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‘“You must send for several porters,” observed the doctor; “they have a heavy burden to carry; this man always had more belly than brains.”
‘“I shall go and draw up the certificate of death. At what time shall we say it took place?” asked the clerk.
‘“Say about four o’clock this morning.”
‘“The skinflint!” said a peasant, “he was going to watch his workmen to have an excuse for stopping a few sous off their wages on Saturday.”
‘Then folding his arms and looking at the dead body: “Well, burgomaster,” said he, “what does it profit you that you squeezed the poor so hard? Death has cut you down all the same.”
‘“What has he got in his pocket?” asked one.
‘They took out of it my crust of bread.
‘“Here is his breakfast!”
‘They all began to laugh. Chattering as they were the groups prepared to quit the ruins; my poor spirit heard them a few moments, and then by degrees the noise ceased. I remained in solitude and silence. The flies came back by millions.
‘I cannot say how much time elapsed,’ continued Hippel, ‘for in my dreams the minutes seemed endless. However, at last some porters came; they cursed the burgomaster and carried his carcass away; the poor man’s spirit followed them plunged in grief. I went back the same way I came, but this time I saw my body carried before me on a litter. When we reached my house I found many people waiting for me, I recognised male and female cousins to the fourth generation! The bier was set down – they all had a look at me.
‘“It is he, sure enough,” said one.
‘“And dead enough too,” rejoined another.
‘My housekeeper made her appearance; she clasped her hands together and exclaimed: “Such a fat, healthy man! who could have foreseen such an end? It only shows how little we are.”
‘And this was my general oration.
‘I was carried upstairs and laid on a mattress. When one of my cousins took my keys out of my pocket I felt I should like to scream with rage. But, alas! spirits are voiceless; well, my dear Ludwig, I saw them open my bureau, count my money, make an estimate of my property, seal up my papers; I saw my housekeeper quietly taking possession of my best linen, and although death had freed me from all mundane wants, I could not help regretting the sous of which I was robbed.
‘I was undressed, and then a shirt was put on me; I was nailed up in a deal box, and I was, of course, present at my own funeral.
‘When they lowered me into the grave, despair seized upon my spirit; all was lost! Just then, Ludwig, you awoke me, but I still fancy I can hear the earth rattling on my coffin.’
Hippel ceased, and I could see his whole body shiver.
We remained a long time silent, without exchanging a word; a cock crowing warned us that night was nearly over, the stars were growing pale at the approach of day; other cocks’ shrill cry could be heard abroad, challenging from the different farms. A watchdog came out of his kennel to make his morning rounds, then a lark, half awake only, warbled a note or two.
‘Hippel,’ said I to my comrade, ‘it is time to be off if we wish to take advantage of the cool morning.’
‘Very true,’ said he, ‘but before we go I must have a mouthful of something.’
We went downstairs; the landlord was dressing himself; when he had put his blouse on he set before us the relics of our last night’s supper; he filled one of my flasks with white wine, the other with red, saddled our hacks, and wished us a good journey.
We had not ridden more than half a league when my friend Hippel, who was always thirsty, took a draught of the red wine.
‘P-r-r-r!’ cried he, as if he was going to faint, ‘my dream – my last night’s dream!’
He pushed his horse into a trot to escape this vision, which was visibly imprinted in striking characters on his face; I followed him slowly, as my poor Rosinante required some consideration.
The sun rose, a pale pink tinge invaded the gloomy blue of the sky, then the stars lost themselves as the light became brighter. As the first rays of the sun showed themselves, Hippel stopped his horse and waited for me.
‘I cannot tell you,’ said he, ‘what gloomy ideas have taken possession of me. This red wine must have some strange properties; it pleases my palate, but it certainly attacks my brain.’
‘Hippel,’ replied I, ‘it is not to be disputed that certain liquors contain the principles of fancy and even of phantasmagoria. I have seen men from gay become sad, and the reverse; men of sense become silly, and the silly become witty, and all arising from a glass or two of wine in the stomach. It is a profound mystery; what man, then, is senseless enough to deny the bottle’s magic power? Is it not the sceptre of a superior incomprehensible force before which we must be content to bow the head, for we all some time or other submit to its influence, divine or infernal, as the case may be?’
Hippel recognised the force of my arguments and remained silently lost in reverie. We were making our way along a narrow path which winds along the banks of the Queich. We could hear the birds chirping, and the partridge calling as it hid itself under the broad vine-leaves. The landscape was superb, the river murmured as it flowed past little ravines in the banks. Right and left, hillside after hillside came into view, all loaded with abundant fruit. Our route formed an angle with the declivity. All at once my friend Hippel stopped motionless, his mouth wide open, his hands extended in an attitude of stupefied astonishment, then as quick as lightning he turned to fly, when I seized his horse’s bridle.
‘Hippel, what’s the matter? Is Satan in ambuscade on the road, or has Balaam’s angel drawn his sword against you?’
‘Let me go!’ said he, struggling; ‘my dream – my dream!’
‘Be quiet and calm yourself, Hippel; no doubt there are some injurious qualities contained in red wine; swallow some of this; it is a generous juice of the grape which dissipates the gloomy imaginings of a man’s brain.’
He drank it eagerly, and this beneficent liquor re-established his faculties in equilibrium.
He poured the red wine out on the road; it had become as black as ink, and formed great bubbles as it soaked in the ground, and I seemed to hear confused voices groaning and sighing, but so faint that they seemed to escape from some distant country, and which the ear of flesh could hardly hear, but only the fibres of the heart could feel. It was as Abel’s last sigh when his brother felled him to the ground and the earth drank up his blood.
Hippel was too much excited to pay attention to this phenomenon, but I was profoundly struck by it. At the same time I noticed a black bird, about as large as my fist, rise from the bushes near, and fly away with a cry of fear.
‘I feel,’ said Hippel, ‘that the opposing principles are struggling within me, one white and the other black, the principles of good and evil; come on.’
We continued our journey.
‘Ludwig,’ my comrade soon began, ‘such extraordinary things happen in this world that our understandings ought to humiliate themselves in fear and trembling. You know I have never been here before. Well, yesterday I dreamt, and today I see with open eyes the dream of last night rise again before me; look at that landscape – it is the same I beheld when asleep. Here are the ruins of the old château where I was struck down in a fit of apoplexy; this is the path I went along, and there are my four acres of vines. There is not a tree, not a streamlet, not a bush which I cannot recognise as if I had seen them hundreds of times before. When we turn the angle of the road we shall see the village of Welcke at the end of the valley; the second house on the right is the burgomaster’s; it has five windows on the first floor and four below, and the door. On the left of my house – I mean the burgomaster’s – you see a barn and a stable. It is there my cattle are kept. Behind the house is the yard; under a large shed is a two-horse wine-press. So, my dear Ludwig, such as I am you see me resuscitated. The poor burgomaster is looking at you out of my eyes; he speaks to you by my voice, and did I not recollect that before being a burgomaster and a rich sordid proprietor I have been Hippel the bon vivant, I should hesitate to say who I am, for all I see recalls another existence, other habits and other ideas.’
Everything was in accordance with what Hippel had described. We saw the village at some distance down in a fertile valley between hillsides covered with vines, houses scattered along the banks of the river; the second on the right was the burgomaster’s.
And Hippel had a vague recollection of every one we met; some seemed so well known to him that he was on the point of addressing them by name; but the words died away on his lips, and he could not disengage his ideas. Besides, when he noticed the look of indifferent curiosity with which those we met regarded us, Hippel felt he was entirely unknown, and that his face, at all events, sufficed to mask the spirit of the defunct burgomaster.
We dismounted at an inn which my friend assured me was the best in the village; he had known it long by reputation.
A second surprise. The mistress of the inn was a fat gossip, a widow of many years’ standing, and whom the defunct burgomaster had once proposed to make his second wife.
Hippel felt inclined to clasp her in his arms; all his old sympathies awoke in him at once. However, he succeeded in moderating his transports; the real Hippel combated in him the burgomaster’s matrimonial inclinations. So he contented himself with asking her as civilly as possible for a good breakfast and the best wine she had.
While we were at table, a very natural curiosity prompted Hippel to inquire what had passed in the village since his death.
‘Madame,’ said he with a flattering smile, ‘you were doubtless well acquainted with the late burgomaster of Welcke?’
‘Do you mean the one that died in a fit of apoplexy about three years ago?’ said she.
‘The same,’ replied my comrade, looking inquisitively at her.
‘Ah, yes, indeed, I knew him!’ cried the hostess; ‘that old curmudgeon wanted to marry me. If I had known he would have died so soon I would have accepted him. He proposed we should mutually settle all our property on the survivor.’
My dear Hippel was rather disconcerted at this reply; the burgomaster’s amour propre in him was horribly ruffled. He nevertheless continued his questions.
‘So you were not the least bit in love with him, madame?’ he asked.
‘How was it possible to love a man as ugly, dirty, repulsive, and avaricious as he was?’
Hippel got up and walked to the looking-glass to survey himself. After contemplating his fat and rosy cheeks he smiled contentedly, and sat down before a chicken, which he proceeded to carve.
‘After all,’ he said, ‘the burgomaster may have been ugly and dirty; that proves nothing against me.’
‘Are you any relation of his?’ asked the hostess in surprise.
‘I! I never even saw him. I only made the remark some are ugly, some good-looking; and if one happens to have one’s nose in the middle of one’s face, like your burgomaster, it does not prove any likeness to him.’
‘Oh no,’ said the gossip, ‘you have no family resemblance to him whatever.’
‘Moreover,’ my comrade added, ‘I am not by any means a miser, which proves I cannot be your burgomaster. Let us have two more bottles of your best wine.’
The hostess disappeared, and I profited by this opportunity to warn Hippel not to enter upon topics which might betray his incognito.
‘What do you take me for, Ludwig?’ cried he in a rage. ‘You know I am no more the burgomaster than you are, and the proof of it is my papers are perfectly regular.’
He pulled out his passport. The landlady came in.
‘Madame,’ said he, ‘did your burgomaster in any way resemble this description?’
He read out: ‘Forehead, medium height; nose, large; lips, thick; eyes, grey; figure, full; hair, brown.’
‘Very nearly,’ said the dame, ‘except that the burgomaster was bald.’
Hippel ran his hand through his hair, and exclaimed: ‘The burgomaster was bald, and no one dare to say I am bald.’
The hostess thought he was mad, but as he rose and paid the bill she made no further remark.
When we reached the door Hippel turned to me and said abruptly: ‘Let us be off!’
‘One moment, my friend,’ I replied; ‘you must first take me to the cemetery where the burgomaster lies.’
‘No!’ he exclaimed – ‘no, never! do you want to see me in Satan’s clutches? I stand upon my own tombstone! It is against every law in nature. Ludwig, you cannot mean it?’
‘Be calm, Hippel!’ I replied. ‘At this moment you are under the influence of invisible powers; they have enveloped you in meshes so light and transparent that one cannot see them. You must make an effort to burst them; you must release the burgomaster’s spirit, and that can only be accomplished upon his tomb. Would you steal this poor spirit? It would be a flagrant robbery, and I know your scrupulous delicacy too well to suppose you capable of such infamy.’
These unanswerable arguments settled the matter.
‘Well, then, yes,’ said he, ‘I must summon up courage to trample on those remains, a heavy part of which I bear about me. God grant I may not be accused of such a theft! Follow me, Ludwig; I will lead you to the grave.’
He walked on with rapid steps, carrying his hat in his hand, his hair in disorder, waving his arms about, and taking long strides, like some unhappy wretch about to commit a last act of desperation, and exciting himself not to fail in his attempt.
We first passed along several lanes, then crossed the bridge of a mill, the wheel of which was gyrating in a sheet of foam; then we followed a path which crossed a field, and at last we arrived at a high wall behind the village, covered with moss and clematis; it was the cemetery.
In one corner was the ossuary, in the other a cottage surrounded by a small garden.
Hippel rushed into the room; there he found the gravedigger, all along the walls were crowns of immortelles. The gravedigger was carving a cross, and he was so occupied with his work that he got up quite alarmed when Hippel appeared. My comrade fixed his eyes upon him so sternly that he must have been frightened, for during some seconds he remained quite confounded.
‘My good man,’ I began, ‘will you show us the burgomaster’s grave?’
‘No need of that,’ cried Hippel; ‘I know it.’
Without waiting for us he opened the door which led into the cemetery, and set off running like a madman, springing over the graves and exclaiming: ‘There it is; there! Here we are!’
He must evidently have been possessed by an evil spirit, for in his course he threw down a cross crowned with roses – a cross on the grave of a little child!
The gravedigger and I followed him slowly.
The cemetery was large; weeds, thick and dark-green in colour, grew three feet above the soil. Cypresses dragged their long foliage along the ground; but what struck me most at first was a trellis set up against the wall, and covered with a magnificent vine so loaded with fruit that the bunches of grapes were growing one over the other.
As we went along I remarked to the gravedigger; ‘You have a vine there which ought to bring you in something.’
‘Oh, sir,’ he began in a whining tone, ‘that vine does not produce me much. No one will buy my grapes; what comes from the dead returns to the dead.’
I looked the man steadily in the face. He had a false air about him, and a diabolical grin contracted his lips and his cheeks. I did not believe what he said.
We now stood before the burgomaster’s grave. Opposite there was the stem of an enormous vine, looking very like a boa-constrictor. Its roots, no doubt, penetrated to the coffins, and disputed their prey with the worms. Moreover, its grapes were of a red violet colour, while the others were white, very slightly tinged with pink. Hippel leaned against the vine, and seemed calmer.
‘You do not eat these grapes yourself,’ said I to the gravedigger, ‘but you sell them.’
He grew pale, and shook his head in dissent.
‘You sell them at Welcke, and I can tell you the name of the inn where the wine from them is drunk – it is The Fleur de Lis.’
The gravedigger trembled in every limb.
Hippel seized the wretch by the throat, and had it not been for me he would have torn him to pieces.
‘Scoundrel!’ he exclaimed, ‘you have been the cause of my drinking the quintessence of the burgomaster, and I have lost my own personal identity.’
But all on a sudden a bright idea struck him. He turned towards the wall in the attitude of the celebrated Brabançon Männe-Kempis.
‘God be praised!’ said he, as he returned to me, ‘I have restored the burgomaster’s spirit to the earth. I feel enormously relieved.’
An hour later we were on our road again, and my friend Hippel had quite recovered his natural gaiety.
MY INHERITANCE (#ulink_b1ae0396-b61a-596b-a65c-867bc1e9f5ef)
At the death of my worthy uncle, Christian Haas, mayor of Lauterbach, I was already music conductor to the Grand Duke Yeri Peter, and I had fifteen hundred florins as salary. That did not prevent me from being in very low water. Uncle Christian, well aware of my position, never sent me a penny, so I cannot help shedding a few tears in learning his posthumous generosity. I inherited from him, alas!… two hundred and fifty acres of good plough-land, vineyards, orchards, a bit of forest, and his fine mansion of Lauterbach.
‘Dear uncle,’ I said to myself with much feeling, ‘now I see the extent of your wisdom, and glorify you for keeping your purse-strings tied up. If you had sent me any money, where would it be now? In the hands of the Philistines! Little Kate Fresserine alone could have given any news about it. But now, by your caution, you have saved the situation. All honour to you, dear Uncle Christian!… All honour to you!’
And having said all this and much more, not less touching or less sincere, I set off on horseback for Lauterbach, It was very odd! The demon of avarice, with whom I never had any dealings, almost made himself master of my soul.
‘Kasper,’ he whispered in my ear, ‘now you’re a rich man. Up to the present you have only pursued vain phantoms. Love and pleasure and the arts are only smoke. A man must be mad to think anything of glory. There is no solidity about anything except lands, houses, and money out on first mortgages. Give up your illusions! Push forward your fences, widen your fields, heap up your money, and you will be honoured and respected. You will become mayor like your uncle, and the people, when you approach, will take off their hats a mile away, saying, “Here comes Herr Kasper Haas … the rich man … the warmest gentleman in the country!”’
These ideas came and went in my head like figures from a magic lantern, and I found they had a reasonable, serious look, and I was much taken with them.
