CHAPTER VIII.
After galloping for a full half-hour, Frantz Mathéus, hearing nothing but the beating of his horse’s hoofs on the road, and the song of the birds in the free air, ventured to open first one eye, then the other; and seeing himself in the midst of a thick forest, far from the cudgels and sophistical minds of the worthy country-folks, breathed like one who has been cut down after having been hanged.
Coucou Peter, on his side, slackened Bruno’s pace, and felt his own ribs to make sure they were still intact. When he had thoroughly convinced himself that all was in its place, he turned towards the village, which was still to be seen through the trees, and extending his hands with an imploring air, cried—
“Peasants of Oberbronn, the prophet Coucou Peter curses you!”
“No, no—do not curse them,” murmured the good doctor, in a tone of supplication; “do not curse them. Alas! the unfortunates know not what they do.”
“So much the worse for them,” replied the fiddler, out of temper. “I curse them to the third and fourth generation! Ah, you beggar, Tapihans! you beggar, Spengler! I curse you both! I despise you like the dust of my shoes!”
This said, he turned in the saddle and rode on.
Bruno was slowly following the path to Eschenbach. The sun heated the sandy ground; thousands of insects danced about the furze-bushes, and their vague buzzing was the only sound that met the ear. This immense calm of nature insensibly affected Mathéus; he gently bowed his head, covered his face, and burst into tears.
“What’s the matter with you, Maître Frantz?” cried Coucou Peter.
“Nothing, my friend,” replied the good man, in a stifled voice. “I am thinking of those unhappy people who have persecuted us; I am thinking of the numberless transformations they still have to endure before reaching moral perfection; and I pity them for having such bad hearts. I, who would have done so much for them!—who sought to enlighten them on their future destinies! I, who love them still with all the strength of my soul! They strike me, cover me with abuse, and misunderstand the purity of my intentions. You cannot imagine how much this pains me. Let me weep in silence; these are gentle tears, and prove to me my own goodness. Oh, Mathéus! Mathéus! man of virtue!” he cried, “weep—weep for the errors of your species; but murmur not against eternal justice! That alone makes your greatness and strength. In turn, onion, tulip, snail, and hare—finally man. You have not always been a philosopher; it has needed many ages to overcome your animal instincts. Be indulgent, therefore, and think that, if inferior beings do you harm, it is because they are not worthy to comprehend you.”
“That’s all very fine! We are knocked about, and you take pity on those fellows!” cried Coucou Peter. “The devil’s in it if we haven’t enough to be sorry for on our own account!”
“Listen to me, my friend,” said Mathéus, drying his eyes. “The more I think of it, the more convinced I am that it could not be otherwise. A nameless prophet was sent to Beth-el, on condition that he neither drank nor ate; but having unfortunately eaten a piece of bread, he was devoured by a lion, and his bones were found between this lion and an ass that had been given to him. Jonah was swallowed by a fish. It is true, he only remained three days in the fish’s stomach; but it is very disagreeable to be kept for seventy-two hours in such a constrained position. Habakkuk was transported by his hair through the air to Babylon. Imagine, Coucou Peter, how much he must have suffered by being suspended by his hair during such a journey. Ezekiel was stoned. It is not exactly known whether Jeremiah was stoned or sawed in two; but Isaiah was certainly sawed in two. Amos was——”
“Maître Frantz,” cried Coucou Peter, abruptly, “if you think to give me courage by telling me such stories as these, you are very much mistaken. I won’t conceal from you that, sooner than be cut in two, I’d rather go back to my fiddle, and play tunes on it all the rest of my life.”
“Come, come—do not be afraid. In these days prophets are no longer so ill-treated; on the contrary, handsome pensions are given to them—so long as they maintain at least the existence of a soul.”
“And we, who maintain thousands of souls, deserve pensions a thousand times bigger!” cried the gay fiddler.
Conversing in this manner, the illustrious philosopher and his disciple tranquilly went their way along the valleys of the Zorn. Mathéus, who loved nothing so well as the interior of the woods, forgot the ingratitude of the human species; the scarce perceptible sound of an insect nibbling the bark of an old tree, the flight of a bird through the rustling foliage, the vague murmur of a stream in the ravine, the whirl of the gnats dancing above the still pools—these thousand details of solitude ceaselessly furnished new texts for his anthropo-zoological meditations.
Coucou Peter whistled to amuse himself, and from time to time paid his respects to his flask of kirschwasser. Bruno often went into the Zorn up to the saddle-girths; at those times Maître Frantz and his disciple clung to one another, raising their legs well out of the way of the water, which they watched running below them with tumultuous gurglings.
The heat, however, became overpowering; not a breath of air penetrated the woods. Coucou Peter, having dismounted, felt the perspiration streaming down his back; Mathéus, who had not closed an eye all night, yawned from time to time, murmuring, “Great—Great Demiourgos!” without exactly knowing what further he wished to say.
In this way they reached a gorge where the torrent spread over a pebbly bed. Hardly had Bruno reached the edge of the water, before the confounded beast stretched out his neck to drink, and Maître Frantz, not expecting this movement, was nearly shot over his head. Coucou Peter quickly seized him by the tails of his coat; and then the rogue gave vent to such a formidable roar of laughter that all the neighbouring echoes rang with it.
“Coucou Peter! Coucou Peter!” cried the scandalised Doctor; “are you not ashamed to laugh when I am in danger of being drowned? Is this, then, your affection for me?”
“I’m laughing, Maître Frantz, because you’ve escaped. If I hadn’t got hold of you, you’d now be paddling in the water like a frog.”
“This is an unpropitious day,” replied Mathéus; “if we continue our journey, I foresee numberless misfortunes!”
“Many besides you have dropped off to sleep and tumbled from their horses,” said Coucou Peter. “Lie down on the moss, take a good nap, and the unpropitious will have passed away by the time you wake. I’ll go and have a bathe. Bruno won’t be sorry for a rest, I’m sure.”
This advice was too much in accord with the good Doctor’s own ideas not to be agreeable to him.
“I approve of this pleasant design,” he said. “Lend me the aid of your shoulder; I am stiff. Take off the horse’s bridle. Go and bathe, my good fellow—go and bathe; a bath will refresh your blood.”
While he was speaking, Frantz Mathéus laid himself down at the foot of an oak, and was truly glad to be able to stretch his limbs in the midst of the heather. The crickets chirped about him. Now and then a wave broke on the pebbles with a sharp slush; he would then open his eyes, and saw Coucou Peter in the act of undressing—of taking off his boots.
The sound of the torrent, the rustle of the leaves, lulled his imagination into vague reverie. Through the tufted branches of the trees he confusedly distinguished the sky, the crests of the mountains. At length his mind reposed; the same sounds fell upon his ears, but their monotony resembled deep silence. The good man distinguished them no longer—his soft and regular breathing announced a profound sleep. Then, perhaps, his mind, freed from its earthly trammels, and going back ages upon ages, wandered, in the form of a hare, through the immense forests of Gaul—perhaps, also, he saw again the humble roof of his sires at Graufthal, and good old Martha weeping for his absence.