Translations from the German · Thomas Carlyle
SEVENTH LETTER-BOX.
_Sermon. School-Exhibition. Splendid Mistake._ The Conrector received his 135 florins, 43 kreutzers, one halfpenny Frankish; but no answer: the dog remained without name, his master without parsonage. Meanwhile the summer passed away; and the Dragoon Rittmeister had yet drawn out no pike from the Candidate _breeding-pond_, and thrown him into the _feeding-pond_ of the Hukelum parsonage. It gratified him to be behung with prayers like a Spanish guardian Saint; and he postponed (though determined to prefer the Subrector) granting any one petition, till he had seven-and-thirty dyers', buttonmakers', tinsmiths' sons, whose petitions he could at the same time refuse. Grudge not him of Aufhammer this outlengthening of his electorial 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 exalted to the Peerage, while still a foetus, may with more propriety be likened to the _spinner_, which, contrariwise to all other insects, passes from the chrysalis state, and becomes a perfect insect in its mother's womb.--
But to proceed! Fixlein was at present not without cash. It will be the same as if I made a present of it to the reader, when I reveal to him, that of the legacy, which was clearing off old scores, he had still thirty-five florins left to himself, as _allodium_ and pocket-money, wherewith he might purchase whatsoever seemed good to him. And how came he by so large a sum, by so considerable a competence? Simply by this means: Every time he changed a piece of gold, and especially at every payment he received, it had been his custom to throw in, blindly at random, two, three, or four small coins, among the papers of his trunk. His purpose was to astonish himself one day, when he summed up and took possession of this sleeping capital. And, by Heaven! he reached it too, when on mounting the throne of his Conrectorate, he drew out these funds from among his papers, and applied them to the coronation charges. For the present, he sowed them in again among his waste letters. Foolish Fixlein! I mean, had he not luckily exposed his legacy to jeopardy, having offered it as bounty-money, and luck-penny to the patron, this false clutch of his at the knocker of the Hukelum church-door would certainly have vexed him; but now if he had missed the knocker, he had the luck-penny again, and could be merry.
But what I must _ex officio_ depict, is the day to which this Sunday was but the prelude, the vigil and the whet; I mean the prelude, the vigil and the whet to the _Martini Actus_, or _Martinmas Exhibition_, of his school. On Sunday was the Sermon, on Wednesday the Actus, on Tuesday the Rehearsal. This Tuesday shall now be delineated to the universe. I count upon it that I shall not be read by mere people of the world alone, to whom a School-Actus cannot truly appear much better, or more interesting, than some Investiture of a Bishop, or the _opera seria_ of a Frankfort Coronation; but that I likewise have people before me, who have been at schools, and who know how the school-drama of an Actus, and the stage-manager, and the playbill (the Program) thereof are to be estimated, still without overrating their importance.
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 ladies and Councillor gentlemen. Smile away, Fixlein, at this astonishment over thy today's _Ovation_, which is leading on tomorrow's _Triumph_: on thy dissolving countenance quivers happy Self, feeding on these incense-fumes; but a vanity like thine, and that only, which enjoys without comparing or despising, can one tolerate, will one foster.
But what flowed over all his heart, like a melting sunbeam over wax, was his mother, who after much persuasion had ventured in her Sunday clothes humbly to place herself quite low down, beside the door of the Prima class-room. It were difficult to say who is happier, the mother, beholding how he whom she has borne 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 the son, who, like some of the heroes of Antiquity, has the felicity of triumphing in the lifetime of his mother. I have never in my writings or doings cast a stone upon the late Burchardt Grossmann, who under the initial letters of the stanzas in his song, "_Brich an, du liebe Morgenroethe_," 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 Tempe, the leaf-skeleton as a Liberty-tree, a Bread-tree and Life-tree, and the dew-drops as the Ocean. We poor day-moths, evening-moths and night-moths, fall universally into the same error, only on different leaves; and whosoever (as I do) laughs at the important airs with which the schoolmaster issues his programs, the dramaturgist his playbills, the classical variation-alms-gatherer his alphabetic letters,--does it, if he is wise (as is the case here), with the consciousness of his own _similar_ folly; and laughs in regard to his neighbour, at nothing but mankind and himself.
The mother was not to be detained; she must off, this very night, to Hukelum, to give the Fraeulein 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 Conrector was just about putting on his fine raiment, something knocked.---- It was the well-known servant of the Rittmeister, carrying the Hukelum Presentation for the Subrector _Fuechs_lein in his pocket. To the last-named gentleman he had been sent with this call to the parsonage: but he had distinguished ill betwixt _Sub_ and _Con_rector; and had besides his own good reasons for directing his steps to the latter; for he thought: "Who can it be that gets it, but the parson that preached last Sunday, and that comes from the village, and is engaged to our Fraeulein Thiennette, and to whom I brought a clock and a roll of ducats already?" That his Lordship could pass over his own godson, never entered the man's head.
Fixlein read the address of the Appointment: "To the Reverend the Parson _Fixlein_ 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 special mention of persons, but only of a _Schul-unter-befehlslaber_ or School-undergovernor (instead of Subrector), he could not but persist in his error. Before I properly explain why the Rittmeister's Lawyer, the framer of the Presentation, had so designated a Subrector--we two, the reader and myself, will keep an eye for a moment on Fixlein's joyful saltations--on his 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 answered him with all distinctness at the very first? And was not this same man, who belonged to the nose-upturning, shoulder-shrugging, shoulder-knotted, toad-eating species of men, at last so moved by the joy which he had imparted, that he determined on the spot, to bestow his presence on the new clergyman's School-Actus, though no person of quality whatever was to be there? Fixlein, in the first place, sealed his letter of thanks; and courteously invited this messenger of good news to visit him frequently in the Parsonage; and to call this evening in passing at his mother's, and give her a lecture for not staying last night, when she might have seen the Presentation from his Lordship arrive today.
The lackey being gone, Fixlein for joy began to grow sceptical--and timorous (wherefore, to prevent filching, he stowed his Presentation securely in his coffer, under keeping of two padlocks); and devout and softened, since he thanked God without scruple for all good that happened to him, and never wrote this Eternal Name but in pulpit characters and with coloured ink, as the Jewish copyists never wrote it except in ornamental letters and when newly washed;[52]--and deaf also did the parson grow, so that he scarcely heard the soft wooing-hour of the Actus--for a still softer one beside Thiennette, with its rose-bushes and rose-honey, would not leave his thoughts. He who of old, when Fortune made a wry face at him, was wont, like children in their sport at one another, to laugh at her so long till she herself was obliged to begin smiling,--he was now flying as on a huge seesaw higher and higher, quicker and quicker aloft. [52] Eichhorn's _Einleit. ins A. T._ (Introduction to the Old Testament), vol. ii.
But before the Actus, let us examine the Schadeck Lawyer. _Fixlein_ instead of _Fuechslein_[53] he had written from uncertainty about the spelling of the name; the more naturally as in transcribing the Rittmeisterinn's will, the former had occurred so often. _Von_, this triumphal arch he durst not set up before Fuechslein's new name, because Aufhammer forbade it, considering Hans Fuechslein as a mushroom who had no right to _vons_ and titles of nobility, for all his patents. In fine, the Presentation-writer was possessed with Campe's[54] 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 intermixed--whether a word was invented by a savage or a foreigner; whether it grew up like moss amid the German forests, or like street-grass, in the pavement of the Roman forum. The Lawyer, on the other hand, contended that it was different; and accordingly he hid not from any of his clients that _Tagefarth_ (Day-turn) meant _Term_, and that _Appealing_ was _Berufen_ (Becalling). On this principle he dressed the word _Subrector_ in the new livery of _School-undergovernor_. And this version farther converted the Schoolmaster into Parson: to such a degree does our _civic_ fortune--not our _personal_ well-being, which supports itself on our own internal soil and resources--grow merely on the _drift-mould_ of accidents, connexions, acquaintances, and Heaven or the Devil knows what!--
Toll, toll your bell for the Actus; stream in, in to the ceremony: who cares for it? Neither I nor the Ex-Conrector. The six pigmy Ciceros will in vain set forth before us in sumptuous dress their thoughts and bodies. The draught-wind of Chance has blown away from the Actus its powder-nimbus of glory; and the Conrector that was has discovered how small a matter a cathedra is, and how great a one a pulpit: "I should not have thought," thought he now, "when I became Conrector, that there could he anything grander, I mean a Parson." Man, behind his everlasting blind, which he only colours differently, and makes no thinner, carries his pride with him from one step to another; and, on the higher step, blames only the pride of the lower. The best of the Actus was, that the Regiments-Quartermaster, and Master Butcher, Steinberg, attended there, embaled in a long woollen shag. During the solemnity, the Subrector Hans von Fuechslein cast several gratified and inquiring glances on the Schadeck servant, who did not once look at him: Hans would have staked his head, that after the Actus, the fellow would wait upon him. When at last the sextuple cockerel-brood had on their dunghill done crowing, that is to say, had perorated, the scholastic cocker, over whom a higher banner was now waving, himself came upon the stage; and delivered to the School-Inspectorships, to the Subrectorship, to the Guardianship and the Lackeyship, his most grateful thanks for their attendance; shortly announcing to them at the same time, "that Providence had now called him from his post to another; and committed to him, unworthy as he was, the cure of souls in the Hukelum parish, as well as in the Schadeck chapel of ease."
This little address, to appearance, well-nigh blew up the then Subrector Hans von Fuechslein 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 Quartermaster erected himself considerably in his shag, and hummed loud enough in happy forgetfulness: "The Dickens!--Parson?"---- The Subrector dashed by like a comet before the lackey: ordered him to call and take a letter for his master; strode home, and prepared for his patron, who at Schadeck was waiting for a long thanksgiving psalm, a short satirical epistle, as nervous as haste would permit, and mingled a few nicknames and verbal injuries along with it. The courier handed in, to his master, Fixlein's song of gratitude, and Fuechslein's invectives, with the same hand. The Dragoon Rittmeister, incensed at the ill-mannered churl, and bound to his word, which Fixlein had publicly announced in his Actus, forthwith wrote back to the new Parson an acceptance and ratification; and Fixlein is and remains, to the joy of us all, incontestable ordained parson of Hukelum. His disappointed rival has still this consolation, that he holds a seat in the wasp-nest of the _Neue Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek_.[55] Should the Parson ever chrysalise himself into an author, the watch-wasp may then buzz out, and dart its sting into the chrysalis, and put its own brood in the room of the murdered butterfly. As the Subrector everywhere went about, and threatened in plain terms that he would review his colleague, let not the public be surprised that Fixlein's _Errata_, and his Masoretic _Exercitationes_, are to this hour withheld from it.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.