Marriage blacksmith part two iss22

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by LUDWIG ACHIM VON ARNIM Translated by Sheila Dickson

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Erratum: The last two sentences of my introduction in Volume 21 were omitted in error. They read as follows: I am also grateful to Christof Wingertszahn for his help in preparing the introduction. Above all I would like to thank Barbara Burns for her generosity in reading different versions of the text, answering numerous individual questions, and always making the best suggestions.

The Story So Far: A German natural scientist, journeying in Scotland with the view of expanding his collection of beetles and en route for Inveraray, meets a group of Highlanders set to emigrate to Canada. He undertakes to intervene on their behalf with the Duke of Argyll in order to enable them to stay and support themselves economically. On arrival in Inveraray he is refused access to the castle as the Duke will receive no-one on account of his son’s German fiancée’s embarrassing behaviour. He stays at the Great Inn in Inveraray, and finds himself next door to a further compatriot, Rennwagen, who is developing a spring-loaded dragon to destroy Napoleon’s army. Rennwagen knows and is himself smitten by the German fiancée, Aura, the ex- fiancée of his friend Baron Starkader, who is currently offending the conventions of the Scottish noble family, and he asks the narrator to pass a letter to her. As Aura cannot recognise people from one meeting to the next she greets the narrator as her true love and begs his forgiveness. On being apprised of her mistake she laughs and runs away, having added the narrator to her list of admirers. The next day both Rennwagen and Aura disappear; the latter is feared drowned, however Rennwagen returns to assure the Duchess of Argyll that she is well, on the other side of the bay. Rennwagen confides to the narrator that he has transported her there in his self-made submarine and has reunited her with Baron Starkader. They enjoy their reconciliation and the Duke and Duchess are now at liberty to invite the narrator to dine with them.

4.THE FIREWORK DISPLAY The castle was furnished in a combination of old and new styles, but everything bore witness to the longestablished wealth of the family. Every owner had added something, since he had lived his life confident of bequeathing this estate to an endless line of descendants or other branches of the family tree. The duke and duchess were sitting silently at the tea table, to which a young foster daughter, a distant relative, was attending. The duchess informed me that she had seen me at the shore, that she was grateful to me for my efforts, that she was also interested in my study of natural history and wanted to show me a collection of rare seashells that could not be matched in the whole of Scotland. My assurances that I was no expert on shells were in vain. I was not permitted to say that shells were as indifferent to me as the different varieties of china dishes, if nothing was being served up in them; that 100 fresh oysters were preferable to me than all those gigantic shaving dishes which the sea throws out with its foam. Luckily, the duke freed me from the litany of names by starting to tell me about his travels in Germany. He conveyed the impression that he was completely at home there, that he spoke good German, that he had adopted completely the persona of a German, at which he pointed to a fat braid dangling at the back of his neck. Incidentally, I did not understand a word when he spoke German; it was now over 30 years since he had studied at Göttingen. He led me in conversation to a brightly lit side-room in which he had put up the portraits

of several German scholars. He assured me that he would have stayed in Germany if the duchess had been able to accustom herself to foreign countries, the strictness of English public conventions was abhorrent to him, only the conviction that they were absolutely necessary to the fundamental beliefs of many people had made him a slave to this petty legislating. ‘From all of this you can probably guess,’ he continued, ‘that I felt more of a liking than a distaste for the bride my son chose: high birth is not a fundamental requirement here anyway, as it normally is in Germany, and the father, as an excellent scholar, enjoys the respect of all well-educated men here too. In Germany he may be called wealthy, so that no external circumstance, only the divine guidance of mutual inclination seemed to have sealed the bond. I was looking forward to having my German daughter-in-law as a sympathetic confidante for my old age, for when difference of opinion hinders any communication with the duchess.

I was hoping for a sincere heart, for the confidence of a broad, cultured mind, for intellect without restricting opinions, with all of which a university can easily provide the inhabitants of its town. But how must German women have changed, were I to draw conclusions for all of them from this one girl. I have found no French girl to be as fickle and flighty as this one; her only rule was to appear strange and extraordinary; she did not joke from the inner pleasure of the joke, but rather in order to elevate herself above everyone else. One could, indeed, laugh at her notions, but they pleased no-one; it was only the hissing of air getting into a vacuum; afterwards, inside the vacuum is the same as outside: the same air.

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When, on the basis of the old familiarity which easily befalls me when I am with Germans, I found myself drawn to make an intimate communication, I found it paraded in great detail among my family the very next day. She had absolutely no delicacy of mind, something which I might call cultivated life skills, and for that reason she had no concept of a genuine secret either, even less of the annoyance she caused by repeating it; her only concern was for another person to find her unique in the way she repeated judgements, opinions and observations that every other woman would keep to themselves. To a certain extent she was the Pasquino in the house, to whom all satires were attached, who barely understood the meaning of most of them, but who circulated them all.1 She also could be said to have resembled in her charming liveliness a tree in blossom which is immediately covered with mayflies, all of the same colour, so that our eye can only distinguish from the closest proximity what is part of the tree and what has flown onto it from elsewhere. However she never bore fruit. By evening the blossoms had fallen and the winged strangers had vanished and 1,000 crickets sang from within her the old, empty dirges about how nothing could satisfy her. In seeming to begin a brief love affair with everyone, both men and women, she offended everyone, one after another, with her wearisome persistence in this joking. She frightened several people away from our home, so that I no longer dared to receive anyone. This is how you must understand me not being able to provide for your entertainment in my house either. The more thoughtlessly she endeavoured to leap over all barriers, the higher I had to raise them. When I excused her to the duchess and others by saying that this kind of thing was the custom in Germany, she laughed at me for knowing so little about German customs when I had lived in Germany for so long. She then assured me and the astonished others that she was unique, that she wanted to remain unique, that whoever wanted to understand her had to raise themselves to her level, she could not tune lower, condescend, without sinking into discord. With this cast of mind she preferred the company of an old chambermaid who told her ghost stories to our evening entertainment; indeed, even old MacBenack had to help out with his war stories when we bored her.

Such conversations made me angry with Aura. The old gentleman deserved every reciprocation of his friendship; she had sacrificed this to the most worthless kind of boredom. The thought occurred to me that she had perhaps not by chance but deliberately made a fool of me with those kisses.

When I returned to the room where tea was served I found the duchess in some agitation, which the duke also noticed but the cause of which she would not divulge. In the brightly lit dining room I noticed

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properly the gigantic proportions of her form for the first time. It had already often seemed to me in Scotland, when I compared the slender girls with the enormous older women, that the female sex grows there for longer, and indeed in all dimensions, than in other areas, in any case much longer than the male sex, in fact, almost until they have reached 60 years of age. In spite of her highly emotional state her jaws never stopped during the meal: the mental and physical states seemed linked to one another, she shunned the bottle no more than the venison.

Her memory was remarkable, for in spite of her aversion to foreign countries she had remembered all the family history from her husband’s stories, so that even I could learn something about my own area from her. The foster daughter was well trained by her to help whenever she could not remember something; in the interpretation of every quietly spoken word, of every gesture. She did everything, she knew everything: she was the whole household and had no idea of her merits. If I add to this that nothing that she said was trivial; that she was as well versed in literature as she was in matters of the kitchen; that, familiar with business affairs, she took on the burden of writing such letters for the duke and the duchess; that, alongside all these merits, while not stunning, she could even be called beautiful, then I could not comprehend the son’s blindness in losing sight of this excellent life companion with whom he had grown up and who had previously been promised to him. She was teased about the lame captain’s regard for her. Daily he swore that no-one knew how to prepare a good chicken pâté like she did, but she waved aside these jests with the utmost composure, without blushing, so that no spark seemed to have been ignited within her.

The evening had passed pleasantly. I was about to go home, pleased at the renewed observation that most people really are better and more intelligent than what people say about them, when the duke apologised for the fact that the duchess, without his or my knowledge, had had my things brought to the room at the castle intended for me. He said that I must have a rare gift to overcome her disapproval of all strangers, even to transform this into predilection.

I expressed my thanks as best I could, since I was shivering in secret fear for my beetles. I merely slipped in a general inquiry about my natural history collections, which the foster daughter immediately answered with a request to show me them in a room specially intended for this purpose. She took a lamp herself; I followed and found everything arranged with the greatest care but was not a little surprised when my beautiful guide said quietly to me that she had sought this opportunity to warn me that I should not under any circumstances engage in certain commissions that the duchess intended to give me; I should lock my room carefully and ignore

any knocking; sleep would be my excuse. She paid no attention to further questions since the duke had also come in and wanted to inspect my curiosities.

It was by now time to go to bed, and the old butler accompanied me to the bedroom which was truly resplendent in its regal furnishings. A servant offered me a nightcap in a large silver tumbler; another offered his services in undressing me. I quickly sent both of them away in order to abandon myself to the wildest surmises. There was no question of a love affair here – that had been clear from the duchess’s whole expression – she would rather have reminded me of Macbeth’s spouse, with her mysterious gravity, her secretive, intense, troubled air of meditation amidst her friendliness. Involuntarily I paused at an engraving.

It was Macbeth, returning from committing the murder. I thought I heard the words: ‘Sleep no more: Macbeth does murder sleep, the innocent sleep, sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, sore labour’s bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course!’2 – The words were printed underneath the picture. The night watchman outside the castle called out the hour and the watchman in the corridor answered with an ‘All’s well!’ Only then did I follow the foster daughter’s advice and locked the door. I lay down, tried to sleep, but now all kinds of melodies began to play in my brain, I discerned clearly the words: ‘Glamis murders sleep!’ I must have slept for a few hours like this, thinking I was awake, when I was awakened by a loud knocking at the door. I asked who was at the door and received the answer: ‘MacBenack, who is to take you to the duchess and who also brings a note from her.’ In some doubt as to whether I should follow the advice of the foster daughter I turned over briskly in the bed and noticed now for the first time that, based on a new invention, it was constructed like a cradle, and it gradually started swaying vigorously. When I tried to jump out this only increased the movement. I was afraid of falling out noisily, since I wanted above all to observe those gathered outside the room through the keyhole. When I turned to the right the bed propelled itself all the more strongly to the left, when I turned to the left the swaying motion went over to the right. I was already feeling seasickness coming on and finally growled, as the messenger did not let up in his knocking, that I had the wind against me in my bed and had to tack.

‘Sir,’ said the servant, ‘I know what you mean.You have pressed the button at the head of the bed by accident. Pull on the silken cord which hangs down from the wall; that will make the mechanical bed stop.

I followed these instructions and was suddenly propelled into the middle of the room; without injuring myself, however, since the bedclothes accompanied me on this flight. At the same time I was subjected to an ice-cold shower from three jets of water from a pipe at the side of the bed, soaking

me through. Now I was wide awake, I cursed all mechanical beds, Macbeth was forgotten, I threw a coat over myself, opened the door and asked MacBenack as he entered the room whether all strangers had to partake of this cold breakfast. He apologised profusely and said that I had pulled the wrong cord – that other one beside it was the right one – the first one was only supposed to be used in order to rouse completely someone who absolutely had to get up by throwing him out and pouring cold water over him. ‘Tell me, who the devil devised this damned invention?’ I cried. ‘Your countryman,’ he continued composedly, ‘Mr Rennwagen. Half of Scotland rushed here to admire the damned invention, but you are indeed the first person to try it out on yourself.’ ‘Unfortunately,’ I said. I felt the same way as I had once felt when a noble soul was playing a funeral march for me on the pianoforte and, instead of the highly restrained passage, let loose Turkish music which then started barking as furiously as a hound from hell. I had just been having an equally magnificent dream: I had been watching the whole procession of Scottish kings rise out of the witch’s cauldron when I was pushed off the throne in this way.

Meanwhile, MacBenack was holding out to me the duchess’s piece of paper on the spike of his halberd and at the same time providing light with his lantern.

She asked for my help in an extremely important, extremely dangerous family matter in which any kind of support from her loved ones was denied. The decisive hour was approaching, she wrote, she must ask that I come to her immediately, but as quietly and inconspicuously as possible. ‘Her hour is approaching,’ I said softly. ‘If she takes me for a midwife she is mistaken, but I will go, that is a Christian duty, and, if I refused, this chap would run his spike through my body. I will surely receive a magic ring as a reward, for only the devil can have been this old lady’s lover.’ As protection against the former I put a small travelling pistol into my jacket pocket while getting dressed, in case he showed any inclination to come for me if I did not complete my business satisfactorily.

I followed MacBenack as far as the door of the duchess’s rooms, where a chambermaid well known to me from conversations in the neighbouring room to mine in the inn fell into my line of vision in a very unpleasant way in that she slipped, dazzled by the lantern. She led me through several dark rooms to the duchess who was sitting on a tall, broad armchair – but, how extraordinary, not to give birth, rather, as it seemed, to transform herself: she seemed to have sat down there in order to metamorphose, and, indeed, she was metamorphosing completely into a man. Her feet were already booted and spurred, she was dressed in a loosely fitting blue uniform overcoat, her hair sported a military braid and, how extraordinary, a black beard was just beginning to sprout over her lips. Or had I overlooked this beard

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yesterday evening? Had she forgotten to have it removed at the usual time? The setting was just as if an army, through a process of metamorphosis, had transformed into women. The discarded weapons were lying around the room; women were carrying them to the duchess and carrying them away again.

The duchess thanked me for coming; she said she would explain everything to me; she would shortly be finished a small task. I saw that this task consisted in unscrewing the triggers of all the pistols presented to her or, if these were rusted on, knocking them off with a hammer in order to smash them.

‘Now there is no serviceable pistol left in the whole castle,’ she cried finally, with the kind of triumph that those under siege might rejoice in when they have rendered useless the besiegers’ artillery in the trenches and can now hope for more peaceful times.

‘Now there is no pistol left in the whole town except yours, sir. Give it to me. I will not destroy it, only lock it up. The device could be misused against your will.’ I was about to deny my little pocket pistol, but she turned to the chambermaid who had previously stumbled across my line of vision. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘the gentleman does indeed have a delicate little pistol.

We always had to laugh when we looked into his room through the knot-hole in the door and saw him threatening his humming beetles with it.’ So, while I was listening in on what they were saying, I was being spied on by the same individuals in the next room when I threatened the beetles whose humming was preventing me from eavesdropping.

I was laughing at them, they at me: the child plays with the cat, the cat with the child. Most joking is mutual, a shared quantity: we enjoy the actors, the actors enjoy us! Willingly I gave up my travelling pistol, was quite happy to allow its dissection, and then watched the duchess lock up the whole array of triggers and the women hang the pistols back up tidily in the armoury, for that was where we were.

The duchess then reported how that morning had been appointed for a duel by pistols between her son and the German baron, that the latter had no pistols and that her son had promised to supply them from his father’s well stocked armoury. She cursed the lame captain’s endeavours in defence of honour; he had even convinced her foster daughter that no-one could interfere in the matter without offending her son’s honour. ‘If I could only gain one day,’ she said, ‘then I think I could undo everything by having the baron sent away on the royal ship as a suspicious stranger and put ashore in his native country.’ The duel was ridiculous, she continued, for her son had started this silly nonsense with Aura and now he had to act insulted when he had got rid of her, as he had wished, and could marry the foster daughter, who had been promised to him for so long; the near relative, daughter of their best friend in

the area. ‘A nice story,’ I cried. ‘I was about to make an offer for the foster daughter myself, now I must hear that she is already bespoken, and I suppose I am even expected to prevent this duel which could easily rid me of my fortunate rival.’ ‘Do not jest,’ she continued, ‘for the matter will not be resolved without some loss of blood.You are to accompany me; I will bring the two of them a pair of good broad Highland swords; my husband has said that they have similar things at German universities as well and so the German baron cannot complain about the weapons. I am going to take the swords, am going to say, now have at each other in the old Scottish fashion, I myself will second my son, and this foreign gentleman can assist his countryman, the German baron, but I cannot bear any accursed firing! These stupid lead pellets are simply not in the power of man: sometimes there is too much, sometimes too little powder behind them, sometimes the spark ignites too slowly, sometimes not at all. In short, shooting is the devil’s work. Parliament should have passed laws against it long ago, but that madhouse is always too late, talking takes up all the time of the gentlemen who sit in it; parliament will only become sensible when we women have a place and a voice in it.’

With these words she handed me two large, beautifully wrought broad-swords, and she herself picked up two other ones. She would not tolerate me taking this burden from her. ‘Perhaps you are surprised,’ she continued, ‘that I chose you for this business after such a short acquaintance, but I was concerned that my husband should not know anything about the matter. His passionate nature would have plunged him into the same danger too, but everyone around here is so devoted to him that they would have betrayed my secret to him.You alone are independent and without connections here; I also have a pledge of your silence in my house, your collection of beetles, the destruction of which would punish any betrayal.Yes indeed, just as lightning melts its way down wires so this fine sword with which your Scottish friends recently presented the duke will behead the rows of pins on which the poor skewered beetles are breathing their last while cursing your cruelty.’ ‘Since you speak so candidly about my cruelty,’ I cut in, ‘but also remind me at the same time of those Highlanders, I therefore make it a condition, if I am to help here, that these people whose way of life was cruelly interfered with are given back their previous situation, their old homes.’ ‘I accept this condition,’ she said after a pause. ‘Since the duke took over the defence of this coast he has found out in any case that these mountain dwellers are more useful to him for military service than all these townsfolk, fishermen and farmers into which he has transformed some of them out of the good intention of removing them from their accustomed poverty into an occupation which is indeed new to them but which was meant to

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place them in the long-term prosperity which England enjoys.You go ahead now, the contract is concluded.

We will meet again in the old castle; a chamber maid who is in my confidence will accompany you.’

The maid arrived and we crept through the house.

Suddenly she stopped me and we drew back into a dark niche. The foster daughter was coming towards the lame captain who seemed to have just arrived.

She asked him: ‘So, this morning then, is it settled?’

‘Irrevocably,’ he replied, ‘if the opponent presents himself.’ ‘Then it is also settled,’ she continued, ‘that if there is a calamity I will never see you again.You shall never again eat chicken pâté made by my expert hand. I swear that to you, and I keep my word.’

She turned away; the captain remained rooted to the spot and grumbled to himself: ‘If I had thought that she would take what I did for the honour of the house like that, I would not have got involved.’

With these words he went on his way and left us free to follow ours, which led us unobserved to the old fortress by the sea. She left me alone there. The tide was still high and was crashing against the wreck of a ship which had run onto the nearby rocks in the night and had foundered. There was no longer any sign of the seamen; they had probably saved themselves, but not to this shore, otherwise the inhabitants would have been more interested in the remains of the ship’s cargo, which was floating in towards land. Without difficulty I recovered what was being tossed out from the ship to behind the tower: various chests with stuffed birds, one with the skins of East Indian fourlegged animals, finally, Indian butterflies and beetles, and, last of all, four large live West Indian turtles. Here, the spoils of an arduous natural historical voyage had obviously been left to the mercy of the waves; who does not feel sympathy for kindred spirits?

A hurried inspection convinced me that here an expert had accumulated only new things; that he had scorned that which was already commonplace; and that I would inevitably become immortal with this find, in so far as the collector was no longer among the living; indeed, that I would, by taking custody of these discoveries, achieve the goal of his endeavours, crown his life’s work. What a noble objective, and what a disagreeable one faced me now, to which the duchess just then called me in a gruff voice. Another glance at my treasures, then with one leap I was in the tower, where the duchess was trying out her blade in the air. A covered box stood beside her; she said with some emotion that it was a gift from the master engineer for her birthday that day. A fire dragon: the first attempt at a model of his spring-loaded dragon; a gift from heaven that she had found in her room as she was leaving, where it was supposed to surprise her at breakfast. ‘With this I have the captain in my

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power,’ she said. ‘If he has managed to get his hands on some firearms after all, I will knock them out of their hands with this. Rennwagen has explained this fearful instrument to me so often that I am certain I can use it very successfully, and even if the springloaded dragon’s arrows are still weak in this model, the fire does burn, and I have no regard for my own life. I brought the marquess into the world; I want to keep him in the world as far as it is in my power!’

I had to honour this sentiment, it expressed a spiritual conviction based on a natural drive that protects the species of all animals against the destruction threatened everywhere by the weakness of old age.

But the marquess was indeed well past this age,3 and this instrument made up of a large number of small tin pipes or needles looked more like a hydraulic organ than a device to save a Scottish ducal family under threat. In the meantime it had become light.

Four people approached in conversation, whom we recognised immediately as the marquess with the lame captain, the master engineer with a stranger who could be no other than Baron Starkader. In the opinion of the duchess the lame captain seemed to have already provisioned himself for flight if an unhappy conclusion were to occur: large parcels, perhaps of Italian sausages, of which he was very fond, filled the side and breast pockets of his overcoat and stuck out everywhere. Rennwagen was carrying two large old military pistols, to which he gave another polish from time to time. The marquess expressed his admiration at how he had got a pair of old rusty pistols into working order in such a short time. ‘May God damn him in all eternity for doing so!’ whispered the duchess and set down her fire instrument towards the open side of the fortress trench, to which all four were making their way, in order to carry out her earnest resolution. The captain took charge of everything authoritatively. He conceded that, in this case, a duel was necessary to satisfy form rather than passion. For that reason the combatants should not be placed too closely together. The trench walls would be their lines; they should not approach each other but, rather, fire simultaneously the moment he dropped his handkerchief. Anyone who fired after his handkerchief had dropped was dishonourable and would be thrown into the sea if he injured the other. On turning round after making these arrangements he said to himself: ‘I have done what I could, I have surely earned a chicken pâté.’ Then the captain went with Rennwagen to the other side of the trench, where we in the corner could see and hear them well. The duellists, however, standing apart from them, chatted about the most unimportant items of news, as if unconcerned about dying. The two seconds found out when they were loading the pistols that they had only brought one bullet with them; they must have lost a bag with shooting equipment. Rennwagen immediately knew what to do, and he halved the bullet on his pocket

knife with one blow of the gun-barrel. As then each of the two seconds, Rennwagen and the captain, held half of the deadly lottery ticket in their hands, the former said: ‘Stop, I have a suggestion now, before we load. In actual fact we both have a greater involvement in the duel than those who want to break each other’s necks.

I took the beautiful Aura away; you presented this abduction to your friend as an insult to his honour.

Why don’t we load at the same time, whoever is finished first shoots down the other, our friends can do afterwards as they please, whoever remains shall have the duty of reconciling them to the best of his ability.’ ‘Very well thought out,’ said the captain, ‘I could envy you the idea. It’s a question of speed here; since I have done a lot of shooting with pistols I could easily have great dexterity in loading, and that is indeed the case. I offer £100 as a wager that I can load twice as many pistols as you in five minutes.’ ‘That may be,’ said Rennwagen, ‘with a lot of pistols, but I will certainly load the first one faster.’ The captain looked at him with astonishment and then said with some emotion: ‘You are the bravest man in Scotland. I know something that you do not know and which I cannot tell you. I can, I must do something for your friend that I have never done for anyone, and will never do again.

I will throw my half-bullet into the sea. Fire at me at will. If this is not your wish then let us load the pistols with powder; the friends’ duel will thus become an empty formality, but anyone who says anything of this is dead.’ ‘The marquess made the challenge,’ said Rennwagen, ‘why should I not do everything to give him as little satisfaction as possible!’ With these words he threw the other half-bullet away. Both of them loaded the pistols with powder. The duchess cast her wild gaze to the heavens and quietly placed the two swords in a corner of the wall. I followed her example.

Meanwhile, the pistols had been given to the duellists.

The captain gave the sign with earnest concentration.

The shots fell almost simultaneously and both duellists looked at each other in astonishment that no success was visible. The captain then took both duellists by the arm and said that he had a secret to divulge to them that must only continue to be withheld from Rennwagen. The duchess became alarmed; she started to reach for the swords; she was on the point of rushing after them when a gale of laughter from the three of them on the side of the fort towards the sea reassured her. She led me outside by another route, requesting me to go back myself and fetch the swords we had left behind once everyone had left. She took the box with the fire dragon herself, however, concealed underneath her arm. Soon we arrived, innocently, at the beach from the garden side, as if we had no knowledge of what had been going on. The three laughing men were still standing there in a group while Rennwagen was delighting over the chests with natural curiosities which I had believed to have brought to safety for myself.

‘What are you laughing about so terribly?’ asked the duchess. They could not speak; they just pointed to the turtles I had previously secured for myself on the beach. Two of these large creatures were fighting a fierce tournament against each other, with pieces of shell flying off, while the reason for the quarrel, the fêted beauty, who seemed to be paying attention in umpire-like fashion to their struggles, permitted a third turtle-knight tender advances. The two duellists, blinded by love and honour, seemed to have no inkling of this betrayal; their only thought seemed to be mutual destruction, so that one could not blame the beloved, in order not to be doubly widowed or to end up as the spoil of a cripple, for surrendering herself confidently to a third who seemed to have no interest in fighting at all. The duchess and I then listened to quiet words of explanation from the son: that Aura had told the captain today that she wished to favour neither the marquess nor the baron with her love. Rennwagen was her only love, but he may not find out anything about this yet because he would consider her love to be a prejudice and probably flee to Botany Bay in order to escape it.

‘Now, is this not the same fate as we see here with the turtles?’ asked the son. ‘No, no, no,’ said the captain. ‘It could be so, that is why it is funny, but this Rennwagen is the bravest knight on earth, excepting neither me nor the two of you. There is no time now but I will explain it to you another time.’

‘But should everything fall to this one person: beauty, fame from these discoveries?’ I said to myself, stepped up to him, and laid my hand on top of the chests.

‘That is my property,’ I said. ‘In science the law of salvage applies, and as a sign that I made this find and that I brought these chests to safety I recorded my name here.’ Rennwagen looked at me in surprise and then said thoughtfully: ‘The insect stuff is completely indifferent to me, but I would like to know how and where the needles were made with which the butterflies were skewered. No single factory known to me works as badly.’ ‘Well then, we’ll share,’ I answered.

‘The needles belong to you, the butterflies to me.’

In the course of this bargaining sudden cries of horror had broken out among those so inclined to laugh.

We looked over and saw a brown and yellow head with fiery gleaming eyes, with wide open jaws full of two-inch-long white teeth, looking menacingly over a fragment of rock. A tiger, a large Bengal tiger! The captain had drawn his sword and jumped to the side in order to get round to the animal’s back; the marquess had armed himself with stones; the baron had seized a turtle; the duchess, however, had set down and taken aim with her fire dragon. The fire dragon began to play at first, but, then, extending its range, its fire hit the captain, who was approaching the animal from behind, more than the tiger. The tiger screwed up its

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face and drew in its head; the captain, on the other hand, caught fire: his heart banged loudly, his coat pockets even louder, his coat burst all over, squibs emerged from his trouser pockets, fireballs from his stomach, jumping jacks sprang out of his waistcoat pockets. The strange sight dispelled any sense of danger, in particular when he shouted: ‘The tiger won’t do you any harm, his legs are shattered, but help me, I have to jump into the sea.’ With this proclamation he leapt into the foaming waves and ducked down as far as his chin. This still did not extinguish the fire, however, and he shouted in great despair that his right coat pocket was now also being set alight by his right trouser pocket and that the rockets in his chest were beginning to hiss. There was a great deal of popping and cracking and water being thrown up into the air. He seemed like a volcano on the sea bed, perhaps even a submerged or surfacing island!

Only when the explosions had stopped, or at least had died away apart from isolated bubbles still rising up, could the captain explain the cause of these phenomena. He had not, for instance, as the duchess suspected, eaten a strange gunpowder dish that had ignited in his stomach, rather, it was a treat that he had prepared for her for that evening, in honour of her birthday, in that he had fetched these fireworks that morning from their manufacturer in order to keep them in a suitable place in the garden until the appointed time and to set them off himself as a surprise for everybody. On being asked whether he was badly wounded he assured us that, apart from some grains of powder that had fallen onto his face and hands, he felt unharmed but that his clothes had been badly damaged, and he resembled a chestnut that had burst open on the coals.

The devastation of the clothes was terrible to behold as he emerged from the water in order not to abandon the chase of the tiger. He himself was partly striped like a tiger, partly speckled like a leopard. The duchess seemed moved by this sight; she promised to have the most marvellous things her kitchen could offer prepared for him, but he requested, with the modesty of a Diogenes,4 merely these four turtles that could be seen on the beach. He wanted to prepare them himself; he wanted to invite all those present to be his guest for this turtle soup. In the meantime the master engineer had already initiated the hunt for the tiger in an ingenious fashion with a harpoon that he had constructed hastily from his pocket knife tied to a stick with twine from the chests. He threw it into the tiger’s open jaws towards its windpipe with such skill and such force that the animal, which was already in a sorry state in any case, used the opportunity to breathe its last. When we dared to approach we noticed for the first time that a dead lion underneath him, which he had probably throttled in the fight, had also wounded the tiger badly on

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its body and its back legs and, dying, had clamped its claws into its back, taking the tiger prisoner and thereby making him harmless to us. The cages of both, which had probably stood on the deck of the ship, lay smashed on the beach; they had used their first leap to freedom from long slavery solely to abandon themselves to their age-old enmity which the feeding arrangements on the ship had probably even increased. ‘These are Frenchmen in disguise,’ said Rennwagen, ‘for if I am not totally mistaken this wreck is the ship of La Perouse5 returning home, and the animals here have repeated the revolution among the ship’s crew.’ At that moment the last remnant of the ship sank. This speculation remained inconclusive. I had no reason to clear up the matter since all the discoveries had fallen to me; the master engineer had enough to do with his own expeditions.

No-one envisaged the monumental effects of the pocket fireworks, which we became aware of only too soon. In order to explain them I have to recall the fact that the duke had a curious relationship with the general who commanded all of the volunteer regiments on the coast. The duke held the fanciful opinion that he performed the duties of his military position, although he was completely new to this activity, with great military discernment because he had been an observer in German military states for a long time and had also let a real, stout military braid grow and had it plaited. The general, aware of this whim, put his talent to all kinds of tests, frequently surprising him with miniature attacks, under the pretext of testing the readiness of his volunteers but in actual fact to draw from him some erroneous word of command. When, in the castle, the duke now heard first of all the individual pistol shots, then the repeated small fire from the dragon, finally the numerous bangs from the captain’s coat pockets, he immediately gave orders for a general call to arms while looking for his uniform, totally convinced that the general was testing him with a landing from the sea. The double quick march was rolled on the drums and bugles, the volunteers assembled at a run, only he himself could not appear as the duchess had put on his uniform overcoat and had even appropriated his sword for her own purposes. In order to be able to arm himself he eventually hurried into his armoury, but what a shock he got: all firearms have been rendered useless; he can scarcely even retrieve a sabre from among the untidy heap. Then it suddenly struck him that it might even be real, that the French might first have had him disarmed by means of secret contacts in order to achieve their landing without resistance.

He then paid no further attention to his uniform; he mounted his horse in a military coat, commanded the volunteers to act as marksmen and search the park while he advanced, at the head of the whole assembly.

The young people had been given live cartridges for the first time that day. They were very keen to use

them and shot at trees under the pretext that they saw Frenchmen behind them. One copied the other in this, and the duke was now of the certain opinion that enemies were in sight. The whole battalion was just being made to prepare itself to fire when our morning society with the captain at its head approached him.

‘Fellow countrymen,’ called the captain, ‘there are no enemies to be found here, but your gracious, benevolent provider in all times of hardship, the duchess, was born today, goodness knows how many years ago; call out three cheers in her honour and open fire with your old muskets, but to the side, so that the bullets don’t hit us.’ ‘Hooray,’ they all shouted, and fired simultaneously, as best they could.

After all this noise and shooting it was not surprising that the watch ships out at sea and the batteries on the promontories discharged signal cannons to announce a landing. Soon the bells in all the villages were tolling, everyone ran to take up their weapons and were corroborated even further in their assumption that a landing had taken place when the duke had all cartridges discharged in honour of the duchess as a military salute to her from him too, so that the noise in the distance seemed to run through the whole gamut of a fierce battle. This time he truly was leading on the general, who had so often put him to the test. The latter gathered together and organised with the greatest of care all the volunteers as they congregated, had them reconnoitre, hurried to win the most important positions, and finally arrived in our circle just as a row of barrels of the best porter and also a small cask of rum in honour of the day were being transported up to the main battery and unpacked. The general did not have to be asked twice to storm this battery with his people, the volunteers pledged fraternity over the porter tankard, the regimental music played merrily, and the girls from the little town did not disdain to dance with the heroic strangers who had hurried to their aid so bravely. An artificially pre-arranged plan could never have assembled such a joyful birthday party. The marquess got engaged at the end of it to the beautiful foster daughter, on the one condition, however, that she and their parents agreed that he would get married to her in the course of a journey, according to an English custom that was still new at the time. The volunteers set off another three volleys in his honour and then the heroes and their weapons rested. The remainder of us rested too: I with my box of insects which the day had bestowed upon me; the captain with his turtles which he took to bed with him, in the belief that these creatures, used to a warmer climate in West India, could easily suffer harm in this present cold autumn air.

5.THE MARRIAGE BLACKSMITH The next morning the master engineer had departed.

He left me, as he had previously, to protect his room and the secrets of the engineering inventions it contained. His farewell letter complained that he was being carried away by prejudice. We knew about this prejudice from the baron, who, in his philosophical pride, had formed a low opinion of the entire female sex because Aura no longer found him loveable. He swore that he would now only marry out of magnanimity, if he could alleviate some intolerable misery by offering his hand. The duke’s estate in England where the marquess’s wedding was to be celebrated, or, rather, to be held without any celebration in the haste of travelling, was situated not far from the famous marriage blacksmith of Gretna Green: the place of refuge for English people in distress who find themselves really married there after a brief procedure, based in Scottish law, of declaring before the Justice of the Peace that they are still single and that they want to get married. The marquess suggested stopping there; perhaps fate would bring their way a couple needing to get married, which would pass the time pleasantly for them. The captain was all ears. He swore that he would contain his appetite and save his turtles for this visit to Gretna Green, inviting everyone to share the turtle soup he was going to prepare. Everyone accepted, only the baron excused himself because he would only spoil the mood of the feast. He departed a few hours later.

I used the rest of the day to put my own discoveries and my find of someone else’s in order. The following two days were spent in the same way. The duke gave me a pair of skilled packers to help me, with the result that, three days later, the collection was lumbering towards London for me in one single case while I was sitting in the duke’s carriage heading for the great celebration at Gretna Green.

On the way the duke told me of the strange things he had noticed about the captain since his foster daughter, towards whom he had previously directed his intentions because of her household skills and love of order, had become engaged to the marquess. He had, namely, made detailed inquiries about whether Daura, the slim daughter of the Highlander, with whom I had come down from the mountains, the cheerful soul who had caught many a beetle for me, was indeed a totally pure-blood descendant of the clan from which the duke’s house had also sprung, centuries ago. When he had heard that she was, he had demanded that the duke recognise her as a relative, to which the duke had no objection, without, however, being able to comprehend what could result from this because several thousand people were related to him in the same way. Thereupon he had said that that was enough for him. At the same time he had praised the fact that Daura had such splendid culinary skills, that she roasted everything on the grill, which was, of course, not surprising as

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the Highlanders were not familiar with any other cooking utensil. If he, the duke, were to add to this that he, the captain, had had a sumptuous outfit made for Daura and that he had brought her and her father to Gretna Green on the kitchen cart, which he had fitted out himself, then he would wager that the captain wanted to marry the dear child there, having learned to worship her as his conquering heroine.

Not without malicious pleasure, as is usual on the part of those who are free towards the prisoners of Eros, we were delighting in this late deciding of his fate when our horses, no less than our coachman, shrank back on turning a corner in the face of a wondrous sight. We soon identified an elephant, which was being led by two exotic brown-skinned East Indians dressed in Naquin. We climbed down in order to lead the horses, both convinced that it was a company of people who eked out a wretched existence by exhibiting animals from other countries. But the splendour of the gold embroidered red blankets, the exquisite craftsmanship of the seat on the elephant alone pointed to a different kind of owner; even more the servants’ clothes, their foreignness. Eventually we found out from Scottish carters, who were taking away two cartloads of the most beautiful Indian divans, boxes and cases, that everything was the property of young Lady Gurli, the daughter of an Indian king whose ship had sunk at the coast and the wreck of which, after only part of the cargo had been saved, had drifted back out to sea and had disappeared overnight. They pointed the owner out to us in the distance and told us that she spoke perfect English as her father had been English, only her mother had been Indian. Sympathetically we approached the unlucky girl, saw her, however, sanguinely absorbed in skewering a beetle, which she stuck onto the scarf that was wrapped around her head. We then saw that her chest was covered in skewered butterflies and beetles.

Trembling with awe I felt as if I was finally beholding the goddess of my studies. What big, burning eyes, yet black as night; what finely drawn eyebrows; what charming colour in her cheeks: yellow and yet not faded, rather, full of joyful life. Golden bracelets with colourful gems encircled her arms; a ring of diamonds was her belt; and fringes of small rubies trimmed the light, white dress so that it would not flutter in the wind. The duke offered her his services, his carriage, everything he possessed, his house, in order that she might rest from the discomfort of an unhappy journey.

‘Yes, this journey can indeed be called unhappy,’ she said, ‘which the will of my dying father obliged me to undertake as he did not believe he could find security for me in the kingdom over which he had ruled for so long. A storm drove us northwards; we sank; I was brought to shore unconscious. When I woke up I found my papers, my treasures saved, but the thing that was dearest to me, my wonderful collections in natural history, invaluable rarities that my father

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had collected with me, which I had studied under his supervision, they had been left on the wreck by the ignoramuses as unimportant, to be brought to safety the next day, and the wreck had been driven away during the night.’ ‘A lion and a tiger too, perhaps?’ I asked eagerly. ‘Indeed, yes, faithful Hider and mighty Ram too!’ ‘Hider and Ram,’ I said sadly, ‘throttled each other, but those treasures in natural history are saved.’ She looked at me in surprise. She probably thought that I was mocking her suffering, but with one leap I was standing at the carriage that was following us, opened the case, and placed silently the finest of the chests open before her eyes. She fell down to her knees; she looked up towards heaven and swore with blazing eyes that she would keep her word, that she would honour the vow that she had made on the morning she had been told of the loss of this treasure of Indian nature. ‘What vow?’ asked the duke apprehensively. She jumped up, leaned towards his ear and said something to him in a quiet, anxious voice, with the result that the sumptuous belt which circled her body burst open with her excited breathing. The duke cried out joyfully: ‘Amen, that can be arranged, but do not say a word now, I must first find out whether another vow stands in opposition to it. There is Gretna Green; there we will meet.’

With an unyielding hand he tore me away – I was lost in contemplation – and plagued me for the remainder of the way with disagreeable questions: whether I was married, whether I was engaged, whether I was in love.

I answered with a brief, ‘No, no,’ and looked round to see if the stranger was following us on her elephant.

After a dozen such questions he also broached the inquiry whether a European could possibly like or even love such a brown Indian skin. I swore to him that I would, if it were possible, take off my skin and put on just such an Indian one. Then he eventually came out with it: ‘Well then, I can no longer conceal from you that this Indian natural scientist has sworn in her despair that she will marry the man who brings these collections back to her, even if he were to be as nasty as the devil and as old as Methuselah. But, one more thing, when I told her that you were German not English, she whispered to me that this had been her father’s wish. ‘I was supposed to marry a German, for he called me Gurli due to a German play that had led him to India and made him rich. He gave me the freedom to live my life without restriction anywhere in the world, which led to me retaining the pretty, expressive epithet of the naive “Girlie” among the English women in Calcutta.’ ‘Gurli, Gurli,’ I cried with a leaping heart, ‘I would never have thought that this fateful play, The Indians in England,6 would lead such a lovely, beautiful, glorious, heavenly bride to me.’

Then the duke continued: ‘The proximity of Gretna Green has a magnetic effect on wedding rings. But confess one more thing to me. Was the beautiful Gurli right to think you are the German traveller who

has been expected for so long in East India? Is your name only an assumed one? Have I had the honour of seeing the famous natural scientist under my roof?’

I had to decline this honour. ‘I am, unfortunately,’ I continued, ‘until now only the unknown man out of Misanthropy and Repentance.’7 ‘How? What?’ cried the duke, ‘So you already were a cuckold?’ ‘God be praised, no,’ I continued, ‘I only mean that I am still an unknown in the world of scholars, that my fame is still hanging on the nails of my collection, indeed, that only the riches of this Indian bride will perhaps make it possible for me to publish my large-format pictures of ladybird parasites. My name really is Robinson, and I really do come from Braunschweig, as the promised consignment of genuine Braunschweig beer and pork sausage should soon convince you, but I am pleased that Kotzebue is as highly regarded, as well known in England as Shakespeare; no allusion to him is lost here.’ ‘The credit for this,’ the duke continued, ‘belongs partly to me. I was the first to encourage his translation, and since then most of our young poets are a mixture of Kotzebue and Shakespeare, with a marvellous seasoning of the spirit of opposition, to which I also adhere, and of worldweary indolence that does not come to fruition and thereby also holds others back from such foolishness.’8 Meanwhile we had driven into Gretna Green, and the coachman immediately inquired at the gate about the marriage blacksmith. ‘There are two of them now,’ said a man, ‘taking the bread out of each other’s mouths. The older, genuinely ministerial one lives across there.You can already hear from the hammer blows that he is a blacksmith. And he really is black because for so long he was the only one here. But the forge would be in a bad way if his daughter didn’t look after things. The new marriage blacksmith from the opposition only works in gold and silver. He is Justice of the Peace for the neighbouring district and for that reason now lives over there, not far from our town. He is a courteous man; he attracts customers because he takes five guineas less, that is, only 10 for his entry of non-resident married couples.

He has also had a new, lengthy religious address prepared for him which, with his deep voice, really does go deep into your ears so that it remains there firmly, like cotton wool when you have toothache.’

‘Thank you very much,’ cried the duke. ‘But where do you suppose couples have stopped off today?’

‘At both of them, your lordship, but I think that you will find the most genteel ones at the goldsmith’s.’

Everything looked really dainty at the goldsmith’s.

There was a sign in large print: Marriage Ceremony for Non-Residents for Ten Guineas. Displayed in a glass case in the window were gold rings of the most diverse fabrication, women’s jewellery, silver tools such as are needed in new households. The proprietor

stepped up to us with a pleased expression. He was hoping, from the appearance of the carriage, for a very distinguished couple. When he saw two men getting out he stepped back, startled, suspecting an angry father, curses, arrests. He denied having any guests and was assuring us that no strangers had stopped there when the marquess called out in French to his father from the upstairs window that most of the party were gathered there. And so we paid no further attention to any speeches but marched up to the large marriage room, which was decorated at one end, to increase the effect, with some wooden columns which made it resemble a village church with an altar.

There we found the marquess with the duchess and his bride, but, to our astonishment, Aura too, deep in conversation with a young man and an old woman.

The impression her whole person created could be called radiant, triumphant, even to the point of putting everything else in the shade. She alone seemed to be the central focal point around which everything revolved. She alone knew how to turn these people who were unknown to each other into a group.

The marquess’s fiancée experienced no unease as a result of this, for Aura was doing everything to get to know her properly without seeming to ingratiate herself in the slightest. Only the elderly lady seemed to be in some agitation, which she could not easily suppress, the source of which, jealousy of the young stranger’s gaze, who only had eyes for Aura, was welling up and filling her heart. The distinguished company was keeping this heart under control, but this feeling was soon to be unleashed because the goldsmith brought in the marriage book in which he had provisionally entered the names of those who had placed their fate in his hands, to which he then asked for the signature of those involved and of the witnesses. To our astonishment he read out how Henry Knatschbull and Aura Luft9 had appeared before him and had been certified as unmarried by the witness, Mrs Debora Knoxtyrwit. ‘Stop,’ cried Debora, ‘there is a mix-up in the names here. I am the bride.’ ‘Nonsense,’ said the proprietor. ‘Don’t make jokes with me in such a serious matter. How could that be? You could be the young lad’s grandmother.’

Aura, however, answered the old woman that the Justice of the Peace knew better what was fitting; she had no claim on the poor boy. ‘I, no claim?’ exclaimed the old woman. ‘Did I not abduct him by force?’ ‘In that case I must detain you in the name of the law,’ the Justice of the Peace interrupted her. ‘Abduction is punishable by hanging.’ ‘I’m very sorry for you, my good woman,’ said the duke, ‘but the fellow is right.

The law leaves no doubt at all about that, as does your own statement in front of us as witnesses.’ ‘Hang she must,’ said the duchess. ‘It is a disgrace for all our sex when a woman abducts a man. That is unheard of, dreadful, shameful. This woman is a true abomination, a degenerate.’ ‘Terrible!’ cried the marquess. ‘She must hang, there is no doubt about it, for who does

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not know the legal passage: O mulier dignissima barris?’10 When the old woman heard us raging like this she turned pale, looked out the window, called ‘Fetch my carriage,’ disappeared, and drove away without deigning to cast a glance at any one of us.

When she had gone Aura leapt about like a child, blew kisses after her, but in so doing trod on the duke’s feet, who did not appreciate such antics because of gout. ‘Always clumsy,’ he said to himself, so that only I heard. ‘How fortunate that she didn’t become my daughter-in-law.’ ‘But do you really want to marry Mr Knatschbull?’ the duchess asked Aura after a while.

‘What is to become of Rennwagen?’ ‘Rennwagen,’ said Aura, laughing. ‘He has long since consoled himself. He arrived here a day earlier and stopped at the blacksmith’s, where he undertook to construct a new marriage bed with a small steam engine for himself, which he can drive, without leaving it, to all his places of work and with which he can set all the lathes in motion. The smithy’s daughter helped him carry out this work. She is the life and soul and the right arm of the workshop. A hefty woman with the most beautiful arms in the world but rough hands, the whitest neck, glowing cheeks, the most luxurious black curly hair, brown eyes, not slim but of perfect proportions. The most magnificent Amazon but at the same time very gentle, totally reasonable, understanding everything, performing every task sensibly, recognising, worshiping, admiring him: a girl who was simply made for him and he for her. Two people who must never be separated. I am superfluous to him. If he got to know my idle life better I would soon even seem detestable to him. So I moved here under the pretext that the accommodation there was too dirty, which was actually true as the old man did not need to spend any money on his house as long as he was the only marriage blacksmith. I then found this young man here who told me of his plight: that his rich parents had rented him lodgings with that woman in order that he learn the merchant’s trade; that she had caused him to get into debt and, in order not to be caught and disowned by his parents, he had let her take him away in a carriage. I lent him the small sum and reassured him; I bribed the proprietor with the same sum that he could hope to get from the old woman to swap over the names. Am I right, my little Knatschbull?’ ‘Everything,’ he cried, ‘everything is absolutely true, how can I repay all your goodness?’ ‘I did not ask for that,’ Aura continued. ‘Gratitude is an undesirable virtue for me; one must be able to help oneself and others: that is the only virtue!’ As she was saying this she tore the large marriage register out of the Justice of the Peace’s hands, ripped out the sheet of paper on which her name was written, and scattered the pieces out of the window into the air. ‘Young sir,’ she said, ‘nothing will come of our marriage. I only made you believe that as a joke to extricate you from the witch all the sooner. Here

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is money for your journey; my post-chaise is ready; go back to your parents immediately; fall at their feet like the prodigal son; confess everything; they will forgive you if they are as you described them to me. No thank yous. Go! Go! Perhaps at this very moment your parents are inconsolable; they think you have run away; the news has already reached them that you have disappeared from the merchant’s shop; every lonely hour is a year of torment for these dear old people who love you as their only, their last happiness. Go! Go! No farewells; they are disagreeable.’ Once the young man, whom one could rather call attractive than handsome, had left the room Aura said cheerfully: ‘The affair went off more easily than I had planned due to the chance help of the company and the just as coincidental comment about forcible abduction. I would have insisted on the validity of my engagement to the young man; she would not have been permitted to institute proceedings; I would have demanded a legal inquiry and, in the meantime, have put the doubly engaged gentleman away in the depository here, or whatever the lawyers call it.

Meanwhile Gurli was riding up to the inn on the elephant, on the nape of whose neck the coloured Indian guide was sitting, as if she were on an elevated throne. She was being accompanied, stared at in wonder and with a kind of awe by all the inhabitants of the village. I hurried to assist her in dismounting and was almost shocked at how extraordinarily small her feet were; they really did not seem made to be actually used. She stood firmly on them, however, walked up to the assembled company with enchanting grace and had everything explained to her, or, rather, intimated and indicated, for through being in her father’s company she knew Gretna Green as well as London. Full of impatience she then asked about her collections. I had to unpack them and open every layer of the chest.

She shed grateful tears over my care; over how I had preserved, secured, packed everything so well. The marriage blacksmith was so near, who could blame me for soon, very soon, standing with Gurli at the Justice of the Peace’s marriage table in her father’s magnificent suit: in a brocade waistcoat which was embroidered with precious stones, in wide muslin sleeves and trousers which seemed to be weaved out of air but which, made up of a thousand layers, nonetheless afforded warmth. It may seem more amazing that the duke and the duchess, moved by the extraordinary nature of this procession, permitted that the wish of their son to be married to the foster daughter here with us be granted. Most amazing, however, was that the lame captain also appeared, with an apron tied around him, leading the slim, pretty Highland girl by the hand, in order to be present, already married, at the same wedding ceremony held by the Justice of the Peace. From this moment Aura could not rest. She wanted to bring Rennwagen and the strapping smithy’s daughter, Judith, into the general

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circle, and so we had to wait for some time. Eventually she arrived with both of them. Black all over from their forging they could not complain enough about the disturbance of their urgent work. However, they had finally recognised, Rennwagen said, that they could not stay away completely from the marriage celebration of so many friends without offending good manners, but they requested to be released after the ceremony because they were near to achieving the goal of their work. This was granted to them, but they were greatly astonished when their mutual alliance was also announced by the Justice of the Peace: Martin Rennwagen to Judith Smith. Rennwagen cast a grateful eye at Aura, for he understood her, only Judith asked in some amazement if he were serious. ‘Certainly,’ he said, ‘without prejudice. Let us sign quickly so that the iron does not become cold.’ Immediately after signing he hurried away with her without paying much attention to anyone; he did not want to receive our hands of friendship. He was held in affection and admiration by everyone, and as he left the captain swore: ‘My God, why is that man not English!’ With these words he and his new bride hurried to finish preparing the meal to which he had invited us.

‘Another carriage with people wanting to get married!’ called Aura. ‘His Honour the Justice of the Peace is bound to oblige. Do my eyes deceive me? It is the baron, and behind him a beautiful girl wearing his coat! See, he is keeping his word; he must have already found someone he can make happy by marrying.’

The baron entered abruptly with a female figure in whose demeanour the most exceptional sweetness seemed to be still struggling with the deepest misery.

Only a rough shift was visible underneath the coat, also a rope tied round her neck. Her slightly wavy blonde hair was held up with a shabby comb, and her feet seemed to be enclosed and disfigured by large men’s shoes. Once Starkader had seen Aura, who appeared sympathetic, he immediately turned to her and asked for her assistance in buying a dress for his bride, as he called the girl with the rope round her neck, so that she could make her marriage vows and sign her name in a respectable state. Aura thanked him for this task as if it were a gift. She offered the trembling beauty her arm, and seemed to have won her trust with the first words she spoke to her.

No-one dared ask for an explanation of the mystery; the duke murmured quietly to me: ‘He really has cut her down from the gallows. A girl condemned to the gallows was executed today, not far from here. She had killed her sister over a pretty dress that the sister had bought herself from dubious earnings.’ ‘Did you notice the rope tied round my bride’s neck?’ Starkader asked, finally. ‘It shall keep us together in future when some rift or other divides us. It is strong, but I’m going to have gold chain spun

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round it as well.’ ‘I did indeed see the rope,’ the duke remarked. ‘Was it suicide or legal murder?’ ‘Neither of the two,’ Starkader replied calmly. ‘I didn’t take my bride from the gallows but from a much worse place, where I truly did not think to find her.’ ‘From a worse place!’ echoed the duke in astonishment. ‘I had taken lodgings in the great inn on the market square in L ... A sad evening! The second separation from Aura had torn open all the old wounds. I cursed all feminine intelligence that sows such thoughtlessness.

I wanted, as I had vowed back then, to marry some poor girl who was in desperate trouble and would necessarily see me as her saviour, even if she could not otherwise love me. I saw all kinds of girls waiting at the corners of the square. The one I meet first, I thought; she will be the one. Then I ran onto the market square, took some poor girl’s arm and asked her if she wanted to marry me. In the intensity of my agitation I had forgotten that I was breathing English air, spoke German, and perhaps I took her arm too roughly. The girl screamed; the night watchmen rushed over; they were going to take both of us to the police station. When I freed us with a guinea the watchmen laughed at the girl for not recognising such a rich, generous gentleman better than that. The girl became disgustingly friendly; I ran back to my inn, absolutely determined to no longer abandon myself to the marriage lottery of the Herrnhuter Brethren.11 I did not fall asleep until late and was woken by noise from the market square. I got dressed quickly, looked out, and at first could not make out anything other than the customary phenomena of the market world: mountains of cabbages and other vegetables, rows of women offering butter and eggs for sale, a line of carts with grain. But I soon saw that no-one was staying beside their stock of wares; buyers and sellers were pushing their way towards one point in the middle where I couldn’t make anything out. I ran down into the market; I made inquiries and was told: the alchemist is selling his wife today for three shillings. ‘Is that legal?’ I asked in amazement. ‘Oh yes,’ said a man nearby. ‘I bought my wife that way too.

This kind of divorce is one of our old laws; it doesn’t cost anything and doesn’t have to get through all the chicanery that the legal experts otherwise put in the way of the simplest matter.’ I pushed my way in. A rough chap came back out of the middle of the crowd and said he would have bought her but she was far too delicate for work, he had no use for her. A merchant expressed his disgust at the brutal custom, but someone else asked him mockingly how many thousand slaves he had bought for West India this year.

‘They are black,’ he said. ‘They are painted by God with black ink as for sale, I can’t change that, but this one is a pretty blonde.’ I continued to force my way through. Finally I saw poor Sara in her long shroud, lead by the rope by an old man whose fiery eyes did not match his white hair at all. She did not dare look up, but he challenged proudly everyone who asked

him for an explanation. An old man set out to him and those standing nearby the whole life of the two of them, explaining how everything had happened: ‘Do you remember,’ he said, ‘how you left our bishop’s church in order to get into the rich Anabaptist’s house, how you made gold with him and made his daughter Sara do your bidding by means of your cunning ruses?

Do you remember how the father wanted to send you away and the daughter defended you, how the father tolerated you for her sake, how she suffered everything for you purely because she believed an injustice had once been done to you and she wanted to suffer for you? I tell you, she never liked you, and indeed, who could love the devil, but she had, after all, committed herself to you. And so she became your wife. Her father didn’t want to give you anything of his, but the daughter was obliged to plead for you.

He gave her everything, which then evaporated into thin air in your crucibles.12 It is two years now since the old man died – you had prepared an elixir of life for him – the daughter inherited a tidy sum; and, in these two years, it’s all gone, all of it! Oh, you arrogant and selfish fool.You wanted to make gold for yourself and have no bread for the poor young woman. Well, if I didn’t have a wife I would buy her off you straight away, the poor child. I would pay you £100 if it would make you have yourself put in a madhouse. When we were apprenticed to the apothecary in London together – yes, do you remember? – who would have thought it of you, that you would become so old and so stupid!’ I interrupted the old man’s fierce tirade, for the alchemist was paying little attention to it. I paid the three shillings he was asking for, took hold of the poor girl’s hand instead of the rope, and took her to the inn where I endeavoured to fortify her with food and drink. She confessed to me that she had not eaten anything for 48 hours and had only drunk water. That was how the old alchemist had forced her to follow him to the market. What goodness, what grace the poor child was soon displaying. I could not contain myself. For the first time I felt that God was something other than a made-up idea. I knelt down and gave thanks for the favour I had been granted after so much aimless wandering, after choosing so wrongly and wretchedly. I felt that with Aura I would have rolled down the mountain into the sea of eternity, more desperate than had I been alone, like these tears onto the ground, where none of them bloom or flourish.

turtle soup was ready; it had turned out perfectly; the Indian birds’ nests were admittedly missing from it this time, but it had been impossible to procure them. ‘Unbeliever,’ said Aura, ‘did I not give my word that they would be found in it!’ ‘None of that helps,’ he said, ‘they are missing all the same.’ But when everyone had sat down to the meal he stammered in astonishment: ‘Miracles still happen today. There they are, swimming, the most magnificent ones I have ever seen. As lame as I am, I nevertheless fall at the feet of the beautiful donor. But where is she?’

The waiter, who was just entering the room, answered the question, saying: ‘Miss has driven away in that direction.You can still see the dust from the carriage.

She gave me a very generous tip as she got in, took this bouquet from her bosom, and commanded me to place it in fresh water and put it on the dining table so that the honoured company may think of her.’

‘The Maiden from Afar!’13 said the baron. ‘A good fairy,’ said the duchess. ‘An angel,’ cried the duke. ‘How could we have so misjudged this blessing from heaven, how could we have let her slip away like that?’ My Gurli wanted to send her people to plead with her to come back. ‘Stop,’ the captain interrupted her.

‘That is to no avail. Can you hold back lightning? Or a champagne cork as it flies out? She is magnificent when she is in flight. If we kept her here she would disturb our happy luncheon with odious jokes. Do you know what incommensurable greats are? They are things that cannot be measured by normal standards. This turtle soup and that roast beef, for example, are both absolutely perfect, but no-one can eat them together. The beef is only set out to cool while we eat the soup reverently. Everything has its moment, its place. The stomach is all-encompassing; however one must not offer it too many things at once. Now, dear friends, eat and don’t say a word.’

Aura came in with Sara, whom she had adorned beautifully. She had bestowed upon her the best of what she possessed as her wedding jewellery.

Sara looked like a most beautiful flower; wilted from the hot day, but already rising again, refreshed by the first evening dew. The Justice of the Peace carried out his office and said his prayer. The baron was married to her. Aura signed as witness.

The captain then announced triumphantly that his

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Endnotes . Pasquino was the name of a statue in Rome on which people posted satirical Latin verses, thus pouring scorn on something or someone in public.

2. Macbeth Act II, scene 2.

3. This passage is illogical as Arnim has just made a comment about old age, relevant to the duchess, perhaps, but not to her son.

4. Diogenes of Sinope (412?-323? BC), Greek Cynic philosopher and moralist. He was said to have lived in a tub like a dog, ostentatiously disregarding domestic comfort.

5. Name of a play by August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue (1761-1819), German dramatist and author of numerous sentimental plays which were very popular at the time but are now largely forgotten. Jean François de Galaup, Comte de la Pérouse (1741-1788) was a French navigator and discoverer whose ship sank in 1788.

6. Name of a play by Kotzebue (1790). The character Gurli is the daughter of a deposed Indian Nabob.

7. Name of a play by Kotzebue (1788). Translated as The Stranger it achieved great popularity in Britain, confirming the subsequent remarks in the narrative on the dramatist’s popularity there. The story concerns a wife who deceives her husband, turning him into a misanthrope; her repentance; their reconciliation, which cures his misanthropy.

8. Kotzebue’s dramas convey a sense of passivity and impotence, very different to the heroic deeds described in the work of Shakespeare.

9. Literally translated: Air. 10. ‘O woman, best suited to elephants.’ Rather than a legal passage it is an adaptation of the first line of a lewd poem by Horace, Epode XII, in which he addresses an old and ugly woman who has complained about his lack of prowess as a lover.

11. The name of the first German settlement of the Moravian Church. In this sect it was decided through a lottery who should marry whom.

12. A ceramic or metal container in which metals or other substances may be melted or subjected to very high temperatures. Used in alchemistic experiments.

13. Title of a poem by the German dramatist, poet and historian Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805). The maiden in the title shows similar generosity to Aura.

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