by Johann Hebel
That is what happened to the executioner at Landau, and Your Family Friend is not sorry that he can’t say who that poor soul was who had to take such a bloody way to life everlasting. No, nobody found out who she was, what sin she had committed, and nobody knows where she is buried.
The Starling from Segringen
A starling may find it useful to have learnt something, but a man even more so.
The barber in a very reputable village – I shall call it Segringen, though it didn’t happen there, but hereabouts, and the one it happened to (the man, not the starling) is perhaps reading this right now – the barber at Segringen had a starling, and his apprentice, who’s well-known in the district, taught him to speak. The starling not only learnt all the words set in these language lessons but also of his own accord copied what he heard his master say, for example, ‘I’m the barber in Segringen.’ His owner had other expressions as well that he repeated on every occasion, for example, ‘So so, la la’, or ‘par compagnie’ (that means in company with others); or ‘God’s will be done!’ or ‘You fool!’ You see, that’s what he used to call the apprentice when he poured half the plaster on to the table instead of the cloth, or sharpened
the back of the razor instead of the edge, or broke a medicine glass. In time the starling learnt all these phrases. The barber also sold brandy, so there were many customers in his shop every day, and often there was much to laugh about when they were talking among themselves and the starling threw in a phrase and it fitted just as if he knew what it meant. And sometimes when the apprentice called to him, ‘What are you doing, Johnny?’ he answered, ‘You fool!’, and everyone in those parts could tell you about Johnny! Then one day when his clipped feathers had grown again and the window was open and the weather fine the starling thought: ‘I know enough by now to get by in the big world outside’, and he was out of the window in a flash. His first flight took him to the fields where he joined a flock of other birds,
and when they flew up he went with them, for he thought, ‘They know the lie of the land better than I do.’ But unfortunately they all flew together into a net. The starling said, ‘God’s will be done!’ When the birdcatcher came and saw what a big catch he had made he took the birds out carefully one by one, wrung their necks and threw them on the ground. But when all unsuspectingly he stretched his murdering hands towards one more catch, that catch cried, ‘I’m the barber in Segringen.’ Just as if he knew it would save his neck! The birdcatcher was scared at first, thinking something really weird was happening, but then when he had recovered from his shock he laughed so much he nearly died. And when he said, ‘Johnny, I didn’t expect to find you here, how did you get into my net?’ Johnny replied, ‘Par compagnie.’ So the birdcatcher took the starling back to its owner and was well rewarded for his find. The barber’s business prospered, for everybody wanted to see the remarkable Johnny, and now everyone from miles around who wants to be bled goes to the barber at Segringen.
Remember: Such things seldom happen to starlings. But many a young fellow who felt like spreading his wings and getting away from home has got into a mess ‘par compagnie’ and not got out of it.
You get as much as you give
A man came into an inn with an air of great importance, but few signs of civility. Those inside all doffed their hats or caps to him, except for one who didn’t notice him enter because he was busy counting the tricks he had won from his neighbour at a game of ‘mariage’. And he was just fingering the ace of hearts, saying, ‘Fifty-two and eleven makes sixty-three,’ still not noticing the newcomer, evidently a man of some importance, when this stranger asked him, ‘You sir, what do you take me for?’ The card-player said, ‘You’re a decent fellow, I suppose; but who may you be?’ The stranger said, ‘The devil take your cheek!’ Then the card-player stood up from the table and asked, ‘And what do you, sir, take me for?’ The stranger said, ‘A lout!’ At that the card-player said, ‘The devil take you too! I see that we have both misjudged our man!’ But now when the others saw that a well-cut coat can cover an ill-bred man they all put their hats on again, and there was nothing the stranger could do about it except be more civil in future.
Well Replied
You must be prepared to take as good as you give!
Once a man was riding past an inn, and he had a splendid paunch on him that almost covered his saddle on both sides. The innkeeper was standing on the steps and called after him: ‘Hey, my good fellow, why have you tied your pack in front of you instead of behind?’ The horseman shouted back, ‘So that I can keep an eye on it. There are scoundrels behind!’ The innkeeper had no answer to that.
The Mistaken Reckoning
Rich and important people sometimes have the good fortune to hear, from their servants at least, the truth that others would hardly tell them.
A man who thought highly of himself and his worth, and particularly of the fine outfit he had just put on to go to a wedding, was admiring himself and his fat red cheeks in the mirror when he turned away from the glass to his valet who was watching him approvingly from one side. ‘Well, Bob,’ he asked, ‘what do you think I’m worth as I stand here before you now?’ Bob pulled a face as if he had to reckon the value of half a kingdom; for a while he waved his right hand, fingers outstretched, this way and that. ‘It must be a good five hundred and fifty guilders,’ he said, ‘given that everything is dearer these days.’ Then his master said, ‘You stupid fellow, can’t you see that this outfit I’m wearing is worth five hundred guilders alone?’ At this the valet retreated a few paces towards the door and said, ‘Forgive me if I got it wrong, I reckoned it worth a bit more, otherwise I would not have reached so high a figure.’
The Last Word
A man and his wife lived together in a village on the Danube this side of Ulm, but they weren’t cut out for each other, their marriage wasn’t made in heaven. She spent money like water and had a wicked tongue; he was mean with everything that didn’t go straight down his throat and into his stomach. When he called her a spendthrift she cursed him for a skinflint, and it was up to him how often each day he was honoured with that title. For if he said ‘Spendthrift!’ a hundred times an hour, she said ‘You skinflint!’ a hundred and one times, and she always had the last word. Once when they were going to bed they started at it again, and it is said they carried on until five o’clock in the morning, and when in the end they were so tired that they couldn’t keep their eyes open and her tongue was longing to nod off, she scratched at her arm with short brisk strokes of her thumb and said yet again, ‘You skinflint!’ This made him lose all interest in work and in the home and he escaped as soon as he could and went – need you ask where? – to the inn. And what do you think he did there? First he had a drink or two, then he played cards, and finally he got drunk, for cash to begin with, then on credit. For when the woman doesn’t make ends meet and the man brings nothing in, their purse may just as well have a hole in it, for there’s nothing to fall out of it. But when he had drunk his fill in the Red Horse for the last time and couldn’t pay the bill and the landlord chalked up his debt, seven guilders fifty-one kreuzers, on the bar door, he went home, and as soon as he laid eyes on his wife he said to her,
‘Insults and disgrace, that’s all I get from you, you spendthrift!’ ‘And all I get from you is trouble and shame, you drunkard, you so and so, you skinflint!’ said she. Then black wrath seethed in his heart and those twin devils within him, anger and drink, said to him, ‘Throw the bitch into the Danube!’ He didn’t have to be told twice. ‘You wait, I’ll show you, you spendthrift!’ (‘You skinflint!’ she answered) ‘I’ll show you where you belong!’, and he carried her down into the Danube. And when her mouth was under but her ears still above water the brute yelled yet again, ‘You spendthrift!’ At this the woman raised her arms out of the water and with her right thumb she scratched at her left wrist, rubbing briskly as you do when striking a flint, and that was the last thing she did.
You, good reader, set store by
what is right and just and you’ll not be told that the cruel murderer is still alive! No, he went home and hanged himself by a beam that same night.
Well Spoken, Badly Behaved
A farmer on a nobleman’s estate met the village schoolmaster in the fields. ‘Schoolmaster, do you still stand by what you were telling the children yesterday: “Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also”?’ The schoolmaster said, ‘I can’t change a word of it! It’s written in the gospel!’ So the farmer boxed his ears, both of them, for he had a longstanding grudge against him. Meanwhile the nobleman was riding by a little way off with his gamekeeper. ‘Go and see what those two are up to over there, Joseph!’ And as Joseph came up, the schoolmaster, who was a sturdy fellow, boxed the farmer’s ears twice too, saying, ‘It is also written: “With the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again. Good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom”!’ And with that text he gave him another half dozen good blows to the side of his head. Joseph went back to his master and said, ‘There’s nothing to worry about, sir, they’re only discussing Holy Scripture among themselves!’
Remember: You must not try to argue about Holy Scripture if you don’t understand it, least of all the way they did. For that same night the nobleman had the farmer locked up for a week; and the schoolmaster, who should have had more sense and more respect for the Bible, was sent packing when school closed in the spring.
The Cunning Husband
Another man had taken to staying on at the pub until after midnight, so at ten o’clock one night his wife locked the door and went to bed and he was forced, like it or not, to spend the night under the beehive in the garden. The next day – what do you suppose he did? When he went off to the pub he lifted the front door off its hinges and took it with him, and at one o’clock in the morning when he came home he hung it back in place and locked it, and after that his wife never again shut him out and went to bed, but used love and sweetness to mend his ways.
The Patient Husband
A man came home tired one evening and was looking forward to a piece of bread and butter with chives on it or a bit of smoked shoulder. But his wife, who wore the trousers in their house and most especially in the kitchen, had the key to the larder in her pocket and was out visiting a friend. So he sent first the maid and then the lad to ask his wife to come home or send him the key. Each time she said, ‘I’m just coming, tell him to wait just a moment!’ But then, as his hunger grew and his patience dwindled within him, he and the lad carried the locked larder cupboard over to the friend’s house where his wife was and he said to her, ‘Wife, kindly unlock the cupboard so that I can have something for supper, I can’t hold out any longer!’ So his wife laughed and cut him off a hunk of bread and a piece of shoulder.
Harry and the Miller from Brassenheim
One day Harry was sitting in an inn, all downcast and thinking of how first Carrot-Top Jack and then his own brother had left him and how he was all on his own now. No, he thought, there’s scarcely anyone you can trust any more, and just when you think someone is really straight it turns out he’s a scoundrel! Meanwhile several other customers came in and sat down to drink the new wine. ‘Have you heard,’ said one, ‘that Harry Tinder is at large, and tomorrow they’ll be out beating the countryside for him, and the magistrate and the clerks are waiting for him to come their way?’ When he heard that our Harry felt queer inside, for he thought someone had recognized him and he was done for. But another said, ‘It’s another of those false rumours again! Doesn’t everybody know that Harry and his brother are in the jail at Wollenstein?’ Just then the miller from Brassenheim, with his chubby red cheeks and little smiling eyes, rode up on a well-fed grey. And when he came in, and had drunk
to the health of the group sitting over their new wine and found that they were talking about Harry Tinder, he said: ‘I’ve heard so many stories about this fellow Harry Tinder! I’d like to clap eyes on him myself one day.’ One of them said: ‘Watch out that he doesn’t come your way all too soon! They say he’s on the loose again.’ But the miller with his chubby cheeks said: ‘Bah! I’ll be out of the Fridstadt forest long before nightfall and then I’ll be on the main road, and if it comes to the push I’ll dig my spurs into my grey.’ When Harry heard that he asked the innkeeper’s wife, ‘What do I owe you?’ and off he went to the Fridstadt forest. On the way he met a soldier with a wounded leg on the cart for beggars. ‘Let me have your crutch for sixpence,’ he said to the soldier. ‘I’ve twisted my left ankle, and if I put any weight on it it makes me cry out in pain. The coach builder in the next village where you’ll be put down will make you a new one.’ And so the beggar gave him his crutch. Soon after that two drunken soldiers passed him, singing ‘The Cavalrymen’s Song’. When he came to the Fridstadt forest he hung the crutch high up on a branch, sat down by the road about six paces away, and tucked in his left leg under him as if he were lame. Now the miller came trotting up on his fine grey, and his expression seemed to say, ‘Aren’t I the rich miller, the handsome miller, the clever miller?’ But when the clever miller rode up to our Harry, Harry said in a voice full of misery: ‘Have pity on a poor fellow who can’t walk! Two drunken soldiers, you must have seen them, took all the alms I had, and they were angry it was so little and threw my crutch up into that tree there, and it stuck in the branches so that I was left stranded here. Would you be so kind and knock it down with your whip?’ The miller said, ‘Yes, I met them at the top of the wood. They were singing “My darling Lisa, she’s the sweetest girl in all the world”.’ The miller had to get off his horse and cross over a ditch by a plank to get to the tree and bring down the crutch. He was standing beneath the tree looking up into it when Harry swooped like an eagle on to the fine grey, dug his heels into its sides and rode away. ‘Have a nice walk,’ he called back to the miller, ‘and when you get home tell your wife Harry Tinder sends his greetings!’ But when a quarter of an hour after dusk he rode into Brassenheim and came to the mill, and all its wheels were clanking round so that nobody heard him, he jumped off, left the miller’s grey tied up at his front door, and went on on foot.
The Fake Gem
Outside the Butcher’s Gate at Strassburg there is a pleasant garden where anyone can go and spend his money on decent pleasure, and there sat a well-dressed man drinking his wine like everyone else, and he had a ring with a precious stone on his finger and held it so it sparkled. So a Jew came up and said, ‘Sir, you have a lovely gem in that ring on your finger, I wouldn’t mind that myself! Doesn’t it glitter like the Urim and Thummim in the breastplate of Aaron the priest?’ The well-dressed stranger answered very curtly, ‘The gem is a fake. If it weren’t, it would be on someone else’s finger, not mine!’ The Jew asked to take a closer look at it. He turned it this way and that in his hand and bent his head to look at it from every angle. ‘He says this stone is a fake?’ he thought, and offered the stranger two new doubloons for the ring. But the stranger said quite angrily, ‘Why do you think I’m lying? I told you, it’s a fake!’ The Jew asked permission to show it to an expert, and someone sitting close by said, ‘I’ll vouch for the Israelite, he’ll know what the jewel is worth!’ The stranger said, ‘I don’t need to consult anyone, the stone’s a fake’.
While this was happening Your Family Friend was sitting at another table in the same garden with good friends of his, happily spending money on decent pleasure, and one of the company was a goldsmith who knows all about gems. He fitted a soldier who lost his nose at the battle of Austerlitz with a silver one and painted it skin colour, and it was a good nose. The only thing he couldn’t do was breathe the breath of life into it. The Jew came over to this goldsmith. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘would you say this is a fake stone? Can King Solomon have worn anything more splendid in his crown?’ The goldsmith, who was also something of a stargazer, said, ‘It shines like Aldebaran in the sky all right. I’ll get you ninety doubloons for thi
s ring. If you come by it cheaper the profit is yours.’
The Jew went back to the stranger. ‘Fake or not, I’ll give you six doubloons!’ and he counted them out on the table, sparkling new from the mint. The stranger put the ring back on his finger and said, ‘I have no intention of parting with it. If it’s such a good fake that you think it’s real that doesn’t make it worth any less to me,’ and he put his hand in his pocket so that the eager Israelite could no longer see the stone. ‘Eight doubloons.’ ‘No.’ ‘Ten doubloons.’ ‘No.’ ‘Twelve – fourteen – fifteen doubloons.’ ‘Very well,’ said the stranger at last, ‘if you won’t leave me in peace and insist on being deceived at all costs! But I tell you, in front of all these gentlemen here, the stone is a fake, and I’ll not say it isn’t. For I don’t want any trouble. You can have the ring, it’s yours.’
Now the Jew took the ring joyfully over to the goldsmith. ‘I’ll come for the money tomorrow.’ ‘But the goldsmith, who had never been taken in by anyone, opened his eyes wide in amazement. ‘My friend, this isn’t the ring you showed me two minutes ago! This stone is worth twenty kreuzers at most. This is the sort they make in the glass works at Sankt Blasien!’ For actually the stranger had in his pocket a fake ring which looked as good as the one that had first sparkled on his finger, and while the Jew was bargaining with him and his hand was in his pocket, he pushed the genuine ring off his finger with his thumb and slipped his finger into the fake, and that was the one he had given the Jew. At once the dupe shot back to the stranger as if fired on a rocket: ‘Oh, woe, woe unto me! I have been tricked, the stone is a fake!’ But the stranger said coldly and calmly, ‘I sold it to you for a fake. These gentlemen here are witnesses. It’s yours now. Did I talk you into buying it or did you talk me into selling it?’ All those present had to admit, ‘Yes, he told you the stone was a fake when he said you could have it!’ So the Jew had to keep the ring and no further fuss was made of the matter.