Simplicissimus (26 page)
I soon became aware of this, so I gave up my former godless life and turned to virtue and piety. I did start going out on forays again, but I was so affable and courteous to friend and foe alike that everyone who came into contact with me found me different from the reports they had heard. I gave up my spendthrift ways and accumulated a hoard of beautiful jewels and ducats which from time to time I hid in hollow trees in the countryside around the town, because that was what the famous fortune-teller of Soest advised, telling me I had more enemies in the city and in my own regiment, who were after my money, than in all the enemy garrisons. The news had got round that the Huntsman had disappeared, but those who rejoiced in the fact soon found me breathing down their necks again. Scarcely had one town heard a rumour that I had wrought havoc in another than I was reminding them too that I was still a force to be reckoned with. I was like a whirlwind, here, there and everywhere, so that people had more reason than ever to say that there must be more than one Huntsman.
Once I was not far from Dorsten with twenty-five muskets, lying in wait for a convoy of carts that was supposed to be heading for the town. As usual, I was on look-out myself, since we were close to the enemy. I saw a single man come along the road, respectably dressed, talking to himself and shadow-fencing with the cane he had in his hand. All that I could hear was that he said, ‘If the world won’t recognise my divinity then I shall just have to punish it.’ From this I deduced that it might be some powerful prince who was going round incognito to find out how his subjects lived and had decided to punish them since he was displeased with what he had found. I thought to myself, ‘If this man belongs to the enemy, he’ll bring a good ransom. If not, then treat him with the greatest respect so that you win his favour and you’ll be well set up for the rest of your life.’ I jumped out with my musket at the ready and said, ‘Would you be so good as to take a walk into the trees here, sir, keeping in front of me. Otherwise I will have to assume you are an enemy and deal with you accordingly.’
He answered gravely, ‘I am not accustomed to be treated like this’, but I ushered him politely into the thicket saying, ‘I’m sure your Honour will not regret bowing to necessity just this once.’ When I had him safely with my men and had set a new lookout, I asked him who he was. He answered very haughtily that there was not much point to my question since I was already aware that he was a great god. At first I thought he was perhaps a nobleman from Soest who had recognised me and was only saying this to pull my leg, since the people of Soest are often teased about their silver statue of Christ with its long gold apron that they call the ‘great God’. I quickly realised however that I had not caught a prince but a lunatic who had studied too much and been driven mad by poetry. Once he had thawed out a little he told me he was the great god Jupiter.
It was a catch I wished I had not made, but since I had the madman, I had to keep him with us until we left. As the wait was becoming rather tedious I decided to humour the fellow and make some use of him, so I said, ‘Well, then, my dear Jove, how is it that your divine majesty has left his heavenly throne and come down to us on earth? Forgive me, o Jupiter, if my question seems somewhat forward, but we are related to the gods of heaven, being simple wood spirits, born of the nymphs and fauns, with whom your secret will ever remain a secret.’
‘I swear by the Styx’, Jupiter replied, ‘that even if you were Pan’s own son I would reveal nothing to you, were it not that you resemble my cup-bearer Ganymede. But for his sake I can inform you that a great outcry over the sins of the world has risen up through the clouds to me. The council of the gods discussed it and decreed that I would be justified in destroying the world by flood, as I did in the days of Lycaon, King of Arcadia. Since, however, I regard the human race with especial favour and am, moreover, always more disposed to lenience than to severity, I am going about the world to see the ways of men for myself. And although I find things worse than I imagined, I am not minded to destroy all men without distinction, but to punish those who deserve punishment and then bend the rest to my will.’
I had to laugh, but kept as straight a face as I could and said, ‘Oh, Jupiter, I fear all the pains you have taken will be in vain if you do not, as you did once before, visit flood, or even fire on the world. If you send war then you will give free rein to all the wicked, villainous rogues who will torment the pious, peace-loving people; if you send famine that is playing into the hands of the profiteers by inflating the price of their corn; if you send plague then the misers and those who survive will feather their nests, for they will inherit everything. If you are going to punish us at all, then you must destroy the whole world, root and branch.’
Jupiter replied, ‘You are talking like an ordinary mortal, as if you did not know that we gods are well able to devise a punishment that will strike down the evil and spare the good. I intend to awaken a German hero who will bring this about through the power of his sword. He will kill all the wicked and protect the righteous and raise them up.’
‘But a hero like that will need soldiers’, I said, ‘and where you have soldiers you have war, and where you have war the innocent suffer along with the guilty.’
‘Do you earthly gods think like earthly men?’ was Jupiter’s response. ‘You seem to understand nothing. I will send a hero who does not need soldiers and yet will reform the whole world. In the hour of his birth I will give him a well-made body, stronger than the one Hercules had, and endow him with more than enough prudence, wisdom and understanding; then Venus will give him such a beautiful face that he will outshine Narcissus, Adonis and even my Ganymede. In addition to all his virtues I will get her to bestow a particular elegance, grace and presence on him which will make him well liked by everyone he meets (with this in mind I will look on her more warmly than ever in the hour of his nativity). Mercury will grant him incomparably profound intelligence and the inconstant moon will help, not harm him by endowing him with incredible speed. Pallas will bring him up on Parnassus, and Vulcan will forge his weapons, especially a sword with which he will conquer the whole world and cut down all the ungodly without the help of a single soldier. He will not need any help. Every city will tremble at his presence and he will subdue any fortress, however impregnable, in fifteen minutes. Eventually the greatest potentates in the world will bow down before him and he will rule the land and the seas so excellently that both gods and men will rejoice in it.’
‘But how’, I said, ‘can all the ungodly be cut down without bloodshed, how can dominion over the whole world be achieved without a strong arm and extreme force? I confess, o Jupiter, that I understand less of these things than an ordinary mortal.’
‘That does not surprise me’, replied Jupiter, ‘since you do not know what extraordinary power my hero’s sword will have. Vulcan will forge it from the same material from which he makes my thunderbolts and my hero will only need to draw it and wave it once to cut off all the heads of a great army, even if they are a whole league away on the other side of a mountain, so that the poor devils will be lying there headless before they even know what is happening to them. When he begins his campaign and comes to a town or fortress he will do as Tamburlaine did and fly a white flag as a sign that he has come in peace and to further the general good. If the people come out and accept him, well and good; if not, then he will unsheathe his sword and by its power chop off the heads of all wizards and witches in the city and raise a red flag; if they still do not come out, he will kill all murderers, thieves, usurers, rogues, adulterers, whores and catamites in the same way and show a black flag; if all those left do not then immediately come out and humbly submit he will condemn the whole city as a stiff-necked and disobedient people that is to be wiped out; however, he will execute only those who kept the others from yielding earlier.
Thus he will go from town to town and give each the land around it to govern in peace, and from each town throughout Germany he will take two of the wisest and most learned men to form a parliament and will unite the towns for ever. He will abolish serfdom as well as all tolls, taxes, interest, rents and dues in the whole of Germany and order the land so that the people can forget forced labour, guard duty, contributions, levies, warfare and other burdens and will be happier than if they were living in the Elysian fields.
Then’, Jupiter went on, ‘I will often come with the whole assembly of the gods to visit the Germans and take my ease under their vines and fig-trees; I will set Mount Helicon in the middle of their land and establish the Muses on it again; I will bless Germany with greater abundance than Arabia Felix, Mesopotamia and the land round Damascus; I will renounce Greek and speak German alone. In a word, I will be so thoroughly German that I will grant them dominion over the whole world, as I did to the Romans before them.’
‘But, mighty Jupiter’, I said, ‘what will the lords and princes say if this future hero, contrary to the law, takes their land away from them and puts it under the jurisdiction of the towns? Will they not resist with force or at least make protestations to gods and men?’
‘The hero will no let that worry him’, replied Jupiter. ‘He will divide the great up into three: those who have lived wicked lives and set a bad example he will punish just as he will the commoners, since there is no earthly power can resist his sword; the rest he will give the choice of staying in the country or leaving. Those who love their fatherland and stay will live like all the other ordinary people, though the Germans’ way of life then will be much more agreeable and joyful than the life of a king at present. The Germans will be all like Fabricius, who refused to share Pyrrhus’s kingdom because he loved his country as well as honour and virtue. The third group, those who want to remain true lords and continue to rule, he will send beyond Hungary and Italy to Moldavia, Wallachia, Macedonia, Thrace and Greece, even across the Hellespont to Asia Minor. He will conquer these countries for them, make them kings and give them all the mercenaries from the whole of Germany to assist them.
Next he will take Constantinople in one day and all those Turks who refuse to obey and convert will find their heads under their backsides, after which he will reestablish the Roman Empire there. Then he will return to Germany and, together with his parliament – for which, as you will remember, he will choose two members from each German town whom he will call the leaders and fathers of his German Fatherland –, build a city in the middle of Germany which will be much bigger than Manoah in America and richer in gold than Jerusalem at the time of King Solomon. Its walls will be like the mountains of the Tyrol and its moat as broad as the sea between Spain and Africa. He will build a temple in it of diamonds, rubies, emeralds and sapphires and a treasury full of precious objects from all over the world that will be given to him by the kings of China and Persia, the great Mogul of India, the great Khan of the Tartars, Prester John from Africa and the Tsar in Moscow. The Emperor of Turkey would be even more generous if the hero had not taken his empire away from him and given it as a fief to the Roman Emperor.’
I asked this Jupiter what the Christian kings would do in all this. He replied, ‘Those of England, Sweden and Denmark, being of German blood and descent, will receive their crowns, kingdoms and colonies as fiefs of the German nation, as will those of Spain, France and Portugal because the old Germans once conquered and ruled their countries. Then there will be perpetual peace between all nations of the world, as there was in the time of Augustus Caesar.’
Tearaway, who was listening, almost offended our Jupiter and spoilt the whole game by saying, ‘Then Germany will be like the land of Cockaigne where it rains nothing but grapes and twopenny pies come up overnight like mushrooms. I’ll have to eat like a horse and drink like a fish.’
‘That you will if you continue to mock my divine majesty’, Jupiter replied, ‘for I will curse you with insatiable hunger, as Diana did to Erysichthon.’ To me, however, he said, ‘I thought I was among wood spirits, but I see there is a Momus or Zoilus here. Should I reveal decrees of the gods to such a carping traitor, cast fine pearls before such swine? I might as well shit on his back to make him a fine linen shirt.’
This was a strangely foul-mouthed god, I thought, mixing lofty sentiments with such squishy matter. However, I could see that he did not like being laughed at, so I contained my laughter as best I could and said, ‘Most gracious Jove, you will surely not let a coarse wood-demon stop you telling your second Ganymede what is to happen next in Germany?’
‘Certainly not’, he answered, ‘but first tell this mocker, this Theon, he better curb his sharp tongue or I will turn him into a stone, as Mercury did to Battus when he let his tongue run away with him. But come now, admit it, you are my very own Ganymede, aren’t you? Did that jealous wife of mine, Juno, banish you from Olympus in my absence?’
I promised to tell him everything that had happened after he had answered my question, so he continued, ‘My dear Ganymede – don’t deny it, I can see it’s you – the next thing to happen in Germany is that making gold will become as straightforward and as common as making pots so that every stable-boy will carry the philosopher’s stone around with him.’
‘But how will Germany enjoy such long-lasting peace with such great differences in religion?’ I asked. ‘Will not the various priests incite their followers to start another war for their faith?’