al song. When she had 
 done, she told me I might follow her. 
 
 y\^ The offer charmed me, strange as the old woman's voice and 
 look appeared. > With her crutch she limped away pretty fast, and 
 at ever y step she twistea n er face so oddly, that at nrst I was li Ee 
 to laugh."/ TJie wild 'rocKs' rfelireiT" beMna ur'more' anymore : "I 
 never stall forget the aspect and ihe feeling of that evening. All 
 thin gs were as molten into the softest golden¥edV the trees were 
 standing witn their tops in the glow of the sunse t ; on th e fields . 
 layaTmila bnghtUMijB ; thiS woods afld^^^I eayes o f th e trees ws£ 6 
 " Hanging' motl^TgSS'; the pure sky Iboked ' out Eke gji opened Ip ara- 
 ^isig^andthe gushing of the brdoksVjandjS^Tflme^^t^^ 
 fcrstHlI g''of ^lieWggy,'Yg§5iEgeyiErou^m^ as in 
 
 penSi ^joy. My young soul was here first taken with a fore- 
 • tEoiight of the world and its vicissitudes. I forgot myself and my 
 conductress ; my spuit and my eyes were wandering among the 
 shining clouds. 
 
 1" We now mounted an eminence planted with biroh;toe^jjrom 
 top we looked into a green valle y, likewise julTorK^Ees; and 
 down below, in the middle of themj was a little hut. | A glad bark- 
 ing reached us, and immediately a little nimble ildg came spring- 
 ing 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 hiU, I heard the strang gst, 
 Bong, as if coming from th e hut, an d sung by so mejbird. It ran 
 
 thui": " ' J— — " — > 
 
 I Alone in wood so ga; 
 
 I 'Tis good to stay, t / 
 
 / Morrow like today, ' ' 
 
 / Forever and aye : 
 
 0, 1 do love to stay 
 \ Alone in wood so gay. j 
 
 " TTipfip few wnr^^fj T yere conti nually repeated, and to describe 
 the sound, itjgas^a s' if you hear d forest-horns a^~sEaImB. gojimded 
 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 
 en a table ; in a fTlitf.Bv^tipf i^ppa, hanging by the window, was a 
 birdp and this in fact proved to be the singer. (The old woman 
 
160 tUDWIO HKOK. 
 
 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 aooustomed 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 ; former face was in 
 perpetual motion ; and, besides, her head shook from^ld^ej so 
 that, for mj life, I could not understand what sort of countenance 
 she hadTj 
 
 " 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 a loud, still twisting her countenance, so^ 
 that I was once more on the point of laughing ; but I took strict J 
 care that I might not make her angry. v 
 
 " After Slipper 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 
 talking with her dog and her bu-d, which last seemed dreaming, 
 and replied with only one or two words of its rhyme. This, witii 
 the birnhea rustling hfjfnrp t.tip win^fi^, an d the song of a distan t 
 mgJitingale, made such a won dr ous eombmation, t hat I nev er 
 fajjly'^EEo uglitT j yas awak e, but only felling 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 learafid-Jjeigt.' 
 ,_eAsiJyT'I iad 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 creature. 
 It s beauty, indeed, always struck me, for i ts / ea^lifi'-R g^ititpvpt^^^tih 
 alTpossible co lours ; the fairest deep blue, and the most burning 
 ^j^jp aite^ESteS ' ^out his neck and bi tdy: and when "smangTEe 
 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, wiU be- 
 come accustomed and attached to anything. In the evenings, she 
 taught me to read ; and this was afterwards a source of boundless 
 satisfaction to me in my solitude, for she had several ancient- 
 writteu hooks, that contained the strangest stories. 
 
• THE fAIK-HAIRED EOKBEBT. l&l 
 
 " The recollection of the life I then led is still singular to me : 
 Visited by no human creature, secluded in the circle of s o small a 
 familjrj 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 ahle to recall tlie 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. Th e bird, I found, lai djeyerxdaj;;.^ 
 a n e^ g, in wh ich ther e was a pearl or a jewe£ I had already no- 
 txced that she ofterTwent 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, lor weeks, for months. 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 oTany simrWTOuljagathtaOiILiihia i tiiMi^J_gt^ 
 ^ S'o~one wandered thither; n o wild-bea st came near our 
 dwelling : I was satisfied, and workeJT along in peace from day to 
 day. One_would^eiiaps be very happy, could he pass his life so 
 undisturbedly to the end. T~~ 
 
 "'KoniTEeTittle 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,Jn_fang[, I would spoH'straflgB:Btcnries;with myself. "I figured 
 euTthefeirest knight on Earth ; adorned him with all perfections, 
 -SitEout knowing rightly, alter all my labour, how he Iookedj_fei!t 
 1 cpuJJKeTa'hearty pity for myself when he ceased to love mie ; I 
 m)uld 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 love4 me,, and did all I wanted ; the 
 bird replied to all my questions with his rhyme ; my wheel kept 
 ■brtSiEly turning, and at bottOln I had ^ever^jJiy,wi^ilfor ^jgj^ge^ 
 When my dame returned from her long wanderingsTsEe would 
 praise my diligence ; she said her house, since I belonged to it, 
 ■vrasnaratSgedJarjtnore perfectly ; she took a pleasure Jn^iny_growth 
 an d healthy toiokg; i5rsE6iSpffielieated_m£-in.all4itoint^.likeJisr 
 
 " * Tho u art a good girl, c hild,' said she once to me, in her 
 
152 LUDWrO TIBOK. 
 
 creaking tone; ' jf-tliou. continuest-so, it will be well with thee : 
 but non e ever jrospe rs when he leav es th e straight path ; punish- 
 mentjoll ojcertakeJiini,, though it may be late.' I gave littleTEeed 
 to this remark of hers at the time, for in all my temper and move- 
 ments I was very lively ; hut by night it occurred to me again, 
 and I could not understand what she meant by it. I considered 
 all the words attentively; I ha d read of^riches, and at last it struck 
 me_ftut^er^eaife^djewels_mi^kt,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^wasjipw fourteen ; it is the misery of man that^he arrives 
 at jinderstanding through the loss of^innocence. I now saw well 
 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 
 whi^ I had read of. Perhaps, too, it would then be possible that 
 1 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- 
 turaedJio-me, again_st 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, telUng 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 .4id I tend, the dog. and Jihe. .l!ij;c],_with such diligence 
 as nowj._Uiey wexe, jieaj;et4o-iay.Jieajrt.4haa .fgimS^. 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 afiBicted 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 jbeautiful ; the-next_tiie' 
 iamgerStaloBw world, with its many. wonders, would, again en- 
 chant jne. 
 
 " I knew not what to make of it; the dog leaped up continually 
 
IHE FAIR-HAIRED ECKBEET. 163' 
 
 about me ; the sunshine spread abroad over the fields : the green 
 birch-trees glittered ; I always felt as if jha d something 1 m ust 'J 'L, 
 3 oTn"Ba,5te; so 1 caugJit tile little dog, tied him up"ih 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 
 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 rooks, but went in the op- 
 posite direction. The dog still whined and barked, and it touched 
 mejtaJJiR beart-to-hear him ; the bird tried once or twice to sing; 
 ^butas X was-carryingiim, the shaking put him out. 
 
 " The farther-I went, the fainter grew the barking, and at last 
 it altogether pflnsfiH. J wepti and had almost turned back, but 
 thejoaging to see something new still hindered me. 
 
 " I had got across the hills, and through some forestSjwhen: 
 the rirgErcaine7pn,'andXwas'Ibiced 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 threateningjae.» > 
 
 " 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, a nd often in the woods I tho ught my dame. 
 w ould suddenly meet~ine . Thus amid tears and sobs I went 
 along ; when I stopped to rest,.and put the cage on the groimd, 
 the birti RtriipJrjrQ^Ji^isRn^ hnt. inn kfip.ply t.n my 
 
 "Tnind theifa jv habitation I had left. As human nature is forgetful, 
 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 reache4 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 
 bom ! 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. 
 
154 LUDWIQ HECK. 
 
 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 dead three years ago. I drew back 
 quickly, and left the village vfieeping aloud. 
 
 " I had figured out so beautifully how I would surprise them 
 with my riches : by the strangest chance, whatjyM,d_OTlydreamed 
 in childhood was beco' f"p r Aality; and now it was aJlia.yain, diey 
 edtiianot rejoice^th ine, and that which had been my first hope 
 in Efe was Tost fpreyey. 
 
 " In a pleasant town I hired a small house and gard«n, and 
 took to myself a maid. The world, in trutli, proved not so won- 
 derful as I had painted it: but I forgot the old woman and 
 my former way of life raUier 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 jQiyme^_ He sang : 
 
 a;- 
 
 / Alone in wood ao gay,\ 
 / Ah, fEir away ! \ 
 
 But thou wilt say 
 j Some other day, ' 
 
 ' 'TwerB 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,.mgre^ than ever, 
 thWTTiaarnQtjSciesLBghtly. 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 s8ngx_lie_sang_it 
 louder and more shrilly than~Ee had been wont. The more I 
 Tisoked' at him, the more he pained and frightened me; al^last 
 I opened the cage, put in my hand, and grasped his neck; I 
 sijn-eeaed-Hly fingers hard together, he looked at m e, I slactened 
 them; but he was dead. I buried him'in tHe gardeST^ 
 
 " After this, there often dajlle ff*icr-over me fbr my maid; I 
 looked back upon myself, aad 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 Kim my hand ; and with 
 this. Sir Waither, ends my story." 
 
 " Ay, y'n^u should have seen her then," said Eckbert warmly ; 
 " seen her ^uth, 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." ~ ' 
 
THE FAIR-HAIEED EOKBEET. 155 
 
 " But with our tattling," added Bertha, " it is growing very- 
 late; we must go to sleep." i 
 
 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 weU figure you beside your singing bird, and how you 
 fed poor little Stmhmim^ 
 
 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 his- 
 toiy, and now such confidence appears to me improper ! Will he 
 not abuse it? Will he not communicate the secret to others? 
 WiU 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 tiie 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 
 y uneasy thoughts, and got very little sleep. 
 
 Bertha was unwell next day, and could not come to breakfast; 
 Walther did not seem to trouble himself much about her illness, 
 but left her husband also rather oooUy.' Eckbert could not com- 
 prehend such conduct ; he went to see his wife, and found her in a 
 feverish state; she _B£iid,her last night's story jnustiav* -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 unmean- 
 ing words and then depart. Eckbert was exceedingly distressed 
 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 seaioas ; the 
 Doctor grew alarmed ; the re^ 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, whjohjs juining jny-, 
 EeilS, unimportant trifle -as-it may appear. Thou mayest re- 
 member, 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 
 
156 LUDWIO TIEOK. 
 
 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 withjny destiny? At times 
 I struggle wTthTmyserf,' as if I but imagined this mysterious busi- 
 ness; 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 wa s a rough stor m y winter-dayj the sr "y tos lying 'fpflp 0" 
 the hills, and oending down^thebranj^t^of the trees. He roved 
 aEoutTTEe'"s"weat~was standing on his brow; he found no game, 
 and this embittered his iU-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-gfisliire, but tlie 
 arrow was ulceady-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 jJ^sJiad-'wan- 
 dered far into the woods. On arriving, he found Bgrtiia dead: 
 before h'5r~agath',~sKeTradTpoken much of Walther and the old 
 woman. ' 
 
 For a great while after this occurrence, Eckbert lived in the 
 deepest solitude : he had all along beeji 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 variance 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 fri end to fill the. void inj]is_spul ; and yet, when 
 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 
 
THE FAIE-HAIEED EOKBEBT. 157 
 
 his life appeared to Mm 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, thgy,gg,eiaed.inseparable. 
 
 Eckbert was never happy longer than a few transitory mo- 
 ments : jja^hje. ialtJtopoleariy that_Hugo loved him only by mis- 
 take-; that he knew him not, was unacquainted with his histoiy ; 
 and hejras_seized_agaiajKijtli_j|^ same old longing to unbogqm 
 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, Jje^isqlpsecTEis whole Hstoory to Hugo, and asked 
 if he could 2pye _a murderer. HugOjgeemed touched, and tried to 
 ■comfort him. Ej^kbert_reiuraeiLto_towii.jvith a lighter heart. 
 
 But it seemed to be his doom that, in the very hour of confi- 
 dence, he should always find materials for suspicion. Scarcely 
 had they entered the public haU, when, in the gUtter 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 pecilliar style. With this man Hugo was 
 conversing; they were speaking privately, and casting looks at 
 Eckbert. The suspicions of the latter seemed confirmed; he 
 thought himself betrayed, and a tremendous rage took hold of 
 him. A^_ha.£0JliiatteiL5azin^_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 
 
158 LUDWIO TIKOE. 
 
 idea he fell into another still more frightful, and sleep never 
 visited his eyes. Often he believed that he vras mad, that a dis- 
 turbed imagination was the origim 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 labyrintii of rocks, 
 from whi ch he could discover no "outle t. "St length fiFmeTTan 313^ 
 peasant, who took him by a path leading jMist a waterftill : he 
 offered him some coins for his guidance, but the peasant would 
 not have them. " What use is it ?" said Eokbert. " 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 galiop, over mead s and forests, till it sank ex- 
 hausted to the earth. Eegardiess of thisTEe^sTehed forward on 
 
 foot: ■' 
 
 In a dreamy mopd_ he mounted a hUl: he fancied he caught 
 the sound oi. lively Jjarking, at a Jjittle .?i?|amcej 3heT)iroE^rees 
 whispered in_the intervals, and in the strangest notes he Eeard 
 this song: - — — -^ ^ 
 
 Alone in wood so gay, \ 
 Once more I stay ; '; 
 
 None dare me slay, \ 
 The evil &,r away ; 
 Ah, here I stay. 
 Alone in wood so gay. 
 
 The sense, the consciousness of Eckbert had departed ; it was 
 a riddle which he could not solve, whether he was direaming now, 
 or had before dreamed of a wife and friend, ^e marvellous was 
 mingle(i_with the common ; the world- around- him -seemaijen- 
 chanted, and he himself was incapable of thought or recQUectipn. 
 /'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 miustice 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. 
 
 " Why did she leave me deceitfully? All would have been feir 
 
THE FAIB-HAIBED ECKBEBT. 
 
 159 
 
 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 Eekbert. 
 
 ""Because in early youth thy father told thee: he could not 
 keep this daughter by him for his second wife, her step-mother." 
 
 Eekbert lay distracted and dying on the ground. „Fgjjlt-aiuL- 
 
 bewildered, he h eajd„jfcfi„Q3iCl, WTTTHIT? ayfo^'^rt^, ^^c< i^ng harWr^^^ ^ 
 
 a5^i^etedj^eating its song. ^/ 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 
 
 Beatk Burgundy no longer 
 
 Could fight for fatherland ; 
 The foe they were the stronger, 
 
 Upon the bloody sand. 
 
 He said : " The foe prevaileth. 
 My friends and followeiB fly. 
 
 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, 
 Eckart, our trusty shield ! 
 
 In fight he used to guide me. 
 
 In danger was my stay ; 
 Alas ! he's not beside 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 hke 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 bo praised ! 
 Not yet we're beat or broken. 
 
 Since Eckart's flag is raised." 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 161 
 
 Then like a true knight, Eokarb 
 
 Dash'd gaily through the foe : 
 But with his red blood fieoker'd, 
 
 His little son lay low. 
 
 And when the fight was ended. 
 Then Burgundy he speaks : 
 " Thou hast me well befriended, 
 Yet so as wete my cheeks. 
 
 The foe is smote and flying ; 
 
 Thou'st saved my land and life f 
 But here thy boy is lying, 
 
 Returns 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. 
 
 " Why diedst thou, Heinz, so early, 
 And scarce wast yet a man ? 
 Thou'rt fallen in battle fairly; 
 For thee TU not complain. 
 
 1?hee, Prince, we have deliver'd ; 
 
 From danger thou art free : 
 The boy and I are sever'd ; 
 
 I give my sou to thee," 
 
 Then Burgundy oiu* chief, 
 
 His eyes grew moist and dim ; 
 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 !" 
 
 And when we heard the same, 
 
 We jo/d as did our prince ; 
 And Trusty Eckart is the name 
 
 We've caird him ever since. 
 M 
 
163 LUDWIO TIEOK. 
 
 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 decU- 
 vity 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, 
 
 Snord 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?" 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 bim to death, if I 
 may credit what the people say." 
 
 " Take down thy broad-sword, and do not suffer it," cried Con- 
 rad ; " they will tremble to see thee, and all the people in the 
 whole laud 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 pro- 
 mised on his hand." 
 
 " But what wants he with us, then ?" said Conrad, impa- 
 tiently. 
 
 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 
 
THE IBUSTY EOKABT. 163 
 
 they fear it day and niglit ; so Burgundy has now come to think 
 that he has trusted me too far ; that he lias nursed in me a ser- 
 pent in his bosom. People call me the stoutest warrior in our 
 country ; they say openly that he owes me laud and life ; I am 
 named the Trusty Eefcart ; and thus oppressed and sufifering per- 
 sons turn to me, that I may get them help. All this he cannot 
 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 confine- 
 ment, and was threatening the life of Eckart himself, as of a traitor 
 to the land. 
 
 Bijt Conrad said to his father : " Wilt thou let me go, my old 
 father, and speak with the Duke, to make him reasonable and 
 kind to thee 1 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 iiis trouble. 
 Thy friendship is 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 re- 
 comcile 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." 
 
164 LUDWIG TIEOK. 
 
 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 oflf the sound of 
 trumpets from the feast; perhaps his son's bride may have ar- 
 rived, and his mind may be friendlier to us." 
 
 Unwillingly he let him go, for he no longer ti-usted to his for- 
 tune : 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 
 liim so kindly but a short while before. " Wilt thou eome hack to 
 me, my little boy ?" sobbed Eckart : " if I lose thee, no other of 
 my i^ce 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 children 
 are dead, your misery in truth is very great." 
 
 " 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 tlie Eai-th ; the fear of 
 God is drying up and dispersing, and can find no channel to unite 
 
THE TRUSTY EOKART, 106 
 
 in ; and the Powers of Evil are rising audaciously from their dark 
 nooks, and celebrating their triumph. my dear sir ! we are old, 
 but not old enough for such prodigious things. You have doubt- 
 less seen the Comet, that wondrous light in the sky, that shines 
 so prophetically down upon us ? All men predict evil ; and no 
 one thinks of beginning the reform with himself, and so essaying 
 to turn off the rod. Nor is this enough ; but portents are also . 
 issuing frbm the Eai-th, and breaking mysteriously from the 
 depths below, even as the light shines frightfully on us from 
 above. Have you never heard of the Hill, which people call the 
 Hill of Venus?" 
 
 " Never," said Eokart, " 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 Mountain 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 Venus 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 olct man, " that no one can tell 
 this, except he have first given himself up to be Satan's servant ; 
 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 vrith visible yet inexplicable force, and drawn on, on, into 
 the wilderness ; he sees not the road he travels ; he wanders, 
 and wanders, and is not weary ; his strength and his speed go on 
 increasing ; no power can restrain him ; but he runs frantic into 
 the Mountain, from which he can nevermore retuiji. This power 
 has, in our day, been restored to Hell ; and in this inverse direc- 
 tion, 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 despised their parents, as 
 they did religion; but now the Sound has caught and carried 
 them off, they are gone into unseen kingdoms ; 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- 
 
166 LBDWIO TIEOK. 
 
 der through the world, to find them again, or die of weariness 
 and woe." 
 
 So saying, 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 Eokart 
 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. Eokart 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 reaeh- 
 iiig them, they recognised him ; but no one laid a hand on hiiti, 
 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 ?" 
 
 " ! ask me not," repUed the sqnire; " 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. AU drew back, 
 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 ; but 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 Burgundy?" 
 said Eokart 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 : " ! answer 
 me not so, Burgundy; for I cannot bear these speeches. Tell me 
 
THE TBUSTT ECKABT. 167 
 
 but that thou art sorry, that thou wishest it were yet undone, and 
 I will try to comfort myself; but thus thou art utterly offensive 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 for- 
 bid that I should now, as I well might, lay my hand upon my 
 sword, and seek revenge of thee. No, I wiU 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 en- 
 circled him on all sides, and motioned to drive Eckart from the 
 chamber with their weapons. 
 
 To horse the hero springs^ 
 wad through the hills he rideth : 
 " Of hope in earthly things, 
 Now none with me abideth. 
 
 My sons are slain in youth, 
 
 I have no child or wBe ; 
 The Piinoe suspects my truth, 
 
 Has sworn to take my life." 
 
 Then to the wood he turns him. 
 
 There gallops on and on ; 
 The smart of sorrow biums him. 
 
 He cries : " They're gone, they're gone I 
 
 All living men from me are fled. 
 
 New friends I must provide me. 
 To the oaJss and flrs beside me. 
 
 Complain in desert dead. 
 
 There is no child to cheer me. 
 
 By cruel wolves the/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 ; 
 
168 LUDWIG IIEOK. 
 
 Sut 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 hghtning 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 fol- 
 low 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 : 
 the hero could not now be 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, 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 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 169 
 
 lie 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 brakes; 
 Him in the tempest dreary 
 
 He on his shoulder takes. 
 
 Said Burgundy : " I'm giving 
 
 Much toil to thee, I fear." 
 Eckart replied : " The living 
 
 On Earth have much to bear." 
 
 " Yet," said the Duke, " believe 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." 
 
 " Harder our plight is growing," 
 
 The Duke cries, dreading scath, 
 " Now whither are we going ? 
 
 Who art thou ? Art thou Death V 
 
 "Not Deathi" 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 goo^* report and bad ; 
 My rights he still promoted. 
 
 The truest man I had. 
 
170 LtJDWIO TIEOK. 
 
 Mo he can never pardon, 
 
 I kill'd his children dear ; 
 This night, to pay my g^aerdon, 
 
 r th' wood he lurks, I fear. 
 
 This does my conscience teach me, 
 
 A threat'ning Toioe within ; 
 If here tonight he reach me, 
 
 I die a child of sin." 
 
 Said Eokart : "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 heen 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 Eokart, who stood Uke a spectre before his soul. He ima- 
 gined he should never see the morning ; and shuddered anew when 
 the wind again rustled through the high trees, and the storm came 
 down from the hollows of the mountains, and went rushing over 
 his head. " Wolfram," cried the Duke, in his anguish, " cUmb one 
 of these taJl pines, and look about if thou canst spy no light, no 
 house or cottage, whither we may turn." 
 
 The Sc[uire, 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 Uttle squirreL 
 At last he reached the top, and cried : " Down there, in flie 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. Eok- 
 art 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. Eckai-t took his seat in a 
 dark comer ; and there he found fast asleep the poor old man, who 
 
THE TBUSTT BOKAET. 171 
 
 had lately told him of his great misery about his sons, and the 
 search he was maJung fof 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 hesurt : 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 thy- 
 self 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 before them ; 
 Beep 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^air*d man ; 
 His face grew pale, a trembling took him. 
 He swoon'd and sank to earth again, 
 
 " 0, saints of heaven," he wakes and cries, 
 " Is't thou that art before my eyes ? 
 
 How shall I fly ? where shall 1 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 bear f* 
 
 Thus Burgundy goes on to wail, 
 And feels the heart within him fail ; 
 Death is at hand, remorse pm'sues him. 
 With streaming eyes he sinks on Eckart's bosom ; 
 And Eckart whispers to him low ; 
 " Henceforth I have forgot the slight, 
 go thou and 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 back to his Castle. Eckart he could not 
 suffer from his side ; he would often take his hand and press it to 
 his breast, and look at him with an imploring look. Then Eckart 
 would embrace him, and speak a few kind words to him, and so 
 
172 LUDWIG TIEOK. 
 
 the Prince would feel composed. At last he Bammoned 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 coun- 
 try was visible for many a league ; and here Eckart had to guard 
 himself from speaking of his children ; for they seemed as if com- 
 ing 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 ?" 
 
 This to the youths did Eckart saj, 
 
 And tiaught the sound from far away ; 
 
 And as the magic tones came uigher, 
 
 A wicked strange desire 
 
 Awakens in the breasts of these pure boys. 
 
 That drives them forth to seek for unknown joyg. 
 
 " Come, let's to the fields, to the meadows and mountains. 
 The forests invite us, the streams and the fountains ; 
 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, fltfol, blue and golden streaks of brightness. 
 
THK TRUSTY ECKART. 173 
 
 Like a shadow, tnelts and flits awaj 
 
 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 hes 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 1 Are those tones restoring 
 My wife and bonny sons ? 
 All that I was deploring, 
 My lost beloved ones ?'* 
 
 Yet soon his sense collected 
 Bi'ought doubt within his breast ; 
 
 These helUsh aiiis detected, 
 A horror him possessed. 
 
 And now he sees the raging 
 Of his young t)rinces dear ; 
 
 Themselves to Hell engaging, 
 His voice no more they hear. 
 
 And forth, in wild commotion. 
 They rush, not knowing where ; 
 
 In tumult like the ocean. 
 When mad his billows are. 
 
 Then, as these things assaU'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. 
 
174 LUDWIO TIEOK. 
 
 And so his mind's in anuour, 
 And hope is conquering fear ; 
 
 When see, the fiendish Charmer 
 Himself comes piping near 1 
 
 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 com'se. 
 
 But now the Hill appeareth. 
 And music comes thereout ; 
 
 And as the Phantoms hoar 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. 
 
 Then his 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 Tale ; 
 
 The Fiends are fighting madly. 
 And threatening to prevail. 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKABT, J 75 
 
 The Dwarfs, wlien hurt, fly downward. 
 
 And rise up cured again ; 
 And other crowds rush onward. 
 
 And fight with might and main. 
 
 Then &aw he from a distance 
 The children safe, and cried : 
 " They need not my assistance, 
 I care not what betide." 
 
 His good broad-aword doth glitter 
 
 And flash 1' th' noontide ray ; 
 The Dwafffe, 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 aad dies. 
 
 So his last howc o'ertook him. 
 
 Fighting like lion brave ; 
 His truth, it ne'er forsook him. 
 
 He was faithful to the grave. 
 
 Now Bckart having perish'd. 
 
 The eldest son bore sway ; 
 His jmemory still he cheiish'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 HiU, 
 
 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. 
 
176 LODWIG TIBCK. 
 
 PAET II. 
 
 More than four centuries had elapsed since the Trusty Eckart'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 sui-passed 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 ob- 
 served 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 wandered thi- 
 ther, 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 ne- 
 cessary of life. Tannenhauser's old father died : Friedrich married 
 some years afterwards; already was a ring of merrj' 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 distinctly 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 
 shuddered at the wild look of his friend, which seemed to bum as 
 with unearthly light. The Tannenhauser had reposed himself a 
 day or two, when Friedrich learned that he was on a pilgrimage 
 to Borne. 
 
 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 dis- 
 close it, now that they were once more on their ancient confi- 
 dential footing : the other long endeavoured to ward off the 
 
THE IRCSTT EOKART. 177 
 
 friendly prayer ; but at last he exclaimed : " Well, be it so ; thy 
 will be done ! Thou shalt know all ; but oast 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, wbere at last they sat down; and 
 now the Tannenhauser hid his face among the grass, and; with 
 loud 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 
 Spirit 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 birtli- 
 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 Rome. 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 Eokart. They tell how, in those days, a Mu- 
 sician 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 stoiy, 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 remembrances the meadows and the 
 woods would awaken in my deepest heart. Oftentimes the loveli- 
 ness and fulness of royal Nature so aflfected me, that I stretched 
 out my arms, as if to fly away with wings ; that I might pour my- 
 self out like the Spirit of Natui-e 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 for- 
 
178 LUDWIO TIEOK. 
 
 ever. Above all, there was one dream that left an ineffaceable im- 
 pression 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 confused 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. ' Am I to 
 lose thee?' said I to my father. 'Oh! 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, stiU 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, ab- 
 sorbed 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 playmates, 
 and often visited the garden, the castle and Emma. Here I had, 
 in a Uttle time, grown, as it were, an inmate of the house, so that 
 they no longer thought it strange to see me ; and Emma was be- 
 coming dearer to me every day. Thus passed my hours ; and a 
 tenderness had taken my heart captive, though I myself was not 
 awai-e of it. My whole destination seemed to me fulfilled ; 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 ac- 
 
THE XBUSiy ECKART. 179 
 
 quainted 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 tliat 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 oflFer 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 mother 
 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 pi-oceeding down the mountains : I assailed him with in- 
 jurious speeches ; he replied ; we drew our swords, and he soon 
 fell beneath my furious strokes. 
 
 " I hastened on, not looking after him, but 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. 
 
 " I could stay no longer; I doubted whether I was living, whe- 
 ther 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 
 
180 LUDWIG IIBCK. 
 
 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 
 hurniug in my father's house when I entered; a strangling oppres- 
 sion lay upon my breast. As I knocked, my father himself, with 
 slow, thoughtful steps; advanced to meet me ; and immediately I 
 recollected the old dream of my childhood ; and felt, with cutting 
 emotion, that now it was receiving its fulfilment. In perplexity, 
 I asked : ' Why are you vip 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 childhke 
 transport of afiection ; I poured burning teai-s on his breast. He 
 kissed me ; and I shuddered ; for his lips, as they touched me, 
 were cold, like the lips of one dead. 'How art thou. Father?' 
 cried I, in horror. He writhed painfully fogether, 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 tlie body fast clasped in my embrace. 
 
 " As it were a gleam, like the first sti-eak 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 nari-ative : 
 Friedi-ich was listening to him with the deepest astonishment, 
 when all on a sudden he broke off, and paused with an expi-ession 
 of the keenest pain. Friedrioh felt embarrassed and immersed 
 in thought; they both returned in company to the Castle, but 
 staid 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, 
 
THE muSTY EOKARI. 181 
 
 and its life, now appeared to me as if dead and utterly desolate ; 
 without tliouglits 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 tumul- 
 tuous Evil Spirit that was in me. My ancient burning impatience 
 again awoke ; and I could no longer understand myself or my 
 wishes. A debauchee, named Rudolf, had become my confidant ; 
 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, on- 
 wards, 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 hfe aiise 
 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 pleasui-es 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 alternating 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 ener-' 
 gies 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 him, the belief in that strange' 
 Hill again arose 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 undei'stood my wandering thoughts, which 
 nished 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 something carrying me, as on the 
 strong wings of desire, to my home : I wished to escape the sha-\| 
 dow which, amid the sunshine, threatens us ; the wild tones which, / 
 amid the softest music, chide us. So travelUng on, I reached the 
 Mountain, one night when the moon was shining faintly from be- 
 hind dim clouds. I proceeded with my Song ; and a giant form 
 stood by me, and beckoned me back with his stafi'. I went nearer : 
 ' I am the Trusty Eekart,' 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 
 
182 I.TJDW1G IIEOK. 
 
 was so naiTow, that I had to press myself along ; I caught the 
 gurgling of hidden waters ; I heard spirits fonning 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 towards 
 me ; my friend Rudolf was among the number. I could not un- 
 derstand how they were to pass me, so narrow was the way ; but 
 they went along, through the middle of the I'Ock, without perceiv- 
 ing 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. 
 
 " All pleasures that Earth affords I here possessed and partook 
 of in their fullest bloom ; insatiable was my heart, and endless my 
 enj oyment. 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 enchanting 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 ghded 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 re- 
 joicing. 
 
 " 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 longing 
 for the old. innocent Earth, with her scanty joys, took hold of me 
 
THE THUSTY E0K4.BT. 183 
 
 liere, as keenly as of old tlie impulse which had driven me hither. 
 I was again drawn on to live that Kfe which men, in their uncon- 
 sciousness, 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 reckoned 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 thinkest : yet before our 
 marriage, thou wert gone on a sudden from the neighbourhood ; 
 nor didst thou ever teU 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- 
 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 ihe 
 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," ex- 
 claimed 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. 
 
 Frildrich roused himself; but the ill-fated pilgrim was already 
 gone. He went to his lady's room ; and her maids rushed out to 
 
184 LUDWia TIEOK. 
 
 meet him, crying that the Tannenhauser had pressed into the 
 apartment early in the morning, with the words : " She shall not 
 obstruct me iu my course !" — ^Emma was lying murdered. 
 
 Friedrich had not yet recalled his thoughts, when a hoiTor came 
 over him : he could not rest; he ran into the open ah-. They wished 
 to keep him- hack ; hut he told them that tlie pilgrim 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 thenceforth unable to withstand 
 the lure that draws him with magic force into the subterraneous 
 chasm. 
 
THE RUNENBERG. 
 
 A TOUNG 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 forsaken 
 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 sink- 
 ing behind the mountains ; birds were singing from the bushes, 
 and an echo was replying to them. He slowly descended the hill; 
 and seated himself on the margin of a bx-ook, 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 inward 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 clieery 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 baying 
 
 Through the bright-green solitude ; 
 Through the groves the horns are playing : 
 
 0, thou merry gay green wood ! 
 
 In some dell, when luck hath blest him^ 
 
 And his shot hath stretch'd the deer^ 
 lies he down, content, to rest him, 
 
 While the brooks are murmuring clear. 
 
186 LUDWIO TIEOK. 
 
 Leave the huBbandman his sowing. 
 
 Let the shipman sail the sea ; 
 None, when bright the mora is glowing, 
 
 Sees its red so fair as he. 
 
 Wood, and wold, and game that piizes, 
 
 While Diana loves his art ; 
 And, at last, some bright fsLce rises ; 
 
 Happy hmitsman that thou art ! 
 
 Whilst he sung, the sun had sunk deeper, and broad shadows 
 fell across the nai'row 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 alto- 
 gether undecided what to do or purpose. Unthinkingly, he pulled 
 a straggUng root from the earth; and on the instant, heard, with 
 afiright, 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 waiUng. As he turned to go, a stranger man was 
 standing at his back, who looked at him with a friendly counten- 
 ance, 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 
 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 EUNENBBSO. 187 
 
 the wood so dreary, the brook seemed uttering lamentations, 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 iind no 
 house or hajnlet within a league of this ; and in the way we may 
 talk, and teU each other tales, and so your sad thoughts wiU 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 liill, 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 gUttered 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, gardening 
 was a tiresome occupation ; and the more so that 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 hfe 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 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 
 
188 lUDWIG IIEOK. 
 
 little hampered garden, with its trimined flower-beds ; our narrow 
 dwelling; the wide sky which stretched above us in its dreary 
 vastness, embracing no hill, no lofty mountain, all became moi-e 
 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 counti'y; 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 i-egion 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 hei-e, 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 tlie 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 
 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 staid up here at the fowling-floor, in the loneliest quarter of 
 the hills ; and tonight I grew so sad as I was never in my life 
 before; I seemed so lost, so utterly unhappy; and even yet I can- 
 not shake aside that melancholy humour." » 
 
 The stranger had listened with attention, while theytboth wan- 
 dered on through a dark alley of the wood. They now' came out 
 into the open country, and the light of the moon, which was stand- 
 ing with its horns over the summit of the hill, saluted them like a 
 
THE BUNENBEBG. 189 
 
 friend. In undistinguishable 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 wonders 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 rook looks down on us ! 
 Wert thou never there ?" 
 
 " Never," said the hunter. " Once I heard my old forester re- " 
 iating 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 i 
 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 wishSs 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 Eunenberg : thither all things 
 seemed to beckon him; the stars were 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 
 sounding woods spoke new courage into him. His steps wei-e 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 sieeper; 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 * 
 
190 LUDWIO TIEOK. 
 
 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 
 l aspect up and down the apartment. She seemed of a different 
 I race from mortals ; so large, so strong was her form, so earnest 
 I her look; yet the enraptured huntsman thought he had never 
 I 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 brightness. 
 
 Lovely changefial lightness, 
 
 Has the Shape been form'd, 
 
 By which the soul is oharm'd. 
 
 And the longing heart is warm'd. 
 
 Come, ye Spirits, at my call, 
 
 Haste ye to the Golden Hall ; 
 
 Eaise, from your abysses gloomy, 
 
 Heads that sparkle ; &ster 
 
 Come, ye Ancient Ones, come to me I 
 
 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 tlie youth 
 fofgot 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 <iie cham- 
 ber naked ; and her heavy waving locks fonned round her, as it 
 
THE KUNENBEKO. 191 
 
 were, a dark billowy eea, 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 i 
 his inmost heart; and the light, and the fair woman, and the won- 
 drous hall, had disappeared. As it were, a dark night, with cur- . 
 tains 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 
 morning dawned; and he, exhausted, giddy and half-asleep, fell 
 headlong down the precipice. — 
 
 The sun shone bright on the face of the stupefied sTeepef ; and. 
 awakening, he found himself upon ■< pleasant hill. He looked 
 round, and saw far behind him, and scarce discernible at the ex- 
 treme horizon, the ruins of the Runenberg; 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 
 efibrts could not separate them. After long struggling with him- ; 
 self, he at last concluded that a dream, or sudden madness, had i 
 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 
 
192 LUBWia TIEOK. 
 
 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 oountiy 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 mounting 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, inex- 
 pressible 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, reminded 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 de- 
 voutness it had never felt before. The desires and emotions of 
 the bygone night seemed i-eokless and wicked; he wished once 
 more, in childlike meekness, helplessly and humbly to unite him- 
 self to men as to his brethren, and fly from his ungodly purposes 
 and feelings. The plain, with its little i-iver, 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 amid waste rocks ; he wished that he 
 could be 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 begun 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 ap- 
 peared beyond all others reverent and attentive. ^ She was slim 
 and fair; her blue eye gleamed with the most piercing softness; 
 her face was as if transparent, and blooming in the tenderest co- 
 lours. 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, when the clergyman pro- 
 nounced his blessing ; he felt these holy words thrill through him 
 like an unseen power ; and the vision of the night drew back be- 
 fore them to the deepest distance, as a spectre at the dawn. He 
 
THE BUNENBEEO. 193 
 
 issued from the church; stopped beneath a large lime-tree; ftnd 
 thanked God, in a heartfelt prayer, that He had sailed him, sipful 
 and undeserving, from the nets of the Wicked Spivjt, 
 
 The people were engaged in holding baryieslrhome that day, 
 and every one was in a cheerful mood ; the children, vith th^ir ga^ 
 dresses, were rejoicing in the i»ra8,pect of the sweetineats aij4 the 
 dance ; in the village square, a space encircled with young treesi, 
 the youths were arranging the preparation? for^ their harvest spoil; 
 the players were seated, and essaying their instruments. Christiaij. 
 went into the fields again, to oolleot his tliQUghtS aAd pursnp hiisf 
 meditations ; and on his returning to the village, ail h44 jojined in 
 mirth, and actual celebration of theiv festival. The fair-haired 
 Elizabeth was there, too, with her parents ; and the stranger min- 
 gled in the joeund throng. Elizal)eth was dmt^iQg '• 4^4 Christian, 
 in the mean time, had entered into conversation with her f£^ther, 
 a farmer, and one of the richest people in the village. The n(an 
 seemed pleased with his youth and way of apeepth ; sp, in a shprji J { 
 time, both of them agreed that Christian should remain with ' 
 him as gardener. This office Christian could engage with; foy he 11 
 hoped that now the knowledge and employments, which he had (j 
 so much despised at home, would stand him in gopd W!>^4. 
 
 From this pieriod a new life began* fw him. He went to liitei 
 with the farmer, and was numbered among his family. With hia 
 trade, he likewise changed his garb. He was so good, ?o helpfi^l 
 and kindly; he stood to his, task so. hone*tJy, that ere lopg evpiry 
 member of the house, especially the daughter, had a friepdly feel^ 
 ing to him. Every Sunday, when he saw her going tp chuvftlft, h^ 
 was standing with a fair nosegay ready for Elizabeth ; and then 
 she used to thank him with blushing kindliness : he felt her abn 
 semce, on days when he did not chance to see her; and a,t night,, 
 she would tell him tales and pleasant histories. Day by day they; 
 grew more necessary to each other ; and the parents, who pbseirved 
 it, did not seem to think it wrong; for Chrisitian was the most in- 
 dustrious and handsomest youth in the village. They themselvBSi 
 had, at firs,t sight, felt a touch of love and fi-iendship for him. 
 After half a year, Elizabeth became hig 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 oele-, 
 brated with abundant mirth ; bride and bridegroom seeme^ intoxi- 
 cated with their happiness. Late at night,, when they retired to 
 their chamber, the husband whispered to hia wife : " No, thou sirt, 
 not that form which once charmed me in a dream, apd which I 
 nevpr can entirely forget; bv-t I am happy beside thee, aj^d bless.^d 
 that thou art mine." 
 
 o 
 
194 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 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 foi-mer 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 
 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 witJistand 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 himself 
 beneath a tree, and take some rest ; when he perceived an old man 
 seated in the shade of it, examining a flower with extreme atten- 
 tion ; now holding it -to the sun, now shading it with his hands, 
 now covmting its leaves ; as if striving in every way to stamp it 
 accurately in his memory. On approaching nearer, he thought he 
 
THE RUNENBEEG. 196 
 
 knew the fonn ; and soon no doubt remained that the old man 
 with the flower was his father. With an exclamation of the live- 
 liest 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 tliis 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 
 veiy scarce, and grows only among the mountains. I set out to 
 seek thee, for thy mother is dead, and the loneliness at home 
 made me sad and heavy. I knew not whither I should turn my 
 steps ; at last I came among the mountains, dreary as the journey 
 through them had appeared to me. By the road, I sought for 
 this flower, but could find it nowhere ; and now, quite unexpect- 
 edly, 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 !" 
 
 Thej' embraced again, and Christian wept for his mother ; but 
 the old man grasped his hand, and said : " Let us go, that the sha- 
 dows 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 caverns. 
 Let us get upon the good, kind, guileless level ground again." 
 
 They went back, and Christian recovered his cheei-fulness. 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 nai-rations sad and cheerful, they 
 returned into the village. AU 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 fonned 
 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 i)re- 
 sents to them: in a short time, all were growing fond, of him. 
 He liked the neighbourhood so well, that he proposed remaining 
 
■196 IiUiDWIO XIBCK. 
 
 in it for » day or itwo ; but the (lays grew wepjcs, and the weeks 
 months. No one seemjefJ to ivonder at his loi]tei;ing ; for all of 
 them had grown aooustpme(3 to ir^gard him as a pjeqiber of the 
 family. Christiam i alone lypvild often sit in a thoughtful mood; 
 ifor it seemed to him as if he knew this traveller of Qld, and yet he 
 oould 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, fund singular 
 lanticipations, drive ,n)e tP the , neighbouring mountains ; a magic 
 image, not tp be withstood, alluises me : I leave you inow, and 
 I know not whether I shall ever see you any more. I have a sum 
 of money by me, which in your hiands will be safer than in mine ; 
 so I ask you to take :ohai;gp,of it; and if within a year I come not 
 ;baok, then .keep it, and accept my thaUiks along with it for the 
 [kindness .you have shown me." 
 
 So ithe traveller wpnt his wp.y, and Christian took the money 
 in charge. He locked it oarflfu)ly i;p ,; and now and then, in ithe 
 excess of his anxjpty, looked over it ; he counted it to see that 
 none was missing, and in all respc;cts took no little pains with it. 
 " This iSutn might ,makp up very happy," 9£(id he pnce ;tp his fathet ; 
 " should the stranger not irpturn, bpth we ajid our childrp^i wei;e 
 well, provided for." 
 
 " Heed not the gold," said the old nian;; ";nQtin it can happi- 
 nessbe found : ihitherto, thank Grod, we hftve never wanted aught ; 
 and do thou, put ,away such thoughts far from theg." 
 
 Christian often rose lin the n;ight to sst his servants tjo their 
 labour, I and look, after evQiy thing hirnself : his father was a&aid 
 lest this excessive diligenpe might harm his youth apid health; 
 so one night he irose to speak wiljh ,hiin about contracting such 
 unreasonable efforts ; when, ito his asto^iishment, ho found him 
 isitting with a little lamp at his table, and counting, with the 
 greatest e^gempss, the stranger's gold. " My son," said the old 
 man, full pf sadi^ess, " must it come to this with ^ee ? Was this 
 lacflursed metal brought beneath our , roof to make us wret;ched? 
 Bethink thee, my son, or the Evil One will consume thy blood 
 land lifeout of thee." 
 
 " Yes," replied he ; " it is true, I know myself no more ; nei- 
 ither day nor might does it give, me any rest : see how it looks on 
 me even now, till the red ,gla,nee of it goes into my very heart ! 
 Hark how, it clinics, this golden stuff! It calls me when I sleep; 
 ■I, hoar, 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 beokons to me, as it were, to 
 ^vhisuer words of love into my ear : and therefore I am forped to 
 
THE BUNBNBERO. 191 
 
 rise in the' night-time, though it were But to sotiBijoltB ea^^mese; 
 and then I feel it triumphing and inwattdty re^ioioing when I touch 
 it with my fingers j in its jloy it growS' still redder and lordliei'. 
 Do but look, yourself at the glow of its rapture !" The old' mani, 
 shuddering and weeping, took his son in his anus; he said a> 
 prayer, and then spoke : " Ghristel, thou muet turn again to the 
 Word of God ; thou must go more zealously and reverently toi 
 church, or el^e, adas! my poor child, thou' wilt droop and die' 
 away in the most, mournful witetehedneSs." 
 
 The money was again' looked up ; Christian promised to take 
 thcitight. 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 ai last gave in to the entreaties of his 
 son; and the money was laid out in' limd, and other property. 
 The young falrmer's riehesi soon became the talk of the village'; 
 and Christian seemed contented and comibrtable, and his fathei' 
 felt deUghted at beholding him so well< and cheerful ; all fear had 
 now varnished from his mind. What then must have been his 
 consternation, when Elizabeth one evening took him aside ; and 
 told him, with teairs, that she co^ld no longer understand her' 
 husband ; how he spoke so wildly, specially at night; how he 
 dreamed strange dreams, a,nd would often in his sl«ep walk Idug 
 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 plea^Sjntry by day; for his laugh was wild and 
 hollow, his look wandering and strange. The father Eltood amazed, 
 ajid the sorrowing wife proceeded : " He is always tallting of the 
 traveller, ,and maintaining that he knew him foimierly, 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 
 phints arnd herbs." 
 
 "Good God I" eixclaiipaed the father, "is the frightfhl hunger 
 in him grown so rooted and strong, that it is come to this ? Then 
 is liis 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 hini' to be pious, and 
 devote his soul to holy contemplations!. " WiUingly, my father," 
 amswered Christian; " and I often do so with success, and all Is 
 well with me : for long periods of tijme, for years, I can forget the 
 true form of my inward man, and lead a life that iS' foreign to flie, 
 as it were, with cheerfulness : but then on a sudden, like a new 
 
198 LUDWIO TIECK. 
 
 moon, the ruling star, which I myself am, arises again in my heart, 
 and conquers this other influence. I might he 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 cor- 
 nered figure, any hne, 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 Mountains," 
 said the old man ; " thou wert bom for calm hfe, thy mind in- 
 chned to peace and the love of plants ; them thy impatience hur- 
 ried thee away to the company of savage stones: the crags, the 
 torn clifis, with their jagged shapes, hav« overturned thy soul, 
 and planted in thee the wasting hunger for metals. Thou shouldst 
 I still have been on thy guard, and kept thyself away from the view 
 jl 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 
 i 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, throughout 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 aU. 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 rocks, 
 and thou wilt be amazed when thou shalt hear them speaJi." 
 
 The father looked at him a long while, and could answer no- 
 
THE BUNENBERG. 199 
 
 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 hai-vest-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 chvirch 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 smoldng 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 Eli- 
 zabeth is now no raore 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 j 
 win one which is finite and transitory." / 
 
 With a heart full of wild desire, he walked to the neighbouring 
 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 dis- 
 tance, 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 ut- 
 most hideousness approached ; she was clad in dirty rags ; a tat- 
 tered clout bound up her few gray haii's ; 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, 
 "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 recognised 
 among the trees the golden veil, the lofty gait, the large 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 shaje and the changeful gleams struck over all his 
 
200 XnDWIO TIBOKl 
 
 senses v/iik sia iistantaneouB poweix He grafiped it firmly, to 
 convince liimBelf tibat it was really onfle mbre in his bands, aid 
 then hastened back with it to the tillagfej His father met him. 
 " See," cried Ghristian, " the thing whidb I T*a8 teUing you ftboat 
 so ofteft, which I tliought jmust have been ehown to me Only in a 
 dreani, is now sure and true." 
 
 The old man looked la long White «t the tablet, and then said : 
 " My son, I am struck with hdrtor ih my heai-t when I view these 
 stones, and dimljr guess the meaning of thfe words on them; Look 
 here, bow cold they glitter, what crudl looks ihey east from them, 
 bloodthirsty!, like the red eye Of the tiger ! Oast tbis writing front 
 tbee, whi(ih makes tbee cold emd cruel, is^hioh will turn thy beaft 
 to ^one : 
 
 See the flowers, when mom is beaming, 
 
 Walten in their dewy place ; 
 And, like ohildreh roused froitt dre^milig, 
 
 h'mibg lo6k theb iH the "hlai. 
 
 By degrees, that way and this^ 
 
 To the golden Sun they're turning, 
 Till they meet his glowing Isiss, 
 
 Aiiti thetr liearts witli lOve are burning : 
 
 For, with fond dnd 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 jaj in mast ; 
 
 To depart in &>tideSt w^kness ; 
 In their lover's being lost, 
 
 Faded stand in silent meekness. 
 
 Then they p6ur kwtly the treaStlrfe 
 
 Of thalr ^^rfilmes, their soft dtmk, 
 And the aii: grow6 drulik -kith plefasure> 
 
 As in wanton floods it rolls. 
 
 LoVe cbfioes te tts hdfe "below, 
 , DisbbiHd hb'rsh a^y i-ertioviti^ j 
 
 And the heart dries': Nbw I ktlo%- 
 Sadness, IVrndniess, Pain of lioving," 
 
 " 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 Eai-th like a beloved bride to one's 
 bosom, BO that in pain and love she would willingly grant one 
 
THE RDNENBEBa. 201 
 
 hfer costliest riches ! The Woodwomin had (Sailed me-; I go to 
 seek for heri Near by is in old i^ined shaft, which some miner 
 has hollowed out many centuries a.go ; perhaips I shall find hei 
 there !" 
 
 He hdsten^d off. In vain did the old man stri-ve to detain 
 him ; in a few moments Christian had vanished from his sight. 
 Some hours afterwards, the father; with a strong effort, reached 
 the rtiined shaft : he saw fuot^nhts ih lihe Sand at the entrance, 
 and returned in tears ; persuaded that his son) in a state of ihad- 
 ness, had gone in and been drowned in the old collected waters 
 aad hdrrid caves of the iuine; 
 
 From that day his heart seemed broken, and he was inoes' 
 4ajitly in tears. The whole neighbourhood deplcjred the fottiihe 
 of the youttg farmelr. Elizabeth was inconsolable, the children 
 lamented aloud. In half a year the aged gardfener diid ; the pa- 
 rents of Elizabeth soon followed hiih ; and she Was forced herseK 
 to take dlaj-ge of everything. Her tnultiphed engagements helped 
 a little t6 withdraw her from her sorrow ; the education of he* 
 childreii, tod the management df so much property, left little time 
 for mouniing. Aftet two yearSj she determined on a new mar- 
 riage i she bestowed her hand on a young light-hearted man, who 
 had loved hfer from his youth. Bntj ere long, everything in their 
 establi'Shment asslimed another fonfa. The cattle died ; men and 
 maid feervahts proved dishonest ; bams full of gi-ain were burnt j 
 people in the to^n whd 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 mUdew, and a year of 
 scarcity, brought new embarrassments. It seemed as if the ^old^ 
 so strangely acquired) were taking speedy flight in aU 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 drimk, 
 and therefore quarrelsome find suUen ; so that frequently Eliza- 
 beth bewailed her state with bitter tearsi As their fortune de- 
 clined, their friends in the village stood aloof from them feiore 
 and more ; So that after some few years they saw themselves 
 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 hei' 
 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 
 
202 LUDWIG HECK. 
 
 colour in the face, defoi-med still farther by a long matted heard : 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 di'ew 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 mth their laugh, 
 though as yet it is against their will." With tliis 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 fore- 
 casting 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 
 say. He fell upon her neck and kissed her. Elizabeth exclaimed : 
 " O Heaven ! my husband is comihg !" 
 
 " 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 chUd ; 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 
 
THE BUNENBERO. 203 
 
 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 an- 
 swered. 
 
 The ill-fated creature was never seen again from that day. 
 
THE ELVES. 
 
 "Wheee is our little Mary?" said the father. 
 
 " She is playing out upon the green there with our neighhour'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 by 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 Uttle green height, ench-cled 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 contentment 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 
 round, and said : " What a different look this quarter has, Brigitta, 
 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." 
 
THE EJ.yBS. 805 
 
 " And wheaevar you ciioss the stream," gaid Brigitta,, " you are, 
 as it were, in another world, all is so dreary and withered,; but 
 levery traveller declares th{i(t,our village ip the fairest in the opuntry 
 far and near." 
 
 "All but that flr^groiindi" said her husband; " do btft look 
 back to it, how dark and dismal that solitary spot is lying in the 
 gay scene : the dingy fir-trees w^th the smoky huts behind them, 
 the ruined stiUls, the brook flowing past w^ith a sluggish melan- 
 choly." 
 
 " It is true," replied Brigitta; " if yf»u but approach that spot, 
 you grow disconsolate and sad, you know not why. What ^ort of 
 people can they be that live there, ai)d keep themselves so sepa- 
 rate from the rest of us, as jf they had an evil conscience ?" 
 
 " A miserable crew," replied the young Farnjer : " gipsies,, 
 seemingly, that iSteal and cheat in other quarters, and have their 
 ioajd and hidiijg-place here. I wonder pnly th^t his J-pr^lphip 
 suffers them." 
 
 " Who knows," said the wife, wjth aij acpent of pity, " but per- 
 haps they may be poqr people, wishing, out of shame, to conceal 
 their poverty; for, after all, no one can say aught ill pf them; the 
 only thing is, that they do npt go to church, and none Imows how 
 they live; ,fpr the little garden, which indeed seenis altpge<iher 
 waste, painnot possibly supppi^t thefn ; and ftelc^ they have none." 
 
 " God knows," said Martin, a? they went flloug, " what trade 
 they follow; no mortal pomes to them; fpr the place they live in 
 is as if bewitched and esfcomfliimicated, so that even p]jr wijifiest 
 jfellpws will not venture into it." 
 
 Such conversatipn they pursued, while walking tp thp ^eldg. 
 That glopjpy spot they spoke of lay asidp frpm the haiplet. In a 
 dell, begirt with firs, you inight behold a hut, an(i various ruijied 
 office-houses ; rarely was smoke seen to niPlint frpja it, still more 
 rarely did, men appear there ; though at times piirious people, ven- 
 turing soinewhat nearer, had perceived upon the bench beforp the 
 huit, some hidepus women, ip raigged plothes, dandling in their 
 arms some children equally dirty and ,ill-fa,vou,rpd; blapk dogs 
 were running up and down upon the boundary; and, of an even- 
 ing, a man of monstrpus size was seen to cross the footbridge of 
 the brpojb;, and disappear in the hutj and, in the darl^nes^, various 
 shapes were observed, inpvitig like shadows round a iire in the 
 open aii:. This piece pf ground, th^ iftfs and the ruined huts, 
 fprmed in truth ,a strange contrast with the bright green land- 
 scape, the white , houses of , the .hamlet, and the stately new-built 
 casjtle. 
 
 The twp little ones had now eaten their fruit j it came into 
 
206 tUDWiG TIECK. 
 
 their heads to run races ; and the little nimble Maiy 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 veiy 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 
 teiTor, 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 barking, and, as 
 she looked at it moi-e 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 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 Maiy sprang 
 along the footbridge; passed the dog, which ceased its bai-king 
 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 but- 
 terflies were wavering in the blossoms ; cages of shining wire were 
 ; hung on the espaliers, with many-coloured birds in them, singing 
 I 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 
 (y giving them to one another; some, again, were eating chei-ries, 
 
THE ELVES. 207 
 
 grapes and ruddy apricots. No liut 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 ranning, 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 pai-ents, 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 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 JMary in their mirth, 
 and twitched her, and incited her to dance; others bi-ought her 
 lambs, or curious playthings; others made music on instruments, 
 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 
 Sied^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 
 
208 LDDWJO TIBCK. 
 
 golden box, in which lay a quantity of seeds, like glittering dus*- 
 She lifted of it with her little hand, and scattered some grainy on 
 the green earth. Instantly the grass began to njove, 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. Maiy also toQk a little of the du^t, ^.nd, 
 having scattered it, she saw white lilies, and the most va^-iegated 
 pinks, pushing up. At a signal from Zerinfi, the flowers disap- 
 peared, and others rose in their room. " Now," said Zeriii% " loo^ 
 
 I for something greater." She laid two pine-seeds in the ground, 
 and stamped them in sharply with her foot. Two green bughesi 
 stood before them. " Grasp me fast," said she ; and M^ry threw 
 her arms about the slender fomj. 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 clim]?- 
 ing up and down the trunks with quipk dexterity, pushing and 
 teasing one another with loud laughter when tjhey inet ; if any one 
 fell down in the press, it flew through the air, and Sjank slowly and 
 surely to the ground. At length Ma,ry was beginning to be fright- 
 ened ; and the other little child sang a iftyf \<i>:a.i tpi^es, and the 
 trees again sank down, and set them (jn the grp;i;^d ^^ gi-^duaUy 
 
 ' as they had lifted them before :to the (dp^43. 
 
 They next went through the b^-azeiti door of tjie p^l^ce- Hei-e 
 many fair women, elderly and young, were sitting in the round 
 hall, partaking of the fairest fruits, ftnd listening to glorious in- 
 visible music. In the vaulting of the ceiling, palms, flowesrs 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 burning 
 colours; now the blue ajod green were sparkling like radiant light, 
 now these tints faded back in paleness, the purple flanied up, and 
 the gold took fire ; and then the naked children seemed to be alive 
 among the flower-garlands, and to draw breaf^h, and emit it thrp^^gh 
 their ruby-coloured lips ; so that by fits you epul4 pe,e tl^e glance 
 of their little white teeth, and the lighting up of thei^ azure eyes. 
 From the hall, a stair of brass led down to a pubtejTanean 
 
 ' 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 eostly things. The gold was 
 worked into many forms, and glittered with the friendliesit red. 
 
 ( Many little dwarfs were busied sorting the pieces from the heap, 
 
 \ and putting them in the vessels; others, hupchbapked and bandy- 
 
THE ELTES. 209 
 
 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 lUce to run away ; and it hap- 
 pened now and then that one in his eagerness ovei^set tiie other, 
 so that both fell heavily and clumsily to the ground. They made 
 angry faces, and looked askance, as Mary laughed at their gestured 
 and their ughness. Behind them sat an old crumpled Httle man, 
 whoin Zerina reverently greeted; he thanked her With a grave in- 
 clination of his head. He held a sceptre in his hand, and wore a 
 Crown upon his brow, and aU the other dwarfs appeared to regafd 
 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 
 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 agsdu to his employment, kept his people weighing and 
 iSorting the ingots ; some he sent away on erraijds, some he chid 
 With angry tones. 
 
 " Who is the gentleman ?" said Mary. 
 
 " Our Metal-Prince^ replied Zeriua, 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 
 febove 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 froin 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 Imooked against the cliflf. 
 This opei^ed hke a door, and a female form, all red, assisted them 
 
 p 
 
210 LUDWla IIKOK. 
 
 to mount. "Are you all brisk here?" inquired 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 
 I 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 ta- 
 pestry, there were figures moving up and down in dancing joyful- 
 , ness; in form so beautiful, and of so fair proportions, that nothing 
 could be seen more graceful ; their bodies were as of red crystal, 
 so that it appeared as if the blood were visible mthin them, flow- 
 ing and playing in its courses. They smiled on the stranger, and 
 saluted her with various bows ; but as Mary was about approaching 
 nearer them, Zerina plucked her sharply back, crying : " Thou wilt 
 bum 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 Uvest 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 laugh and 
 
 |i shout; those down below spread out the fire -floods everywhere 
 
 [ beneath the earth, and thereby the flowers, and fruits, and wine, 
 
 I are made to flourish ; these red streams again, are to run beside 
 
 1 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 
 millc, and Mary said : " Suppose we go, by way of change, to the 
 firs, and see how things look there ?" 
 
 " With all my heart," replied Zerina; " thou wilt see our watch- 
 men too, and they will surely please thee ; they are standing up 
 among the trees on the mound." The two proceeded through the 
 flqwer-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 
 j the domain. " How does it come," said Mary, " that we have to 
 j walk so far here, when without, the circuit is so narrow ?" 
 
THE ELVES. 211 
 
 " I know not," said lier 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 
 wings, which flared out curiously beside the woollen roquelaures. 
 " I could laugh, yet I am frightened," cried Mary. 
 
 " These are our good trusty watchmen," said her playmate ;'~\ 
 " they stand here and wave their fans, that cold anxiety and inex- 
 pHoable fear may fall on every one that attempts to approach us. 
 They are covered so, because without it is now cold and rainy, 
 which jihey 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 descending 
 to the flowery fragrance ; " or have you no name at all ?" 
 
 " We are called tiie Elves," replied the friendly child ; " people 
 talk about "lis In'the Earth, as I have heard." 
 
 TEey'uow 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 crowding 
 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 gaUy 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 bUl 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 glittering 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 
 
212 LUDWia TIEOK. 
 
 moved by it to tears of joy and rapture. When he ceased, a1 
 bowed before ti^m ; he again flew round the dome in circles, thei 
 darted through the door, and soared into the light heaven, wher 
 he shone far up like a red point, and then soon vanished fror 
 their eyes. 
 
 " Why are ye all so glad ?" inquired Mary, bending to her fai 
 playmate, who seemed smaller than yesterday. 
 
 " The King is coming !" said the httle one ; " many of us hav 
 never seen him, and whithersoever he turns his face, there is haj 
 piness and mirth ; we have long looked for him, more anxiousl 
 than you look for spring when winter lingers vidth you; and no: 
 he has announced, by his fan- herald, that he is at hand. This wis 
 and glorious Bird, that has been sent to us by. the King, is caUe 
 Phoenix; he dwells far off in Arabia, on a tree, which there is n 
 other that resembles on Earth, as in Uke manner ther§ is n 
 second Phoenix. When he feels himself grown old, he buUds 
 pile of balm and incense, kindles it, and dies singing ; and the 
 from the fragrant ashes, soars up the renewed Phosnix with unlei 
 sened beauty. It is seldom he so wings his course that men bi 
 hold him ; and when once in centuries this does occur, they not 
 it in their annals, and expect remarkable events. But now, m 
 friend, thou and I must part ; for the sight of the King is not pe 
 mitted thee." 
 
 Then the lady with the golden robe came through the throni 
 and beckoning Mary to her, led her into a sequestered wall 
 " Thou must leave us, my dear child," said she; " the King is i 
 hold his court here for twenty years, perhaps longer; and fruitfu 
 ness and blessings will spread far over the land, but chiefly hei 
 beside us ; all the brooks and rivulets will become more bountifu 
 all the fields and gardens richer, the wine more generous, tl 
 , meadows more fertile, and the woods more fresh and green; 
 milder air will blow, no hail shall hurt, no flood shall threate; 
 - Take-this^rin^, and think of us : but beware of telling any one ( 
 ■Bttr-Sistence; or we must fly this land, and thou and all arouE 
 will lose the happiness and blessing of our neighbourhood. Om 
 more, kiss thy playmate, and farewell." They issued from tl 
 walk; Zerina wept, Maiy stooped to embrace her, and they parte 
 Already she was on the narrow bridge ; the cold air was blowir 
 on her back fi-om the firs ; the Uttle dog barked with all its migl 
 and rang its little bell ; she looked round, then hastened over, f 
 the darkness of the firs, the bleakness of the ruined huts, t] 
 shadows of the tvidlight, were fiUing 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 da 
 
IHE ELVES. 213 
 
 not tell tliem where I have been, or what wonders I have wit- 
 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 hang- 
 ing last night loaded with fruit, were now standing dry and leaf- 
 less ; the house was differently painted, and a new barn had been 
 built beside it. Mary was amazed, and thought she must be 
 dreaming. In this perplexity she opened the door ; and behind 
 the table sat her father, between an unknown woman and a stran- 
 ger youth. " Good God ! Father," cried she, " where is my mo- 
 ther ?" 
 
 " 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 shfe 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 f 
 
 "Yes, yes," said Andres, laughing, and shaking her trustfully 
 by the hand ; "I have won the race, good Maiy ; 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 no- 
 tion 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 recollected 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 i n any- ^ 
 thing she saw. The house seeme3~smairau3^darir; she felt aston- 
 SEedTTt her'dress, which was clean and simple, but appeared quite 
 
214 LBDWIQ TIECK. 
 
 ; foreign; she looked at the ring on her finger, and the gold of it gUt- 
 ! tered strangely, enclosing a stone of burning red. To her father's 
 i question, she replied that the ring also was a present from her 
 i 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 hkewise 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 
 I and the high beauty she had seen with the Elves in their hidden 
 i 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 mea- 
 I dows ; 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 injui'ed the fruits ; the wine flowed blushing in immense 
 i grapes ; and the inhabitants of the place felt astonished, and were 
 j captivated as in a sweet dream. The next year was like its fore- 
 's runner ; 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 th«y 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- 
 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 
 
THE ELVES. 215 
 
 out in defence of those good beings, whom she knew to be the 
 benefactors of the land ; especially to Andrea, 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 Uttle 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 httle Elfrida soon dis- 
 played peculiar faculties and gifts ; for she could walk at a, very 
 eai'ly 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 Hked best to be alone. She would then retire 
 into a corner of the garden, and read, or work diKgently with her 
 needle ; often also you might see her sitting, as if deep sunk iu J 
 thought ; or violently walking up and* down the alleys, speaking j 
 to herself. Her parents readily allowed her to have her will in 
 these things, for she M'as healthy, and waxed apace; only her i 
 strange sagacious answers and observations often made them anxi- ! 
 ous. " Such wise children do not grow to age," her grandmother, 1 
 Brigitta, many times observed ; " they are too good for this world ; j 
 the child, besides, is beautiful beyond nature, and will never find /' 
 its proper place on Earth." 
 
 The little girl had this pecidiarity, that she was veiy 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 carefuUj'', 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 
 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 
 
216 LUDWIG TIEOK. 
 
 liked it much, laacl kept it carefully : sh.e at the same tim^ prayed 
 so earnestly and pressinglyto have it back, that Mary fastened it 
 again on its former place, and, fuU of thoughts, went out with her 
 in silence to the castle. 
 
 Sidewards fifom 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 soUtude 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 q, 
 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 miother, when she was a child ; but 
 you mortals so soon grow tall and thoughtful ! It is very htp-d : 
 i wert thou but to, be a child as long as I !" 
 
 " WiUingly 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 gjid waxing„ it can 
 do nothing more, but must grow to fi-uit in harvest. An apple, to 
 be sure, is pretty and refreshing; y?t 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 imposr 
 sible ; but I will come to thee, my doling, 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. O ! we will be much, much 
 together, while thou art still little. What can I do to please 
 thee?" 
 
THE ELVES. 217; 
 
 " Thou must like me very dearly," said Elfrida, " as I like thee 
 in my heait. 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 ohildi-en plucked them smiling, and the bush 
 disappeared. " 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 httle 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 in 
 sport, or in earnest conversation. 
 
 " Wouldst thou hke 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 her head in ten-or to look after 
 them; when Zerina, from the air, held up her finger, and threat- 
 ened yet smiled; then descended with the child, embraced hey, 
 and disappeai-ed. After this, it happened more than once that 
 Mary was observed by her; and every time, the shining little crea- 
 ture 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; aud 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 
 
218 LBDWia TIEOK. 
 
 the country; wten his wife, in anger, said to him: " Hush! for 
 they are benefactors to thee and to every one 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 glitter- 
 ing Elf sporting with his child, and caressing her in the grove. 
 He knew not what to say; an exclamation of astonishment escaped 
 him, and Zerina raised her eyes. On the instant she grew pale, 
 and trembled violently; not with friendly, hut with indignant 
 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 embraced 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 lamentation moaned 
 , in the air. Andres and his wife had not courage to rise ; they 
 shrouded themselves within the curtains, and with fear and trem- 
 bling awaited the day. Towards morning, it grew calmer; and 
 all was silent when the Sun, with his cheerful light, rose over the 
 wood. 
 
 Andres dressed himself; and Mary now observed that the stone 
 of the ring upon her finger had become quite pale. On opening 
 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 lan- 
 guidly 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- 
 
THE ELVES. 219 
 
 torn of my heart, when the door suddenly opened, and my play- 
 mate entered to take leave of me. She had a travelling-pouoh 
 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 sevei-est and most painful punishments, as she had 
 always heen so fond of thee ; for all of them, she said, were very 
 loath to leave this quarter." 
 
 Maiy 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 tiU sunrise ; and with this condition, that the boatman 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 perceived a, white 
 streaming light, that grew broader and broader, like many thou- 
 sands of falling stars ; sparkling and waving, it proceeded forwai'd 
 from the dark Fir-ground, moved over the fields, and spread itself 
 along towards the river. Then I heard a trampling, a jingling, 
 a hustling, 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 over. In the river 
 were by the boat swimming many thousands of glittering forms ; 
 in the air white clouds and Ughtswere wavering; and all lamented 
 and bewailed that they muat travel fortli 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 hack, 
 and was again laden ; many heavy casks, too, they took along with 
 them, which multitudes of horrid-looking little fellows can-ied 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." 
 
220 LtlDWIO TIBOK. 
 
 r~ - 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 
 1 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 fniit- 
 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. 
 
 I 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 
 
 i^where he had lived before. 
 
THE GOBLET. 
 
 The forenoon bells were sounding from the liigh 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, aU were seeking shelter from the heat. He alone had 
 stood for a long time leaning on a piUar, amid the burning beams, 
 without regarding them; for he was lost in the remembrances 
 which mounted up within his mind. He was calUng back his 
 bygone hfe; and inspiring his souPwith tha» 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 variegated 
 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 ancles 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 highest 
 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 lightning. Her 
 foot caught the robe ; and quickly as he darted towards her, he 
 could not prevent her having, for a moment, in the most charming 
 posture, lain kneehng at his feet. He raised her; she did not look 
 at him, she was all one blush; nor did she answer his inquiry whe- 
 ther 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 
 
322 LUDWia TIEOK. 
 
 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 ofifer his beloved no such . splendid for- 
 tune 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 existence 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 ajjrear 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 multitude 
 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 maiden pressed the cru- 
 cifix of her rosary to her ruby mouth. How dim had been his 
 apprehension of this Faith and this Love before ! The priest ele- 
 vated 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 
 
IBE eOBLEI. 223 
 
 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 Albert, 
 who lived apart from men, and whose solitary house was open to 
 Ferdinand alone : " Do you remember our engagement?" said the 
 hoarse husky voice. " O 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 tlie 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 a 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 
 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 repu- 
 tation of a gold-maker. A lute was lying on the table, singularly 
 overlaid with mother-of-pearl, and coloured wood ; and represent- 
 ing 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, almost 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 hkewise covered 
 with a red cloth; and the old man placed upon it something which 
 
324 ItTDWle TIEGK. 
 
 was eare&Uy wrapped up. " From pity to your youth," he began, 
 " I promised lately to predict to you whether you could ever be' 
 come happy or not; and this promise! 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 ap- 
 parition terrify your senses. The biisiness 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 promise me to 
 keep yourself quite still." 
 
 Ferdinand gave his word, and the old man unfolded from its 
 cloths ihe packet he had placed on the table. It was a golden 
 goblet, of very skilful and beautiful workmanship. Round its 
 broad foot ran a garland of flowers, intertvrined 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?" 
 
 " 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 your eyes 
 wander any more, but fix them steadfastly on the glittering of tiiis 
 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 gUtter of the 
 bowl. Then he paused, and recommenced his circles in the oppo- 
 site direction. After this had lasted for a Uttle, Ferdinand began 
 to think he heard the sound of music; it came as from without, in 
 some distant street, but soon the tones approached, 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 
 
THE GOBLET. 225 
 
 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 hues. And now it 
 seemed as if the old 'man, in tlie i-ed dusk, were stretching a 
 wondrous net over the gleaming 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, wa- 
 vering to and fro, and playing into one another. Having so fixed 
 them, he again described the circle round the rim; the music then 
 moved off, grew fainter and fainter, and at last died away. While 
 the tones departed, the sparkling net quivered to and fro as in 
 pain. In its increasing agitation it broke in pieces ; and the beam- 
 ing 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 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 en- 
 rapturing foi-m fi'om its golden prison. Instantly a violent trem- 
 bhng 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. 
 
 Q 
 
226 LUDWIO TIEOK. 
 
 " Thou hast kept thy promise badly," said the old man, with 
 an angry tone ; " thou hast none but thyself to blame." He agaia 
 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 
 from 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 ia 
 his eye ; and every coach that issued from the gate was carefully 
 examined by him. 
 
 The night approached. The setting sun was throwing forth its 
 red splendour, when from the gate rushed out the richly gUded 
 coach, gleaming with a fiery brightness in the glow of evening. 
 He hastened towai'ds 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 fuU 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 ; gnd he felt as if it presaged to 
 him that he should mot see his loved one anv more, that now his 
 happipess had faded away from hiija. 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 
 stiU looking &r their elder son, the captain, with his wife; and for 
 two elder daughters, with their husbands : Leopold, the younger, 
 was maliciously busied in increasing the disorder, and deepening 
 the tumult; perplexing all, while hepretended to be furthering it. 
 Agatha, his still unmarried sister, was in vain endeavouring to 
 
IHE OOBLET. 227 
 
 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 follyi 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 thinli about already, you would trouble me with no fresh 
 tidings, unless it be of something 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 ser- 
 vants have been breaking 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 dook get tipsy, or set the chimney on 
 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 eveiy jot as riotous as when 
 they left thee two years ago ?" 
 
 " They must do justice to my force of character," Said Leopold, 
 " 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 didi forsooth !" said Leopold. "There is such confusion here 
 among us, not one of them can ttiiuk 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 awaa^ yourself," replied the mother, " that extensive 
 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 iriend. 
 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 
 
228 tUDWIO IIEOK. 
 
 trouble in persuading him to come, and show himself again 
 among his fellow-creatures." 
 
 " Not vour 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 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 knoiving 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 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 wUt 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 curiosity 
 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 ereeting, went away to seek their ancient melanchoho 
 friend. 
 
 The latter lived most part of the year in tne country, about a 
 league from town ; but he also kept a Uttle dwelling for himself in 
 a garden near the gate. Here, by chance, the young men had be- 
 
THE GOBLET. 229 
 
 come acquainted with him. They now found him in a coffeehouse, 
 where they had previously agreed to meet. As tlie 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 
 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 ?" 
 
 " 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 
 astonishment 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 conversa- 
 tion; 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 mer- 
 chant of his speculations and the bad times; the country gentle- 
 man 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 settled 
 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 excuse 
 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 relar 
 tions 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." 
 
230 LUDWie TIECK. • 
 
 Ttey went through several passages, and Leopold at last took 
 leave, and bade his guest good-night. The servant placed two 
 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 himself 
 alone. 
 
 " How does it chance, then," said he, walking up and down, 
 "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 hut 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 fency I had known this 
 house and this apartment of old." He tried to settle ids remem- 
 brances, and lifted some large books which were standing in a 
 comer. 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 in- 
 strument, time-worn, and without the strings. " No, I am not mis- 
 taken !" cried he, in astonishment ; " this lute is too remarkable ; 
 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 complicated passages 
 where Leopold conducted me. Heaven ! On this veiy table did 
 the Shape rise budding forth, and grow up as if watered and re- 
 freshed 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 veiy little. Early in the morning he 
 was up, and looking at the room again ; he opened the ■ndndow, 
 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 eveiy 
 day of those bright times has a longer life than all the intervening 
 space." 
 
 He was called to the company. The morning passed in vaiied 
 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 
 one observed it. They proceeded to the chui-ch, and the marriage- 
 
THE GOBLET. 231 
 
 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 fi-ightful eyes, these 
 thousandfold wrinkles, that pale sunk mouth, that strange laugh 
 of his, which looks and sounds so mockingly? Ko; 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 descrip- 
 tion. One easily observes that he is of a violent temperament, 
 and has inured himself to look up his feelings in his own bosom ; 
 perhaps, too, as Leopold was saying, he may have encountered 
 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 conversation. 
 Dinner was served up ; and the stranger sat between Agatha and 
 the rich merchant. When the toasts were beginning, 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 else- 
 where." She walked out rapidly to seek it herself. 
 
 " How brisk and busy is our good old lady stiU !" 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 goblet. 
 It was filled with wine, and began to circulate, each toasting 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 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, 
 
232 LtTDWIO TTEOK. , 
 
 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 as- 
 tonishment ; for it was the very goblet out of which old Albert 
 had called forth to him tlie 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 astonished 
 look. 
 
 " Whence is this bright goblet ?" said Ferdinand, who also felt 
 ashamed of his embari'assment. 
 
 " 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 Imown this old man; for 
 his whole being was too much perplexed, too like an enigmatic 
 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 
 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?" 
 
 " O 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 beautiful 
 daughter, who is now celebrating the gladdest day of her exist- 
 ence, is BO like a maiden whom I knew and adored in my youth, 
 that I could reckon it a mu-acle. Like, did I say ? No, she is not 
 
THE QOBLET. S33 
 
 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 herself was lost to me, for she proved 
 faithless, and soon after married." 
 
 " God in Heaven !" cried the lady, violently moved, and start- 
 ing up, " thou art not Ferdinand ?" 
 
 " It is my name," replied he. 
 
 " I am Franoesca," 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 t But no, not faithless. On returning from 
 the country, where I stayed two months, I heard from every one, 
 thy friends as well as mine, that thou wert long ago gone home, 
 and married in thy own countiy. They showed me the most con- 
 vincing letters, they pressed me vehemently, they profited by my 
 despondency, my indignation ; and so it was that I gave my hand 
 to another, a deserving husband ; but my heait 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. 
 
234 lUDWIG TIBCK. 
 
 Leopold- is almost the only one that has attracted me, and led me 
 out amongst my fellows. O my beloved friend, it is like a fright- 
 ful spectre-stoiy, 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 fi-iend 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 aepai^ation. 
 
JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
AEMT-CHAPLAIN SCHMELZLE'S JOURNEY 
 TO FL^TZ; 
 
 VITH 
 
 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 Aimy- chaplain Schmelzle, 
 wherein he describes to his friends his Journey to the metropolitan city of Flatz; 
 after having, in an Introduction, premised some proofs and assurances of hia va- 
 lour. Properly speaking, the Journey itself has been written purely with a view 
 that hia 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 
 side : on this point I keep my judgment suspended. 
 
 For the rest, I beg the judges of literature, as well as their satellites, the critics 
 of literature, to regard this Journey ^ for whose literary contents I, as Editor, am 
 answerable, solely in the light of a Portrait (in the French sense), a little Sketch 
 of Character. It is a voluntary or involuntary comedy-piece, at which I have 
 laughed so often, that I purpose in time coming to paint some similar Pictures of 
 Character myself. And, for the present, when could such a little comic toy be 
 more fitly imparted and set forth to the world, than in these very days, when the 
 sound both of heavy money and of light laughter has died away from among us ; 
 when, like the Turks, we count and pay merely with sealed purses, and the coin 
 within them has vanished? 
 
 Despicable would it seem to me, if any clownish sqtiire 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 weU, and do not dis- 
 close it. This comedy-piece, for which I, at aU evenia, as my Bookseller will 
 testify, draw the profit myself, I got hold of so unblamably, that I await, with 
 unspeakable composture, what the Army-chaplaia shaU. please to say against the 
 publication of it, in case he say anything at all. My conscience bears me witness, 
 that I acquired this article, at least by more honourable methods than are those 
 of l^e 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 disload- 
 ing their plundered Lectures, and vending them up and down the country as pro- 
 ductions of their own. Hitherto, in my whole life, I have stolen little, except now 
 and then in youth some — glances. 
 
 The ieeond word must es^laiu or apologise for the singular form of this little 
 
238 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEICH BIOHTEK. 
 
 Work, standing as it does on a substratmn of Notes. I myself am not contented 
 ■with it. Let the World open, and look, and determine, in like manner. But the 
 truth is, this line of demarcation, stretching through the whole book, originated 
 in the following accident: certain thoughts (or digressions) of my own, with 
 which it was not permitted me to disturb those of the Am^-chaplain,-and which 
 could only be allowed to fight behind the lines, in the shape of Notes, I, with a 
 view to conveniency and order, had written down in a separate paper ; at the same 
 time, as will be obserred, 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 1 do, cast a stone at my worthy 
 Printer, inasmuch as he (perhaps in the thought that it was my way, that I had 
 some purpose in it) took these Notes, just as they stood, pellmell, without ar- 
 rangement of Numbers, and clapped them under the Text; at the same time, by 
 a praiseworthy artful computation, taking care at least, that, at the bottom of every 
 page in the Text, there should some portion of this glittering Note-precipitate 
 make its appearance. Well, the' thing at any rate is done,, nay pei^etuated, 
 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 pro- 
 vide for my digression-cometft new orbits, if not focal sunSj for my episodes new 
 epopees,— -I could scarce possibly have hit upon a better or more spacious Limbo 
 for such VanitieB than Chance and Printer here accidetitally o&r me ready-made. 
 1 have only to regret, that the thing' lias been printed, before I- could turn it to 
 account. Heavens I. what remotest allusions (had I known it before printing) 
 might not have been privily intxoduoed in every Text-page and Note-nun^er; and 
 what apparent incongruity in. the real congruity between this- upper suid under 
 side of the cards ! How vehemently and devilishly might one not have cut aloft, 
 and to the light and left, torn ISiese impregnable casemates and covered-ways; 
 andfwhat lissio ultra ditmdiwm (injury beyond the half of the Text) might not, with 
 these satirical injuries, have been effected and completed I 
 
 But Fate meant not so kindly with me : of this golden harvest-field of saJaie I 
 was not to be informed till three days before the Pre&ce. 
 
 Perhaps, however, the -writing world, by the little blue flame of this aocident> 
 may he guided to a weightier acquisition, to a larger subterranean treasure, tjtian 
 I, idas,. have dug up I For, to the -writer, there is now a way pointed out of proi> 
 ducing in one marbled volume a group of altogether different works ; of -writing in 
 one leafi for both' sexes at the same time, without confounding them, nay, for the 
 five fkcolties all: at once, without disturbing theix limitations ; since now, instead 
 of boiling up avile 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 beoanse 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 tlie reader, I hope, may almost run through it, and read it at the bookseller's 
 counter, without,, as in the case of thioker 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 Spizit ? 
 
 Jban Pmil Fbi Bu^tbb. 
 Bayreuth, in the Hay and Peace Month, 1807. 
 
SCHMELZLE'S JOURNEY TO FL^TZ. 
 
 Circular Letter of the proposed Catechetical Professor Attila. Sohmelzle to 
 Ms Friends ; containing some Account of a ffolidays' Journey to Mats, 
 with an Introductionf touching his Flightf ' and his Courage as former 
 Army-chaplain. 
 
 NoiHiNU 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 opposite 
 faults, those of a lion; though indeed the A&ican lion himself, 
 since the time of Sparrmann's Travels, passes among us for a pol- 
 troon. Yet this case is mine,, worthy Friends ; and I piu;po3e 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, when I, as 
 the parson was toning away to the silent congregaiion, used to 
 take it into my head: " How now, if thou shouldst start up from 
 thy pew, and shout aloud : I am here too, Mr. Parson !" and to 
 paint out this thought in such glowing colours, that for very dread, 
 I have often been obliged to leave the church ! Anything like 
 Rugenda's battle-pieces ; horrid murder -tumults, sea-fights or 
 Stormings of Toulon, exploding fleets ; and, in my childhood, 
 Battles of Prague on the harpsichord,; nay, in short, every map 
 of any remarkable scene of war : these are perhaps too much my 
 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 wilUng, then 
 you,. my worthy Friends, will be the first to recognise mine, wJien 
 it shall break forth into, not barren and empty, but active and 
 efiiective words, while I strengthen my future Catechetical PupUs, 
 
 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 througb his means they fell and grew savage. 
 
 S. For a good Physician saves, if not always &am the disease, at least from 
 a bad Physician. 
 
240 JEAN PAUL PBIEDKICH EIOHTBB. 
 
 as well as can be done in a course of College Lectures, and steel 
 them 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 
 in case one of them were drowning, I should that moment (for the 
 heart overbalances the head) plunge after the fool to save him, 
 into some bottomless depth or other, where we sho^d 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 Csesar, no Alexander or Luther, need have felt ashamed 
 of? Have I not, to mention a few instances, taken Eome 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 hataillon quarrS ; and then capture, in Aix-la- 
 Chapelle, the Peruke of Charlemagne, for which the town pays 
 yearly ten reichsthalers of barber-money ; and carrying it off to 
 Halberstadt von Gleim, there in like manner seize the Great 
 Frederick's Hat; put both Peruke and Hat on my head, and yet 
 return home, after I had stormed their batteries, and turned the 
 cannon against the cannoneers themselves ? Did I not once sub- 
 mit to be made a Jew of, and then be regaled with hams ; though 
 they were ape-hams on the Orinooco (see Humboldt) ? And a 
 thousand such things ; for I have thrown the ConsistoriaJ Pre- 
 sident of Flatz out of the Palace window; those alarm-fulmina- 
 tors, sold by Heinrich Baokofen 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 Csesar did Alexander, I 
 shaU now by my touch dissipate into dust. Be what truth in it 
 there can, it is still little or nothing. Your great Minister and 
 General in Flatz (perhaps the very greatest in the world, for there 
 are not many Sohabackers) may indeed, like any other great man, 
 be turned against me, but not with the Ai-tillery of Truth ; for 
 this Artillery I here set before you, my good Hearts, and do you 
 
 100. In books lie the PJuBnix-ashea of a past Millennium and Paradise ; but 
 War blows, and much ashes are scattered away. 
 
 102. Dear Political or Beligious Inquisitor ! art thou aware that Turin 
 tapers never rightly begin shining, till thou breakest them, and then they take 
 firoJ 
 
SOHMELZLE's journey to FLaiTZ. 241 
 
 tut 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- 
 chetios, 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 tJiem 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 tJie 
 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 of 
 my christian name, Attila, had passed into me more strongly than 
 was proper, I feel myself impelled still farther to prove my cour- 
 ageousness ; which, dearest Friends ! I shall here in a few lines 
 again do. This proof I could manage by mere inferences and 
 learned citations. For example, if Galen remarks that animals 
 with large hind-quarters are timid, I have nothing to do but turn 
 round, and show the enemy my back, and what is under it, in 
 order to convince him that I am not deficient in 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 
 
 86. Very true ! In youth we love and enjoy the most ill-assorted friends, 
 perhaps more tban^ in old age, the best-assorted. 
 
 128. In Love there are Summer Holidays ; but in Marriage also there are 
 Winter Holidays, I hope. 
 
 B 
 
242 JEAN SWf. IFRIESBICa Blap^IEB. 
 
 I.yj^ld itono officer of |;lie 8;eryice; though it is tjlie h^bit of these 
 gentl,einen not only to run up Ipng spores of roa?t-meat with their 
 landlords, but also to leave them unpaid, tfeat so pA pyery hoiir 
 thjBy inay have an open doouip^nt in t}ie hand^ pftjjp enenjyhim.- 
 self .(th,e landlord), testifyipg that they h^ve eaten then- own share 
 (with some of other people'? top), ap4 ?o put common butcher^ 
 meat on a War-footing, living not li^e others by bravery, but for 
 brayery. As little have I ever, iji my .eharacter of chaplain, shrunk 
 from comparison wi^h awy officer in the regiment, who may be a 
 true lion, and so snatch every sort pf plunder, but yet, like thig 
 King of the Beasts, is afraid offir^s or who, — Uke King Janies pf 
 England,' that scampered oJF at sight of drawn swords, yet so 
 much the more gallantly, before all Europe, went put against thp 
 storming JJuther with book and pen, — does, from a similar idio- 
 syncrasy, attack all warlike armaments, both by word aud wrilt' 
 ing. And here I recollect with satisfaetipn a brave sub-lieutenant, 
 whose confessor I was (he still owes me the confpssion-money), 
 and who, in respect of stoutheartedness, had iu hipj perhaps 
 something of that Indian dog whiph Alexander had presented tp 
 him, as a sort of Dog-Alexander. Byway of trying this c^ack 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 : Uien a bear ; he lay still. Ale^ajider was on the point 
 of condemning him; when a Upn was let fprth> l^o dog rose, and 
 tore the lion in pieces. So likewise the sub-lieutenant. A chal- 
 lenger, a foreign enemy, a Prenchnian, are to him o^ily stag, and 
 sow, and bear, and he lies still in his place; but let his oldest 
 enemy, his creditor, come and knock at his gate, and dernand of 
 him actual sijiart-money for long bygone pleasures, thus presum- 
 ing 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. 
 
 Qao, says Livy, xii. 6, and with great justice, quo Umorii minus 
 est, eo minus ferme periculi est, The less fear ypu 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 
 
 143. "Women have weekly at least one actire and passive day of gJory, the 
 holy day, the Sunday. The higher ranks alone have more Smidays than work- 
 days ; as in great towns, you can celebrate your Sunday on Friday with the 
 Turks, on Saturday with the Jews, and on Sunday with yourself. 
 
 • The good Professor of Oateqhetics is out here. lvdig%ar cpMndogm ioniis 
 dormitat Sehmdzle. — Ed. 
 
sohmelzle's jocbubt tO'ELJEtz;. 248 
 
 of fear;;and; among these, minads to be reckoned. The more hate- 
 ful, therefore, must that calumny about haue-heartedaess appear 
 to me. 
 
 To my Holidays' Journey I shall prefix a few facts, whiohi 
 prove how easily foresight — ^that is to say, when a: person would 
 not resemble the stupid^ marmot, that wilLeveu attack a man on 
 horseback — ^may pass for cowardice. For the rest; Ii 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 s«quel, 
 I shall be able to advance some facts'whieh 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. NeverthelesSj 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 &• 
 wax-cloth umbrella:over me, to him I shall probably appear ridieu- 
 lousj so long' as he is not aware that I carry this umbrella as a 
 thunder-screen, to keep oif 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 thuudfei^soreen, in fact^ is exactly that. 
 of Eeimarus : on a. long walking-stiok, I caray the: wax-doth, roof; 
 from the peak of whichi depends a' string' of gold- laoe as a, con- 
 ductor; and this, by means of a key fastened to it, .which it trails, 
 along! the ground, wUl lead off eveiy. possible bolt, and easily disr 
 tribute it over the whole superficies of the Earth. With this Para-^ 
 tonnerre Eortatif in' my hand, I can walk about for weeks, under 
 the oleari sty; without the smallest dangert This Diving-bell, more- 
 over, protects me agaiiist something else; against, shot. Eor who, 
 in ih& latter end' of Harvest, willi give me black on white that no 
 lurking ninny of a sportsman somewhere, when. I am out enjoying 
 Nature; shallso fire off his piece, at an angle of 46?, that in falling; 
 down again, thei shot needs only lightdiirectly on my crown, aaafdc 
 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 
 llkB:averyTiur3£.: forthispaitry little Earth's trainbearer and eiTand- 
 maid thinks, in iiiese rebellious times; that she too must begin, for- 
 sooth, to sling somewhat against her Mother ! In good truth, as 
 matters stand, any young Catechist of feeling may go out a' nights, 
 
 21. Sehiller and Klopstock are Poetic Mirrors held up to the Sun-god : the 
 Mirrors refteet the -Sun with such dazzling brightaess, that you cannot find the 
 Kcture of the Vf'orld imaged forth in them. 
 
344 JEAN PAUL lEIEDEIOH EICHIEK. 
 
 with whole limbs, into the moonshine, a-meditating ; and ere long 
 (in the midst of his meditation the villanous Satellite hits him) 
 come home a pounded jelly. By heaven ! new proofs of courage 
 are required of us on every hand ! No sooner have we, with great 
 effort, got thunder-rods manufactured, and comet-tails explained 
 away, than the enemy opens new batteries in the Moon, or some- 
 where else in the Blue ! 
 
 Suffice one other story to manifest how ludicrous the most 
 serious foresight, with all imaginable inward courage, often exter- 
 nally appears in the eyes of the many. Equestrians are well ac- 
 quainted 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 tug- 
 ging, 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 Eeichshofrath law-suit, 
 or the Daily Postwagen, could not in the least understand the 
 matter, till I cried as if possessed : " Stop him then, ye blockheads 
 and joltheads; don't you see that I cannot hold the nag?" But 
 now, to these noodles, the sight of a hard-mouthed horse going off 
 with its rider step by step, seemed ridiculous rather than other- 
 wise; 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 perpen- 
 dicular piece of drift-ice on my honey-coloured nag, which stalked 
 on, on, step by step : a many-cornered, red-coated letter-carriex', 
 was delivering his letters, to the right and left, in the various sto- 
 ries, and he still crossed over before me again, with satirical fea- 
 tui'es, because the nag went along too slowly. The Schwanz- 
 sohleuderer, or Train-dasher (the person, as you know, who drives 
 along the streets with a huge barrel of water, and besplashes them 
 with a leathern pipe of three ells long from an iron trough), came 
 across the haunches of my horse, and, in the course of his duty, 
 wetted both these and myself in a very cooling manner, though, 
 for my part, I had too much cold sweat on me already, to need any 
 fresh refrigeration. On my infernal Trojan Horse (only I myself 
 
 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-leamed ; and so on ; but not the Whole-learned by the Half- 
 learned, 
 
sohmelzle's jouenbt to flmiz. 845 
 
 was Troy, not beridden but riding to destruction), I an-ived at 
 Malzlein (a suburb of Vienna), or perhaps, so confused were my 
 senses, it miglit 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 c6me 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 Fldte. 
 
 You are aware, my friends, that this Journey to Flatz was ne- 
 cessarily to take place in Vacation time; not only because the 
 Cattle -market, and consequently the' Minister and General vou 
 Schabacker, was there then ; but more especially, because the 
 latter (as I had it positively from a private hand) did annually, on 
 the 23d of July, the market-eve, about five o'clock, become so full 
 of gaudium and graoiousness, 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 uijjustly 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 Peti- 
 tion. 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 intro- 
 duced above thirty dashes, or' breaks, in the middle of my sen- 
 tences ! 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 interlinea- 
 
 35. Bien icovier c'est presque rSpondre, says Marivaux justly of social cir- 
 cles : but I extend it to round Councillor-tables and Cabinet-tables, where 
 reports are made, and the PriiLce listens. 
 
.246 JEAN HAUL EBIEDMOH KICHTEB. 
 
 tticin of Hioughts, these borizoBtsil note -marks cff poetical mrnie- 
 /pieees.jand these ropejadders ror AdhiHeS'-tendons of philosophieal 
 ,««e7pieoes, are at present fashionable and indispenssible : but, at 
 Jast, I-was obliged (as erasures may oflfend people of quality) to 
 w;eite my ibestiproofrpetition overagainj and then tosaflfliet myself 
 ffor lanolher i quarter of an iLour over the name Attida Schmelzle, 
 seeing it is always ,my prijaoiple fthat this and the address of the 
 .letter, the two. cardinal points of ithe whole, can never he written 
 legibly.epough. 
 
 Faust. Stage,; sfrom,If.emaMel to VierMltdten,, 
 
 The 22d of ffuly, or 'Wednesday, about five in "fiie afternoon, 
 was now, by the way-bill of the regular Post-coach, irrevocably 
 'fixed for my departure. I had still 'half a day t-o 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 -with- 
 drawn. Besides this, my good wife Bergelchen, as I call my Teu- 
 toberga, was immediately to travel after me, on Friday the 24th, 
 .in order to see and tojioake puoschases at the yeajdy Fair; inay, 
 • 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 Kescript, which, after 
 ,my departure, .in the first place before the outset of my wife, and 
 jin the second place erfter ihis outset, they Jiad riigorously to obey,; 
 .^plaining to them especially wtote,ver, jn case of con^grationsi, 
 houseJsreakingB,, 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 iRegisterisihip,; which goods she, in case the 
 .house topk fire,, iad, in .the first plaoe, to secure. I ordered her, 
 4n stormy nights ,(the pecuUar thief-weather), to put our Eolian 
 Jiarp in the .windaw, that so any villanous prowler might imagine 
 I was fantasying on my instrument, .and therefore awake : for like 
 reasons, ;alsq, to take the house-dog within doors by day, that he 
 .might sleep then,, and so he livelier at nighi. I farther counselled 
 Jier to iave an eye on the focus of every knot in the panes of the 
 stable-window;, may, on every glass of water she jnight set down in 
 the house ; ;as I iiad already often recounted to her examples of 
 ^UQh aocid^tttl burning-glasses having set wiiole buildings in 
 Barnes. I .then .appointed her the hour when she was to set out 
 on .Friday :morning Jo follow me ; and recapitulated more em- 
 
 17. The^ed of Htmour, since so frequently whole j-egimeuts lie on it, and 
 receive their last unction, and last honour but one, really ought faim time to 
 time to be new-filled, beaten and suuned> 
 
SOHiiiSLZfLH'S JOUfiNEY TO PLilTZ. 24^ 
 
 phatidally the household precepts, which, prior to her departure, 
 she must afresh inculcate on her domestics. My dear, heart-sound, 
 blooming Berga answered h^r 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 bi'other-in-law the Dragoon, for whoiii, out of 
 complaisaKce, I had paid the coaeh-faire, in ol'd^r to have in the 
 vehicle along wiffi me a stout swoi'dkraatt and heMor, as spirituill 
 relative and buUy-roek, so to speaU ; tlie Dragoon, I Say, oil hedir- 
 iiS^ these' my regulations, Juokered up (which I etisily foi'ga'ye the 
 Wild soldier aKd bachelor) his sunburnt face considei'ably into 
 ridicule, and Said : " Were I in thy' place, diStet, I should do what 
 I liked, and then afterward'S take a peep into these regulation- 
 papers of his." 
 
 " O'!" answered I, " niisfortune rilay conceM itself like a scor- 
 pion in any corner : I might say, we are like children, who, lookihg 
 at their gaily painted toy-box, soon ^uU off the M, and, p6p ! out 
 springs a mouse who hftS young' ones." ' 
 
 " Slouse, mouse !" saSd hei stepping up and doWn. "But, good 
 ISnfotber, it is five o'clock; and yod Will find, when yoU retiurn', 
 that all looks exactly as it does today' ;^th'e dog like th-e' dog', and' 
 my sisfe like a prstty woman : allons dorio !" It Was purely his 
 biaiine that I, fearingi hiS- Msconceptions, had not previously made' 
 a sort 6f testament. 
 
 I now paokedi-in tWo different sorts of medicines, heating as 
 well as cooling, a'gaiil'st two 6aSev6&t- possibilities ; also my old' 
 splints for ar* ol* leg breakages, in case the coafeh oVerset; and' 
 (oiit of foresight) two times the ihoiiey I was likely to need'. Only' 
 here I could have Wished, so uncertain iS the stowage of s'uch' 
 things, that I had been an Ape With cheek-pouches, or sonie sori^ 
 of Opossum with a natural bag, that so I might have reposited' 
 these necessaries of ejiisteiitee in pofckets which were sensitive. 
 Sheaving is a' task I ftlWayS go through' before setting out on joul-- 
 tfeyS ; having a' rational miStruSt against stranger bloodthirsty' 
 barbers : but, 03a this' ocdasibri-, I retailed' niy beard; since, how<- 
 ever close shaved', it would have grown again by the rbad to 
 such a lettgth thflifl cdiildhave frbhted no Minister and General' 
 with it. 
 
 With a vehement embtion, I threw myself oh' the Jjith-hettrf ef- 
 my fiergai, and, with a Still iHore vehement one, tore myself aWay: 
 
 120. Many a one become^ a free-spoken Diogenes, not when he dwells in 
 the Cask, but when the Cask dwells in him. 
 
 3. CultUile makes' wHble Iteagi for iafetkiiSi) GSrtiiaiiy, Ginll, and dtheis, 
 physically warmer, but spiritually Solder; 
 
348 JEAN PAUL FBIEDBICH BICHTEB. 
 
 in her, however, this our first maniage-separation seemed to pro- 
 duce less lamentation than triumph, less consternation than re- 
 joicing ; 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 some- 
 what long and thin neck and body, almost painfully, being indeed 
 a too fleshy and weighty load, and said to me : " Whisk thee off 
 quick, my charming Attel (Attila), and trouble thy head with no 
 cares by the way, thou singular man ! A whiff or two of ill luck 
 we can stand, by God's help, so long as my father is no beggar. 
 And for thee, Franz," continued she, turning with some heat to 
 her brother, " I leave my Attel on thy soul : thou well knowest, 
 thou wild fly, what I 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 iU ; 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 re- 
 union 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 aU. 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 sus- 
 picious, unknown rabble, whom (as markets usually do) the Flatz 
 cattle-market was alluring by its scent." I dislike becoming ac- 
 quainted with strangers : not so my brother-in-law, the Dragoon; 
 who now, as he always does, had in a few minutes elbowed him- 
 self into close quarters with the whole ragamuffin posse of them. 
 Beside me sat a person who, in all human probability, was a Haa> 
 lot ; on her breast, a Dwarf intending to exhibit himself at the Fair ; 
 on the other side was a Ratcatcher gazing at me ; and a Blind 
 
 1. The more Weakness the more Lying : Foi-ce goes stiidglit ; any cannon- 
 ball with holes or cavities in it goes crooked. 
 
sohmelzle's oouknet to tl^tz. 249 
 
 Passenger,* 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 propei-ties and 
 accidents, to entangle me in their 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 catchpole 
 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 curiy 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 Ratcatcher, 
 besides the circumstance that no man can prepossess us much in 
 his favour, who lives solely by poisoning, like this Destroj'ing 
 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 he a lessener of it; besides 
 all this, I say, the present Ratcatcher had many baneful features 
 about him : first, his stabbing look, piercing you like a stiletto ; 
 
 38. Epictetus advises us to ti-avel, because our old aoquaintaiices,. by the in- 
 fluence of shame, impede our transition to higher virtues ; as a bashful man will 
 rather lay asi(ie his provincial accent in some foreign quarter, and then return 
 wholly purilied 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,' ' Nip ;' a passenger taken up only by Jarvie's autho- 
 rity, and for Jarvie s profit. — ED. 
 
250 JBAN PAUL FRIEDBICH EICHTER. 
 
 then the lean shai?!) bony visage, ednjoined with his enuraeratiftii 
 of his considerable stock of poisons ; thda (fof I hated him inors 
 and more) his Sly stillnfeSs, his sly Smile, as if in some corner he 
 notified a mouse, as he would notice a man ! To mi, I declare, 
 though Usually I take not the slightest exception against people's 
 looks, it seemed at last as if his thrOat were a Dog-grOttO, a Orottd 
 del tane, his eheek-bones cliff's and breakers, his hot breath the 
 Wind of a daloiniug fui'naee, and his Maek hairy breast a kiln for 
 pai'ching and roastiug. 
 
 Nor Was I fai* wrong, 1 believe ; for soon after this, he begaii 
 quite coolly to inforin the coBttpaUy, in Which Were a dwarf and £t 
 female, that, in his time, he had, not without enjoymeitt, run teU 
 men through the body ; had With great cwlveiiieiice lieWed oiF a 
 doaen ffleu's arms; slowly Split four head^, torn out two h'eairts, 
 and more of the like sort; While nolle of them, otherwise persofls 
 of sph^it, had ia the least i'esisted : " but Why?" added he, with a 
 poisonous Smile, and taking the hat fi'Oln his odious bald pate: 
 " I am invulnei'able. Let any one of the coMpany that chooses 
 lay as mudh Are on my bare crown as te likeS, I shall riot mind 
 it." 
 
 My bfother-iU'law, the Dragoion, directly kindled his tinder-box, 
 and put a heap Of the burning matter on the Eateatcher's pole; 
 but the fellow stood it, as if it had been a mere picture of fire, 
 and the two looked eXpectingly at ofle aflOthef ; and the former 
 smiled very foolishly, sayiug : " It was simply pleasant to' him, 
 like a good warlning-plaSter; for this 'v^as always the wintry regioU 
 of his body." 
 
 Here the Dragoon grOped a Ktle oh the naked scull, and cried 
 with amazement, that " it was as cold as a kaee-pan." 
 
 But now the fellow, to ottr horl-Ol', after some preparations, ac- 
 tually lifted off the qUarter-scuU and held it out to us, sayiug: 
 " He had sawed it off a murderer, his oWh having accidentally 
 been brokeU ;" and withal explained, that the Stabbirig and' ai-m- 
 cuttiug he had talked of was to be uud'erstoo'd as a jeSt, seeing' he 
 had merely done it iu the' character of Famulus at an Anatomical 
 Theatre. However, the jester seemed to rise littfe in favour with 
 any of us ; and for my part, as he put his brain-lid and sham-scuU 
 on again, I thought to myself; " This duUgbed'-bell has changed 
 its place indeed, but not the hemlock it was made to cover.'* 
 
 Farther, I could not but reckon it a suspicious circumstance, 
 
 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 iilto Papers ; although', or because, the Rag-haoker 
 (the Devil as they call it) will not altogether be'at rest. Meanwhile; if Loarned 
 
bdhmelzle's jouniirEY 10 m.iEWz. 251 
 
 feat he as well as all the company (the Blind Passenger too) were 
 maldng for this very Flatz, to which I myself was bound : much 
 good I could not expect of iiiis ; and, in truth, turning home again 
 would have been as pleasant to me as going on, had I not rathe): 
 felt a pleasure in defying the future. 
 
 I come now to the red-mantled Blind Passenger; most probably 
 an Mrrdgre or JSefugie ; for he speaks G-erman 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 Ha,ngman, 
 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 loopholes, 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 Eedcloak become to me, when he began to talk about 
 his soft mildness of soul; a thing which seemed either to betoken 
 pumping you or undermining 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 hajipens to have a roaiing waterspout 
 of a heart, it may be well if his clerical character (which is mine) 
 rather enjoins on him mildness than wildness. However, all mild- 
 ness has its iron limit. If any thoughtless dog chance to anget 
 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 returning them; and 
 I often feel as if I must still pay them to his descendants. In 
 
 Heads transform themselves into Books, Crowned Heads transform and coin 
 themselves into Government-paper: in Norway, acoording to the Universal 
 IndieatOTf 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 CoUegiums would take pattern fi'om that Glass 
 Manufactory at Madrid, in which (according to Baumgiirtner) there were in- 
 deed nineteen clerks stationed, bat also eleven workmen. 
 
262 JEAN PAUL FEIEDEIOH RIOHTEE. 
 
 sooth, if I but 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 smiUng, not in the best fashion. 
 He gave himself out for a Legations-Eath, 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 iirm. 
 
 " I am altogether for Montaigne's advice," said I : " Fear no- 
 thing but fear." 
 
 " I again," replied the Legations-man, with useless wiredraw- 
 ing, " 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 epilepsies, 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 Dra- 
 goon, 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 this 
 date; and to the present hour I congratulate myself on once hur- 
 rying out of church, though I had confessed but the day previous ; 
 and running, without more ceremony, and before I had received 
 the sacrament, into the charnel-house, because a heavy thunder- 
 
 2. In his Prince, a soldier reverences and obeys at once his Pi'ince and his 
 Generalissimo ; a Citizen only his Prince. 
 
 45. Our present writers shrug their shoulders most at those on whose shoul- 
 ders they stand ; and exalt those most who Crawl up along them. 
 
sohmelzle's journey to pl^iz. 253 
 
 cloud (which did, in fact, strike the churchyard lindentree) 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 : hut 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 ooach-conclave would at least bring out 
 their watches, rings, money and such like, and put them all into 
 one of the carriage-pockets, that none of us might have a conductor 
 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 desperate 
 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 under- 
 stand that, in our conversational picnic, especially with the Blind 
 Passenger, I had not always come oif 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 company the whole theory of Electricity, in clear words, but 
 low and slow (striving to avoid all emission of vapour) ; and espe- 
 cially endeavoured to frighten them away from fear. For indeed, 
 through fear, the stroke — nay two strokes, the electric or the apo- 
 plectic — might hit any one of us ; since in Erxleben and Eeimarus, 
 it is sufiioiently proved, that violent fear, by the transpiration it 
 causes, may attract the lightning. I accordingly, in some fear 
 
 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, unmotrical Translation i 
 
254 lEAN PAUL EBIEDRIOH BIOHIEB. 
 
 of my QTOn and other peopls'si feac,, repeeeeated to the passea- 
 gers that now, in a ooaeh 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 tean&pirationB from, 
 incipient fear ; in short, with such visible dangMf on every hand, 
 they must absolutely fear nothing,, if they would not, all and aun- 
 dj:y, be smitten to death in a few minutes.. 
 
 " Heavea !" 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? Eear, if you, 
 like, when you axe out. of the, ooaeh; fear to your hearit!s: content 
 in, other places, where there ia less, to be afraid of; only not here,, 
 not here !" 
 
 I shall not determine — ^since among milUons 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 un- 
 injured, and driving towards > a raiabow^ we entered the town o£ 
 Vierstadten, where dwelt a Postmaster,, in the only street which 
 the; place had. 
 
 Seconct, Stage; from. Vierstadten, to SiederscMna. 
 The Postmaster was a chujrl and a, striker;, a class of mortals 
 whom I inexpressibly dietest, as my fancy always whispers to me, 
 in their presence, that by accident or dislike I mig^t happen to 
 put on a scornful or impertinent look, andl hound these mastiffs 
 on my own throat; and so, from the- very first,,!' must iucessaintljr 
 watch them. Happily, in this case (supposing I' even had madjeia 
 wrong face), I could have shielded myself with the Dragoon; 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 enteringt, and, as he crosses tha threshold, shout- 
 ing: "Peace, dogft!"— and thexewith, under show of a peace-depu- 
 tation, 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 hand heads of the: 
 parties together (he himself taikes no side), catchiing each by, the 
 hind.-look; in such cases the rogue, is in Heaven !> 
 
 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 wings 
 have wing-sMls, of very sufficient strength, and — grown together: 
 
 8. Oonstitutions of Government are lite highways : on a new and' quite 
 untrodden one, where every carriage helps in the process of bi*uisihg and 
 smoothing, you are as much jolted and pitched as on an old worn-out one, full 
 of holes ! What is to be done- then ! Travel on. 
 
SOHMBtZLE 9 JOVBNEY TO FL^IZ. 365 
 
 I, for my part, rSiliher avoid discrepant qh'cles than seefc them ; 
 as I likflwise avoici gJl <iea4 or killed people : the prudent man 
 easily foresees what jg tp, he got by them ; either vexatious and 
 injurious witnessing, or often even (when circumstances qon^ 
 spire) painful investigation, and suspicions of your being an 
 accomplice. 
 
 In Vierstadten, nothing of importance presented itself, except 
 -^to my horror-^a dog without tail, whiph cam? 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, Whether they 
 could reckon a system of Medical Police well arranged, which, like 
 this of Vierstadten, allowed dogs open^ to scour about, when their 
 tails were wanting ? "* What am I to dq," ss,id J, " when this mem- 
 ber 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 ia 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 ^e now got himself inscribed as a See- 
 ing one, Gad knows for what objects) had heard my observation; 
 which he now spun out in my presence almost into, ridicule, and 
 at last awa,kened 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-heacon, and finger-post 
 for us, that we come not even into the outmost precincts of mad- 
 ness: cut away from Comets their tails, from Bashaws theirs, 
 from Grabs theirs (outstretched it denotes that they are burst) ; 
 and ia the most dangerous predicaments of life we are left with- 
 out clew, without indicator, without hand in margine; and we 
 perisb, not so much as knowing how." 
 
 For the rest, this stage passed over without quarrelling or peril. 
 About ten o'clock, the whole pax'ty, including even the PostiUon, 
 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 hut downrpressed 
 eyelids. 
 
 I had now a glorious opportunity of following Lavater's coun- 
 sel, to apply the physiognomical ellwand specially to sleepers. 
 
 3. Jn Criminal Courts, murdered children are often represented as. still- 
 bom ; in Antiontiques, atiU-boi'n as murdered. 
 
 101. Not only were the Bhodians, from their Colossus, called Colossians ; 
 but also innumerable Germans are, &om their Luther, called Lutherans. 
 
256 JEAN PAUL FMEDKIOH BIOHTER. 
 
 since sleep, like death, expresses the genuine form in coarser 
 lines. Other sleepers not in stage-coaches I think it less advisable 
 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 stnicture, as 
 to exclude it forever from appearing in any Physiognomical Frag- 
 ments (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 dissection, lay 
 about him, spurred on by honour in some cudgelling-scene he 
 may be dreaming; and in a few instants of clapperclawing, 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 shame- 
 less; my Brother-in-law peacefully satisfied, with revenge or food ; 
 and the Legations-Rath, Jean Pierre, Heaven only knows why, like 
 a half angel, — though, perhaps, it might be 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 Postilion 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 awaiting me. Over 
 an untrodden flowery tangle, I reach the black on white ; and to 
 my horror and amazement, I decipher in the moonshine: 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, be- 
 yond the verge of Time ! The first thing I did was to slutch down 
 my toe-nails, to bite, and, as it were, eat myself into the ground 
 
 88. Hitherto I have always regarded the Polemical writings of our priesent 
 philosophic and esthetic Idealist Logic-buffers, — in which, certainly, a few con- 
 tumelies, and misconceptions, and misoonclusions do make their appearance, — 
 rather on the fair side ; observing in it merely an imitation of clas^iical Anti- 
 quity, in particular of the ancient Athletes, who (according to SohBttgen) 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. 
 
SCHMBLZLe's journey 10 FUETZ. 257 
 
 ■with thein; since I miglit at least continue in warm life so long as 
 I pegged my body firmly in beside the Atropos-soissors and hang- 
 man'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 perspix-ed the whole of it, and could remember no- 
 thing. 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 PostUion were both carousing with 
 full can. However, I summoned my courage and determination; 
 wrote , down on a leaf of my pocket-book my last will, the acci- 
 dental 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; expecting at every step to awaken the murder- 
 ous engine, and thus to clap over my still long candle of life the 
 bonsoir, or extinguisher, with my own hand. However, I got off 
 without shot. In the tavern, indeed, there was more than one fool 
 to laugh at 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 whffle sts^e, 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 postilion 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 postilions 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 
 
 103. Or are all Mosques, Episoopal-ohuixhes, Pagodas, Chapels-of-Ease, 
 Tabei-naoles and Pantheons, anything else than the Ethnic Forecourt of the 
 Invisible Temple and its Holy of Holies ? 
 
 40. The common man is copious only m 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. 
 
258 JEAN PAUL rMEDEICH KIOHTER. 
 
 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 play- 
 house, 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 N'iederschSna to Fliitz. 
 
 While I am standing at the Posthouse musing, with my eye 
 fixed on my portmanteau, comes a beast of a watchman, and bel- 
 lows 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-fulmi- 
 nators and alarm-cannon, by which notwithstanding no gunpowder 
 cannon are saved? In my opinion, nobody should be invested 
 with the watchman-horn but some reasonable man, who had al- 
 ready blown himself into an asthma, and who would consequently 
 be in case to sing out his hour-verse so low, that you could npt 
 hear it. 
 
 What I had long expected, and the Dwai*f predicted, now took 
 place : deeply stoopi^^g, 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 hke his 
 son of foui-teen years; the Dwarf like his lap-dog waiting for him 
 on its two hind legs. " Good friend," said my bantering Bi-other- 
 in-law, leading him towards me and the stage-coach, "just step 
 softly in, we shall all be happy to malce 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; /will creep into any hole, do but 
 tell me where." 
 
 9. In any national calamity, the ancient Egyptians took revenge ontlio god 
 Typhon, whom they blamed for it, by huvling liis favourites, the Asses, down 
 over rocks. In similar wise have countries of a different religion now and 
 then taken their revenge. 
 
 70. Let Poetry veil itself in Philosophy, bnt only as the latter does in the 
 former. Philosophy in poetised Prose resembles those tavern driuking-glasses. 
 
sohmelzle's joceney to rL^Tz. 259 
 
 In short, tliere was no resource for the Postmaster and the 
 Giant, but that the latter should plant himself behind, in the cha- 
 racter 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 th« coach-roof and demoUshed the whole 
 party in a lump. However, this Elephant (who indeed seemed to 
 owe the similarity more to his overpowering mass than to his quick 
 light of iuwai'd 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 
 tlie contrary, as was proper, to wake, I freely offered my seat of 
 honour, the front place in the coach .^eauing thereby to abohsh 
 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.l To me this sort of coach-sleeping of a diplomatic charge 
 eCaffaires remained a tiling 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^ 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 
 shudd«r at the thought of insanity or violent fevers; seeing no 
 mortal can be his surety that he shah- not in such cases publish 
 the greatest scandals, of which, it may be, th« half are lies? 
 
 At last, after the long July night, we passengers, together with 
 
 encircled with parfci-coloured wreaths of figures, which disturb your enjoyment 
 both of the drink, and (often awkwardly eclipsing and Govering each other) of 
 the carving also. 
 
 * Titan is also the title of this Legations-Eath Jean Pierre or Jean Paul 
 (Friedrich Richtor)'s chief novel. — Ed. 
 
 2 Briihl, I suppose ; but the historical edition of the matter is, that Briihl's 
 treasonable secrets were come at by the more ordinary means of wax impres- 
 sions of his keys. — En, 
 
260 JEAN PAUL rniEDRlOH EICHTEE. 
 
 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-iield 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; those 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 an- 
 swered, with suflicient want of taste : " The steeples of such towns 
 are indeed the Swiss Alpine peaks, on which we milk and manu- 
 facture the Swiss cheese of our Future." Did the Legations-Peter 
 mean with this style to make me ridiculous, or only himself? De- 
 termine ! 
 
 " 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 Day in, FltOz. 
 
 No mortal, in my situation at this Tiger-hotel, would have tri- 
 umphed 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 murderers, 
 none knew how many of the latter two classes were floating among 
 the tide; purposing perhaps to lay hold of the most innocent 
 strangers, and in part cut their purses, in part their throats. My 
 
 158. Governments sbould not too often cliange tlie penny-trumps and 
 chUd's-dnims of the Poets for the regimental trumpet and fire-drum ; on the 
 other hand, good subjects should regai'd 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 ; but 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, aa if you were in the great Earth Inn, which 
 indeed you are. 
 
SCHMELZLE's JOUKNET to PLfiTZ. 2C1 
 
 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 : O 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 Eatcatcher, Jean Pierre, the Giant, who had dismounted at the 
 Gate of the town, and carrying the huge blockhead 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. 
 
 And now for each of the Passengers, the question was, how he 
 could make the Tiger, the heraldic emblem of the Inn, his proto- 
 type ; and so, what lamb he might suck the blood of, and tear in 
 pieces, and devour. My Brother-in-law too left me, having gone in 
 quest of some horse-dealer; but he retained the chamber next 
 mine for his sister: this, it appeared, was to denote attention on 
 his part. I remained solitary, left to my own intrepidity and force 
 of purpose. 
 
 Yet among so many villains, encqpapassing 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 casemate- 
 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 psahn, 
 I was somewhat disturbed by a Heiduc, who came up to a well- 
 
 107. Germany is a long lofty mountain — under the sea. 
 
 144. The Reviewer does not in reality employ his pen for writing ; but he 
 bums 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 Philoso- 
 pher, and the Poet, produce their new book solely from new materials and 
 growth, the Keviewer merely lays his old gage of tasts and knowledge on a 
 thousand new works ; and his light, in the ever-passing, ever-differently-cut 
 glass-world which he elacidates, is still refracted into new colours. 
 
262 JEAN PAUL rBIEDRICH BIOHTEB. 
 
 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 
 ofi'; and here again, I am afraid, I shall pass for a foolhardy per- 
 son and a desperado ; so much only I reckoned fit, to look invari- 
 ably into my psalm-book; not once lifting my eyes while the Court 
 was rustling and entering, thereby to denote that my glasses were 
 ground convex. For ihe rest, the sermon was good, if not always 
 finely conceived for a Court-chvirch ; it admonished the hearers^ 
 against innumerable vices, to whose counterparts, the virtues, an- 
 other preacher might so readily hav« exhorted us. During the 
 whole service, I made it my business to exhibit true deep rever- 
 ence, not only towards God, but also towards 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 Fldtz WeMy Journal, might have been per- 
 verted 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 ease I had happened to assume no reve- 
 rent look, but an indifferent or even proUd one. God knows, who 
 has kneaded into me those mad desperate fancies and crotchets, 
 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 ordina- 
 tion to be Army-chaplain, while about to participate in the Sacra- 
 ment, 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 
 
 71. The Youth is singular from caprice, and takes pleasui'e 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 abyss ; with tha 
 Man it is otherwise. 
 
sohmelzle's jodrnet to pi^tz. 863 
 
 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 oi-gan 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 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 ascribe such things to tlie 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' un- 
 successful, 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 inwardly as I hked. 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 Jong) put the wafer in my 
 clenched mouth, I felt all the muscles of laughter ah-eady begin- 
 ning 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 proceeded 
 to the Tiger Inn, and dined at the table-d'hote, being at no time 
 shy of encountering men. Previous to the second course, a waiter 
 handed me an empty plate, on which, to my astonishment, I noticed 
 a French verse scratched-in with a fork, containing 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 
 
 11.' The Grolden Calf of Self-love soon waxes to be a burning Phalaris' Bull, 
 which reduces its father and adorer to ashes. 
 
 103. The male Beau-crop which suiTounds the female Roses and Lilies, must 
 (if I rightly comprehend its flatteries) most probably presuppose in the feir the 
 manners of the Spaniards and Italians, who offer any valuable, by way of pre- 
 sent, to the man who praises it excessively. 
 
264 JEAN PAUL rEIBDRIOH RIOHTEK. 
 
 saw, got this lampooning cover presented to me, and must request 
 them to bear witness that I had nothing to do with the matter. 
 An officer directly changed plates with me. During the fifth 
 course, I could not but admire the ohemico-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, nevei'" 
 theless, 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. " Horrible !" 
 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 clergyman 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 
 opposite side of the table, some lying story of a French defeat was 
 started : now, as I had read on the street-comers that French and 
 
 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 toge- 
 ther, 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 Iriends and female enemies 
 (if that is no pleonasm), and look at her I 
 
SOgilELZLE's JOURNEY TO FUEIZ. 266 
 
 German Proclamation, calling before the Court Martial any one 
 who had heard wai--rumours (disadvantageous, namely), without 
 giving notice of them, — I, as a man not willing ever to forget him- 
 self, had nothing more prudent to do in this case, than to with- 
 draw 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 Pontao 
 into my stomach, with true disgust, and contrary to all sanitaiy 
 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 visstge, more of a man 
 that would finally go mad, than of one growing wiser. Now, mad- 
 men are a class of persons whom I hate incredibly ; and nothing 
 can take me to see any madhouse, simply because the first maniac 
 among them may clutch me in his gig.nt fists if he like ; and be- 
 cause, owing to infection, I cannot be sure that I shall ever get 
 out again with the sense which I brouglit 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 midriif 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 sliaver, and 
 he just then chanced to lay his long-whetted weapon a little too 
 abruptly against my bare throat, I gave him such a sudden bounce 
 on the abdominal viscera, that the silly varlet had well nigh sui- 
 cidally slit his own windpipe. For me, truly, nothing remained 
 but to indemnify the man ; and then, contraiy to my usual prin- 
 ciples, to tie round a broad stuffed cravat, by way of cloak to what 
 remained unshorn. 
 
 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 allnsions (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. 
 
266 JEAN PAUL FHlEDKIOH RIOHIEE. 
 
 And now at last I sallied fortli to the General, drinking out the 
 remnant of the Pontao, 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 Uving fence of ministerial obstmctions ; and soon. 
 I unexpectedly found myself in the ante-chamber, among his most 
 distinguished lackeys ; persons, so fax as I could see, not inclined 
 to change flour for bran with any onci Selecting the most re- 
 st>ectable 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 rumiway brother, or my Peti- 
 tion ; to no purpose, neither of them could be found. How happy 
 was it that in the midst of my Pontac, before shaving, I had 
 written out the duplicate of this paper ; and therefore — simply on 
 the principle that you should always keep a second wooden leg 
 packed into your knapsack when you have the first on your body 
 — and out of fear that if the original 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 therefore, I say, 
 having stuck the repeating work of that original paper into my 
 pocket, I had, in any case, something to hand in, and that some- 
 thing truly a Ditto. I handed it in. 
 
 Unhappily six o'clock was already past. The lackey, however, 
 did not keep me long waiting ; but returned with — I may say, the 
 text of this whole Circular — the almost rude answer (which you, 
 my Friends, out of i-egard for me and Schabacker, will not divulge) 
 that : " In case I were the Attila Schmelzle of Schabacker's Regi- 
 ment, 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 fel- 
 low : " With great pleasui-e indeed, I fly to the Devil ; and so Devil 
 a fly I care." On the road home I examined myself whether it had 
 
 36. And so I should like, in all cases, to be the Fii-st, especially in Begging.. 
 The first prisoner-of-war, the first cripple, the first man ruined by burning 
 (like him who brings the first fire-engitie), gains the head-subscription and the 
 heart ; the nextcomer finds nothing but Ihity 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 I") obtains 
 from the beniirnant 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, especi- 
 ally the last the first. So, however, is the world orderad. 
 
SCHMELZLE's JOTIENET to Ft«TZ. 267 
 
 not been the Pontac that spoke out of me (though the very exami- 
 nation contradicted this, for Pontac never examines) ; but I found 
 that nothing but I, my heart, my courage perhaps, had spoken ; 
 and wh}', after all, any whimpering ? Does not the patrimony of 
 my good wife endow me better than ten Catechetical Professor- 
 ships ? And has she not furnished all the corners of my book of 
 Life with so many golden clasps, that I can open it forever with- 
 out 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 circum- 
 stances, 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 out- 
 strip, than the mite-populaoe about me, or, at the best, here and 
 there a Vulcanello. I thought and thought, and grew wilder and 
 wilder, and intoxicated myself (no Pjintao intoxication therefore, 
 which, you know, increases more by continuance than cessation of 
 drinking), and gesticulated openly, aslputthe question to myself: 
 " Wilt thou be a mere state-lapdog ? A dog's-dog, a^mm desiderium 
 of sea impium desideHwm, an Ex-Ex, a Nothing's-Nothing ? — Fire 
 and Fury !" With this, however, I dashed down my hat into the 
 mud of the market. On lifting and cleaning this old servant, I 
 coiild not but perceive how worn and faded it was ; and I there- 
 fore 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 detei-mined to avenge my- 
 
 136. If you mount too high above your time, your ears (on the side of Fame) 
 are little better o£F than if you sinlr too deep below it : in truth, Charles up in 
 his Balloon, and Halley down in his Diving-bell, felt equally the same strange 
 pain in their ears. 
 
 25. In youth, like a blind man just couched (and what isbii-thbut a couch- 
 ing of the sight ?), you take the Distant for the Near, the starry heaven for tan- 
 gible room-^miture, pictures for objects J and, to the young man, the whole 
 world is Bitting on his very nose, till repeated bandaging and nnbandaging 
 have at last taught him, like the blind patient, to estimate Distance and Ap- 
 pearance. 
 
268 JEAN PAUL FBIEDEIOH RICHIER. 
 
 self, not by vulgaf clownishness, but by courtesy, I had here got 
 one of the most tickUsh problems imaginable to solve on the spur 
 of the instant. You observe, if I swung only the fine hat which I 
 carried in my hand, and kept the faded one on my head, — I might 
 have the appearance of a perfect clown, who does not doff at all ; 
 if, on the other hand, I pulled the old hat from my head, and 
 therewith did my reverence, then two hats, both in play at once 
 (let me swing the other at the same time or not), brought my 
 salute within the verge of ridicule. Now do you, my Friends, be- 
 fore reading farther, bethink you how a man was to extricate him- 
 self 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. 
 
 An-ived at the Tiger, — to avoid misconstructions, I first had the 
 glossy, fine and superfine hat cleaned, and some time afterwards 
 the mud-hat or rubbish-hat. 
 
 And now, weighing my momentous Past in the adjusting 
 balance within me, I walked in fiery mood to and fro. The 
 Pontao must — I know that there is no imadulterated liquor here 
 below — have been more than usually adulterated ; so keenly did 
 it chase my fancy out of one fire into the other. I now looked 
 forth into a wide glittering life, in which I lived without post,' 
 merely on money; and which I beheld, as it were, sowed with 
 the Delphic caves, and Zenonic walks, and Muse-hills of all the 
 Sciences, which I might now cultivate at my ease. In particular, 
 I should have it in my power to apply more diligently to writing 
 Prize-essays for Academies ; of which (that is to say, of the Prize- 
 essays) no author need ever be ashamed, since, in all cases, there 
 is a whole cro%vning 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 (liis Device not 
 being unsealed) than any other author, who indeed can publish 
 some nameless Long-ear of a book, but not hinder it fi-om being, 
 
 125. In the long-run, out of mere fear and necessity, vie shall become the 
 warmest cosmopolites I know of ; so rapidly do ships shoot to and fro, and, 
 like shuttles, weave Islands and Quartera of the World together. For, let 
 but the political weatherglass fall today in South America, tomorrow we in 
 Europe have storm and thunder. 
 
 19. It is easier, they say, to climb a hill when you ascend back foremost. 
 This, perhaps, might admit of application to politicsil eminences ; if you still 
 turned towards them that part of the' body on which you sit, and kept yotu: 
 face directed down to the people; all the while, however, removing and 
 mounting. 
 
sohmelzle's jouenet to tlmtz. S69 
 
 by a Literaiy Ass-burial (s^uUura 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 
 negatoiy 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 Uving honour 
 than the last honours. Especially so good a lowly-bom 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 Kath or Council- 
 lor ; 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- 
 membrances, I longed unspeakably for my Bergelohen : 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 
 
 26. Few German writers are not original, if we may ascribe originality (aa 
 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 Imagi- 
 nation or Productive Power, where their writing or own peculiar matter ori- 
 ginates, 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, or even altering it, — their individuaUty may, I 
 believe, be considered as secured j and their spiritual nourishment, their pan- 
 
270 JEAN PAUL PRIEBRICH RICHIER. 
 
 and easier to become all things, an Exchequer-Ratli, an Excise- 
 Rath, any Rath in the world, and whatever she required when 
 site came. 
 
 " See thou take thy pleasure in the tqwn !" had Bergelohem 
 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 NigM in Mifti, 
 
 Yet the wine did not take from me the good sense to look un 
 der 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- 
 walldng. To me it has always been incomprehensible how so 
 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 Somnambuhsts, and crawl over the tops of roofs and the 
 Hke ; 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 
 tliis bed-ai-rest, I must ivith the tether infalUbly 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 
 
 eakes, loaves, fritters, caviare and meat-balls, are not assimilated to their 
 system, but given back pm'e and unaltered. Often in my own mind I figure 
 such writera as living but thousandfold more artifixsial Ducklings from Vau- 
 casson'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. 
 
SOHMELZLE's JOUENEY to TLS.TZ. 271 
 
 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 
 Pontac Fire-bath, axid apprehensive of the valorous and tumul- 
 tuous dreams too likely to ensue ; which, alas, did actually prove 
 to be nothing better than heroic and monarchic feats, castle- 
 Btormings, rock-throwiugs, and the Uke. This point also I am 
 sorry to see so little attended to in medicine. Medical gentle- 
 men, as well as their customers, all stretch themselves quietly 
 in their beds, without one among them considering whether a 
 furious rage (supposing him also directly after to drink cold 
 water in his dream), or a heart-devouring grief, aU which he may 
 undergo in vision, does harm to life or not. 
 
 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 pi-oducing 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 coverUd began to get in motion ; I pulled it towards 
 me ; it wovild not stay ; sharply I sit upright in my bed,, and cry : 
 
 15t After the manner of the fine polished Bjiglish folding-knives, there are 
 now also folding-war-swords, or in other words — Treaties of Peace, 
 
 13. Omnibus una SALUa 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 sha- 
 dow of this in the writing world ; for the Beatitude of authors once beatified 
 hy Criticism, whether they be genial, good, mediocre, or poor, is the same 
 
272 JEAN PAUL FBIEDRIOH BlCHIEEi 
 
 " What is that ?" No answer ; everywhere silence in the Inn ; the 
 whole room full of moonshine. And now my drawinfcplaster, my 
 coverlid, actually rose up, and let in the air; at which T felt like a 
 wounded man whose cataplasm you suddenly pull off. In fltis 
 crisis, I made a hold leap from this Devil's-torus, and, leaping; 
 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. 
 
 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-devihy ? I lighted on 
 it, under my piece of (self) movable property, my coverUd : 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. 
 
 tlirougliout ; they all obtain the same pecuniary Felicity, the same slender 
 profit. But, Heavens I in regard to the degrees of Fame, again, how far (in 
 spite of the same emolument 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 forgot- 
 ten, he is lowered into the German Temple of Fame ; a Temple imitating the 
 
BOHMELZLE's JOnHNET TO EUEIZ. 273 
 
 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 think- 
 ingtjiput three crosses; "quick, despatch 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 coming 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 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 FUUz, 
 
 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, 
 blooming, 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 
 Bergelcheu; " 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. 
 
 peculiarity of the Padri Lucched churches in Naples, which (according to 
 Volkmann) peiinit burials under their ruo&, but'no tombstone, 
 
 79. Weak and wrong heads are the hardest to change ; and their inward 
 man acquires a scanty covering : thus capons never moult. 
 
 I 
 
274 JEAN PAUL FMBDEICH eichter. 
 
 "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 pedestriaa 
 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 hfe 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 
 in, as the whole ohevaux-de-frise barricade of chairs was stUl stand- 
 ing fast at the door. She laughed heartily, eurtseying in village 
 fashion, and said, she had planned it with her brother the day be- 
 fore 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 aj)art- 
 ment, 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 Blester 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 la,menting dolefuUy 
 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 
 
 89. In times of misfortune, the Anoienta supported themselves with Philo- 
 sophy or Christianity ; the modems again (for example, in the reign of Terror) 
 take to Pleasure ; as the wounded Buffalo, for bandage and salve, rolls himself 
 in the mire. 
 
 181. God be thanked that we live nowhere forever except in Hell or Hea- 
 ven ; on Earth otherwise we should grow to be the veriest rascals, and the 
 World a House of Incurables, for want of the dog-dtoctor {the Hangman), and 
 the issue-cord (on the Gallows), and tiw sulphur and chalybeate medicines 
 
schmelzle's joukney to ftletz. 275 
 
 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 ?" 
 
 L inquired whether she, in her noeturnal 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 
 morning. ! how I do love these soft Harmonicarquiverings of 
 female fright ! 
 
 At last, however, I was forced to bite Or cut the coloquinta- 
 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 
 shoulders 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 veiy long. Then, with painfully quiveriug voice, she 
 began : " Good Christ stand by me at Neusattel on Sunday, when 
 these high-prancing prideful dames look at me in chux-ch, 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 piCeeS so ! May I 
 die, if yet in these dog-days I become not all and everything that 
 thou wishest! Speak, wilt thou be Miuing-rathin, Build-rathin, 
 Court-rathin, War-rathin, Chamber-rathin, Commerce^rathin, Lega- 
 tions-rathin,. or Devil and his Dam's rathin : I am here, and will 
 buy it,i and be it. Tomorrow I send riding posts to Saxony and 
 
 (on Sattle-iields). So that we tod find our gigajntic moral force dependent on 
 the Debt of Nature which we have to pay, exactly as your politicians (for ex- 
 ample, the Author of the New Leviathan) demonstrate that the English have 
 their National Debt to thank for their superiority. 
 
 63. To apprehend danger from the Education of the People, is like fearing 
 lest the thunderbolt strike into the house because it has windows ; whereas 
 the lightning never comes through these, but througix their lead framing, or 
 down by the amohe of the chipaney. 
 
276 JEAN PAUL PKIEDEIOH BICHIEE. 
 
 Hessia, to Prussia and Eussia, to Frieslarid and Katzenellen- 
 bogen, and demand patents. Nay, I will carry matters farther 
 than another, and be all things at once, Flaohsenfingen Court- 
 rath, Scheerau Excise-rath, Haarhaar Building-rath, Pestitz* Cham- 
 ber-rath (for we have the cash) ; and thus, alone and single-handed, 
 represent with one podex and corpus a whole Katih-session of se- 
 lect Raths; and stand, a complete Legion of Honour, on one single 
 pair of legs : the like no man ever did." 
 
 " O ! now thou art angel-good !" said she, and gladder tears 
 rolled down ; " thou shalt counsel me thyself w;hieh are the finest 
 Baths, 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-rathin, 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 foi-mer 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 he 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 poltroons, 
 
 76. Your economical, preaching Poetry, apparently supposes that a sur- 
 , gioal Stone-cutter is an Artlstioal one ; and a Pulpit or a Sinai a Hill of the 
 muses. 
 
 • Cities of Riohter's romance kinf^dom. Flaohsenfingen ho sometimes calk 
 KleiiirWieii,, little Vienna. — Ed. 
 
SOHMELZLB's JODBNEY 10 TUEIZ. 277 
 
 the bad example acting on me by tlie rule of contraries. Little 
 touches may in this case shadow forth man and wife, without 
 casting them into the shade : When the trim waiter with his green 
 sillc apron brought up cracknels for breakfast, and I told him : 
 " Johaun, 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 Oap-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 towu'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 Bohbers 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 
 fuU 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 — 
 
 115. According to Smith, the universal measure of economical value is La- 
 hour. This fact, at least in regard to spiritual and poetical value, we Germans 
 had discovered before Smith ; and to my knowledge, we have always prefeiTed 
 the learned poet to the poet of genius, and the heavy book full of labour to 
 the light one full of sport. 
 
 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 
 
278 JEAN PAUL raiEDEICH EICHTEB. 
 
 " Sir, is this your way of treating guests? Why don't you eome 
 promptly? Don't come so again; and now be going, friend!" 
 Although his retreat was my victory, I still iept brieldy cannon- 
 ading on the field of action, and fired the louder (to let him hear 
 it), the more steps he descended in his flight. Bergelohen,T-^who 
 felt quite horrorstruck at my fury, particularly in a quite strange 
 house, and at a quality waiter with sUk 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 we, 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 an- 
 cient times, special sermons were preached), that one is never more 
 completely in his Heaven and Menplmsir (a pleasurerpalace) than 
 while in the midst of right hearty storming and indignation. 
 Heavens ! what might not a man of weight accomplish in tiiis 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 Lutiier, with whom I nowise compare myself, con- 
 fess, in his Tahle-talh, that he never pi-eached, sung, or prayed so 
 well, as while in a x-age ? Truly, he was a man sufficient of him- 
 self 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 Uke 
 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, fuU 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 
 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 
 
 inverts this practice, that to otliers lie sliows 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 I 
 
 67. Individual Minds, nay Political Bodies, are like organic bodies : extract 
 the inierior air from them, the atmosphere crushes them together ; pump off 
 imder the bell the exterior resisting air, the interior inflates and bursts them. 
 
SOHMELZLE's JODBNEY to FLiETZ. 279 
 
 Earth, fly off, and feather Win, 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. ! 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, 
 Ihough cannon of smaller calibre. 
 
 After dinner (in our room), we issued from the Purgatory of 
 the market-tumultj — 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 pubUc and pleasure-house without 
 the gates is named, where, in market-time, hundreds ttm 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 beohained, begrated, 
 gigantic Schabaeker-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 sufiieient pleasure ; en- 
 circled, as we were, with blooming faces and meadows. In my 
 secret heart, I all along kept looking down, with success, on Seha- 
 backer's refusal ; and till midnight made myself a happy day of it : 
 I had deserved it, Berga still more. Nevertheless, about one in 
 the morning, I was destined to find a windmill to tilt with ; a wind- 
 mill, which truly lays about 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 
 
 Therefore, let every State keep up its internal and its external resistance both 
 at ouco. 
 
280 JEAN PAUL FRIEDBIOH BIOHTEK. 
 
 reasons, retire without malice behind a covered booth, the tent 
 most probably of some rude trader; and linger there a moment ac- 
 cording 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 comer, and 
 doing anything but — taking. A sense of honour without 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 mud- 
 dled, 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'U make thee !" 
 
 You see the whole nodus of the matter : I whisked away zigzag 
 among the booths as fast as possible, from the claws of this 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 vil- 
 lage wise) : " Stupid sot, go sleep the drink out of thy head, or I'll 
 teach thee ! Dost know, then, whom thou art spealdng to ? My 
 husband, Army-chaplain Sohmelzle under General and Minister 
 von Schabaoker at Pimpelstadt, thou blockhead! — Fye! Take 
 shame, fellow !" The watchman mumbled : " Meant no harm," 
 and reeled about his business. " O 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 ?" 
 
 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 fai-ther they flow along through lazy flats. 
 
SCHMBLZLB's JODBNET to TLiETZ. S81 
 
 Thus lovingly we both reached home ; and perhaps in the se- 
 quel of this Fair day might still have enjoyed a glorious after-mid- 
 night, had not the Devil led n-jy eye to the ninth volume of Lioh- 
 tenberg's Works, and the 206th page, where this passage occui'S : 
 " It is not impossible that at a future period, our Chemists may 
 light on some means of suddenly decomposing the Atmosphere by 
 a sort of Ferment. In this way the world may be destroyed." 
 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 monstrous devouring 
 world-storm catches me and you in Flatz by the throat; my 
 breathing, and the like, in this choak-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 specially needful ; ai)d the Devil 
 takes the whole, in the Bartholomew-night, when this cursed 
 " Ferment" is invented. 
 
 From the true soul, however, I co»ceaIed these deadly Night 
 Thoughts ; seeing she would either painfully have sympathised in 
 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 
 Eathships 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 se- 
 cretly 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 before- 
 hand. 
 
 At the appointed hour, all gaily started from the Staple, I ex- 
 cepted ; 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. 
 
 28. When Nature takes the huge old Earth-round, the Barth-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 d0| 
 
382 JEAN PAUL FBIEDKIOH EIOHTBB. 
 
 The Blind Passenger, whom I Uked so ill, also mounted along 
 with us, and looked at me«,s 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 a-sawing 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 Pafesenger, 
 with all the fire-brands he might throw into my near or distant 
 Future, could appear but ludicrous, at a time when I was reflect- 
 ing 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, lighted 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 enlight- 
 ened Potentates of chemical nations do not enjoin it on their 
 chemical subjects, who in their decompositions 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 
 course of our return from Flatz to Neusattel, suffering or observ- 
 ing anything, except that I actually arrived there, and at the same 
 time saw the BUnd 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-doom, 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 HUtoriola ; 
 and in time coming, perhaps, still more rewarded through you, 
 ye Friends about Flatz, if in these pages you shall find any weU- 
 ground pruning-knives, whereby you may more readily outroot the 
 weedy tangle of Lies, which for the present excludes me from the 
 gallant Sohabaoker — Only this cursed Ferment still sits in my 
 
 to her daughters, 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 Ijegislative polisher, that so the little elf may have some- 
 thing to he shaping and manufaoturing beside its mother. And irhan the 
 
sohmelzle's johrnet to fletz. 288 
 
 head. Farewell then, so long as there are Atmospheres left us to 
 hreathe. I wish I had that Ferment out of my head. 
 
 Yours always, 
 
 AlIILA SCHMBLZLE. 
 
 P.S. — My Brother-in-law has kept his promise well, and Berga 
 is dancing. Particulars in my next ! 
 
 other young ones get a taste of sisterkin's taking, they all clap hands, and 
 cry : "Aha, Mother ! canst bake like Snky here V 
 
LIFE OF QTJINTTJS FIXLEIN, 
 
 DOWN TO OUE OWN TIMES; 
 
 EXTRACTED FB.OM 
 
 JIPTBEN LETTEE-BOXES BY JEAN PAUL. 
 
 LETTER TO MY FEIENDS, 
 
 INSTEAD or PBEFAOB. 
 
 Meeohahts, Anthora, 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 eacb on request, after the Fair, with his copy — in return for a trifling 
 consideration and don gratuit to printers, pressmen and other such persons. Eut 
 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 ejrtemal 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 garden ; and there 
 to nestle yourself so snugly, so homewise, in some furrow, that in looking out fi'om 
 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. 
 
LETTER TO MY FRIENDS. 285 
 
 TMs I shall now satisfactorily expound to men at large. 
 
 The Hero, the Eeformer, your Brutus, your Howard, your EepuhHcau, he 
 ■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 J^ed 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 slumbers flying; and 
 on his outspread pinions, oversleeps unconsciously the earthquakes and confla- 
 grations of Life, in his long fair dream of his ideal Motherland. — Alas! to 
 few is this dream granted; and these few are so often avfakened by Flying 
 Dogs II 
 
 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 o^ the Fishes ? To the whole 
 standing and writing host of heavy-laden State-domestics, Purveyors, Clerks of aU 
 departments, and aU the lobsters packed together heels over head into the Lobster- 
 basket of the Government office-rooms, and for refireshment, 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 aa foUows: To take a compound microscope, 
 and with it to discover, and convince themselves, that their drop of Burgundy is 
 properly a Eed Sea, that butterfly-dust is peacock-feathera, 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, hut little good-haps can make us happy. — Can I accomplish this, I 
 shall, through means of my Book, bring up for Posterity, a race of men finding 
 refreshment in all things ; in the waxmth 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 Eesidence, wMther the husband could 
 not be persuaded ; in the bloodletting-day of these their newsbringers ; in the day 
 of slaughtering, salting, potting ag^nst 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, roaring, immeasurable tree of Life, 
 but on one of its leaves, sews itself a nest together, and there lies snug. The 
 most essential sermon one could preach to our century, were a sermon on the J 
 duty of staying at home. 
 
 The third skyward road is the alternation between the other two. The fore- 
 
 ^ So are the Vampires called. 
 
286 JEAN PAUL FBIEDBICH RICHTER. 
 
 going second way is not good enoogh fat man, who here on Earth should take into 
 his hand not the Sickle only, but also the Plough. The^rai is too good for him. 
 He has not always the force, like Kogendas, in the midst of the Battle to compose 
 Battle-pieces; and, like Backhnysen in the Shipwreck, to dlntdh at no board but 
 the drawing-board to paint it on. And then hispafw are not less lasting than his 
 fatigma. Still oftener is Strength denied its Arena : it is but the smallest portion 
 of life that, to a working soul, offers Alps, Eevolutions, Ehine-falls, Worms Diets, 
 and Wars with Xerxes ; and for the whole it is better so : the longer portion of life 
 is a field beaten fiat as a threshing-floor. Without lofty Gothard Mountains ; often 
 it is a tedious ice-field, without a single ^cier tinged with dawn. 
 
 But even by walking, a man rests and recovers himself for chmbing*; by little 
 joys and duties, for great. The vi'CtoriouB 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 which his children may enact some good pieces from 
 the Children'8 Friend. Can he aecomplish 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 Boses 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' half-satirical half-philoso- 
 phical part of the Work, till that opportunity. 
 
 Here, out of respect for the rights of a Letter, the Author drops his half 
 anonymity,^ and for the first time subscribes himself with his whole true name, 
 
 JiHiit Paul PSiedbich Bichtes. 
 Hof in Voigthnd, 29(A June 1796. 
 
 ' Fixlein stands in the middle of the voliims; preceded by Bijier Mmtkeil fOir 
 M&dchen (A Jelly-course for Young Ladies); and followed by Some Jus he Tab- 
 LETTE far 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. — En. 
 
 2 J, P. H., Jean Paul Hasus, Jean Paul, &a. have in succession been Bichter's 
 signatures. At present even, his German designation, either in writing or speech^ 
 is never Bichter, but Jean Paul. — Ed. 
 
38r 
 
 LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 FIRST LETTER-BOX. 
 
 Doff-days Vacation. Visits, An Indigent of Quality, 
 
 EaiDiDs Zebedsus Fixlein hadgust for eight days been Quintus,' 
 and fairly commenced liis teaching duties, when Fortune tabled 
 out for him four refreshing courses and collations, besprinkled 
 with flowers and sugar. These were the four canicular weets. I 
 could find in my heart, at this hour, to pat the cranium of that 
 good-man who inyented 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 desiraes; 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 Sunday, 
 — 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 
 Flachsenflngen, the village Hukelum, the dog Schil, and the yean* 
 of Grace 1791. 
 
 " Manikin," said he to the Quintaner, for he Uked to speak 
 as Leve, children, and the people of Vienna do, in diminutives, 
 " Maaikin, 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, 
 
 ' For understanding many little tints wWoh occur in this Life of Fixlein, 
 it will be necessary to bear in mind the following particulars; A German 
 &ymnanum, in its complete state, appear.s to include eight Masters ; Eector, 
 Conreetor, Subrector, Quintus, Quartus, Tertius, &c., to, the Jmt or'Jowest, 
 T^G 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 
 Sector ; the Secundaner, by the Conrector, &o., and therefore the Qnai'taner 
 by the Quintus. In many cases, it would seem, the number of Teachers is only 
 six, ; but, in this Flachsenflngen Gymnasium, we have express evidence that 
 t^ere was no curtailment, — msitj^^- 
 
288 JEAN PAUL FBIEDKIOH EIOHIEH. 
 
 lackey, room-comrade, train-bearer and gentleman-in-waiting ; and 
 the Shook also was his manikin. 
 
 He stept slowly along, through the crisped cole-beds, overlaid 
 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 sMp 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 further- 
 more 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 Heaven 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 ? 
 
 " Dickens ! Thou already, Zebedaus !" said the mother, giving 
 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- 
 
LIFE or QUINTUS TIXLEIN. 289 
 
 essences, and bird-music, and butterfly-collections, was almost 
 half within the room : but I suppose I have not yet mentioned 
 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 Quests, 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 flowei-s 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 
 foi'ced to walk by the light of? Stood there not behind the pulpit- 
 stairs the saoristy-eabin, 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 Pfeifl'er's Critica Saara, had turned up leaf by leaf, in his early 
 years, excerpting therefrom the literal inversce, majuseulte, minusimlce, 
 and so forth, with an immensity of toil ? And could he not at 
 present, the sooner the more readily, have wished to cast this 
 alphabetic soft-fodder into the Hebrew letter-trough, whereto your 
 Oriental Ehizophagi (Eoot-eaters) are tied, especially 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 in- 
 vited by the Senior to come over in the afternoon ; and to them, 
 jt win be little less gratifying than if he had invited themselves. 
 
 D 
 
290 JEAN PAUL PKIEDEICH BICHIEH. 
 
 But wliat 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 economical ; 
 reads no books, not even mine ; inhabits, that is, watches like a 
 wardeness, quite alone, the thirteen void disfurnished chambers of 
 the Castle of Hukelum, which belongs to the Dragoon Eittmeister 
 Aufhammer, at present resident in his other mansion of Schadeck : 
 on occasion, she commands and feeds his soccagers and hand- 
 maids ; 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 Eitt-, 
 meisterinn Aufhammer'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, hut her 
 soul was soft ; she was modest, courteous and timid, but too much 
 so ; — cheerfully and coldly she received the most cutting humilia- 
 tions in Schadeck, and felt no pain, and not till some days after 
 did she see it all dearly, and then these cuts began sharply to 
 bleed, and she wept in her loneliness over her lot. 
 
 It is hard for me to give a light tone, after this deep one, and 
 to add, that Fixlein had been almost hi'ought 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 hei'bs, 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. 
 
LIFE OF QUIKTUS FIXIBIN. 291 
 
 began their Feast of Sweet Bread, their Feast of Honour for 
 Thiennette, their Grove-feast in the gai'den. 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 Oargons de la Maison-bouoJie I do not reckon) in his 
 kitchen, nor a Fruiterie of thirty-one human bipeds, nor a Pasti-y^ 
 cookeiT' of three-and-twenty, nor a daily expenditure of 887 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 toll. 
 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 Eittmeisterinn (for this lady used to hang her cast clothes 
 on Thiennette, as Catholics do their oast crutches and sores on 
 their patron Saints) was miich thicker. (Good women grudge 
 each other nothing, save only clothes, husbandsi and flax.j 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 : lie 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 honour- 
 ing. Farther,, the good mother read to him, as it were, the monu- 
 mental inscription 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 Aufhammer was called Egidius, and 
 was Fixlein's godfather: but be, — though the Bittmeisterinn 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 
 balefuUest. For, our Egidius Fixlein, with his Shock, which, by 
 reason of the French convulsions, had, in company with other 
 emigrants, run off from Nantes, was but lately retmned from, col- 
 
292 JEAN PAUL FMEDKICH BICHTEB. 
 
 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 
 ciying out to his attendant : " Coosh, Schil" [Gouche, Oilles), it 
 must apparently have been the Devil that had just then planted 
 the Lord of Aufhammer among the trees and hushes 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 moi-tal : he knew 
 not head or tail of what oouche signified; a word, which, in Paris, 
 even the plebeian dogs are now in the habit of saying to their va- 
 lets de ehiens. But there were three things which Von Aufhammer 
 never recalled; his error, his anger and his word. The provokee, 
 therefore, detei-mined that the plebeian 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 thu-d 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- 
 gliding about on tiptoe, " not to disturb him in studying his 
 Latin Bible" (the Vulgata), that is, in reading the Utteratur- 
 zeitung, 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 
 gi-ay 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 pro- 
 fessor, will scarcely deign to cast an eye on a pastor; but one, 
 who is himself looking up to a pai-sonage 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 Erlang, or the Berlin Friedrichs-strasse, and alighted in 
 Hukelum, — was for the Quintus a Temple of tlie Sun, and the 
 Senior a Priest of the Sun. To be Parson there himself, was a 
 thought ovei-laid 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 d! esprit: 
 people of office, especially of the same office, have more to tell 
 
LIJFB OF QDINTUS HXLEIN. 293 
 
 each other, namely, tlieir own history, than your idle May-chafers 
 and Court-celestiaJs, 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 
 Gukguk.l 
 
 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 
 mounted with our upper classes, — fSr instance with every Patri- 
 cian's son in Niirnberg, to whom the public must present 1000 
 florins for studj'ing 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 
 Eebuifus summed up,^ — against prescription, and lost none ex- 
 cept 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 Pro- 
 fessor and Miser, maintained in his enclosed court a whole com- 
 
 ' A university beer. 
 
 2 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 by 
 falddia, Inc. &o. 
 
294 BAN PAUL FBIEtmiOH BIOHTEB. 
 
 munity 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 midnight, the other after midnight, like nocturnal watch- 
 men ; one coat, in which one after the other they appeai-ed in 
 public, and which, like a watoh-ooat, was the national uniform of 
 the company ; and several other ones, Unities both of Interest and 
 Place. Nowhere can you collect the stress-memorials and siege- 
 atnedals of Poverty more pleasantly and philosophically than at 
 College ; the Academic burgher exhibits to us how many humor- 
 ists 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 eoro 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 
 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 foUow Nature, continued he, — "fietio 
 eequitur 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 Archimedes, be heaved aloft 
 to the hungry air-fishing society, where, according to ch-cum- 
 stances, the proper feudal name and title of possession failed 
 not to be awaiting her: for the updrawn fowls were now deno- 
 minated Christmas-fowls, now Forest-hens, Bailifi'-hens, Pente- 
 cost and Summer-hens. " I begin," said the angling lord of the 
 manor, " with taking Butoher-dites, for so we call the triple and 
 quintuple of the original quit-rent, when the vassal, as is the case 
 here, has long nfeglected 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 oi 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 punishment, in middle air : he followed the incomprehen- 
 
MFE OF QUINTCS rlXLElN. 295 
 
 sible direct ascension of tlie aeronautic animal, and at last des- 
 ci'ied at tlie upper window the attracting artist, and animal-mag- 
 netiser, 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 Regalities. 
 
 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 wifiidows 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 ana nature- 
 intoiTogating eye, visiting the white-muslin Thiennette. The mo- 
 ther 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 wotnen feel their hearts much more attracted 
 towstrds 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-cteuds, forked waterspouts, or 
 even reposing tornadoes. 
 
 Blessed Quintus ! on whose Life this otlier distinction like an 
 order of nobility does alsb shine, that thou canst tell it over to 
 thy mother; as, for exainple, this past afternoon in the parsonage. 
 Thy joy flows ihto another heart, and streams back from it, re- 
 doubled, into thy own. There is a closer approximating of hearts, 
 and also of sounds, than that of the Echo; the highest approxima- 
 tion melts Tone and Echo into Besonance together. 
 
 It is historically certain that both of them supped this evening; 
 and that instead of the whole dinner fragments which tomorrow 
 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 him- 
 self, there should no crum of the precious pastry be given, but only 
 table-bread without ^e crust. But the Schoolman 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 countei-part 
 of great men and geniuses, — ^Was inclined 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 
 
296 JEAN PAUL FKIEDBICH EIOHTEB. 
 
 whole, our Quintus had a touch of honour in him, and notwith-' 
 standing his thrift and sacred regard for money, he willingly gave 
 it away in cases of honour, and unwillingly in cases of overpower- 
 ing sympathy, which too painfully filled the cavities of his heart, 
 and emptied those of his purse. Whilst the Quintaner was exer- 
 cising the jus compascui on the cake, and six arms were peacefully 
 resting on Thiennette's free-tahle, Fixlein read to himself and the 
 company the Flachsenfingen Address-calendar; any higher thing, 
 except Meusel's Oelehrtes Deutschland} he could not figure : the 
 Kammerherrs and Raths of the Calendar went tickling over his 
 tongue like the 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 hfe, 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 falling 
 forwards, fell obliquely to the right, as it were after his hat : for 
 he had not risked talcing a stick with him ; and hat and stick were 
 his proppage and balance-wheel, in short, his bowing-gear, with- 
 out 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 Hai-vest sermon for the scaly cake ; which 
 appeared to her at once kind and tedious. Young women without 
 the polish of high life reckon tedious pedantiy, merely like snuff- 
 ing, one of the necessary ingredients of a man : they reverence us 
 infinitely; and as Lambert could never speak to the King of Prus- 
 sia, by reason of his sun-eyes, except in the dark, so they, I be- 
 lieve, often like better, — also by reason of our sublime air, — ^if tliey 
 
 ' Literary Germany ; a work (I believe of no great merit) whicli Eichter 
 often twitches in the same style. — m>. 
 
LIFE OH QUINTTJS FIXLEIN. 297 
 
 can catch us in the dark too. Him Thiennette edified hy the 
 Imperial History of Herr vou Aufhammer 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 Suh- 
 rector; how, for instance, he was at present vicariating in the 
 Second Form, and ruling over scholars as long in stature as him- 
 self. And tlius did the two in happiness, among red besen-blossoms, 
 red may-chafers, before the red of the twilight burning lower and 
 lower on the horizon, waDc to and fro in the garden; 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; secondlyj 
 he had notliing, 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 — Fisleinl 
 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, andnpresented 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 Timo- 
 the Eon de Beaumont,' but a smooth, fair-haired, white-capped 
 dove ; that she sought more to please her own sex tlian 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 cheapening, I 
 should, on these grounds, have been out with my heaW. — 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 chil- 
 dren, 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 mufi", and there 
 played with them in secret ; had I, lastly, considered that we were 
 here standing before the glass-house, now splendent in the ena- 
 mel 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, 
 ' See Sehmelzle's Jowrney, p. 264. — Ed, ' 
 
298 JEAN PA0L FBIEDBICH HICHTEB. 
 
 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 
 him back. Softened, without knowing the cause — (accordingly 
 he gave his mother a kiss)-^and blessed without having had a lite- 
 rary conversation; and dismissed with a freight of humble compli- 
 ments, which he was to disload on the morrow before the Dragoon 
 Eittmeisterinn, 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 droop- 
 ing 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 Schadeok, to thy 
 patroness. All prosperity attend thee, thou foohsh Quintus ! — 
 
 SECOND LETTEBrBOX. 
 Frmi. votl Aufltammer. ChUdhood-Besanance, AidTwrcrUft, 
 
 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 paralltl-ruler the hands of his careful mother had been, for 
 she would not send him to the Eittmeisterinn " Uke a runagate 
 dog." The Shook was incarcerated, the Quintaner talten with 
 him, as likewise many wholesome rules from Mother Fixlein, how 
 to conduct himself towards the Eittmeisterinn. But the son an- 
 swered : " Mamma, when a man has been in company, Uke me, 
 with high people, with a Fraulein Thiennette, he soon knows whom 
 he is spealdng to, and what polished manners and Saver di veaver 
 (Savoir viure) i-equire." 
 
 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 Aufhammer a 
 
LIFE 0¥ QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 299 
 
 lipe flowei', with (adipose) neck -bulb, and tuberosity (of lard). 
 Already, in the half of her body, cut away from life by the apo- 
 plexy, she lay upon her lard -pillow but as On a softer 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 Quintua 
 with the back-bowing air of a patroness ; yet she brightened into 
 a look of kindliness at his disloading of the compliments 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 coifee, and from the Town-Syndic (he 
 drove a considerable wholesale and retail trade in Hamburg can- 
 dles) 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 Schadeck, 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, according 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 straightway came forth 
 with his petition to the noble lady, signifying that "indeed he 
 
300 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRIOH EICHTEB. 
 
 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 instruc- 
 tions from several sound teachers of the faith, well knowing that 
 the Consistorium, in its examinations as to purity of doctrines 
 was now more strict than formerly." 
 
 The sick lady required him to make a proof-shot, namely, to 
 administer to her a sick-bed &hortation. By Heaven ! he admin- 
 istered to her one of the best. Her pride of birth now crouched "' 
 f before his pride of office and priesthood ; for though he could not, 
 Hwith the Dominican monk, Alanus de Bupe, believe that a priest 
 j 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 
 Ifall-in with Hostiensis, who shows that the priestly dignity is 
 I 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 Kittmeisterinn — slie shrinks into absolute nothing before 
 a parson. 
 
 In the servants' hall he applied to the lackeys for the last an- 
 nual series of the Hamburg Political Journal; perceiving, that with 
 these historical documents of the time, they were scandalously 
 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. f 
 
 On a Triumphal Car, full-laden with laurel, and to which Hopes 
 alone were yoked, he drove home at night, and by the road ad- 
 vised 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, fire- 
 proof joys, that is to say, Employments. For he was writing, as 
 I am doing. Truly, if Xerxes proposed a prize for the invention 
 of a new pleasure, any man who had sat down to write his thoughts 
 ' on the prize -question, had the new pleasure aheady among his 
 fingers. I know only one thing sweeter than maldng a book, and 
 that is, to project one. Fixlein used to write Uttle works, of the 
 
LIFE 0¥ QUINIUS PIXLEIN. 301 
 
 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 literaiy ranks 
 of his book-board. Every one thought they were novelties printed 
 in writing types. He had laboured, — I shall omit his less interest- 
 ing performances, — at a Collection of Errors of the Press, in German 
 writings : he compared Errata with each other ; showed which 
 occurred most frequently; observed 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 eveiy Tetter 
 was to be found in their Bible ; for example, the Aleph (the A) 
 43,377 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 consonants 
 enter (there is just one, Jeremiah xxi. 7) ; which is the middle 
 letter in certain books (in the Pentateuch, it is in Leviticus xi. 
 42, the noble V'), 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 j 
 how often each vowel ? Thousands of Bible-Christians go out l 
 of the world, without ever knowing that the German A occurs i 
 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 
 Eeviewers would publicly let me know, if on a more accurate sum- 
 mation they find this number incorrect.^ 
 
 Much also did the Quintus collect: he had a fine Almanac [• 
 Collection, a Catechism and Pamphlet Collection ; also a Collection 1 
 of Advertisements, which he began, is not so incomplete as you j 
 most frequently see such things. He puts high value on his I 
 Alphabetical Lexicon of German Subscribers for Boohs, 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 
 
 ' As in the State. — [V. or Von, de, of, being the symbol of the nobility, the 
 middle order of the State. — Ed.] 
 
 " In Brlang, 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 accord- 
 ingly given in the first Edition of this Work, p. 81), the above-mentioned 
 32B, 01 6 ; which (uncommonly singular) is precisely the sum of all the letters in 
 the Eoran put together. See LvdMa Beschr. des Twrh. Jlddie (Liideke's De- 
 scription of the Turkish Empire. New edition, 1780). 
 
302 JEAN PAUL FEIEDKIOH BICHIBR. 
 
 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 Literai-y r^ublio 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 Giitze, 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 mus- 
 ter-r(Mls and matriculations of other kinds of Learned; whereof 
 he proposed a few : for example, of the Learned, who were un- 
 leai-ned ; of those who were entire rascals ; of such as wore their 
 own hair, — of cue-preachers, cue-psaJmists, 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, un- 
 less the Beggar Thomas Parr might be adduced; of the Learned 
 who wrote a more abominable hand than the other Learned (where- 
 of we know only Eolfinken and his letters, which were as long 
 as his hands') ; or of the Learned who had dipt nothing from 
 each other but the beard (whereof no instance is known, save 
 that of Philelphus and Timotheus?). 
 
 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 Lettrea- 
 at the expense of his jog-trot officialities, to eoncert-elocks, which, 
 though striking their hours in flute -melodies, are worse time- 
 keepers than your gross stupid steeple-clocks. 
 
 To return to St. Clar.a's day. Fixlein, after such, mental exer- 
 tions, bolted out under the music-bushes and rustlingrtrees ; and 
 returned not again ovit of warm Nature, tiU plate and chair were 
 aheady 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 ehild'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 
 
 ' Paravicmi Singularia de viris Claris. CeM. I. 2. 
 
 ' Emsd. Cent. II. Philelphus, quarrelled with the Greek about the quantity 
 qf a syllable ; the prize or bet was the beard of the vanquished. I'lmoiieus 
 lost his. 
 
LIFE 01' QUINlnS nXLEIN. 303 
 
 leaves, which merit our undivided attention. For such leaves ex- 
 clusively, containing scenes, acts, plays of his childhood, he used 
 chronologically to file and arrange in separate drawers in a little 
 child's-desk of his ; and thus to divide his Biography, as Moser did 
 his Publicistic Materials, into separate letter-boxes. He had boxes 
 or drawers for memorial-letters of his twelfth, of his thirteenth, 
 fourteenth, &o. 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 heck, most 
 particularly beg, that, before doing so on account of my Chapters 
 being called Letter-boxes, they would have the goodness 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. — good mother, rather thank God 
 for it !— 
 
 After breakfast, to fortify himself with new vigour for his desk, 
 he for some time strolled idly over the house, and, like a PoUce 
 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 deUght in 
 the red acorn-blockhouse, in the sparwork glued together out of 
 white chips and husks of potatoe- 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 
 
304 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEIOH KICHIEB. 
 
 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 : balconies, 
 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 j — from this Joy an adept in the art of education might easily 
 have prophesied his turn for household contraction ; 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 Sedes Explo- 
 ratoria 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 won- 
 dered 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 
 my table, and which had belonged to his poor drowned brother. 
 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 be- 
 take him with new heart to his desk, and produce something quite 
 peculiar — petitions for church-livings. He took the Address-calen- 
 dar, 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 pre- 
 sent 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. 
 
LIFE or QUINTUS FIXLBIN. 305 
 
 In truth, if among the Calmuoks.the turning ofacalabashl stands 
 in 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 com- 
 mon where he had so often driven his snails to pasture ; visited 
 the peasant, who, from school-times upwards, had been wont, to 
 the amazement of the rest, to thmt^ 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, a fire had de- 
 stroyed 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 Itnevr 
 exactly how old they were; and the memory of our Quintus him- 
 self vibrated between adopting the thirty-third year and the thirty- 
 second.) In consequence, the preaching had now to be carried 
 on where foi:merly 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-chiirch-pepple stood on the one 
 sheaves-loft, the Schadeck womankind on the other; and their hus- 
 bands 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 Verhs with Thiennette. 
 
 These voyages of discoveiy 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 
 
 * Their prayer-barrel, Kuriidu, 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. 
 
 2 In German, as in some other languages, the common mode of address is 
 by the third person : plural, it indicates respect ; singulai*, command : the se- 
 coTid person is also used ; plural, it generally denotes indifference ; sinfrular, 
 p'e.at familiarity, and sometimes its product, contempt. Dutzevfreund, Thou- 
 iTig-fHend, is the strictest term of intimacy ; and among the wild Burschen 
 (Students) many a duel (happily, however, often ending like the Folemo-Mid- 
 dinia in one drop of blood ) has been fought, in consequence of saying Du (thou) 
 and Sie (they) in the wrong place.— Ed. 
 
 X 
 
306 JEAN PAUL rRIEDRICH BICHTER. 
 
 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 Eighteous 
 man behind the thin wall of Life), an outstretched blooming Pa- 
 radise I mean, she loved him a little. 
 
 He might have known it, perhaps. But to his compressed de- 
 light he gave freer vent, as he went to bed, by early recollections 
 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 
 rosaiy, including fourteen Bible Proverbs, the first verse of the 
 Psalm, " All people that on Earth," the Tenth Commandment, 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 Semler stupid books. 
 Moored in the haven of the down-waves, he was already over with 
 his evening supplication; and could now, 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 Iiife, 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 Quin- 
 tus, 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 monoto- 
 nous 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 campaigns 
 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 
 
LIFE OF QtnSTUS TIXLEIN. 307 
 
 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 fi-agments of these our 
 trophies, maliciously torn down hy the French, were scarcely dis- 
 cernible ; nay, with old plans he could clrive 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 circumstance 
 that it — cost him nothing. His attachment to gratis reading was 
 decided. And does not this throw light on the fact, that he, as 
 Morhof advised, was wont sedulously to collect the separate 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 Idng), 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 GeiTQau would translate these api-ons: in- 
 deed I am wilhng to believe that a good version of more than one 
 of such paper aprons might contribute to elevate our Literature 
 (this Muse d belles fesses) , 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 vei-y 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 blossoming ; 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 peeking at the snout of old Sohil; and 
 then with the right hand — with the left he was holding his pipe 
 — proceed, so undisturbed, so intrenched, so eloud-capt, without 
 the smallest breath of frost, to the highest enterprise which a 
 Quintus can attempt, — to writing the Class-prodromus of the 
 Flaohsenfingen Gymnasium, namely, the eighth part thereof. I 
 hold th.e first printing in the history of a literary man to be more 
 important than the Jirst printing in the history ofLettei-s : Fixlein 
 
308 JEAN PAUL FBIEDEIOH BIOHTEB. 
 
 could not sate himself with specifying what he purposed, God 
 willing, in the following year, to treat of; and accordingly, morej 
 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 
 longer look at it, that so, when printed, he might stand astonished 
 at his own thoughts. And now he could take the Leipzig Fair 
 Catalogue, which he pui'chased 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 bu-d, move up and down in 
 his cage. On the warm smoke, the long galaxy of street-lamps 
 was gleaming ; and red on his bed-ciirtains 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, un- 
 covered, fresh, green and balmy, standing afar off before him. 
 Prom 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^ 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 Pythagoras'-legs, and 
 golden Philistine-mice of wealthier capitalists. — Then came his 
 mother, bringing him both Christianity and clothes : for in draw- 
 ing on his trousers, she easily recapitulated the Ten Command- 
 ments, and, in tying his garters, the Apostles' Creed. So soon as 
 candle-light was over, and day-light come, he clambers to the ai-rn 
 of the settle, and then measures the nocturnal growth of the yel- 
 low wiry grove of Christmas-Birch ; and devotes faj- less attention 
 
 ' These antique Christmas festivities Riohter describes with equal gusto in 
 another work (Bnefe und ZuhUnftige Zeienslemf) ; where the Christ-child 
 (falsely reported to the young ones, to have been seen flying through the air, 
 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 suddenly produces, &o, &c, are specified with the same fidelity as here. — Ed. 
 
LIFE or QTJINIUS FIXLEIN. 309 
 
 than usual to tlie little white winter-flowerage, which the seeds 
 shaken fi-om the hird-cage are sending forth in the wet joints of 
 the window-panes. — I nowise grudge J. J. Eousseau his Flora Pe- 
 trinmlaris ;^ hut let him also allow our Quintus his Window-flora. 
 — There was no such thing as school all day; so he had time 
 enough to seek his Flescher (his brother) , and commence (when 
 could there be finer frost for it?) the slaughtering of their winter- 
 meat. Some days hefore, the hrother, 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 must call 
 the Professor of Gardening, 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 Rupreoht with his bells. In the dusk, our little 
 Quintus talces an apple; divides it into all the figures of stereome- 
 try, and spreads the fragments in two htaps on the table : then as 
 the lighted candle enters, he starts up in amazement at the unex- 
 pected present, and says to his hrother : " 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 hes in wait 
 the whole evening. 
 
 AUout eight o'clock, — ^here he walks chiefly by the chi'onicle 
 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 ; hut the awakening gives hack 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 heai-ts ; and which yet, in the moon- 
 light 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 ! 
 
 ' Which he purposed to make for his Island of St, Pierre in the Bienne 
 Lake, 
 
^10 JEAN PAUL PBIEDBTOH BIOHIEE. 
 
 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-frostj rushing, intoxicated, 
 shouting, tliey hurr'y down-stairs into the dark room. Fancy riots 
 in the pastry and fruit-perfume of the still eclipsed treasures, and 
 paints her air-castles by the glimmering of the Hesperides-fruit 
 with which the Biroh-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 Coh- 
 rectorship, and a table-clock. 
 
 FOURTH LETTER-BOX. 
 
 OJice-hro^age. Discovery of the promised Secret. SaTis von Fiiclislein, 
 
 Fob while the Quintus, in his vapoury chamber, was thus running 
 over the sounding-board of his early years, the Rathsdiener, or. 
 City-officer, entered with a lantern and the Presentation ; and be- 
 hind him the courier of the Frau von Aufhammer with a note and 
 a table-clock. The Rittmeisterinn had transformed her payment 
 for the Dog-days sickbed-exhortation into a Christmas present; 
 which consisted, _^r«J, of a table-clock, with a wooden ape thereon^ 
 starting out when the hours struck, and drumming along with 
 evei-y stroke; secondly, of the Conrectorate, which she had pro- 
 cured 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 Beichsanzeiger, or Imperial Indicator. — I have al- 
 ready mentioned, in the Second Letter-Box, that the Town-Syndic 
 drove a trade in Hamburg candles ; and the then Burgermeister 
 in coffee-beans, which he sold as well whole as ground. Their 
 joint traffic, however, which they carried on exclusively, was in 
 the eight School-offices of Flachsenfingen : the other members of 
 the Council acting only as bale-wrappers, shopmen and account- 
 ants in the Council wareroom. A Council-house, indeed, is like 
 an India-house, where not only resolutions or appointments, but 
 also shoes and cloth, are exposed to sale. Properly speaking, the 
 Councillor derives his freedom of office-trading from that principle 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 311 
 
 of the Boman law: Ouijus est donandi, eidem et vendendi jus est, that 
 is to say, He who has the right of giving 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-word on Apjjointment-irohers in general. 
 
 My chief anxiety is lest the Academy-product-sale-Commissionl 
 of the State carry on its office-trade too slackly. And what but the 
 commonweal must suffiir 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, pai'ty recom- 
 mendations, and bowings and cringings ? Is it not a contradiction, 
 to charge titulary offices dearer than real ones ? Should one not 
 rather expect that the real Hofrath would pay higher by the aU 
 terum tantum than the mere titulary Hofrath? — Money, among 
 European nations, is now the equivalent and representative of 
 value in all things, and consequently in understanding; the rather 
 as a head is stamped on it : to pay down the purchase-money of 
 an office is tlierefore neither more nor less than to stand an examen 
 rigorosum, which is held by a good schema examinandi. To invert 
 this, to pretend exliibiting your qualifications, in place of these 
 their surrogates, and assignates and monnoie de confiance, is simply 
 to resemble the crazy philosophers in Oulliver'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 tiy- 
 ing to fall back into the bai'barous times of trade by barter, when 
 the Romans, instead of the figured cattle on then- 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 devis- 
 ing new offices, to stand and sell them under the booth of his Bal- 
 daquin, I have set myself to do something of the like. This I shall 
 now at least calmly propose ; not vexing my heart whether Govern- 
 ments choose to adopt it or not. As our Sovereign will not allow 
 us to multiply offices purely for sale, nay, on the contrary, is day 
 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 above French 
 method, therefore, will not apply, could we not at least contrive to 
 invent some Virtues harmonising with the offices, along with which 
 
 * Borrowed from the "Imperial Mine-produet-sale-Commission," in Vienna : 
 in their very names these Vienna people show taste. 
 
812 JEAN PAITL PBIEDRICH EIOHTEK. 
 
 tliey miglit be sold as titles ? Might we not, for instance, with the 
 office of a Eeferendary, put off at the same time a titular Incor- 
 ruptibility, for a fair consideration ; and so that this virtue, as not 
 belonging to the office, must be separately paid for by the candi- 
 date ? Such a market-title and patent of nobility could not but be 
 ornamental to a Eeferendary. We forget that in fonner times 
 such high titles were appended to all posts whatsoever : the scho- 
 lastic Professor then wtote himself (besides his official designa- 
 tion) " The Seraphic," " The Incontrovertible," " The Penetrat- 
 ing;" the King wrote himself, " The Great," " The Bald," " The 
 Bold," and so also did the Eabbins. Could it be unpleasant to 
 gentlemen in the higher stations of Justice, if the titles of Impar- 
 tiality, Eapidity, &c. might be conferred on them by sale, as well 
 as the posts themselves ? Thus with the appointment of a Kam- 
 merrath, or Councillor of Eevenue, the virtue of Patriotism might 
 fitly be conjoined; and I believe, few Advocates would gradge pur- 
 chasing the title of Integrity (as well as their common one of Go- 
 vernment-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 Virtue-boai-d or 
 Moral Address Department, with some half dozen secretaries, who, 
 for a small salary, might devise various virtues for the vai-ious 
 posts. Were I in their place, I should hold a good prism before 
 the white ray of Virtue, and divide it completely. Pity that it were 
 not crimes we wanted — their .subdivision I mean ; — our country 
 
 .Judges might then be selected for this purpose. For in their tri- 
 bunals, where only inferior jurisdiction, 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 Solfinlcenism, which our Jmists have learned from 
 
LIFE OF QUINIUS FIXLEIN. 313 
 
 the great Sin-cutters, St. Aiigustin and liis Sorbonne, who together 
 have carved more sins on Adam's Sin-apple tlian ever Eolfinken 
 did faces on a cherrystone. 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 oommunit}' a Hamel's iZaJ-and- 
 Child-catcker ; or a Weissen's Child' s-/riend, — this to the Council 
 can make no difference ; seeing the Schoolmaster 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 reoreatipn and ornament, would at 
 the very least exclude the duller, cooler head, who properly foirms 
 the true care and profit of the State ; as your costly carat-pearl is 
 good for show alone, but coarse grain,5pearls 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 school- 
 master go through the duty of firking one or two young pei-sons 
 of his class in their presence, by way of trial, to see what is in 
 him. 
 
 ^nd of the Exlra-word on Ajp^ointmeM-hrohers in general. 
 
 Now again to our histoiy ! 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 
 veiy 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 positively lay 
 it open, nay hang a reverberating-lamp over it. 
 
 In medical history, it is a well-known fact that in certain fami- 
 lies the people all die precisely at the same age, just as in these 
 families they are all born at the same age (of nine mouths) ; nay, 
 from Voltaire, I recollect one family, the members of which at the 
 same age all killed themselves. Now, in the Fixleinic lineage, it 
 
314 JEAN PAUL FEIEDBICH EIOHTEB. 
 
 was the custom that the male ascendants uniformly 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. Tme 
 Philosophy explains the matter thus : " The first two or three 
 times, it happened purely by accident; 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 affau- ? 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 
 exceptioai and perished before the thirties. Fourthly, on this 
 ground : When a boy he had fallen sick of sorrow, on the veiy 
 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 shp. Fifthly, the church-books being des- 
 troj'ed, and with them the certainty of his age, he could never fall 
 into a right definite deadly fear : " It may be," 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, "if I am not to be 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 of 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 themselves, 
 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 be- 
 come Hukelum Parson ; especially, as Astmann's Death-angel, ac- 
 cording to sure intelligence, was opening more and more widely 
 
LIFE OF QUINlnS FIXLEIN. 316 
 
 tlie door of tliis spiritual' sheepfold. " If the fellow weather ano- 
 ther 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 of 
 manners, he might have somewhat refined himself. To our poor 
 QuintuB, whom no mortal disliked, and who again could hate no 
 mortal, he alone bore a gi'udge ; simply because Fixldn did not 
 write \drase\i FilcTisUiji, and had not chosen along with him to pur- 
 chase 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 of 
 his pedagogic talents. • 
 
 A Oatherinenhof, anAnnenhof, an Elizabethhof, Sti-alenhof and 
 Petershof, all these Russian pleasure palaces, a man can dispense 
 with (if not despise), who has a room, in which on Christmas-eve 
 he walks about with a Presentation in his hand. The new Con- 
 reotor now longed for nothing but — daylight : joys always (cares 
 never) nibbled from him, like sparrows, his sleep-grains ; and to- 
 night, moreover, the registrator of his glad time, the elock-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 be 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 
 eat, 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 sen- 
 timental people very seldom are, — thanlcful : 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, 
 
316 JEAN PAUL FEIEDEIOH ElOHTEE. 
 
 was suspended, many a well-filled trough with good canaiy-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. 
 — Oh Fixlein's entrance, as was at all times customaiy, 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 Flescher not at all. Fixlein first took his 
 victuals, and then signified that he was made Conrector. " 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 
 Conreotorate ; for he was in the habit of advancing all instalment- 
 dues to his ward, at an interest of four and a half per cent. Fifty 
 gulden he had already lent the Quintus on his advancement to the 
 Quiniusship : of these the interest had to be duly paid ; yet, on 
 the day of payment, the Quintus always got some abatement; be- 
 ing wont every Sunday after dinner to instruct his guardian's 
 daughter in arithmetic, writing and geograpliy. 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 crookedlj', or sub- 
 tracted 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 tlie 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 Fleschei' — simply because his wife was dead — ^had 
 constantly been in the habit of seai-ching 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 Con- 
 rectorate, Eva had become unusually red. 
 
 When she went after breakfast to bring in coffee, which the 
 Ward had to drinlj. down to the gi-ounds : " 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 sufi'er 
 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." 
 
LTFE or QUIHTUS WXLEIN. 317 
 
 " HeiT Regiments-Quartermaster," said Fixleiu (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 Flescher; " with this 
 crook, thy father knocks thy brains out, if thou but think of a 
 learned man. Now malce 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 of fifty florins 
 Frankish, and clutch the pedagogic sceptre, and become coadjutor 
 of the Rector, that is, Conrector. We may assert, that it is with 
 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 debtor 
 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 haudfuls of this gold-dust, to cany in and wash 
 in my biographical gold-hut. That Sunday, on the contraiy, is 
 very metalhferous : do hut 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 ; 
 
318 JEAN PAUL PHIEDBIOH BICHTEH. 
 
 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 j'ounger than a Icing, who, in 
 his whole life has never been aught else except a — crown-prince. 
 
 FIFTH LETTEE-BOX. 
 Cantata-Sunday. Two Testaments. Pontac; Blood; Love, 
 
 Thb Spring months clothe the earth in new variegated hues; but 
 man they usually dress in black. Just when our icy regions are 
 becoming fi-uitful, 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 of tears. But, 
 on the other hand, this very upblooming 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 A.pril, 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 :Ilittmeisterinn ; 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 be- 
 fore 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 tlie apoplectic thrice. 
 
 Men are apt to postpone their last will as long as their hetter 
 one : the Rittmeisterinn 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 be- 
 came corpse-watcher, reminded the patient of the poor Conrector, 
 and of his meagre hunger-bitten existence, and of the scanty ali- 
 ment and board-wages which Fortune had thrown him, and of his 
 empty Future, where, like a drooping yellow plant in the pai'ohed 
 deal-box of the schoolroom between scholars and creditors, he 
 must languish to the end. Her own poverty ofiered her a model 
 of his ; and her inward tears were the fluid tints with which she 
 coloured her picture. As the Rittmeisterinn's testament 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 
 
LIFE OF QUIKTUS FIXLEIN. 319 
 
 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 
 Notai-y had blabbed how much it was), yet almost with every 
 which he masoretically excerpted from his German Bible, and en- 
 tered in his Masoretic Work, great drops fell down on his pen, 
 and made his black ink pale. His sorrow was not the gorgeous 
 sorrow of the Poet, who veils the gaping wounds of the departed 
 in the. winding-sheet, and breaks the ciy of anguish in soft tones 
 of plaintiveness ; nor the sorrow of the Philosopher, who, through 
 one open gi-ave, 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 brealc in his mourning ; and, like a woman, 
 he was that very evening capable of sketching some plans for the 
 future employment of his legacy. 
 
 Four weeks after, to wit, on the 6th 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 miiTor-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-godchild-money, 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 stifiened 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 ti-ue condolence ; which in women 
 
320 JEAK PAUL rHIEBRIOH BIOHTEE. 
 
 dissipates envy, and comes easier to them than congi'atulation, 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 Conreotor 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 
 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 chivahic 
 beds, into which, by means of a little stair without balustrades, 
 you can easily ascend ; and in which you, properly spealdng, sleep 
 always at least one story above ground. Nazianzen informs us 
 {Orat. X VI.) 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 pei-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 tliis 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 Inscription, for 
 older than he was : but against this venia mtatis, 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 Schadeok 
 
LIFE OF QUINTCS FIXLEIN. 321 
 
 called, and delivered to tlie 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 
 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 un- 
 ravelled — ^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^ — 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 tlaese lasted longer : Philo- 
 sophers contend for thousands of years over philosophical ques- 
 tions ; and it seems an unaccountable thing, therefore, that Ad- 
 vocates should attempt to end their juristical questions in a space 
 of eighty, or even sometimes of sixty years. But the professors of 
 law are not to blame for this : on the other hand, as Lessing asserts 
 of Truth, that not ihj& 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 deciding, but by the inves- 
 tigation of a juridical truth — which is called pleading and pi-actis- 
 ing — and he would willingly consent to approximate to Truth for- 
 ever, Uke 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 Hkes. 
 
 The Schadeok sei-vant 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 capital- 
 ists of the world, held his short gold-roll like a scepti-e 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. 
 
 ' 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 could be claimed by him; since, according to our fiction, at the 
 making of the testament he was not even one year old. 
 
 Y 
 
322 JEAN PAUL raiEDBIOH KIOHTKB. 
 
 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 
 the monied Conreotor 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 aggravation. 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 Imagi- 
 nation ; but as the child, as the savage, as the peasant, as the 
 woman does, in the plane octavo-miiTor 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 Fortune 
 
 is a cistern-wheel that empties its water in our eyes But the 
 
 friendly Genius of this ten'estrial, or rather aquatic Ball — for, in 
 the physical and in the moral world, diere 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 towai-ds this medicinal 
 Genius on the on« 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 nerv^ 
 ous vertigos of life, will instantly supply the place of Philosophy. 
 Christianity, Judaism, Paganism and Time ; — liquor, as 1 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 Pontae- 
 from the town. " I must have a Cantata merry-making," said he ; 
 " if it be my last day, let it be my gayest too !" I could wish he' 
 had given a larger order; but he kept the bit of moderation between 
 his teeth at all times ; even in a threatened sham-death-night, and 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 323 
 
 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 purj)le Pontac arrived at a time when Fixlein could com- 
 pai'e the redehalk-drawings and red-letter-titles of joy, which it 
 would bring out on the cheeks of its drinker and drinkeresses, — 
 with the Evening-cai-nation of the last clouds about the Sun. . . ; j 
 
 I declai-e, among all the spectators of this History, no one can 
 be thinking more about poor Thiennette than I ; nevertheless, it 
 is not permitted me to bring her out from her tiring-room to my 
 historical scene, before the time. Poor girl ! The Conrector can- 
 not wish more warmly than his BiAsrapher, 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 Thien- 
 nette'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 Eittmeister rather made 
 to bleed than alleviated, swept all away from her, occupations ex- 
 cepted ; 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 eyeUds 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 ofTer his thanks, — and tonight also — ^his Pontac. Three 
 Pontac decanters and three wine-glasses were placed outside on 
 the projecting window-sill of his cottage ; and every time he re- 
 turned 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 back into the village^ In the north-west corner 
 
334 JEAN PAUL FRIBDRICH BIOHTEE. 
 
 bloomed an aeacia-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 Y^ide-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 De- 
 stroying 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 woundings — this day's 
 included — had taken from them. Fixlein, after his first terroiv^ 
 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 flrst time he had ever looked at her : 
 he was now among the thirties ; and he still continued 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 
 Conreetor plucked up courage to — turn, to come back, and employ 
 the resuscitating means of coughing, sneezing, tramplin'g and 
 calling to his Shock, in stronger and stronger doses on the fair 
 sleeper. ' To take her by the hand, and, witii some medical apo- 
 logy, gently pull her out of sleep, this was an audacity of which 
 the Conreetor, 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 tiiy 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 
 wounds ! — ^And yet was the smiling friend of thy youth the fah'est 
 object which thy eye could light on, when it sank from the hanging 
 garden of Dreams into this lower one round thee. 
 
 She herself was little conscious, — and the Conreetor not at all, 
 -—that she was bending her flower-leaves imperceptibly towards a 
 terrestrial body, namely towards Fixlein : she resembled an Italian 
 flower, that contains cunningly concealed within it a newyear"? 
 gift, which the receiver knows not at first how to extract. But 
 now the golden chain of her late kind deed attracted her as well 
 towards him, as him towards her^ — She at once gave her eye and 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS PIXLEJN. 325 
 
 her voice a mask of joy ; for she did not put her tears, as Catholics 
 do those of Christ, in r&Uo-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 banquet 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 aU 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 farther 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 Fraulein. I 
 aver, that, at the banquet-board of the wine, at the window-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 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 boiling throilgh his heart, 
 and threatening piece by piece to Inelt it and bear it away. — A. 
 candle stood without among the three bottles, like Eeason amolig 
 the Passions ; on this account the Conrector looked without intei-- 
 mission 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. 
 
 Evei-y minute was a Federation-festival, and every second a 
 Preparation -Sabbath for it. The Moon was gleaftiing from th© 
 
aatj JEAN PAUL FBIEDRICH RICHTEK. 
 
 evening dew, and the Pontao from their eyes, and the hean-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 heilrt 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 elec- 
 tric 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 everything, and 
 changes all sorrows into chaorms. Good sex ! I too consider every 
 sister in misfortune as fair; and perhaps thou wouldst desei-ve 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 frapae in wax, to teach his pupils how to 
 cure them, I also, thou good sex, am representing in little figures 
 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 Eittmeisterinn, when the feverish watching 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, uncon- 
 sciously quick drops often trickled over her cheeks, while in 
 thought she prefigured the heavy, cumbrous dressing of her be- 
 nefactress for the coflin. 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 heai-t to her own, wished 
 that she herself shpuld embrace her, O then, that instant, keen 
 and tearful she pressed her warm, lips on the colder, — and she was 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 327 
 
 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 tlie 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 Fixleiu's warai 
 soul : " O thou forsaken one beside me ! No happy accident, no 
 twilight hast thou, like that now glimmering in the heayens, 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 noble- 
 man will seek her, anc^ ihe 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 forth^wth conducted his friend (for 
 a bashful man may in an hour and a half be transformed into the 
 boldest, and then continues so) back to the last flask, that all 
 these upsprouting thistles and passion-flowers of sorrow might 
 thei-ewith be swept away. I remarlc, 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 veiy 
 syllogism. — 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 for- 
 ever a youth; and is, what other men are only once, namely in love, 
 — or only after Pontac, namely intoxicated, — all his life long. Fix- 
 lein, who had been no poet in the morning, now became one at 
 night: wine made him pious and soft; the Harmonica -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 moisp. 
 
 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 ; oa the one moun- 
 
328 JBAN PAUL EBIBDRICH KICHTEE. 
 
 tain was the twilight sinking togethei-, 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 Mem Tehel 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 pricldy 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; trem- 
 bling' 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 
 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,' where the faintest 
 breath bodies itself forth into a sound. The good Conreetor 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 
 gleajm of the twilight, ajid said (and here for unspeakable love the 
 tears were running warm over his cheeks) : " Ah, I will give you 
 ali; 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 perceived 
 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- 
 
 ' In St. Paul's Churoll at Londbn, where the slightest whisper sounds over, 
 Eioross a space of US feet. 
 
tlfE OF QUINTUS MXLEIN. 329 
 
 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 toge- 
 ther by lying in water, and get back their tones. — Before such a 
 magic form, before such » pure heavenly love, her sympathising 
 friend was melted between the flames of joy and grief; 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 aU-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. 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 spas- 
 modically round the last heart in this world, round the last rap- 
 ture 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 betrothment, 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 everlasting Morning ; 
 and the stars quivered joyfully asunder; and sank, resolved into 
 beams, down into the hearts of men. — The Moon, with her foun- 
 tain 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-fa<!e smiling in love of man. — 
 
 Under this hght, they looked at one another for the first time, 
 after the first words of love ; and the sky gleamed magically down 
 
JEAN PAUL FRIEDRIOH RICHIEK. 
 
 on tlie 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. 
 
 Qfflce-imposU One of the most important of Petitions, 
 
 The finest thing was his awakening in his European Settlement 
 in the giant Schadeck bed ! — With the inflammatory, tickling, 
 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 lon- 
 ger 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 obhged 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 supei-ficial 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 Eai'th 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 
 sujiple 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 
 Eock, 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-moruing (for joy needs 
 coolness, sorrow sun) ; his Betrothed comes — not indeed to meet, 
 him, but still — ^into his hearing, by her distant morning hymn; 
 he makes but one momentary turn into the blissful haven of the 
 
T.IPE OF QUINTD8 HXLEIN. 331 
 
 blooming acacia-grove, which still, like the covenant sealed in it, 
 has no thorns ; he dips his wai-m 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 Conrector 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 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 apprehension, 
 that I cunningly imputed Fixleiu's journey more to his desire of 
 knowing what was in the will, than of making his own will in pre- 
 sence of his mother. Every recovery is a bringing back and palin- 
 genesia 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 cJish, 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 stufiing puddings as before, " in my bond it is said, payable 
 at three months' mutual notice. How could a man like me go on, 
 else ? — However, I will change you the gold pieces." Thereupon 
 he advised him that it might be more judicious to take back a 
 florin or two, and buy himself a better hat, and whole shoes : 
 " if you like," added he, " to get a calfskin and half a dozen hare- 
 sldns dressed, they are lying up-stairs."^ — I should think, for my 
 own part, that to the reader it must be as little a matter of indif- 
 ference as it was to the Butcher, whether the hero of such a His- 
 
332 JEAN PACL FKIEDMCH RICHTEB. 
 
 tory appear before him with an old tattered potlid of a hat, and a 
 pump-sucker and leg-harness pair of boots, or in suitable apparel. 
 — In short, before St. John's day, the man was dressed with taste 
 and pomp. 
 
 But now came two most peculiarly important papers— at bot- 
 tom 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 toU-biUs 
 of the road-money, which he had been obliged to pay, before the 
 toll-gates at the Quintusship and Conrectorship had been thrown 
 open : for the executor of the Schadeck testament had to reim- 
 burse him the whole, as his discharge would express it, " to penny 
 and farthjng." 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 this sum. Not to speak of Saxony 
 (what, in truth, was to be expected from the cradle of the Refor- 
 mation, in Religion and Polite Literature), where a schoolmaster 
 and a parson have nothing to pay, — even in Bayx-euth, for example, 
 in Hof, the progress of improvement has been such, that a Quar- 
 tus— a Quartus do I say, — a Tertius — a Tertius do I say, — a Con- 
 rector, at entrance on his post, is not required to pay down more 
 than: 
 
LIFE OF QCINTUS FIXLEIN. 333 
 
 Fl, rhen. Kr. rhen. 
 
 30 49 For taking the oaths at the Coasistorium. 
 
 4 To the Syndic for the Presentation. 
 
 2 To the then Biirgermeister. 
 45 71 For the Governmentsanction. 
 
 Total 81 fl. 66J 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 dook-money 
 of his office. A schoolmaster must, like his scholars, have been 
 advanced from class to class, before these his loans to Government, 
 together with the interest for delay of payment, can jointly amount 
 to so much as his yearly income in the highest class. Another 
 thing in his favour is, that our institutions do not — as those of 
 Athens did — prohibit people from entering on office while in debt ; 
 but every man, with his debt-knapsack on his shoulders, mounts 
 up, step after step, without obstructian. The Pope, in large bene- 
 fices, 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 Popeiy and Lutheran- 
 ism, 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 Oorp. Jur. Pub. 
 Germ. 1 have turned up the Mentz-Imperial-Court-Chancery-tax- 
 ordinance of the 6th January 1669 ; 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 the instituted Gym- 
 nasium might with us clear off the entrymoneys of their school- 
 rooms. Again, a Freiherr, who, at any rate, often enough grows 
 
S34 
 
 JEAN PAUL FUIEDBIOH KICHTSR. 
 
 old without knowing how, must purchase the venia atatis with 200 
 hard florins ; while with the half sum he might have become a 
 schoolmastei*, and here age would have come of its own accord. — 
 And a thousand such things ! — They prove, however, that matters 
 can be at no bad pass in our Governments and Circles, where pro- 
 motions are sold dearer to Folly than to Diligence, 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 remarkable 
 to be omitted for mere dread of digressiveness. 
 
 The Syndic — a man of enlarged views, and of fiery patriotism, 
 the warmth of which was the more beneficent that he collected all 
 the beams of it into one focus, and directed them to himself and 
 his family — gave me (I had perhaps been comparing the School- 
 bench and the School-stair to the bench and the ladder, on which 
 people are laid when about to be tortured) the best reply : " If a 
 schoolmaster consume nothing but 30 reichsthalers ;' 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 substantial 
 wood-cutter, — then the Devil must be in it, if he cannot yearly 
 lay by so much net profit, as shall, in the long-run, pay the inter- 
 est of his eiitry-debts." 
 
 The Syndic must have failed to convince me at that time, since 
 I afterwards told the Flachsenfingen Prince .-^ "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 running, 
 for such a sum as every real Schoolmaster has to take for acting 
 it all the days of the year. — In Prussia, Invalids ai-e made School^ 
 masters ; with us. Schoolmasters are made Invalids.". . . . 
 
 But to our story! Fixlein wrote out the inventory of his 
 Crown-debts ; but with quite a different purpose than the reader 
 will guess, who has still the Schadeck testament in his head. In 
 one word, he wanted to be Parson of Hukelum. To be a clergy- 
 man, and in the place where his cradle stood, and all the little 
 gardens of his childhood, his mother also, and the grove of be- 
 
 * So much, according to Political Economists, a man yeai'ly requires in 
 Germany. 
 
 ' This singular tono of my address to a Prince can only be excused by 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. 
 
LIFE OF QUINTHS FIXLEIN. 335 
 
 trothment, — this was an open gate into a New Jerusalem, supposing 
 even that the living had been nothing but a meagre penitentiary. 
 The main point was, he might many, if he were appointed. For, 
 in the capacity of lanli; Conrector, supported only by the strength- 
 ening-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, iu well-ordered States, as little 
 permitted to marry as the Soldiery. In Conringius de Antiquita- 
 tibus Aoademicis, 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 maintain in our 
 teachers at least an imitation of the Three Monastic Vows. The 
 vow of Obedience might perhaps be sufficiently enforced by School- 
 Inspectors ; but the second vow, that Of Celibacy, would be more 
 hard of attainment, were it not that, by one of the best political ar- 
 rangements, the third vow, I mean a beautiful equality in Poverty, 
 is so admirably attended to, that no man who has made it needs 
 any farther testimonium paupertatis ; — and now let this man, if he 
 likes, lay hold of a matrimonial half, "When of the two halves each 
 has a whole stomach, and nothing for it but half-coins and half- 
 beer ! . . . . 
 
 I know well, millions of my readers would themselves compose 
 this Petition for the Conrector, and ride with it to Schadeok to 
 his Lordship, that so the poor rogue might get the sheepfold, 
 with the annexed wedding-mansion : for they see clearly enough, 
 that directly thereafter one of the best Letter-Boxes would be 
 written that ever came from such a repository. 
 
 Fixlein's 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 parents and ancestors had already done 
 Hukelum service ; therefore he prayed," &o. 
 
 2. " The here-documented official debts of 135 florins, 41 krout- 
 zers and one halfpenny, the cancelling of which a never-to-be- 
 forgotten testament secured him, he himself could clear, iu ease 
 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 God- 
 father, 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 
 Bittmeister was a cormorant towards the poor, as he was a squan- 
 
336 JEAN PAUL rEIEDBIOH EICHIEB. 
 
 derer towards the rich. It may be, too, the Conreotor might once 
 or twice have heard, in the Law Gom-ts, of patrons, by whom not in- 
 deed the church and churchyard — though these ttiings are articles 
 of commerce in England — so much as the true management of 
 them had been sold, or rather farmed to farming-candidates. I 
 know from Lange.^ 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 hy me. I hold this ground to be the strongest 
 in the whole Petition. In the eyes of Herr von Aufhammer, 
 Thiennette's genealogical tree was long since stubbed, disleaved, 
 worm-eaten £md full of millepedes : she was his CEconoma, his 
 Castle-Stewardess and Legatess a Latere for his domestics ; and 
 with her pretensions for an alms-coffer, was threatening in the 
 end to become a burden to him. His indignant wish that she 
 had been provided for with Fixlein's legacy might now be fulfilled. 
 In a word, if Fixlein become Parson, he will have the third ground 
 to thank for it ; not at all the mad fourth 
 
 4. " He had learned with sorrow, that the name of his Shock, 
 which he had purchased from an Emigrant at Leipzig, meant 
 Egidius in German ; and that the dog had drawn upon him the 
 displeasure of his Lordship. Far he 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 pi-esent called without any name, his 
 Lordship would be pleased to appoint one himself." 
 
 My Voluntary Note. The dog then, it seems, to which the 
 nobleman has hitherto been'godfether, is to receive its name a se- 
 cond time from him !^But how can the famishing gardener's son, 
 whose career never mounted higher than from tlie 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 con- 
 tracted 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 
 ' His Clerical Lam, p, 551. 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLBIN. 337 
 
 rays; and tliat 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 mouths; inserting his valuations, 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 pai-sonage : can't you see, then, that 
 Aufhammer's hands are tied ? In spite of all his other faults, or 
 even because of tliem, he will stand like iron by his word, which 
 he has given so long ago to the Subrector. It were another matter 
 had he been resident at Court; for there, where old German 
 manners still are, no promise is kept; for as, according to Moser, 
 the Ancient Germans kept only such promises as they made in 
 the forenoon (in the afternoon they were all dead-drunk), — so the 
 Court Germans likewise keep no afternoon promise; forenoon 
 ones they would keep if they made any, which, however, cannot 
 possibly happen, as at those hours they are — sleeping. 
 
 SEVENTH LETTEE-BOX. 
 
 Sermon. ScTtool-MxMhition, Splendid Miatahe. 
 
 The Conrector received his 135 florins, 43 kreutzers, one halfr 
 penny Frankish; but 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 ihe feeding- 
 pond of the Hukelum parsonage. It gratified him to be behung 
 •with prayers like a Spanish guardian Saint ; and he postponed 
 (though determined to prefer the Subrector) granting any one 
 petition, till he had seven-and-thirty dyers', buttonmakers', tin- 
 smiths' sous, whose petitions he could at the same time refuse, 
 
 z 
 
838 JKAN PAUL FEIBBBICH RIOHTEK. 
 
 Gru^e Bot him of Aufhammer tliis outlengthening of his elec- 
 torial 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 squiress, 
 countess, or the like, as his mother. A man, however, who has 
 been eixalied to the Peerage, while still a fcetus, may with more 
 propriety be liltened to the spitmer, which, contrariwise to all other 
 insects, passes from the chrysalis s^tate, and becoicies a perfect 
 insect in its mother's womb.-r— 
 
 Buit to proceed ! Fixlein was at present not withaiait cash. It 
 will be the same as if I made a paresent of it to the reader, when I 
 reveal to him, that of the legacy, which was clearing off old scores, 
 he had atill thirty-five fiorinsi left to himself, as allodium and poeket- 
 money, wherewith he might purchase whatsoever seemed good to 
 him. And how came he by so large a sum, by so eoiisiderable a 
 competence ? Simply by this means : Every time he changed a 
 piece of gold, and especially at every payment he received, it had 
 been his custom to. throw in, blindly at random, two, three, or 
 four small coins, among the papers of his trunk. Has purpose was 
 to astonish himself one day, when he summed up and took posses- 
 sion of this sleeping capital. And, by Heaven ! he reached it too, 
 when oji mounting the throne of his Conrectorate, he drew out 
 these funds from among his papers, and applied them to the coro- 
 nation charges. For the present, he sowed them in agaiQ among 
 his waste letters. Foolish Fixlein ! I mean, had he not luckily 
 exposed; his legacy- to, jeiapardy, having offered it as bounty-money, 
 and luck-penny to, the patron, this false clutch ©f his at the knocfceof 
 of the Hukeliiim church -door^ would oertaimly have vexed him; 
 but 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 flue 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. dea,r native village, with a brief transitory notice. 
 
 Ii» itself the sermoa was good and gloi-ious; and the day a rich 
 day of pleasure ; but I should really need to have more hojitrs at 
 iny disposal thaUi I can steal from May, in wliich I am at present 
 living and writing; and more strength than waisdering through 
 this fine weather has left me foir landscape pictures of the same, 
 befoi-e I could attempt, with any well-founded hope, to di-aw out a 
 mathematicail estimate of the length and thickness, and the vibra- 
 tions aad accordant relations to each other, of the various strings, 
 which combined together to iprm. for hia heart a Music of the 
 
LIFE OB QUINTDS PIXLElW. 339 
 
 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 gai-dener's boy; farther, 
 before his mother, who is leading off her tears through the conduit 
 of her satin muff; farther, before his Lordship, 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 eio officio depict, is the day to which this Sun- 
 day was but the prelude, the vigil and the whet; I mean the 
 prelnide, the vigil and the whet to the Menrtini Actus, or Martinmas 
 JSmhibition, of his school. On Sunday was the Sermon, on Wednes- 
 day the Actus, on Tuesday the Behearsal. This Tuesday shall 
 now be delineated to the universe. 
 
 I count upon it that I shall not be read .by mere pe;ople 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 the 
 playbill (the Prog»am) thereof are to be estimated, still without 
 overrating their importance. 
 
 Before proceeding to the Rehearsal of the Martini Actus, I im- 
 pose upon myself, as dramaturgist of the play, the duty, if not of 
 exti-acting, at least of recording the Gom'ector's Letter of Invita- 
 tion, In this cranpositioB he said many things ; and (what an 
 author likes so well) made proposals rather than reproaches ; in- 
 terrogatively i-emindimg. the public. Whether in regard to the well- 
 fenown head-bi-eakages of Prisoian on the part of the Magnates in 
 Pest and Poland, our school-houses were not the best quarantine 
 and lazar-houses to protect us against infectious barbarisms ? More- 
 over, he diefended in schools what eould be defended (and nothing 
 in the world is sweeter or easier than a defence) ; and said. School- 
 masters, who not quite justifiably, like certain Courts, spoke no- 
 thing, and let nothing be spoken to them but Latin, might plead 
 the Romaais in excuse, whose subjects, and whose kings, at least 
 in their epistles and public transactionSs were obliged to make 
 use of the Latin tongue. He wondered why only our Greek, and' 
 not also our Latin Gi-ammars, were composed in Latin, and put 
 
340 JEAN PAUL PBIEDEIOH BIOHIEB. 
 
 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 every- 
 thing which can be said or known about the great founder of the 
 Reformation, the subject of our present Mai-tini Prolusions, has 
 been long ago exhausted, as well by Seckendorf as others. In 
 fact, with regard to Luther's personalities, his table-talk, incomes, 
 journeys, clothes, and so forth, there can now nothing new be 
 brought forward, if at the same time it is to be true. Nevertheless, 
 the field of the Reformation history is, to speak in a figure, by no 
 means wholly cultivated ; and it does appear to me as if the in^ 
 quirer even of the present day might in vain look about for correct 
 intelligence respecting the children, grandchildren and cliildren's 
 children, down to our own times, of this great Reformer ; all of 
 whom, however, appertain, in a more remote degree, to the Re- 
 formation histoi'y, 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 foi-ward and cultivate 
 this neglected branch of History. And so have I ventured, with 
 the last male descendant of Luther, namely, with the Advocate 
 Martin Gottlob Luther, who practised in Dresden, and deceased 
 there in 1759, to make a beginning of a more special Reformation 
 histoiy. 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 submis- 
 sively, obediently, and humbly request all friends and patrons of 
 the Flachsenfingen Gymnasium to listen to, on the 14th of Novem-. 
 ber, from the mouths of six well-conditioned perorators. In the 
 first place, shall 
 
 " Oottlieb Spiesglass, a Flaohsenfinger, endeavour to show, in a 
 Latin oration, that Martin Gottlob Luther was certainly descended 
 of the Luther family. After him strives 
 
 " Friedrieh Christian Krabbler, from. Hukelum, in German 
 prose, to appreciate the influence which Martin Gottlob Luther 
 exercised on the then existing Reformation ; whereupon, after 
 him, will 
 
 " Daniel Lorenz Stenzinger deliver, in Latin verse, an account of 
 Martin Gottlob Luther's lawsuits ; embracing the probable merits 
 of Advocates generally, in regard to the Reformation. Which then, 
 will give opportunity to 
 
 " NiJeol Tobias Pfiaman to come forward in French, and recount 
 
LI¥E OF QniNTUS FIXLEIN. 341 
 
 the most important circumstances of Martin Gottlob Luther's 
 School-j'ears, 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 cathedi-a, 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 great school-festival, especially 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 possibly 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 la- 
 dies and Councillor gentlemen. Smile away, Fixlein, at tliis as- 
 tonishment over thy today's Ovation, which is leading on tomor- 
 row'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 comparing or despising, can one tole- 
 rate, will one foster. But what flowed over all his heart, like a 
 melting sunbeam over wax, was his mother, who after much per- 
 suasion had ventured in her Sunday's clothes humbly to place her- 
 self 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 under 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 tlie 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 wiitings or doings 
 oast a stone upon the late Burchardt Grossmann, who under the 
 
S42 JEAN PAUL FBIEDEIOH BIOHIEB. 
 
 initial letters of the stanzas in his song, " Bridh an, du liebe Morgen- 
 rothe," inserted 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 indeed 
 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 Tempo, the 
 leaf-skeleton as a Liberty-tree, a Bread-tree and Life-tree, and the 
 dewdrops as the Ocean. We poor day-moths, evening-moths and 
 nightmoths, 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 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 
 iiothing but mankind and himself. 
 
 The mother was not to he 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 forthwith 
 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-laiown servant of Hhe Eittmeister, carrying the 
 Hukelum Presentation for the Subreetor Fuehslein in his pocket. 
 To the last-named gentleman he had been sent with this call to 
 the parsonage : but he had distinguished ill betwixt Suh and Ccm- 
 rector; and had besides his own good reasons for du-ectiog 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 ah-eady?" That his 
 Lordship could pass over his own godson, never entered the man's 
 head. 
 
 Fixleiu read the address of the Appointment : " To the Eeve- 
 rend tlie Parson Fwlein of Hukelum," He naturally enough made 
 the same mistake as the lackey; and broke up the Presentation as 
 his own : and finding moreover in the body of the paper no spe- 
 cial mention of persons, but only of an Sohul-unterbefehUhaber or 
 Sohool-undergoveraor (instead of Subreetor), he could not but per- 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 343 
 
 sist in his error. Befoi-e I properly explain wliy the Eittmeister's 
 Lawyer, the framer of the Presentation, had so designated a Sub- 
 rector — we two, the reader and myself, will keep an eye for a mo- 
 ment on Fixlein's joyful saltations— on his gratefully -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 pedagogic 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, though the servant an- 
 swered 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 species of men, at last so 
 moved by the joy which he had imparted, that ho determined on 
 the spot, to bestow his presence on the new clergyman's Sehool- 
 Actus, though no person of quality whatever was to be there? Fix- 
 lein, 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 sceptical 
 — and timorous (wherefore, to prevent filching, he stowed his Pre- 
 sentation 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 Jewish 
 copyists never wrote it except in ornamental letters and when 
 newly washed ;^ — 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 tiU she hersejf was obliged to begin smil- 
 ing, — he was now flying as on a huge seesaw higher and higher, 
 quicker and quicker aloft. 
 
 But before the Actus, let us examine the Sohadeok Lawyer. 
 Fixlein instead otFUchsUin^ he had written from uncertainty about 
 the spelling of the name; the more naturally as in transcribing the 
 Rittmeisterinn's will, the fonuer had occurred so often. Von, this 
 triumphal arch, he durst not set up before Fiichslein's new name, 
 because Aufhammer forbade it, considering Hans Fiichslein as a, 
 
 ' Eiohhom's Einleit. ins A. T. (Introduction to the Old Testament), vol. n. 
 * Both hare the same sound. Fiichalein, means Foxling, toxwhelp. — ^Bd. 
 
844 JEAN PAXIL rBIEDBIOH KICHTBB. 
 
 mushroom who had no right to votis and titles of nohility, for all 
 his patents. In iine, tlie Presentation-writer was possessed with 
 Campe's' whim of Germanising everything, minding little though 
 when Germanised it should cease to be intelligible ; — 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 inter- 
 mixed — 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 Roman forum. The Lawj'er, 
 on the other hand, contended that it was different; and accord- 
 ingly 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 Subrector in the new liveiy of Selwol- 
 undergovemor. And this version farther convei-ted the Schoolmas- 
 ter 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, con- 
 nexions, 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 Oerman or un-Oerman Law- 
 practice) wei-e written in Latin, as before the times of Joseph the 
 Hungarian, — are now, if we may say so without offence, perhaps 
 written fully more in the German dialect than in the Latin ; and in 
 support of this opinion, I can point to whole lines of German lan- 
 guage, to be found in these Imperial-Court-Confessions. However, 
 I win not believe that the Jurist is endeavouring, because Imhofer 
 declares the Roman tongue to be the mother tongue in tlie 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 
 
 ' Campe, a German philologist, who, along with several others of that class, 
 has really proposed, as represented in the Text, to substitute for all (ireek or 
 Latin derivatives corresponding Gei-man terms of the like import. Geography, 
 which may be Erdheschreibnvg (Earth-description), was thenceforth to be no- 
 thinsr else ; a Geometer became an Earthinea surer, &c. &c. Sclioot-undergo- 
 ■vernor, instead of Sitlirector, is by no means the happiest example of the system, 
 and seems due rather to the Sohadeck Lawyer than to Campe, whom our 
 Author has elsewhere more than once eulogised for his project in similar 
 style.— Ed. 
 
LIFE or QUlNTtTS FIXLEIN. 345 
 
 lias blown away from the Actus its powder-nimbus of glory; and 
 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, behind his 
 everlasting blind, which he only colours differently, and makes no 
 thinner, oarries 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 Regiments-Quartermaster, 
 and Master Butcher, Steinberg, attended there, embaled in a long 
 woollen shag. Dui-ing the solemnity, the Subrector Hans von 
 Fiichslein cast several gratified and inquiring glances on the Scha- 
 deck sei-vant, 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 coekerel-brood had on their 
 dunghill done crowing, that is to say, had perorated, the scholastic 
 cooker, 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, unwortliy 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-yellow and 
 vomissement de la reine. 
 
 The tall Quai-termaster erected himself considerably in' his 
 shag, and hummed loud enough in happy foi-getfulness : " The 
 Dickens ! — Parson ?" 
 
 The Subrector dashed-by like a comet before the lackey: or- 
 dered him to call aiid take a letter for his master ; strode home, 
 and prepared for his patron, who at Schadeck was waiting for a 
 long tlianksgiving psalm, a short satiiical epistle, as nervous as 
 haste would permit, and mingled a few nicknames and verbal in- 
 juries 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 Fijclein had publicly announced in his Actus, 
 forthwith wrote back to the new Parson an acceptance and ratifi- 
 cation ; and Fixlein is and remains, to the joy of us all, incontest- 
 able ordained parson of Hukelum. 
 
846 lEAK PAUL rRIEDRlOH BIOHTEB. 
 
 His disappointed rival has still this consolation, that he holds 
 a seat in the wasp-nest of the Neue Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliotheh} 
 Should the Parson ever ohrysahse himself into an author, the 
 watch-wasp may then buzz out, and dart its sting into the chrysac 
 lis, and put its own brood in the room of the murdered butterfly. 
 As the Subrector everywhere went about, and threatened in plain 
 terms that he would review his colleague, let not the public be 
 surprised that Fixlein'a Errata, and his Masoretio Exeroitationes^ 
 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 Ghristi in one hand, and his own Sponsa in the other, — 
 this, without an Eighth Letter-Box, which, in the present case, 
 may be a true jewel-box and rainbow-key ,2 can no mortal figure, 
 except the Sponsus himself. 
 
 EIGHTH LETTER-BOX. 
 
 Instalment in the Parsonage, 
 
 On the 16th 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 eight- 
 eenth centuiy, as the whole came down to him unbroken" from 
 the seventeenth. 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 Gym- 
 nasium, 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 Oerman Library ; here, 
 in the heavenly Hukelumic Jerusalem, they do nothing but 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 : but 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 
 
 ' New Universal Oerman Library, a reviewing periodical; in tliose days 
 conducted by Nicolai, a sworn enemy to wliat has since been called the New 
 School. (See Tieok, aafe.)— Ed. 
 
 ^ Superstition declares, that on the spot whei'O the rainbow lises, a golden 
 key is left. 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 347 
 
 enhance by contrast with the former. For it requires little reflec- 
 tion to discover that the torments of a schoolmaster are nothing 
 so extraordinary ; but, on the contrary, as in the GjTnnasium, he 
 mounts from one degree to another, not veiy dissimilar to the 
 common torments of Hell, which, in spite of their eternity, grow 
 weaker from oentui-y to century. Moreover, since, according to 
 the saying of a Frenchman, dmx afflictions mises ensemble peuvent 
 devenir une eonsolation, a man gets aiBictious enow in a school to 
 console him; seeing out of eight combined afflictions— I reckon 
 only one for every teachei- — certainly more comfort is to be ex- 
 tracted 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 generally — one is always recom- 
 pensed : for, as in the second life, a greater virtue is the recom- 
 pense of an earthly one, so, in the Schoolmaster's case, his merits 
 are always rewarded by more opportunities for new merits ; and 
 often enough he is not dismissed from his post at all. — 
 
 Eight Gymnasiasts are trotting about in the Parsonage, setting 
 up, nailing to, hauling in. I think, as a scholai- of Plutarch, I am 
 right to introduce such seeming mi%utim. 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 6'i« (They) 
 to the Secundauers, and the Subrector said Ilir (Ye) ; because his 
 upreaiing forefinger was his only sceptre and baculus; because in 
 the Secunda he had interchanged Latin epistles with his scholars ; 
 and in the Quinta, had taught not with Napier's Rods (or rods of 
 a sharper description) , but with sticks of barley-sugar. 
 
 Today his- cliui'chyard 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. 
 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 coppei-plates 
 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 
 
348 JEAN PAUI, FRIEDEICH HICHTEE. 
 
 in this new improved edition of his house, and laboured faithfully 
 among the other furnishers and furbishers. But todaj' she kept 
 aloof; for she was too good to forget the maiden in the bride. 
 Love, lilte men, dies oftener of excess than of hunger ; it lives on 
 love, but it resembles those Alpine flowers, which feed themselves 
 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 
 bridemaids — 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 
 because 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 maiTy 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 Sun- 
 day- Wauwau at all, were it not that I delineate with such extreme 
 fidelit.y. Fixlein himself — especially as the Quartermaster 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. 
 Tor as dreaming that you die signifies, according to the exegetic 
 rule of false, nothing else than long life and welfare, so did Fix- 
 lein easily infer that his death-imagination was 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 show- 
 ered 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 Notaiy, any such 
 incarcerated Slave of tlie Desk, feels excellently well how far he 
 is beneath a Parson composing his inaugural sermon. 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 tlie right side, and a Song-Con- 
 cordance on the left; is tliere digging out a man-owy sentence, 
 here clipping off a song-blossom, with both ,to garnish his homi- 
 letic pastiy ; — sketches out the finest plan of operations, not, Uke 
 a man of the world, to subdue the heai't 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 
 
LIFE OF QUINTDS FIXLEIN. 849 
 
 out the butter of the smooth soft hj-mn-book, and therewith ex- 
 quisitely fattens the black broth of his sermon, which is to feed 
 five thousand men. 
 
 At last, in tJie evening, as the i-ed 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, slowly 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 tlie 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 seek- 
 ing a new one among us 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 of Chance, could requii-e aught more, it 
 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, i-ustling press of people ; before his Guardian, and be- 
 fore the Lord of Aufhammer, 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 
 ancles 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 applica- 
 tion, with wet heavy eyes, he looked round over the mute attentive 
 church, 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 
 lUie internal stream, inexpressibly {softened by the farther recol- 
 
850 JEAN PAUL FEIEDBIOH BIOHTER. 
 
 leetiona of his own fear of deafth on tHs 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- 
 Bolving countenance of her friend, his Thiennette — overpowered, 
 motionless and weeping, looked down from the pulpit to the door 
 of the Schadeok vault, and said : " Thanks, thou pious soul, foe 
 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 theire 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 
 his bride, from this day, his whole movable property (not, as yoia 
 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 marriagepoction); — in return for which, she li? 
 berally 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 ; — witb 
 a sumptuous dozen of godchild-plates and godchild-spoons (gifts 
 from Sohadeck), together with a fish-knife ; — of silk, not only stock- 
 ings (though even King Henry 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-gjft of Nature ! 
 
 The, Parson, — ^whoi, not from mistrust but from " the uncer- 
 tainty of life," could have wished for a notary's seal on everything; 
 to whom no security but a hypothecary one appeai-ed sufficient, 
 and who, in the depositing of every barleycorn, required quiti>- 
 anees and contracts, — had now, when the marriage-charter was 
 completed, a lighter heart;, amd thajough the whole evening the 
 good man ceased not to thank his bride for what she had given 
 him. To me, however, a marriage-eontraot were a thing as pain&l 
 and repulsive, — I confess it camdjidly, though you should in con- 
 sequence upbraid me with my great youth, — as if I had to take 
 
LIFE OF QUINTtJS FIXLEIN. 351 
 
 my loye-letter to a Notary Imperial, and make him docket and 
 countersign it before it could be sent. Heavens ! to see the 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 intoxicated 
 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 devotionsi 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 few do those 
 festivities, like Holiday and Apostle's day, commerge), — ^then is it 
 still more pleasant to make the interval, the flower-border, between 
 betrothment and marriage, of an extraordinary breadth. Before 
 the marriage-day are the true hon^-weeks ; then come the wax- 
 weeks ; then the honey-vinegar-weeks. 
 
 la the Ninth Letter-Box, our Parson celebrates his wedding; 
 and 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-inagazines 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 BuU of Bispensation, 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. 
 
 O ! if the Eitter Miohaelis maintains that Paradise was little, 
 because otherwise the people would not have found each other, — 
 
352 JEAN PADL JBIEDBIOH BICHTEB. 
 
 a hamlet and its joj's are little and narrow, so tliat some shadow 
 of Eden may still linger on our Ball. 
 
 I have not even hinted that, the day before the wedding, the 
 Eegiments-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- 
 soribedst 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 i-ooted to the boundary-hill of Moderation, and from thence 
 looked down on what thousands flout away. Sitting opposite tlie 
 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 
 Beoeipts 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 Histoiy of Hukelum, and soon to foUow 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 ! — 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 353 
 
 On the 9th of May 1793, about three in the morning, there 
 came a sharp peal of trumpets, hke 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 Shook 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 morn- 
 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 Flaohsenfin- 
 gen. At two doors he knocked in vain, and without answer ; for all 
 were already down at the hearth, eofeng, 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 
 Resurrection ! — The quicksilver-pillar of the barometer, the guid- 
 ing Fire-pillar of the weather-prophet, rests firmly on Fixlein's 
 Ajk 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 thi'ough the melodious air . . . 
 O, the good Genius of Fair Weather, who deserves many temples 
 and festivals (because witliout 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 hlue Monday — glittering below the Sun, in tlie zigzag 
 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 bot- 
 tom 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 
 
 A A 
 
354 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEICH EIOHTKB. 
 
 ■with the church, lay round his mansion like a court. Here on 
 the moist gi'een, over whose closed flowers the churchyard-wall 
 was still spreading hroad 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 fiither uttered to 
 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 usuajly he 
 read ; and entreated God to bless him in his oflBoe, and to spare 
 his mother's life ; and to look with favour and acceptance on the 
 pui-pose of today. — Then over the graves he walked into his fence- 
 less little angular flower-garden; and here, composed and con- 
 fident 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 janissaiy-music of wedding -gladness; — ^the 
 marriage-guests had all thrown off their nightcaps, and were drink- 
 ing diligently; — there was a clattering, a cooking, a frizzling; — tea- 
 services, coffee-seiTices and warm-beer-servioes, were advancing in 
 succession; and plates full of bride-cakes were going round Uke 
 potter's frames or cistern-wheels. — The Schoolmaster, with three 
 young lads, was heard reheai'sing 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 
 ioy-streams into one, when the sky-queen besprinkled with blos- 
 soms, the bride, descended upon Earth in her timid joy, fuU of 
 quivering humble love; — ^when the bells began; — ^wheu the proces- 
 sion-column set forth with the whole village round and before it ; 
 — ^when the organ, the oongi-egation, the officiating priest and the 
 sparrows on the trees of the church -window, struck louder and 
 louder their rolUng 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 
 went round, and at length danced round : for they had instrumental 
 music from the city there. 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 355 
 
 One minute handed over to the other the sugar-howl and bottle- 
 case of joy : the guests heard and saw less and less, and the villa^ 
 gers began to see and hear more and more, and towards night they 
 penetrated Ijie a wedge ijito the open door, — ^nay two youths ven- 
 tured even in the middle of the parsonage-court, to mount a plank 
 over a beam, and commence seesawing. — Out of doors, the gleam- 
 ing 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 drinking or danc- 
 ing ijilong 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 ot 
 wedding-bread privily into a press, in the old superstitious beliet 
 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 mflther, to deUver 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: 
 Thieniiette's wax-face was blea.ching still whiter under the svm- 
 beams of Happiness. never fall, thou lUy of Heaven, and may 
 four springs instead of four seasons open and shut thy flower-beUs 
 to the sun ! — All the arms ,of his soul, as he floated on the sea of 
 joy, were quivering to clasp the soft wai-m heart of his beloved, to 
 encircle it gently and fast, and draw it to his own 
 
 He led her from the crowded idawoing-room into the cool even- 
 ing. 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 tiu-moil of Ufe; that veiling of the 
 world, in which for the soul nothing more remains but souls ; — is 
 it therefore, that the letters ki which the loved name stands written, 
 on our spirit appear, like phosphorus -writing, by night in fire, 
 while by day in their elaudy traces ithey but smoke ? 
 
 He walked with his bride into the Castle-garden : she hastened 
 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 ^e blossoms which today were gladdening 
 her existence. StiU Eden ! green fLowerioheqiiered chiamsaura!'^ 
 
356 JEAN PAUL FBIEDRIOH BICHTER. 
 
 The moon is sleeping underground like a dead one ; but beyond 
 the garden the sun's red ev«ning-olouds 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 waudei-ing 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 kiss-, 
 ing him : "Call me Thou always, Dearest !" ' 
 
 And as they stept forth again from the sacred grove into the 
 magic-dusky garden, he took oflf 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 rathw, 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 
 Vihite steeple-obelisk the sky rested bluer and darker; and behind 
 it wavered the withered summit of the May-pole with faded flag. 
 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 withinv 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 3B7 
 
 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. thou 
 good, dear father, couldst thou today but see the happiness of thy 
 son, like my mother ! But thy eyes ai-e 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 I'ound for their daughter, who had 
 stayed so long behind them, forsaken on the Earth. She fell upon 
 his heart, and faltered : " beloved, I have neither father nor 
 mother, do not forsake me !" 
 
 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 joy 
 be holily concluded. — 
 
 TENTH LETTER-BOX. 
 St. Thomases 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 different sea- 
 sons, and here accelerates, and there retards, the blossoming, of 
 many a flower, that so in all chapters there be blooming. 
 
 The goddess of Love and the angel of Peace conducted our 
 mai'ried pair on ti-acks 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 aiTived 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 Win- 
 ter's. About a quarter past nine, just when the singing ceases in 
 the church, we shall take a peep through the window into the in- 
 terior of the parsonage. There is nothing here but, the old mother, 
 who has all day (the son having restricted her to rest, 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 brightness; — 
 everything hangs, as with all iBfti^ried peppje who have no childi-eu, 
 in its right place, brushes, fly-flaps an(i,. almanacs; — the chairs 
 are stationed by the rooni,-polioejn their ancient comers; — a flax- 
 
358 JEAN PAtfL PBIEBBIOH BICHTEK. 
 
 jfock, encircled with a diadem, or scarf of azure ribbon, is lying iu 
 tlie Schadeokbed, because, though it is a half holiday, some spin- 
 ning may go on; — 'the narrow slips of paper, whereon heads of ser- 
 mons are to be arranged, lie white beside the sennons thems&lves, 
 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 cleain 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, -tvithout Mtnesses — except the two or three thousand 
 readers who are peeping with me throtigh the windoTfr-^-might ar- 
 range the provender-baking, a!nd whole commissariat 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, aiid eShort, 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 monastio charaoters, 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, tvhen thy husband so- 
 lemnly says : " This is thy birthday; and may the Lord bless thee 
 and watch oter thee, and cause his countenance to shine on thee, 
 and send thee, to the joy of our njotlier and thy husband espe- 
 cially, a happy glad reco'iery. Alnen !" — ^And when Thiennette per- 
 ceived that it was the old mistress who had cooked and served up 
 all this herself, she fell upon her iieek, as if it had been not her 
 husband's mother, but her own. 
 
 Emotion conquers the appetite. But Fixlein's stomaeh 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, hot till he had eaten and spoken much, 
 did the pastor fill the glasses. Then indeed he drew the cork- 
 sluice from the bottle, and Set fcirth its streams. The Sickly 
 mothei', of a being still hid beneath her heart, turiied her eyes, in 
 embart-assed emotion, on the old woman ttnly ; and could scai-oely 
 Chide him for sending to the city wine-merchant on her account. 
 He took a glass in each hand, fdr each of the two whotn he loved, 
 and handed them to his mother and his wife, and said : " To thy 
 long, long life, Thiennette! — And your health and hajipiness, 
 Mamma!— And a glad arrival to our little one, if God so bleSs us!" 
 
LUTE OF QTIINIUS FIXLEIN. 359 
 
 — " My son," said the gardeneress, " it is to thy long life that we 
 must drink; for it is by thee we are supported. God grant thee 
 length of days !" added she, with stifled voice, and her eyes be- 
 trayed 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 christen- 
 ing. But thou, Thiennette, hadst nobler thoughts, though these 
 too along vrith 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 thought- 
 est of death, with a certainty, of which I yet knew not the reasons; 
 and to thee it was as if the Eai-th were a dark mineral cave where 
 man's blood like stalaotitic 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 continually trick- - 
 ling from thy soft eyes, and betraying all thy anxious thoughts 
 about thy child : but thou repaidst ihese 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 see two mortals, bending under 
 the same burden, bound to the same duties, animated by 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 mor- 
 tals who already wear the mourning-weeds of life, I mean old age, 
 whose hair and cheeks are now gi'own 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 weai-ied 
 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 — O, 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 toge- 
 ther," — does not all within us cry: Love, thy spark is superior 
 to Time ; it burns neither in joy nor in the cheek of roses ; it dies 
 
860 JEAN PAUL FKIEDRICH BICHIBR. 
 
 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 himself 
 " transition from the heart to the digestive faculty. He now sub- 
 mitted to Thiennette (whose voice at once grew cheerful, while her 
 eyes time after time began to sparkle) his purpose to take advan- 
 tage of the frosty weather, and have the winter meat slaughtered 
 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 » pro- 
 vince 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, " newyear 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 Astro- 
 nomical 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 jus ciroa sacra, 
 for a new Ball to the church-steeple ; and the rather, as he hoped 
 before newyear's-day to raise a bountiful subscription 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 
 fii'st church-going, dame !" 
 
 Thereupon he shifted his chair from the dinner ajid dessert 
 table to the work-table ; and spent the half of his afternoon over 
 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 Eobber-Castle, which 
 Fixlein, every day in Autumn, had hovered round like a remnant, 
 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 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 361 
 
 some drawings of the not so much vertical as horizontal walls — he 
 hoped to- impart to his " Architectural Correspondence of two Friends 
 concerning the HuJcelum Bobber-Castle" that last polish and labor limce 
 which contents Eeviewers. For towards the critical Starchamber 
 of the Reviewers he entertained not that contempt which some 
 authors actually feel — or only affect, as for instance, I. From this 
 mouldered Robber-ioMWe, there gi-ew for him more ilowers 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 Biisching has to answer. Fixlein had 
 not long ago, among the rubbish of the church letter-room, stumbled 
 on a paper wherein the Geographer had been requesting special 
 information about the statistics of the village. Biisching, it is 
 true, had picked uji nothing — accordingly, indeed, Hukelum, in 
 his Oeography, 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 assafoetida-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 lai'ge furs 
 and bearskin-caps, were things which he loved more than you 
 would iigure. The dusk, this fair chiaroscuro of the day, this co- 
 loured 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, be? 
 cause 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 some- 
 thing 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 certain charts 
 and sketches of Italy, or the East, as additional landscapes to 
 those among which I am sitting. And yet tonight he farther took 
 
362 JEAN PAUL FBIEDRIOH BIOHTER. 
 
 up the Weekly Ohroniele of Flachsenflngen ; and amid the bomb- 
 shells, pestilences, famines, comets with long tails, and the roaring 
 of all the Hell-ioods 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 cany 
 her people, like precious night-moths, on leaves and flowers, the 
 new steeple-hall, and a thick handsome — ^boy to boot ! 
 
 ELEVENTH LETTER-BOX. 
 
 Spring ; Investiture j and Childbirth. 
 
 I HAVE jttst risen from a singular dream ; but the foregoing Box 
 makes it natural. I dreamed that all was verdant, all 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 
 bee-hives. Then, methought, advancing slowly through the beds, 
 came the Hukelum Parson, and stept into the gai-d en-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 fol' the same, when it shall be received into the bosom 
 of the church." 
 
 I naturally started up, and there was — Parson Fixlein standing 
 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 alleviate the 
 travail : for this stone performs, in its way, all the service which 
 the bonnet of that old Minorite monk in Naples, of whom Gorani 
 infottns us, could accomplish for people in such circumstances, 
 who put it on 
 
 — I might vex the reader still longer ; but I willingly gire 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 everj' year, that 
 our German singers should indite May-songs, since several other 
 
LIFE OF QHINTUS FIXLEIN. 363 
 
 months deserve sucli a poetical night-musio 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 waver- 
 ing chequei-ed aoaeia-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 warOiing 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 westei-n 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-eolourg 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 
 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 
 tipon 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 ! ETery spring^aud 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 1 should 
 have seen even the steeple-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 1 got acquainted with Fixlein's his- 
 tory-^every Candidatus must deliver an account of his life to the 
 Oonsistorium — and with his still madder petition for a steeple-ball. 
 I observed, with pleasure, how gaily the cob was diving and swash- 
 ing 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 de- 
 scribing 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 Oapituli, and some temporal Eaths, 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 
 
364 JEAN PAUL rRIBDnlCH BICHTER. 
 
 white espalier of the Castle-garden, that there I was to vsiite 
 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 hack. 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-com- 
 panions, 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 kitchen, and at 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, 
 hy Fixlein. First Oollection." 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 gentle- 
 men of letters, who hold only a department of the foreign, and 
 none of the home affairs, nothing (except some other things about 
 themj 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 f3,ce 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 similitude given 
 in my Note ;' — and although the blazing wood threw a false rouge 
 over her, I guessed how pale she must have been ; and my sym- 
 pathy 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 witliin her the 
 transition from Nothingness to Existence, from Eternity to Time ; 
 
 ' To the Spring, namely, which begins with snowdrops, and ends with roses 
 aud pinks. — 
 
LTFE or QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 365 
 
 — ^but still less can a man have any heart of flesh, if Ms soul, in 
 presence of a woman, who, to an unknown unseen being, is sacri- 
 ficing 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, 
 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-days, 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 Sun- 
 day, 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 churohyai-d ; 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, whistling 
 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 Presei-ver ? — I perused 
 the grave-stones ; and I think even now that Superstition' is right 
 in connecting with the reading of such things a loss of memory; 
 at all events, one does forget a thousand things belonging to this 
 world 
 
 The Investiture on Sunday (whose Gospel, of the good shep' 
 herd, suited well with the ceremony) I must despatch in few words ; 
 because nothing truly sublime can bear to be treated Of in many; 
 However, I shall impart the most memorable circumstances, when 
 
 ■ This Christian superstition is not only a, Rabbinical, but also a Bomai^ 
 one. Cicero de iSeneclitte. 
 
366 JEAN PAUL FEIEDEIOH KICHTER. 
 
 I say that tliere was — drinking (jn the Parsonage), — music-making 
 (in the Choir), — ^reading (of the Presentation by the Senior, and of 
 the Eatification-rescript by the lay Eath), — and preaching, by the 
 Consistorialrath, who took the soul-curer by the hand, and pre- 
 sented, made over and guaranteed him to 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 m^u is treated 
 with solemnity, he looks upon himself as a higher nature, and 
 goes through his solenin feasts devoutly. 
 
 This indenturing, this monastic profession, our Head-Eabbig 
 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 investiture 
 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 Eaths 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 aii- 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 oyer with a few perfumes. Now, in our days, by cleri- 
 cal persons top much (fluid) breath can never be inhaled through 
 the mouth ; seeing the dignity of thejr station excludes them from 
 that breathing through the smaller por^s, which Abei-nethy so 
 highly recommends under the name of air-bath : and can the Gul- 
 let in their case be aught else than door-neighbour to the Wind- 
 pipe, the consonant and fellow-shoot of the Windpipe ? — I am runn- 
 ing astray : I meant to signify, that I this evening had adopted the 
 same opinion ; only that I used this air or ether, not like the rest 
 for loud laughter, but for the more quiet contemplation of life in 
 general. I even shot forth at my gossip certain speeches, which 
 betrayed devoutness : these he at firgt 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 
 
LIFE OF QUINIDfl FIXLEIN. 307 
 
 and embodied like spiritual shapes, 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; — 1 fsaid 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, tlie omnipotence of Goodness was driving us and the cen- 
 turies of the world towards the gates of the City of God, as, ac- 
 cording to Euler, the resistance of the either 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 belligerent 
 powers were wont of old from the theologians of the Reformation. 
 I hide not from myself, however, that what preachers call vanity 
 of the world, is something altogether different from what philo- 
 sophy so calls. When I, moreover, signified to him tha.t 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 ther« a tint of flesh-colour, — then was my silk, which, alas! 
 not only isolates one from electric fli-e, 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 parsons, 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 acknowledge it with venera- 
 tion, if I should mention him in print ; but he was much afraid 
 his life was too common and too poor for a biography." Never- 
 theless, 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 
 JExercitationes, and his Letters on the Mobber-Oastle, if I should pre- 
 viously send forth a life of the Author, might be better received ; 
 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 theii 
 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 
 open beside them) to the fifteenth : today is Thursday, tomorrow 
 is the sixteenth and Friday, when eomes 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, however, I do 
 
368 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEIOH KICHTBE. 
 
 not go SO soon ; for on Sunday I have to assist at the baptismal ce- 
 remony, as baptismal agent for my little future godson. Whoever 
 pays attention to me, and keeps the Almanac open, may readily 
 guess why the christening is put oflF till Sunday : for it is that me- 
 moi-able 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, cannot 
 prognosticate either his joys or his soitows, stiU 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 gardeneress 
 may be able to take share in it. The moming-service in the church, 
 where often the whole people' ai-e sitting and singing, 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. Fixlein's 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 really 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 Loi'ds'-sons, therefore, should la- 
 bour 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 
 eating flre calcines the heart : I praise the Antiquaiy, the Herald- 
 ist, Notemaker, Compiler; I esteem the Title-perch (a fish cUled 
 Perca-Diagramma, because of the letters on its scales), and the 
 Printer (a chafer, called Soarabcms Typographus, which eats letters 
 in the bark of fir), — neither of them needs any greater or fairer 
 arena in the world tlian a piece of rag-paper, or any other laying- 
 apparatus than a pointed pencil, wherewith to lay his four-aud- 
 ' For according to the Jurists, fifteen persons make a people. 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 309 
 
 twenty letter-eggfs. — In regard to the catalogue raisonne, -vvliioh 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 com- 
 puted, that e.g. for a hundredweight of pica black-letter, four hun- 
 dred and fifty semicolons, three hundred periods, &c. are required ; 
 and to recount, and see whether in Political writings and Dedica- 
 tions, the fifty notes of admiration for a hundredweight of pica 
 black-letter were not far too small an allowance, and if so, what 
 the real quantity was ?" 
 
 Several days he wrote nothing ; but wrapped himself in the 
 slough of his parson's-oloak ; and so in his canonicals, beside the 
 Schoolmaster, put the few A-b-c shooters, which were not, like 
 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 difierent museums, and 
 examine the village, especially the Biographical furniture and 
 holy places, which I chance that mqyning to have had under my 
 pen or pantagraph; because I look at them with more interest 
 after my description than hefore 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 
 subsoribei-s, or (in case they have subscribed for their children) 
 with their children's names also, is to be inurned in a leaden 
 capsule, and preserved in the steeple-ball ; the other will remain 
 below among the parish Registers. You cannot fancy what con- 
 tributions the ambition of getting into the Ball brings us in; I 
 declare, several peasants who had given and well once already, 
 contributed again when they had baptisms : must not little Hans 
 be in the Ball too ? 
 
 After this book-keeping by double-entiy, 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. 
 
870 JEAN PAUL FEIEDBIOH KICHTEB. 
 
 " Before you can count sixty,'' said he to me, " I take my fun- 
 damental-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 
 heauty, 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 Eussian, 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 coUation ; 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 
 the apoplectic crushings of a downpressed youtli, the most vio- 
 lent pulses of joy are heavier than the-movements of pensive sad- 
 ness. And thus beautifully runs our pure transparent life along, 
 under the blooming curtains of May ; and in our modest plea- 
 sures 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 rodd 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. 
 
LIFE OF QTIINIUS FIXLEIN. 871 
 
 For he is gone to town, to bring a whole magazine of spice- 
 ries : his ooat-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-ooUeagues, and several respectable 
 shopkeepers, — does, much more than flesh-fetching, foi-m the ob- 
 ject of these journeys to the city. This morning he appointed me 
 regent head of the house, and delivered me the fasoet and aurule 
 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 Hked 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 ci'ushed 
 with other than sentimental woes, overflowed at the smallest pres- 
 sure. A hundred times in the recital I was on the point of saying : 
 " O 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 wiU 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 censm-e of the 
 Parson ; the best wives will complain of their husbands to a stran- 
 
 iger, without in the smallest lUdng them the less on that account. 
 The mother and the wife, during dinner, accused him 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 espe- 
 cially 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 onee women are in the way 
 of a full open-hearted effusion, they like (only you must not turn 
 the stop-cock of inquii-y) 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 are almost more Chamberlains than picklocks among us ? — 
 At last I took heart, and asked after the little toy-pi-ess of the 
 drowned son, which hitherto I had sought for in vain over all the 
 
372 JEAN PAUL FBIEDEIOH RIOHTER. 
 
 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 recol- 
 lection of his brother would pain him. When this deposit-chest 
 of Time (the look 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 weakening 
 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 
 Eome, 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 fii-e of a moderate and everlasting love, and 
 gave warmth without casting forth sparks, and flamed straight up 
 without crackling. The evening-red is flowing back more magically 
 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 dwelling." 
 
 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 to- 
 night from the town ! — How will the ascending steeple-ball refresh 
 thy soul tomorrow ! — 
 
 TWELFTH LETTER-BOX. 
 
 /Steeple-iall-Ascension. The Toy-press. 
 
 How, on this sixteenth of May, the old steeplo-ball was twisted off 
 from the Hukelum steeple, and a new one put on in its stead, will 
 
LIFE or QTONTtlS FXXLEIN. 873 
 
 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 community, con- 
 sisting of subscribers to the Globe, was visibly collecting. A little 
 later came the Lord Dragoon Rittmeister von Aufhammer, as Pa- 
 tron 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 innumerable hearers, a week- 
 day prayer-service. Directly afterwards, my Reverend Friend made 
 his appeai'ance 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 tlie leaden box in which 
 they wei-e specially recorded; observing, that the book fi-om which 
 he had recited them was to be reposited 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 under- 
 taker of such a work. The whole he concluded with a short prayer 
 for Mr. Stechmaun the Slater (who was already hanging on the out- 
 side 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 oock'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 preserved 
 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 as- 
 cend aloft 
 
 By heaven ! the unadorned style is here a thing beyond my 
 power : for when the Ball moved, swung, mounted, tliere rose a 
 
374 JEAN PAUL FKIBDEICH RIOHTEB. 
 
 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 happUy incorporated the spike of it, and delivered 
 down, between Heaven and Earth, and leaning on the Ball, a Top- 
 stone-speech to this aiid all of us, — and when my gossip'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 baptismal-Sunday, he would be — two- 
 and-thirty years of age. " !" thought I, while I looked at the 
 blue heaven, the green graves, the glittering ball, the weeping 
 priest, " so, at all times, stands poor man TOth bandaged eyes be- 
 fore thy shaxp 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 mouraful 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 rainbow! 
 — Out of love to him, she had yearly told one falsehood, and con- 
 cealed his age. By extreme good luck, he had not been present 
 when the press was opened. I still purpose, after this fatal Sun- 
 day, to surprise him with the party-coloured reliques of his child- 
 hood, 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, Uke 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 metamorphotio mirror of his 
 superstitious imagination, and behind the magnifying magic va/- 
 pour of his present joys, would bum forth like a red death-war- 
 
LIFE OF QUINIUS FIXLEIN, 375 
 
 rant. . . . 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. 
 
 Today is that stupid Cantata-Sunday; but nothing now remains of 
 it save an hour.— fBy heaven ! in right spirits were we all today. I 
 believe I have drunk as faithfully as another. — In truth, 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 chng 
 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-aJf, 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. O, without, under the stars, under 
 the tones of the nightingale, which seem to reverberate, not from 
 the echo, but from the far-oif down-glancing worlds; beside that 
 moon, which the gushing brook in its flickering 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 evening 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 mode- 
 rate our own joys, and to conceive those of others. 
 
 I return, peaceful and cool enough, to my narrative. All yester- 
 night 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 committing it to 
 memory) ia his hand, he set before me all that he had ; and pointed 
 out to me the fruit-baskets of pleasures which CantatarSunday al- 
 
376 OEAN PAUL FBIEDRICH EIOHTEK. 
 
 ways 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 i-egard to the public 
 revenues — of his parish, to the number of his communicants and 
 expected catechumens. At this point, however, I am afraid that 
 many a reader will in vain endeavour to transport himself into my 
 situation, and still be unable to discover why I said to Fislein : 
 " Worthy gossip, better no man could wish himself." I lied not, 
 for so it is But look in the Note.' 
 
 At last rose the Sunday, the present; and on this holy day, 
 simply because my little godson was for going over to Christianity, 
 there was a vast racket made : every time a conversion happens, 
 especially of nations, there is an uproaring and a shooting;, I I'efer 
 to the two Thirty-Years Wars, to the more recent one, and to the 
 earlier, which Ohai-lemagne so long carried on with the heathea 
 Saxons : thus, in the Palais Royal, the Sun, at his transit over the 
 meridian, fires off a cannon.^ But this morning the little Un- 
 christian, 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-bap- 
 tism ; having named him Jean Paul before the priest did so. At 
 midday, we sent the beef away as it had come ; the Sun of happi- 
 ness having desiccated all our gastric juices. We now began to 
 look about us for pomp; I for scientific decorations of my hair, 
 my godson for his christening-shirt, and his mother for her dress- 
 cap. Yet before the child's-rattle of the clu-istening-beU had been 
 jingled, I and the midwife, in front of the mother's bed, instituted 
 Physiognomical Travels* on the countenance of the small Unchris- 
 tian, and returned with the discovery, that some features had been 
 embossed by the pattern of th© mother, 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 talce 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 
 
 ' A long philoBopliical elucidation is indispensalily requisite : whicli will be 
 found in this Book, under the title ; Natural Magic of the Imagination. [A 
 part of the Jm de Tahlette appended to this Biography, unconnected with it, 
 and not given here. — En.] 
 
 2 This pigmy piece of ordnance, with its cunningly devised burning-glass, is 
 Btill to be seen on the south side of the Paris Vanity- Mr ; and in tine weather, 
 to be heard, on all sides thereof, proclaiming the convei'sion (so it seems to 
 Richter) of the Day from Forenoon to Afternoon. — Bd. 
 
 '■> SeeMusdits, ante, — Ed, 
 
LIFE OF QniNTUa MXLEIN. 877 
 
 draw the father, with swelling canonicals, moving forward slowly, 
 devoutly, and full of emotion ? Would he not have to sketch the 
 godfather, minded this day to lend out his names, which he de- 
 rived from two Apostles (John and Paul), as Julius Csesar 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-millt) 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 afterwai'ds, 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 Hukelum, — 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 lying iu 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 hving reh- 
 gion, and, with invisible hand, conduct him unlost through the 
 forest of Life, through its falling trees, and Wild Hunters,' 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 grandmother 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 running over? — 
 For I remembered that his father might perhaps this vei-y 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; of these soiled steps to the Grecian 
 Temple of our Perfection; I thought that one day his own fire of 
 genius might reduce himself to ashes, as a man that is electrified 
 
 can kill himself with his own lightning All the theological 
 
 wishes, which, on the godson-billet printed over with them, I 
 
 ' The Wild Hunter, Witde JUger, is a popular spectre of Germany.— Ed. 
 
378 JEAN PAUL FEIBDBIOH RIOHTEB. 
 
 placed in his young bosom, were glowing written in mine 
 
 But tie 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 scull And as I am doing so even now, let 
 
 the describing of the baptism be over for today, and proceed again 
 tomorrow 
 
 FOUETEENTH LETTEErBOX. 
 
 Oh, 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, whUe 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 who 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 be- 
 fore. O, 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 Egidius" ? — 
 
 This stroke sunk deep into his bosom, even to the rending of 
 it asunder: in this warm hoiir, fiiU 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 cold, 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 
 the sky, full of stai-s, which a white overarching lam-el-tree half 
 screened from his sight ; — and though he longed to be in bed, to 
 settle there and sleep it ofi', 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 
 
LTIE OF QUINTUS MXLEIN. 879 
 
 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-windows, 
 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-bom masks alternately 
 into lightning and shadow. Then at last from transparent thoughts 
 grew coloured visions, and he dreamed this dream : He was stand- 
 ing 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-hones 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 scull, 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 win- 
 dow, 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 himself 
 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 scythe and cloak were gone, 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. 
 
380 JEAN PAUL TBIEDBICH KIOHTEB. 
 
 Tlie 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 ciy, 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 burn- 
 ing-rod, and the heart drove flaming naphtha-brooics 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 Thien- 
 nette's arm, into a bloody rain; — he still thought he was in the 
 garden in the night of betrothment, he still kept calling for baud- 
 ages to stanch blood, and was for hiding his head in the ball of 
 the steeple. Nothing afflicts one more than to see a reasonable 
 moderate man, who has been so even in his passions, raving in 
 the poetic madness of fever. And yet if nothing save this moulder- 
 ing corruption can soothe the hot brain; and if, while the reek 
 and thick vapour of a boihng 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 suddenly 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 the oculist, who, 
 when about to open to a blind eye the world of light, first band- 
 ages 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 ia 
 her; but what I am forced to see in her, and what too keenly cuts 
 the sympathising heart, is a pale, still, unmoved, uudistorted 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 headsman ; 
 for, O ! on this form the wounds, from which the three-edged 
 dagger had been drawn, are all fallen firmly togetlier, and the 
 blood is flowing from them in secret into the choking heart. O 
 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 happi- 
 
LWE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 381 
 
 ness 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 hours ago, the too loud lamenting mother told me. Thien- 
 nette, who of old had always trembled for his thirty-second year, 
 had encountered tliis superstition with a nobler one ; she had 
 purposely stood farther back at the marriage-altar, and in the 
 bx'idal-night fallen sooner asleep than he ; thereby — as is the po- 
 pular 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 f?he may descend the sooner to keep him company 
 in his narrow house. Thou good, thou faithful wife, but thou un- 
 happy 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 con- 
 vulsions by convulsions, one fanoj 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 eveiy 
 one to leave the patient : only his mother, while the fiercest 
 meteors were darting 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, dissi- 
 mulation 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 ne- 
 
382 JEAN PAUT. FRIEDEIOH KICHTER. 
 
 oessarily recognised as his own handwriting; then the black velvet 
 faW-liat 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 orbispietas oijictits of Niirn- 
 berg 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 Golgo- 
 tha of a heavenly time, which none of us forgets, which we love for- 
 ever, 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 di'eam; and his whole heart flowed down in 
 warm showers of tears, and he said, fixing his full eyes on the 
 eyes of his mother: " But are my father and brother still living, 
 then?" — " They are dead lately," said the wounded mother; but 
 her heart was overpowered, and she turned away her eyes, and 
 bitter tears fell unseen from her down-bent head. And now at . 
 once that evening, when he lay confined to bed by the death of 
 his father, and was cured by his playthings, overflowed his soul 
 with splendour and lights, and presence of the past. 
 
 And so Delirium dyed for itself rosy wings in the Aurora of 
 life, and fanned the panting soul, — and shook down golden 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, — O, his heart was like to fall in pieces, but 
 only into fluttering flower-stamina, into soft sentient nerves ; his 
 eyes were like to melt away, but only into dewdrops for the cups 
 of joy-blossoms, into blooddrops for loving hearts; his soul was 
 floating, palpitating, drinking and swimming in the warm relaxing 
 rose-perfume of the brightest delusion 
 
 The rapture bridled his feverish heart; and his mad pulse grew 
 calm. Next morning, his mother, when she saw that all was pros- 
 pering, would have had the ohui-ch-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 ws moved the month-hand of his clock 
 (biit otherwise than Hezekiah's Dial) eight days forward; espe- 
 cially 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 Can- 
 tata-Sunday, and yet, out of sheer terror, was withering to a lath?" 
 
 A glorious reinforcement joiaed me; the Flescher or Quartei^ 
 
LIFE or QUINTtrS FIXLEIN. 383 
 
 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. Regiments-Quartermaster : 
 last night, he let them persuade him he was little older than his 
 own son : here is the child's fall-hat he was for putting on." The 
 Guardian deuced and devilled, and said: "Ward, are you a parson 
 or a fool ? — Have not I told you twenty times, there was a maggot 
 in your head about this ?" — 
 
 At last he himself perceived that he was not rightly wise, and 
 so grew better ; besides the guardian's invectives, my oaths contri- 
 buted a good deal ; for I swore I would hold him as no I'ight gos- 
 sip, 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 Sa- 
 turday, and at the altar next day he dispensed the Sacrament. Ser- 
 vice ended, the feast of his recovery was celebrated, my farewell- 
 feast included ; for I was to go in the afternoon. 
 
 This last afternoon I wiU ohal^ 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 per- 
 sonal tribute from his catechumens, and fairings by way of bonfire 
 for his recovery; proving how much the people loved him, and 
 how weU 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 Uttle under the cover of the Black Board, with 
 its white Psalm-ciphers,' and wrote down what I was there — ^think- 
 ing. I was well aware, that when I today, on the twenty-fifth of 
 May, retired from this Salemu? spinning-school, where one is 
 taught to spin out the thread of Ufe, in fairer wise, and without 
 wetting it by foreign mixtures, — 'I was well aware, I say, that I 
 
 ' Indicating to the congregation what Psalm is to be sung. — Bd, 
 
 ^ Salerno was once famous for its medical science ; but here, as in many 
 
 other cases, we could desire the aid of Herr Beinhold with his Lexicon-Commen- 
 
 tary. — En. 
 
384 OEAN PAWL FBIEDBIOH RlOHIBIl. 
 
 should oai-ry off with me far more elementary principles of the 
 Science of Happiness, than the whole Ohamherlain piquet ever 
 muster all their days. I noted down my first impression, in the 
 following Rules of Life for myself and the press : 
 
 '' Little joys refresh us constantly like house-hread, 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 gra- 
 tify 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,' feed them. — For civic life and its micrologies, for 
 which the Parson has a natural tSste, we must acquire an artificial 
 one ; must learn to love without esteeming it ; learn, far as it ranks 
 beneath human life, to enjoy it like another twig of this human life, 
 as poetically as we do the pictures of it in romances. The loftiest 
 mortal loves and seeks the same sort of things with the meanest ; 
 only from higher grounds and by higher paths. Be every minute, 
 Man, a full life to thee ! — Despise anxiety and wishing, the Future 
 and the Past ! — If the Second-pointer can be no road-pointer into an 
 Eden for thy soul, the Month-pointer will still less be so, for thou 
 livest not from month to month, but from second to second ! En- 
 joy thy Existence more than thy Manner of Existence, and let the 
 dearest object of thy Consciousness be this Consciousness itself! 
 — Make not the Present a means of thy Future; for this Future is 
 nothing but a coming Present; and the Present, which thou de- 
 spisest, was once a Future which thou desiredst ! — Stake in no lot- 
 teries, — keep at home, — give and accept no pompous entertain- 
 ments, — ti-avel not abi-oad every year ! — Conceal not from thyself, 
 by long plans, thy household goods, thy chamber, thy acquaint- 
 ance ! — Despise Life, that thou mayst enjoy it ! — Inspect the neigh- 
 bourhood of thy life; every shelf, every nook of thy abode ; and 
 nestling in, quarter thyself in the farthest and most domestic wind- 
 ing 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 neighbours at the street-door ; a library as a learned conversa- 
 tion, 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 vrfde-gowned and 
 black-gowned gossip. The congregation gone, we clambered up 
 
 ' This hospitable Potentate is as unknown to me as to any of my readers, 
 •—Ed. 
 
LIFE OF QUINTD3 FIXLEIN. 385 
 
 to all high places, perused the plates on the pews, — I took a lesson 
 on the altar on its inscription incrusted with the sediment of Time 
 (I speak not metaphorically) ; I organed, my gossip managing the 
 bellows; I mounted the pulpit, and was happy enough there to 
 alight on one other rose-shoot, which, in the farewell minute, I 
 could still plant in the rose-garden of my Fixlein. For I descried 
 aloft, on the back of a wooden Apostle, the name Lavater, which 
 the Zurich Physiognomist had been pleased to leave on this sa- 
 cred Torso in the course of his wayfaring. Fixlein did not know 
 the hand, but I did, for I had seen it frequently in Flachsenfingen, 
 not only on the tapestry of a Court Lady there, but also in his 
 Hand-Library;^ and met with it besides in many country ollurohes, 
 forming, as it were, the Directoiy and Address-Calendar of this 
 wandering name, for Lavater likes to inscribe in pulpits^ as a shop- 
 herd 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 care- 
 fully among his curiosa. 
 
 On retui-ning 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 Thieunette. 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,^ 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 Cai-dinals in- 
 stead of theirs, and Saiuts instead of martyi'-crowns, would clap 
 such memory-bonnets on their heads !" — Thereupon, till the roast- 
 ing and cooking within doors wei-e over, we marched out alone 
 over the parsonage meadows, and talked of learned matters, we 
 packed ourselves into the ruined Eobber- Castle, on which my gos- 
 sip, 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 
 
 ' A little work printed in manuscript types ; and seldom given by him to 
 aiiybut Princes. This piece of print-writirtg he intehtioually passes off to the 
 great as a piece of hand-writing ; these persons being, both more ' habituated 
 and inclined to the reading of manuscript than of print. 
 
 ^ Thus defined by Adelung in his Lexicon : " Krautermuize, in Medicine, a 
 crip with various dried herbs sewed into it, and'which'isworn for all manner of 
 troubled in the head." — Ed. 
 
386 JEAN PAUL FRIEDSICH EICHTER. 
 
 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 friend the Editor of the Litteraturzeitung at my side, who 
 will gladly permit me to give an anticritique, on paying the inser- 
 tion-dues!" — I especially excited him to new fillings and return- 
 freights of his Letter-Boxes. I have not taken oath that into this 
 biographical chest-of-drawers, I will not in the course of time in- 
 troduce another Box. " Neither to my godson, worthy gossip, 
 will it do any harm that he is presented, poor child, even now to 
 the reading public, when he does not count more months than, as 
 Horace will have it, a literary child should count years, namely, 
 nine." 
 
 In walking homewards, I praised his wife. " If marriage," said 
 I to him, " is the madder, which in maids, as in cotton, makes the 
 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 another sort, 
 divine ones ; in a marriage, I mean, where beside the writing-table 
 (as beside the great voting-table at the Eegensburg Diets, there 
 are little tables of confectionary) ; where in like manner, I say, a 
 little jar of marmalade were standing by me, namely, a sweetened, 
 daintj', lovely face, and out of measure fond of the Letter-Box- 
 writer, gossip ! Your marriage will resemble the Acacia- grove we 
 are now going to, the leaves of which grow thicker with the heat 
 of summer, while other shrubs ai-e yielding only shrunk and por- 
 ous 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 age than 
 I, for that his temperate temperament was balanced as if by a doc- 
 tor so equally between tlie nei-vousness 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 yeai-s, it would 
 amount, exclusive of the leap year-days, to 280,320 seconds, which 
 in itself was something considerable ; and that he often reckoned 
 
LIFE or QDINTnS FIXLEIN. 887 
 
 up with satisfaction tlae many thousand persons of his own age 
 that would have a life equally long. 
 
 At last I tried to get in motion ; for the red lights of the falling 
 sun were mounting up over the grove, and dipping us still deeper 
 in the shadows of night : the young mother had grown chill in the 
 evening dew. In confused mood, I invited the Parson to visit me 
 soon in the city, where I would show him not only all the cham- 
 bers of tlie 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 repre- 
 senting 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 escoi-tiug 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 somfe 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 lyjut 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.— 4 — 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 
 
Sob jean paul friedihch kiohtek. 
 
 this good pair, arose before my heart; and I remembered that 
 / httle save the falling asleep of joy-ilowers would mark the current 
 I of their Life-day, as it does of mine and of every one's. — And yet 
 is it fairer, if they measure their years not by the WaUr-elock of 
 falling tears, but by the Floioer-cloak^ 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 coi-pses — address 
 myself, and say : Far too soft, Jean Paul, whose chalk still sketches 
 the models of Nature on a ground of Melancholy; harden thy 
 heart like thy frame, and waste not thyself and others by such 
 thoughts. Yet why should I do it, why should I not confess di- 
 rectly what, in the softest emotion, 1 said to these two beings ? 
 / " May all go right with you, ye mild beings," I said, for I no 
 ■ longer thought of courtesies, " may the arm of Providence bear 
 gently your lacerated hearts, and the good Father, above all these 
 suns which are now looking down on us, keep you ever united, 
 and exalt you still undivided to his bosom and his lips !" — " Be 
 you too right happy and glad !" said Thiennette.^— " And to you, 
 Thiennette," continued I, " Ah ! to your pale cheeks, to your op- 
 ( pressed heart, to your long cold maltreated youth, I can never, 
 never wish enough. No! But all that can soothe a wounded 
 soul, that can please a pure one, that can still the hidden sigh — 
 O, all that you deserve — may this be given you; and when you see 
 me again, then say to me, ' I am now much happier !' " 
 
 We were all of us too deeply moved. We at last tore ourselves 
 asunder from repeated embraces ;• my friend retired with the soul 
 whom he loves — I remained alone behind him with the Night. 
 
 And I walked without aim through woods, thrrugh 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 upstretohing Aurora of a morning beneath our feet. 
 White nightbuttei-flies 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 Creation to tremble 
 and to sound, blown on from above, and my immortal soul was 
 a string in this Harp. — The heart of a brother everlasting Man 
 swelled under the everlasting Heaven, as the seas swell under the 
 Sun and under the Moon. — The distant village-clocks sti-uck mid- 
 
 ' Linne formed in Upsal a flower-olook, the flowers of which, by their dif- 
 Cerent times of falling asleep, indicated the hours of the day. 
 
LIFE OF QCINTUS FIXLEIN. 389 
 
 night, mingling, as it were, with the ever-pealing tone of ancient 
 Eternity. — The limbs of my buried ones touched cold on my soul, 
 and drove away its blots, as dead hands heal eruptions of the skin. 
 — I walked silently through little hamlets, and close by their 
 outer clmi'ohyai'ds, where crumbled upcast coflSn-boards were glim- 
 mering, 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 everlast- 
 ing chain stretches thither, and over and below; and all is Life, 
 
 and Warmth, and Light, and all is godlike or God 
 
 Towards morning I descried thy late lights, little city of my 
 dwelling, which I belong to on this side the grave ; I returned to 
 the Earth; and in thy steeples, behind the by-advanced great Mid- 
 night, 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 stream- 
 ing on the blossoms of Spring : " All retire, bloody War, like red 
 Mars ; and thou, still Peace, come forth like the mild divided 
 Moon!" — 
 
 T}IE EUD. 
 
 PRIUTED BY RODSOX, LEVEY, AND FRASHLVM, 
 Great New Street aud Fetter h&Me.