Miss Lady Birds Wildflowers How A First Lady Changed

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Miss Lady Birds Wildflowers How A
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.
Kuhschnappelersthar, there was nobody whom he should bo delight
in playing practical jokes upon as on such a
 76 JEAN PAUL FKIEDBICH RICHTER. [BOOK I. mannikin —
yea, in insulting him, or even doing him an injury (to the extent of a
good cudgelling). Also it had always been a source of delight to him
that Socrates and Cato walked barefoot about in the market-place;
going bareheaded, on the other hand (chapeau has), he did not like
half so much. But, ere he could utter himself otherwise than by
making faces, the wooden-head of a Venner stroked his sprouting
beard, and in a distant manner graciously offered himself to the
advocate in the capacity of cardinal protector or mediator in the
Blaise inheritance business ; this he did, of course, partly to blind
the advocate's eyes, and partly to impress upon him how
immeasurably inferior was his station. The latter, however,
shuddering at the idea of taking a gnome of this kind for paraclete
and household angel, said to him (but in Latin') — " In the first place
I must insist that my wife shall not hear a syllable about that
insignificant potato quarrel. And moreover, in any legal question I
scorn and despise anybody's assistance but a legal friend's, and in
this instance I am my own legal friend. I fill an official position here
in Kuhschnappel ; it is true, the official position by no means fills
me." The latter play upon words he expressed by means of a Latin
one, which displayed such an unusual amount of linguistic ability,
that I should almost like to quote it here. The Venner, however, who
could neither construe the pun nor the rest of the speech with the
ease with which we have read it here, answered at once (so as to
escape without exposing his ignorance) in the same langunge, "
Imo, immo," whioh he meant for yes. Firmian then went on, in
German, saying, " Guardian and ward, intimate as their connection
should be, in this case came into contact to an extent almost too
great to be pleasant ; although, no doubt, there have been cases
before where one cousin has cozened another ; * however, the very
members of ecclesiastical councils have come to fisticuffs before
now, e. g. at Ephesus in the fifteenth century. Indeed, the Abbut
Barsumas and Dioscurus, Bishop of * For the next six pages or so
the original literally bristles with untranslatable puns and plays upon
words. — Translator.
 CHAP III.] FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES. 77
Alexandria, men of position, pummelled the good Flavian on that
very occasion till he was as dead as a herring.* And this was on a
Sunday too, a day on which, in these absurd old times, a sacred
truce was put to quarrels and differences of every description ;
though now, Sundays and feast-days are the very days when the
peace is broken; the public-house bells and the tinkling of the
glasses ring the truce out, and people pummel each other, so that
the law gets her finger into the pie. In old days, people multiplied
the number of saints' days for the sake of stopping fights, but the
fact is that everybody connected with the legal profession, Herr von
Meyern (who must have something to live upon), ought to petition
that a peaceable working-day or two might be abolished now and
then, so that the number of rows might be increased, and with them
the fines and the fees in like ratio. Yet who thinks of such a thing,
Venner ?" He was quite safe in spouting the greater part of this
before Lenette ; she had long been accustomed to understanding
only a half, a fourth, or an eighth part of what he said ; as for the
whole Venner, she gave herself no concern about him. When Meyern
had taken his departure with frigid politeness, Siebenkses, with the
view of helping to advance him in his wife's good opinion, extolled
his whole and undivided love for the entire female sex (though
engaged to be married), and more particularly his attachment to
that preliminary bride of his, who was now in the condemned cell of
the prison ; this, however, rather seemed to have the effect of
lowering him in her good opinion. " Thou good, kind soul, may you
always be as faithful to yourself and to me!" said he, taking her to
his heart. But she didn't know that she had been faithful, and said, "
to whom should 1 be unfaithful?" From this day onwards to
Michaelmas Day, which was the day of the borough fair, fortune
seems to have led our pathway, I mean the reader's and mine,
through no very special flower-beds to speak of, but merely along
the smooth green turf of an English lawn, one would suppose on
purpose that the fair on Michaelmas Day may suddenly arise upon *
Mosheim's ' Ecclesiastical History.'
 78 JEAN PAUL FKIEDRICH RICHTER. [BOOK I. our view as
some shining, dazzling town starts up out of a valley. Very little did
occur until then ; at least, my pen, which only considers itself bound
to record incidents of some importance, is not very willing to be
troubled to mention that the Venner Meyern dropped in pretty often
at the bookbinder's (who lived under the same roof with the
Siebenkaeses) — he merely came to see whether the * Liaisons
Dangereuses ' were bound yet. But that Michaelmas ! Truly the
world shall remember it. And in fact the very eve of it was a time of
such a splendid and exquisite quality that we may venture to give
the world some account of it. Let the world read the account of this
eve of preparation at all events, and then give its vote. On this eve
of the fair all Kuhschnappel (as all otlier places are at such a time)
was turned into a workhouse and house of industry for women ; you
couldn't have found a woman in the whole town either sitting down,
or at peace, or properly dressed. Girls the most given to reading
opened no books but needle-books to take needles out, and the only
leaves they turned over were paste ones to be put on pies. Scarcely
a woman took any dinner ; the Michaelmas cakes and the coming
enjoyment of them were the sole mainspring of the feminine
machinery. On these occasions women may be said to hold their
exhibitions of pictures, the cakes being the altar-pieces. Everyone
nibbles at and minutely inspects these baked escutcheons of her
neighbour's nobility ; and each has, as it were, her cake attached to
her, as a medal is, or the lead tickets on bales of cloth, to indicate
her value. They scarcely eat or drink anything, it is true, thick coffee
being their consecrated sacrament wine, and thin transparent pastry
their wafers ; only the latter (in their friend's and hostess's houses)
tastes best, and is eaten almost with fondness when it has turned
out hard and stony and shot and dagger proof — or is burnt to a
cinder — or, in short, is wretched from some cause or other; they
cheerfully acknowledge all the failures of their dearest friends, and
try to comfort them by taking them to their own houses and treating
them to something of a very different kind. As for our Lenette, she,
my dear lady reader, has always
 CHAP. III.] FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES. 79 been
a baker of such a sort that male connoisseurs have preferred her
crust, and female connoisseurs her crum, both classes maintaining
that no one but she (and yourself, dearest) could bake anything like
either. The kitchen fire was this salamander's second element, for
the first and native element of this dear nixie was water. To be
scouring with sand, and squattering and splattering in it, in a great
establishment like Siebenka3s's (who had devoted all Leibgeber's
Ephraimites to the keeping of this feast), was quite her vocation. No
kiss could be applied to her glowing face on such a day — and
indeed she had her hands pretty full, for at ten o'clock the butcher
came bringing more work with him. The world will be glad (I'm
perfectly certain in my own mind) if I just give them a very short
account of this business — who could have dune it better, for that
matter ? The facts of it were these : at the beginning of summer the
four fellow lodgers had clubbed together and bought a cow in poor
condition which they had then put up to fatten. The bookbinder, the
cobbler, the poor's advocate and the hairdresser — between whom
and 'his tenants there was this distinction, that they owed their rent
to him, whereas he owed his to his creditors — caused to be prepaid
and drawn up by a skilful hand (which was attached to the arm of
Siebenkajs) an authentic instrument (here Kolbk the word-purist will
snarl at poor innocent me in his usual manner for employing foreign
words in a document based on the Roman law) relative to the life
and death of the cow ; in which instrument the four contracting
parties aforesaid — who all stood attentively round the document,
he who was sitting and drawing it excepted — bound and engaged
themselves in manner following, that is to say, that — lstly. Each of
the four parties interested, as aforesaid, in the said cow might and
should have the privilege of milking her alternately. 2ndly. That this
Cooking or Fattening Society might and should defray from a
common treasury chest the price of said cow, the cost of the
carriage of implements and provisions, and maintenance generally of
the same; and
 80 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. [BOOK I, 3rdly. That
the allied powers as aforesaid should not only on the day before
Michaelmas, the 28th September, 1785, slaughter the said cow. but
further that each quarter of the same should then and there be
further divided into four quarters, conformably to the lex agraria, for
partition among the said parties to the said contract. Siebenkaes
prepared four certified copies of this treaty, one for each ; he never
wrote anything with graver pleasure. All that now remained to be
performed of the contract by the house association of our four
evangelists, who had collectively adopted as their armorial crest or
emblematic animal, one single joint-stock beast, namely, the female
of that of Saint Luke — was the third article of it. However. I know
the learned classes are panting for my fair, so I shall only dash down
a hurried sketch of my Man-and- Animal piece (Kolbe of course goes
on taking me to task). That Septembriseur, the butcher, did his part
of tho business well, though it was at the close of Fructidor — the
four messmates looking on throughout the operation, as also did old
Sabine, who did a good deal, and got something for it. The
quadruple alliance regaled itself en the slain animal at a general
picnic, to which each contributed something in order that tho
butcher might be included gratis ; and it is undeniable that one
member of the league, whom I shall name hereafter, attended this
picnic in a frame of mind and in a costume barely serious enough for
the occasion. The slaughter confederation then set to working its
division sura, according to the number of its members, and the
golden calf round which their dance was executed was cut, up with
the appropriate heraldic cuts. Then the whole thing was over. I think
I can say nothing more laudatory of the manner in which the whole
process of zootomic division was carried out than what Siebenkass,
an interested party, said himself, viz., " It's to be wished that the
twelve tribes of Israel, as well as, in later times, the Eoman empire,
had been divided into as many and as fair divisions as our cow and
Poland have been." I shall be doing ample justice to the cow's
embonpoint
 CHAP, in.] FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES. 81 if I
merely mention that Fecht the cobhler uttered a panegyric which
commenced with the most lively and vigorous oaths, and the
statement that she was an (adjective) bag of skin and bones, and
ended with an assurance, uttered in mild and pious accents that
Heaven had indeed favoured the poor beast, and " blessed us
unworthy sinners above measure." A frolicsome cult by nature, he
had had the heavy coach-harness of pietism put on to him, and was
consequently obliged to keep softening down the " strong language"
which came naturally to him into the pious sighs appropriate to his
"converted state." And it was to the frame of mind and the costume
of this very Fecht that I made allusion above as being barely suitable
to the occasion, for I'm sorry to say he had no breeches on him the
whole day of this great slaughter, but ran up and down the
slaughter-house in a white frieze frock of his wife's, having a strange
general effect of looking something like his own better half. However,
the members of the association didn't take any offence ; he couldn't
help it, because while he was going about got up in this Amazon's
demi-negligee, and presenting this hermaphrodite appearance, his
own black-leather leg-cases were in the dye pot, being prepared for
a reissue. The poor's advocate had begged Lenette (about a quarter
past four in the afternoon) not to go on working herself to death,
and never to mind bothering about any supper, as he was going to
be miserly for once, save himself a supper tonight, and sup upon
eighteen penn'orth of pastry : but the busy soul kept running about
brushing and sweeping, and by six o 'clock they were both lying
resting in the leather arms of — a big easy chair (for he had no flesh
and she no bones), and looking around them with that expression of
tranquil happiness which you may see in children while eating, at the
room in its state of mathematical order, at the way in which
everything in it was shining, at the pastry new-moon-crescents in
their hands, and at the liquid burnished gold (or rather foilgold *) of
the setting sun creeping up and up upon the gleaming tin dishes.
There they rested and reposed like cradled children, with * Gold in
leaves, o two colours, used bj bookbinders. U. Q
 82 JEAN PAUL FRIEDKICH RICHTER. [BOOK I. the
screeching, clattering, twelve herculean lahours of the rest of the
people of the house going on all round them ; and the clearness of
the sky and the newly cleaned windows added a full half-hour to the
length of the day ; the hellhammer, or tuning-hammer of the curfew
bell gently let down the pitch of their melodious wishes till they —
lapsed into dreams. At ten o'clock they woke up and went to bed . .
. . ! I quite enjoy this little stariy night picture myself; though my
head has reflected it all glimmery and oxit of focus, as the gilt
hemisphere of my watch does the evening sun when 1 hold it up to
it. Evening is the time when Ave weary, hunted men long to be at
rest ; it is for the evening of the day, for the evening of the year
(autumn), and for the evening of life, that we lay up our hard-
earned harvests, and with such eager hopes ! But hast thou never
seen in fields, when, the crops were gathered, an image and
emblem of thyself — I mean the autumn dais}*, the flower of
harvest; she delays her blossom till the summer is past and gone,
the winter snows cover her before her fruit appears, and it is not till
the — coming spring that that fruit is ripe ! But see how the roaring,
dashing surges of the fair-day morning come beating upon our
hero's bedposts! He comes into the white, shining room, which
Lenette had stolen out of bed like a thief before midnight to wash
while he was in his first sleep, and had sanded all over like an Arabia
: in which manner she had her own way while he had his. On a fair-
day morning I recommend everybody to open the window and lean
out, as Siebenkaes did, to watch the rapid erection and hiring of the
wooden booths in the market-place, and the falling of the first drops
of the coming deluge of people, only let the reader observe that it
wasn't by my advice that my hero, in the very arrogance of his
wealth (for there were samples of every kind of pastry which the
house contained on a table behind him), called down to many of the
little green aristocratic caterpillars whom he saw moving along in the
street with even greater arrogance than his own, and whose natural
history he felt inclined to learn by a look at their laces.
 CHAP. III.] FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES. 83 " I
say, sir, will you just be good enough to look at that house, that one
there — do you notice anything particular ?" If the caterpillar lifted
up its physiognomy, he could peruse and study it at his ease, —
which was of course his object. " You don't notice anything particular
?" he would ask. "When the insect shook its head, he concurred with
it, and did the same up at the window, saying : " No, of course not !
I've been looking at it for the last twelve months myself, and can't
see anything particular about it ; but I didn't choose to believe my
own eyes." Giddypated Firmian ! Your seething foam of pleasure
may soon drop down and disappear — as it did that Saturday when
the cards were left. As yet, however, his little drop of must which he
has squeezed out of the forenoon hours was foaming and sparkling
briskly. The landlord moved at a gallop, casting (with his powder-
sowing machine) seed into a fruitful soil. The bookbinder conveyed
his goods (consisting partly of empty manuscript books, partly of still
emptier song books, partly of " novelties," in almanacs) to the fair by
land-carriage in a wheelbarrow, which he had to make two journeys
with in going, but only one in returning in the evening, because then
he had got rid of his almanacs to purchasers and to sellers
(almanacs are the greatest of all novelties, or pieces of news — for
there is nothing in all the long course of time so new as the new
year). Old Sabel had set up her East India house, her fruit garner,
and her cabinet of tin rings at the town gate ; she wouldn't have let
that warehouse of hers go to her own brother at a lower figure than
halfa-sovereign. The cobbler put a stitch in no shoe on this St.
Michael's Day except his wife's. Suck away, my hero, at your nice bit
of raffinade sugar of life, and empty your forenoon sweetstuff spoon,
not troubling your head about the devil and his grandmother,
although the pair of them should be thinking (after the nature of
them) about getting a bitter potion, even a poison cup, made ready
and handing it to you. But his greatest enjoyment is still to come, to
wit, the numberless beggar people. I will describe this enjoyment,
and so distribute it. G 2
 84 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH EICHTEE. [BOOK I. A fair is the
high mass which the beggars of all ranks and classes attend ; when
it is still a day or two off, all the footsoles that have nothing to walk
upon but compassionate hearts, are converging towards the spot like
so many radii, but on the morning of the fair-day itself the whole
annual congress of beggardom and the column of cripples are fairly
on the march. Anyone who has seen Furth, or been in Elwangen
during P. Gassner's government, may cut these few leaves out of his
copy ; but no one else has any idea of it till I proceed and lead him
in at the town-gate of Kuhschnappel. The street choral service and
the vocal serenades now commence. The blind sing like blinded
singing-birds — better, but louder ; the lame walk ; the poor preach
the gospel themselves; the deaf and dumb make a terrible noise,
and ring in the feast with little bells — everybody sings his own tune
in the middle of everybody else's — a paternoster is clattering at the
door of every house, and in the rooms inside nobody can hear
himself swear. Whole cabinets of small coppers are lavished on one
hand, pocketed on the other. The one-legged soldiery spice their
ejaculatory pra}Ters with curses, and blaspheme horribly, because
people don't give them enough — in brief, the borough which had
made up its mind for a day's enjoyment, is invaded and almost taken
by storm by the rabble of beggars. And now the maimed and the
diseased begin to appear. Whoever has a wooden jury-leg under
him, sets it and his long third leg and fellow-labourer the crutch, in
motion towards Kuhschnappel, and drives and plants his
sharppointed timber toe into moist earth there in the vicinity ot the
town-gate, in hopes of its thriving and bearing fruit. Whosoever has
no arms or hands left, stretches both out for an alms. Those to
whom Heaven has entrusted the beggars' talent, disease, above all
paralysis, the beggars' vapeurs — trades with his talent, and the
body appertaining to it, levying contributions with it on the whole
and the sound. People who might stand as frontispieces to works on
surgery and medicine, quite as appropriately as at city gates, take
up their position near the latter and announce what they lack, which
is, first and foremost, other people's cash. There are plenty of legs,
noses, and arms in Kuh 
 CHAP. III.] FLOWEK, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES. 85
schuappel, but a great many more people. There is one most
extraordinary fellow — (to be admired at a distance, though
impossible to be equalled — looked upon with envy, though indeed
only by such blotting-paper souls as can never see supreme
excellence without longing to possess it) ; there's only half of him
there, because tlie other half's in his grave already, everything you
could call legs having been shot clean away ; and these shots have
placed him in a position at once to arrogate and assume to himself
the primacy and generalship-in-chief of the cripples, and be drawn
about on a triumphal car as a kind of demigod, whose soul, in place
of a corporeal garment, has on merely a sort of cape and short
doublet. " A soldier," said Siebenkaes, " who is still afflicted with one
leg, and who on that ground expostulates with fate, inquiring of her,
' Why am I not shot to pieces like that cripple, so that I might make
as much in the day as he does ? ' seems to forget that on the other
side of the question there are thousands of other warriors besides
himself who haven't even one wooden leg ("let alone more), but are
totally unprovided with even that nre- and begging-certificate ;
moreover, that however many of his limbs he might have been
relieved of by bullets, he might still keep on asking, ' Why not more
? ' " Siebenkaes was merry over the poor because they are merry
over themselves ; and he never would kick up a politico-economical
row about their occasionally tippling and guzzling a little too much,
— when, for instance, a whole lazarette-wagon, or ambulance-load
of them, halting at some shepherd's hut, they get down, and go in,
and their plasters, their martyrs' crowns, their spiked girdles and
hair-shirts come off, leaving nothing but a brisk human being who
has left off sighing just for a minute ; or — since what everybody
works for is, not merely to live, but to live a little better now and
then — when the beggar too has something a little better than his
everyday fare, and when the cripple pulls the goddess of joy into his
boarded dancingbarn to dance with him as his partner, and her hot
mask falls off in the waltz (as for our ball-rooms, it never falls off in
them). About 11 o'clock, the devil, as I have half hinted already,
dropped a handful of blue-bottle flies into Firmian's wecU
 86 JEAN PAUL FRIEDBICH EIOHTER. [BOOK L ding soup —
to wit, Herr Kosa von Meyern, who graciously intimated his
aristocratic intention of coming to call that afternoon, "because there
was such a good view of the market-place." People of impecunious
gentility, who can't issue orders in any houses but their own,
construct in their own, with much ease, loopholes whence the}' can
fire upon the enemy who makes his attack from — within. The
advocate had a piece of rudeness towards the Venner to put into
either scale of his balance of justice, so as to determine which was
the least of the two. The one was, to let him be told he might stay
where he was ; the other, to let him in, and then behave just as
though the noodle were up in the moon. Siebenkass chose the latter
as the smaller. Women, good souls, have always to carry and hold
up Ihe Jacob's ladder by which the male sex mount into the blue
aether and into the evening-red ; this call of the Venner oame as an
extra freight loaded on to Lenette's two burden-poles of arras. The
laving of all moveable property, and the aspersion of all immoveable,
recommenced. Meyern, the false lover of the poor child-murderess,
Lenette detested with all her heart ; at the same time, all her
polishing machinery was at once set agoing on the room. Indeed, I
think women dress themselves more and with greater pains for their
lady-enemies than for their ladyfriends. The advocate went up and
down, all behung with long chains of ratiocination, like a ghost, and
would fain have succeeded in imbuing her with the idea that she
shouldn't give herself the slightest bother of any kind about the
nincompoop. " It was no good," she said, " what would he think of
me ?" It was not until having eliminated from the room as a piece of
crudity his old ink-bottle, into which he had only that minute put ink-
powder to dissolve and make ink for the ' Selection from the Devil's
Papers,' she was about to lay hands on that holy ark, his writing-
table — that the head of the house ramped up — on his hind legs,
pointing with his fore paw to the line of demarcation. Kosa appeared
! Nobody who had just a little soft place in 3»is heart could really
have cursed this youngster, or beaten Him into a jelly; one rather got
to feel a kind of a liking for him, between his pranks. He had white
hair on his
 CHAP. III.] FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES. 87 head
and on his chin, and was soft all over; and had stuff like milk instead
of blood in his veins, like the insects, just as poisonous plants have
generally white milky juice. He was of a very forgiving nature,
especially towards women, and often shed more tears himself in an
evening at the theatre than he had caused many whom he had
ruined to let fall. His heart was really not made of stone, or lapis
infernalis, and if he prayed for a certain time, he grew pious during
the process and sought out the most timehonoured of religious
formularies to give in his adhesion to them then and there. Thunder
was to him a watchman's rattle, arousing him from the sleep of sin.
He loved to take the needy by the hand, especially if the hand was
pretty. All things considered, he may perhaps get to heaven sooner
or later; for, like many debtors in the upper circles of society, he
doesn't pay his play-debts, and he also has in his heart an inborn
duel-prohibition against shooting and hacking. As yet he is not a
man of his word ; and if he were poorer, he would steal without a
moment's hesitation. Like a lap-dog, he lies down wagging his tail at
the feet of people of any importance, but tugs women by the skirts,
or shows his teeth and snarls at them. Pliant, water- weeds of this
sort fall away from the very slightest satiric touch, and you can't
manage to hit them with one, richly as they deserve it, because its
effect is only proportionate to the resistance it meets with.
Siebenkaes would have been better pleased had Von Meyern only
been a little rougher and coarser, for it is just these yielding, pitiful,
sapless, powerless sort of creatures that filch away good fortune,
hard cash, feminine honour, good appointments and fair names, and
are exactly like the ratsbane or arsenic, which, when it is good and
pure, must be quite white, shining and transparent. Rosa appeared,
I have said, but oh! lovely to behold beyond expression ! His
handkerchief was a great Molucca, of perfume ; his two side lucks
were two small ones. On his waistcoat he had a complete animal
kingdom painted (as the fashion of the day was), or Zimmermann's
Zoological Atlas. His little breeches and his little coat, and everything
about him salted the women of the house intoLottish Bait-pillars,
merely in passing them by on his way upstuiis,
The text on this page is estimated to be only 26.78%
accurate

88 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICII RICHTEB. [BOOK I. I must, say,

though, that what dazzle me personally, are the rings which emboss
six of his fingers, — there were profile portraits, landscapes, stones,
even beetle-wing covers all employed in this gold-shoeing of his
fingers. Wo may quite properly apply to the human hand the
expression " it was shod with rings like a horse's hoof,'' it has been
long applied to the horse's hoof itself, and Daubenton has proved, by
dissections, that the latter contains all the different parts of the
human hand. The use of these hand or finger manacles is quite
proper and permissible ; indeed rings are indispensable to the
fingers of those who ought by rights to have them in their noses.
According to the received opinion, these metal spavins, or
excrescences of the fingers, were only invented to make pretty
hands ugly, as a kind of chain and nose-rings to keep vanity in check
; so that fists which are ugly by nature can easily dispense with
these disfigurements. I should like to know whether there is
anything in another idea of mine bearing on this subject. It is this.
Pascal used to wear a great iron ring with sharp spines on it round
his naked body, that he might always be ready to punish himself for
any vain thought which might occur to him by giving this ring a
slight pressure ; now is it not perhaps the case that these smaller
and prettier rings in a similar way chastise any vain thoughts which
may occur, by slightly, but frequently hurting? They seem at least to
be worn with some such object, *br it is exactly the people who
suffer most from vanity who wear the greatest quantities of them,
and move about their beringed hands the most. Unwished-for visits
often pass off better than others; on this occasion everyone got on
pretty comfortably. Siebenkaes of course was in his own house —
and behaved himself accordingly. He and the Venner looked out of
the window at the people in tho market-place. Lenette, in
accordance with her upbringing, and the manners and customs of
the middle classes of small towns, didn't venture to be otherwise
than silent, or at the most to take an exceedingly subordinate,
obligato, accompanying part in the concert of a conversation
between men ; she fetched and carried in and out, and, in fact, sat
most of the time down
 CHAP. III.] FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES. 89 stairs
with the other women. It was in vain that the courteous, gallant
Eosa Everard, tried upon her his wonted wizaid spells to root women
to a given spot. To her husband he complained that there was little
real refinement in Kuhschnappel, and not one single amateur theatre
where one could act, as there was in Ulm. He had to order his new
books and latest fashions from abroad. Siebenkaes in return
expressed to him merely his enjoyment over the — beggars in the
market-place. He made him notice the little boys blowing red
wooden trumpets, loud enough to burst the drum of the ear, if not
to overthrow the walls of Jericho. But he added, with proper
thoughtful ness, that he shouldn't omit to notice those other poor
devils who were collecting the waste bits of split wood in their caps
for fuel. He asked him if, like other members of the chamber, he
disapproved of lotteries and lotto, and whether he thought it was
very bad for the Kuhschnappel common people's morals that they
should be crowding about an old cask turned upside down, with an
index fixed to the bottom of it which revolved round a dial formed of
gingerbread and nuts, and where the shareholders, for a small
stake, carried off from the banker of the establishment, a greedy old
harridan of a woman, a nut or a ginger cake. Siebenkass took
pleasure in the little, because in his eyes it was a satirical,
caricaturing diminishing mirror of everything in the shape of
burgherly pomposity. The Venner saw no entertainment whatever in
double-meaning allusions of the kind ; but indeed the advocate
never dreamt of amusing anybody but himself with them. " I may
surely speak out whatever I like to myself," he once said ; " what is
it to me if people choose to listen behind my back, or before my face
either ? " At length he went down among the people in the market-
place, not without the full concurrence of the Venner, who expected
at last to be able to have some rational conversation with the wife.
Now that Firmian was gone, Everard begun to feel in his element,
swimming in his own native pike-pond as it were. As an introductory
move he constructed for Lenette a model of her
 90 JEAN PAUL FR1EDRICH RICHTER. [BOOK I. native town
; he knew a good many streets and people in Augspurg, and had
often ridden through the Fuggery, and it seemed only yesterday, he
said, that he saw her there working at a lady's hat, beside a nice old
lady, her mother he should think. He took her right hand in his (in an
incidental manner), she allowing him to do so out of gratefulness for
calling up such pleasant memories ; he pressed it — then suddenly
let it go to see if she mightn't just have returned the pressure the
least bit in the world, in the confusion of fingers as it were — or
should try to recover the lost pressure. But he might as well have
pressed Gotz von Berlichingen's iron hand with his thievish thumb as
her warm one. He next came upon the subject of her millinery work,
and talked about cap and bonnet fashions like a man who knew
what he was talking about ; whereas when Siebenkses mixed
himself up with these questions, he displayed no real knowledge of
the subject at all. He promised her two consignments, of patterns
from Ulm, and of customers from Kuhschnappel. *' I know several
ladies who must do what I abk them," he said, and showed her the
list of his engagements for the coming winter balls in his pocket-
book; "I shan't dance with them if they don't give you an order." " 1
hope it won't come to that," said Lenette (with many meanings).
Finally, he was obliged to ask her to let him see her at work for a
little, his object here being to weaken the enemy by effecting a
diversion of her forces — her eyes being occupied with her needle,
she could only have her ears at liberty to observe him with. She
blushed as she took two bodkins and stuck one of them into the
round red little pincushion of — her mouth ; this was more than he
could really allow, it was so very dangerous — it formed a hedge
against himself — and she might swallow either the stiletto in
question, or at all events some of the poisonous verdigris off it. So
he drew this lethal weapon with his own hand out of its sheath in
her lips, scratching the cherry mouth a little, or not at all— as he
loudly lamented — in the process, however. A venner of the right
sort considers himself liable in a case of this kind for the fees and
expenses consequent upon the accident ; Everard, in his liberality,
took out his English patont pomade,
 CIIAP. III. J FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES. 91
smeared some on to her left forefinger, and applied the salve to the
invisible wound with the finger as a spatula — in doing which he was
obliged to take hold of her whole hand as the handle of the spatula,
and frequently squeeze it unconsciously. He stuck the unfortunate
stiletto itself into his shirt front, giving her his own breastpin instead,
and exposing his own tender white breast to — the cold. I
particularly beg persons who have had experience in this description
of service to give their opinion with firm impartiality on my hero's
conduct, and, sitting in court martial on him, to point out such of his
movements and dispositions as they may consider to have been
illadvised. Kow that she was wounded, poor thing, he wouldn't let
her go on working, but only show him her finished productions. He
ordered a copy of one of them for Madame von Blaise. He begged
her to put it on and let him see it on her — and he set it himself just
as Madame von Blaise would wear it. By heaven ! it was better even
than he had thought; he swore it would suit Madame von Blaise
quite as well, as she was just the same height as Lenette. This was
all stuff and nonsense, really the one was taller by quite half a nose
than the other. Lenette said so herself, she had seen Madame von
Blaise at church. Bosa 6tuck to his own opinion, and swore by his
soul and salvation (for in cases of the kind he was given to profane
language), and by the sacrament, that he had measured himself
with her a hundred times, and that she was halfan-inch taller than
himself. " By heaven ! " he said, suddenly jumping up, " of course I
carry her measure about with me, like her tailor ; all that need be
done is that you and I measure ourselves together." 1 shall not here
withhold from little girls a golden rule of war made by myself, " Don't
argue long with a man, whatever it may be about — warmth is
always warmth, even if it only be warmth of argument — one
forgets one's self, and ultimately takes to proving by syllogistic
figures, and this is just what the enemy wants — he converts these
figures into poetical figures — ultimately ev«n into plastic figures."
Lenette, a li/tle giddy with the rapid whirl of events^
 92 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. [BOOK L good
naturedly stood up to serve as recruit measure for her recruit Rosa ;
he leant his back to hers. " This won't do," he said, " I can't see,"
and unlocked his fingers which had been intertwined together,
backwards, over the region of her heart. He turned quickly round,
stood before her, and embraced her gently, so as to determine, by
comparing the levels of their eyes, whether their brows were an
exact height or not. His were glaring quite an inch higher up than
hers ; he clasped her closely and said, turning red, " you see you
were right ; but my mistake was that I added your beauty to your
height," and in this proximity he pressed his mouth, red as sealing-
wax, upon her lips, very founts and sources of truth as they were.
She was ashamed, annoyed and embarrassed, angry, and ready to
cry, but had not the courage to let her indignation break out upon a
gentleman of quality. She didn't speak another word then. He set
her and himself at the window, and said he would read her some
songs, of rather a different kind, he hoped, to those which were
being hawked down in the street. For he was one of the greatest
poets in Kuhschnappel, although as yet it was not so much that his
verses had made him known, as that he had made his verses
known. His poems, like so many others nowadays, were like the
muses themselves, children of memory. Every old Frankish town has
at least its one fashionable fop, a person who fait lea honneurs ; and
every town, however old, prosaic, imperial-judicatureendowed,
possesses its genius, its poet, and sentimentalist ; often both these
offices are filled by the same individual — as was the case in
Kuhschnappel. The greater and likewise the lesser house of
assembly looked upon Rosa as a mighty genius, smitten with the
genius-epidemic-fever. This disease is something like elephantiasis,
of which Troil in his travels in Iceland gives such an accurate
description in twenty-four letters, and the principal features of which
are that the patient is exactly like an elephant as to hair, cracks,
colour, and lumps of the skin, but has not the power of the elephant,
and lives in a cold climate. Everard took a touching elegy out of one
of his pockets, the left one, in which (i mean in the elegy) a noble
gentleman, lovesick, sang himself to death ; and he told
 V CHAP. III. J FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES. 93 her
he should like to read it to her, if his feelings would let him get
through it without breaking down. However, the poem shortly drew
more than one tear and emotion from its owner, and he, to his
honour, was constrained to furni.sh a fresh proof of the fact that
however manly and cold he and poets of his stamp can be to the
heaviest sorrows of humanity, they really cannot quite contain
themselves at the woes of love, hut are compelled to weep at them.
Meanwhile Eosa, who, like swindlers at play, alwaj-s kept one eye
upon a reflecting surface of some sort — water, window panes, or
polished steel for instance, so as to catch a passing glimpse of the
female countenance from time to time — saw by means of a little
mirror in one of the rings of his left hand, in which hand he was
holding the elegy, just a trace or two in Lenette's eyes of the tiagic
dew left there by his poem. So he pulled out of his second pocket a
ballad (it is, no doubt, printed long ago) in which an innocent child
murderess, with a tearful adieu to her lover, throws herself upon a
sword. This ballad (very unlike his other poetical children) had real
poetic merit, for luckily (for the poem at least) he was a lover of that
kind himself, so that he could speak from the heart to the heart. It is
not easy to portray the emotion and the melting pitying tears on
Lenette's face ; all her heart rose to her tear-dimmed eyes. It was
an experience utterly new to her to be thufe agitated by a
combination of truth and fiction. The Venner threw the ballad into
the fire, and himseif into Lenette's arms, and cried — " Oh ! you
sympathising, noble, holy creature !" I cannot paint the amazement
with which, completely unprepared for and incomprehensive of this
transition from crying to kissing, she shoved him away. This made
little impression on him ; he was on his high horse and said he must
have some souvenir of this "sacred entrancing moment" — only a
little lock of her hair. Her humble station, his high-flown language,
and the fact that she was perfectly unable to form the slightest idea
what use her hair would be to him, even supposing she gave enough
to stuff a pillow — all this put into her head the fuoli.-h idea that he
wanted it to perform some magical rite with4
 94 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICtf RICHTER. [BOOK ft such as
putting her tinder a love spell, or something of the sort. He might
have stabbed himself there and then before her, hewn himself in
pieces, impaled himself alive, she wouldn't have interfered ; she
might indeed have shed her blood to save him, but not a single hair
of her head. He had still one resource in petto — he had really never
met with such a case as this before ; he lifted up his hand and
vowed that he would get Heir von Blaise to recognise her husband
as his nephew, and pay over his inheritance — and that with the
greatest ense, because he would threaten to jilt his niece unless he
did it — if she would just take the scissors and cut off a little hair
memorial, no bigger even than the fourth part of a moustache. She
knew nothing about the business of the inheritance, and he was
consequently obliged, to the great detriment of his enthusiastic
state, to give a prosaic, detailed account of the species facti of the
whole of that law suit. By great good fortune he had still in his
pocket the number of the 4 Gazette ' in which the inheritance
chamber's inquiry as to the advocate's existence appeared in print,
and he was able to put it into her hands. And now this plundered
wife began to cry bitterly, not for the loss of the money, but because
her husband had told her nothing about it all this time, and still
more because she couldn't quite make out what her own name
really was, or whether she was married to a Siebenkaes or to a
Leibgeber. Her tears flowed faster and faster, and in her passion of
grief the would have let the deceiver before her have all the pretty
hair on her head, had not an accidental circumstance burst the
whole chain of events, just as he was kneeling and imploring her for
one little lock. But we must first look after her husband a little, and
see how he is getting on. and whither he bends his steps. At first
among the market stalls; for the many-throated roaring, and the Olla
Podrida of cheap pleasures, and the displayed pattern cards of all
the rags out of, and upon, which we human clothes moths construct
our covering cases and our abodes — all these caused his mind to
sink deep into a sea of humoristic-melancholy reflections concerning
this mosaic picture of a life of ours, made up as it
 CHAP. III.] FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES. 95 is of
so inany little bits, many-tinted moments, motes, atoms, drops, dust,
vapours. He laughed, and listened, with an emotion
incomprehensible by many of my readers, to a ballad singer,
bawling, with his rhapsodist's staff in his right hand pointed at a big,
staring picture of a horrible murder, and his left full of smaller,
printed pictures, for sale, in which the misdeed and the perpetrator
of it were displayed to the German public in no brighter colours than
those of poetry. Siebenkaes bought two copies, and put them in his
pocket, to read in the evening. This tragic murder picture evoked in
the background of his fancy that of the poor girl he had defended,
and the gallows, on to which fell those burning tears which had
flowed from his wounded heart — that heart which nobody on earth,
save one, understood — when last it had been lacerated. He left the
noisy market-place, and sought all-peaceful nature, and that
isolatorium, destined alike for friendship and for guilt, the gallows.
When we pass from the stormy uproar of a fair into the still expanse
of wide creation, entering into the dim aisles of nature's hushed
cathedral, the strange sudden calm is to the soul as the caressing
touch of some beloved hand. With a sad heart he climbed up to the
well-known spot, whose ugly name I shall omit, and from these
ruins he gazed around upon creation, as if he were the last of living
beings. Neither in the blue sky, nor upon the wide earth, was there
voice or sound; nothing but one forlorn cricket, chirping in
monosyllables, among the bare furrows, where the harvest had been
cleared away. The troops of birds flocking together with discordant
cries flew to the green nets spread upon the ground — and not to
meet the green spring far away. Above the meadows, where all the
flowers were withered and dead, above the fields, where the corn
„ars waved no more, floated dim phantom forms, all pale and wan,
faint pictures of the past. Over the grand eternal woods and hills a
biting mist was draped in clinging folds, as if all nature, trembling
into dust, must vanish in its wreaths. But one bright thought pierced
these dark fogs of nature and the soul, turning them to a white
gleaming mist, a dew all glittering with rainbow colours, and gently
lighting upon flowers. He
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accurate

96 JEAN PAUL FEIEDEICH EICHTER. [BOOK I turned Ms

face to the north-east, to the hills which lay between him and his
other heart, and up from behind them rose, like an early moon in
harvest, a pale image of his friend. The spring, when he should go
to him and see him once more, was at work already preparing for
him a fair broad pathway thither, all rich with grass and flowers. Ah !
how we play with the world about us, so quickly dressing it all with
the webs which our own spirits spin. The cloudless sky seemed
sinking closer to the dusky earth, bright with a softer blue. And
though a whole long winter lay between, the music of the coming
spring already came, faint and distant, to his ear; it was there in the
evening chime of the cattle bells down in the meadows, in the birds'
wild wood notes in the groves, and in the free streams flowing fast
away amid the flowery tapestries that were yet to be. A palpitating
chrysalis was hanging near him still in her haif-shrivelled caterpillar's
case, sleeping away the time till the flower cups all should open ;
phantasy, that eye of the soul, saw beyond and over the sheaves of
autumn the glories of a night in June ; every autumntinted tree
seemed blooming once again ; their bright coloured crests, like
magnified tulips, painted the autumn mist with rainbow dyes ; light
breezes of early May seemed chasing each other through the fresh,
fluttering leaves ; they breathed upon our friend, and buoyed him
up, and rose with him on high, and held him up above the harvest
and above the hills, till he could see beyond these hills and lands —
and lo ! the springs of all his life to conie, lying as yet enfolded in
the bud, lay spread before his sight like gardens side by side — and
there, in every spring time, stood his friend. He left the place, but
wandered a long while about the meadows, where at this time of
year there was no need to hunt carefully for footpaths — chiefly that
his eyes might not betray where his thoughts had been to all the
market people who were to be met. It was of little use — for in
certain moods the torn and wounded heart, like injured trees, bleeds