An opportunity for visiting the Patriarch was presented by a return coach-and-six, belonging to a count, on which I was admitted to a seat with the coachman. Just before arriving at Bienenroda, he pointed with his whip toward an orchard, tuneful with song, and said, “There sits the old man with his little animals around him.” I sprang from the noble equipage and went toward him. I ventured to expect that the Count’s six horses would give me, before the old man, the appearance of a person of rank, apart from the simplicity of my dress, whereby princes and heroes are wont to distinguish themselves from their tinselled lackeys. I was, therefore, a little surprised that the old man kept on playing with his pet hare, not even checking the barking of his poodle, as if counts were his daily bread, until, at last, he lifted his oil-cloth hat from his head. A buttoned overcoat, which gave room to see his vest, a long pair of knit over-alls, which were, in fact, enormous stockings, and a neckerchief, which hung down to his bosom, made his dress look modern enough. His time-worn frame was far more peculiar. The inner part of the eye, which is black in childhood, was quite white; his tallness, more than his years, seemed to bow him over into an arch; the out-turned point of his chin gave to his speech the appearance of mumbling; yet the expression of his countenance was lively, his eyes bright, his jaws full of white teeth, and his head covered with light hair.
I began by saying: “I came here solely on your account to see a man for whom there can assuredly be little new under the sun, though he himself is something very new under it. You are now strictly in your five and twenties; a man in your best years; since after a century a new reckoning commences. For myself, I confess that after once clambering over the century terminus, or church-wall of a hundred years, I should neither know how old I was, nor whether I was myself. I should begin fresh and free, just as the world’s history has often done, counting again from the year one, in the middle of a thousand years. Yet why can not a man live to be as old as is many a giant tree of India still standing? It is well to question very old people concerning the methods by which they have prolonged their lives. How do you account for it, dear old sir?”
I was beginning to be vexed at the good man’s silence, when he softly replied: “Some suppose it is because I have always been cheerful; because I have adopted the maxim, ‘Never sad, ever glad’; but I ascribe it wholly to our dear Lord God; since the animals, which here surround us, though never sad, but happy for the most part, by no means so frequently exceed the usual boundary of their life, as does man. He exhibits an image of the eternal God, even in the length of his duration.”
Such words concerning God, uttered by a tongue one hundred and twenty-five years old, had great weight and consolation; and I at once felt their beautiful attraction. On mentioning animals, the old man turned again to his own; and, as though indifferent to him who had come in a coach-and-six, he began again to play with his menagerie, the hare, the spaniel, the silky poodle, the starling, and a couple of turtle-doves on his bosom; a pleasant bee-colony in the orchard also gave heed to him; with one whistle he sent the bees away, and with another summoned them into the ring of creatures, which surrounded him like a court-circle.
At last, he said: “No one need be surprised that a very old man, who has forgotten everything, and whom no one but the dear God knows or cares for, should give himself wholly to the dear animals. To whom can such an old man be of much use? I wander about in the villages, as in cities, wholly strange. If I see children, they come before me like my own remote childhood. If I meet old men, they seem like my past hoary years. I do not quite know where I now belong. I hang between heaven and earth. Yet God ever looks upon me bright and lovingly, with his two eyes, the sun and the moon. Moreover, animals lead into no sin, but rather to devotion. When my turtle-doves brood over their young and feed them, it seems to me just as if I saw God himself doing a great deal; for they derive their love and instinct toward their young, as a gift from him.”
The old man became silent, and looked pensively before him, as was his wont. A ringing of christening bells sounded from Bienenroda among the trees in the garden. He wept a little. I know not how I could have been so simple, after the beautiful words he had uttered, as to have mistaken his tears for a sign of weakness in his eyes. “I do not hear well, on account of my great age,” said he; “and it seems to me as if the baptismal bell from the distant sanctuary sounded up here very faintly. The old years of my childhood, more than a hundred years ago, ascend from the ancient depths of time, and gaze on me in wonder, while I and they know not whether we ought to weep or laugh.” Then, addressing his silky poodle, he called out, “Ho! ho! come here old fellow!”
The allusion to his childhood brought me to the purpose of my visit. “Excellent sir,” said I, “I am preparing the biography of the deceased Master Gotthelf Fibel, author of the famous Spelling-Book; and all I now need to complete it is the account of his death.” The old man smiled, and made a low bow. I continued, “No one is more likely to know the particulars of his decease than yourself; and you are the only person who can enrich me with the rare traits of his childhood; because every incident inscribed on a child’s brain grows deeper with years, like names cut into a gourd, while later inscriptions disappear. Tell me, I pray you, all that you know concerning the departed man; for I am to publish his Life at the Michaelmas Fair.”
He murmured, “Excellent genius; scholar; man of letters; author most famous; these and other fine titles I learned by heart and applied to myself, while I was that vain, blinded Fibel, who wrote and published the ordinary Spelling-Book in question.”
So then, this old man was the blessed Fibel himself! A hundred and twenty-five notes of admiration, ay, eighteen hundred and eleven notes in a row, would but feebly express my astonishment.
[Here follows a long conversation concerning Fibel, after which the narrative continues as follows:—]