I had hardly travelled a few hours—days—weeks (for I do not state the truth), and had gone to sleep towards midnight in my carriage as I mounted a hill in a thick forest, when suddenly two hands, which had worked their way in behind through the back window, jammed down a bee-cap[[202]] over my head, fastened it hastily round my neck with a padlock, covered and blinded my eyes, and ten or twelve other hands seized, held, and bound my body. The worst thing in such a case is, that one expects to be killed and robbed of his jewel-caskets; but nothing can vex and annoy more an author who has not yet finished his book than to take away his life. No man wishes to die in the midst of a plan; and yet every one at every hour of the day bears about with him at once budding, green, half-ripe, and wholly ripe plans. I sought, therefore, to defend my life with such valor—since the forty-fifth chapter and its critics weighed upon my mind—that I—although I say it—could easily have mastered four or five prince-stealers, had there not been half a dozen. I laid down my arms, but occupied the battle-field (namely, the coach-cushion),—and observed, in fact, that they did not want so much to kill the Mining-Superintendent as to blind him. The adventure grew still more romantic,—my own fellow was not tumbled from the throne of his box,—my carriage continued on the road to Flachsenfingen,—two gentlemen seated themselves in beside me, who, to judge by their feminine hands, were persons of rank,—and, strangest of all, a dog began to bark, who, by his barking, must have labored as mass-assistant and fellow-master on this learned work.
We supped and lunched in the open air. Here a surgical order-ribbon was drawn around my naked body, because I had unfortunately, during the quarter-wheelings and manual evolutions of my defence, run my shoulder-blade upon the point of a sword. I could eat very well, inasmuch as the tin canary-cage door of my bee-cap was turned wide open. Good heavens! if the public had seen the author of the Dog-Post-Days shove in his eatables through the open leaves of the leaden gate, he would have died with shame!—During the meal, I called the dog to me by the name, Hofmann! He actually came; I felt all over him, if haply any forty-fifth chapter might be hanging on his neck,—it was bare.
After a long alternation of journeying,—eating,—saying nothing,—sleeping,—days,—nights,—I was at last set down in a sea, and there carried about (or did it come from a narcotic?) till I slept like a rat. What followed—strange as it is—I shall not make known till I have first written out the observation, that, to be sure, great joy and great sorrow enliven and gratify the nobler propensities within us; but that hope, and far more anxiety, hatch the whole worm's nest of miserable hankerings, the infusorial spawn of petty ideas, and unravel them and set them to gnawing,—so that in this way the Devil and the Angel within us contrive to maintain a worse parity of their two religions than holds even in Augsburg with two others,[[203]] and that each of the two religious parties in man has in pay its own night-watch, censor, innkeeper, gazetteer, just as much as the aforesaid ones in Augsburg....
—I had my eyes still closed, when a whispering, swelled and multiplied into a great murmur by a thousand tree-tops, floated round me; the rushing aerial sea swept through narrow Æolian harps, and raised waves thereon, and the waves rippled over me with melodies,—a high mountain air, flung down from a cloud shooting by overhead, fell like a cooling stream of water on my breast.—I opened my eyes, and thought I was dreaming, because I was without the iron mask.—I was leaning against the fifth column on the upper step of a Grecian temple, whose white floor was encircled by the summits of tossing poplars,—and the tops of oaks and chestnuts ran waving only as fruit-hedges and espaliers round the lofty temple, and reached only up to the heart of a man standing within.
"I must surely be acquainted with this luxuriant harvest of tree-tops," said I.—"Lo, weeping birches hang their arms yonder,—out there stems kneel before the thunder which blasted them,—do not nine crape veils and sprayey fountains, in many-colored twigs, flutter through each other?—and the tempests have planted here their conductors as five iron sceptres in the earth.—-This is most certainly a dream of the Island of Reunion, which has hitherto so often darted rays across the mist of sleep, and with heavenly and winning radiance beamed upon my soul."—
But it was no dream. I rose from the step, and was about to enter the illuminated Grecian temple, which consisted only of a Grecian roof, of five columns, and the whole earth encamped around it, when eight arms embraced me, and four voices accosted me: "Brother!—we are thy brothers." Before looking upon them, before addressing them, I fell gladly with outspread arms into the midst of three hearts which I knew not, and shed tears upon a fourth, which I knew not, and at last lifted my eyes, not inquiringly, but blissfully, from the unknown hearts to their faces; and while I looked upon them, I heard behind me my beloved Dr. Fenk say: "Thou art the brother of Flamin, and these three Englishmen are thy incarnate brothers." ... Joy darted through me convulsively like a pang.—I pressed my lips mutely to those of the four embraced and embracing ones,—but I fell then upon my elder friend, and stammered, "Dear, good Fenk! tell me all! I am distracted and enchanted with things which I still do not comprehend."
Fenk went back with me smiling to the four brothers, and said to them: "See, this is the monsieur, your fifth and lost brother of the seven islands,-and your biographer into the bargain.—Now at last he has caught his forty-fifth chapter."—Then turning to me: "Thou seest, of course," said he, "that this is the Isle of Union,—that the three twins here are the sons of the Prince, whom our Lord wanted to bring back.—For thy sake, because thou hast this long time been absent from the seven islands, he has travelled through all market towns, and around all islands of Europe. At last I wrote to him." ...
"Thou hast certainly, also," I interrupted him, "been my correspondent through the dog."—
"Just go on," said he.
"And Knef is Fenk spelt backward,—and thou gavest thyself out with Victor for an Italian, who could speak no German,—copiedst off all day his own list of rules for deportment, for his Lordship, and for me too, in fact, in order to be his and my spy."—