Yet among so many villains, encompassing if not even beleaguering me, I thought warmly of one far distant, faithful soul, of my Berga in Neusattel; a true heart of pith, which perhaps with many a weak marriage-partner might have given protection rather than sought it.
"Appear, then, quickly tomorrow at noon, Berga," said my heart; "and if possible before noon, that I may lengthen thy market paradise so many hours as thou arrivest earlier!"
A clergyman, amid the tempests of the world, readily makes for a free harbour, for the church: the church-wall is his casemate-wall and fortification; and behind are to be found more peaceful and more accordant souls than on the market-place: in short, I went into the High Church. However, in the course of the psalm, I was somewhat disturbed by a Heiduc, who came up to a well-dressed young gentleman sitting opposite me, and tore the double opera-glass from his nose, it being against rule in Flätz, as it is in Dresden, to look at the Court with glasses which diminish and approximate. I myself had on a pair of spectacles, but they were magnifiers. It was impossible for me to resolve on taking them off; and here again, I am afraid, I shall pass for a foolhardy person and a desperado; so much only I reckoned fit, to look invariably into my psalm-book; not once lifting my eyes while the Court was rustling and entering, thereby to denote that my glasses were ground convex. For the rest, the sermon was good, if not always finely conceived for a Court-church; it admonished the hearers against innumerable vices, to whose counterparts, the virtues, another preacher might so readily have exhorted us. During the whole service, I made it my business to exhibit true deep reverence, not only towards God, but also towards my illustrious Prince. For the latter reverence I had my private reason: I wished to stamp this sentiment strongly and openly as with raised letters on my countenance, and so give the lie to any malicious imp about Court, by whom my contravention of the Panegyric on Nero, and my free German satire on this real tyrant himself, which I had inserted in the Flätz Weekly Journal, might have been perverted into a secret characteristic portrait of my own Sovereign. We live in such times at present, that scarcely can we compose a pasquinade on the Devil in Hell, but some human Devil on Earth will apply it to an angel.
107: Germany is a long lofty mountain—under the sea.
144: The Reviewer does not in reality employ his pen for writing; but he burns it, to awaken weak people from their swoons, with the smell; he tickles with it the throat of the plagiary, to make him render back; and he picks with it his own teeth. He is the only individual in the whole learned lexicon that can never exhaust himself, never write himself out, let him sit before the ink-glass for centuries or tens of centuries. For while the Scholar, the Philosopher, and the Poet, produce their new book solely from new materials and growth, the Reviewer merely lays his old gage of taste and knowledge on a thousand new works; and his light, in the ever-passing, ever-differently-cut glass-world which he elucidates, is still refracted into new colours.
When the Court at last issued from church, and were getting into their carriages, I kept at such a distance that my face could not possibly be noticed, in case I had happened to assume no reverent look, but an indifferent or even proud one. God knows, who has kneaded into me those mad desperate fancies and crotchets, which perhaps would sit better on a Hero Schabacker than on an Army-chaplain under him. I cannot here forbear recording to you, my Friends, one of the maddest among them, though at first it may throw too glaring a light on me. It was at my ordination to be Army-chaplain, while about to participate in the Sacrament, on the first day of Easter. Now, here while I was standing, moved into softness, before the balustrade of the altar, in the middle of the whole male congregation,—nay, I perhaps more deeply moved than any among them, since, as a person going to war, I might consider myself a half-dead man, that was now partaking in the last Feast of Souls, as it were like a person to be hanged on the morrow,—here then, amid the pathetic effects of the organ and singing, there rose something—were it the first Easter-day which awoke in me what primitive Christians called their Easter-laughter, or merely the contrast between the most devilish predicaments and the most holy,—in short there rose something in me (for which reason, I have ever since taken the part of every simple person, who might ascribe such things to the Devil), and this something started the question: "Now, could there be aught more diabolical than if thou, just in receiving the Holy Supper, wert madly and blasphemously to begin laughing?" Instantly I took to wrestling with this hell-dog of a thought; neglected the most precious feelings, merely to keep the dog in my eye, and scare him away; yet was forced to draw back from him, exhausted and unsuccessful, and arrived at the step of the altar with the mournful certainty that in a little while I should, without more ado, begin laughing, let me weep and moan inwardly as I liked. Accordingly, while I and a very worthy old Bürgermeister were bowing down together before the long parson, and the latter (perhaps kneeling on the low cushion, I fancied him too long) put the wafer in my clenched mouth, I felt all the muscles of laughter already beginning sardonically to contract; and these had not long acted on the guiltless integument, till an actual smile appeared there; and as we bowed the second time, I was grinning like an ape. My companion the Bürgermeister justly expostulated with me, in a low voice, as we walked round behind the altar: "In Heaven's name, are you an ordained Preacher of the Gospel, or a Merry-Andrew? Is it Satan that is laughing out of you?"
71: The Youth is singular from caprice, and takes pleasure in it; the Man is so from constraint, unintentionally, and feels pain in it.
198: The Populace and Cattle grow giddy on the edge of no abyss; with the Man it is otherwise.
"Ah, Heaven! who else?" said I; and this being over, I finished my devotions in a more becoming fashion.
From the church (I now return to the Flätz one), I proceeded to the Tiger Inn, and dined at the table-d'hôte, being at no time shy of encountering men. Previous to the second course, a waiter handed me an empty plate, on which, to my astonishment, I noticed a French verse scratched-in with a fork, containing nothing less than a lampoon on the Commandant of Flätz. Without ceremony, I held out the plate to the company; saying, I had just, as they saw, got this lampooning cover presented to me, and must request them to bear witness that I had nothing to do with the matter. An officer directly changed plates with me. During the fifth course, I could not but admire the chemico-medical ignorance of the company; for a hare, out of which a gentleman extracted and exhibited several grains of shot, that is to say, therefore, of lead alloyed with arsenic, and then cleaned by hot vinegar, did, nevertheless, by the spectators (I excepted) continue to be pleasantly eaten.