We sat down to two or three courses with minced-meat (or ragout) of travelling-anecdotes. At last, I drew his attention—as all literati do—to what I had written, to my latest opusculum, what stood before us in a cursed pile as high as a conical orrery: "It has dropped from me," said I, "in an entirely cursory manner, often in the night, just as Voltaire or the pea-hens let fall their eggs on the straw in their sleep. I have taken pleasure in endowing the world with this legacy of four volumes; but the legacy still waits for its last chapter,—without which the labor of the dog (in the noble sense) will be in the bad sense a dog's-work." He read the whole bequest through before my eyes,—which gives an author a foolish, oppressive sensation,—and flung his two arms up and down often during the perusal, and would fain make the author red with extravagant praise. But it did not take; for an author has already bestowed every compliment upon himself beforehand a thousand times, and is at the same time his own flesh-scales, his own flesh-weight, and his own flesh, because, like a virtuous man, he is satisfied with his own approbation.
"The hero of thy Post-Days," said he, "is modelled somewhat after thyself."—"That," I replied, "is for the world and the hero to decide, when they both become acquainted with me; but all authors do so,—their personality is either pictured opposite the title-page, or farther on in the midst of the work, as the painter Rubens and the designer Ramberg in almost all their works bring on a dog."
But now let one imagine with what astonishment I clapped my hands when the Doctor named to me the little country where the whole story transpired: * * * is the little country's real name. "I had only to go thither," he said, "and I could draw the forty-fifth (tail-) chapter from the fountain-head. As he passed through Flachsenfingen, they had only just got to the Fortieth Dog-Post-Day. If I would take my own horses," ("That I will," said I, "I will buy me some this very day,") "I might, perhaps, come up with a distinguished passenger, who, unless all signs deceived him, was his Lordship incarnate." For the sake of a few ounces of asafœtida which Fenk needed on the road, he had even been with Zeusel in his apothecary's shop, upon whom, he said, the number ninety-nine was as legibly imprinted as the number ninety-eight was on the butterfly[[197]] (the Catalanta).
No one certainly can blame an author who was crabbing and fishing for his forty-fifth, tail- or train-chapter, for running away as if distracted,—packing up,—tackling up,—jumping in,—starting off, and driving so furiously, as he shot by hotels, country-houses, processions, stars, and nights, that not in * * days, but in * * * days (many a one will actually think I am drawing a long bow[[198]]), I sprang, bedusted but unpowdered, into the inn of the Golden Lion. The said inn is situated in the town of Hof, which again on its part is situated in something greater; namely, in Voigtland. I am careful not to name either the days of my journey or the gate through which I shot into Hof, in order that I may not reveal to curious knaves and mouchards[[199]] by my route of march the real name of Flachsenfingen. Hof I could name right out without harm, because from there—the moment one is past the gates—one can travel to all points of the compass; and so, too (which is a very good thing), one can arrive there from all places,—from Mönchberg, Kotzan, Gattendorf, Sachsen, Bamberg, Böheim, and from America, and from the Rascally Islands, and from any part of Büsching and Fabri.[[200]]
Not far from the Golden Lion (properly in Oat Lane) stood a distinguished Englishman, looking on while his four smoking horses took a medicine of two thirds common saltpetre and one third horse-brimstone against foundering. The stranger—who might have been about as many years old as this book is days was dressed in black; tall, respectable, rich (to judge by his equipage), and of a manly build. His bright and fixed eye lay kindling like a focus on men,—his face was fine and cold,—on his forehead stood the perpendicular secant as the time-bar denoting business, as sign of exclamation at the toil and trouble of life,—faint, horizontal lines were ruled across this time-bar like staves; both sorts of lines were cut into the too high forehead, as if for signs how high the tear-water of affliction had already risen on this brow, on this soul. "I would," thought I, "have painted Lord Horion differently, if this face had appeared to me sooner." Perhaps the reader thinks this was his Lordship himself.
When the Englishman had seen my tiercet of sorrels, he came straight up to me and introduced a project of exchange, and wanted to take my sorrel for a black. He had the fancy of Russians in the higher ranks, of travelling with a regular cento[[201]] of differently-colored horses,—as he also had the finer custom of the Neapolitans, to let a free, loose horse prance along beside the carriage. Accordingly, for the sake of the equine quodlibet, he wanted to bid in my miserable sorrel, who, to tell the truth, wore nowhere any hair of his own, except behind on the bob. I told him frankly,—to leave him no suspicion of selfishness or design,—"My three sorrels looked like the three Furies, and represented tolerably well the three cavities of anatomy; only the dark sorrel which he wanted was magnificently built, particularly about the head, and I should be sorry to lose him now, when the head was just going to be of use to me."—"So?" said the Briton.—"Of course," said I; "for a horse's head is the best remedy against bed-bugs, and this one must now very soon fall off from the nag, like a ripe plum,—the head I can then put into my bed-straw." The Englishman did not even smile; during the whole bargain he stirred not a finger, not a feature, not a muscle. Not until I myself had said, "If the three Fates only keep on their legs till I have fetched away the forty-fifth chapter on wheels," did it strike me that he had been in a distant manner studying and sounding me more than the sorrel,—and I fell upon the hypothesis, whether he had not misused the whole horse-exchange as a mere cloak and blinder of his suspicious, pumping questions.
Let the reader only just read on—The Englishman started off with my sorrel muscle-preparation; and I followed some time after with my black, who was as strong, black, and glossy as the old Adam in man.
But I must first tell what I was going to do in Hof,—I was going to dedicate. At first each of these volumes was to be inscribed to a female friend; but I had reason to fear I should rue it, because my wont is to quarrel with a different one—never with all at once—every month. I should like to know in what parallel of latitude the man were to be found who does not fall out with his lady friend a thousand times oftener than with his male one. The biographer must, therefore, of necessity, because he is too changeable, cross the street from the Golden Lion with his four volumes, and enter the house of the only man towards whom he never alters, and who never does himself either, and say to him, "Here, my dear good Christian Otto, I dedicate something to thee again,—four volumes at once.—It were handsome, if thou again wouldst dedicate each to one of thy family,—three are just enough, and thou hast thine own left for thee, too.—I am riding now after the forty-fifth chapter, and thou—cut and clear away meanwhile at the forty-four other beds as much as thou wilt."
And here, my faithful one, must thou absolutely have the last chapter also; and I only add further, "This Hesperus, which stands as morning-star over my life's fresh morning, thou mayest still look upon when my earthly day is over; then is it a quiet evening-star for quiet men, till it also sets behind its hill."
Inasmuch as all letters to me are notoriously delivered in the busy and somewhat surly city of Hof, and as in fact many travellers pass this way, one will readily indulge me with the small space for two observations, which the town itself makes upon the town. The Hofites, namely, all remark and complain that they cannot exactly become accustomed to each other. "We ought all to be able," they say, "to bear with each other very well, and, if only thereby, refute the observation of the great Montesquieu, that trade knits together nations and sunders individuals." Secondly, they all reproach each other, that from year to year they barter for in quantity, and accumulate and store away in green-houses, great cornucopias full of balsam, rose, clover, and lily-seed, and tall boxes full of splendid apple-seeds (particularly of princes' apples, violet apples, Adam's- and virgin-apples, and Dutch ketterlings),—but that they sow or set out of this seed little or nothing. "In old age," they say, "good fruits and flowers will come apropos to us, if we save a good quantity of seed out of the present ones, and then plant it."—A certain candidate (an academical chum of mine) took occasion from these two observations to make two very good points in an afternoon sermon. In the first part, he showed his Hofites out of the Epistle that they should not torment, but heartily love, each other in this fleeting vapor of life, without reference to the numbers of their houses; and in the second pars, he made it plain that they ought in this brief, waning light of life to make from time to time one and another joke....