XXIX
How a Notably Pious Soldier Fared in Paradise, and How the Huntsman Filled His Place
Now unless our hostess had been content to have herself and her whole house possessed by my army, ’twas certain she must be rid of them. And that she did, short and sharp, for she put my rags into the oven and burned them out as clean as an old tobacco-pipe, so that I lived again as ’twere in a rose-garden freed from my vermin: yea, and none can believe how good it was for me to be free from that torment wherein I had sat for months as in an ant’s nest. But in recompense for that I had a new plague to encounter: namely, that my new master was one of those strange soldiers that do think to get to heaven: he was contented with his pay and never harmed a child. His whole fortune consisted in what he could earn by standing sentry and what he could save from his weekly pay; and that, poor as it was, he valued above all the pearls of the Orient: each sixpence he got he sewed into his breeches, and that he might have more of such sixpences I and his horse must starve: I must break my teeth upon dry Pumpernickel, and nourish myself with water, or at best with small beer, and that was a poor affair for me—inasmuch as my throat was raw from the dry black bread and my whole body wasted away. If I would eat I must needs steal, and even that with such secrecy that my master could by no manner of means be brought to book. As for him, gallows and torture, headsmen and their helpers—yea, and surgeons too—were but superfluous. Sutlers and hawkers too must soon have beat a retreat from him: for his thoughts were far from eating and drinking, gaming and quarrelling: but when he was ordered out for a convoy or an expedition of any sort where pay was, there he would loiter and dawdle away his time. Yea, I believe truly if this good old dragoon had not possessed these soldierly virtues of loitering, he would never have got me: for in that case he would have followed my lieutenant-colonel at the double. I could count on no cast clothes from him: for he himself went in such rags as did beforetime my hermit in the woods. His whole harness and saddle were scarce worth three-halfpence, and his horse so staggering for hunger that neither Swede nor Hessian needed to fear his attack.
All these fair qualities did move his captain to send him to Paradise—which was a monastery so called—on protection-duty: not indeed as if he were of much avail for that purpose, but that he might grow fat and buy himself a new nag: and most of all because the nuns had asked for a pious and conscientious and peaceable fellow for their guard. And so he rode thither and I behind him: for he had but one horse: and “Zounds;” says he, “Simbrecht; (for he could never frame to pronounce my name aright) when we come to Paradise we will take our fill.” And I answered him: “Yes,” said I, “the name is a good omen: God grant it that the place be like its name!” “Yes, yes,” says he, for he understood me not, “if we can get two ohms of the good Westphalian beer every day we shall not fare ill. Look to thyself: for I will now have a fine new cloak made, and thou canst have the old one: ’twill make a brave new coat for thee.”
Well might he call it the old one: for I believe it could well remember the Battle of Pavia, so weather-beaten and shabby was it: and with the giving of it he did me but little kindness.
Paradise we found as we would have it and still better: in place of angels we found fair maidens, who so entertained us with food and drink that presently I came again to my former fatness: the strongest beer we had, the best Westphalian hams and smoked sausages and savoury and delicate meat, boiled in salt water and eaten cold. There too I learned to spread black bread a finger thick with salt butter, and put cheese on that so that it might slip down better: and when I could have a knuckle of mutton garnished with garlic and a good tankard of beer beside it, then would I refresh body and soul and forget all my past sufferings. In a word, this Paradise pleased me as much as if it had been the true Paradise: no other care had I except that I knew ’twould not always last, and I must fare forth again in my rags.
But even as misfortune ever came to me in abundance when it once began to pursue me, so now it seemed to me that good fortune would run it hard: for when my master would send me to Soest to fetch his baggage thence, I found on the road a pack, and in the same some ells of scarlet cloth cut for a cloak, and red silk also for the lining. That I took with me, and at Soest I exchanged it with a clothier for common green woollen cloth fit for a coat and trappings, with the condition he should make such a coat and provide me also with a new hat: and inasmuch as I grievously needed also a new pair of shoes and a shirt, I gave the huckster the silver buttons and the lace that belonged to the cloak, for which he procured for me all that I wanted, and turned me out brand-new. So I returned to Paradise to my master, who was mightily incensed that I had not brought my findings to him: yea, he talked of trouncings, and for a trifle, an he had not been shamed and had the coat fitted him, would have stript it off me for to wear it himself. But to my thinking I had done a good piece of trading.
But now must the miserly fellow be ashamed that his lad went better clothed than he: therefore he rides to Soest, borrows money from his captain and equips himself in the finest style, with the promise to repay all out of his weekly protection-pay: and that he carefully did. He had indeed himself means to pay that and more also, but was too sly to touch his stores: for had he done that his malingering was at an end, wherein he hoped to abide softly that winter through, and some other naked fellow had been put in his place: but now the captain must perforce leave him where he lay, or he would not recover his money he had lent. Thenceforward we lived the laziest life in the world, wherein skittles was our chief exercise: when I had groomed my dragoon’s horse, fed and given him to drink, then I played the gentleman and went a-walking.
The convent was safeguarded also by our opponents the Hessians with a musketeer from Lippstadt: the same was by trade a furrier, and for that reason not only a master-singer but also a first-rate fencer, and lest he should forget his art he daily exercised himself with me in all weapons, in which I became so expert that I was not afraid to challenge him whenever he would. My old dragoon, in place of fencing with him, would play at skittles, and that for no other wager but who should drink most beer at dinner: and so whoever lost the convent paid.
This convent had its own game-preserves and therefore its own huntsman, and inasmuch as I also was clad in green I joined myself to him, and from him in that autumn and winter I learned all his arts, and especially all that concerns catching of small game. For that cause, and because also the name Simplicissimus was somewhat uncommon and for the common folk easily forgotten or hard to pronounce, everyone called me the “little huntsman”: and meanwhile I learned to know every way and path, and that knowledge I made good use of thereafter. But when by reason of ill weather I could not take my walks abroad in the wood, then I read all manner of books which the bailiff of the convent lent me. And so soon as the good nuns knew that, besides my good voice, I could also play a little on the lute and the harpsichord, then did they give more heed to me, and because there was added to these qualities a prettily proportioned body and a handsome face enough, therefore they deemed all my manners and customs, my doings and my ways, to be the ways of nobility: and so became I all unexpectedly a much-loved gentleman, of whom one could but wonder that he should serve so scurvy a dragoon.
But when I had spent the winter in the midst of such pleasures, my master was discharged: which vexed him so much (by reason of the good living he was to lose) that he fell sick, and inasmuch as that was aggravated by a violent fever (and likewise the old wounds that he had got in the wars in his lifetime helped the mischief), he had but short shrift, for in three weeks I had somewhat to bury, but this epitaph I wrote for him:
“Old Miserly lies here, a soldier brave and good,
Who all his lifetime through shed ne’er a drop of blood.”
By right and custom the captain could take and inherit the man’s horse and musket and the general all else that he left: but since I was a lively, well-set-up lad, and gave hopes that in time I should not fear any man, it was offered me to take all, if only I would take the place of my dead master. And that I undertook the more readily because I knew my master had left a pretty number of ducats sewn into his old breeches, which he had raked together in his lifetime: and when in the process of things I must give in my name—namely, Simplicius Simplicissimus—and the muster-clerk (which was named Cyriack) could not write it down aright, says he, “There is no devil in hell with such a name.” Thereon I asked him quickly, “Was there one there named Cyriack?” and clever as he thought himself, that he would not answer: and that pleased my captain so that from thenceforward he thought well of me.