The world will be glad (I’m perfectly certain in my own mind) if I just give them a very short account of this business—who could have done it better, for that matter? The facts of it were these: at the beginning of summer the four fellow lodgers had clubbed together and bought a cow in poor condition which they had then put up to fatten. The bookbinder, the cobbler, the poor’s advocate and the hairdresser—between whom and his tenants there was this distinction, that they owed their rent to him, whereas he owed his to his creditors—caused to be prepaid and drawn up by a skilful hand (which was attached to the arm of Siebenkæs) an authentic instrument (here KOLBE the word-purist will snarl at poor innocent me in his usual manner for employing foreign words in a document based on the Roman law) relative to the life and death of the cow; in which instrument the four contracting parties aforesaid—who all stood attentively round the document, he who was sitting and drawing it excepted—bound and engaged themselves in manner following, that is to say, that—
1stly. Each of the four parties interested, as aforesaid, in the said cow might and should have the privilege of milking her alternately.
2ndly. That this Cooking or Fattening Society might and should defray from a common treasury chest the price of said cow, the cost of the carriage of implements and provisions, and maintenance generally of the same; and
3rdly. That the allied powers as aforesaid should not only on the day before Michaelmas, the 28th September, 1785, slaughter the said cow, but further that each quarter of the same should then and there be further divided into four quarters, conformably to the lex agraria, for partition among the said parties to the said contract.
Siebenkæs prepared four certified copies of this treaty, one for each; he never wrote anything with graver pleasure. All that now remained to be performed of the contract by the house association of our four evangelists, who had collectively adopted as their armorial crest or emblematic animal, one single joint-stock beast, namely, the female of that of Saint Luke—was the third article of it.
However, I know the learned classes are panting for my fair, so I shall only dash down a hurried sketch of my Man-and-Animal piece (Kolbe of course goes on taking me to task).
That Septembriseur, the butcher, did his part of the business well, though it was at the close of Fructidor—the four messmates looking on throughout the operation, as also did old Sabine, who did a good deal, and got something for it. The quadruple alliance regaled itself on the slain animal at a general picnic, to which each contributed something in order that the butcher might be included gratis; and it is undeniable that one member of the league, whom I shall name hereafter, attended this picnic in a frame of mind and in a costume barely serious enough for the occasion. The slaughter confederation then set to working its division sum, according to the number of its members, and the golden calf round which their dance was executed was cut, up with the appropriate heraldic cuts. Then the whole thing was over. I think I can say nothing more laudatory of the manner in which the whole process of zootomic division was carried out than what Siebenkæs, an interested party, said himself, viz., “It’s to be wished that the twelve tribes of Israel, as well as, in later times, the Roman empire, had been divided into as many and as fair divisions as our cow and Poland have been.”
I shall be doing ample justice to the cow’s embonpoint if I merely mention that Fecht the cobbler uttered a panegyric which commenced with the most lively and vigorous oaths, and the statement that she was an (adjective) bag of skin and bones, and ended with an assurance, uttered in mild and pious accents that Heaven had indeed favoured the poor beast, and “blessed us unworthy sinners above measure.” A frolicsome cult by nature, he had had the heavy coach-harness of pietism put on to him, and was consequently obliged to keep softening down the “strong language” which came naturally to him into the pious sighs appropriate to his “converted state.” And it was to the frame of mind and the costume of this very FECHT that I made allusion above as being barely suitable to the occasion, for I’m sorry to say he had no breeches on him the whole day of this great slaughter, but ran up and down the slaughter-house in a white frieze frock of his wife’s, having a strange general effect of looking something like his own better half. However, the members of the association didn’t take any offence; he couldn’t help it, because while he was going about got up in this Amazon’s demi-negligée, and presenting this hermaphrodite appearance, his own black-leather leg-cases were in the dye pot, being prepared for a reissue.
The poor’s advocate had begged Lenette (about a quarter past four in the afternoon) not to go on working herself to death, and never to mind bothering about any supper, as he was going to be miserly for once, save himself a supper tonight, and sup upon eighteen penn’orth of pastry: but the busy soul kept running about brushing and sweeping, and by six o’clock they were both lying resting in the leather arms of—a big easy chair (for he had no flesh and she no bones), and looking around them with that expression of tranquil happiness which you may see in children while eating, at the room in its state of mathematical order, at the way in which everything in it was shining, at the pastry new-moon-crescents in their hands, and at the liquid burnished gold (or rather foilgold[[26]]) of the setting sun creeping up and up upon the gleaming tin dishes. There they rested and reposed like cradled children, with the screeching, clattering, twelve herculean labours of the rest of the people of the house going on all round them; and the clearness of the sky and the newly cleaned windows added a full half-hour to the length of the day; the bell-hammer, or tuning-hammer of the curfew bell gently let down the pitch of their melodious wishes till they lapsed into dreams.
At ten o’clock they woke up and went to bed...!