NUMBER TWENTY-ONE.
An Imperfect Character, such as are for sale to Romance-writers at the Publishing Office of the Gazette.
"In Romance, as in the world, there are no perfectly good characters; but neither, on the other hand, will either readers or his fellow men be pleased with one who is out and out a knave--he must be merely half or three-quarters of one, as it is with everything in the great world, whether honor or vulgarity or truth or falsehood.
"In the publishing office of this paper there is a half-knave who is offered for sale to any romance-writer in Scheerau, for the little which they can afford to pay for him. I assure Messieurs the writers, that I do not at all exaggerate the imperfections of this knave, for the sake of disposing of him at a higher price; the owner will take the knave back again if he proves not to have malice enough.
"This imperfect character was reared in the states of the Church and born on the borders of Lower Italy; and after his baptism and majority bought himself hatchels and mouse-traps. The fewest possible Germans know that the Italians, with whom this branch of business flourishes, can overreach us immensely. Our character soon raised himself from hatchel-commissioner to hatchel-associé; he disposed of the mouse-traps, which he ordered from Italy, in Germany, and the mouse-holes were his Ophir and the flax-fields his mint-towns. The hatchels which he sold before the purchase of his patent of nobility, he knocked off at five and a half guilders.
"He must, even before his birth, have, in the other world, dealt in a great house; for he brought with him a ready-made mercantile soul. It was stupid in me not to have mentioned sooner: when, as a boy of nine years old, he had the small-pox, he opened a little shop, and traded in the pock matter, which people took from his dispensary, that is from his body, for purposes of vaccination. He never gave out any matter gratis, but demanded his money for it, and said he was a pock-seedman, only a young beginner. This trade with his own manufacture, nature and the Doctor soon suppressed, and the latter said he was as dear as an apothecary. Hence he even undertook to be one himself.
"And he did become one, only according to the Mecklenburg idiom; for in that every furnishing store is called an apothecary's shop.[[42]] That is to say, in Unter-Scheerau he changed his religion and his business and built himself a shop which was to buyers a mere hatchel and mouse-trap. Here he kept for himself a shop-boy, a man-cook, a friseur, a barber, and a reader of morning papers. All these persons were personated by one, is own, this was and did all, as ensophos [or Jack of all trades.]
"Since with our knave, as an imperfect character, virtues must be mineralized into faults--otherwise I would not offer him to any romance builder--therefore let no one take it ill of me that I also bring forward his white side to set by his black one, as on Bohemian tables they always place side by side white and black dishes.
"In those days he always went forth from his shop on Sunday, though with all permissible parsimony, still well-dressed. His hat, his ring-finger, and his vest, were bordered with genuine gold; his stomach and his calves were enclosed by the work of the silk-worm, and his back was covered by the produce of the English sheep. It is quite in keeping with human malice to call that extravagance which was in this case a rare and covert beneficence; all that the imperfect character had on consisted of pawns; for in order to cure people of pawning, he threatened every one that he would wear every article on which he lent money, as long as it remained in his hands. In this way he weaned many a one, and the clothes of those with whom humane warnings availed nothing he actually put on after dinner on Sunday. It was therefore less from a want of taste than from an absence of avarice and hardness, that just as he bore in his own person several menial personalities united, so also he wore several dresses, and came forth as variegated as a rainbow, or as a clothes-moth, that eats its way through from cloth to cloth.
"As I am so perfectly sure that he was not spoiled by prodigality, however much he may have the appearance, I will remove all such appearance by the statement that he every Saturday bought his pound of flesh for his bachelor's hall, but--for otherwise it would still prove nothing--did not eat it. He did, indeed, eat one and with the spoon; but it was that of the previous Saturday. That is to say, the imperfect character fetched every Saturday his holy meat from the stall and ennobled and decorated therewith his Sunday greens. But he appropriated nothing to himself except the vegetable part. On Monday he had the animal portion still and seasoned with it a second dish of greens. On Tuesday the cooked-over flesh worked with new fire at the culture of a fresh cabbage. On Wednesday it had to ogle before him with faint fat-eyes [or spots of grease] floating on another cabbage-soup--and so it went on, till at last the Sunday appeared when the soaked-out rag of flesh came itself to the dinner, but in another sense, and Röper actually ate the pound. So, too, with a pound of Leibnitz's, Rousseau's, Jacobi's,[[43]] thoughts one may boil vigorously whole ship-kettle-fulls of original leaf-work.