"I am altogether for Montaigne's advice," said I: "Fear nothing but fear."
"I again," replied the Legations-man, with useless wire-drawing, "I should fear again that I did not sufficiently fear fear, but continued too dastardly."
"To this fear also," replied I coldly, "I set limits. A man, for instance, may not in the least believe in, or be afraid of ghosts; and yet by night may bathe himself in cold sweat, and this purely out of terror at the dreadful fright he should be in (especially with what whiffs of apoplexies, falling-sicknesses and so forth, he might be visited), in case simply his own too vivid fancy should create any wild fever-image, and hang it up in the air before him."
"One should not, therefore," added my brother-in-law the Dragoon, contrary to his custom, moralising a little, "one should not bamboozle the poor sheep, man, with any ghost-tricks; the hen-heart may die on the spot."
A loud storm of thunder, overtaking the stage-coach, altered the discourse. You, my Friends, knowing me as a man not quite destitute of some tincture of Natural Philosophy, will easily guess my precautions against thunder. I place myself on a chair in the middle of the room (often, when suspicious clouds are out, I stay whole nights on it), and by careful removal of all conductors, rings, buckles, and so forth, I here sit thunder-proof, and listen with a cool spirit to this elemental music of the cloud-kettledrum. These precautions have never harmed me, for I am still alive at this date; and to the present hour I congratulate myself on once hurrying out of church, though I had confessed but the day previous; and running, without more ceremony, and before I had received the sacrament, into the charnel-house, because a heavy thunder-cloud (which did, in fact, strike the churchyard linden-tree) was hovering over it. So soon as the cloud had disloaded itself, I returned from the charnel-house into the church, and was happy enough to come in after the Hangman (usually the last), and so still participate in the Feast of Love.
45: Our present writers shrug their shoulders most at those on whose shoulders they stand; and exalt those most who crawl up along them.
Such, for my own part, is my manner of proceeding: but in the full stage-coach I met with men to whom Natural Philosophy was no philosophy at all. For when the clouds gathered dreadfully together over our coach-canopy, and sparkling, began to play through the air like so many fire-flies, and I at last could not but request that the sweating coach-conclave would at least bring out their watches, rings, money and suchlike, and put them all into one of the carriage-pockets, that none of us might have a conductor on his body; not only would no one of them do it, but my own brother-in-law the Dragoon even sprang out, with naked drawn sword, to the coach-box, and swore that he would conduct the thunder all away himself. Nor do I know whether this desperate mortal was not acting prudently; for our position within was frightful, and any one of us might every moment be a dead man. At last, to crown all, I got into a half altercation with two of the rude members of our leathern household, the Poisoner and the Harlot; seeing, by their questions, they almost gave me to understand that, in our conversational picnic, especially with the Blind Passenger, I had not always come off with the best share. Such an imputation wounds your honour to the quick; and in my breast there was a thunder louder than that above us: however, I was obliged to carry on the needful exchange of sharp words as quietly and slowly as possible; and I quarrelled softly, and in a low tone, lest in the end a whole coachful of people, set in arms against each other, might get into heat and perspiration; and so, by vapour steaming through the coach-roof, conduct the too-near thunderbolt down into the midst of us. At last, I laid before the company the whole theory of Electricity, in clear words, but low and slow (striving to avoid all emission of vapour); and especially endeavoured to frighten them away from fear. For indeed, through fear, the stroke—nay two strokes, the electric or the apoplectic—might hit any one of us; since in Erxleben and Reimarus, it is sufficiently proved, that violent fear, by the transpiration it causes, may attract the lightning. I accordingly, in some fear of my own and other people's fear, represented to the passengers that now, in a coach so hot and crowded, with a drawn sword on the coach-box piercing the very lightning, with the thunder-cloud hanging over us, and even with so many transpirations from incipient fear; in short, with such visible danger on every hand, they must absolutely fear nothing, if they would not, all and sundry, be smitten to death in a few minutes.
103: The Great perhaps take as good charge of their posterity as the Ants: the eggs once laid, the male and female Ants fly about their business, and confide them to the trusty working-Ants.
10: And does Life offer us, in regard to our ideal hopes and purposes, anything but a prosaic, unrhymed, unmetrical Translation?
"O Heaven!" cried I, "Courage! only courage! No fear, not even fear of fear! Would you have Providence to shoot you here sitting, like so many hares hunted into a pinfold? Fear, if you like, when you are out of the coach; fear to your heart's content in other places, where there is less to be afraid of; only not here, not here!"