3. "He had lately betrothed himself with Fräulein von Thiennette, and given her a piece of gold, as marriage-pledge; and could therefore wed the said Fräulein, were he once provided for," &c.
Voluntary Note by me. I hold this ground to be the strongest in the whole Petition. In the eyes of Herr von Aufhammer, Thiennette's genealogical tree was long since stubbed, disleaved, worm-eaten, and full of millepedes; she was his [Oe]conoma, his Castle-Stewardess, and Legatess a Latere for his domestics; and with her pretensions for an alms-coffer, was threatening in the end to become a burden to him. His indignant wish that she had been provided for with Fixlein's legacy might now be fulfilled. In a word, if Fixlein become Parson, he will have the third ground to thank for it; not at all the mad fourth....
4. "He had learned with sorrow, that the name of his Shock, which he had purchased from an Emigrant at Leipzig, meant Egidius in German; and that the dog had drawn upon him the displeasure of his Lordship. Far be it from him so to designate the Shock in future; but he would take it as a special grace, if for the dog, which he at present called without any name, his Lordship would be pleased to appoint one himself."
My Voluntary Note. The dog then, it seems, to which the nobleman has hitherto been godfather, is to receive its name a second time from him!--But how can the famishing gardener's son, whose career never mounted higher than from the school-bench to the school-chair, and who never spoke with polished ladies, except singing, namely in the church, how can he be expected, in fingering such a string, to educe from it any finer tone than the pedantic one? And yet the source of it lies deeper; not the contracted situation, but the contracted eye, not a favorite science, but a narrow plebeian soul, makes us pedantic,--a soul that cannot measure and separate the concentric circles of human knowledge and activity, that confounds the focus of universal human life, by reason of the focal distance, with every two or three converging rays; and that cannot see all, and tolerate all---- In short, the true Pedant is the Intolerant.
The Conrector wrote out his Petition splendidly in five propitious evenings; employed a peculiar ink for the purpose; worked not indeed so long over it as the stupid Manucius over a Latin letter, namely, some months, if Scioppius's word is to be taken; still less so long as another scholar at a Latin epistle, who--truly we have nothing but Morhof's word for it--hatched it during four whole months; inserting his variations, adjectives, feet, with the authorities for his phrases, accurately marked between the lines. Fixlein possessed a more thoroughgoing genius, and had completely mastered the whole enterprise in sixteen days. While sealing, he thought, as we all do, how this cover was the seed-husk of a great entire Future, the rind of many sweet or bitter fruits, the swathing of his whole after life.
Heaven bless his cover; but I let you throw me from the Tower of Babel, if he get the parsonage; can't you see, then, that Aufhammer's hands are tied? In spite of all his other faults, or even because of them, he will stand like iron by his word, which he has given so long ago to the Subrector. It were another matter had he been resident at Court; for there, where old German manners still are, no promise is kept; for as, according to Möser, the Ancient Germans kept only such promises as they made in the forenoon (in the afternoon they were all dead-drunk),--so the Court Germans likewise keep no afternoon promise; forenoon ones they would keep if they made any, which, however, cannot possibly happen, as at those hours they are--sleeping.
[SEVENTH LETTER-BOX.]
Sermon.--School-Exhibition.--Splendid Mistake.
The Conrector received his 135 florins, 43 kreuzers, one halfpenny Frankish; but no answer; the dog remained without name, his master without parsonage. Meanwhile the summer passed away; and the Dragoon Rittmeister had yet drawn out no pike from the Candidate breeding-pond, and thrown him into the feeding-pond of the Hukelum parsonage. It gratified him to be behung with prayers like a Spanish guardian Saint; and he postponed (though determined to prefer the Subrector) granting any one petition, till he had seven-and-thirty dyers', button-makers', tinsmiths' sons, whose petitions he could at the same time refuse. Grudge not him of Aufhammer this outlengthening of his electorial power! He knows the privileges of rank; feels that a nobleman is like Timoleon, who gained his greatest victories on his birthday, and had nothing more to do than name some squiress, countess, or the like, as his mother. A man, however, who has been exalted to the Peerage, while still a f[oe]tus, may with more propriety be likened to the spinner, which, contrariwise to all other insects, passes from the chrysalis state, and becomes a perfect insect in its mother's womb.--
But to proceed! Fixlein was at present not without cash. It will be the same as if I made a present of it to the reader, when I reveal to him, that of the legacy, which was clearing off old scores, he had still 35 florins left to himself, as allodium and pocket-money, wherewith he might purchase whatsoever seemed good to him. And how came he by so large a sum, by so considerable a competence? Simply by this means; every time he changed a piece of gold, and especially at every payment he received, it had been his custom to throw in, blindly at random, two, three, or four small coins, among the papers of his trunk. His purpose was to astonish himself one day, when he summed up and took possession of this sleeping capital. And, by Heaven! he reached it too, when, on mounting the throne of his Conrectorate, he drew out these funds from his papers, and applied them to the coronation charges. For the present, he sowed them in again among his waste letters. Foolish Fixlein! I mean, had he not luckily exposed his legacy to jeopardy, having offered it as bounty-money and luckpenny to the patron, this false clutch of his at the knocker of the Hukelum church door, would certainly have vexed him; but now, if he had missed the knocker, he had the luckpenny again, and could be merry.