by Johann Hebel
‘Do you remember,’ he said to the hussar, ‘how eighteen years ago in Champagne you robbed an innocent man of all his belongings and even took his bed from his house and showed no mercy when an eight-year-old boy pleaded with you to spare them? And my sister too?’ At first the wretch tried to excuse himself: in war unfortunate things happen, and if you don’t take something someone else will, so why not look after number one? But when he saw that the sergeant was the boy whose parents he had looted and maltreated, and when he reminded him of his sister, his bad conscience and his fear robbed him of speech and he fell trembling to his knees and could say only, ‘Forgive me!’ Yet he was thinking, this won’t do much good!
Perhaps you too, good reader, are thinking, now the Frenchman will give the hussar a good thrashing, and you’re looking forward to it? But that didn’t happen, nor could it! For if someone’s heart is broken with grief he is in no mood for vengeance, vengeance seems small and contemptible to him. Rather he thinks, ‘We are in God’s hands’, and has no desire to repay evil with evil. And that’s how the Frenchman felt, and he said, ‘You were cruel to me, I forgive you that. You were cruel to my parents and reduced them to poverty, they will forgive you that. You threw my sister into the well and she never got out again, may God forgive you that!’ Saying this he left without laying a hand on the hussar, and he felt happier again. But the hussar afterwards felt as if he had stood at the Last Judgement and been found wanting. From that moment on he knew no peace of mind, and we are told he died about three months later.
Remember: When in a foreign land you should do nothing you would not have known by those back home.
Remember: Certain crimes are never forgotten, however much water flows under the bridge.
One Word Leads to Another
A rich man in Swabia sent his son to Paris to learn French and a few manners. After a year or more his father’s farmhand came to see him. The son was greatly surprised and cried out joyfully, ‘Hans, whatever are you doing here? How are things at home, what’s the news?’
‘Nothing much, Mr William, though your fine raven copped it two weeks ago, the one the gamekeeper gave you.’
‘Oh, the poor bird,’ replied Mr William. ‘What happened to it?’
‘Well, you see, he ate too much carrion when our fine horses died one after the other. I said he would.’
‘What! My father’s four fine greys are dead?’ Mr William asked. ‘How did that happen?’
‘Well, you see, they were worked too hard hauling water when the house and the barns burned down, and it did no good.’
‘Oh no!’ exclaimed Mr William, horrified. ‘Our house burnt down? When was that?’
‘Well, you see, nobody thought of a fire when your father lay in his coffin. He was buried at night with torches. A small spark soon spreads.’
‘That’s terrible news!’ exclaimed Mr William in his distress. ‘My father dead? And how is my sister?’
‘Well, you see, your late father died of grief when the young Miss had a child and no father for it. It’s a boy.
‘There’s nothing much else to tell,’ he added.
Moses Mendelssohn
Moses Mendelssohn was of the Jewish faith and worked for a merchant who didn’t actually invent the wheel, yet was god-fearing and wise and therefore respected and liked by the most eminent and learned men.* And that is only right. For you mustn’t judge a man by the length of his hair. The said Moses Mendelssohn was content with his lot, as this story shows. For one day a friend came to him while he was sweating over some trickly accounts and said to him, ‘It’s a real shame, my good Moses, it’s a scandal that a clever fellow like you has to work for a man who’s not fit to hold a candle to him! After all, you have as much brain in your little finger as he has in his whole fat body!’ That would have rankled with anyone else, he would have thrown pen and inkpot into the fire with a few curses after them and given his notice on the spot. But the sensible Mendelssohn did not reach for the inkpot, he stuck his pen behind his ear, looked calmly at his friend and said this: Things are well as they are and the work of wise providence. For my master can profit from my services and I have a livelihood. If I were the master and he my clerk I would have no use for him.’
A Dear Head and a Cheap One
When the last King of Poland* was still on the throne there was a rebellion against him, one of several. One of the rebels, a Polish prince, was rash enough to set a price of twenty thousand guilders on the king’s head. Indeed he had the impudence to inform the king himself of this in writing, to dishearten or frighten him. But the king replied quite coolly, ‘I have received and read your letter. I am pleased that you still place a value on my head. For I can assure you I wouldn’t give a brass farthing for yours.’
Expensive Eggs
Some time ago a foreign prince was travelling through France when his stomach began to feel a little hollow, so he stopped at a common inn where such custom is normally never seen, and ordered three boiled eggs. When he had eaten the landlord demanded three hundred livres. The prince asked if eggs were in such short supply there. The landlord smiled and said, ‘No, not eggs, but grand gentlemen who can pay that much for them!’ The prince smiled too and paid up, and that was good. But when the King of France at that time heard of this (it was told him as a joke) he was not at all pleased that an innkeeper in his land should dare to overcharge so shamelessly, and he told the prince, ‘When you pass that inn on your way home you will see that justice reigns in my land!’ And when the prince passed the inn on his journey home the signboard had gone, the doors and windows were bricked up, and that was good too.
The Three Thieves
You, good reader, are warned not to think that everything that happens in this story is true. Yet it is told in a fine book, and in verses too!*
From an early age Harry and Freddy Tinder followed in the trade of their father, who had already got entangled with a ropemaker’s daughter called Noose at the gallows in Auerbach; and a schoolfriend, Carrot-Top Jack, joined them, and he was the youngest. But they didn’t murder or attack people, they just paid night calls on hen-houses, and if they had the chance on kitchens, cellars and storerooms too, maybe the occasional money box, and at markets no one bought cheaper than they did. But when there was nothing around to steal they practised all sorts of tasks and tricks together so as to progress in their craft. Once, when they were in the forest, Harry spotted a bird sitting on its nest high up in a tree, guessed it must have eggs, and asked the other two: ‘Who can take the eggs from that bird’s-nest up there without the bird noticing?’ Freddy climbed aloft like a cat, crept quietly up to the nest, poked a hole through the bottom, let the eggs drop through into his hand one after the other, made good the nest with moss, and came down with the eggs. ‘Now, who can.put the eggs back under the bird’, said Freddy, ‘without the bird noticing?’ So now Harry climbed up the tree, but Freddy climbed up after him, and as Harry was slowly pushing the eggs back under the bird without the bird noticing Freddy slowly pulled down Harry’s trousers without Harry noticing. They had a good laugh, and the other two said, ‘Freddy win!’ But Carrot-Top Jack said, ‘I see I can’t keep up with you two, and if we ever get detained at someone else’s pleasure and the devil catches up on us I shan’t be scared for you, but for myself I will!’ So he left them and became an honest man again, and went back to a quiet life of work at home with his wife.
In the autumn, not long after the other two had stolen a pony at the horse fair, they called on Jack to ask how he was doing; for they had heard that he had killed a pig and intended to keep an eye open for it. It was hanging on the wall in the larder. When they had left Jack said to his wife, ‘I’ll take the porker into the kitchen and hide it under the trough, otherwise it will be gone by the morning!’ That night the thieves came back and made a hole in the wall as quietly as they could, but their prize was no longer there. Jack heard something, got up and walked round outside the house to check. Harry sneaked round the other si
de of the house, in through the door and up to the bed where Jack’s wife lay, imitated her husband’s voice and said, ‘Wife, the pig has gone from the larder!’ She said, ‘Don’t be silly! You put it under the
trough in the kitchen!’ ‘Of course!’ said Harry, ‘I’m still half asleep,’ and went and took the pig and carried it off safely. But he couldn’t find his brother in the dark and reckoned that he would join him in the forest at the spot they’d arranged. And when Jack came back into the house and went to check on the pig he cried, ‘Wife, those scallywags have taken it after all!’ Yet he didn’t admit defeat so easily, he went after the thieves, and when he caught up with Harry (he was already some way from the house) and saw that he was on his own, he promptly imitated Freddy’s voice and said, ‘Brother, let me carry the porker now, you’ll be getting
tired.’ Harry thought it was his brother and gave him the pig and said he would go on ahead into the forest and make a fire. But Jack turned round behind his back and said to himself, ‘Now you’re mine again, you lovely little piggy!’ and carried the pig home. Meanwhile Freddy wandered around in the dark until he saw the fire in the forest and found his brother and said, ‘Where’s the pig then, Harry?’ Harry said, ‘Don’t you have it then, Freddy?’ Now they looked at each other wide-eyed and could have done without the fire of beech chips crackling away for the feast in the night.
By now an even finer fire was roaring away back home in Jack’s kitchen. For as soon as he got back to the house the pig was cut up and put to cook in a pot over the fire. You see, Jack said, ‘Wife, I’m hungry, and if we don’t eat it quickly those rogues will get it after all.’ Then he slumped down in a corner and dozed off, and while his wife was stirring the meat with an iron fork he groaned in his sleep and she looked over at him, and at that moment a sharp stick came slowly down the chimney and speared the best piece in the pot and lifted it up and away. And when he made ever more frightened whimpers in his sleep and his wife eyed him with ever greater concern the stick appeared a second and then a third time. And when Jack’s wife woke him, ‘We can serve up now!’ she said, the pot was empty, and now they too could have done without their fire crackling away for the feast in the night. But as they were about to go to bed hungry and were thinking, ‘If the devil means to have the pig there’s nothing we can do about it,’ the thieves came down from the roof and through the hole in the wall into the larder and from there into the room, and they brought back what they had spirited away.
Now they really made a party of it! They ate and drank, joked and laughed as if they knew it was for the last time, and enjoyed themselves until the moon in its last quarter was going down over the house and the cocks in the village were crowing for the second time and the butcher’s dog was barking in the distance. For the constables were on the trail, and just as Carrot-Top Jack’s wife was saying, ‘Now we really must get to bed!’, the constables came about the stolen pony and took Harry and Freddy Tinder off to jail to be put away behind lock and key.
The Emperor Napoleon and the Fruit Woman in Brienne
The great Emperor Napoleon spent his youth as a cadet in the military school at Brienne. Do you wonder what kind of a pupil he was? You can tell that from the way he led his armies into war and from his other actions. Like other youngsters he was fond of fruit, and a certain woman who sold fruit in Brienne earned a good few pennies from him. When he had no money she gave him credit. When he had the money he paid her. But when he left the school as a well-trained soldier to put what he had learnt into practice he owed her a few thalers. You see, as she brought him a plate of juicy peaches or sweet grapes for the last time he said, ‘Young lady, I have to leave now and I can’t pay you. But you won’t be forgotten.’ But the fruit woman said, ‘Just you go and don’t let it worry you, young sir. May God keep you in good health and bring you happiness!’
But in the career the young soldier was about to begin such a thing can be forgotten even by the best memory in the world, until in the end a grateful heart gives it a jog. Soon Napoleon was made a general and conquered Italy. Napoleon went to Egypt where the children of Israel once made bricks and he fought a battle near Nazareth* where the Blessed Virgin lived eighteen hundred years ago. Napoleon sailed straight back to France over a sea swarming with enemy ships, arrived in Paris and became First Consul. Napoleon restored peace and law and order to his troubled country and became French Emperor, and still the good fruitseller in Brienne had nothing except his word, ‘You won’t be forgotten!’ But that word was worth as much as cash in hand, and more. For one day when the Emperor was expected in Brienne, though nobody knew it he was already there, and he must have been moved as he thought of the past times and the present and how in so short a space of time God had led him safely through so many dangers and placed him on the new imperial throne – and all at once he stopped in his tracks and put his hand to his brow like someone remembering something, and after a few moments he spoke the fruit woman’s name and found out where she lived, in a house that was almost a ruin, and he went there with just one trusty companion. A narrow doorway led him into a small but tidy room where the woman with her two children was kneeling at the fire preparing a frugal supper.
‘Do you have any fresh fruit?’ asked the Emperor. ‘Indeed I do,’ replied the woman, ‘the melons are ripe,’ and she fetched one. She was putting a few more sticks on the fire and the two strangers were eating the melon when one of them asked, ‘Do you know the Emperor who is supposed to be here today?’ ‘He isn’t here yet,’ the woman replied. ‘He’s still on his way. Do I know him, indeed! He bought many a dish or basket of fruit from me when he was at school here.’ ‘And did he pay for everything?’ ‘Of course he did, he paid all right.’ Then the stranger said to her, ‘Woman, either you are not telling the truth or you must have a bad memory. For one thing, you don’t know the Emperor. For I’m the Emperor! Furthermore, I didn’t pay for everything as you say, rather I think I owe you something like two thalers!’ And at this point his companion counted out 1,200 francs on the table, principal and interest. Now that the woman recognized the Emperor and heard the gold coins ring on the table she fell at his feet and was beyond herself with astonishment and joy and gratitude, and her children looked at each other and didn’t know what to say. Afterwards the Emperor ordered the house to be torn down and a new one to be built for her on the same spot. ‘I shall stay in this house,’ he said, ‘whenever I come to Brienne and it shall be called after me.’ And he promised the woman that he would look after her children.
He has in fact already made honourable provision for her daughter, and her son is being educated at the Emperor’s expense at the same school from which the great hero himself started out.
The Bombardment of Copenhagen
In the whole dangerous time from 1789 on, when one country after another was drawn into revolution or bloody war, Denmark remained at peace, thanks partly to its position and partly to the wisdom of its government. It sided with no one and harmed nobody, desiring only the welfare of its subjects, and was therefore respected by all the powers. When, however, in 1807 the English saw that Russia and Prussia had deserted them and made peace with the enemy,* and that the French held all the harbours and strong points on the Baltic and matters would be worse if they moved into Denmark, they said nothing, but put a fleet to sea, and no one knew where it was heading. Then, when the fleet stood in the sound off the Danish coast and outside the Danish capital city and royal residence of Copenhagen, and all was peaceful and quiet, the English sent this message to Copenhagen: ‘Since we are such good friends kindly hand over your fleet until the end of the war so that it doesn’t fall into the hands of the enemy, and the fort with it. For we would be terribly
sorry to have to shoot the town down over your heads!’ It was just as if a townsman or a farmer who has a quarrel at law with a neighbour were to take his men with him and go in to another neighbour in bed at night and say, ‘Neighbour, since I am fighting a case against that fellow you mus
t give me your horse to keep until it is settled, so that he can’t use it to ride to the lawyers – if you don’t I’ll burn your house down! And you must let me stand with my men in your cornfield beside the road so that if he tries to go to court on his own horse we can stop him.’ That neighbour would say: ‘You leave my house out of it! What’s your quarrel to do with me?’ And that’s what the Danes said.
When the English said, ‘Will you oblige us or won’t you?’ and the Danes said, ‘No, we won’t!, they put landing parties ashore and moved in towards the town, erected batteries and set up cannons in them, and told the Danes they had until 2 September after the peace of Tilsit. But the people of Copenhagen and the whole Danish nation said it was high-handed and quite outrageous and the sea could never wash out the shame of giving in to threats and agreeing to unjust demands. Definitely not!
So began the terrible punishment that fate had decreed for that unfortunate city. Copenhagen was bombarded by seventy-two mortars and heavy cannon without a pause from seven o’clock in the evening throughout the night for twelve hours. A devil by the name of Congreve* was part of it, he had invented a new weapon of destruction, the so-called fire-rockets. They were, roughly speaking, tubes filled with inflammable material and with a short arrow fixed to their front end. When the rocket was fired it set light to the material inside, and when it hit something in which the arrow could take hold it stuck there, often in places that couldn’t be reached, and set fire to everything around that would burn. These fire-rockets too rained on Copenhagen all night long. At that time Copenhagen had 4,000 houses, 85,965 inhabitants, 22 churches, 4 royal palaces, 22 hospitals, and 30 poorhouses, it was a busy trading centre and had many factories. You can imagine how many fine roof-timbers were shot to pieces during that awful night, how many mothers’ hearts and minds were paralysed by fear, how many wounds bled, and how the prayers and cries of despair mingled with the alarm bells and the thunder of the cannon.