These last did so affirm what they said that I now began almost entirely to believe them, and they did so move my curiosity that I determined to visit this wondrous lake. But of those that with me had listened to the whole story one judged one way and another another, from which sufficiently appeared their different and contradictory ways of thinking. For my part I said the German name Mummelsee[[40]] sufficiently declared that there was about the thing, as about a masquerade, some disguise, so that none might fathom either its nature or its depth, which had never yet been discovered, though such high personages had attempted it. And with that I betook me to the same place where a year before I had seen my departed wife for the first time and drank in the sweet poison of love. And there I laid myself down on the green grass in the shade, yet took no heed as I had done before to what the nightingales did sing, but rather pondered on the changes I had suffered since then. I represented to myself how in that very place I had begun to be in place of a free man a slave of love, and how since then I had become from an officer a peasant, from a rich peasant a poor nobleman, from a Simplicissimus a Melchior, from a widower a husband, from a husband a cuckold, and from a cuckold a widower again; moreover, from a peasant's brat I had proved to be the son of a good soldier, and yet again the son of my old dad. Then again I reflected how fate had robbed me of my Herzbruder, and in his place had provided me with two old married folk. I thought of the godly life and decease of my father; the piteous death of my mother; and, further, of the manifold changes which I had undergone in my lifetime, till I could no longer refrain myself from tears. And even while I reflected how much good money I in my lifetime had possessed and squandered away, and began to lament therefore, there came two good soakers or winebibbers on whom the gout had fastened in their limbs, whereby they were crippled and needed both the baths and to drink the waters: these set themselves down by me, for 'twas a fair place to rest, and each bewailed to the other his sad case as thinking that they were alone. So said the one, "My doctor hath sent me here either as one of whose healing he despaired or else as one that with others might help him to repay my host here for the keg of butter he sent him: I would I had either never seen him in my life or else that he had at the first sent me to the spa, for so should I either have more money than now or else be sounder, for the waters suit my case right well." And "Ah" says the other, "I thank my God that He hath given me no more money to spare than what I have, for had my doctor known that I had more behind he had never counselled me to come to the spa; but I must have shared all between him and his apothecaries, that for this cause do oil his palms year by year--yea, even though I should have died and perished in the meanwhile. These greedy fellows send not men like us to so healthful a place till they be well assured they can help us no more, or else find us pigeons they can pluck no longer: and if the truth must be confessed, he that once deals with them, and of whom they know that he has money, must pay them only to this end, that they keep him sick." And much more evil had these two to say of their doctors, but I care not to tell it all: otherwise might the gentlemen of that profession take it amiss and some time or other give me a dose that should purge my soul out of my body. Nay, I do but mention it for this cause, because this second patient, in giving thanks to God that He had given him no more wealth, so comforted me that I banished clean out of my mind all vexations and heavy thoughts that had assailed me on the score of money: and I did resolve to strive no more for honour nor gold nor for aught else that the world loveth. Yea, I determined to be a philosopher and to devote myself to a godly life, and in especial to lament mine own impenitence and to endeavour myself, like my dear departed father, to ascend to the highest degree of piety.
Chap. xii.: HOW SIMPLICISSIMUS JOURNEYED WITH THE SYLPHS TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH
Now this desire to visit the Mummelsee increased with me when I learned from my foster-father that he had been there and knew the way thither; but when he heard that I likewise would go, "And what will ye gain," says he, "by going thither? My son with his old dad will see naught else but the picture of a pond lying in the midst of a great wood, and when he hath paid for his present taste with sore distaste, he will have naught but repentance and weary feet (for a man can hardly come to the place by riding) and the way back instead of the way thither. Nor should ever any man have had me to go thither had I not been forced to flee there when Doctor Daniel (by which he meant Duc d'Anguin[[41]]) marched with his troops down through the country to Philippsburg." Yet my curiosity would not be turned aside by his dissuasion, but I got me a fellow that should guide me thither; so my father, seeing my fixed intent, said, since the oat-crop was gathered in, and there was neither hoeing nor reaping to be done on the farm, he would even go with me and shew the way. For he loved me so that he would fain not let me out of his sight, and since all the people of the country believed I was his true-born son, he was proud of me; and so behaved to me and to all others as a poor man might well do in respect of a son whom good fortune, without his own help and assistance, had turned into a fine gentleman.
So together we set off over hill and dale and came to the Mummelsee; and that before we had gone six hours, for my dad was as lively as a cricket and as good a traveller as any young man. And there we consumed what meat and drink we had brought with us, for the long journey and the high mountain on which the lake lieth had made us both hungry and thirsty. So having refreshed ourselves I did inspect the lake, and found lying in it certain hewn timbers which my dad and I took to be the remains of the Würtemberg raft: and I by geometry took or estimated the length and breadth of the water (for 'twas far too wearisome to go round the lake and measure it by paces or feet), and entered the dimensions, by means of the scale of reduction, in my tablets. And having done this, the sky being completely clear and the air windless and calm, I must needs try what truth was in the legend that a storm would arise if any should throw a stone into the lake; having already found those stories I had heard, how the lake would suffer no trout to live in it, to be true, by reason of the mineral taste of the waters. So to make trial of this, I walked along the lake to the left, where the water, which elsewhere is as clear as a crystal, doth begin, by reason of the monstrous depth, to shew as black as coal, and therefore is so dreadful of appearance that the mere look of it doth terrify. And there I began to cast in stones as great as I could carry; my foster-father or dad not only refusing to help me, but warning and begging me to give over, as much as in him lay: but I went busily on with my work, and such stones as by reason of their size and weight I could not carry, I rolled down till I had cast more than thirty such into the lake. Then began the sky to be covered with black clouds, in which terrible thundering was heard, so that my dad, which stood on the other side of the lake by the outlet, lamenting over my work, cried out to me that I should escape, lest we be caught by the rain and the dreadful storm, or even a worse mishap chance to us. But in despite of all I answered him, "Father, I will stay and await the end even though it rained pitchforks." "Yea, yea," answered he, "ye act like all madcap boys, that care not if the world perish."
But I, while I listened to his scolding, turned not mine eyes away from the depths of the lake, expecting to see certain bladders or bubbles rising up from the bottom, as is wont to happen when stones are thrown into deep water whether still or running. Yet saw I naught of the kind, but was ware of certain creatures floating far down in the depths, which in form reminded me of frogs, and flitted about like sparks from a mounting rocket which in the air doth work its full effect: and as they came nearer and nearer to me they seemed to grow larger and more like to the human form: at which at first great wonder took hold of me, and at last, when I saw them hard by me, a great fear and trembling. "Ah," said I then to myself in my terror and wonder, and yet so loud that my dad, that stood beyond the lake, could hear me, though the noise of the thunder was dreadful, "how great are the wondrous works of the Creator! yea, even in the womb of the earth and the depths of the waters!" And scarce had I said these words when one of these sylphs appeared upon the waters and answered me, "Aha, and thou dost acknowledge that before thou hast seen aught thereof: what wouldst say if thou wert for once in the Centrum Terrae and beheldest our dwelling which thy curiosity hath disturbed?"
Meanwhile there rose up here and there more of such water-spirits, like diving birds, all looking upon me and bringing up again the stones I had cast in, which amazed me much. And the first and chiefest among them, whose raiment shone like pure gold and silver, cast to me a shining stone of the bigness of a pigeon's egg and green and transparent as an emerald, with these words: "Take thou this trinket, that thou mayst have somewhat to report of us and of our lake." But scarce had I picked it up and pocketed it when it seemed to me the air would choke or drown me, so that I could not stand upright but rolled about like a ball of yarn, and at last fell into the lake. Yet no sooner was I in the water than I recovered, and through the virtue of the stone I had upon me could breathe in water instead of air: yea, I could with small effort float in the lake as well as could the water-spirits, yea, and with them descended into the depths; which reminded me of nothing so much as of a flock of birds that so descend in circles from the upper air to light upon the ground.
But my dad having beheld this marvel in part (namely, so much of it as was done above the water), made off from the lake and home again as if his head were on fire. And there he told the whole history; but especially how the water-spirits had brought back those stones that I had cast into the lake, in the midst of the thunderstorm, and had laid them where they came from, but in exchange had taken me down with them. So some believed him but most accounted it a fable. Others conceived that I had, like another Empedocles of Agrigentum (which cast himself into Mount Aetna that all might think, since he was nowhere to be found, that he was taken up to heaven), drowned myself in the lake, and charged my father to spread such tales about me to gain for me an immortal name: for, said they, it had long been marked by my melancholic humour that I was half-desperate.
Others would fain have believed, had they not known my strength of body, that my adopted father had himself murdered me to be rid of me (being a miserly old man) and so be master alone on my farm: so that at this time naught else but the Mummelsee and me and my departure and my foster-father could be talked of or discoursed on either at the spa or in the countryside.
Chaps. xiii.-xvi. contain merely a farrago of nonsense conveyed in conversations with the prince of the Mummelsee, who explains to Simplicissimus the construction of the "earth's crust" and the nature of sylphs, and in turn is treated by him to an account of earthly affairs, on which he makes the usual commonplace satirical remarks (see the Introduction).
Chap. xvii.: HOW SIMPLICISSIMUS RETURNED FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE EARTH, AND OF HIS STRANGE FANCIES, HIS AIRCASTLES, HIS CALCULATIONS; AND HOW HE RECKONED WITHOUT HIS HOST