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It was for the same reason that I
determined to marry Amalia, for a man is not a complete Mensch until
he is the father of a family; to be which is a condition of his
existence, and therefore a duty of his education. Amalia must wait;
she is out of the reach of want, being, indeed, cook to the Frau
Prorectorinn Nasenbrumm, my worthy patron's lady. I have one or two
books with me, which no one is likely to take from me, and one in my
heart which is the best of all. If it shall please Heaven to finish
my existence here, before I can prosecute my studies further, what
cause have I to repine? I pray God I may not be mistaken, but I
think I have wronged no man, and committed no mortal sin. If I have,
I know where to look for forgiveness; and if I die, as I have said,
without knowing all that I would desire to learn, shall I not be in
a situation to learn EVERYTHING, and what can human soul ask for
more?
'Pardon me for putting so many _I_'s in my discourse,' said the
candidate, 'but when a man is talking of himself, 'tis the briefest
and simplest way of talking.'
In which, perhaps, though I hate egotism, I think my friend was
right. Although he acknowledged himself to be a mean-spirited
fellow, with no more ambition than to know the contents of a few
musty books, I think the man had some good in him; especially in the
resolution with which he bore his calamities. Many a gallant man of
the highest honour is often not proof against these, and has been
known to despair over a bad dinner, or to be cast down at a ragged-
elbowed coat. MY maxim is to bear all, to put up with water if you
cannot get Burgundy, and if you have no velvet to be content with
frieze. But Burgundy and velvet are the best, bien entendu, and the
man is a fool who will not seize the best when the scramble is open.
The heads of the sermon which my friend the theologian intended to
impart to me, were, however, never told; for, after our coming out
of the hospital, he was drafted into a regiment quartered as far as
possible from his native country, in Pomerania; while I was put into
the Bulow regiment, of which the ordinary headquarters were Berlin.
The Prussian regiments seldom change their garrisons as ours do, for
the fear of desertion is so great, that it becomes necessary to know
the face of every individual in the service; and, in time of peace,
men live and die in the same town. This does not add, as may be
imagined, to the amusements of the soldier's life. It is lest any
young gentleman like myself should take a fancy to a military
career, and fancy that of a private soldier a tolerable one, that I
am giving these, I hope, moral descriptions of what we poor fellows
in the ranks really suffered.
As soon as we recovered, we were dismissed from the nuns and the
hospital to the town prison of Fulda, where we were kept like slaves
and criminals, with artillerymen with lighted matches at the doors
of the courtyards and the huge black dormitory where some hundreds
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