I had almost forgotten to mention, that, in a little village, while my Brother-in-law and the Postilion were sitting at their liquor, I happily fronted a small terror, Destiny having twice been on my side. Not far from a Hunting Box, beside a pretty clump of trees, I noticed a white tablet, with a black inscription on it. This gave me hopes that perhaps some little monumental piece, some pillar of honor, some battle memento, might here be awaiting me. Over an untrodden flowery tangle I reach the black on white; and to my horror and amazement I decipher in the moonshine, Beware of Spring-guns! Thus was I standing perhaps half a nail's breadth from the trigger, with which, if I but stirred my heel, I should shoot myself off, like a forgotten ramrod, into the other world, beyond the verge of Time! The first thing I did was to slutch down my toe-nails, to bite, and, as it were, eat myself into the ground with them; since I might, at least, continue in warm life so long as I pegged my body firmly in beside the Atropos-scissors and hangman's block, which lay beside me. Then I endeavored to recollect by what steps the Fiend had led me hither unshot, but in my agony I had perspired the whole of it, and could remember nothing. In the Devil's village, close at hand, there was no dog to be seen and called to, who might have plucked me from the water; and my Brother-in-law and the Postilion were both carousing with full can. However, I summoned my courage and determination; wrote down on a leaf of my pocket-book my last will, the accidental manner of my death, and my dying remembrance of Berga; and then, with full sails, flew helter-skelter through the midst of it the shortest way; expecting at every step to awaken the murderous engine, and thus to clap over my still long candle of life the bonsoir, or extinguisher, with my own hand. However, I got off without shot. In the tavern, indeed, there was more than one fool to laugh at me; because, forsooth, what none but a fool could know, this Notice had stood there for the last ten years without any gun, as guns often do without any notice. But so it is, my Friends, with our game-police, which warns against all things, only not against warnings.
88. Hitherto I have always regarded the Polemical writings of our present philosophic and aesthetic Idealist Logic-buffers,--in which, certainly, a few contumelies, and misconceptions, and misconclusions do make their appearance,--rather on the fair side; observing in it merely an imitation of classical Antiquity, in particular of the ancient Athletes, who (according to Schöttgen) besmeared their bodies with mud, that they might not be laid hold of; and filled their hands with sand, that they might lay hold of their antagonists.
For the rest, throughout the whole stage, I had a constant source of altercation with the coachman, because he grudged stopping perhaps once in the quarter of an hour, when I chose to come out for a natural purpose. Unhappily, in truth, one has little reason to expect water-doctors among the postilion class, since Physicians themselves have so seldom learned from Haller's large Physiology that a postponement of the above operation will precipitate devilish stone-ware, and at last precipitate the proprietor himself; this stone-manufactory being generally concluded, not by the Lithotomist, but by Death. Had postilions read that Tycho Brahe died like a bombshell by bursting, they would rather pull up for a moment; with such unlooked-for knowledge, they would see it to be reasonable that a man, though expecting some time to carry his death-stone on him, should not incline, for the time being, to carry it in him. Nay, have I not often, at Weimar, in the longest concluding scenes of Schiller, run out with tears in my eyes; purely that, while his Minerva was melting me on the whole, I might not by the Gorgon's head on her breast be partially turned to stone? And did I not return to the weeping play-house, and fall into the general emotion so much the more briskly, as now I had nothing to give vent to but my heart?
103. Or are all Mosques, Episcopal-churches, Pagodas, Chapels-of-Ease, Tabernacles, and Pantheons, anything else than the Ethnic Forecourt of the Invisible Temple and its Holy of Holies?
Deep in the dark we arrived at Niederschöna.
[Third Stage; from Niederschöna to Flätz.]
While I am standing at the Posthouse musing, with my eye fixed on my portmanteau, comes a beast of a watchman, and bellows and brays in his night-tube so close by my ear that I start back in trepidation, I whom even a too hasty accosting will vex. Is there no medical police, then, against such efflated hour-fulminators and alarm-cannon, by which notwithstanding no gunpowder cannon are saved? In my opinion nobody should be invested with the watchman-horn but some reasonable man, who had already blown himself into an asthma, and who would consequently be in case to sing out his hour-verse so low that you could not hear it.
40. The common man is copious only in narration, not in reasoning; the cultivated man is brief only in the former, not in the latter; because the common man's reasons are a sort of sensations, which, as well as things visible, he merely looks at; by the cultivated man, again, both reasons and things visible are rather thought than looked at.
What I had long expected, and the Dwarf predicted, now took place; deeply stooping, through the high Posthouse door, issued the Giant, and raised in the open air a most unreasonably high figure, heightened by the ell-long bonnet and feather on his huge jobbernowl. My Brother-in-law, beside him, looked but like his son of fourteen years; the Dwarf like his lap-dog waiting for him on its two hind legs. "Good friend," said my bantering Brother-in-law, leading him towards me and the stagecoach, "just step softly in, we shall all be happy to make room for you. Fold yourself neatly together, lay your head on your knee, and it will do." The unseasonable banterer would willingly have seen the almost stupid Giant (of whom he had soon observed that his brain was no active substance, but in the inverse ratio of his trunk) squeezed in among us in the post-chest, and lying kneaded together like a sand-bag before him. "Won't do! Won't do!" said the Giant, looking in. "The gentleman perhaps does not know," said the Dwarf, "how big the Giant is; and so he thinks that because I go in-- But that is another story; I will creep into any hole, do but tell me where."
In short, there was no resource for the Postmaster and the Giant, but that the latter should plant himself behind, in the character of luggage, and there lie bending down like a weeping willow over the whole vehicle. To me such a back-wall and rear-guard could not be particularly gratifying; and I may refer it (I hope) to any one of you, ye Friends, if with such ware at your back you would not, as clearly and earnestly as I, have considered what manifold murderous projects a knave of a Giant behind you, a pursuer in all senses, might not maliciously attempt; say, that he broke in and assailed you by the back-window, or with Titanian strength laid hold of the coach-roof and demolished the whole party in a lump. However, this Elephant (who indeed seemed to owe the similarity more to his overpowering mass than to his quick light of inward faculty), crossing his arms over the top of the vehicle, soon began to sleep and snore above us; an Elephant, of whom, as I more and more joyfully observed, my Brother-in-law, the Dragoon, could easily be the tamer and bridle-holder, nay, had already been so.