Simplicissimus (46 page)
Compared with other parts of Germany the country seemed as strange as if I had been in Brazil or China. I saw people living and working in peace, the byres were full of cattle, the farmyards swarming with chickens, geese and ducks, the roads safe for travellers and the inns crowded with people enjoying themselves. No one went in fear of enemy attack, of being plundered, of losing goods or chattels, life or limb; everyone lived secure under his own vine or fig tree. In comparison with other German states they lived lives of such pleasure and delight that, even though it seemed fairly rough, the country struck me as an earthly paradise, so that I was forever staring about me. Herzbruder, on the other hand, was saying his rosary and kept telling me off. He thought I should be praying all the time like him, but I just couldn’t get myself into the habit.
In Zurich he found out that I was cheating and told me what he thought of me in no uncertain terms. We had spent the previous night in Schaffhausen, and my feet were hurting so much from the peas that I couldn’t bear the thought of walking on them again the next day. So I had them cooked before I put them back in my boots and did the stage to Zurich without any difficulty, while he was in a terrible state. ‘Brother’, he said, ‘you must have found great favour with God if you can get on like this despite the peas in your boots.’
‘I have to confess, Herzbruder’, I said, ‘that I cooked them, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to walk so far.’
‘Lord preserve us’, he replied. ‘what have you done? It would have been better if you had left them out of your boots altogether if all you can do is make a mockery of the penance. I fear God might punish both of us for this. Simplicius, you are like a brother to me, and I hope you won’t take it amiss if I tell you in plain German what I feel. I am very much afraid that if you do not change your attitude towards God you will put your immortal soul in great danger. There’s no one I love more, I assure you, but I must confess that if you do not mend your ways my conscience will not allow that love to continue.’ The shock of this threat struck me dumb, and it was some time before I could speak again. Then I openly confessed that I had not put the peas in my boots out of piety but simply to persuade him to let me accompany him.
‘Oh Simplicius’, he said, ‘peas or no peas, I can see you have strayed far from the path of salvation. May God lead you into better ways, otherwise our friendship is at an end.’
From then on I followed sadly in his wake, like a man being led to the gallows. My conscience began to torment me and as various thoughts went through my mind I saw all the misdeeds I had committed. I bewailed the loss of the innocence I had when I first came out of the forest and which I had so squandered in the world. And what made me even more wretched was the fact that Herzbruder hardly talked to me any more but just looked at me and sighed, as if he knew I was already among the damned and was lamenting my fate.
Still in the same frame of mind, we reached Einsiedeln and went straight to the church where a priest was exorcising a man possessed by an evil spirit. This being something unusual I had never seen before, I let Herzbruder kneel down and pray as long as he liked while I went to enjoy the spectacle. Hardly had I approached, however, than the spirit inside the poor man cried out, ‘Oho, an ill wind’s blown you here, has it? I expected to see you with Oliver when I got back to our home in hell. And now you turn up here, you adulterous, murderous whoremonger. You don’t imagine you’re going to escape us, do you? Hey, you priests, have nothing to do with him. He’s a hypocrite and a worse liar than me. He’s just laughing at you and making fun of God and religion.’
The exorcist commanded the spirit to be silent since, being an arch-liar, no one believed him anyway. ‘Well’, it answered, ‘you just ask this runaway monk’s companion. He’ll tell you this atheist had no compunction about boiling the peas he’d vowed to walk on all the way here.’
Hearing all this and seeing everyone staring at me, I didn’t know whether I was on my head or my heels. The priest rebuked the spirit and compelled it to be silent, but he could not drive it out that day. When Herzbruder came over I was so terrified I looked more like a corpse than a living man and so torn between hope and fear I didn’t know which way to turn. He gave me what comfort he could and assured the bystanders, especially the priests, that I had never been a monk at any time in my life. I had been a soldier, he said, and as such might well have done more evil than good, but the devil was a liar and had made out the matter of the peas to be much worse than it actually was. I, however, was so bewildered I felt I was suffering the torments of hell already and the good fathers had their hands full reassuring me. They exhorted me to go to confession and take communion, but once again the spirit inside the possessed man started shouting and saying, ‘Oh yes, a fine confession you’ll get out of him. He doesn’t even know what confession is! What are you going to do with him? He’s one of those heretics, he belongs to us. His parents were more Anabaptists than Lutherans’, and more in the same vein.
Once again the exorcist commanded the spirit to be silent, saying, ‘In that case it will annoy you all the more if the poor lost sheep is snatched from your jaws and gathered into the Christian fold.’ At that the spirit set up such a dreadful roaring it was terrible to hear, but I actually found comfort in its ghastly howl. The fiend would not have reacted in that way if I was excluded from God’s grace.
I was not at all prepared for confession, in fact it had never once occurred to me to confess my sins, I had always shrunk back from it, like the devil from the Cross, but in that moment I felt such remorse at my sins and such a strong desire to do penance and lead a better life that I asked to see a confessor straight away. Herzbruder was delighted at this sudden conversion and amendment since from his own observation he was well aware that up to that point I had not belonged to any religion. Accordingly I publicly professed myself a Catholic, went to confession and, having received absolution, took communion, at which I felt so light at heart it is beyond description. The strangest thing of all was that from then on the evil spirit inside the man left me in peace, even though before my confession and absolution it had accused me of various misdeeds I had committed, as if its sole purpose had been to record my sins. However, those who heard it did not believe it. They assumed it was lying, especially since my pilgrim’s outfit suggested I was quite different.
We spent two whole weeks in that abode of grace and I praised God for my conversion and contemplated the miracles that had occurred there. All this made me fairly pious and devout, but the transformation did not last as long as it might have. Since I had converted not out of love of God but from fear of damnation, as I gradually forgot the terror the Evil One had inspired in me, I became lukewarm and lethargic. After we had spent enough time viewing the relics of the saints, the vestments and other treasures of the monastery, we went to Baden in the Aargau, where we intended to spend the winter.
There I rented a pleasant sitting-room and bedroom for us which were generally used by the summer visitors who came to take the waters. (Actually, these were mostly rich Swiss who came more to enjoy themselves and show off their wealth than to take the waters for some ailment.) I agreed terms for full board, and when Herzbruder saw the magnificent arrangements I made he cautioned me to be thrifty, reminding me of the long, hard winter we had to face, not believing my money would last all that time. I would need my hoard in the spring, he said, when we set out again. Money was soon spent if you kept taking and never adding to it, he warned, it would vanish like smoke into thin air, never to return, and so on and so forth. After this well-meant admonition I could no longer conceal from him how brimful my moneybags were. And I meant us to have a good time with it, I said. It had been acquired from such an unholy source I could not think of buying a farm with it, the land would be cursed. Even if I hadn’t been determined to use it to support my dearest friend, it was right and proper that he, Herzbruder, should be compensated from Oliver’s money to make up for the disgrace Oliver had caused him at Magdeburg, I argued. Now that I knew I was safe, I removed my two gold-filled vests, cut out the doubloons and pistoles and told Herzbruder the money was at his disposal, to invest or spend as he thought would be in our best interest.
Seeing how much I trusted him and realising that without him I could have used the large sum of money to set myself up as a gentleman, he said, ‘Brother, since I have known you, you have done nothing but give me proofs of your love and constancy. Tell me, how do you think I am ever going to repay you. It’s not just the money – that I might be able to pay back in time – but your love and constancy and above all the great trust you show me, which is beyond all price. In a word, brother, your nobility of soul makes me your slave and I can only marvel at what you have done for me, not hope to repay it. O honest Simplicius it never occurs to you, even in these godless times when the world is full of deceit, that poor, penniless Herzbruder might run off with such a substantial sum of money and leave you destitute! I tell you, my brother, this demonstration of true friendship binds me to you more than if a rich man had given me thousands. But I have just one request: remain master of your own money, keep it and spend it as you see fit. For me it is enough that you are my friend.’
‘What kind of talk is this, sir?’ I replied. ‘You assure me you are under an obligation to me and yet you refuse to take steps to see to it that I do not throw our money away, which would be to both our detriment.’
We went on talking in this rather fatuous manner for some time, since we were both drunk on the other’s affection, and the ultimate outcome was that Herzbruder became my steward and my treasurer, my servant and my master. We had time to spare for each other, which we had not had before, and he told me his experiences and how he had come to the notice of Count Götz and been promoted, and I told him everything that had happened to me since his father’s death. When he heard I had a young wife in Lippstadt he reproached me for having accompanied him to Switzerland instead of going back to her, as both decency and duty demanded. I excused myself by saying I had not had the heart to leave my dearest friend in misery, at which he persuaded me to write to her to let her know my situation, promising I would join her at the earliest possible opportunity. In my letter I said how sorry I was that I had been away from her for so long. My fervent desire to be with her, I wrote, had been thwarted by all kinds of adverse circumstances.
In the meantime my companion had learnt that things were looking up for Count Götz. Report had it that he would vindicate himself in his trial before the Emperor, be released and even put back in command of the army. Herzbruder therefore sent word to him in Vienna to tell him of his own situation. He also wrote to the Bavarian army about his effects, which were still there, and started to feel more optimistic about the future. We agreed therefore to separate when spring came, he going to join the Count, I returning to my wife in Lippstadt. So that we did not spend the winter in complete idleness, we had an engineer teach us how to design more fortifications than the kings of France and Spain put together could build. I also came into contact with several alchemists who, sniffing my money, offered to show me how to make gold, if I would only finance them. I believe they might even have persuaded me if Herzbruder had not sent them packing, telling them that anyone who had really mastered the art would not have to go round begging others for money.
Although Herzbruder received a cordial and encouraging reply from the Count in Vienna, not a single word came to me from Lippstadt, even though I had sent copies by separate post. That annoyed me, and when spring came I did not set off for Westphalia but got Herzbruder to agree to take me with him to Vienna, to share in the good fortune he hoped to find there. So with my money we kitted ourselves out with clothing, horses, servants and arms like two gentlemen and went via Constance to Ulm, where we took a boat on the Danube and reached Vienna in a week. All the way I had eyes for nothing but the women who answered the calls from the boats with literal rather than verbal bare-arsed cheek.
It is strange how everything is constantly changing in this world. People say,
If you knew everything you’d soon be rich
, but I say if you knew how to seize the opportunity you’d soon be great and powerful. There’s many a skinflint who would soon get rich because he’d use the advantage of foreknowledge to fleece his fellow men and bleed them white, but that wouldn’t make him great. In fact he would stand lower in people’s estimation than when he was poor. A man, however, who can make himself great and powerful will find that riches come to him automatically. After we had been in Vienna for a week or so Lady Luck, who hands out wealth and power, gave me ample opportunity to rise in the world, but I didn’t take it. Why? I believe the simple reason was that my destiny had decided otherwise, namely that I should follow the road along which my stupidity took me. Count von der Wahl, under whose command I had made my reputation in Westphalia, also happened to be in Vienna when we arrived there. During a banquet, at which various members of the Imperial War Council were present along with Count Götz, the conversation came round to famous soldiers and their deeds, at which Count von der Wahl remembered the Huntsman of Soest and recounted a few of his exploits. He spoke so well of him that some expressed their surprise at how young he was, while others regretted that the crafty Hessian colonel, Saint Andrée, had hobbled him with an agreement either to lay down his arms or join the Swedish army, for von der Wahl had received news of the way the colonel had dealt with me in Lippstadt.