For the rest, this stage passed over without quarrelling or peril. About ten o'clock, the whole party, including even the Postillion, myself excepted, fell asleep. I indeed pretended to be sleeping, that I might observe whether some one, for his own good reasons, might not also be pretending it; but all continued snoring; the moon threw its brightening beams on nothing but down-pressed eyelids.
I had now a glorious opportunity of following Lavater's counsel, to apply the physiognomical ellwand specially to sleepers, since sleep, like death, expresses the genuine form in coarser lines. Other sleepers not in stage-coaches I think it less advisable to mete with this ellwand; having always an apprehension lest some fellow, but pretending to be asleep, may, the instant I am near enough, start up as in a dream, and deceitfully plant such a knock on the physiognomical mensurator's own facial structure, as to exclude it forever from appearing in any Physiognomical Fragments (itself being reduced to one), either in the stippled or line style. Nay, might not the most honest sleeper in the world, just while you are in hand with his physiognomical dissection, lay about him, spurred on by honour in some cudgelling-scene he may be dreaming; and in a few instants of clapper-clawing, and kicking, and trampling, lull you into a much more lasting sleep than that out of which he was awakened?
In my Adumbrating Magic-lantern, as I have named the Work, the whole physiognomical contents of this same sleeping stage-coach will be given to the world: there I shall explain to you at large how the Poisoner, with the murder-cupola, appeared to me devil-like; the Dwarf old-childlike; the Harlot languidly shameless; my Brother-in-law peacefully satisfied, with revenge or food; and the Legations-Rath, Jean Pierre, Heaven only knows why, like a half angel,—though, perhaps, it might be because only the fair body, not the other half, the soul, which had passed away in sleep, was affecting me.
88: Hitherto I have always regarded the Polemical writings of our present philosophic and æsthetic Idealist Logic-buffers,—in which, certainly, a few contumelies, and misconceptions, and misconclusions do make their appearance,—rather on the fair side; observing in it merely an imitation of classical Antiquity, in particular of the ancient Athletes, who (according to Schottgen) besmeared their bodies with mud, that they might not be laid hold of; and filled their hands with sand, that they might lay hold of their antagonists.
I had almost forgotten to mention, that in a little village, while my Brother-in-law and the Postillion were sitting at their liquor, I happily fronted a small terror, Destiny having twice been on my side. Not far from a Hunting Box, beside a pretty clump of trees, I noticed a white tablet, with a black inscription on it. This gave me hopes that perhaps some little monumental piece, some pillar of honour, some battle memento, might here be awaiting me. Over an untrodden flowery tangle, I reach the black on white; and to my horror and amazement, I decipher in the moonshine: Beware of Spring-guns! Thus was I standing perhaps half a nail's breadth from the trigger, with which, if I but stirred my heel, I should shoot myself off like a forgotten ramrod, into the other world, beyond the verge of Time! The first thing I did was to cramp-down my toe-nails, to bite, and, as it were, eat myself into the ground with them; since I might at least continue in warm life so long as I pegged my body firmly in beside the Atropos-scissors and hangman's block, which lay beside me; then I endeavoured to recollect by what steps the fiend had let me hither unshot, but in my agony I had perspired the whole of it, and could remember nothing. In the Devil's village close at hand, there was no dog to be seen and called to, who might have plucked me from the water; and my Brother-in-law and the Postillion were both carousing with full can. However, I summoned my courage and determination; wrote down on a leaf of my pocket-book my last will, the accidental manner of my death, and my dying remembrance of Berga; and then, with full sails, flew helterskelter through the midst of it the shortest way; expecting at every step to awaken the murderous engine, and thus to clap over my still long candle of life the bonsoir, or extinguisher, with my own hand. However, I got off without shot. In the tavern, indeed, there was more than one fool to laugh at me; because, forsooth, what none but a fool could know, this Notice had stood there for the last ten years, without any gun, as guns often do without any notice. But so it is, my Friends, with our game-police, which warns against all things, only not against warnings.
103: Or are all Mosques, Episcopal-churches, Pagodas, Chapels-of-Ease, Tabernacles and Pantheons, anything else than the Ethnic Forecourt of the Invisible Temple and its Holy of Holies?
40: The common man is copious only in narration, not in reasoning; the cultivated man is brief only in the former, not in the latter: because the common man's reasons are a sort of sensations, which, as well as things visible, he merely looks at; by the cultivated man, again, both reasons and things visible are rather thought than looked at.
For the rest, throughout the whole stage, I had a constant source of altercation with the coachman, because he grudged stopping perhaps once in the quarter of an hour, when I chose to come out for a natural purpose. Unhappily, in truth, one has little reason to expect water-doctors among the postillion class, since Physicians themselves have so seldom learned from Haller's large Physiology, that a postponement of the above operation will precipitate devilish stoneware, and at last precipitate the proprietor himself; this stone-manufactory being generally concluded, not by the Lithotomist, but by Death. Had postillions read that Tycho Brahe died like a bombshell by bursting, they would rather pull up for a moment; with such unlooked-for knowledge, they would see it to be reasonable that a man, though expecting some time to carry his death-stone on him, should not incline, for the time being, to carry it in him. Nay, have I not often, at Weimar, in the longest concluding scenes of Schiller, run out with tears in my eyes; purely that, while his Minerva was melting me on the whole, I might not by the Gorgon's head on her breast be partially turned to stone? And did I not return to the weeping playhouse, and fall into the general emotion so much the more briskly, as now I had nothing to give vent to but my heart?
Deep in the dark we arrived at Niederschöna.