But when the Tome is ended, then begins—this is the last nominal definition—a small one, in which I give just what I choose (only no narrative), and in which I flit to and fro so joyously, with my long bee's-sting, from one blossom-nectary and honey-cell to another, that I name the little sub-volume, made up as it is merely for the private gratification of my own extravagance, very fitly my honey-moons, because I make less honey therein than I eat, busily employed, not as a working-bee to supply the hive, but as a bee-master to take up the comb. Until now I had surely supposed that every reader would readily distinguish the transits of my satirical trailing-comets from the undisturbed march of my historical planetary system, and I had asked myself: "Is it, in a monthly journal, any sacrifice of historical unity to break off one essay, and follow it up with a new one; and have the readers complained at all, if e. g. in the annual sets of the 'Horen,' Cellini's history, as is sometimes the case, breaks off abruptly, and a wholly different paper is foisted in?" But what actually happened?
As in the year 1795 a medical society in Brussels made the contrat-social among themselves, that every one should pay a fine of a crown, who, during a meeting, should give utterance to any other sound than a medical one; so, as is well known, has a similar edict, under date of July 9th, been issued to all biographers, that we shall always stick to the subject-matter,—which is the history,—because otherwise people will begin to talk with us. The intention of the mandate is this, that when a biographer, in a Universal History of the World, of twenty volumes, or even a longer one,—as in this, for instance,—thinks or laughs once or twice, i. e. digresses, the culprit shall stand out in the critical pillory as his own Pasquino and Marforio,—which sentence has been already executed on me more than once.
Now, however, I put an entirely new face upon matters, inasmuch as, in the first place, I draw a marked line in this work between history and digression, a few cases of dispensation excepted; secondly, inasmuch as the liberties which I had taken in my former works are in the present reduced to a prescriptive right and confirmed into a servitude, the reader surrenders at once when he knows, that, after a volume full of Jubilee-periods, one is to follow which is entirely full of nothing but honey-months. I take shame to myself, when I remember how I once, in former works, stood with the beggar's staff before the reader, and begged for the privilege of digression, when I might, after all,—as I do here,—have extorted the loan, as one has to demand of women, as a matter of course, not only the tribute as alms, but also the don gratuit as quarterly assessment. So does not merely the cultivated Regent at the Diet, but even the rude Arab, who extorts from the traveller, besides the cash, a deed of gift for the same.
I come now to the Privy-Legation's-Counsellor, Von Hafenreffer, who is the subject of my promised exposé of fact.
It must have been formerly learned from the 45th Dog-Post-Day, who governs Flachsenfingen, namely, my revered father. This striking promotion of mine was, at the bottom, more a step than a spring; for I was, previously, no less than a Jurist, consequently the germ or bud of an embryo Doctor utriusque, and consequently a nobleman, since in the Doctor the whole spawn and yolk of the Knight lies; therefore the former, as well as the latter, when anything chances by, lives upon his saddle or stirrup, although less in a robber's castle than in a robber's chamber; I have, therefore, since the preferment, changed less myself than my castle of residence;—the paternal seat in Flachsenfingen is at present my own.
I care not now to eat my sugar-cake at court with sin,—although one earns sugar-cake and manna more comfortably than ship-bread,—but I represent, in order to make a profit upon my adventure, the whole Flachsenfingen Department of Foreign Affairs at home here in the castle, together with the requisite deciphering chancery. This, then, is what we shall do: we have a Procurator in Vienna, two Residents in five Imperial cities, a Secretary of the Comitia in Ratisbon under the Cross-Bench,[21] three Chancery-clerks of the circle, and an Envoyé-Plenipotentiary at a well-known and considerable court not far from Hohenfliess, who is no other than the aforementioned Mr. Feudal Provost Von Hafenreffer. To the latter my father has even advanced a complete silver-service, which we lend him, till he shall have received his recall, because it is for our own interest that a Flachsenfingen ambassador should, while abroad, do extraordinary honor, by his extravagance, to the princely hat or coronet of Flachsenfingen.
Now it is no joke to stand on such a post as this of mine; the whole legation-writing-and-reading company write to me under frank, the chiffre banal and the chiffre déchiffrant are in my hands, and I understand, as it seems to me, the whole mess. It is unutterable, all that I thus learn: it could not be read by men nor drawn by horses, if I were disposed to hatch, biographically, and feed and reel off the whole silk-worm seed of novels, which the corps of ambassadors send me every post-day in closely-sealed packages. Yes (to use another metaphor), the biographical timber which my float-inspection launches for me from up above,—now into the Elbe, now into the Saale, now into the Danube,—stands already so high before me in the ship-yard, that I could not use it up, supposing I drove on the æsthetical building of my biographical fools'-ships, masquerade-balls, and enchanted castles, day and night, year out and year in, and never danced, nor rode, nor spoke, nor sneezed again in my life....
Verily, whenever (as I often do) I weigh my ovary as an author against many another spawn, I ask out-right, with a certain chagrin, why a man should come to bear so great a one, who cannot give it forth from himself for want of time and place, while another hardly lays and hatches a wind-egg. If I could despatch a picket from my legation-division to knightly book-makers with its official reports, would they not gladly exchange ruins for castles, and subterranean cloister-passages for corridors, and spirits for bodies? whereas, now, for want of the official reports of a picket, wenches must represent women of the world, veimers[22] ministers of justice, as well as jesters pages, castle-chaplains court-preachers, and robber-barons the Pointeurs.[23]
I come back to my ambassador, Von Hafenreffer. At the above-mentioned distinguished court sits this excellent gentleman, and supplies me—without neglecting other duties—from month to month with as many personalities of my Hohenfliess hero as he can, by means of his legation-soothsayers or clairvoyants, ferret out;—the smallest trifles are with him weighty enough for a despatch. Certainly a quite different way of thinking from that of other ambassadors, who in their reports make room only for events which afterwards are to make their entrance into the Universal History! Hafenreffer has in every cul de sac, servant's chamber and attic, in every chimney and tavern, his opera-glass of a spy, who often, in order to discover one of my hero's virtues, takes upon himself ten sins. Of course, with such a hand-and-horse service of good luck, no one of us can wonder,—that is, I mean, with such a cistern-wheel turned for me by Fortune herself,—with such thieves' thumbs affixed to my own writing-fingers,—with such silhouetteurs of a hero, who make everything except color,—in short, with such an extraordinary concatenation of circumstances, or Montgolfiers,[24]—it cannot of course be anything but just what is expected, if the man who is lifted by them should, on his mountain height up there, bring together and afterward send down a work which will be freely translated after the last day (for it deserves as much) on the Sun, on Uranus and Sirius, and for which even the lucky quill-scraper who nibbed the pens for it, and the compositor who prints the errata, will take more airs upon themselves than the author himself, and upon which neither the swift scythe nor the tardy tooth of time,—especially since the latter can, if requisite, be cut in two by the tooth-saw of the critical file,—shall be able to make any impression. And when to such eminent advantages the author adds that of humility, then there is no longer any one to be compared with him; but unhappily every nature holds itself,—as Dr. Crusius does the world,—not for the best, indeed, but still as very good.
The present Titan enjoys, besides, the further advantage that I at this moment inhabit and grace the paternal court, and accordingly, as draughtsman, have certain sins near and bright before my eyes in a position most favorable for observation, of which at least Vanity, Libertinism, and Idleness will stay and sit for their likeness; for fate has sowed these mushrooms and mosses as high as possible among the upper classes, because in the lower and broader they would have spread too much, and sucked them dry,—which seems to be the pattern of that same foresight by which ships always have their assafœtida which they bring from Persia hanging overhead on the mast, in order that its stench may not contaminate the freight on deck. Moreover, I have up here in the court all the new fashions already around me for my observation and contempt, before they have been, down below there, only traduced, not to say commended,—e. g. the fine fashion of the Parisians, that women shall by a slight tuck in their dress show their calves, which they do in Paris, in order to let it be seen that they are not gentlemen, who, as is well known, walk on wooden legs,—this fashion will to-morrow or day after to-morrow (for it has arrived on an individual lady) be certainly introduced. But the females of Flachsenfingen imitate this fashion on quite another ground,—for gentlemen among us have no defect,—and that is, as a way of proving that they are human beings, and not apes (to say nothing less), since, according to Camper and others, man alone has calves. The same proof was adduced ten years ago, only on higher grounds. For since, according to Haller, man is distinguished from monkey in no other respect than by the possession of a posterior, the female officers of the crown, the dressing-maids, sought as much as possible to magnify in the persons of their mistresses this characteristic of their sex by art,—by the so-called cul de Paris; and, with such a penultimate of the ultimate, it became then a jest and an amusement to distinguish at a distance of two hundred paces a woman of the world from her female ape,—a thing which now many who know their Buffon by heart will venture to do, when they are no nearer to her than too near.