The city stood in the celestial flames of Morning. Here his divining-rod (his gold-roll, which, excepting one sixteenth of an inch broken off from it, he carried along with him) began to quiver over all the spots where booty and silver-veins of enjoyment were concealed; and our rod-diviner easily discovered that the city and the future were a true entire Potosi of delights.
In his Conrectorate closet he fell upon his knees and thanked God--not so much for his heritage and bride as--for his life; for he had gone away on Sunday morning with doubts whether he should ever come back; and it was purely out of love to the reader, and fear lest he might fret himself too much with apprehension, that I cunningly imputed Fixlein's journey more to his desire of knowing what was in the will, than of making his own will in presence of his mother. Every recovery is a bringing back and palingenesia of our youth; one loves the Earth and those that are on it with a new love. The Conrector could have found in his heart to take all his class by the locks, and press them to his breast; but he only did so to his adjutant, the Quartaner, who, in the first Letter-box, was still sitting in the rank of a Quintaner....
His first expedition, after school-hours, was to the house of Meister Steinberger, where, without speaking a word, he counted down fifty florins cash in ducats, on the table: "At last I repay you," said Fixlein, "the moiety of my debt, and give you many thanks."
"Ey, Herr Conrector," said the Quartermaster, and continued calmly stuffing puddings as before, "in my bond it is said, payable at three months' mutual notice. How could a man like me go on, else? However, I will change you the gold-pieces." Thereupon he advised him that it might be more judicious to take back a florin or two, and buy himself a better hat, and whole shoes. "If you like," added he, "to get a calf-skin and half a dozen hare-skins dressed, they are lying up-stairs." I should think, for my own part, that to the reader it must be as little a matter of indifference as it was to the Butcher, whether the hero of such a History appeared before him with an old tattered potlid of a hat, and a pump-sucker and leg-harness pair of boots, or in suitable apparel. In short, before St. John's day, the man was dressed with taste and pomp.
But now came two most peculiarly important papers--at bottom only one, the petition for the Hukelum parsonship--to be elaborated; in regard to which I feel as if I myself must assist.... It were a simple turn, if now at least the assembled public did not pay attention.
In the first place, the Conrector searched out and sorted all the Consistorial and Councillor quittances, or rather the toll-bills of the road-money, which he had been obliged to pay before the toll-gates at the Quintusship and Conrectorship had been thrown open; for the executor of the Schadeck testament had to reimburse him the whole, as his discharge would express it, "to penny and farthing." Another would have summed up his post-excise much more readily; by merely looking what he--owed; as these debt-bills and those toll-bills, like parallel passages, elucidate and confirm each other. But in Fixlein's case, there was a small circumstance of peculiarity at work, which I cannot explain till after what follows.
It grieved him a little that for his two offices he had been obliged to pay and to borrow no larger a sum than 135 florins, 41 kreuzers, and one halfpenny. The legacy, it is true, was to pass directly from the hands of the testamentary executor into those of the Regiments-Quartermaster; but yet he could have liked well had he--for man is a fool from the very foundation of him--had more to pay, and therefore to inherit. The whole Conrectorate he had, by a slight deposit of 90 florins, plucked, as it were, from the Wheel of Fortune; and so small a sum must surprise my reader; but what will he say, when I tell him that there are countries where the entry-money into school-rooms is even more moderate? In Scherau, a Conrector is charged only 88 florins, and perhaps he may have an income triple of this sum. Not to speak of Saxony (what, in truth, was to be expected from the cradle of the Reformation, in Religion and Polite Literature), where a schoolmaster and a parson have nothing to pay,--even in Baireuth, for example, in Hof, the progress of improvement has been such that a Quartus,--a Quartus, do I say,--a Tertius--a Tertius, do I say,--a Conrector,--at entrance on his post, is not required to pay down more than:--
| Fl.rhen. | Kr.rhen. | |
| 30 | 49 | For taking the oaths at the Consistorium. |
| 4 | 0 | To the Syndic for the Presentation. |
| 2 | 0 | To the then Burgermeister. |
| 45 | 7½ | For the Government-sanction. |
| Total, | 81 fl. | 56½ kr. |
If the printing-charges of a Rector do stand a little higher in some points, yet, on the other hand, a Tertius, Quartus, &c., come cheaper from the press than even a Conrector. Now, it is clear, that in this case a schoolmaster can subsist; since, in the course of the very first year, he gets an overplus beyond this dockmoney of his office. A schoolmaster must, like his scholars, have been advanced from class to class, before these his loans to Government, together with the interest for delay of payment, can jointly amount to so much as his yearly income in the highest class. Another thing in his favor is, that our institutions do not--as those of Athens did--prohibit people from entering on office while in debt; but every man, with his debt-knapsack on his shoulders, mounts up, step after step, without obstruction. The Pope, in large benefices, appropriates the income of the first year, under the title of Annates, or First-Fruits; and accordingly he, in all cases, bestows any large benefice on the possessor of a smaller one, thereby to augment both his own revenues and those of others; but it shows, in my opinion, a bright distinction between Popery and Lutheranism, that the Consistoriums of the latter abstract from their school-ministers and church-ministers not perhaps above two thirds of their first yearly income; though they too, like the Pope, must naturally have an eye to vacancies.
It may be that I shall here come in collision with the Elector of Mentz, when I confess, that, in Schmausen's Corp. jur. pub. Germ., I have turned up the Mentz-Imperial-Court-Chancery-tax-ordinance of the 6th January, 1659, and there investigated how much this same Imperial-Court-Chancery demands, as contrasted with a Consistorium. For example, any man that wishes to be baked or sodden into a Poet Laureate, has 50 florins tax-dues, and 20 florins Chancery-dues, to pay down; whereas, for 20 florins more, he might have been made a Conrector, who is a poet of this species, as it were by the by and ex officio. The institution of a Gymnasium is permitted for 1,000 florins; an extraordinary sum, with which the whole body of the teachers in the instituted Gymnasium might with us clear off the entry-moneys of their school-rooms. Again, a Freiherr, who, at any rate, often enough grows old without knowing how, must purchase the venia ætatis with 200 hard florins; while, with the half sum, he might have become a schoolmaster, and here age would have come of its own accord. And a thousand such things! They prove, however, that matters can be at no bad pass in our Governments and Circles, where promotions are sold dearer to Folly than to Diligence, and where it costs more to institute a school than to serve in one.