The Treasure Chest

by Johann Hebel

  and found work on a farm in the village, and if anyone asked he gave an answer that’s been given by others, he said he had had bad luck and lost his regiment. He was a willing hand, quick and efficient at his work and good-looking too. He was poor of course, but that only made the miller’s daughter a suitable match, for the miller had a few pennies. So they were married. The young couple lived together in loving harmony and set up their little home. But one day after a year had passed he came home from the fields and his wife met him with a worried look on her face. ‘Freddy, we had a visit that won’t please you.’ ‘Who was it?’ ‘The billeting officer from your regiment. They’ll be here in an hour!’ The old miller was desolated, his daughter was desolated and looked at the baby at her breast with tears in her eyes. For someone was bound to tell on him. But after the first shock Freddy said, ‘Leave it to me! I know the colonel.’ So he put on his blue tunic again that he had meant to keep as a souvenir, and told his father-in-law what to do. Then he shouldered his musket and went back to his post. And when the battalion had marched in the old miller appeared before the colonel. ‘Have a thought, general, for the poor fellow who was put on sentry duty a year ago out there at the corner of the wood. Are you supposed to leave a sentry at his post for a whole year without relieving him?’ The colonel looked at the captain, the captain looked at the sergeant, the sergeant at the corporal, and half the company, who knew the missing man well, ran out to see the year-old sentry and how he must be shrivelled up out there like a prune left too long in the sun. Eventually the corporal, the one who had placed him at his post twelve months before, came and relieved him: ‘Present arms! Shoulder arms! Quick march!’ according to military rules and tradition. He was taken before the colonel, and his pretty young wife went with him with her baby in her arms and they had to tell him everything. But the colonel was a kindly man and gave him a thaler and helped him get his discharge.

  Two Honest Tradesmen

  Two broom-makers were selling their wares next to each other in Hamburg. When one of them had sold nearly all his brooms, the other, who had sold none at all, said to his neighbour, ‘I just don’t understand it, mate, how can you sell your brooms so cheaply? I steal the twigs for mine too and yet can scarcely make ends meet.’ ‘I can believe that, mate,’ came the reply, ‘I steal mine ready made.’

  Cunning Meets its Match

  Two elegantly dressed individuals had bought 3,000 thalers’ worth of precious jewellery from a well-known goldsmith for the coronation in Hungary. They put down 1,000 thalers in cash, packed all the pieces they had chosen into a casket, sealed it and left it with him, as a pledge so to speak until they paid the full amount; at least that is how it seemed to the goldsmith. ‘We’ll be back with the money in a fortnight,’ they said, ‘and collect the casket.’ It was all put down in writing. But three weeks went by and they didn’t come back. The coronation day passed, and another four weeks. They weren’t likely to come for the casket now. In the end the goldsmith thought, ‘Why should I look after their property at my risk and let my capital lie idle?’ So he had the casket opened in the presence of an official and proposed depositing with the authorities the 1,000 thalers he had received.

  But when the casket was opened the lawyer said, ‘My dear goldsmith, I’m afraid you’ve been hoodwinked by those two rascals all right!’ For it contained pebbles instead of gems and glazing lead instead of gold. The two buyers were a couple of rascally conjurors, Bohemian Jews, the goldsmith hadn’t noticed, but they had replaced the real casket with another one that looked just like it. ‘There’s nothing we can do about it now,’ said the lawyer. ‘It’s bad luck, I’m afraid!’ At that moment another stranger, well-dressed and honourable in manner, came in the door wanting to sell the goldsmith a collection of bent silver tableware and odd buckles, and saw what was going on. ‘Goldsmith,’ he said when the lawyer was gone, ‘never have anything to do with pen-pushers! Stick to practical people. Help

  is at hand if you have the courage to cast a sprat to catch a mackerel! If your casket or the money they got for it still exists I’ll lure the rascals back into your house.’ ‘who may you be, if I might ask?’ said the goldsmith. ‘I’m Freddy Tinder,’ replied the stranger confidently, with the friendly smile of a likeable rogue. If you don’t know Freddy personally, as Your Family Friend does, you cannot imagine how honest and good-natured he can appear, and how he can capture the heart and trust of even the most cautious of men, just like their money! Besides, he’s really not so bad as people the length of Germany think. Maybe the goldsmith also thought of the saying that poachers make the best gamekeepers, or perhaps of another saying, in for a penny, in for a pound. However it was, he-decided to trust Freddy. ‘But don’t let me down, I beg you,’ he said. ‘Just rely on me,’ said Freddy. ‘And don’t be too surprised if you have learnt another lesson by tomorrow morning!’

  Are you thinking Freddy is already hot on the scent? No, not yet! But that same night someone came to the goldsmith’s house and took four dozen silver spoons, six dozen silver salt-cellars, six gold rings with precious stones, and that someone was Freddy! Some of you who don’t care too much about the goldsmith will be thinking, ‘Serves him right!’ There’s no harm in that. He didn’t mind, you see! For on the table he found a receipt in Freddy Tinder’s own hand, acknowledging that he had taken delivery of the said items, and a note telling him what to do. So, as Freddy instructed, the goldsmith reported the theft and requested an on-the-spot investigation. Then he asked the sheriff’s officer to put a complete list of the stolen articles in all the newpapers. And he asked that the sealed casket should, for a consideration, be described in every detail in that list. The officer saw his way clear and agreed to his request. ‘A man with a family to keep can do an honest goldsmith a favour,’ he thought. So all the papers reported that the goldsmith had had such and such stolen, among other things a casket answering to such and such a description, containing many precious gems, all listed. The news reached Augsburg. ‘Loeb,’ smirked one Bohemian Jew to the other, ‘that goldsmith will never find out what was in that casket! Have you heard it’s been stolen from him?’ ‘That’s a stroke of luck,’ said Loeb, ‘now he will have to give us our money back and he’ll be left with nothing!’ They had fallen into Freddy’s trap, and went back to the goldsmith’s.

  ‘We’ve come for our casket. You remember, we’ve kept you waiting a little while.’ ‘My dear sirs,’ said the goldsmith, ‘a disaster has happened, your casket has been stolen! Didn’t you see it in the papers?’ Loeb replied calmly, ‘We are sorry, but surely the misfortune is yours! Either give us the casket we left in your keeping, or return our deposit! The coronation is over anyway.’ They exchanged a word or two, and the goldsmith said, ‘The misfortune is yours, I tell you!’ For at that moment his wife came into the room with four sheriff’s men, sturdy fellows all as such men are, and they took hold of the rogues. The casket was never traced, but they did find a prison cell big enough for two, and enough in money and in kind to pay the goldsmith. In gratitude he tore up Freddy’s receipt. But Freddy returned everything and asked no payment for his help. ‘If I ever need anything of yours again,’ he said, ‘I know my way to your shop and the strong box! I just wish I could ruin all the rascals,’ he said, ‘so that I was the only one left!’ For he’s jealous of rivals, you see.

  A Willing Justice

  During the republic* a newly appointed magistrate was on the bench for the first time when the miller from the bottom mill appeared before him to put a complaint against the top miller over river maintenance costs. When he had stated his case the magistrate acknowledged, ‘The matter is very clear! You are in the right.’ One night and a few drinks passed, then the miller from the top mill appeared and defended himself and demanded justice even more volubly. When he had finished speaking the magistrate acknowledged, ‘The case couldn’t be clearer! You are completely in the right.’ The miller left the room, then the clerk came up to the bench. ‘Your Honour,’ said the cle
rk, ‘your predecessor never, all the time he sat on the bench, acted like this while administering justice. And we can’t go on like this. Both parties can’t win a case, or else they must both also lose, and that won’t work!’ Now the magistrate answered, ‘No case has ever been clearer! You are right too.’

  Pious Advice

  An eighteen-year-old lad, inexperienced, Catholic and pious, left his parents’ home for the first time to go on his travels. At the first large town he paused on the bridge to look around him to right and left, for he feared he wouldn’t see too many bridges like this one again with houses built above and below it. But when he looked to the right a priest was coming towards him from that side, carrying that hallowed article before which every humble and sincere Catholic falls to his knees. When he looked round to the left another priest was coming from the other end of the bridge, and he too was carrying that hallowed article before which every humble and sincere Catholic falls to his knees, and both were quite close to him and about to pass him at the same time, the one approaching from this side on his left, the other from that side on his right. Now the poor fellow didn’t know which way to turn, whether to kneel to this hallowed article or to that one, and to which one he should direct his prayer and his devotion, and there was no easy answer. But when in his distress he looked at one of the priests and his look asked what he should do, the priest smiled like a kind angel at this pious soul and raised his hand and pointed a finger towards the light in the heavens high above. He meant, you see, he was to kneel to Him above and worship Him. Your Family Friend can respect and applaud that advice even if he has never told a rosary – if he had he wouldn’t be writing the Lutheran calendar.

  The Weather Man

  Just as a sieve-maker or a basket-weaver who lives in a small place cannot earn enough in his village or town to keep himself all year, but has to look for work and practise his craft in the countryside around, so our compasses-maker too does business away from home, and his trade is not in compasses but in knavish tricks that pay for a few drinks at the inn. Thus one day he appeared in Oberehingen and went straight to the mayor. ‘Mr Mayor,’ he said, ‘could you do with different weather? I’ve seen how things are hereabouts. There’s been too much rain on the bottom fields and the crops on the hill are behindhand.’ The mayor thought that was easy to say but difficult to put right. ‘Just so,’ replied the compasses-maker, ‘but that’s my line of business! Didn’t you know I’m the weather man from Bologna?’ In Italy, he said, where the oranges and lemons grow, all the weather was made to order. ‘You Germans are a bit behind in these matters.’ The

  mayor was a good and trusting fellow and one of those who would like to get rich sooner rather than later. So he was attracted by the offer. But he also thought caution was called for! ‘As a test run,’ he said, ‘make it a clear sky tomorrow with just a few fluffy white clouds, sunshine all day with some streaks of vapour glistening in the air. Let the first yellow butterflies come out round midday, and it can be a nice cool evening!’ The compasses-maker replied, ‘I can’t commit myself just for one day, Mr Mayor! It wouldn’t cover my costs. I can only take on the job by the year. But then you’ll have problems finding room to store your crops and the new wine!’ When the mayor wanted to know how much he would charge for the year he was careful and didn’t ask for payment in advance, only a guilder a day and free drinks until the matter was properly in hand, that could take at least three days – ‘But after that a pint from each gallon of wine over what you press in your best years, and a peck from every bushel of fruit.’ ‘That’s risnible,’ said the mayor. He stood in awe of the compasses-maker and was using refined language, and people in his part of the country think it’s refined to say ‘risnible’ for reasonable. But when he took pen and paper from the cupboard and was drawing up a schedule for the weather month by month the compasses-maker came up with a further complication: ‘You can’t do that, Mr Mayor! You will have to consult the people. The weather is a community matter. You can’t expect everyone to accept your choice of weather.’ ‘You’re right!’ said the mayor. ‘You’re a sensible man.’

  You, good reader, will have taken the measure of our compasses-maker and will have foreseen that the people could not agree on the matter. At their first meeting no decision was reached, nor even at the seventh, at the eighth hard words were spoken, and in the end a level-headed lawyer concluded that the best thing to do, to preserve peace and avoid strife in the community, was to pay the weather man off and send him packing. So the mayor summoned the compasses-maker. ‘Here are your nine guilders, you mischief-maker, now make sure you leave before there’s blood shed in the village!’ The compasses-maker didn’t have to be told twice. He took the money, left owing for about twelve pints of wine at the inn, and the weather stayed as it was.

  Now then, as always the compasses-maker has much to teach us! In this case how good it is that up till now the supreme ruler of the world has always governed the weather according to his will alone. Even we calendar-makers, luminaries and the other estates of the realm are scarcely consulted and need lose no sleep on that score.

  The Tailor at Penza

  An honest calendar man, Your Family Friend for instance, has been given an important and enjoyable task by the Lord God, that is to show how eternal providence provides help before the need is too great, and to proclaim the praise of excellent men wherever they may be.

  This tailor in Penza, what a splendid little fellow he was! Twenty-six journeymen under him, year in, year out, enough work for half of Russia, and yet no money, but a happy, joyful disposition, a heart worth more than its weight in gold, and German blood and Rhenish hospitality in the middle of Asia!

  In 1812 when there weren’t enough roads in Russia for the prisoners of war taken by the Beresina or at Vilna,* one of those roads went through Penza, which is more than one hundred days’ journey from Lahr or Pforzheim and where the best German or English watch, if you have one, doesn’t show the right time but is always a few hours slow. Penza is the residence of the first Russian governor in Asia as you leave Europe. The prisoners of war were handed over there before being sent further into the depths of alien Asia where Christianity stops and no one knows the Lord’s Prayer unless he brings it with him as a foreign ware from Europe. So one day there arrived in Penza, along with French prisoners, sixteen officers from the Rhineland* who had served under Napoleon’s banners, they were weary from the battlefields and conflagrations of Europe, their limbs frozen and their wounds not properly healed, they were ill, without money, clothes or hope, and in that land they found nobody who understood their language or who pitied them in their plight. They looked at each other in despair. ‘What shall become of us?’

  they thought, or ‘When will death end our misery and who will bury the last of us to die?’ Then all of a sudden in the midst of the babble of Russians and Cossacks they heard, like the glad tidings sent from heaven, a voice saying, ‘Any Germans there?’ And there stood, though not on an equal footing, a very welcome friendly figure! It was the tailor at Penza, Franz Anton Egetmeier, born in Bretten in the Neckar district in the Grand Duchy of Baden. He learnt his trade in Mannheim in the year 1779, don’t you know? Then he moved to Nuremberg and then on a bit to St Petersburg. A tailor from the Palatinate isn’t afraid of seven to eight hundred hours on the road if the spirit moves him! In St Petersburg he took a job as regimental tailor in a Russian cavalry regiment, and he rode with them, wielding now his scissors and now his sword, into the strange Russian world where nothing is the same as here, and to Penza. Later he set up in civilian life in Penza and he is now a highly respected little fellow there. Anyone in Asia who wants a nice smart coat sends to the German tailor in Penza. The governor, a distinguished man who has the ear of the Tsar, grants him favours as to a friend; and if anyone up to thirty hours’ journey away is in trouble he turns to the tailor in Penza and finds just what he needs, comfort, advice, help, a heart full of love, shelter, a meal and a bed, everything except money
.

  The battlefields of 1812 brought a wonderful harvest of joy to a heart like his, rich only in love and kindness. Whenever a batch of unfortunate prisoners arrived he threw down his scissors and his tape and was the first on the square, and his first question was, ‘Any Germans there?’ From one day to the next he hoped to find fellow countrymen among the prisoners and looked forward to helping them, and he loved them in anticipation before he had seen them, just as a woman loves her child and

  can feed it before she has it. ‘If only they look like this or like that,’ he thought. ‘If only they are in great need so that I can be a great help to them!’ But when there were no Germans he made do with Frenchmen and did all he could to lighten their misery before they were moved on. Yet this time there were fellow countrymen there, quite a few of them, from Darmstadt and other familiar places too, and when he shouted, ‘Any Germans there?’ he had to ask a second time, for at first they were too amazed and disbelieving to answer, the sweet sound of German in Asia rang in their ears like the sound of a harp. And when they replied, ‘Quite a few of us Germans!’ he asked them all where they came from. He would have been happy with Mecklenburg or the Electorate of Saxony, but one said, ‘From Mannheim on the river Rhine!’ as if the tailor didn’t know where