Yet the wine did not take from me the good sense to look under the bed, before going into it, and examine whether any one was lurking there; for example, the Dwarf, or the Rat-catcher, or the Legations-Rath; also to shove the key under the latch (which I reckon the best bolting arrangement of all), and then, by way of further assurance, to bore my night-screws into the door, and pile all the chairs in a heap behind it; and, lastly, to keep on my breeches and shoes, wishing absolutely to have no care upon my mind.
But I had still other precautions to take in regard to sleep-walking. To me it has always been incomprehensible how so many men can go to bed, and lie down at their ease there, without reflecting that perhaps, in the first sleep, they may get up again as Somnambulists, and crawl over the tops of roofs and the like; awakening in some spot where they may fall in a moment and break their necks. While at home, there is little risk in my sleep; because, my right toe being fastened every night with three ells of tape (I call it in jest our marriage tie) to my wife's left hand, I feel a certainty that, in case I should start up from this bed-arrest, I must with the tether infallibly awaken her, and so by my Berga, as by my living bridle, be again led back to bed. But here in the Inn, I had nothing for it but to knot myself once or twice to the bed-foot, that I might not wander; though in this way, an irruption of villains would have brought double peril with it.--Alas! so dangerous is sleep at all times, that every man, who is not lying on his back a corpse, must be on his guard lest with the general system some limb or other also fall asleep; in which case the sleeping limb (there are not wanting examples of it in Medical History) may next morning be lying ripe for amputation. For this reason, I have myself frequently awakened, that no part of me fall asleep.
Having properly tied myself to the bed-posts, and at length got under the coverlid, I now began to be dubious about my Pontac Fire-bath, and apprehensive of the valorous and tumultuous dreams too likely to ensue; which, alas, did actually prove to be nothing better than heroic and monarchic feats, castle-stormings, rock-throwings, and the like. This point also I am sorry to see so little attended to in medicine. Medical gentlemen, as well as their customers, all stretch themselves quietly in their beds, without one among them considering whether a furious rage (supposing him also directly after to drink cold water in his dream), or a heart-devouring grief, all which he may undergo in vision, does harm to life or not.
Shortly before midnight, I awoke from a heavy dream, to encounter a ghost-trick much too ghostly for my fancy. My brother-in-law, who manufactured it, deserves for such vapid cookery to be named before you without reserve, as the maltmaster of this washy brewage. Had suspicion been more compatible with intrepidity, I might perhaps, by his moral maxim about this matter, on the road, as well as by his taking up the side-room, at the middle door of which stood my couch, have easily divined the whole. But now, on awakening, I felt myself blown upon by a cold ghost-breath, which I could nowise deduce from the distant bolted window; a point I had rightly decided, for the Dragoon was producing the phenomenon through the key-hole by a pair of bellows. Every sort of coldness in the night-season reminds you of clay-coldness and spectre-coldness. I summoned my resolution, however, and abode the issue; but now the very coverlid began to get in motion; I pulled it towards me; it would not stay; sharply I sit upright in my bed, and cry, "What is that?" No answer; everywhere silence in the Inn; the whole room full of moonshine. And now my drawing-plaster, my coverlid, actually rose up, and let in the air; at which I felt like a wounded man whose cataplasm you suddenly pull off. In this crisis, I made a bold leap from this Devil's-torus, and leaping, snapped asunder my somnambulist tether. "Where is the silly human fool," cried I, "that dares to ape the unseen sublime him?" But on, above, under the bed, there was nothing to be heard or seen, I looked out of the window; everywhere spectral moonlight and street-stillness; nothing moving except (probably from the wind), on the distant Gallows-hill, a person lately hanged.
15. After the manner of the fine polished English folding-knives, there are now also folding-war-swords, or, in other words--Treaties of Peace.
Any man would have taken it for self-deception as well as I; therefore I again wrapped myself in my passive lit de justice and air-bed, and waited with calmness to see whether my fright would subside or not.
In a few minutes the coverlid, the infernal Faust's-mantle, again began flying and towing; also, by way of change, the invisible bed-maker again lifted me up. Accursed hour!--I should beg to know whether, in the whole of cultivated Europe, there is one cultivated or uncultivated man, who, in a case of this kind, would not have lighted on ghost-devilry? I lighted on it, under my piece of (self) movable property, my coverlid; and thought Berga had died suddenly, and was now, in spirit, laying hold of my bed. However, I could not speak to her, nor as little to the Devil, who might well be supposed to have a hand in the game; but I turned myself solely to Heaven, and prayed aloud: "To thee I commit myself; thou alone heretofore hast cared for thy weak servant; and I swear that I will turn a new leaf,"--a promise which shall be kept nevertheless, though the whole was but stupid treachery and trick.
13. Omnibus una salus Sanctis, sed gloria dispar; that is to say (as Divines once taught), according to Saint Paul, we have all the same Beatitude in Heaven, but different degrees of Honor. Here, on Earth, we find a shadow of this in the writing world; for the Beatitude of authors once beatified by Criticism, whether they be genial, good, mediocre, or poor, is the same throughout; they all obtain the same pecuniary Felicity, the same slender profit. But, Heavens! in regard to the degrees of Fame, again, how far (in spite of the same emolument and sale) will a Dunce, even in his lifetime, be put below a Genius! Is not a shallow writer frequently forgotten in a single Fair? while a deep writer, or even a writer of genius, will blossom through fifty Fairs, and so may celebrate his Twenty-five Years' Jubilee, before, late forgotten, he is lowered into the German Temple of Fame; a Temple imitating the peculiarity of the Padri Lucchesi churches in Naples, which (according to Volkmann) permit burials under their roofs, but no tombstone.
My prayer had no effect with the unchristian Dragoon, who now, once for all, had got me prisoner in the dragnet of a coverlid; and heeded little whether a guest's bed were, by his means, made a state-bed and death-bed or not. He span out my nerves, like gold-wire through smaller and smaller holes, to utter inanition and evanition, for the bed-clothes at last literally marched off to the door of the room.