The Hamburg magistrates had offered one hundred thalers for my arrest; consequently it behooved me to be very cautious. I pretended I had chosen that spot to rest; and lay very still; for, just then, a good many people—chattering old women, noisy lads, and all sorts of shabby folk—were passing through the cemetery, toward the further wall.
The crowd seemed to be expecting something—an imposing funeral, I said to myself. I soon found out why they were so eager to get to the boundary wall of the cemetery: In the strip of earth just outside the wall was the suicide's grave.
He is not to rest among the respectable Christians; but in the strip of unconsecrated ground outside the sacred inclosure. No priest leads his funeral train; his body comes to its last resting place in the knacker's cart, on a bier made of four rough deals. The coffin is unpainted; there is no name-plate on the lid.
The bell on the neck of the knacker's old steed tolls him to the grave. Instead of a solemn funeral dirge, there is the noisy chatter of the curious mob; and in lieu of funeral oration are the knacker's stupid and offensive jokes, which he cracks while he prepares to lower the coffin into the grave. Before he does this, he takes a knife from his pocket, and whittles a few chips from the coffin; and over these the gaping crowd—especially the old women—quarrel and higgle, gladly giving their last pence for the relics. And these people never suspect that the man who leans heavily against the broken cross, hard-by the new-made grave, might rush suddenly upon them, and with the stump of the broken cross crack the skulls of those whom he chanced to strike!
At last the knacker took note of me:
"Well, Master Soldier," he called, "and how goes it with you? Don't you want to exchange a few pence for a chip from the coffin of the man who hung himself? There is great virtue in such a bit of wood! It will preserve you from lightning, and—"
"I would rather have a nail out of the coffin," I interrupted, "for iron will attract lightning, which is what I most desire."
The fellow was ready enough to comply with my request, but he said the nail would be worth a thaler. I gave him the thaler, the last money I possessed in the world! and received the nail—my legacy from my father!
Later, I had a ring made of the coffin-nail, and I still wear it on the fore-finger of my right hand.
"Well," enunciated his highness, drawing his handkerchief from his pocket; "you certainly were punished for your misdeeds, my son. Your sufferings must have been greater than if you had been tortured on the wheel."