The Adventurous Simplicissimus: being the description of the Life of a Strange vagabond named Melchior Sternfels von FuchshaimGrimmelshausen, Hans Jakob Christoph von
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The Adventurous Simplicissimus: being the description of the Life of a Strange vagabond named Melchior Sternfels von Fuchshaim
Grimmelshausen, Hans Jakob Christoph von
German fiction -- Translations into English; Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648 -- Fiction
In this gracious place we abode fourteen days, and there I thanked God
for my conversion, and marked the miracles that were there done: all
which did incite me to some shew of piety and godliness. Yet did the
same last but as long as it might: for even as my conversion took its
beginning, not from love of God but from dread and fear of damnation,
so did I by degrees become lukewarm and slothful, because I little by
little forgot the terror that the Evil One had struck into me. So when
we had sufficiently viewed the relics of the saints, the vestments, and
other remarkable things of the abbey, we betook ourselves to Baden,
there to spend the winter.
_Chap. iii._: HOW THE TWO FRIENDS SPENT THE WINTER
There did I hire a cheerful parlour and a chamber for us, such as the
visitors to the baths do commonly use to have, especially in summer:
which be mostly rich Switzers that do resort here more to pass the time
and make a show than to take baths for any disease. So also I bargained
for our food, and Herzbruder, seeing how princely I began, counselled
me frugality, and reminded me of the long hard winter that we had yet
to pass, for he dreamt not that my money would hold out so long; and I
should need all I had, he said, for the spring when we should depart:
for much money was soon spent if one ever took from it and never added
to it: 'twas blown away like smoke and was certain never to return,
etc. At such loyal counsel I could no longer conceal from Herzbruder
how rich my treasury was, and how I was minded to spend it for the good
of both of us, since its extraction and growth were so unholy that I
could not think to buy lands with it; and even if I were not minded to
spend it so as to maintain so my best friend on earth, yet it were but
right that he, Herzbruder, should enjoy Oliver's money in revenge for
the insult he had before received from him before Magdeburg. And when I
knew myself to be in all safety, I drew off my two shoulder-bags,
divided the ducats and pistoles, and said to Herzbruder he might
dispose of this money at will, and spend and disburse it as he would,
so that it might best profit us both.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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