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
Having now, as I deemed, reason to doubt whether I were among
Christians or not, I went to the pastor and told him all that I had
heard and seen, and what my thoughts were: namely, that I held these
people for mockers of Christ and His word, and no Christians at all,
with the request he would in any case help me out of my dream, that I
might know what I should count my fellow men to be. The pastor
answered: "Of a surety they be Christians, nor would I counsel thee to
call them otherwise." "O God," said I, "how can that be? for if I point
out to one or the other his sin that he committeth against God, then am
I but mocked and laughed at." "Marvel not at that," answered the
pastor; "I believe if our first pious Christians, which lived in the
time of Christ--yea, if the Apostles themselves should now rise from
the grave and come into the world, that they would put the like
question, and in the end, like thee, would be accounted of many to be
fools: yet that thou hast thus far seen and heard is but an ordinary
thing and mere child's play compared with that which elsewhere,
secretly and openly, with violence against God and man, doth happen and
is perpetrated in the world. Let not that vex thee! Thou wilt find few
Christians such as was the late Master Samuel."[6]
Now even as we spake together, some of the opposite party which had
been taken prisoner were led across the market-place, and this broke up
our discourse, for we too must go to look on the captives. Here then I
was ware of a folly whereof I could never have dreamed, and that was a
new fashion of greeting and welcoming one another: for one of our
garrison, who also had beforetime served the emperor, knew one of the
prisoners: so he goes up to him, gives him his hand, and pressed his
for sheer joy and heartiness, and says he: "Devil take thee! art still
alive, brother? 'S blood, 'tis surely the devil that brings us together
here! Strike me blind, but I believed thou wert long since hanged."
Then answered the other: "Curse me, but is it thee or not? Devil take
thee, how camest thou here? I never thought in all my born days I
should meet thee again, but thought the devil had fetched thee long
ago." And when they parted, one says to the other (in place of "God be
wi' you"). "Gallows' luck! Gallows' luck! to-morrow will we meet again,
and be nobly drunk together."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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