I am a silversmith. Though I was not born here, I love Russia. I am not the only German whom it supports. The Lord may grant all to feel as gratefully to Russia, but people feel differently about that. I work for many people, among them for a French teacher. You know there are bushels of them in Moscow. The one I am telling you about came to his profession in a strange manner. He was originally a shoemaker. Suddenly he was seized by the spirit of heroism, or, to tell the truth, indolence and starvation compelled him to enlist as a soldier. After the battle of Rossbach, he fled in company with many others. He worked in many capacities, wandering about from place to place, and finally reached Russia, where he developed the proper qualifications for a coachman. But he soon grew tired of sitting on the coachman’s seat, and had a strong desire of getting inside the carriage. He found no easier way of accomplishing his ambition than by becoming a teacher, emulating in this the example of many of his countrymen who, some from the box, like him, others from the footman’s stand, have found their way into the carriage. And he succeeded. Thus a lazy shoemaker, runaway soldier and bad coachman was turned into a first-class teacher. At least he appears to me to be good because he pays promptly for my work and does not feed me, as other gentlemen do, with to-morrows.
SOUND REASONING ADORNS A MAN
My teacher made me once a present of a doll on my name-day, accompanying it with the following noteworthy words: “Every brainless man is a doll.” I asked him whom he meant by the word “brainless,” and he answered: “Him who obeys more his will than established rules.” I wanted to know why. He said: “Will without rule is licence, and licence is injurious to oneself and his neighbour, whereas rules have been established in life in order to curb harmful lusts.” I sighed and said: “Oh, I see, then our neighbour committed an act of licence, and did not obey the established rules, when he took away our meadows so that our cattle are starving.” “Our neighbour,” he answered with a smile, “has his own rules. He belongs to the class of people who say every morning: ‘Lord, I am in need of everything, but my neighbour is in need of nothing.’”
We paid such a high salary to this teacher that my step-mother found it necessary to dismiss him, in order to add one hundred roubles to the cook’s wages, and another cheaper teacher was hired for me. He belonged to the class of people who write in their will that they are to be buried without being washed. His affection for his ungrateful country was so strong that he always had the name of Paris in his mouth, in spite of the fact that he had been driven out of his country with the coat of arms of a full-blown lily imprinted on his back.[144] He knew by heart the names of all the streets of Paris, and the external walls of all the prominent buildings of that city were familiar to him, but he had never had the courage to enter them. He was so adorned with wisdom that he knew everything without having studied anything. He had an absolute contempt for everything that did not transpire in France. For other things he had no mind, for frequently, in a fit of abstraction, he put other people’s property into his pockets, the result of which was a certain misunderstanding, as he called it, between him and the police. The police proved that he had stolen, but he affirmed the word “steal” was the invention of crass ignorance, and that an honest man must defend his honour from the police by means of the rapier. So he invited the commissary of police to fight a duel with him. The latter not being as good a talker as he was wont to stick to incontrovertible proofs, ordered my mentor to be cast into prison. My mother was quite put out about him, for she said she did not know where to get another cheap teacher like him. However, there arrived at that time some guests at our house who assured her that that very day there had arrived in Moscow the coachman of the French ambassador, with his scullion, hair-dresser, courier and lackey, who did not wish to return with him, and that for the common good of the people of Moscow they had the intention of imparting their arts to those who wanted to be instructed for a reasonable consideration, though somewhat higher than the price they had received in the stable, kitchen, kennel, or for blackening shoes and making wigs.
I once went to see my friend and, as he was not at home, went to his wife’s apartments. She had stepped down into the nursery. As I am quite at home there, I went down into the nursery myself and found her surrounded by her four children. The smallest boy started crying; to pacify him, his mother made him beat the nurse with a handkerchief. She pretended she was crying, while the mother kept on repeating: “Beat her, my darling, beat well the stupid nurse! She had no business annoying baby.” The child was trying to strike the nurse hard; and the harder he struck her, she feigned weeping harder, whereat the child smiled. A little while later, another child fell down. The mother told it to spit on the floor and to kick the place where it had stumbled. When I remarked that it was not good education to allow the child to do that, she answered me: “My friend, you are always philosophising. As if we had not been brought up in the same way! Why should it be different with these babies?” Then I heard the whining of a dog. I looked around and saw a third child pinching a pup, while another child was frightening a canary bird by striking with his hands against the cage: the poor little bird flitted about distressed from one corner to another. I lost my patience, and told their mother: “You are making tyrants of these children, if you do not teach them to respect man and beast. I’ll tell your husband so!” and I slammed the door as I went out.
FROM THE “DRONE”
RECIPE FOR HIS EXCELLENCY, MR. LACKSENSE
This nobleman suffers from a quotidian fever of boasting of his family. He traces his family tree to the beginning of the universe, and hates all those who cannot prove their aristocratic blood at least five hundred years back, and loathes to speak with those whose nobility is only a hundred years old or less. He shakes with fever the moment somebody mentions burghers or peasants in his presence. In opposition to the modern current appellation, he does not even honour them with the name “low-born,” but in the fifty years of his fruitless life he has not yet been able to find a proper term for them. He does not travel to church nor in the streets, for fear of a dead faint which would unavoidably fall upon him the moment he met an ignoble man. Our patient complains hourly against fate for having destined him to share the same air, sun and moon with the common people. He wishes there were no other beings on the whole globe but aristocrats, and that the common people should all be annihilated. He had repeatedly handed in projects to that effect, and they had been highly praised for the good and novel ideas contained therein, though many rejected them, because the inventor demanded three million roubles in advance in order to execute his plans.
Our aristocrat hates and loathes all the sciences and arts, and regards them as a disgrace for any noble gentleman. In his opinion a blueblood can know everything without having learned it; but philosophy, mathematics, physics and all the other sciences are trifles that are below a nobleman’s attention. Books of heraldry and letters patent that have just escaped the dust-pile and mould are the only books which he continually reads by spelling out. Alexandrian sheets, on which the names of his ancestors are written in circles, are the only pictures with which his house is adorned. But to be short; the trees by which he illustrates the descent of his family have many a dry limb, but there is no more rotten twig upon them than he himself is, and in all his family coats of arms there is not such a beast as is his Excellency. However, Mr. Lacksense thinks differently of himself, and worships himself as a great man in mind, and as a small god in his nobility. To make the whole world believe the same way, he tries to differ from all others, not by useful and glorious deeds, but by magnificent houses, carriages and liveries, though he spends on his foolishness all his income that ought to support him ten years hence.
Recipe, to cure Mr. Lacksense of his fever.—It is necessary to inoculate the sick man with a good dose of common sense and philanthropy, in order to kill in him his empty superciliousness and the lofty contempt for other people. Noble descent is, indeed, a great privilege, but it will always be dishonoured if it is not fortified by personal worth and noble services to your country. Meseems it is more laudable to be a poor yeoman or burgher and a useful member of society than a distinguished drone who is known only for his stupidity, his house, carriages and liveries.