But before the Actus, let us examine the Schadeck Lawyer. Fixlein instead of Füchslein[53] he had written from uncertainty about the spelling of the name; the more naturally as in transcribing the Rittmeisterinn's will, the former had occurred so often. Von, this triumphal arch he durst not set up before Füchslein's new name, because Aufhammer forbade it, considering Hans Füchslein as a mushroom who had no right to vons and titles of nobility, for all his patents. In fine, the Presentation-writer was possessed with Campe's[54] whim of Germanising everything, minding little though when Germanised it should cease to be intelligible;—as if a word needed any better act of naturalisation than that which universal intelligibility imparts to it. In itself it is the same—the rather as all languages, like all men, are cognate, intermarried and intermixed—whether a word was invented by a savage or a foreigner; whether it grew up like moss amid the German forests, or like street-grass, in the pavement of the Roman forum. The Lawyer, on the other hand, contended that it was different; and accordingly he hid not from any of his clients that Tagefarth (Day-turn) meant Term, and that Appealing was Berufen (Becalling). On this principle he dressed the word Subrector in the new livery of School-undergovernor. And this version farther converted the Schoolmaster into Parson: to such a degree does our civic fortune—not our personal well-being, which supports itself on our own internal soil and resources—grow merely on the drift-mould of accidents, connexions, acquaintances, and Heaven or the Devil knows what!—
[53] Both have the same sound. Füchslein means Foxling, Foxwhelp.—Ed.
[54] Campe, a German philologist, who, along with several others of that class, has really proposed, as represented in the Text, to substitute for all Greek or Latin derivatives corresponding German terms of the like import. Geography, which may be Erdbeschreibung (Earth-description), was thenceforth to be nothing else; a Geometer became an Earthmeasurer, &c. &c. School-undergovernor, instead of Subrector, is by no means the happiest example of the system, and seems due rather to the Schadeck Lawyer than to Campe, whom our Author has elsewhere more than once eulogised for his project in similar style.—Ed.
By the by, from a Lawyer, at the same time a Country Judge, I should certainly have looked for more sense; I should (I may be mistaken) have presumed he knew that the Acts or Reports, which in former times (see Hoffmann's German or un-German Law-practice) were written in Latin, as before the times of Joseph the Hungarian,—are now, if we may say so without offence, perhaps written fully more in the German dialect than in the Latin; and in support of this opinion, I can point to whole lines of German language, to be found in these Imperial-Court-Confessions. However, I will not believe that the Jurist is endeavouring, because Imhofer declares the Roman tongue to be the mother tongue in the other world, to disengage himself from a language, by means of which, like the Roman Eagle, or later, like the Roman Fish-heron (Pope), he has clutched such abundant booty in his talons.——
Toll, toll your bell for the Actus; stream in, in to the ceremony: who cares for it? Neither I nor the Ex-Conrector. The six pigmy Ciceros will in vain set forth before us in sumptuous dress their thoughts and bodies. The draught-wind of Chance has blown away from the Actus its powder-nimbus of glory; and the Conrector that was has discovered how small a matter a cathedra is, and how great a one a pulpit: "I should not have thought," thought he now, "when I became Conrector, that there could he anything grander, I mean a Parson." Man, behind his everlasting blind, which he only colours differently, and makes no thinner, carries his pride with him from one step to another; and, on the higher step, blames only the pride of the lower.
The best of the Actus was, that the Regiments-Quartermaster, and Master Butcher, Steinberg, attended there, embaled in a long woollen shag. During the solemnity, the Subrector Hans von Füchslein cast several gratified and inquiring glances on the Schadeck servant, who did not once look at him: Hans would have staked his head, that after the Actus, the fellow would wait upon him. When at last the sextuple cockerel-brood had on their dunghill done crowing, that is to say, had perorated, the scholastic cocker, over whom a higher banner was now waving, himself came upon the stage; and delivered to the School-Inspectorships, to the Subrectorship, to the Guardianship and the Lackeyship, his most grateful thanks for their attendance; shortly announcing to them at the same time, "that Providence had now called him from his post to another; and committed to him, unworthy as he was, the cure of souls in the Hukelum parish, as well as in the Schadeck chapel of ease."
This little address, to appearance, well-nigh blew up the then Subrector Hans von Füchslein from his chair; and his face looked of a mingled colour, like red bole, green chalk, tinsel-yellow and vomissement de la reine.
The tall Quartermaster erected himself considerably in his shag, and hummed loud enough in happy forgetfulness: "The Dickens!—Parson?"——
The Subrector dashed by like a comet before the lackey: ordered him to call and take a letter for his master; strode home, and prepared for his patron, who at Schadeck was waiting for a long thanksgiving psalm, a short satirical epistle, as nervous as haste would permit, and mingled a few nicknames and verbal injuries along with it.
The courier handed in, to his master, Fixlein's song of gratitude, and Füchslein's invectives, with the same hand. The Dragoon Rittmeister, incensed at the ill-mannered churl, and bound to his word, which Fixlein had publicly announced in his Actus, forthwith wrote back to the new Parson an acceptance and ratification; and Fixlein is and remains, to the joy of us all, incontestable ordained parson of Hukelum.