Simplicissimus (35 page)

When I arrived in Cologne I went to see my Jupiter, who happened to be in his right mind just then. When I told him why I had come, he said straight away that he was afraid I was wasting my time. The merchant with whom I had deposited my goods had gone bankrupt and disappeared. The authorities had put my property under seal and summoned the merchant to appear before them, but people thought it was very doubtful whether he would return since he had taken with him the best of the things that could be easily carried. A lot of water would pass under the Rhine Bridge before the case was dealt with.

You can imagine how delighted I was at this news. The air was blue with my cursing and swearing, but that did nothing to get me my money back. I had only brought ten thalers with me for the journey and so could not afford to stay for the time the matter would take. Anyway, it was dangerous to stay that long. I was worried that, since I was now attached to an enemy garrison, I might be identified and suffer a worse fate than just losing my fortune. Still, to return to Lippstadt with nothing but a wasted journey to show for it did not seem a good idea either.

I finally decided to stay in Cologne until the case was dealt with and sent word to my wife to tell her the reason for the delay. Accordingly I went to see a lawyer, explained my position and asked for his advice and assistance, promising him a generous bonus on top of his fee if he managed to expedite matters. Since he hoped to make something out of me, he willingly took me on and also provided me with board and lodging. The next day we went together to the officials who dealt with bankruptcies, showed them the original of the merchant’s receipt and submitted a certified copy. Their reply, however, was that we would have to wait for the full hearing since not all the items in the inventory were there.

So I had to resign myself to another period of idleness, and I decided to use it to see what life was like in a great city. As I said, my landlord was a lawyer, but he also had around half a dozen lodgers and always kept eight horses in his stable, which he used to hire out to travellers. He had two servants, one German, one French, who looked after the horses and could drive a carriage or accompany a rider. With this threefold, or even three-and-a-half-fold business he doubtless not only made a living, but a huge profit for, since Jews were not allowed in the city, he could lend money at an exorbitant rate.

During the time I stayed with him I closely observed his disposition and by extending this to others I learnt how to recognise all kinds of diseases, which is the most important of a doctor’s skills; once a disease has been correctly identified, the patient, so people say, is half way on the road to recovery. Many whom I diagnosed as fatally ill were completely unaware of their sickness and thought to be healthy by others, even by their doctors. I found people whose ailment was anger; when they suffered an attack they contorted their faces like demons, roared like lions, scratched like cats, laid about themselves like bears, bit like dogs, indeed, they were worse than wild animals, since like madmen they threw anything they could lay their hands on. They say this disease comes from the gall, but I believe its origin lies in the arrogance of fools. If you hear an angry man raging, especially about some trifle, you can be sure he has more pride than wits. This illness causes untold misery, both to the person himself and to others; to the sufferer it eventually brings palsy, gout and an early (perhaps even eternal!) death. And although they suffer from a fatal disease, you cannot in all conscience call them patients since the thing they lack most of all is patience.

Others I saw who were sick with envy. People say of them, seeing them always so pale and wan, that they are eating their hearts out. I consider this sickness the most dangerous of all because it comes from the devil, even though its origin lies in good fortune – the good fortune of the sufferer’s enemies. Anyone who cures a man of this disease can almost boast he has brought a lost sheep back to the Christian fold, since it cannot infect true Christians because they abhor vice and sin.

I also consider addiction to gambling a disease, not just because the name implies that, but because those that suffer from it are completely obsessed by it. Its origin lies in idleness, not greed as some think; if you take away idleness the illness will disappear of its own accord. Likewise I came to the conclusion that over-indulgence in food and drink is a disease and that it comes from habit, not from an excess of wealth. Poverty is a good medicine for it, though not a guaranteed cure: I have seen beggars carousing and rich misers starving themselves. This ailment generally comes with its own remedy and that is called want – if not of money, then of health, so that sufferers generally recover on their own when, either through poverty or some other disease, they can no longer stuff their bodies.

Arrogance I considered a kind of mental illness based on ignorance. If a man knows himself, knows where he comes from and where he is going, it is impossible for him to be such an arrogant fool. Whenever I see a peacock or a turkeycock strutting along, displaying its feathers and gobbling, I have to laugh at the excellent caricature of sufferers from this complaint these brute breasts provide. I have not been able to find any particular remedy for the disease, since without humility those who have it are no easier to cure than other madmen.

I also concluded that laughing is an illness. The Greek poet Philemon is said to have died from it and Democritus was infected with it to his dying day. Even now our women say they could laugh till they died. People maintain it has its origin in the liver but I believe it comes from an excess of foolishness, since to laugh a lot is not a sign of a sensible man. It is unnecessary to prescribe a remedy for it since it is not only a jolly illness, but some people find they are laughing on the other side of their faces sooner than they would like. Inquisitiveness, too, struck me as no less of a disease, and one that is well nigh congenital in the female sex. It looks like a mere trifle, but in fact it is very dangerous; we are all still paying for the curiosity of our first mother. For the moment I will say nothing of the others, such as sloth, vengefulness, jealousy, blasphemy, debauchery and other ailments and vices, but get back to what I originally intended to write about, my landlord. It is just that he was so completely possessed by greed that he started me off thinking about other similar failings.

He had, as I mentioned above, various business activities through which he scraped together money. He fed himself from his boarders’ food and not vice versa. What they provided could have furnished generous portions for himself and his household if the tightwad had only used it for that, but he held a lot back and kept us on Spartan rations. At first, since I did not have much money with me, I did not eat with the student boarders but with his children and servants. The helpings were tiny and my stomach, which had become accustomed to the hearty Westphalian diet, felt quite strange. We never saw a decent joint of meat on the table, only what the students had had a week before, which had been well gnawed and was now as old and grey as Methuselah. The landlady, who had to do all the cooking herself since he refused to pay for a maid, would make some sour black gravy to pour over it and spice it up with plenty of pepper. The bones were licked so clean you could have made chessmen out of them, but that did not mean he had no more use for them. They were kept in a special bin and when our skinflint had enough they were chopped up into small pieces and any remaining fat boiled off. Whether it was used to make soup or grease boots I couldn’t say.

Fast-days, of which there were more than enough, were religiously observed, our host being very conscientious about that, and we had to nibble at stinking kippers, salt cod and other dried and decaying fish. Cheapness was his sole criterion and he was quite prepared to go to the fishmarket himself and pick up what the fishmongers intended to throw away. Our bread was usually black and stale, our drink a thin, vinegary beer that tore my guts apart and yet had to pass for best barley wine. What is more, the German servant told me it was even worse in summer: the bread was mouldy and the meat full of maggots, the best was a few radishes at lunchtime and a handful of lettuce for supper. I asked him why he stayed with the old skinflint to which he replied that he was usually away on journeys and so depended more on the tips he got from travellers than on his penny-pinching master. You would be hard put to it to find a worse miser anywhere, he said, he didn’t even trust his wife and children to go down into the cellar, he begrudged them the drips from the wine-casks. What I had seen so far, he added, was nothing. If I stayed longer I would see that he would flay a donkey for a few coppers. Once he brought home six pounds of tripe or brawn and left it in the cellar. His children, overjoyed to find the window had been left open, tied a fork to a stick and fished the whole lot out, which they ate, half-cooked, as fast as they could. They claimed it was the cat had taken the tripe, but the old cheese-parer was having none of that. He caught the cat and weighed it to prove that, hair, claws and all, it wasn’t as heavy as his tripe had been.

Given this situation, I asked to eat with the students, whatever the cost, and not with the household. There was certainly more on the table, but I was not much better off for it since the dishes he gave us were all only half cooked. In that way the landlord could make double savings: he used less wood and we ate less. I believe he counted each mouthful we took and tore his hair whenever we made a good meal. His wine was well watered and not at all an aid to digestion. The cheese that appeared at the end of every meal was hard as stone, the Dutch butter so salty that no one could eat more than half an ounce at any one time and the fruit had to be served up for weeks on end before it was ripe enough to eat. If any of us complained, he would give his wife such a loud telling off that we could all hear, but on the quiet he would order her to carry on as usual.

Once one of his clients gave him a hare as a present. I saw it hanging in the larder and assumed we would get some game to eat for once. However, the German servant told me it was not for us, his master’s agreement with the students stated explicitly that he did not need to provide such delicacies. I should go to the Old Market that afternoon, he said, and see if it wasn’t for sale there. So I cut a piece out of the hare’s ear and while we were at lunch, our host being absent, I told the others the old skinflint had a hare to sell and that I intended to cheat him out of it, if any of them wanted to come along we would have some fun and get the hare into the bargain. They all agreed; they had long wanted to play a trick on him, if they could get away with it.

The servant had told me our landlord used to stand where he could see how much the stallholder who was selling his goods got for them, to make sure he didn’t cheat him out of a few coppers, so that afternoon we went there and saw him talking to some of the town notables. A man I had engaged to play the part now went up to the stallholder and said, ‘Look here, friend, that’s my hare there, it’s been stolen and I’m taking it back. Someone snatched it from out of my window last night. If you’re not willing to hand it over now I’ll go before any judge you like, but you risk having to pay the costs.’

The stallholder replied that he would see what had to be done, that respectable gentleman standing over there had given him the hare to sell and he certainly wouldn’t have stolen it. As the two of them argued, a crowd gathered round. Our skinflint noticed this and immediately realised which way the wind was blowing. He signalled to the stallholder to let the hare go to avoid any scandal because he had so many boarders. But the man I had engaged showed the piece from the hare’s ear to all those standing round and measured it up against the hole so that they all agreed the hare was his. Now I came along with the students, as if we just happened to be passing, went up to the man with the hare and started haggling with him. After the sale was completed, I handed the hare to our landlord and asked him to take it home and prepare it for our dinner. To the man I had engaged I gave the price not of the hare, but of two pints of beer. So our skinflint was forced to give us the hare after all and couldn’t make any objections, which gave us all a good laugh. If I had stayed in his house much longer I would have played a lot of tricks like that on him.

If you’re too sharp you’ll cut your own finger, if you play with fire too often you’ll get burnt. The prank I played on my landlord with the hare was not enough for me, I was determined to punish him for his parsimony even more. I taught the boarders to water the salty butter to draw out the excess salt and to grate the hard cheese like Parmesan then moisten it with wine, both of which cut the skinflint to the quick. My tricks during mealtimes made my companions forget the water in the wine and I made up a song in which I compared a miser to a pig which is no use to anyone until it lies dead on the butcher’s slab. That was not at all why he had brought me into his house, and the consequence was that he got his own back through the following subterfuge.

Two young nobles among the students received letters of credit from their parents with which they were to go to France to learn the language. The German groom happened to be away and the landlord could not trust the French one with the horses in France, or so he said, because he did not know him well enough yet and was worried he might forget to come back and he would lose his horses. Therefore, since my case was not due to come up for four weeks, he asked me whether I would do him the great favour of accompanying the two noblemen to Paris with his horses. He assured me that if I gave him full power of attorney he would see to my business as faithfully as if I were there myself. The two young gentlemen added their voices to his request and my own fancy to see France chimed in as well, since this would give me the opportunity of doing it with all expenses paid when the alternative was to spend four weeks kicking my heels and consuming my own resources into the bargain.