They could barely subsist for two days upon the dog and the chair.
And then the process of alchemical transmutation of metals was applied to the shaving-basin and the bedroom crockery, which were converted into table-money. Of course he previously said “Censeo.” It is scarcely worth the trouble, but I may just observe here how little fruit was born by this branch of trade; it was rather a woody branch than a fruit-bearing one.
The lean porcelain cow or butter-boat would scarcely have served as their nourishing milch cow for more than a day, if she had not been attended by seven potentates (that is to say, most miserable prints of them), who went “into the bargain,” but for whom the woman at the shop added some melted butter. Wherefore he said “Censeo.” Many of my readers must remember my mentioning that, a short time ago, when he was distributing sentences of death among the furniture, he did not take very much notice of certain table-napkins which were lying beside the checked calico dress. Now, however, he acted as screech-owl, or bird of death, and gallows-priest to them also, and routed them out all but a few. When they were gone, he remarked, in an incidental manner, shortly before Martinmas Day, that the napkin-press was still to the fore, though it was not very clear what was the use of it, as there was nothing for it to press.
“If such a thing should be necessary,” he said, “the press might very well get leave of absence on private affairs, until we get through the smoothing-press, oiling-press, and napkin-press of destiny, and come out all smooth and beautiful ourselves, and can stick the napkins into our button-holes on their return.” His first intention had even been to reverse the order of the funeral procession, and put the press in the van of it as avant-courier of the napkins, and in that event he would only have had to invert his syllogism (as well as his procession) in this way: “I don’t see what we can do with the napkins, or how we’re to press them and keep them smooth, till we get the press home again.”
I am most firmly convinced that the majority of people would have done as Lenette did with reference to my trade-consul Siebenkæs, and his Hanseatic confederation with everybody who dealt in anything—that is, clasped her hands above her head, and said, “Oh! the thoughtless, silly creature! he’ll soon be a beggar at this rate: the beautiful furniture!”
Firmian’s constant answer was—
“You would have me kneel down and howl, and tear my coat in lamentation, like a Jew—my coat, which is torn already and pull my hair out by the roots—that hair, which terror frequently causes to fall off in a single night. Isn’t it enough if you do the howling? Are you not my appointed præfica and keening-woman? Wife, I swear to you, and that as solemnly as if I were standing on pig’s bristles,[[47]] that if it is the will of God, who has given me so light and merry a heart—if it be His will that I am to go about the town with eight thousand holes in my coat, and without a sole to either shoe or stocking that I am to go on always getting poorer and poorer” (here his eyes grew moist in spite of him, and his voice faltered), “may the devil take me and lash me to death with the tuft of his tail if I leave off laughing and singing; and anybody who pities me, I tell him to his face, is an ass. Good heavens! the apostles, and Diogenes, and Epictetus, and Socrates, had seldom a whole coat to their backs—never such a thing as a shirt—and shall a creature such as I let a hair of him turn grey for such a reason, in miserable PROVINCIALISTIC times such as these?”
Right, my Firmian! Have a proper contempt for the narrow heart-sacs of the big clothes-moths about you—the human furniture-boring worms. And ye, poor devils, who chance to be reading me—whether ye be sitting in colleges or in offices, or even in parsonage-houses, who perhaps haven’t got a hat without a hole in it to put on your heads, most certainly haven’t got a black one—rise above the effeminate surroundings of your times to the grand Greek and Roman days, wherein it was thought no disgrace to a noble human creature to have neither clothes nor temple, like the statue of Hercules; take heed only that your soul shares not the poverty of your outward circumstances; lift your faces to heaven with pride—a sickly faint northern Aurora is veiling it, but the eternal stars are breaking through the thin blood-red storm!
It was but a few weeks now to the St. Andrew’s Day shooting-match, which was Lenette’s consolation in all her troubles, and to which all her wishes were directed; however, there came one day on which she was something worse than melancholy—inconsolable.
This was Michaelmas: on that day the press was to have followed Lenette’s Salzburg emigrants, the napkins, as their lady superior; but nobody in all the town would have anything to do with it. The sole anchor of refuge was one Jew, because there was no species of animal (in the shape of articles of merchandise) which did not flee to his Noah’s ark of a shop. Unfortunately, however, the day when the napkin-press applied to him was a Jewish feast-day, which he kept more strictly than ever he did his word. He said he would see about it to-morrow.