Jochen and Gottlieb would have been glad to stop a little while at the parsonage; but Krischan the coachman opposed it violently, saying it would never do, it was pitch dark already; so the old Phantom labored along, in the night and the mist, through the deep country roads. To night and mist and a phantom, sleep is appropriate, and whoever finds this four-leaved clover, has the prospect of all sorts of good fortune. Sleep was not long absent. Jochen slept before they were fairly put of Gurlitz, and if it had been daylight, one could have seen, from the way Krischan dragged his whip, that he was beginning to doze, and though Gottlieb did not sleep he was farther off, in his thoughts, than the others; for he was dreaming of his Lining, and his parish, and his election sermon, and his entrance sermon. And when they came to the place where Krischan had made his intelligent remark, as they were going, and as the influences of sleep and darkness combined with its dangers, and Gottlieb had come in his dream to the last election vote, which gave the decision in his favor, the confounded old Phantom began to totter, the fore-wheel was up, high and dry, on the shore, and the hind-wheel, over which Gottlieb sat, fell into a deep hole; so, two steps further, and splash! the whole company lay in the ditch.
I see, from my window, a great many farmers of the Grand Duke's lands getting down from their carriages, at my Frau Neighbor's, the landlady Frau Lurenz, at the "Prince's Arms," but I never in my life saw any one get down so quickly as Jochen; he shot out, in a great curve, over Gottlieb, who was lying beneath him, directly, in the soft mud, and Krischan, old, honest, faithful soul, who could not think of deserting his master in such a crisis, also shot head-foremost from his seat, and lay at his master's side.
"Purr--Oh! Herr, just lie still!" cried the honest old fellow, "the horses will stand!"
"You blockhead!" cried Jochen.
"Praise God!" exclaimed Krischan, getting on his feet, "I am all right. But Herr, just lie perfectly still, I will hold the horses."
"You blockhead!" said Jochen again, scrambling up, while Gottlieb splashed and waded about in the deep mire, "how could you turn us over here?"
"Yes, it is all as true as leather," said Krischan, who, in his long years of service, had caught his master's expressions, "what could a body do, on such a road, in such pitch darkness?"
Since Jochen's words were taken out of his mouth in this way, he didn't know what to say for himself, so he asked, "Gottlieb, are your bones whole?"
"Yes, uncle," said the candidate, "and yours too?"
"Yes," said Jochen, "except my nose, but that seems clean gone out of my face."