For after all, nobody could suppose that our Lord God would let Matt's scholarly training be set down as anything to the good.
Such a miserable, outrageous piece of rascality surely had never existed before in the history of the world!
This time the rage of the Bridge Farmer was directed not merely against the teachers at Freising; the priest had enlightened him as to the fact that Matt was deficient in everything except tarot playing and beer-drinking. The ragamuffin, the good-for-nothing!
Now he was running around Eynhofen with glasses on his nose and a belly like an alderman. He looked like a regular Vicar, sure enough, who was going to begin reading mass the next day. And all the time he was nothing, absolutely nothing.
The only person who remained calm under these blows of fate was the quondam stud. lit. Matthew Fottner.
If he had studied longer and more, I should be fain to think he had learned this calm of soul from the seven wise men.
As it is, I must assume that it was inborn.
He had, to be sure, gained no treasure of classical learning for his future life, but he figured that in any case seven fat years had been accorded him, which no one could ever take from him again. Not even the Bridge Farmer with all his rage.
Why should man torment himself with thoughts of the future? The past is worth something, too, and especially such a jolly one as he had had in the secret tap-room of the Star Brewery, where he had sat with his boon-companions and had gradually mastered the art of draining a glass of beer at a draught. Where he had sung all the bully songs in the collection, such as "Crambambuli" and the "Bier la la," and the ever memorable and eternally beautiful "Drum Brüderchen er-her-go bi-ba-hamus."
Such recollections are also a treasure for life; and even if the sun- dried country bumpkins didn't understand it, jolly it had been all the same.