For Büsching such a Rekahn's journey would be a windfall,—to me it is a true torment; for my manuscript is, besides, so large already, that my sister sits on it when she plays the piano-forte, because the seat is not high enough without the addition of the Dog-Post-Days.
What did January see, and what Victor? The Regency-Counsellor, January, saw among the public servants nothing but crooked backs, crooked ways, crooked fingers, crooked souls. "But a bow is crooked, and the bow is a sector of the circle, that emblem of all perfection," said the Consistorial Messenger, Victor. But what vexed January most was, that the officials respected him so exceedingly, when after all he gave himself out only for a regency-counsellor, and not for a regent. Victor replied: "Man knows only two neighbors: the neighbor at his head is his master, the one at his feet is his slave; what lies out beyond either of these two is to him God or beast."
What did January see still further? Untaxed knaves he saw, who enriched themselves at the expense of taxed poor men,—honest advocates he heard, who did not, like his courtiers or the English highwaymen, steal under the mask of virtue, but without any mask, and to whom a certain remoteness from enlightenment and philosophy and taste will not after death be prejudicial, because they can then in their own defence set up against God the exception of their ignorance, and represent to Him, "that no other laws but those of their own sovereign and of Rome can bind them, and that neither is God Justinian, nor is Kant Tribonian."[[209]] He saw hanging from the heads of his country-justices bread-baskets, and from those of their subjects muzzle-baskets; he saw, that, if (according to Howard) it takes two men to support one prisoner, here there must be given twenty incarcerated ones, that one city-magistrate may live.
He saw cursed stuff. But, on the other hand, as an offset, he saw on pleasant nights the cattle in fair groups feeding in the fields,—I mean the republican ones, namely, stags and wild boars. The Consistorial Messenger, Victor, said to him, that he had to thank the masters of the chase for this romantic spectacle, whose tender hearts had been as little able to execute the princely order of shooting wild game as were the Egyptian midwives to execute that of slaughtering the Jewish male children. Nay, the Financial Messenger at an alehouse had some yellow ink and black paper brought to him, and there,—while the slater drummed away on the roof to get some more slates brought to him, and the guests knocked on the pitchers to get them replenished, and the tavern-boy tooted in at the window through a beer-siphon,—amidst this Babylonian din the Consistorial Tithingman drew up one of the best petitions that the noble gentlemen of the chase ever yet despatched to the Prince.
A PLAIN RELATION, FROM THE PETITION OF THE CHIEF MASTERS OF THE CHASE.
"That, as the wild game could neither read nor write, it was the bounden duty of the masters of the chase, who could, to write for them, and on conscience report that all the wild game of Flachsenfingen was pining under the tyranny of the peasant, as well the red game as the black.[[210]] That it made a chief-forester's heart bleed, to stand out of doors at night and see how the country-folk, out of an incredible ill-will to the deer, all night long, in the coldest weather, kept up on the borders of the fields a noise and fire, whistling, singing, shooting, so that the poor game might not be able to eat. To such hard hearts it was not given to reflect, that, if one should station around their potato-tables, as they do around their potato-fields, just such shooters and pipers, who should shoot away every potatoe from their mouths, that then they would necessarily grow lean. From just this cause the game was so haggard, because it could but slowly accustom itself to such treatment, as cavalry-horses learn to eat their oats from a beaten drum. The deer had often to go miles away, like one who, in Paris, picks up his breakfast at the inns,—in order, at last, to dash into a cabbage-field, which was beset by no such coast-guards and adversaries of the wild game, and there get a good bellyful. The dog-boys, therefore, said justly, that they trampled down in one stag-hunt more grain than the game got to eat the whole week. These, and none other, were the reasons which had moved the chief masters of the chase to appear before his Highness with the humble prayer—
"That your Highness would be pleased to enjoin it upon the country-people to stay at night in their warm beds, as thousands of good Christians do, and as the game itself does by day.
"Thereby—the majors of the chase were emboldened to promise—a lift would be given at once to the country-folk and the stags, the latter could then graze the fields in peace, like the day-cattle, and would certainly leave the countryman the gleanings, while they contented themselves with the first-fruits. The country-folk would be happily freed from the ailments which come of night-vigils, from chills and exhaustions. But the greatest advantage would be this,—that, whereas hitherto peasants had grumbled at the hunting-socages (and not wholly without justice), because they delayed the time of the harvest, that then the deer in their place would undertake the harvest in the night, as the young men in Switzerland took upon themselves to cut the grain over night in the place of their sweethearts, so that the latter, when they came to their work in the morning, should find none there,—and thus would the hunting-socages no longer disturb any one in the matter of the harvest, except at most—the game," &c.
But what have we to tell of the Consistorial Fee-Messenger, Victor? That ecclesiastical collecting-servant astonished all parsons by his drollery, and all parsons' wives by his readiness, and nothing but his tin and his papers could adequately certify the genuineness of such a specimen of a Messenger. He collected all that the Consistorial Secretary had liquidated, and excused himself by the plea that it became neither him nor the Secretary in this case to be conscientious. In his brief administration, he bagged without shame all back-standing marriage-pledges of the smallest value, ("We in the College," said he, "are greedy for a half-bats,"[[211]])—moneys, when parties were divorced,—moneys, when marriages were concluded by councils, whether by indulgences for mourning-time, for blood-relationship, or for want of parental consent,—moneys, when the moneys were only once (or twice) paid, but not yet for the second (or third) time, although the Consistory always required this after-ring or resonance of the money in the single case where people had lost the receipt,—moneys which the parsons had to pay down merely for decrees wherein they were exempted from payment.—
Thereupon he emptied his bag before the Prince, and flattened down the billow of money, and began:—