Simplicissimus (50 page)

There I lay down in the shade on the green grass. Now, however, I ignored the twittering of the nightingales and pondered on the changes that I had been through since then. It had all started in this very place when I had been transformed from a free man into a slave of love; then I had been changed from an officer into a farmer, from a rich farmer into a poor nobleman, from a Simplicius into a Melchior, from a widower into a married man, from a husband into a cuckold and from a cuckold back into a widower. Also I had gone from being a peasant’s son to the son of a distinguished soldier and back to being my Da’s son again. I also reflected on how my fate had robbed me of Herzbruder and replaced him with an old married couple. I thought of my father’s God-fearing life and death, my mother’s piteous demise, and all the vicissitudes I had been through in my short life, and I could not hold back my tears.

I was going over how much money I had possessed and squandered, and starting to bemoan the fact when two devotees of Bacchus, who had been lamed by the gout and therefore needed to bathe and take the waters, sat down close to where I was, as it was a pleasant spot. Thinking they were alone, each told the other his troubles. One said, ‘My doctor sent me here either because he despaired of my health or, along with other patients, to repay the innkeeper for the keg of butter he sent him recently. I wish either that I had never seen him or that he had prescribed the spa straight away; in the one case I would have more money, in the other I would be in better health than now, for the waters are doing me good.’

‘Oh’, the other replied, ‘I thank God that He did not give me more money than I have. My doctor would certainly not have advised the spa if he had thought I had more. I would have had to share it with him and his apothecaries, who grease his palm every year, even if it was the death of me. Those money-grubbers never advise people like us to come to such a health-giving place as this unless they think we are beyond help or that there’s nothing more to be squeezed out of us. To tell the truth, any man of means who gets involved with them is just paying them to keep him ill.’

These two had a lot more abuse to pour on doctors, but I think I had better not repeat it in case the medical profession take it amiss and at some future point give me a laxative that will purge the soul out of my body. I simply record it because I derived such comfort from the way the second man thanked God for not giving him more money that I immediately dismissed all the bleak thoughts I had about money from my mind. I made a resolution not to seek honour or money or anything else the world loves, but to give myself up to contemplation and lead a God-fearing life. In particular I determined to repent my lack of contrition and try to emulate my father in ascending the ladder of virtue.

My fancy to see the Mummelsee grew stronger when my godfather told me he had been there himself and knew the way. But when he heard I wanted to go there as well he said, ‘And what will you gain from it when you’ve got there? All you’ll see is a pond like other ponds, my son, in the middle of a large forest. Once you’ve scratched this itch all you’ll be left with is regret, weary legs (you can hardly get there on horseback) and a long journey back. No one would have got me to go there if I hadn’t had to flee when Doctor Daniel (he meant the Duc d’Enghien) and his troops were marching through the country to Philippsburg.’ However his attempt at dissuasion did nothing to dampen my curiosity and I hired a man to guide me. Seeing I was serious, and given that, the oats having been sown, there was no hoeing or reaping to be done on the farm, he said he would come with me and show me the way. He was so fond of me he was unwilling to let me out of his sight, and because the local people thought I was his real son he liked to show off with me, treating me just as a poor, ordinary man would treat a son who had become a person of substance without any help or support from his father.

So we walked together up hill and down dale, and reached the Mummelsee in less than six hours, for my godfather was still as strong a walker as a young man. When we got there, hungry and thirsty from the long journey and the climb up the mountain to the lake, we first of all ate the food and drink we had brought with us. Once we had refreshed ourselves, I looked round the lake and immediately found some rough-hewn tree-trunks, which my Da and I assumed were the remains of the Duke of Württemberg’s raft. As it was rather difficult to walk round the lake to measure it in paces and feet, I worked out its dimensions by means of geometry and drew a scale map of it in my notebook. Once I had done that, and seeing the sky was clear, the air mild and still, I decided to see if there was any truth in the story that a storm would arise if someone threw a stone into the lake. The claim that trout could not survive there I confirmed from the mineral taste of the water.

In order to carry out my experiment I went along the lake to the left, to the spot where the water, otherwise as clear as crystal, seems to be pitch black on account of its awesome depth and looks so horrifying the sight alone makes your flesh creep. There I started throwing in the biggest stones I could pick up. My godfather not only refused to help me, but warned me and begged me to stop. I, however, went on busily with my experiment, rolling any stones that were too big or heavy for me to lift, until I had about thirty in the lake. Then dark clouds started to cover the sky and terrible thunder came from them. My godfather, who was by the outlet on the other side of the lake tearing his hair at what I was doing, shouted to me to get away before we were caught in the rain and the dreadful storm or something worse happened. ‘I’m going to stay here until the end, father’, I replied, ‘even if it rains halberds.’

‘Oh’, replied my godfather, ‘you’re just like all those dare-devil lads who don’t care if they bring the whole world down about their ears.’

All the time I was listening to his scolding I did not take my eyes off the depths of the lake, expecting to see bubbles rise from the bottom, as happens when you throw stones into other deep water, stagnant or running. Nothing like that happened, but I saw some creatures, the shape of which reminded me of frogs, flitting around in the deepest part, shooting here and there the way stars from a rocket do in the air. They were approaching me, and the closer they came, the bigger they seemed to grow and more like human beings. My first response was amazement but then, when they were very near, I was seized with terror. ‘Oh’, I exclaimed in a combination of wonder and dread, ‘how great are the wondrous works of the Creator, even in the bowels of the earth or the watery depths!’ I was talking to myself, but I said it so loud my Da could hear me on the other side of the lake. Hardly had I finished than one of the sylphs appeared on the surface and said, ‘You say that even before you have seen anything of it. What would you say if you were in the centre of the earth and could see our dwelling-place, which has been disturbed by your idle curiosity?’

Meanwhile more of these water sprites had surfaced like diving ducks and were staring at me while they brought back the stones I had thrown in, which astounded me. The foremost among them, whose clothes glistened like silver and gold, threw me a shining stone, the size of a pigeon’s egg and as green and transparent as an emerald, with these words, ‘Take this jewel so that you will be able to tell people something of us and of the lake.’ Hardly had I picked it up and put it in my pocket than I felt I was being suffocated or drowned so that I couldn’t stand upright any more but rolled about like a ball of thread and eventually fell into the lake. As soon as I was in the water, however, I recovered, and the power of the stone allowed me to breathe water instead of air. I also found I could move round in the lake with little effort, just like the water sprites, and I went down into the depths with them. It reminded me of nothing so much as a flock of birds sweeping down to earth from the upper air.

My Da, seeing only part of this miracle, namely what happened above the surface of the water, including my sudden giddiness, scampered off home as if his hair was on fire. There he told everyone what had happened, especially how, in the middle of a thunderstorm, the water sprites had brought up the stones I had thrown into the lake, put them back where I had found them and then taken me back down with them. Some believed him, but most assumed it was a fabrication. Others imagined I had drowned myself in the lake (like Empedocles who threw himself into Mount Etna so that, not finding his body, people would assume he had been taken up to heaven) and told my father to spread these tales about me to immortalise my name. For some time, they said, it had been obvious from my melancholy mood I was getting pretty close to despair. Others would have liked to believe, if they hadn’t known how strong I was, that my adoptive father had murdered me himself. They saw him as a miserly old man who would like to get rid of me to have the farm for himself. In the spa and the surrounding countryside all the conversation and speculation turned round the Mummelsee, me, my journey there and my godfather.

At the end of the second book of his
Natural History,
Pliny writes of the mathematician Dionysiodorus that his friends found a letter in his grave saying that he had gone from his grave to the dead centre of the earth and had measured the distance at 42,000 stadia. The Prince of the Mummelsee, however, who accompanied me down from the surface, assured me that from the centre of the earth to the air was 4,150 miles, whether you went up to Germany or down to the Antipodes. These journeys, he told me, had to be done through lakes such as this one. There were as many as there were days in the year dotted around the world and they all came together at their king’s residence. This huge distance took us less than an hour so that we travelled at little less than the speed of the moon, if at all, and yet it was no effort so that not only did I not feel tired but could converse with the Prince as we glided gently down.

Once I had realised his intentions were friendly, I asked him why they were taking me on this long journey, which was both dangerous and unusual for any human being. It wasn’t far, he replied modestly, just an hour’s stroll, nor was it dangerous as long as I had the stone and stayed with him and his fellow sylphs. That I found it unusual was not surprising, however. He had brought me, he said, not only on the order of his king, who had something he wanted to talk to me about, but also so that I could observe the strange wonders of nature beneath the earth and in the deeps at which I had already marvelled on the surface where what I had seen was a mere shadow of the true riches of nature. I next asked him why the Creator in His goodness had made all these remarkable lakes, since as far as I could see they were no use to mankind, indeed were more likely to harm them.

‘You are quite right to ask about things you do not know or understand’, he replied. ‘There are three reasons for the creation of these lakes: firstly it is through them that all the seas, and especially the great ocean, are fixed to the earth, as if with nails; secondly we use these lakes – by means of something similar to your human science of hydraulics, with its pipes, tubes and cylinders – to send water from the depths of the oceans to all the springs on the earth’s surface (that is our task), so that they do not dry up, but feed the small and large streams, moisten the soil, water the plants and provide drink for humans and animals; and thirdly they exist so that we, creatures God has endowed with reason, can live here, go about our business and praise the Creator in His wondrous works. That is why we and these lakes were created and will endure until the day of judgment. If, however, as those last days approach we should for any reason neglect our task then the world will be destroyed by fire. However, this probably cannot happen before that time unless you lose the moon (‘as long as the moon endureth’, Psalm 72,7), Venus or Mars, the morning and evening stars, for all generations of fruits and animals must first pass away and all waters vanish before the earth ignites from the heat of the sun, is burnt to ashes and regenerates. But these are things reserved to God and not for us to know, though we may conjecture and your chemists burble on in their scientific fashion.’

Hearing him speak like this and quote the Bible, I asked him whether they were mortal creatures with hope of a future life after this world, or whether they were spirits who carried out their appointed tasks as long as the world endured. ‘We are not spirits’, he answered, ‘but mortals, endowed with rational souls which, however, die and vanish with our bodies. God is so wonderful in all His works that no created being can express them, but I will tell you about our kind in simple terms so that you can understand how we differ from God’s other creatures. The holy angels are spirits, fit to be the image of God, wise, free, chaste, bright, fair, clear, swift and immortal, created to praise, laud, honour and glorify Him in eternal joy; in this temporal world, however, their task is to serve the church of God on earth and carry out His holy ordinances, for which reason they are sometimes called nuncios. As many hundred thousand times a thousand million angels were created as divine wisdom saw fit, but after an unimaginably large number fell, due to pride in their own nobility, your first parents were created by God, endowed with reason and an immortal soul, and given bodies from which they can multiply until their number reaches that of the fallen angels. It was then that the world was created, along with all the other creatures, so that earthly man could live there until the human race was numerous enough to replace the fallen angels, praising God and using all other created things, over which God made him lord, to the glory of God and to satisfy the needs of his body. At that point the difference between man and the holy angels was that he was burdened with an earthly body and did not know good and evil, and therefore could not be as strong or as swift as the angels. On the other hand, he had nothing in common with the brute beasts. However after the Fall in the Garden of Eden made his body subject to death we see him as an intermediate between the holy angels and brute beasts. Just as, when freed from its body, the soul of an earthly man whose mind is fixed on heaven has all the good qualities of a holy angel, so his body, when the soul has left it, putrefies like that of any brute beast. Ourselves we see as an intermediate stage between you and all other creatures. Although we are endowed with a rational soul, this dies along with our bodies, just as the living spirits of the brute beasts vanish when they die. We have heard that the eternal Son of God, through whom we too were created, has set the human race aloft by taking on human form, satisfying the demands of divine justice, calming God’s anger and regaining salvation for you, which raises you far above us. But here am I talking about eternity, of which I know nothing because we are not capable of enjoying it. All I know about is this transient world where the Lord in His goodness has showered sufficient gifts on us, for example sound reason, enough understanding of God’s holy will as we need, healthy bodies, long life, knowledge, skill and understanding of all things in nature. And most important of all is that we are not subject to sin, therefore not to punishment or His anger, nor even to the least disease. I have gone into all this in such detail, bringing in the angels, humans and brute beasts, so that you can better understand me.’