Just at that time the colonel’s wife gave birth to a son. The christening feast was almost princely and young Herzbruder was asked to wait at table. He was happy to do the colonel this favour and that gave Oliver the chance of putting into effect the scheme he had long since had in mind. When it was all over the colonel missed his silver-gilt goblet, which he thought it was unlikely he had mislaid since it had still been there after all the guests had left. The page said that he thought the last time he saw it Oliver had it, but he would not swear to it. The provost-sergeant was consulted and ordered that if he could recover the goblet by magic he should do it in such a way that the thief would be revealed to the colonel alone. Some officers from his own regiment had been present and, he said, if one of them had perhaps let himself be tempted he would not want to shame him publicly.
Since we were all sure of our innocence, we laughed and joked as we came into the colonel’s great tent where the sorcerer was to perform his magic. We all looked at each other, wanting to know what was going to happen and where the lost goblet would reappear. Then the sorcerer muttered a few words and puppies started to jump out of people’s pockets, sleeves, boots, flies and any other openings in their dress, one, two, three or more at a time. They were all very handsome, with different colours and markings, and it was a hilarious sight to see them scurrying here and there round the tent. The tight calfskin breeches that the Czech arquebusiers had made for me were so full of puppies that I had to take them off and since my shirt had disintegrated long ago in the forest I stood there naked. Finally one leapt out of young Herzbruder’s flies. It was wearing a gold collar and it was the nimblest of them all. The tent was so full of puppies scrabbling round we couldn’t move without treading on them, but the one from Herzbruder’s breeches ate them all up. And when it had finished it grew smaller and smaller while its collar grew bigger and bigger until it turned into the colonel’s goblet.
Then not only the colonel but everyone present was forced to the conclusion that no one other than Herzbruder had stolen the goblet. The colonel said to him, ‘You ungrateful fellow! I would never have believed it of you. Is this the reward for all the kindness I have shown you? I was going to appoint you regimental secretary in the morning, now you deserve to be hanged this very evening. And I would do it, too, if it wasn’t for your honest old father. Get out of my camp right away and never let me see your face again.’
Herzbruder tried to defend himself but did not get a hearing since his guilt appeared self-evident. As he left, his father collapsed unconscious and it took all our efforts to bring him round and even the colonel tried to comfort him, saying that a God-fearing father should not have to answer for the sins of his son. That was how Oliver used the devil’s help to obtain the position he had long been striving for but had not been able to get by honest means.
Chapter 23
Ulrich Herzbruder sells himself for a hundred ducats
As soon as the captain heard the story he removed Ulrich Herzbruder from his post as company clerk and put him with the pikemen. From that time on he was so generally despised that any dog might piss on him and he often wished he were dead. His father was so stricken with grief over the affair that he fell seriously ill and prepared himself for death. Since he had previously prophesied that he would face danger to life and limb on the 26th of July and that day was close at hand, he obtained permission from the colonel for his son to visit him so that he could talk to him about his inheritance and give him his last will and testament.
I was also present at the meeting and both witnessed and shared their sorrow. I saw that the son did not need to justify himself to his father. He knew what kind of person his son was and how well brought up, and he was convinced of his innocence. As a man of profound understanding and insight, he had no difficulty deducing from the circumstances that it was Oliver who had conspired with the provost-sergeant to concoct the predicament his son was in. But what could he do against a sorcerer? If he attempted to avenge himself he could expect even worse. Moreover he was making himself ready for death and yet could not die happy knowing he would leave his son behind in such disgrace. His son, for his part, could not face living with the shame and wanted to die before his father. Their grief was so heart-rending I could not hold back my tears.
Eventually the two of them agreed to bear their cross patiently and put their trust in God. The son, however, ought to think of ways of quitting the regiment and seeking his fortune elsewhere, but the problem was that they had no money for him to buy himself out. It was only while they were bemoaning the way poverty kept them imprisoned in their plight, cut off from all hope of improvement, that I remembered the ducats I still had sewn up in my donkey’s ears. I asked them how much they needed. ‘If someone came along with a hundred thalers for us’, the son replied, ‘I am sure it would solve all our troubles.’
‘Then cheer up, brother’, I replied. ‘If that is what you need I will give you a hundred ducats.’
‘What is this, brother?’ he said, ‘Are you really a fool to make a joke out of our misery?’
‘No, no’, I said, ‘I will supply the money.’ I took off my jerkin, slipped one of the donkey’s ears off my arm and made him count out a hundred ducats himself and put them in his pocket. The rest I kept, saying, ‘This I will use to look after your father, if he needs it.’
They threw their arms around me and kissed me; they were so overjoyed they hardly knew what they were doing. They wanted to draw up a document making me joint heir to old Herzbruder along with his son, or a note to the effect that, if God should help them to recover their estate, they would gratefully pay me back the sum with interest. I refused both offers, trusting in their constant friendship. Then young Herzbruder wanted to swear an oath to have his revenge on Oliver or die, but his father forbade it, telling him that the man who killed Oliver would die at my hands. ‘But’, he said, ‘I am sure that neither of you will kill the other since I foresee that neither will be killed by weapons.’ After that he made us swear an oath to love each other till death and stand by each other in all adversity.
Young Herzbruder bought himself an honourable discharge from the captain with thirty ducats. With the rest, and a measure of good fortune, he made his way to Hamburg where he equipped himself with two horses and enlisted in the Swedish army as a volunteer trooper, leaving our father in my care.
Chapter 24
Two prophecies are fulfilled at the same time
There was no one among the colonel’s men better suited to care for old Herzbruder than I and so, since the patient himself was also more than happy with me, the colonel’s wife, who showed him much kindness, gave me the job of nursing him. Being well looked after and also relieved of his worry about his son, the old man’s health improved daily so that he was almost completely recovered before the 26th of July. However, he so dreaded that day that he decided to remain on the sick list until it was past. In the meantime he was visited by all kinds of officers from both armies who wanted to know what the future held for them. As he was a good mathematician and expert at casting horoscopes as well as being an excellent palmist and physiognomist his prophecies were seldom wrong. He even predicted the date of the Battle of Wittstock because he told so many who came to him they were threatened with a violent death on that day.
He had told the colonel’s wife, six weeks before she was due, that she would have her baby in the camp because Magdeburg would not fall to us before that time. He made it clear to the treacherous Oliver, who insisted on pestering him, that he would die a violent death, adding that whenever and wherever it happened, I would avenge it and kill his murderer, with the result that from then on Oliver treated me with respect. He told me the whole course of my future life in great detail, as if it were past and he had been with me all the time. I paid little attention however and later on I remembered things he had predicted after they had occurred. Above all, he warned me to beware of water because he was afraid it might bring about my end.
W
hen the 26th arrived he warned me and an orderly the colonel had sent at his request not to let anyone into his tent. He lay in bed and spent all the time in prayer. In the afternoon, however, a lieutenant from the cavalry camp rode over asking for the colonel’s equerry. He was directed to us and when we turned him away he refused to accept it and made all sorts of promises to the orderly to let him in to the equerry whom, he said, he urgently had to see before that evening. When that didn’t work he started swearing and blinding. A pox on it but he had ridden over so many times to see the equerry and had never found him in; now that the old man was here, was he going to have to leave again without having had a single word with him? He dismounted and started unfastening the tent-flap. I tried to stop him and bit his hand, for which I got a good box on the ears. When he saw the old man he said, ‘I do beg you to forgive me, sir, for taking the liberty of coming to have a word with you.’
‘Of course’, said old Herzbruder. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I was hoping, sir’, said the lieutenant, ‘you would be so kind as to see your way to drawing up my horoscope.’
‘I hope you will forgive me’, replied Herzbruder, ‘but I really cannot, because of my illness. That kind of work demands a lot of calculations and my head is not up to it just now. If you can come back tomorrow I hope I shall be able to oblige you then.’
‘Very well’, said the lieutenant, ‘but would you read my hand in the meantime?’
‘Sir’, replied Herzbruder, ‘that art is very uncertain and can be deceptive so I would ask you to excuse me for the moment. I will do everything you want tomorrow.’
But the lieutenant refused to be put off. He went right up to my father’s bed, stretched out his hand and said, ‘Just a few words about the way my life will end, sir. I assure you that if what you say contains bad news I will regard it as a warning from God to take better care of myself. For God’s sake, do not keep the truth from me.’
The honest old man’s reply was brief and to the point. ‘Then, sir, you had better take care not to be hanged this very hour.’
‘What, you old rascal’, cried the lieutenant, who was drunk as a fiddler’s bitch, ‘is that how you address a gentleman?’ drew his sword and stabbed my dear friend to death in his bed. The orderly and I immediately set up a cry of ‘Murder’ so that the whole camp ran to arms. The lieutenant did not wait but made a swift exit on his horse and would doubtless have escaped had not the Elector of Saxony arrived at that very moment with a large contingent of cavalry, some of whom he sent to catch him. When the Elector heard what had happened he said to Hatzfeld, our general, ‘It says little for discipline in an Imperial camp if a man is not safe from murderers on his sick-bed.’ It was a severe verdict, enough to cost the lieutenant his life, for the general had him strung up straight away by his precious neck.
Chapter 25
Simplicius is transformed into a girl and is courted by a variety of people
This true story shows that not every prophecy should be rejected out of hand, as some people do whose minds are so closed they cannot believe anything at all. It shows how well-nigh impossible it is for any man to live beyond his predestined end, even if he has been been forewarned of it a short or long time before. To those who ask whether it is a good idea for people to have their horoscope drawn up and their future foretold I will just say that old Herzbruder told me so many things that I often wished, and still do wish, he had said nothing at all. I have been unable to avoid any of the misfortunes he predicted and the sleep I lose over those which have still not happened is to no avail; whether I make preparation for them or not, they are going to come about, just as the others did. And as for the pieces of good fortune that are predicted, I think they are very often a disappointment, or at least people find they do not live up to the expectations the wretched prophecies raise. What good was it to me that Herzbruder swore by all that was holy that I had been born and bred of noble parents when the only ones I knew of were my Da and my Ma and they were common peasants in the Spessart? Similarly, what good was it to Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland, that it was prophesied he would be crowned king to the sound of viols? Do we not all know the violent end he met at Eger? However, I will let others rack their brains over this question and get back to my story.
Once I had lost my two Herzbruders there was nothing left for me in the camp outside Magdeburg, which, anyway, had been so battered during previous sieges that it was no more than a collection of canvas tents and straw huts surrounded by earthworks. I was so completely fed up with my role as fool you would have thought I had been eating jokes and quips by the ladleful. I decided I would get rid of my jester’s outfit, whatever the cost, and stop being an object of ridicule. However, as I will now relate, I went about it in a rather careless fashion, since no better opportunity came my way.
Oliver, the secretary, had been appointed my tutor after old Herzbruder’s death, and he often allowed me to ride out foraging with the servants. One day, when we were in a village where some of the cavalry baggage was stored and everyone kept going in and out of the houses, looking for anything they could take, I slipped away to see if I could find some old peasants’ clothes to put on in place of my fool’s costume. However, I couldn’t find what I was looking for and had to make do with a woman’s dress. As soon as I was alone I put it on and dropped my calfskin outfit down the lavatory, imagining my troubles were now over. Dressed like this I set off across the street to where some officers’ wives were standing, taking little mincing steps such as Achilles might have done when his mother sent him disguised as a girl to stay with Lycomedes. Hardly had I left the house, however, than some of the foragers saw me and soon had me legging it as fast as I could. ‘Hey, stop!’ they shouted, which only made me run all the quicker. I reached the officers’ wives before they caught me, fell down on my knees and begged them, in the name of women’s honour and virtue, to protect my virginity from being ravished by this lecherous crew. Not only was my request granted, the wife of a cavalry captain took me on as her maid and I stayed with her until our forces had taken Magdeburg, the ramparts at Werben, Havelberg and Perleberg.
This captain’s wife, although still young, was no innocent babe. She became so infatuated with my smooth cheeks and slim figure that, after making great efforts with veiled hints and insinuations, she finally told me only too clearly how I could be of service to her. In those days, however, I was much too strait-laced and pretended I had not understood and did nothing to suggest I was anything other than a pious young virgin. The captain and his servant were both suffering from the same disease, and the former ordered his wife to find me some better clothes so that, he said, she would not be shown up by my peasant smock. She did more than that and decked me out like a French doll, which only served to add fuel to the fires all three of them were consumed with. Eventually they were all so hot with desire that the master and his servant were both begging for what I could not give them, while I also refused it, most politely, to the lady.
Finally the captain decided to set up an opportunity to take by force what it was impossible for him to have from me. His wife realised this and since she was still hoping to overcome my resistance herself, she put obstacles in his path at every turn and frustrated all his ploys so he began to think he was going out of his mind. One night, when his master and mistress were asleep, the servant appeared beside the carriage where I had to sleep, poured out his passion for me with tears running down his cheeks and solemnly begged me to have pity on his distress. But I stayed as hard as stone and gave him to understand I intended to remain chaste until I was married, at which he immediately offered a thousand times to marry me. When I told him it was impossible for me to wed him, he became desperate, or at least pretended to, drew his dagger and placed the point on his breast, the hilt against the carriage, as if he were about to run himself through. Perhaps he really does intend to kill himself, I thought, so I put him off with a promise that I would give him a final decision the next morning.
All in all, I was much worse off in my woman’s clothes than I had ever been in my fool’s costume. It was at this point – far too late – that I remembered old Herzbruder’s prophecy and imagined I must be in the prison he had warned me of. I was imprisoned in my women’s dress and could not escape without danger to life and limb, for if the captain realised who I was and caught me catching fleas with his beautiful wife I would have been in for a terrible thrashing. What should I do? Finally I decided to tell the servant the truth when he came in the morning, thinking, ‘That will soon cool his ardour and if you slip him a few ducats he’ll surely get you some man’s clothes and that should solve all your problems.’ It would have been a well thought-out plan if luck had been with me, but it wasn’t.
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