Jochen and Gottlieb would have been glad to stop a little while at the
parsonage; but Krischan the coachman opposed it violently, saying it
would never do, it was pitch dark already; so the old Phantom labored
along, in the night and the mist, through the deep country roads. To
night and mist and a phantom, sleep is appropriate, and whoever finds
this four-leaved clover, has the prospect of all sorts of good fortune.
Sleep was not long absent. Jochen slept before they were fairly put of
Gurlitz, and if it had been daylight, one could have seen, from the way
Krischan dragged his whip, that he was beginning to doze, and though
Gottlieb did not sleep he was farther off, in his thoughts, than the
others; for he was dreaming of his Lining, and his parish, and his
election sermon, and his entrance sermon. And when they came to the
place where Krischan had made his intelligent remark, as they were
going, and as the influences of sleep and darkness combined with its
dangers, and Gottlieb had come in his dream to the last election vote,
which gave the decision in his favor, the confounded old Phantom began
to totter, the fore-wheel was up, high and dry, on the shore, and the
hind-wheel, over which Gottlieb sat, fell into a deep hole; so, two
steps further, and splash! the whole company lay in the ditch.
I see, from my window, a great many farmers of the Grand Duke's lands
getting down from their carriages, at my Frau Neighbor's, the landlady
Frau Lurenz, at the "Prince's Arms," but I never in my life saw any one
get down so quickly as Jochen; he shot out, in a great curve, over
Gottlieb, who was lying beneath him, directly, in the soft mud, and
Krischan, old, honest, faithful soul, who could not think of deserting
his master in such a crisis, also shot head-foremost from his seat, and
lay at his master's side.
"Purr--Oh! Herr, just lie still!" cried the honest old fellow, "the
horses will stand!"
"You blockhead!" cried Jochen.
"Praise God!" exclaimed Krischan, getting on his feet, "I am all right.
But Herr, just lie perfectly still, I will hold the horses."
"You blockhead!" said Jochen again, scrambling up, while Gottlieb
splashed and waded about in the deep mire, "how could you turn us over
here?"
"Yes, it is all as true as leather," said Krischan, who, in his long
years of service, had caught his master's expressions, "what could a
body do, on such a road, in such pitch darkness?"
Since Jochen's words were taken out of his mouth in this way, he didn't
know what to say for himself, so he asked, "Gottlieb, are your bones
whole?"
"Yes, uncle," said the candidate, "and yours too?"
"Yes," said Jochen, "except my nose, but that seems clean gone out of
my face."
The carriage had been righted by this time, and, as they got in again,
Krischan turned half round and said:
"Herr, didn't I tell you, this afternoon, this was the place to tip
over?"
"Blockhead!" cried Jochen, rubbing his nose, "you were asleep."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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