The whole morning till noon now passed in viewing sights, and trafficking for wares; and indeed, for the greatest part, in the broad street of our Hotel. Berga needed but to press along with me into the market throng; needed but to look, and see that she was decorated more according to the fashion than hundreds like her. But soon, in her care for household gear, she forgot that of dress, and in the potter-market the toilette-table faded from her thoughts.
I, for my share, full of true tedium, while gliding after her through her various marts, with their long cheapenings and chafferings, merely acted the Philosopher hid within me: I weighed this empty Life, and the heavy value which is put upon it, and the daily anxiety of man lest it, this lightest down-feather of the Earth, fly off, and feather him, and take him with it. These thoughts, perhaps, I owe to the street-fry of boys, who were turning their market-freedom to account, by throwing stones at one another all round me: for, in the midst of this tumult, I vividly figured myself to be a man who had never seen war; and who, therefore, never having experienced, that often of a thousand bullets not one will hit, feels apprehensive of these few silly stones lest they beat-in his nose and eyes. O! it is the battle-field alone that sows, manures and nourishes true courage, courage even for daily, domestic and smallest perils. For not till he comes from the battle-field can a man both sing and cannonade; like the canary-bird, which, though so melodious, so timid, so small, so tender, so solitary, so soft-feathered, can yet be trained to fire off cannon, though cannon of smaller calibre.
4: The Hypocrite does not imitate the old practice, of cutting fruit by a knife poisoned only on the one side, and giving the poisoned side to the victim, the cutter eating the sound side himself; on the contrary, he so disinterestedly inverts this practice, that to others he shows and gives the sound moral half, or side, and retains for himself the poisoned one. Heavens! compared with such a man, how wicked does the Devil seem!
After dinner (in our room), we issued from the Purgatory of the market-tumult,—where Berga, at every booth, had something to order, and load her attendant maid with,—into Heaven, into the Dog Inn, as the best Flätz public and pleasure-house without the gates is named, where, in market-time, hundreds turn in, and see thousands going by. On the way thither, my little wife, my elbow-tendril, as it were, had extracted from me such a measure of courage, that, while going through the Gate (where I, aware of the military order that you must not pass near the sentry, threw myself over to the other side), she quietly glided on, close by the very guns and fixed bayonets of the City Guard. Outside the wall, I could direct her with my finger, to the bechained, begrated, gigantic Schabacker-Palace, mounting up even externally on stairs, where I last night had called and (it may be) stormed: "I had rather take a peep at the Giant," said she, "and the Dwarf: why else are we under one roof with them?"
In the pleasure-house itself we found sufficient pleasure; encircled, as we were, with blooming faces and meadows. In my secret heart, I all along kept looking down, with success, on Schabacker's refusal; and till midnight made myself a happy day of it: I had deserved it, Berga still more. Nevertheless, about one in the morning, I was destined to find a windmill to tilt with; a windmill, which truly lays about it with somewhat longer, stronger and more numerous arms than a giant, for which Don Quixote might readily enough have taken it. On the market-place, for reasons more easily fancied than specified in words, I let Berga go along some twenty paces before me; and I myself, for these foresaid reasons, retire without malice behind a covered booth, the tent most probably of some rude trader; and linger there a moment according to circumstances: lo! steering hither with dart and spear, comes the Booth-watcher, and coins and stamps me, on the spot, into a filcher and housebreaker of his Booth-street; though the simpleton sees nothing but that I am standing in the corner, and doing anything but—taking. A sense of honour without callosity is never blunted for such attacks. But how in the dead of night was a man of this kind, who had nothing in his head—at the utmost beer, instead of brains—to be enlightened on the truth of the matter?
67: Individual Minds, nay Political Bodies, are like organic bodies: extract the interior air from them, the atmosphere crushes them together; pump off under the bell the exterior resisting air, the interior inflates and bursts them. Therefore, let every State keep up its internal and its external resistance both at once.
I shall not conceal my perilous resource: I seized the fox by the tail, as we say; in other words, I made as if I had been muddled, and knew not rightly, in my liquor, what I was about: I therefore mimicked everything I was master of in this department; staggered hither and thither; splayed out my feet like a dancing-master; got into zigzag in spite of all efforts at the straight line; nay, I knocked my good head (perhaps one of the clearest and emptiest of the night), like a full one, against real posts.
However, the Booth-bailiff, who probably had been oftener drunk than I, and knew the symptoms better, or even felt them in himself at this moment, looked upon the whole exhibition as mere craft, and shouted dreadfully: "Stop, rascal; thou art no more drunk than I! I know thee of old. Stand, I say, till I speak to thee! Wouldst have thy long finger in the market, too? Stand, dog, or I'll make thee!"
You see the whole nodus of the matter: I whisked away zigzag among the booths as fast as possible, from the claws of this rude Tosspot; yet he still hobbled after me. But my Teutoberga, who had heard somewhat of it, came running back; clutched the tipsy market-warder by the collar, and said (shrieking, it is true, in village-wise): "Stupid sot, go sleep the drink out of thy head, or I'll teach thee! Dost know, then, whom thou art speaking to? My husband, Army-chaplain Schmelzle under General and Minister von Schabacker at Pimpelstadt, thou blockhead!—Fye! Take shame, fellow!" The watchman mumbled: "Meant no harm," and reeled about his business. "O thou Lioness!" said I, in the transport of love, "why hast thou never been in any deadly peril, that I might show thee the Lion in thy husband?"
8: In great Saloons, the real stove is masked into a pretty ornamented sham stove; so likewise, it is fit and pretty that a virgin Love should always hide itself in an interesting virgin Friendship.