Translations from the German · Thomas Carlyle
SCHMELZLE'S JOURNEY TO FLAETZ.
_Circular Letter of the proposed Catechetical Professor_ ATTILA SCHMELZLE _to his Friends; containing some Account of a Holidays' Journey to Flaetz, with an Introduction, touching his Plight and his Courage as former Army-chaplain._ Nothing can be more ludicrous, my esteemed Friends, than to hear people stigmatising a man as cowardly and hare-hearted, who perhaps is struggling all the while with precisely the opposite faults, those of a lion; though indeed the African lion himself, since the time of Sparrmann's Travels, passes among us for a poltroon. Yet this case is mine, worthy Friends; and I purpose 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 congregation, used to take it into my head: "How now, if thou shouldst start up from the pew, and shout aloud: I am here too, Mr. Parson!" and to paint out this thought in such glowing colours, that for very dread, I have often been obliged to leave the church! Anything like 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 willing, then you, my worthy Friends, will be the first to recognise mine, when it shall break forth into, not barren and empty, but active and effective words, while I strengthen my future Catechetical Pupils, as well as can be done in a course of College Lectures, and steel them into Christian heroes.
But enough! It is now time briefly to touch that farther slander of my chaplainship, which unhappily has likewise gained some circulation in Flaetz, but which, as Caesar did Alexander, I shall now by my touch dissipate into dust. Be what truth in it there can, it is still little or nothing. Your great Minister and General in Flaetz (perhaps the very greatest in the world, for there are not many Schabackers) may indeed, like any other great man, be turned against me, but not with the Artillery of Truth; for this Artillery I here set before you, my good Hearts, and do you but fire it off for my advantage! The matter is this: Certain foolish rumours are afloat in the Flaetz country, that I, on occasion of some important battles, took leg-bail (such is their plebeian phrase), and that afterwards, on the chaplain's being called-for to preach a Thanksgiving sermon for the victory, no chaplain whatever was to be found. The ridiculousness of this story will best appear, when I tell you that I never was in any action; but have always been accustomed, several hours prior to such an event, to withdraw so many miles to the rear, that our men, so soon as they were beaten, would be sure to find me. A good retreat is reckoned the masterpiece in the art of war; and at no time can a retreat be executed with such order, force and security, as just before the battle, when you are not yet beaten.
But for my part I think not so: almost as if the party-spirit influence of my christian name, Attila, had passed into me more strongly than was proper, I feel myself impelled still farther to prove my courageousness; which, dearest Friends! I shall here 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 I yield to no officer of the service; though it is the habit of these gentlemen not only to run up long scores of roast-meat with their landlords, but also to leave them unpaid, that so at every hour they may have an open document in the hands of the enemy himself (the landlord), testifying that they have eaten their own share (with some of other people's too), and so put common butcher's-meat on a War-footing, living not like others _by_ bravery, but _for_ bravery.
As little have I ever, in my character of chaplain, shrunk from comparison with any officer in the regiment, who may be a true lion, and so snatch every sort of plunder, but yet, like this King of the Beasts, is afraid of _fire_; or who,--like King James of England, that scampered off at sight of drawn swords, yet so much the more gallantly, before all Europe, went out against the storming Luther with book and pen,[2]--does, from a similar idiosyncrasy, attack all warlike armaments, both by word and writing. And here I recollect with satisfaction a brave sub-lieutenant, whose confessor I was (he still owes me the confession-money), and who, in respect of stout-heartedness, had in him perhaps something of that Indian dog which Alexander had presented to him, as a sort of Dog-Alexander. By way of trying this crack dog, the Macedonian made various heroic or heraldic beasts be let loose against him: first a stag; but the dog lay still: then a sow; he lay still: then a bear; he lay still. Alexander was on the point of condemning him; when a lion was let forth: the dog rose, and tore the lion in pieces. So likewise the sub-lieutenant. A challenger, a foreign enemy, a Frenchman, are to him only stag, and sow, and bear, and he lies still in his place; but let his oldest enemy, his creditor, come and knock at his gate, and demand of him actual smart-money for long bygone pleasures, thus presuming to rob him both of past and present; the sub-lieutenant rises, and throws his creditor down stairs. I, alas, am still standing by the sow; and thus, naturally enough, misunderstood.
What boots the heroic arm, without a hero's eye? The former readily grows stronger and more nervous; but the latter is not so soon ground sharper, like glasses. Nevertheless, the merits of foresight obtain from the mass of men less admiration (nay, I should say, more ridicule) than those of courage. Whoso, for instance, shall see me walking under quite cloudless skies, with a wax-cloth umbrella over me, to him I shall probably appear ridiculous, so long as he is not aware that I carry this umbrella as a thunder-screen, to keep off any bolt out of the blue heaven (whereof there are several examples in the history of the Middle Ages) from striking me to death. My thunder-screen, in fact, is exactly that of Reimarus: on a long walking-stick, I carry the wax-cloth roof; from the peak of which depends a string of gold-lace as a conductor; and this, by means of a key fastened to it, which it trails along the ground, will lead off every possible bolt, and easily distribute it over the whole superficies of the Earth. With this _Paratonnerre Portatif_ in my hand, I can walk about for weeks, under the clear sky, without the smallest danger. This Diving-bell, moreover, protects me against something else; against shot. For who, in the latter end of Harvest, will give me black on white that no lurking ninny of a sportsman somewhere, when I am out enjoying Nature, shall so fire off his piece, at an angle of 45 deg., that in falling down again, the shot needs only light directly on my crown, and so come to the same as if I had been shot through the brain from a side?
Suffice one other story to manifest how ludicrous the most serious foresight, with all imaginable inward courage, often externally appears in the eyes of the many. Equestrians are well acquainted with the dangers of a horse that runs away. My evil star would have it, that I should once in Vienna get upon a hack-horse; a pretty enough honey-coloured nag, but old and hard-mouthed as Satan; so that the beast, in the next street, went off with me; and this in truth--only at a _walk_. No pulling, no tugging, took effect; I, at last, on the back of this Self-riding-horse, made signals of distress, and cried: "Stop him, good people, for God's sake stop him, my horse is off!" But these simple persons seeing the beast move along as slowly as a Reichshofrath 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 otherwise; half Vienna gathered itself like a comet-tail behind my beast and me. Prince Kaunitz, the best horseman of the century (the last), pulled up to follow me.
I myself sat and swam like a perpendicular piece of drift-ice on my honey-coloured nag, which stalked on, on, step by step: a many-cornered, red-coated letter-carrier, was delivering his letters, to the right and left, in the various stories, and he still crossed over before me again, with satirical features, because the nag went along too slowly. The Schwanzschleuderer, or Train-dasher (the person, as you know, who drives along the streets with a huge barrel of water, and besplashes them with a leathern pipe of three ells long from an iron trough), came across the haunches of my horse, and, in the course of his duty, wetted both these and myself in a very cooling manner, though, for my part, I had too much cold sweat on me already, to need any fresh refrigeration. On my infernal Trojan Horse (only I myself was Troy, not beridden but riding to destruction), I arrived at Malzlein (a suburb of Vienna), or perhaps, so confused were my senses, it might be quite another range of streets. At last, late in the dusk, I had to turn into the Prater; and here, long after the Evening Gun, to my horror, and quite against the police-rules, keep riding to and fro on my honey-coloured nag; and possibly I might even have passed the night on him, had not my brother-in-law, the Dragoon, observed my plight, and so found me still sitting firm as a rock on my runaway steed. He made no ceremonies; caught the brute; and put the pleasant question: Why I had not vaulted, and come off by ground-and-lofty tumbling? though he knew full well, that for this a wooden-horse, which stands still, is requisite. However, he took me down; and so, after all this riding, horse and man got home with whole skins and unbroken bones.
But now at last to my Journey! [Note 34: Women are like precious carved works of ivory; nothing is whiter and smoother, and nothing sooner grows _yellow_.] [Note 72: The Half-learned is adored by the Quarter-learned; the latter by the Sixteenth-part-learned; and so on; but not the Whole-learned by the Half-learned.] _Journey to Flaetz_. You are aware, my friends, that this Journey to Flaetz was necessarily to take place in Vacation time; not only because the Cattle-market, and consequently the Minister and General von Schabacker, was there then; but more especially, because the latter (as I had it positively from a private hand) did annually, on the 23d of July, the market-eve, about five o'clock, become so full of gaudium and graciousness, that in many cases he did not so much snarl on people, as listen to them, and grant their prayers. The cause of this gaudium I had rather not trust to paper. In short, my Petition, praying that he would be pleased to indemnify and reward me, as an unjustly deposed Army-chaplain, by a Catechetical Professorship, could plainly be presented to him at no better season, than exactly about five o'clock in the evening of the first dog-day. In less than a week, I had finished writing my Petition. As I spared neither summaries nor copies of it, I had soon got so far as to see the relatively best lying completed before me; when, to my terror, I observed, that, in this paper, I had introduced above thirty _dashes_, or breaks, in the middle of my sentences! 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 interlineation of thoughts, these horizontal note-marks of poetical _music_-pieces, and these rope-ladders or Achilles' tendons of philosophical _see_-pieces, are at present fashionable and indispensable: but, at last, I was obliged (as erasures may offend people of quality) to write my best proof-petition over again; and then to afflict myself for another quarter of an hour over the name Attila Schmelzle, seeing it is always my principle that this and the address of the letter, the two cardinal points of the whole, can never be written legibly enough.
I ordered her, in stormy nights (the peculiar thief-weather), to put our Eolian harp in the window, that so any villanous prowler might imagine I was fantasying on my instrument, and therefore awake: for like reasons, also, to take the house-dog within doors by day, that he might sleep then, and so be livelier at night. I farther counselled her to have an eye on the focus of every knot in the panes of the stable-window, nay, on every glass of water she might set down in the house; as I had already often recounted to her examples of such accidental burning-glasses having set whole buildings in flames. I then appointed her the hour when she was to set out on Friday morning to follow me; and recapitulated more emphatically the household precepts, which, prior to her departure, she must afresh inculcate on her domestics. My dear, heart-sound, blooming Berga answered her faithful lord, as it seemed very seriously: "Go thy ways, little old one; it shall all be done as smooth as velvet. Wert thou but away! There is no end of thee!" Her brother, my brother-in-law the Dragoon, for whom, out of complaisance, I had paid the coach-fare, in order to have in the vehicle along with me a stout swordsman and hector, as spiritual relative and bully-rock, so to speak; the Dragoon, I say, on hearing these my regulations, puckered up (which I easily forgave the wild soldier and bachelor) his sunburnt face considerably into ridicule, and said: "Were I in thy place, sister, I should do what I liked, and then afterwards take a peep into these regulation-papers of his."
I now packed-in two different sorts of medicines, heating as well as cooling, against two different possibilities; also my old splints for arm or leg breakages, in case the coach overset; and (out of foresight) two times the money I was likely to need. Only here I could have wished, so uncertain is the stowage of such things, that I had been an Ape with cheek-pouches, or some sort of Opossum with a natural bag, that so I might have reposited these necessaries of existence in pockets which were sensitive. Shaving is a task I always go through before setting out on journeys; having a rational mistrust against stranger bloodthirsty barbers: but, on this occasion, I retained my beard; since, however close shaved, it would have grown again by the road to such a length that I could have fronted no Minister and General with it.
With a vehement emotion, I threw myself on the pith-heart of my Berga, and, with a still more vehement one, tore myself away: in her, however, this our first marriage-separation seemed to produce less lamentation than triumph, less consternation than rejoicing; simply because she turned her eye not half so much on the parting, as on the meeting, and the journey after me, and the wonders of the Fair. Yet she threw and hung herself on my somewhat long and thin neck and body, almost painfully, being indeed a too fleshy and weighty load, and said to me: "Whisk thee off quick, my charming Attel (Attila), and trouble thy head with no cares by the way, thou singular man! A whiff or two of ill luck we can stand, by God's help, so long as my father is no beggar. And for thee, Franz," continued she, turning with some heat to her brother, "I leave my Attel on thy soul: thou well knowest, thou wild fly, what I will do, if thou play the fool, and leave him anywhere in the lurch." Her meaning here was good, and I could not take it ill: to you also, my Friends, her wealth and her open-heartedness are nothing new. [Note 1: The more Weakness the more Lying: Force goes straight; any cannonball with holes or cavities in it goes crooked.]
Melted into sensibility, I said: "Now, Berga, if there be a reunion appointed for us, surely it is either in Heaven or in Flaetz; and I hope in God, the latter." With these words, we whirled stoutly away. I looked round through the back-window of the coach at my good little village of Neusattel, and it seemed to me, in my melting mood, as if its steeples were rising aloft like an epitaphium over my life, or over my body, perhaps to return a lifeless corpse. "How will it all be," thought I, "when thou at last, after two or three days, comest back?" And now I noticed my Bergelchen looking after us from the garret-window. I leaned far out from the coach-door, and her falcon eye instantly distinguished my head; kiss on kiss she threw with both hands after the carriage, as it rolled down into the valley. "Thou true-hearted wife," thought I, "how is thy lowly birth, by thy spiritual new-birth, made forgettable, nay remarkable!"
I must confess, the assemblage and conversational picnic of the stage-coach was much less to my taste: the whole of them suspicious, unknown rabble, whom (as markets usually do) the Flaetz cattle-market was alluring by its scent. I dislike becoming acquainted with strangers: not so my brother-in-law, the Dragoon; who now, as he always does, had in a few minutes elbowed himself into close quarters with the whole ragamuffin posse of them. Beside me sat a person who, in all human probability, was a Harlot; on her breast, a Dwarf intending to exhibit himself at the Fair; on the other side was a Ratcatcher gazing at me; and a Blind Passenger,[3] in a red mantle, had joined us down in the valley. No one of them, except my brother-in-law, pleased me. That rascals among these people would not study me and my properties and accidents, to entangle me in their 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.
The Ratcatcher, besides the circumstance that no man can prepossess us much in his favour, who lives solely by poisoning, like this Destroying Angel of rats, this mouse-Atropos; and also, which is still worse, that such a fellow bids fair to become an increaser of the vermin kingdom, the moment he may cease to be a lessener of it; besides all this, I say, the present Ratcatcher had many baneful features about him: first, his stabbing look, piercing you like a stiletto; then the lean sharp bony visage, conjoined with his enumeration of his considerable stock of poisons; then (for I hated him more and more) his sly stillness, his sly smile, as if in some corner he noticed a mouse, as he would notice a man! To me, I declare, though usually I take not the slightest exception against people's looks, it seemed at last as if his throat were a Dog-grotto, a _Grotta del cane_, his cheek-bones cliffs and breakers, his hot breath the wind of a calcining furnace, and his black hairy breast a kiln for parching and roasting.
My brother-in-law, the Dragoon, directly kindled his tinder-box, and put a heap of the burning matter on the Ratcatcher's pole; but the fellow stood it, as if it had been a mere picture of fire, and the two looked expectingly at one another; and the former smiled very foolishly, saying: "It was simply pleasant to him, like a good warming-plaster; for this was always the wintry region of his body." Here the Dragoon groped a little on the naked scull, and cried with amazement, that "it was as cold as a knee-pan." But now the fellow, to our horror, after some preparations, actually lifted off the quarter-scull and held it out to us, saying: "He had sawed it off a murderer, his own having accidentally been broken;" and withal explained, that the stabbing and arm-cutting he had talked of was to be understood as a jest, seeing he had merely done it in the character of Famulus at an Anatomical Theatre. However, the jester seemed to rise little in favour with any of us; and for my part, as he put his brain-lid and sham-scull on again, I thought to myself; "This dungbed-bell has changed its place indeed, but not the hemlock it was made to cover." Farther, I could not but reckon it a suspicious circumstance, that he as well as all the company (the Blind Passenger too) were making for this very Flaetz, to which I myself was bound: much good I could not expect of this; and, in truth, turning home again would have been as pleasant to me as going on, had I not rather felt a pleasure in defying the future.
I come now to the red-mantled Blind Passenger; most probably an _Emigre_ or _Refugie_; for he speaks German not worse than he does French; and his name, I think, was _Jean Pierre_ or _Jean Paul_, or some such thing, if indeed he had any name. His red cloak, notwithstanding this his identity of colour with the Hangman, would in itself have remained heartily indifferent to me, had it not been for this singular circumstance, that he had already five times, contrary to all expectation, come upon me in five different towns (in great Berlin, in little Hof, in Coburg, Meiningen and Bayreuth), and each of these times had looked at me significantly enough, and then gone his ways. Whether this _Jean Pierre_ is dogging me with hostile intent or not, I cannot say; but to our fancy, at any rate, no object can be gratifying that thus, with corps of observation, or out of 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 Redcloak 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.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.