But, ere he could utter himself otherwise than by making faces, the wooden-head of a Venner stroked his sprouting beard, and in a distant manner graciously offered himself to the advocate in the capacity of cardinal protector or mediator in the Blaise inheritance business; this he did, of course, partly to blind the advocate’s eyes, and partly to impress upon him how immeasurably inferior was his station. The latter, however, shuddering at the idea of taking a gnome of this kind for paraclete and household angel, said to him (but in Latin)—
“In the first place I must insist that my wife shall not hear a syllable about that insignificant potato quarrel. And moreover, in any legal question I scorn and despise anybody’s assistance but a legal friend’s, and in this instance I am my own legal friend. I fill an official position here in Kuhschnappel; it is true, the official position by no means fills me.” The latter play upon words he expressed by means of a Latin one, which displayed such an unusual amount of linguistic ability, that I should almost like to quote it here. The Venner, however, who could neither construe the pun nor the rest of the speech with the ease with which we have read it here, answered at once (so as to escape without exposing his ignorance) in the same language, “Imo, immo,” which he meant for yes. Firmian then went on, in German, saying, “Guardian and ward, intimate as their connection should be, in this case came into contact to an extent almost too great to be pleasant; although, no doubt, there have been cases before where one cousin has cozened another:[[24]] however, the very members of ecclesiastical councils have come to fisticuffs before now, e. g. at Ephesus in the fifteenth century. Indeed, the Abbot Barsumas and Dioscurus, Bishop of Alexandria, men of position, pummelled the good Flavian on that very occasion till he was as dead as a herring.[[25]] And this was on a Sunday too, a day on which, in these absurd old times, a sacred truce was put to quarrels and differences of every description; though now, Sundays and feast-days are the very days when the peace is broken; the public-house bells and the tinkling of the glasses ring the truce out, and people pummel each other, so that the law gets her finger into the pie. In old days, people multiplied the number of saints’ days for the sake of stopping fights, but the fact is that everybody connected with the legal profession, Herr von Meyern (who must have something to live upon), ought to petition that a peaceable working-day or two might be abolished now and then, so that the number of rows might be increased, and with them the fines and the fees in like ratio. Yet who thinks of such a thing, Venner?”
He was quite safe in spouting the greater part of this before Lenette; she had long been accustomed to understanding only a half, a fourth, or an eighth part of what he said; as for the whole Venner, she gave herself no concern about him. When Meyern had taken his departure with frigid politeness, Siebenkæs, with the view of helping to advance him in his wife’s good opinion, extolled his whole and undivided love for the entire female sex (though engaged to be married), and more particularly his attachment to that preliminary bride of his, who was now in the condemned cell of the prison; this, however, rather seemed to have the effect of lowering him in her good opinion.
“Thou good, kind soul, may you always be as faithful to yourself and to me!” said he, taking her to his heart. But she didn’t know that she had been faithful, and said, “to whom should I be unfaithful?”
From this day onwards to Michaelmas Day, which was the day of the borough fair, fortune seems to have led our pathway, I mean the reader’s and mine, through no very special flower-beds to speak of, but merely along the smooth green turf of an English lawn, one would suppose on purpose that the fair on Michaelmas Day may suddenly arise upon our view as some shining, dazzling town starts up out of a valley. Very little did occur until then; at least, my pen, which only considers itself bound to record incidents of some importance, is not very willing to be troubled to mention that the Venner Meyern dropped in pretty often at the bookbinder’s (who lived under the same roof with the Siebenkæses)—he merely came to see whether the ‘Liaisons Dangereuses’ were bound yet.
But that Michaelmas! Truly the world shall remember it. And in fact the very eve of it was a time of such a splendid and exquisite quality that we may venture to give the world some account of it.
Let the world read the account of this eve of preparation at all events, and then give its vote.
On this eve of the fair all Kuhschnappel (as all other places are at such a time) was turned into a workhouse and house of industry for women; you couldn’t have found a woman in the whole town either sitting down, or at peace, or properly dressed. Girls the most given to reading opened no books but needle-books to take needles out, and the only leaves they turned over were paste ones to be put on pies. Scarcely a woman took any dinner; the Michaelmas cakes and the coming enjoyment of them were the sole mainspring of the feminine machinery.
On these occasions women may be said to hold their exhibitions of pictures, the cakes being the altar-pieces. Everyone nibbles at and minutely inspects these baked escutcheons of her neighbour’s nobility; and each has, as it were, her cake attached to her, as a medal is, or the lead tickets on bales of cloth, to indicate her value. They scarcely eat or drink anything, it is true, thick coffee being their consecrated sacrament wine, and thin transparent pastry their wafers; only the latter (in their friend’s and hostess’s houses) tastes best, and is eaten almost with fondness when it has turned out hard and stony and shot and dagger proof—or is burnt to a cinder—or, in short, is wretched from some cause or other; they cheerfully acknowledge all the failures of their dearest friends, and try to comfort them by taking them to their own houses and treating them to something of a very different kind.
As for our Lenette, she, my dear lady reader, has always been a baker of such a sort that male connoisseurs have preferred her crust, and female connoisseurs her crum, both classes maintaining that no one but she (and yourself, dearest) could bake anything like either. The kitchen fire was this salamander’s second element, for the first and native element of this dear nixie was water. To be scouring with sand, and squattering and splattering in it, in a great establishment like Siebenkæs’s (who had devoted all Leibgeber’s Ephraimites to the keeping of this feast), was quite her vocation. No kiss could be applied to her glowing face on such a day—and indeed she had her hands pretty full, for at ten o’clock the butcher came bringing more work with him.