Quo, says Livy, xii. 5, and with great justice, quo timoris minus est, eo minus ferme periculi est, The less fear you have, the less danger you are likely to be in. With equal justice I invert the maxim, and say, The less the danger, the smaller the fear; nay, there may be situations in which one has absolutely no knowledge of fear; and among these mine is to be reckoned. The more hateful, therefore, must that calumny about hare-heartedness appear to me.
To my Holidays' Journey I shall prefix a few facts, which prove how easily foresight--that is to say, when a person would not resemble the stupid marmot, that will even attack a man out on horseback--may pass for cowardice. For the rest, I wish only that I could with equal ease wipe away a quite different reproach, that of being a foolhardy desperado; though I trust, in the sequel, I shall be able to advance some facts which invalidate it.
143. Women have weekly at least one active and passive day of glory, the holy day, the Sunday. The higher ranks alone have more Sundays than work-days; as, in great towns, you can celebrate your Sunday on Friday with the Turks, on Saturday with the Jews, and on Sunday with yourself.
What boots the heroic arm, without a hero's eye? The former readily grows stronger and more nervous; but the latter is not so soon ground sharper, like glasses. Nevertheless, the merits of foresight obtain from the mass of men less admiration (nay, I should say, more ridicule) than those of courage. Whoso, for instance, shall see me walking under quite cloudless skies with a wax-cloth umbrella over me, to him I shall probably appear ridiculous, so long as he is not aware that I carry this umbrella as a thunder-screen, to keep off any bolt out of the blue heaven (whereof there are several examples in the history of the Middle Ages) from striking me to death. My thunder-screen, in fact, is exactly that of Reimarus. On a long walking-stick I carry the wax-cloth roof; from the peak of which depends a string of gold-lace as a conductor; and this, by means of a key fastened to it, which it trails along the ground, will lead off every possible bolt, and easily distribute it over the whole superficies of the Earth. With this Paratonnerre Portatif in my hand, I can walk about for weeks under the clear sky, without the smallest danger. This Diving-bell, moreover, protects me against something else; against shot. For who, in the latter end of Harvest, will give me black on white that no lurking ninny of a sportsman somewhere, when I am out enjoying Nature, shall so fire off his piece, at an angle of 45°, that, in falling down again, the shot needs only light directly on my crown, and so come to the same as if I had been shot through the brain from a side?
It is bad enough, at any rate, that we have nothing to guard us from the Moon; which at present is bombarding us with stones like a very Turk; for this paltry little Earth's train-bearer and errand-maid thinks, in these rebellious times, that she too must begin, forsooth, to sling somewhat against her Mother! In good truth, as matters stand, any young Catechist of feeling may go out o' nights, with whole limbs, into the moonshine, a meditating; and erelong (in the midst of his meditation the villanous Satellite hits him) come home a pounded jelly. By Heaven! new proofs of courage are required of us on every hand! No sooner have we, with great effort, got thunder-rods manufactured, and comet-tails explained away, than the enemy opens new batteries in the Moon, or somewhere else in the Blue!
21. Schiller and Klopstock are Poetic Mirrors held up to the Sun-god; the Mirrors reflect the Sun with such dazzling brightness, that you cannot find the Picture of the World imaged forth in them.
Suffice one other story to manifest how ludicrous the most serious foresight, with all imaginable inward courage, often externally appears in the eyes of the many. Equestrians are well acquainted with the dangers of a horse that runs away. My evil star would have it that I should once in Vienna get upon a hack-horse; a pretty enough honey-colored nag, but old and hard-mouthed as Satan; so that the beast, in the next street, went off with me; and this in truth--only at a walk. No pulling, no tugging, took effect; I at last, on the back of this Self-riding-horse, made signals of distress, and cried: "Stop him, good people! for God's sake stop him! my horse is off!" But these simple persons seeing the beast move along as slowly as a Reichshofrath lawsuit, or the Daily Postwagen, could not in the least understand the matter, till I cried as if possessed: "Stop him then, ye blockheads and joltheads! don't you see that I cannot hold the nag?" But now, to these noodles the sight of a hard-mouthed horse going off with its rider step by step seemed ridiculous rather than otherwise; half Vienna gathered itself like a comet-tail behind my beast and me. Prince Kaunitz, the best horseman of the century (the last), pulled up to follow me. I myself sat and swam like a perpendicular piece of drift-ice on my honey-colored nag, which stalked on, on, step by step; a many-cornered, red-coated letter-carrier was delivering his letters, to the right and left, in the various stories, and he still crossed over before me again, with satirical features, because the nag went along too slowly. The Schwanzschleuderer, or Train-dasher (the person, as you know, who drives along the streets with a huge barrel of water, and besplashes them with a leathern pipe of three ells long from an iron trough), came across the haunches of my horse, and, in the course of his duty, wetted both these and myself in a very cooling manner, though, for my part, I had too much cold sweat on me already to need any fresh refrigeration. On my infernal Trojan Horse (only I myself was Troy, not beridden, but riding to destruction), I arrived at Malzlein (a suburb of Vienna), or perhaps, so confused were my senses, it might be quite another range of streets. At last, late in the dusk, I had to turn into the Prater; and here, long after the Evening Gun, to my horror, and quite against the police-rules, keep riding to and fro on my honey-colored nag; and possibly I might even have passed the night on him, had not my brother-in-law, the Dragoon, observed my plight, and so found me still sitting firm as a rock on my runaway steed. He made no ceremonies; caught the brute; and put the pleasant question, why I had not vaulted, and come off by ground-and-lofty tumbling; though he knew full well that for this a wooden horse, which stands still, is requisite. However, he took me down; and so, after all this riding, horse and man got home with whole skins and unbroken bones.
84. Women are like precious carved works of ivory: nothing is whiter and smoother, and nothing sooner grows yellow.
But now at last to my Journey!