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
Now when I awaked next morning were both my becalfed bedfellows up and
away: so I rose up likewise, and when the adjutant came to fetch away
the keys to open the town gates, out I slipped to my pastor; and to him
I told all that had happened to me, as well in heaven as in hell. So
when he saw that it vexed my conscience that I should deceive so many
folk, and specially my master, whereas I pretended to be a fool, "why,
upon that point," says he, "thou needest not to trouble thyself: this
foolish world will be befooled; and if they have left thee thy wits, so
use thou those same wits to thine own advantage, and imagine to thyself
as if thou, like to the Phœnix, hast been newly born from folly to
understanding through fire, and so to a new human life. Yet know thou
withal thou art not yet out of the wood, but with risk of thy reason
hast slipped into this fool's cap. Yea, and these times be so out of
joint that none can know whether thou yet escape without loss of thy
life. For a man can run quickly into hell, but to get out again doth
need a deal of puffing and blowing: and thou art not yet--no, not by a
long way--man enough to escape the danger that lies before thee, as
well thou mightest suppose. So wilt thou have need of more foresight
and wit than in those days when thou knewest not what reason or
unreason was: bide thou thy time and wait on the turn of the tide."
Now was his manner of speaking different from what it had been, and
that because, I believe, he had read it in my countenance that I
fancied myself to be somewhat, since I had with such masterly deceit
and art slipped through the net. Nay, I gathered this from his face,
that he was sick and tired of me, for his looks shewed it; and indeed
what part had he in me? With that I changed my discourse also, and
busied myself to give him great thanks for the excellent remedies which
he had imparted to me for the preserving of my wits: yea, and I made
him impossible promises to repay him all that my debt to him demanded.
Now this tickled him and brought him again to a different humour,
wherein he bepraised his medicine and told me Simonides of Melos had
invented an art which Metrodorus of Skepsis had perfected, and that not
without great pains, whereby he could teach men at the repeating of a
single word to recount all that they had ever heard or read, and such a
thing, said he, "were not possible without medicines to strengthen the
head such as he had ministered to me."
"Yea," thought I, "my good master parson: yet have I read in thine own
books, when I dwelt with my hermit, a different tale of that wherein
the Skepsian's mnemonic did consist."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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