XVII
How Simplicissimus Returned from the Middle of the Earth, and of His Strange Fancies, His Aircastles, His Calculations; and How He Reckoned Without His Host
Meanwhile the time drew near that I should return home; therefore the king bade me declare my wishes, whereby I understood he was minded to do me a favour. So I said, no greater kindness could be shown me than to cause a real medicinal spring to rise on my farm. “And is that all?” answered the king, “I had thought thou wouldst have taken with thee some of these great emeralds from the American Sea and have asked to bear them with thee back to earth. Now do I see that there is no greed among you Christians.” Therewith he handed to me a stone of strange and glittering colours, and said, “Put this in thy pouch, and wheresoever thou layest in on the ground, there will it begin to seek the Centre of the Earth again, and to pass through the most fitting mineralia, till it come back to us, and for our part we will send thee a noble mineral spring, that shall work thee such good and profit as thou hast deserved of us by thy declaration of the truth.” So thereupon the prince of the Mummelsee took me again under his charge, and passed with me through the road and the lake by which we had come. And this way back seemed to me far longer than the way thither, so that I reckoned it at three thousand five hundred German-Swiss miles well measured; but doubtless the cause that the time seemed so long to me was that I had no speech of my escort, save that I learned from them they were from three to five hundred years old and lived all this time without the least disease.
For the rest, I was in fancy so rich with my spring that all my wits and all my thoughts were busied with this, to wit, where I should plant it and how turn it to profit. And first I had my plans for the fine buildings that I must set up that the bathing-guests might be properly accommodated, and I for my part might gain great hire for lodgings. Then I devised already by what bribes I could persuade the doctors to prefer my new miraculous spa to all the others, yea, even to that of Schwalbach, and so procure for me a crowd of rich patients: in my fantasy I even levelled whole mountains lest they that came and went should find the way wearisome to travel: already I hired sharp-witted drawers, sparing cooks, careful chambermaids, watchful grooms, spruce intendants of the baths and springs, and already I thought of a place where in the midst of the wild mountains by my farm I might plant a fine level pleasure-garden, and there rear all manner of rare plants, that the bathing-guests and their wives that came from foreign parts might walk therein, where the sick might be cheered and the sound might be amused and exercised with all manner of sports and pastimes. Then must the doctors, for a reward, write me a noble treatise on my spring and set down on paper its healing qualities; and this I would have printed with a fine plate wherein my farm should be depicted and a ground plan thereof given; by reading which any absent patient might at once believe and hope himself in health again. Then would I have all my children fetched from Lippstadt, to have them taught all that was needful to know of my new watering-place; for ’twas my intent to scarify my guests’ purses well though not their backs. With such rich fancies and overweening castles in the air I came again into the upper world, for this oft-mentioned prince brought me again to land from his Mummelsee with dry clothes; and there I must forthwith cast from me the talisman that he had at first given me when he fetched me away; else had I either been choked in the air or must have plunged my head under the water again, such was the effect of the said stone. Which being done, and he having taken it to him again, we commended each other to the protection of the most High, as men that should never meet again; so he with his people dived under and sank into his depths; but I with my stone which the king had given me went thence as full of joy as if I had fetched the golden fleece home from Colchis.
But alas! my joy, of which I vainly hoped for the everlasting continuance, endured not long, for hardly was I gone from that lake of wonders when I began to go astray in that monstrous wood, for I had not marked from what direction my dad had brought me to the lake. Yet I went some way on before I was aware of my mistake, ever making calculations how I could plant that noble spring on my farm, and build round it, and earn for myself a peaceful revenue as proprietor thereof. In this way I unawares strayed further and further from the place whither I desired to come and, worst of all, I found it not out till the sun was sinking and I was helpless. For there I stood in the midst of a wilderness like Simple Simon, without food or arms, of which I might well have need during the night that was coming on. Yet I found comfort in my stone that I had brought with me from the very bowels of the earth. “Patience, patience!” said I to myself: “this will again repay thee for all sufferings undergone. All good things take time, and fine rewards be not won without great toil and labour: else would every fool need but to wipe his beard to get possession at will of even such a noble spring as thou hast in thy poke.”
And having spoken thus I got with my new resolve new strength, so that I went forward with a bolder gait than heretofore, although night now overtook me. The full moon indeed shone on me brightly, but the tall fir-trees kept the light from me more than the deep sea had done that very day; yet I made my way on, till about midnight I was ware of a fire afar off, to which I straightway walked, and saw from a distance that there were certain woodmen about it, resin-gatherers; and though such folk be not at all times to be trusted yet my necessity compelled me and my own courage urged me on to speak to them. So I came quietly behind them and said, “Good night or good day or good morrow or good even, gentlemen: for tell me what hour it is that I may know how to greet ye.” With that the whole six stood or sat there all a-tremble with fear and knew not what to answer me. For I, being of great stature and just at that time, by reason of mourning for my late wife, being in black raiment; and in especial having a terrible cudgel in mine hand, on which I leaned like a wild man of the woods, my figure seemed to them dreadful. “How,” says I, “will none answer me?” Yet they stayed yet a good while in amazement, till at last one came to himself well enough to ask, “Who be the gentleman?” By that I heard they must be of the Swabian nation; which men esteem as simple-minded yet with little cause: so I said I was a travelling scholar, but newly come from the Venusberg, where I had learned a heap of wondrous arts. “Oho,” quoth the eldest woodman, “Praise God; for now do I believe that I shall live to see peace again, because the wandering scholars are on their travels anew!”