Again, look at the industrious spider, whose web is nigh on a miracle. Can you find one single knot in its whole work? Which hunter or fisherman taught it how to spread out its net and, depending on the net it has used, to sit either in the farthest corner or right in the middle to lie in wait for its prey? You humans marvel at the raven which, as Plutarch reports, kept dropping stones into a pot half full of water until the water came high enough for it to drink out of it in comfort. What would you do if you lived among the animals and observed all the other things they did? Then you would really have to acknowledge that it is clear that all animals have something to teach you in the special natural powers they possess in all their feelings and responses, be it caution, strength, gentleness, wildness. Each knows the others, they are different from each other, they look for what is good for them, keep away from what is harmful and avoid danger, gather what they need to feed them and sometimes even deceive you humans. This was why many ancient philosophers paid serious attention to these matters and were not ashamed to discuss whether unreasoning animals did not also have understanding. That is all I have to say on this subject. Go and watch the bees making wax and honey and then tell me what you think.’
Chapter 13
Contains all sorts of things; if you want to know what they are you must read it yourself or get someone to read it to you
At this those gathered round my master’s table pronounced various judgments on me. The secretary maintained I should be judged a fool since I considered myself an animal with the power of reason and people who were not all there but still thought themselves as rational as the next man were the best, most entertaining fools of all. Others said that if someone could only cure me of the delusion I was a calf, or persuade me I was human again, they would consider me rational or sane enough. My master himself said, ‘I think he is a fool because he is not afraid to tell everyone the truth. On the other hand what he says is not what you would expect from a fool.’ All this they said in Latin, so that I shouldn’t understand it. Then my master asked me if I had done any studying while I was still human.
I replied that I had no idea what studying was. ‘But, master’, I went on, ‘tell me what these studs are with which you go studying. Is that perhaps what you call the bowls with which you go bowling?’
At this Ensign Madcap said, ‘Wha’s wrang wi’ the man? The de’il’s in him, that’s wha’s wrang. He’s possessed, it’s the de’il aye speakin’ thru him.’
Then my master asked me, seeing that I had turned into a calf, whether I still prayed like other men, as I had done before, and whether I believed I would go to heaven.
‘Of course’, I answered. ‘I still have my immortal human soul and, as you can well imagine, it will not want to end up in hell, largely because it has had such a hard time there once already. I have been transformed, just as Nebuchadnezzar was, and I too will presumably turn back into a man when the time comes.’
‘Amen to that’, said my master with a deep sigh, from which I deduced he regretted having had me turned into a fool. ‘But tell us’, he went on, ‘how you do your praying.’
At that I knelt down and raised my hands and eyes to heaven in true hermit fashion. Since my master’s remorse, which I had noticed, touched my heart and comforted me, I could not hold back my tears. Thus it was to all appearances with deepest reverence that, after saying the Lord’s Prayer, I prayed for the whole of Christendom, for my friends and enemies, and that God would grant that I might live in this world in such a way that I would be found worthy to praise Him in eternal bliss. This was a reverent prayer the hermit had composed and taught me. Some of the soft-hearted onlookers were almost crying because they felt such pity for me and even my master had tears in his eyes.
After the meal my master sent for the pastor. He told him everything I had said and indicated that he was concerned there were dark forces at work, perhaps the devil himself was involved seeing how I had at first appeared quite simple-minded and ignorant but now was saying astounding things.
The pastor, who was best acquainted with me, replied that they should have considered these things before they had had the presumption to turn me into a fool. Men, he reminded them, were made in the image of God and should not be played with just for sport, as if they were brute beasts, especially when they were so young. However, he could not believe that the evil spirit had been allowed to interfere since I had always commended myself to God through fervent prayer. If, however, contrary to all expectation that was the case, then they would have a serious charge to answer for before God, since there was hardly any worse sin than for one man to deprive another of his reason, thus making it impossible for him to praise and serve God, which was the principal purpose for which he had been created.
‘I have’, he went on, ‘already assured you that he is intelligent but does not know the ways of the world. The reason for this is his simple upbringing out in the wilds with his father, a coarse peasant, and your brother-in-law. If people had been more patient with him he would, with time, have made better progress. He was just a simple-minded, God-fearing child unacquainted with the wicked world. I have no doubt that he can be brought back to his right mind if he can just be cured of the delusion that he has turned into a calf. We can read of a man who firmly believed he had turned into an earthenware jug and asked his family to put him up on a shelf so he would not be knocked over; another imagined he was a cock and and in his madness crowed both day and night. There was yet another who thought he had already died and wandered around as a ghost, refusing both medicine and food and drink until a clever doctor paid two men to pretend they were ghosts, but ones who loved to drink. They joined the other and persuaded him that modern ghosts were in the habit of eating and drinking, through which he was cured.
I myself had a sick farmer in my parish who, when I visited him, complained that he had some three or four barrels of water in his body; if he could get rid of it he believed he might get well again. He asked me either to slit him open, so that it would run out, or to hang him up in the smokehouse so that it would dry up. I talked him into believing I could get rid of the water in another way. I took a spigot they use for wine or beer barrels, tied a length of intestine to it and the other end to the bunghole of a bathtub, which I had had filled with water. Then I pretended to stick the spigot into his belly, which he had wrapped up in rags so that it wouldn’t burst, and let the water run out of the bathtub. The poor fellow was so pleased that he threw off the rags and in a few days was his old self again. Another man who imagined he had swallowed all sorts of horse equipment, bridles and the like, was helped in a similar way. The doctor gave him a strong laxative and put some of those things underneath the stools he did during the night so that he thought he had excreted them. And there was another madman who believed his nose was so long it reached the floor. They stuck a sausage onto his nose and kept cutting off slices. When they got to his nose he felt the knife and shouted out that his nose was back in its old shape again. If they could be cured then I am sure our good Simplicius could be too.’
‘I can well believe that’, said my master, ‘but what concerns me is that he was so ignorant before and now he can talk – and so perfectly – of things which you would not expect to hear from many older, more experienced and better read people. He went through all those qualities of the animals, and described my own character so precisely, as if he had spent his whole life out in the wide world! It amazes me and I wonder whether I shouldn’t regard what he said as an oracle or a warning from God.’
‘My lord’, answered the pastor, ‘there is a natural explanation for all this. I know that he is well-read, because both he and the hermit read all my books, and there were quite a lot of them. And since the lad has a good memory, but at the moment has nothing to occupy his mind and has forgotten who he is, he can regurgitate things he has previously stored in his brain. I am confident that with time he can be restored to normality again.’
Thus the pastor left the governor
suspended between hope and fear. He spoke up for me in excellent fashion, securing good times for me and for himself access to the governor. Their final decision was to wait and see for a while, which the pastor proposed more for his own advantage than for mine, for by coming and going, pretending it was all for my sake, he gained the favour of the governor, who took him into his service and appointed him chaplain to the garrison, which was no small matter in those difficult times and I was glad of it for him.
Chapter 14
Tells how Simplicius led the life of a nobleman and how the arquebusiers robbed him of it by carrying him off
I can truthfully boast that from then on I enjoyed my master’s grace, favour and affection to the full. My happiness was complete, apart from the fact that I had one calfskin too many and several years too few, although I didn’t realise that at the time. The pastor did not want me brought back to my right mind just yet because he thought it would not be in his interest. My master, seeing that I liked music, sent me to study with an excellent lutenist. I picked up his skill pretty quickly, even surpassing my teacher in that I could sing better to the lute than he could. So I served my master well, amusing, entertaining and astonishing him.
All the officers were courteous to me, the richest citizens gave me presents and the servants and common soldiers treated me with respect because they could all see how well-disposed my master was towards me. One would give me this, another that, for they knew that jesters can often achieve more with their masters than honest behaviour. And that was the purpose behind the gifts. Some gave me presents to stop me from lampooning them, others to get me to lampoon someone else. In this way I came by quite a lot of money, most of which I handed over to the pastor as I still had no idea what to do with it. And since no one dared even to give me a dirty look, I had nothing to cause me vexation, worry or care. All I thought about was my music, or devising clever ways of pointing out this or that person’s faults. I lived off the fat of the land and my body grew visibly stronger day by day. Soon you could tell I was no longer mortifying my flesh in the forest with water, acorns, beech-mast, roots and herbs, but that my hearty meals were washed down with Rhine wines and strong Hanau beer. In those wretched times that was a great mercy, for the whole of Germany was ravaged by war, pestilence and famine and Hanau itself surrounded by enemy forces, yet I did not suffer in the least.
My master’s intention, after the siege was lifted, was to present me either to Cardinal Richelieu or Duke Bernard of Weimar. Not that he hoped for any great reward, but he claimed he could no longer bear to have the living image of his lost sister, whom I came to resemble more and more, parade before his eyes every day in such a ridiculous garb. The pastor advised against it. He felt the time had come for him to perform his ‘miracle’ and restore me to my right mind. He told the governor to get two calfskins and have two boys wrapped up in them; then he was to arrange for someone to pretend to be a doctor, prophet or magician and perform strange ceremonies as he removed the calfskins from me and the other boys, claiming to be able to turn animals into humans and vice versa. He was sure, he said, that in this way I could be changed back into my old self and easily persuaded I had been turned back into a human being along with the others.
When the governor had given his approval to this suggestion, the pastor told me what he had agreed with my master and easily persuaded me to go along with it. But jealous fortune refused to let me get rid of my fool’s outfit so easily or to continue to enjoy my life of luxury. While the tanner and tailor were preparing the costumes for this farce, I was playing with some other boys on the ice outside the ramparts. Someone, I don’t know who, brought along a party of arquebusiers, who surprised us and seized us all, slung us over the backs of some farm-horses they had just stolen and carried us off. At first they were in some doubt as to whether to take me along with the others or not. Finally one said, in Czech, ‘Let’s take the fool as well and bring him to the colonel.’ To which another replied, ‘Yes, by God! Put him on the horse. The colonel can understand German, he’ll have some fun with him.’ So I had to get on a horse too and learn how one single moment of bad luck can rob you of all well-being and take you so far away from all comfort and happiness that it haunts you for the rest of your days.
Chapter 15
Simplicius’s life as a dragoon; his experiences with the arquebusiers
Although the alarm was immediately raised in Hanau and a party of troopers rode out to harry the arquebusiers, they only managed to hold them up for a little while and could not win back their prisoners. The Czechs, being light dragoons and slippery customers into the bargain, escaped without difficulty and continued towards Büdingen, where they fed, handed over the sons of the rich Hanauers to the citizens to be ransomed and sold the horses and other goods they had stolen. Then they set off again straight away, before it was really dark, never mind waiting for daybreak. They rode quickly through Büdingen Forest in the direction of Fulda, carrying off whatever they could en route. Robbing and plundering did not seem to slow down their rapid progress at all, they were like the devil who, as people say, can run and shit at the same time and still not miss anything on the way. So we reached Hersfeld Abbey, where they were quartered, that same evening with a large quantity of booty. It was all divided up, but I was given to the colonel, Marcus von Corpus.
Everything about life with that gentleman seemed disagreeable to me, almost barbarous. The tasty morsels I had enjoyed in Hanau became coarse black bread and stringy beef or, at best, a hunk of stolen bacon. Wine and beer had turned into water and instead of a bed I had to make do with the straw in the stable next to the horses. Instead of playing the lute, which everyone had enjoyed, I was sometimes made to crawl under the table with other boys and howl like a dog, to be pricked with the officers’ spurs, which I did not find in the least amusing. Instead of taking walks, as I had done in Hanau, I was allowed to ride out with the foragers, groom horses and muck out the stables. This foraging is dreary toil and not without danger to life and limb. All it consists of is roaming the villages, threshing, grinding, baking, stealing, taking anything you find, tormenting and ruining the farmers, yes, even raping their maids, wives and daughters. And if the poor farmers refused to take this lying down, or even had the audacity to rap one or other of the foragers (and there were many like that in Hessen in those days) over the knuckles when they caught them at this, then the soldiers cut them down, if they could catch them, or at least sent their houses up in flames.
My master had no wife (soldiers of that type do not have women accompanying them), no page, no manservant and no cook, but there was a motley crew of grooms and boys who looked after both him and the horses at the same time. He was not too proud to saddle his horse himself or to feed it with his own hand. He always slept on straw or the bare ground, covering himself with his fur coat. The result was that lice were often seen wandering over his clothes, which did not embarrass him in the least; on the contrary, he would laugh when someone picked one off. He had his hair cut short and wore his whiskers untrimmed in the Swiss fashion, which came in useful when he disguised himself in peasant clothes, which he often did, to go out and reconnoitre the ground. Although, as you have heard, he did not give lavish feasts, he was respected, loved and feared by his men and those who knew him. We were never at rest, always going here or there; sometimes we attacked, sometimes we were attacked. We were never for a moment idle in our attempts to weaken the strength of the Hessians, nor did the Hessian general, Count Holzapfel, leave us in peace, but captured many of our dragoons and sent them to Kassel.
This restless life was not to my taste at all and I often vainly wished I was back in Hanau. My biggest problem was that I could not talk with the men properly, so that I kept on being pushed and shoved around by everyone, battered, bruised and beaten. The colonel’s favourite amusement with me was to make me sing to him in German and blow the horn like other stable lads, at which I was boxed round the ears so hard that the blood came pouring out. I must a
dmit that this did not happen very often but once was enough to last me for a long time. Eventually, since I was no use at foraging anyway, I started to take over the cooking and to clean my master’s weapons, which he was very particular about. And I did it so well that I gained my master’s favour; at least, he had a new fool’s outfit made for me out of calfskins with much larger donkey’s ears than I had before. And since my master was not very fastidious as far as his palate was concerned I didn’t need any great skill at cookery. But I soon tired of it, as we were often short of salt, fat and spices, so that day and night I spent the time thinking of a good way to escape, especially since it was spring again. To this end I offered to clear away the entrails of sheep and cows, which were lying all over the place in our quarters, to get rid of the awful smell. The colonel thought this a good idea and I set about it. At last, when it grew dark, I didn’t return, but slipped away into the nearest bit of forest.
Chapter 16
Simplicius makes a good haul and becomes a thieving woodlander
It looked, however, as if the longer I lived the worse my situation was going to get, so that I even started to think I must have been born to misfortune. Only a few hours after I had escaped from the Czech arquebusiers I was captured by some robbers who doubtless thought they had made a good catch. In the darkness they could not see my fool’s outfit and two of them took me away to some place in the woods. When we stopped, in the pitch darkness, one immediately demanded money from me. He put down his gauntlets and gun and started to search me, asking, ‘Who are you? Have you any money?’ But he got the shock of his life when he felt my hairy coat and the donkey’s ears on my cap, which he thought were horns, and saw the glitter of sparks that you often get when you stroke animal skins in the dark. He started and shrank back. I immediately noticed this and, not giving him time to think or recover his wits, rubbed my coat with both hands so that it glowed as if I were full of burning sulphur, replying in a fearsome voice, ‘I am the devil. I am going to wring your neck and your companion’s too.’ This terrified the pair of them so much that they hurtled off through brake and briar as if pursued by all the fires of hell. Even the pitch darkness didn’t slow them down. They kept running into rocks and stones, trunks and branches and falling over, but they picked themselves up just as quickly again. This continued until they were out of earshot. I meanwhile was laughing out loud, which echoed through the woods, doubtless a terrifying sound to hear in that dark, lonely wilderness.
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