72. The Half-learned is adored by the Quarter-learned; the latter by the Sixteenth-part-learned; and so on: but not the Whole-learned by the Half-learned.
You are aware, my friends, that this Journey to Flätz was necessarily to take place in Vacation time; not only because the Cattle-market, and consequently the Minister and General von Schabacker, was there then; but more especially because the latter (as I had it positively from a private hand) did annually, on the 23d of July, the market-eve, about five o'clock, become so full of gaudium and graciousness, that in many cases he did not so much snarl on people as listen to them, and grant their prayers. The cause of this gaudium I had rather not trust to paper. In short, my Petition, praying that he would be pleased to indemnify and reward me, as an unjustly deposed army-chaplain, by a Catechetical Professorship, could plainly be presented to him at no better season than exactly about five o'clock in the evening of the first dog-day. In less than a week I had finished writing my Petition. As I spared neither summaries nor copies of it, I had soon got so far as to see the relatively best lying completed before me; when, to my terror, I observed that in this paper I had introduced above thirty dashes, or breaks, in the middle of my sentences! Now-a-days, alas! these stings shoot forth involuntarily from learned pens, as tails of wasps. I debated long within myself whether a private scholar could justly be entitled to approach a minister with dashes,--greatly as this level interlineation of thoughts, these horizontal note-marks of poetical music-pieces, and these rope-ladders or Achilles'-tendons of philosophical see-pieces, are at present fashionable and indispensable; but, at last, I was obliged (as erasures may offend people of quality) to write my best proof-petition over again; and then to afflict myself for another quarter of an hour over the name Attila Schmelzle, seeing it is always my principle that this and the address of the letter, the two cardinal points of the whole, can never be written legibly enough.
85. Bien écouter c'est presque répondre, says Marivaux justly of social circles; but I extend it to round Councillor-tables and Cabinet-tables, where reports are made, and the Prince listens.
[First Stage; from Neusattel to Vierstädten.]
The 22d of July, or Wednesday, about five in the afternoon, was now, by the way-bill of the regular Post-coach, irrevocably fixed for my departure. I had still half a day to order my house; from which, for two nights and two days and a half, my breast, its breastwork and palisado, was now, along with my Self, to be withdrawn. Besides this, my good wife Bergelchen, as I call my Teutoberga, was immediately to travel after me, on Friday the 24th, in order to see and to make purchases at the yearly Fair; nay, she was ready to have gone along with me, the faithful spouse. I therefore assembled my little knot of domestics, and promulgated to them the Household Law and Valedictory Rescript, which, after my departure, in the first place before the outset of my wife, and in the second place after this outset, they had rigorously to obey; explaining to them especially whatever, in case of conflagrations, housebreakings, thunder-storms, or transits of troops, it would behoove them to do. To my wife I delivered an inventory of the best goods in our little Registership; which goods she, in case the house took fire, had, in the first place, to secure. I ordered her in stormy nights (the peculiar thief-weather) to put our Æolian harp in the window, that so any villanous prowler might imagine I was fantasying on my instrument, and therefore awake; for like reasons, also, to take the house-dog within doors by day, that he might sleep then, and so be livelier at night. I further counselled her to have an eye on the focus of every knot in the panes of the stable-window, nay, on every glass of water she might set down in the house; as I had already often recounted to her examples of such accidental burning-glasses having set whole buildings in flames. I then appointed her the hour when she was to set out on Friday morning to follow me; and recapitulated more emphatically the household precepts which, prior to her departure, she must afresh inculcate on her domestics. My dear, heart-sound, blooming Berga answered her faithful lord, as it seemed very seriously: "Go thy ways, little old one; it shall all be done as smooth as velvet. Wert thou but away! There is no end of thee!" Her brother, my brother-in-law, the Dragoon, for whom, out of complaisance, I had paid the coach-fare, in order to have in the vehicle along with me a stout swordsman and hector, as spiritual relative and bully-rock, so to speak; the Dragoon, I say, on hearing these my regulations, puckered up (which I easily forgave the wild soldier and bachelor) his sun-burnt face considerably into ridicule, and said: "Were I in thy place, sister, I should do what I liked, and then afterwards take a peep into these regulation-papers of his."
17. The Bed of Honor, since so frequently whole regiments lie on it, and receive their last unction, and last honor but one, really ought from time to time be new-filled, beaten, and sunned.
"Oh!" answered I, "misfortune may conceal itself like a scorpion in any corner; I might say, we are like children, who, looking at their gayly painted toy-box, soon pull off the lid, and, pop! out springs a mouse who has young ones."
"Mouse, mouse!" said he, stepping up and down. "But, good brother, it is five o'clock; and you will find, when you return, that all looks exactly as it does to-day; the dog like the dog, and my sister like a pretty woman; allons donc!" It was purely his blame that I, fearing his misconceptions, had not previously made a sort of testament.
120. Many a one becomes a free-spoken Diogenes, not when he dwells in the Cask, but when the Cask dwells in him.
I now packed in two different sorts of medicines, heating as well as cooling, against two different possibilities; also my old splints for arm or leg breakages, in case the coach overset; and (out of foresight) two times the money I was likely to need. Only here I could have wished, so uncertain is the stowage of such things, that I had been an Ape with cheek-pouches, or some sort of Opossum with a natural bag, that so I might have reposited these necessaries of existence in pockets which were sensitive. Shaving is a task I always go through before setting out on journeys; having a rational mistrust against stranger bloodthirsty barbers; but, on this occasion, I retained my beard; since, however close shaved, it would have grown again by the road to such a length that I could have fronted no Minister and General with it.