2. In his Prince, a soldier reverences and obeys at once his Prince and his Generalissimo; a Citizen, only his Prince.
A loud storm of thunder overtaking the stage-coach altered the discourse. You, my Friends, knowing me as a man not quite destitute of some tincture of Natural Philosophy, will easily guess my precautions against thunder. I place myself on a chair in the middle of the room (often, when suspicious clouds are out, I stay whole nights on it), and by careful removal of all conductors, rings, buckles, and so forth, I here sit thunder-proof, and listen with a cool spirit to this elemental music of the cloud-kettledrum. These precautions have never harmed me, for I am still alive at this date; and to the present hour I congratulate myself on once hurrying out of church, though I had confessed but the day previous; and running, without more ceremony, and before I had received the sacrament, into the charnel-house, because a heavy thunder-cloud (which did, in fact, strike the churchyard linden-tree) was hovering over it. So soon as the cloud had disloaded itself, I returned from the charnel-house into the church, and was happy enough to come in after the Hangman (usually the last), and so still participate in the Feast of Love.
45. Our present writers shrug their shoulders most at those on whose shoulders they stand; and exalt those most who crawl up along them.
Such, for my own part, is my manner of proceeding; but in the full stage-coach I met with men to whom Natural Philosophy was no philosophy at all. For when the clouds gathered dreadfully together over our coach-canopy, and sparkling, began to play through the air, like so many fireflies, and I at last could not but request that the sweating coach-conclave would at least bring out their watches, rings, money, and such like, and put them all into one of the carriage-pockets, that none of us might have a conductor on his body; not only would no one of them do it, but my own brother-in-law the Dragoon even sprang out, with naked drawn sword, to the coach-box, and swore that he would conduct the thunder all away himself. Nor do I know whether this desperate mortal was not acting prudently; for our position within was frightful, and any one of us might every moment be a dead man. At last, to crown all, I got into a half altercation with two of the rude members of our leathern household, the Poisoner and the Harlot; seeing, by their questions, they almost gave me to understand, that, in our conversational picnic, especially with the Blind Passenger, I had not always come off with the best share. Such an imputation wounds your honor to the quick; and in my breast there was a thunder louder than that above us. However, I was obliged to carry on the needful exchange of sharp words as quietly and slowly as possible; and I quarrelled softly, and in a low tone, lest in the end a whole coachful of people, set in arms against each other, might get into heat and perspiration; and so, by vapor steaming through the coach-roof, conduct the too near thunderbolt down into the midst of us. At last I laid before the company the whole theory of Electricity in clear words, but low and slow (striving to avoid all emission of vapor); and especially endeavored to frighten them away from fear. For, indeed, through fear, the stroke--nay, two strokes, the electric or the apoplectic--might hit any one of us; since in Erxleben and Reimarus it is sufficiently proved that violent fear, by the transpiration it causes, may attract the lightning. I accordingly, in some fear of my own and other people's fear, represented to the passengers that now, in a coach so hot and crowded, with a drawn sword on the coach-box piercing the very lightning, with the thunder-cloud hanging over us, and even with so many transpirations from incipient fear; in short, with such visible danger on every hand, they must absolutely fear nothing, if they would not, all and sundry, be smitten to death in a few minutes.
103. The Great perhaps take as good charge of their posterity as the Ants; the eggs once laid, the male and female Ants fly about their business, and confide them to the trusty working-Ants.
"O Heaven!" cried I, "Courage! only courage! No fear, not even fear of fear! Would you have Providence to shoot you here sitting, like so many hares hunted into a pinfold? Fear, if you like, when you are out of the coach; fear to your heart's content in other places, where there is less to be afraid of; only not here, not here!"
I shall not determine--since among millions scarcely one man dies by thunder-clouds, but millions perhaps by snow-clouds, and rain-clouds, and thin mist--whether my Coach-sermon could have made any claim to a prize for man-saving; however, at last, all uninjured, and driving towards a rainbow, we entered the town of Vierstädten, where dwelt a Postmaster, in the only street which the place had.
[Second Stage; from Vierstädten to Niederschöna.]
The Postmaster was a churl and a striker; a class of mortals whom I inexpressibly detest, as my fancy always whispers to me, in their presence, that by accident or dislike I might happen to put on a scornful or impertinent look, and hound these mastiffs on my own throat; and so, from the very first, I must incessantly watch them. Happily, in this case (supposing I even had made a wrong face), I could have shielded myself with the Dragoon; for whose giant force such matters are a tidbit. This brother-in-law of mine, for example, cannot pass any tavern where he hears a sound of battle, without entering, and, as he crosses the threshold, shouting, "Peace, dogs!"--and therewith, under show of a peace deputation, he directly snatches up the first chair-leg in his hand, as if it were an American peace-calumet, and cuts to the right and left among the belligerent powers, or he gnashes the hard heads of the parties together (he himself takes no side), catching each by the hind-lock. In such cases the rogue is in Heaven!
10. And does Life offer us, in regard to our ideal hopes and purposes, anything but a prosaic, unrhymed, unmetrical Translation?