To be sure he did—carry out the joke; but still at bottom I do not lose my bet. For it happened in this way. From the day when Doctor Culpepper had made that pass with his coarse hand, as with an electrical discharger, before the full-blooded nose of Zeusel, the man with three watches pressed his company upon my hero, who carried only one, and that, too, the clumsy one of the Bee-father. Zeusel always thanked God, if only a court-courier got drunk at his house, or the court-dentist over-ate himself. He always brought with him, when he came, certain secret items of intelligence, which were to be published. He kept nothing to himself, not though one had threatened to hang him in the cellar of his shop. He told our hero that the Minister was making interest in behalf of his Joachime for the place of second maid-of-honor to the Princess, who could select only the female part of her service for herself,—but that he could not fairly do it, because he, or his son Matthieu, had promised the Chamberlain Le Baut to procure the same place for Clotilda; he therefore begged my hero, who, as he saw, he said, was Matthieu's friend, to spare him the embarrassment, and induce the Prince (which would cost only one word) himself to intercede with the Princess in behalf of Joachime; the Princess, who, besides, patronized the Minister, would, on more than one ground, do it with pleasure, and then the Minister could not help it, if the Chamberlain, the enemy of his Lordship, went away empty.
The simpleton, as one can see, had guessed out, merely from the two accounts, which he had got hold of, of the two office-seekers, the whole of the remaining case; and the very circumstance, which Matthieu disclosed to him, that the Minister was vacating a quarter of a wing of his palace, for a companion of his deceased daughter Giulia, had only strengthened his conviction. To such a degree does malice supply the place, not only of years, but also of information and insight!
My hero could say nothing to him except that—he did not believe a word of it. But after three minutes of private reflection he believed it all: for that was the reason, he saw, why the dear Clotilda had to come back from the seminary just at the arrival of the Princess,—that was the reason why Le Baut built around the Minister's son so many altars of incense and thank-offerings,—that was the reason why the old lady (in the Sixteenth Dog-Post-Day) serenaded, and so loudly, court-life,—in fact, as he further saw, two such outlawed, captive Court-Jews in Babylon must have the live Devil in them, until they are reinstated in the old holy city, and if they happen to have a handsome daughter, they will use her as the relay of their journey, and the Montgolfier of their balloon-ascension....
"O, only come, Clotilda!" he cried, glowingly;—"the court-pool will then be to me an Italian cellar, a flowery parterre. If thou art only once settled at the Minister's, then I shall have spirits enough and sparkle properly. What will my father say, when he sees us stand with two leading-strings, with one of which thou holdest the Princess, and I, with the other, the husband?" ... At this moment, Clotilda's recent objections to court-life fell like ice-flakes into his boiling blood; but he thought to himself: "Women, however, are a little mite more pleased with the court-residence of splendor than they themselves suspect or say, and far more than men are. Cannot he, too, bear, then, with a like soul-edifying position? She, as step-daughter of the Prince, is only half-miserable, compared with him,—and does she know, then, whether she may not some time be recalled from her field-état to the court-garrison by an accident?" By this accident he meant a marriage with Sebastian. Finally, he tranquillized himself with something which I also believe,—namely, that she had at that time, merely out of politeness, made a show of a certain coldness towards her new separation from her parents, and therefore towards the new place also; and then, too, pleasure at such a prospect might have been taken for warmth toward somebody or other at court, e. g. toward her—brother, he thought to himself.
And now yesterday's idea, upon which I have lost my wager, came forth again, having shot up astonishingly in one night,—namely, that, if he could persuade the Prince to make the journey and the visit to the Chamberlain, and while they were still on the road, could plead with him for a good word to the Princess in behalf of Clotilda,—then was it, in the first place, impossible for the stepfather to refuse a prayer for the most beautiful stepdaughter,—and, secondly, impossible for the Princess, when her spouse should exercise the privilege of the first petition, not to draw all possible advantage from the first opportunity of laying him under obligations to her.
—Eight days after, just at dusk,—in the autumn days night comes sooner,—the Court—Chaplain Eymann was standing on the observatory and peering at the sun, not for its own sake, but in reference to the evening-redness and the weather, because he wanted to sow the next morning,—when suddenly and with alarm he sprang down from the watch-tower into his house, and delivered the Job's tidings, that the Consistorial Messenger would be there in a moment, together with a French emigrant, and for the one there was not a farthing, and for the other not a bed in the house....
No soul came.
I can easily comprehend it; for the Consistorial Messenger reconnoitred around the parsonage, and so soon as he saw the court-physician, Victor, in wax, sitting up at the window, he marched instanter out of the village, straight back to Flachsenfingen. The emigrant had turned in at his professional cousin's, Le Baut's.
The two travellers were named January and Victor, and were returning this very day from their facetious flying tour.
That is to say, seven days ago, the Prince, who loved mask-dances and incognito-journeys and the ways of the commonalty, and who wished only the Minister's mental masks and incognito further, had started off on foot, with Victor, behind a fellow who had sallied forth in advance on horseback with the masquerade dresses and masquerade refreshments. January carried a sword in his hand, which was contained, not in any sheath, but in a walking-cane,—an emblem of court-weapons! He gave himself out in the market-town for the new Regency-Counsellor, Flamin. My hero, who at the outset had passed himself through the mint, and come out stamped as a travelling dentist, recoined himself in the third village into a Consistorial Messenger, simply because the couple met the true Messenger. This financial collector of the Consistory was made to hand over to the physician for this week—it cost the Prince only a princely resolution and an indulgence—his receipt-book and his ecclesiastical robe of office, together with the tin-plate sewed thereto. These plates are attached to Messengers, and the silver stars to coats of distinction, as the leaden ones are to bales of cloth, that one may know what the trumpery is worth.