The notary paused, and asked in amazement, “Am I to put this stuff, and more like it, down upon paper?”
“Imprimis, I, Firmian Siebenkæs, alias Heinrich Leibgeber, do hereby will and ordain that my guardian the Heimlicher von Blaise shall (and must) pay over, within a year and day after my decease, to my friend, Mr. Leibgeber, inspector in Vaduz,[[88]] the 12,000 florins of trust money whereof he has godlessly defrauded me, his ward: the said Mr. Leibgeber making over the same hereafter faithfully to my beloved wife. In the event of the said Herr von Blaise declining so to do, I here lift up my hand and swear, upon my dying bed, that after I have departed this life I will pursue him, not legally, but spiritually, and will terrify him by appearing to him, either as the devil or as a tall white man, or by my voice merely, according as my circumstances, after my decease, may permit.”
The notary’s feathered arm hovered in air, and he ceased not to shrink and shudder with terror. “All I am afraid of,” he said, “is that if I write down things of this kind, the Heimlicher will get hold of me.” But Leibgeber, with face and body, barred his retreat through that hell-gate, the door of the room.
“Further, as reigning sovereign of the shooter’s company, I will and ordain that no war of succession shall convert my testament into a powder of succession for innocent people. Further, that the republic of Kuhschnappel (into the office of Gonfaloniere and Doge whereof I was balloted with rifle bullets) shall wage no defensive war, seeing that it cannot defend itself if it does—but offensive wars only, with the object of enlarging the boundaries of its territories, they not being easy to protect. And that its members may, in their generation, be as wood-economising as their country and royal burgh’s father has been in his. Now-a-days, when forests are burned to charcoal faster than they grow again, the only thing to be done is to warm the climate a good deal, and turn it into a great brooding-oven, kiln, and field-oven, so as to save the trouble, and obviate the necessity, of having stoves in the houses. And this has been in some measure attended to by careful Commissioners of Woods and Forests, who have cleared away the forests as much as they could, they being full of late winter. When one thinks how very beautifully modern Germany contrasts with that which Tacitus mapped, warmed as it is by the mere cutting down of the forests, we have little difficulty in feeling convinced that a time will come when, there being no more timber at all, we shall arrive at such a temperature that the atmosphere itself shall be our fur pelisse. The reason the present superfluity is burnt to ashes as rapidly as possible is, that the price of raft-wood may be raised, just as a million livres’ worth of nutmegs were publicly burnt at Amsterdam in 1760, to prevent the price from falling.
“Moreover, as King of the Kuhschnappelian Jerusalem, it is my desire that the senate and people thereof (senatus, populusque Kuhschnappeliensis) be not damned, but contrariwise blessed, particularly in this present world. Further, that the town magnates may not devour the Kuhschnappelian nests (houses) as they do the Indian ones, and that the taxes, though they have to pass through the four stomachs of the tax-gatherers,[[89]] may nevertheless issue thence converted from milky chyle into red blood (from silver into gold), and after circulating through the lacteals and the thoracic duct, be impelled in due course into the veins of the body politic. Further, I will and appoint that the greater and the lesser council——”
The notary would fain have stopped here, and shook his head most energetically, but Leibgeber was playing with the rifle with which the testator had elevated himself to the throne of the marksman (whereas it is upon leaping-poles consisting of other men’s ramrods that thrones are usually attained to), and Bærstel wrote on in the sweat of his brow.
“That the mayor, the treasurer, the Heimlicher, the eight members of council, and the serjeant of court, may listen to reason, and reward no merit but that of other people. And that the rascal Blaise, and the scoundrel Meyern may daily lay castigatory hands upon each other, as relations, so that there may at all events always be one to punish the other.”
Here the notary jumped up, declared it took his breath away, and went to the window to get a little air. And as he saw that there was a pile of tanner’s bark within easy shot of the window-sill, his terror, shoving at him from behind, impelled him up on to the sill in question. Having taken this first step, before a testament witness could seize him by the coat-tails, he made a second (and long) one out into the open air, so as to be in a position to reach that modelling-table the heap of bark. Being thus a falling artist (not a rising one), he could do no better on his arrival there than make use of his face as a graving-tool, plastic “form,” and copying machine, and execute therewith a faint bas-relief impression of himself upon the heap of tan. His fingers worked busily as graving-tools, making copies of themselves, whilst, as a matter of pure accident, he countersigned this, his report of the incident, with his notarial seal, which he had taken with him in his descent. So easy is it for one notary to create another, like a Count Palatine. But Bærstel left his co-notary and the entire lusus naturæ behind him, thinking on his homeward way of matters of a wholly different kind. Stiefel and Leibgeber, again, looked out of window, and (the notary having vanished, bag and baggage,) gazed upon his second outward man as it lay outstretched before them upon its anatomical theatre, smelling of Russia leather. Concerning which the author will not add another word of his own, but only these of Henry’s.
“The notary wished to seal the testament with a larger seal than usual—one which nobody might forge—so he sealed it with his own body, and there we see the sphragistic impression all complete.”
The will, such as it was, was duly subscribed by the witnesses and by the testator, and anything but a demi-military testament of this kind was scarcely to be expected in the circumstances. Evening was now drawing on,—the time when sick and sorry man turns him from the sun (as does the earth he dwells on), and towards the twilight evening star of the other world,—when the sick pass away to the latter, and the well gaze at the former—and when Firmian thought to give his wife the long kiss of parting, and then begin slowly sinking. But unfortunately Deacon Revel (the assistant preacher) came rustling in in an electrically stormy fashion. He came arrayed in his ecclesiastical armour, gorget, sash, and all, to administer a befitting rebuke to the invalid (round whose neck he had tied the band of matrimony in a double knot) for trying to evade payment of the confession fee—that toll for the communion of the sick and sound on the highway between heaven and hell. As (on the authority of Linnæus) the ancient botanists—a Croll, Porta, Helvetius, Fabricius—thought that certain plants which had more or less resemblance to particular illnesses were remedies for these complaints, prescribing yellow plants, such as saffron and turmeric, for jaundice, dragon’s-blood and catechu for dysentery, cabbage-heads for headache (as well as prickly things, such as fish-bones, for stitches in the side), so, in the hands of able Gospel ministers, the spiritual materia medica, such as sermons and admonitions, assume the appearance of the spiritual maladies for whose cure they are administered—anger, pride, avarice, and so on. Thus there is often no difference, but one of condition, between the bed-ridden patient and his physician. This was the case with Revel. One of his great objects in life was, in an age when people are so prone to defame the Lutheran clergy by calling them mere Jesuits in disguise, or monks, to give the most unmistakable proof, more by deeds than by words, that he was, at all events, none of the latter (who call nothing their own, and are not allowed to possess property), and for that reason to be at all times on the hunt, and on the snatch, after worldly possessions. Hoseas Leibgeber did his best to make himself a barrier-rope and turnstile for the parson, and stopped him on the threshold, saying, “I fear it won’t be of much use; I tried my own hand yesterday at converting and recoining him flying, (if I may use the expression,) post-haste, volti subito citissime, but all that came of it was that he threw it in my teeth that I wasn’t converted myself—and no more I am. There are whole flocks of heretical singing-birds pecking away at the summer rape-seed of my opinions.” Revel answered (vacillating between a major mode and a minor), “A servant of the Lord bides his time, keeps diligent watch, and does the duty of his sacred calling, striving to save souls—from atheism, as well as from other sin. The event concerns the sinner, and the sinner only.”