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
Not long after this I did take my godfather with me, and ride into the
Spessart to get certain news and certificate of my descent and noble
birth; which I gat without difficulty from the book of baptisms and my
godfather's witness: and presently thereafter visited the priest that
had dwelt at Hanau and had taken care of me: which gave me a writing to
declare where my late father had died, and that I had abode with him to
his death and thereafter for a long time with Master Ramsay, the
commandant at Hanau, under the name of Simplicissimus: yea, I had an
instrument containing my whole history drawn up by a notary out of the
mouth of witnesses; for I thought, "Who knoweth when thou wilt have
need of it?" And this journey did cost me 400 thalers, for on my return
I was captured by a party, dismounted, and plundered so that I and my
dad or godfather came off naked and hardly with our lives.
Meanwhile things went ill at home: for as soon as my wife knew her
husband was a nobleman she not only did play the great lady, but did
neglect all housekeeping; which I bore in silence because she was big
with child: moreover, misfortune came on my cattle and robbed me of my
chiefest and best: all which 'twould have been possible to endure, but
O Gemini! misfortunes came not singly: for even then while my wife was
delivered, the maid was brought to bed likewise: and the child she bore
was indeed like to me, but that which my wife had was so like to the
farm-servant as it had been cut on the pattern of his face. Nay, more!
for the lady of whom I writ above did in the same night cause one to be
laid at my door with notice in writing that I was the father: and so
did I get a family of three at once, and could not but expect that
others would creep out of every corner, which caused me not a few grey
hairs. But so will it fare with whoever doth follow his own bestial
lusts in such a godless and wicked way of life as I had led.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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