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Page 41
"Here is this dwarf," I thought, "an ill-shaped, stunted caricature,
banished into a corner of Nideck, and living just like the cricket that
chirps beneath the hearthstone. Here is this little Knapwurst, who in the
midst of excitement, grand hunts, gallant trains of horsemen coming and
going, the barking of the hounds, the trampling of the horses, and the
shouts of the hunters, is living quietly all alone, buried in his books,
and thinking of nothing but the times long gone by, whilst joy or sorrow,
songs or tears, fill the world around him, while spring and summer,
autumn and winter, come and look in through his dim windows, by turns
brightening, warming, and benumbing the face of nature outside. Whilst
men in the outer world are subject to the gentle influences of love, or
the sterner impulses of ambition or avarice, hoping, coveting, longing,
and desiring, he neither hopes, nor desires, nor covets anything. As long
as he is smoking his pipe, with his eyes feasting on a musty parchment,
he lives in the enjoyment of dreams, and he goes into raptures over
things long, long ago gone by, or which have never existed at all; it is
all one to him. 'Hertzog says so and so, somebody else tells the tale a
different way,' and he is perfectly happy! His leathery face gets more
and more deeply wrinkled, his broken angular back bends into sharper
angles and corners, his pointed elbows dig beds for themselves in the oak
table, his skinny fingers bury themselves in his cheeks, his piggish grey
eyes get redder over manuscripts, Latin, Greek, or mediaeval. He falls
into raptures, he smacks his lips, he licks his chops like a cat over a
dainty dish, and then he throws himself upon that dirty litter, with his
knees up to his chin, and he thinks he has had a delightful day! Oh,
Providence of God, is a man's duty best done, are his responsibilities
best discharged, at the top or at the bottom of the scale of human life?"
But the snow was melting away from my legs, the balmy warmth of the stove
was shedding a pleasant influence over my feelings, and I felt myself
reviving in this mixed atmosphere of tobacco-smoke and burning pine-wood.
Knapwurst gravely laid his pipe on the table, and reverently spreading
his hand upon the folio, said in a voice that seemed to issue from the
bottom of his consciousness; or, if you like it better, from the bottom
of a twenty-gallon cask--
"Doctor Fritz, here is the law and the prophets!"
"How so? what do you mean?"
"Parchment--old parchment--that is what I love! These old yellow, rusty,
worm-eaten leaves are all that is left to us of the past, from the days
of Charlemagne until this day. The oldest families disappear, the old
parchments remain. Where would be the glory of the Hohenstauffens, the
Leiningens, the Nidecks, and of so many other families of renown? Where
would be the fame of their titles, their deeds of arms, their magnificent
armour, their expeditions to the Holy Land, their alliances, their claims
to remote antiquity, their conquests once complete, now long ago
annulled? Where would be all those grand claims to historic fame without
these parchments? Nowhere at all. Those high and mighty barons, those
great dukes and princes, would be as if they had never been--they and
everything that related to them far and near. Their strong castles,
their palaces, their fortresses fall and moulder away into masses of
ruin, vague remembrancers! Of all that greatness one monument alone
remains--the chronicles, the songs of bards and minnesingers. Parchment
alone remains!"
He sat silent for a moment, and then pursued his reflections.
"And in those distant times, while knights and squires rode out to war,
and fought and conquered or fought and fell over the possession of a nook
in a forest, or a title, or a smaller matter still, with what scorn and
contempt did they not look down upon the wretched little scribbler, the
man of mere letters and jargon, half-clothed in untanned hides, his only
weapon an inkhorn at his belt, his pennon the feather of a goosequill!
How they laughed at him, calling him an atom or a flea, good for nothing!
'He does nothing, he cannot even collect our taxes, or look after our
estates, whilst we bold riders, armed to the teeth, sword in hand and
lance on thigh, we fight, and we are the finest fellows in the land!' So
they said when they saw the poor devil dragging himself on foot after
their horses' heels, shivering in winter and sweating in summer, rusting
and decaying in old age. Well, what has happened? That flea, that vermin,
has kept them in the memory of men longer than their castles stood, long
after their arms and their armour had rusted in the ground. I love those
old parchments. I respect and revere them. Like ivy, they clothe the
ruins and keep the ancient walls from crumbling into dust and perishing
in oblivion!"
Having thus delivered himself, a solemn expression stole over his
features, and his own eloquence made the tears of moved affection to
steal down his furrowed cheeks.
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