Connubial Ordeals.--Five Biters Bit.
So now, Falkenberg has a tutor, the hope of the 13,000 Rixthalers, and a cadetship for his son--all he wanted now was recruits. These, too, were brought in to him and his under-officers in abundance by the Moloch-of-Moles, Robisch: but I know not what the clients meant, that, when Robisch had once secured his brokerage and they their christening-present, they for the most part made-off with the latter. In the Maussenbach woods thieves fell upon the transport and at the end of the battle thieves and transports had both fled from the field. This afflicted the Captain sorely, because he, who for himself and his family never committed the most profitable injustice, sometimes allowed a small one on the recruiting ground.
To the quiet Gustavus the noisy city-winter brought the longest hours. He saw no white head-band and no black lamb go by, without flying over on a sigh back to his enchanted wall and into the midst of his summer joys. When the ill-bred posterity of Hoppedizel looked upon him as stupid, because he was not crafty, and proud because he was not loud, he stanched the bleeding of his inner man, which was teased and ridiculed, with the thought of the beings who had loved him, of his Genius and his Shepherdess. For the sake of his Amandus he would so gladly have had another neighborhood than Hoppedizel's, even the grounds and the free sky of his home! He loved to have things still and snug around him, and to be encircled with the immensity of nature. Oh! when thou art once beside me, darling, how will I indulge and love thee! Thine eye shall never be clouded beside my desk of instruction, thy heart never heavy! Thou, tender plant, shalt not be tied to me with cutting pack-threads as to a straightening hop-pole, but with living ivy-roots shalt thou of thyself twine around me, as a living thing!
On the whole in Hoppedizel's home they led a confounded dog's life, as I myself often witnessed, when I and the master of the house in a dispute on the first principles of morals had each other, in a moral way merely, by the hair: for all, meanwhile, had a hand and its match in the business, but physically; one dog was pitted against another dog, the boys against the girls--the servants against one another--the heads of the house against the servants--the Professor against the Professoress, whereof a memorable fact is to be printed--and all these alternately against each other according to the law of Permutation.
Unfortunately Hoppedizel never had any respect (and consequently no disrespect either) for anybody; he borrowed on all sides, soiled all he touched, compromised every one, pardoned everybody and himself first of all. In the Captain's winter quarters the oil-painted tapestry (24 groschen the yard) formed a Spanish wall or screen between the Captain's empty room and the cracks in the wall for the bugs to pass through; the stove was good, but, like the tower of Babel, without a cupola; the ceiling of the apartment threatened (though, like many throne-canopies, for a long time without actual damage) to break down and crush the heads of the greatest philosophers, who stood, in stone, on the pier-table. He, therefore, had often little tenderness for people, because he took for granted that they had too much of it to scold at the invisibleness of his;--in Lower Scheerau we do just so. But now comes the catastrophe which hastened the flight of us all.
The Professor, we must premise, had, like most people, no taste in furniture; he had the greatest fancy for placing the best among the poorest, the finest piece of crockery under an ancestral bed and over against it a sandy wash-bowl; a nicely cleaned servant's livery behind the cast-off clothes of his children, etc. Now, he always committed a breach of the peace against his wife by never coming home empty; he had always been buying something that was good for nothing; he had the weakness of innumerable men, of making believe he understood house-keeping as well as his wife, when he was a mere beginner. Things which one sees, for a long time, others doing, one comes to think at last that he can do himself. She had the weakness of numberless women, of flattering herself into the presumption that her lord and master was an ignoramus in house-keeping, and never could learn it, however much he might wish to. "Do I have any say about your books?" asked the very coarse-bodied Professoress. One could, therefore, at every furniture auction, or at every annual fair in a calendar of practical matters, prophesy, in connection with the wars of great lords, that here a little war would break out between the connubial potentate and the other hostile power; because the latter could not endure his commercial treaty; the married couple celebrated then its Olympic games of tongues and hands, and could mark off the divisions of time since their marriage by these Olympiads.
Still more! Our new Regent--as in Italy, the people get the palace of the deceased Doge or Pope gratis--let the furniture of his illustrious father be sold at auction for a song; he did it, as all Crown princes do, out of respect for him, so that the people might inherit a souvenir of the departed, as the Roman people did the gardens of Cæsar. The Professor proposed to himself, therefore, to inherit and purchase. He bid, therefore, for the benefit of the Captain, in whose chamber the commode, the looking-glass, and the chairs were miserable objects--not upon those three objects, but upon three to match them--upon two elegant bronze vases, with goats' heads and myrtle leaves, for the miserable commode; upon a straight-legged pier-table, with pointed feet, to go under the miserable looking-glass; upon a splendid bergére to stand between the miserable chairs. The whole was knocked off to him. His first word, as he went from the auction room into his own, was to his wife: "Is the Captain up stairs? I have bought some elegant things for him." At this she sang the first verse of her war-song, without having yet noticed a single article of his purchase. He did not name one of them to her; for he had the greatest misfortune of a husband, namely, contempt for his wife, just as she, on the contrary, took his part against all persons, even the best, only not against herself. During the unpacking of the purchases he responded to the first verse of the war-song, yet did not name an article; and no they merely kept up an antiphonal chanting. At last the goats' heads and pointed feet were set down in the house. Then broke loose the war-cry: "That is stupid, stupid, stupid! Ha! you stupid man, you! the stuff! the rubbish! where were your five senses to-day! I wont pay a doit (besides she was never treasurer), and so dear! But when children and fools go to market!"
Quite coolly he said: "Just see that no harm comes to them, and take them up to the Captain, my sweet!" She obeyed on the instant; but then went into his room and opened all the sluices of her roaring wrath. At a late period of this roaring he said, at last, threateningly: "You know, wife!..." Now the wind grew to a storm in her mouth. He was not the man to be carried away by anger or any other passion, but he was a genuine Stoic, and always himself; hence, it is easily explained how, as Epictetus and Seneca advise Stoics to make up for the forbidden inward anger by the outward show of the same, so as to get the upper hand of people, he too diligently availed himself of his show of anger, and quickly petrified his fist and threw this bunch as a fire-ball at those members of his spouse, which were devoid of light in the matter. This blunt Wilsonian conducting-knob of her anger was the first thing to draw forth from her the greatest spark of eloquence; and, in fact, it is in marriage as in the old Republics, which (according to Hume's observation), never produced greater orators than in the stormy times of war. He made the material thing a mere vehicle of the mental, and accompanied his hand with fragmentary extracts from the manual of Epictetus: "I am really quite in my senses," said he, "but you will scream altogether too loud if I don't strike into the midst of it." His carnal arm continued to move upon her. "I shall just keep on," he continued, "meanwhile, thank God that your husband has so much composure, that he can weigh everything he does!" But she never grew cold till he grew heated; this she discovered, at any time, by his growing dumb as Socrates, and arming and winging his hand with his night-cap suddenly snatched down from its nail. In proportion as his stinging sunny friendliness before the irruption of her thunderstorms seemed hot to her, in the same degree was his cloudiness that followed disagreeably cold; in short, both parties played before and after the battle reversed parts. This time her anger found a crisis of relief, and vented its whole force upon the head of him who was sitting under the goat-headed vases on the bergére--the Captain. The latter at the first gazette of this disgusting war had his winter-things packed up in Scheerau, and his summer things unpacked in Auenthal, and went--yes, actually went away.
But he came near staying. For the rest I do not wish to see this pugnacious pair I have depicted with their marriage-rings turned into explosive rings, too much despised by the more refined connubial world that never descends to fisticuffs; for, verily, the corrosive, poisonous words which ooze out from the refined married couple upon each other, drop by drop, the slow annoyance, drawing like a blister, wherewith they undertake to wound and cure each other, only drives the sore deeper under the skin, and makes not the surgeon indeed, but the doctor, necessary.
I will now explain why the Captain came near staying.
Hoppedizel had one afternoon at his house, beside the Captain, five others, the lawyer Kolb, the raft-inspector Peuschel, an old carmen-maker [or rhyme-smith], a court-chamber cleaner, and a court page; for what does the reader care about the surnames of these people? He first drew the lawyer aside and said to him: He must play a joke to day and drink to the other four gentlemen in colored water, which they would take for wine, while they would become fuddled with real wine. "Very good," said the lawyer; "they shall all have cause to remember the lawyer." The same thing the Professor repeated to the raft-inspector, the carmen-maker, etc.; all answered: "Very good! they shall all remember the raft-inspector, the carmen-maker," etc. Every one meant to make fools of the other four; the Professor had his eye on five--all were successful.
At evening five baskets of colored water were brought into the room; each man placed himself behind his little table, and screwed out the cork-stopper from the bottle of quasi-wine. The first flasks of bottled water were drained by the company in silence; true cunning must needs dictate to the pleasure-party or water-party this appearance of gradual intoxication.
But now the solar system began its drawing-of-water. "The wine might be stronger," every one said; and would fain deceive every one. The lawyer with rosy-red nose-button moistened his clay with more water (instead of spirit) than he had drunk or made or wrung from other eyes in his whole eternity a parte ante. A man who becomes so capable of holding water, as he is, that he can hardly stand straight for--soberness, makes it easily credible to his other tippling confederates that it arises from drunkenness; and all smiled very much when he laughed.
The raft-inspector Peuschel led a whole stream of water into his stomach, and made his blood-veins water-veins; but he was half vexed that he should be compelled to cheat the rest with his make-believe guzzling, and longed secretly for a real drunkenness instead of the pretended.
The chamber-cleaner actually macerated and soaked himself through and through with the colored water, and almost drowned out his Gallic malady--he guzzled so in his malicious pleasure.
The page, who almost burst his stomach with drinking, fared worse; three days after, he was carried off by an incontinentia urinæ. The porous carmen-maker was the only one through whom a whole colored deluge glided in and out without doing any harm; he looked round gaily and satirically, and watched for the moment when his next neighbors behind the four tables should fall down dead drunk.
A burning barn might have been saved by the toasts they drank in their whale-like throats.... Now came the time when every one who was in the secret of the joke must appear drunk. They discoursed and gabbled at each other with prancing, overbearing tongues. The page and the polisher actually stretched themselves out into the room like two felled trees, and their puffed-up paunches, the world was to fancy, lay like wine-sacks on their tressles. The man of office opened his mouth and shut his eyes--the carmen-maker imagined he should be doing it in the maddest and most plausible manner, if, in the first place, he should swear, like real drunkards, that he was sober; secondly, if he should collapse against the bed-posts in such a way as to get a real bruise. Fortunately he did in fact get a wound greater than his drunkenness, and was on the point, out of revenge, of breaking out with the information that he had made fools of the quartumvirate and drunk only water. The Professor also was just about to let the cat out of the bag and expose the wine and everything--the rest were going to do the same, and already began to laugh simultaneously in the anticipation: when meanwhile, unfortunately the raft-inspector, who had long been satiated, had stolen away to the polisher and thievishly by way of antidote and alleviative to his imitated wine, pledged himself in the pretended original edition of the same, out of the polisher's (or Frotteur's) cup.... there was water in that too as in his. Quick as lightning and half-foolishly he sipped the cups of all the water-gods; in all was water. Then out he came with the whole story--and the whole marine went flying round and hob-a-nobbing with each other, and each had to say seriously whether he was full and fou'.[[28]] Unfortunately, the entire fraternity of practical jokers was sober. The Captain, who loved such pranks better than fastnight hens, transformed, from love of morals, the general pretense of drunkenness into pure sincerity, and carried out his plan by genuine wine. When, by and bye, the pentagon skipped homeward, and those five foolish virgins returned to their several abodes as five wise ones, though with an aqueous plethora, then he said: "Upon my soul, such a thing ought to be printed!" And in fact it is printed here.
I should be glad if, before I and the reader leave his house, we might take with us a medallion, an adumbration of this Hoppedizel, as a souvenir; but I shrink from the labor--I would rather emboss all the characters of this work on paper or wax than this man. His character consists of a compilation of a hundred characters, his knowledge of all departments of knowledge, his acuteness of skepticism, his vice of stoicism, his virtue of a system upon virtue, and his actions of jokes and tricks; and grimaces.
For all that, or for all that, the Captain liked him, because he saw him often (he was grum to almost everyone who did not visit him) and because both were merry blades, and because people love each other in a hundred instances without a devil's knowing why. Falkenberg would have exchanged shots with Behemoth himself, for any friend, even for the one who had been the first to take him in--he would have done it out of honor and good-heartedness; the Professor, on the contrary, preferred pure morals, as one might pure mathematics, to applied morality, and seldom acted. One loves to remember, therefore, the proof of his fine consistency to his principles which he once gave as a guest in Auenthal, when at midnight, instead of the Captain, only his riderless nag came home out of the heavy snowdrifts. Another, e. g., the Captain himself, would have mounted the same nag and ridden out to seek and save the lost; but the Professor neatly snuffed the tallow candle and seated himself by the wife, who continued to weep disconsolately, and who at a former time used to worry herself almost to death if her husband was a little late at night, although she scolded herself soundly for it the very next morning--and said to her composedly: "She might just cry as much as she liked, he would gladly allow it; it did little harm, rather it lightened the heart, and withal washed the pupil of the eye and refracted a too intense light; besides the superfluous tears must needs filter through the nasal cavity into the throat and stomach and help digestion; but as to her husband, the worst that could have befallen him would be that he had frozen to death; but he knew, partly from experience, that there was no gentler way of dying than by cold--for, in fact, it was the same as if one were hanged or drowned, for one died by an apoplectic stroke."
But, as I said the Captain loved, and left him nevertheless.