“Get married!” thought Hans. He was struck all on a heap at the very mention of it “Get married! What! fine clothes to go a-wooing in, and fine presents to go a-wooing with; and parson’s fees, and clerk’s fees; and wedding-dinner, and dancing, and drinking; and then, doctor’s fees, and nurse’s fees, and children without end! That is ruin!” thought Hans—“without end!” The fifty dollars and the Bürgermeistership—they might wait till doomsday.
“Well, that is good!” thought Hans, as he took a little more breath. “They first counseled me to get a light—then went house and all in a bonfire; next, I must get a journeyman—then went the money; and now they would have me bring more plagues upon me than Moses brought upon Egypt. Nay, nay!” thought Hans; “you’ll not catch me there, neither.”
Hans all this time was seated upon his shop-board, stitching, at an amazing rate, upon a garment which the rascally Wagner should have finished to order at six o’clock that morning, instead of decamping with his money; and, ever and anon, so far forgetting his loss in what appeared to him the ludicrousness of this advice, as freely to laugh out. All that day, the idea continued to run in his head; the next, it had lost much of its freshness; the third, it appeared not so odd as awful; the fourth, he began to ask himself whether it might be quite so momentous as his imagination had painted it; the fifth, he really thought it was not so bad neither; the sixth, it had so worked round in his head, that it had fairly got on the other side, and appeared clearly to have its advantages—children did not come scampering into the world all at once, like a flock of lambs into a meadow—a wife might help to gather, as well as spend—might possibly bring something of her own—ay! a new idea!—would be a perpetual watch and storekeeper in his absence—might speak a word of comfort, in trouble when even his fiddle was dumb; on the seventh—he was off! Whither?
Why, it so happened that in his “wander-years,” Hans had played his fiddle at many a dance—a very dangerous position; for his chin resting on “the merry bit of wood,” as the ancient Friend termed that instrument, and his head leaned on one side, he had had plenty of opportunity to watch the movements of plenty of fair maids in the dance, as well as occasionally to whirl them round in the everlasting waltz himself. Accordingly, Hans had left his heart many times, for a week or ten days or so, behind him, in many a town and dorf of Bohemia and Germany; but it always came after him and overtook him again, except on one occasion. Among the damsels of the Böhmer-Wald who had danced to the sound of his fiddle, there was a certain substantial bergman’s or master-miner’s daughter, who, having got into his head in some odd association with his fiddle, was continually coming up as he played his old airs, and could not be got out again, especially as he fancied that the comely and simple-hearted creature had a lurking fondness for both his music and himself.
Away he went: and he was right. The damsel made no objection to his overtures. Tall, stout, fresh, pleasant growth of the open air and the hills, as she was, she never dreamed of despising the little skipping tailor of Rapps, though he was shorter by the head than herself. She had heard his music, and evidently had danced after it. The fiddler and fiddle together filled up her ambition. But the old people!—they were in perfect hysterics of wrath and indignation. Their daughter!—with the exception of one brother, now absent on a visit to his uncle in Hungary, a great gold-miner in the Carpathian mountains, the sole remnant of an old, substantial house, which had fed their flocks and their herds on the hills for three generations, and now drew wealth from the heart of these hills themselves! It was death! poison! pestilence! The girl must be mad; the hop-o’-my-thumb scoundrel must carry witch-powder!
Nevertheless, as Hans and the damsel were agreed, every thing else—threats, denunciations, sarcasms, cuttings-off with a shilling, and loss of a ponderous dowry—all went for nothing. They were married, as some thousands were before them in just the like circumstances. But if the Bohemian maid was not mad, it must be confessed that Hans was rather so. He was monstrously exasperated at the contempt heaped by the heavy bergman on the future Bürgermeister of Rapps, and determined to show a little spirit. As his fiddle entered into all his schemes, he resolved to have music at his wedding; and no sooner did he and his bride issue from the church, than out broke the harmony which he had provided. The fiddle played merrily, “You’ll repent, repent, repent; you’ll repent, repent, repent;” and the bassoon answered, in surly tones, “And soon! and soon!” “I hope, my dear,” said the bride, “You don’t mean the words for us.” “No, love,” explained Hans, gallantly; “I don’t say ‘we,’ but ‘you’—that is, certain haughty people on these hills that shall be nameless.” Then the music played till they reached the inn where they dined, and then set off in a handsome hired carriage for Rapps.
It is true, that there was little happiness in this affair to any one. The old people were full of anger, curses, and threats of total disownment. Hans’s pride was pricked, and perforated, till he was as sore as if he had been tattooed with his own needle; and his wife was completely drowned in sorrow at such a parting with her parents, and with no little sense of remorse for her disobedience. Nevertheless, they reached home; things began gradually to assume a more composed aspect. Hans loved his wife; she loved him; he was industrious, she was careful; and they trusted, in time, to bring her parents round, when they should see that they were doing well in the world.
Again the saving scheme began to haunt Hans; but he had one luckless notion, which was destined to cost him no little vexation. With the stock of the shop, he had inherited from his father a stock of old maxims, which, unluckily, had not got burnt in the fire with the rest of the patrimonial heritage. Among these was one, that a woman can not keep a secret. Acting on this creed, Hans not only never told his wife of the project of becoming Bürgermeister of Rapps, but he did not even give her reason to suppose that he laid up a shilling; and that she might not happen to stumble upon his money, he took care to carry it always about him. It was his delight, when he got into a quiet corner, or as he came along a retired lane, from his errands, to take it out and count it; and calculate when it would amount to this and that sum, and when the full sum would be really his own. Now, it happened one day, that having been a good deal absorbed in these speculations, he had loitered a precious piece of time away; and suddenly coming to himself, he set off, as was his wont, on a kind of easy trot, in which, his small, light form thrown forward, his pale, gray-eyed, earnest-looking visage thrown up toward the sky, and his long blue coat flying in a stream behind him, he cut one of the most extraordinary figures in the world; and checking his pace as he entered the town, he involuntarily clapped his hand on his pocket, and behold! his money was gone! It had slipped away through a hole it had worn. In the wildness and bitterness of his loss, he turned back, heartily cursing the spinner and the weaver of that most detestable piece of buckram that composed his breeches-pocket, for having put it together so villainously that it broke down with the carriage of a few dollars, halfpence, thimbles, balls of wax and thread, and a few other sundries, after the trifling wear of seven years, nine months, and nineteen days.
He was peering, step by step, after his lost treasure, when up came his wife, running like one wild, and telling him that he must come that instant; for the Ritter of Flachenflaps had brought in new liveries for all his servants, and threatened if he did not see Hans in five minutes, he would carry the work over to the other side of the street. There was a perplexity! The money was not to be found, and if it were found in the presence of his wife, he would regard it as no better than lost. He was therefore obliged to excuse his conduct, being caught in the act of poring after something, to tell, if not a lie, at least the very smallest part of the truth, and say that he had lost his thimble. The money was not found, and to make bad worse, he was in danger of losing a good job, and all the Ritter’s work forever, as a consequence.
Away he ran, therefore, groaning inwardly, at full speed, and, arriving out of breath, saw the Ritter’s carriage drawn up at his opponent’s door. Wormwood upon wormwood! His money was lost; his best customer was lost, and thrown into the jaws of the detested Hippopotamus. There he beheld him and his man in a prime bustle from day to day, while his own house was deserted. All people went where the Ritter went, of course. The Hippopotamus was now grazing and browsing through Hans’s richest meadows with a vengeance. He was flourishing out of all bounds. He had got a horse to ride out on and take orders, and to all appearance was likely to become Bürgermeister ten years before Hans had got ten dollars of his own.