The Adventurous Simplicissimus / being the description of the Life of a Strange vagabond named Melchior Sternfels von Fuchshaim

by Hans Jakob Christoph von Grimmelshausen

Yet must I tell you of a couple of adventures before I say how I was again freed from my musquet, and one in truth of great danger to life and limb, the other only of danger to the soul, wherein I did obstinately persist: for I will conceal my vices no more than my virtues, in order that not only may my story be complete, but also that the untravelled reader may learn what strange blades there be in this world.

As I said at the end of the last chapter, I might now go out with foraging-parties, which in garrison towns is not granted to every loose customer, but only to good soldiers. So once on a time nineteen of us together went up to the Rhine to lie in wait for a ship of Basel that was given out to carry secretly officers and goods of the Duke of Weimar's army. So above Ottenheim we got us a fishing-boat wherein to cross over and post ourselves on an eyot that lay handy to compel all ships that drew near to come to land, to which end ten of us were safely ferried over by the fisherman. But when one of us that could at other times row well was fetching over the remaining nine, of whom I was one, the skiff suddenly capsized and in a twinkling we lay together in the Rhine. I cared not much for the others, but thought of myself. But though I strained to the utmost and used all the arts of a good swimmer, yet the stream played with me as with a ball, tossing me about, sometimes over, sometimes under. I fought so manfully that I often came up to get breath: but had it been colder, I had never been able to hold out so long and to escape with my life. Often did I try to win to the bank, but the eddies hindered me, tossing me from one side to another: and though 'twas but a short time before I came opposite Goldscheur, it seemed to me so long that I despaired of my life. But when I had passed that village and had made sure I must pass under the Strassburg Rhine-bridge dead or alive, I was ware of a great tree whose branches stretched into the river not far from me. To this the stream flowed straight and strong: for which cause I put forth all the strength I had left to get to the tree, wherein I was most lucky, so that by the help both of the water and my own pains I found myself astride upon the biggest branch, which at first I had taken for a tree: which same was yet so beaten by waves and whirlpools that it kept bobbing up and down without ceasing, and so shook up my belly that I wellnigh spewed up lungs and liver. Hardly could I keep my hold, for all things danced strangely before my eyes. And fain would I have slipped into the water again, yet found I was not man enough to endure even the hundredth part of such labour as I had so far accomplished. So must I stick there and hope for an uncertain deliverance, which God must send me if I was to get off alive. But in this respect my conscience gave me but cold comfort, bidding me remember that I had so wantonly rejected such gracious help a year or two before; yet did I hope for the best, and began to pray as piously as I had been reared in a cloister, determining to live more cleanly in future; yea, and made divers vows. Thus did I renounce the soldier's life and forswore plundering for ever, did throw my cartridge-box and knapsack from me, and naught would suffice me but to become a hermit again and do penance for my sins, and be thankful to God's mercy for my hoped-for deliverance till the end of my days, and when I had spent two or three hours upon the branch between hope and fear there came down the Rhine that very ship for which I was to help lie in wait. So I lifted up my voice piteously and screamed for help in the name of God and the last Judgment, and because they must needs pass close to me, and therefore the more clearly see my wretched plight, all in the ship were moved to pity, so that they put to land to devise how best to help me. And because, by reason of the many eddies that were all round me (being caused by the roots and branches of the tree), it was not possible to swim out to me without risk of life nor to come to me with any vessel, small or great, my helping needed much thought: and how I fared in mind meanwhile is easy to guess. At last they sent two fellows into the river above me with a boat, that let a rope float down to me and kept one end of it themselves. The other end I with great trouble did secure, and bound it round my body as well as I could, so that I was drawn up by it into the boat like a fish on a line and so brought into the ship.

So now when I had in this fashion escaped death, I had done well to fall on my knees on the bank and thank God's goodness for my deliverance, and moreover then begin to amend my life as I had vowed and promised in my deadly need. But far from it. For when they asked me who I was and how I had come into this peril I began so to lie to the people that it might have made the heavens turn black: for I thought, if thou sayst thou wast minded to help plunder them, they will cast thee into the Rhine again. So I gave myself out for a banished organist, and said that as I would to Strassburg to seek a place as schoolmaster or the like on the upper Rhine, a party had captured me and stripped me and thrown me into the Rhine, which brought me to that same tree. And as I contrived to trick out these my lies finely, and also strengthened them with oaths, I was believed, and all kindness shewn me in the matter of food and drink to refresh me, of which I had great need indeed.

At the custom-house at Strassburg most did land, and I with them, giving them all thanks; and among them I was ware of a young merchant whose face and gait and actions gave me to understand that I had seen him before: yet could I not remember where, but perceived by his speech that 'twas that very same cornet that had once made me prisoner: and now could I not conceive how from so fine a young soldier he had been turned into a merchant, specially since he was a gentleman born. Yea, my curiosity to know if my eyes and ears deceived me or not urged me to go to him and say, "Monsieur Schönstein, is it you or not?" to which he answered, "I am no Herr von Schönstein but a simple trader." "And I too," says I, "was never a huntsman of Soest but an organist, or rather a land-tramping beggar." And "O brother!" he answered, "what the devil trade art thou of? whither art thou bound?" "Brother," said I, "if thou beest chosen by heaven to help preserve my life, as hath now happened for the second time, then 'tis certain that my destiny requires that I should not be far from thee."

Then did we embrace as two true friends, that had aforetime promised to love one another to the death. I must to his quarters and tell him all that had befallen me since I had left Lippstadt for Cologne to fetch my treasure, nor did I conceal from him how I had intended to lay wait for their ship with a party, and how we had fared therein. And he on his part confided to me how he had been sent by the Hessian General Staff to Duke Bernhard of Weimar on business of the greatest import concerning the conduct of the war: to bring reports and to confer with him on future plans and campaigns, all which he had accomplished and was now on his way back in the disguise of a merchant, as I could see. By the way also he told me that my bride at his departure was expecting child-bed, and had been well entreated by her parents and kinsfolk, and furthermore that the colonel still kept the ensigncy for me. Yet he jested at me by reason of my pock-marked face, and would have it that neither my wife nor the other women of Lippstadt would take me for the Huntsman. So we agreed I should lodge with him and on this opportunity return to Lippstadt which was what I most desired. And because I had naught but rags upon me he lent me some trifle in money, wherewith I equipped myself like to an apprentice-lad.

But as 'tis said, "What will be, must be," that I now found true: for as we sailed down the river and the ship was examined at Rheinhausen, the Philippsburgers knew me again, seized me and carried me off to Philippsburg, where I had to play the musqueteer as before: all which angered my friend the cornet as much as myself: for now must we separate: and he could not much take my part, for he had enough to do to get through himself.

Chap. ix.: WHEREFORE CLERGYMEN SHOULD NEVER EAT HARES THAT HAVE BEEN TAKEN IN A SNARE

Now hath the gentle reader heard in what danger of life I put myself. But as concerns the danger of my soul 'tis to be understood that as a musqueteer I became a right desperate fellow, that cared naught for God and his word. No wickedness was for me too great: and all the goodnesses and loving kindnesses that I had ever received from God quite forgotten: and so I cared neither for this world nor the next but lived like a beast. None would have believed that I had been brought up with a pious hermit: seldom I went to church and never to confess: and because I cared so little for my own soul's health, therefore I troubled my fellow men yet more. Where I could cheat a man I failed not to do it, yea I prided myself upon it, so that none came off scot-free from his dealings with me. From this I often got me a whipping, and still more often the torture-horse; yea, I was often threatened with the strappado and the gibbet: but naught availed: I went on in my godless career till it seemed I would play the desperado and run post-haste to hell. And though I did no deed evil enough to forfeit my life, yet was I so reckless that, save for sorcerers and sodomites, no worse man could be found.

Of this our regiment's chaplain was ware, and being a right zealous saver of souls, at Eastertide he sent for me to know why I had not been at Confession and Holy Communion. But I treated his many faithful warnings as I had done those of the good pastor at Lippstadt, so that the good man could make naught of me. So when it seemed as if Christ and His Baptism were lost in me, at the end says he, "O miserable man: I had believed that thou didst err through ignorance: now know I that thou goest on in thy sins from pure wickedness and of malice aforethought. Who, thinkest thou, can feel compassion for thy poor soul and its damnation? For my part, I protest before God and the world that I am free of guilt as to that damnation; for I have done, and would have gone on to do without wearying, all that was necessary to further thy salvation. But henceforward 'twill not be my duty to do more than to provide that thy body, when thy poor soul shall leave it in such a desperate state, shall be conveyed to no dedicated place there to be buried with other departed pious Christians, but to the carrion-pit with the carcases of dead beasts, or to that place where are bestowed other God-forgotten and desperate men." Yet this severe threatening bore as little fruit as the earlier warnings, and that for this reason only, that I was shamed to confess. O fool that I was! For often I would tell of my knaves' tricks in great company and would lie to make them seem the greater; yet now, when I should be converted and confess my sins to a single man, and him standing in God's place, to receive absolution, then was I as a stock or a stone. I say the truth: I was stockish; and stockish I remained: for I answered, "I do serve the Emperor as a soldier: and if I die as a soldier, 'twill be no wonder if I, like other soldiers (which cannot always be buried in holy ground, but must be content to lie anywhere on the field in ditches or in the maw of wolf and raven), must make shift outside the churchyard."

And so I left the priest, which for his holy zeal for souls had no more return from me than that once I refused him a hare, which he urgently begged from me, on the pretence that since it had hanged itself in a noose and so taken its own life, therefore as a self-murderer it might not be buried in a holy place.