The remarks I made on this subject to a Prince, as well as the remarks a Town-syndic made on it to myself, are too remarkable to be omitted for mere dread of digressiveness.
The Syndic--a man of enlarged views, and of fiery patriotism, the warmth of which was the more beneficent that he collected all the beams of it into one focus, and directed them to himself and his family--gave me (I had perhaps been comparing the School-bench and the School-stair to the bench and the ladder, on which people are laid when about to be tortured) the best reply: "If a schoolmaster consume nothing but 30 reichsthalers;[[52]] if he annually purchase manufactured goods, according as Political Economists have calculated for each individual, namely, to the amount of 5 reichsthalers; and no more hundred-weights of victual than these assume, namely, 10; in short, if he live like a substantial wood-cutter, then the Devil must be in it if he cannot yearly lay by so much net profit as shall, in the long run, pay the interest of his entry debts."
The Syndic must have failed to convince me at that time, since I afterwards told the Flachsenfingen Prince:[[53]]
"Illustrious sir, you know not, but I do,--not a player in your Theatre would act the Schoolmaster in Engel's Prodigal Son, three nights running, for such a sum as every real Schoolmaster has to take for acting it all the days of the year. In Prussia, invalids are made Schoolmasters; with us, Schoolmasters are made invalids." ....
But to our story! Fixlein wrote out the inventory of his Crown-debts; but with quite a different purpose than the reader will guess, who has still the Schadeck testament in his head. In one word, he wanted to be Parson of Hukelum. To be a clergyman, and in the place where his cradle stood, and all the little gardens of his childhood, his mother also, and the grove of betrothment,--this was an open gate into a New Jerusalem, supposing even that the living had been nothing but a meagre penitentiary. The main point was, he might marry, if he were appointed. For, in the capacity of lank Conrector, supported only by the strengthening-girth of his waistcoat, and with emoluments whereby scarcely the purchase-money of a--purse was to be come at; in this way he was more like collecting wick and tallow for his burial torch than for his bridal one.
For the Schoolmaster class are, in well-ordered states, as little permitted to marry as the soldiery. In Conringius de Antiquitatibus Academicis, where in every leaf it is proved that all cloisters were originally schools, I hit upon the reason. Our schools are now cloisters, and consequently we endeavor to maintain in our teachers at least an imitation of the Three Monastic Vows. The Vow of Obedience might perhaps be sufficiently enforced by School-Inspectors; but the second vow, that of Celibacy, would be more hard of attainment, were it not that, by one of the best political arrangements, the third vow, I mean a beautiful equality in Poverty, is so admirably attended to, that no man who has made it needs any further testimonium paupertatis;--and now let this man, if he likes, lay hold of a matrimonial half, when of the two halves each has a whole stomach, and nothing for it but half-coins and half-beer!...
I know well, millions of my readers would themselves compose this Petition for the Conrector, and ride with it to Schadeck to his Lordship, that so the poor rogue might get the sheepfold, with the annexed wedding-mansion; for they see clearly enough, that directly thereafter one of the best Letter-Boxes would be written that ever came from such a repository.
Fixlein's Petition was particularly good and striking; it submitted to the Rittmeister four grounds of preference: 1. "He was a native of the parish; his parents and ancestors had already done Hukelum service; therefore he prayed," &c.
2. "The here documented official debts of 135 florins, 41 kreuzers, and one halfpenny, the cancelling of which a never-to-be-forgotten testament secured him, he himself could clear, in case he obtained the living, and so hereby give up his claim to the legacy," &c.
Voluntary Note by me. It is plain he means to bribe his Godfather, whom the lady's testament has put into a fume. But, gentle reader, blame not without mercy a poor, oppressed, heavy-laden school-man and school-horse for an indelicate insinuation, which truly was never mine. Consider, Fixlein knew that the Rittmeister was a cormorant towards the poor, as he was a squanderer towards the rich. It may be, too, the Conrector might once or twice have heard, in the Law Courts, of patrons by whom not indeed the church and churchyard--though these things are articles of commerce in England--so much as the true management of them, had been sold, or rather farmed to farming-candidates. I know from Lange,[[54]] that the Church must support its patron, when he has nothing to live upon; and might not a nobleman, before he actually began begging, be justified in taking a little advance, a fore-payment of his alimentary moneys, from the hands of his pulpit-farmer?--