A Countess' Birthday E-Book

Fritz Reuter

• Herausgeber: neobooks
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Deutsch

Seitenzahl: 118

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

One fine morning, it was 29 May 1842, I saw a carriage stop in front of a friend's house, which my friend was about to board with another friend who belonged to both of us. "Where to?" I asked. "To S.," was the answer. "What are you going to do there?" - "Oh," cried my lively friend Fischer: "Birthday - Venetian regatta - Bucentaur - little angels - Waren's fishermen's servants - cannons - fisherman's sting - beer and brandy - people - Countess X. - bratwurst.""

Leseprobe

Fritz Reuter

A Countess' Birthday

English and German Edition

Dieses ebook wurde erstellt bei

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Titel

A Countess' Birthday.

First day.

Second day.

Erster Tag.

Zweiter Tag.

Impressum neobooks

A Countess' Birthday.

The celebration of the birthday of the reigning Countess, as it took place on 29 and 30 May 1842 at the estate, the Count Hahn's "estate" in Mecklenburg.

Ein gräflicher Geburtstag.

Die Feier des Geburtstages der regierenden Frau Gräfin, wie sie am 29. u. 30. Mai 1842 in der Begüterung vor sich ging.Die gräflich Hahn'sche »Begüterung« in Mecklenburg ist gemeint.

Written by

Fritz Reuter

translated by

Thomas Westphal

First day.

Motto:

The Cossacks live a merry life.

One fine morning, it was 29 May 1842, I saw a carriage stop in front of a friend's house, which my friend was about to board with another friend who belonged to both of us. "Where to?" I asked. "To S.," was the answer. "What are you going to do there?" - "Oh," cried my lively friend Fischer: "Birthday - Venetian regatta - Bucentaur - little angels - Waren's fishermen's servants - cannons - fisherman's sting - beer and brandy - people - Countess X. - bratwurst.""

"I can't make heads or tails of that," I say; "dear Meier,The two friends, however, are not actually called Meier and Fischer with the first letter, but something else. You tell me what there actually is." - I haven't made much sense of it either," says Meier, "only this much I know, that I read a letter, a kind of programme, in which there was talk of many festivities, of which I have never heard in our country; but at last there was a passage in the letter which I understood, for it read very popularly: 'Fires are to be lit on the shores of the lake; at these the people are to encamp, are to be trapped there with beer and brandy, potatoes and sausage, and are to shout Hurrah! and there shall be no end to this hurrah!'"

All this was too tempting; I jumped on the wagon and we drove to S. The first thing I saw there was a beautiful, leaf-covered gate of honour. On the top of the gate was the count's crown and underneath the name of Countess A. H. I was about to enter the gate. H. I was just about to pass through the gate when I saw a lean, black-legged figure with a black body, holding a roll of paper in his hand and running back and forth under the gate of honour in great agitation. Oh God, I thought, that's another poor schoolmaster from the estate who wants to make a petition. With these pitying feelings, I went on, but suddenly the black man held the roll of paper under my nose. "Dear friend," I say, "you are mistaken with your petition, I am not a high lord, I am the people;" and at this I had in mind such a dark but hopeful picture of beer and brandy, potatoes and sausage. - "'What petition, what folk,'" sputtered the little fellow at me, "'I am the Capellmeister R., and am to see that no unconsecrated foot treads the ground beneath the Gate of Honour till it has borne The whose rays will soon rise behind those spruces; people, like you, go through the little gate here next door.'" - Now, as I turned to go through the side honour-gate, I caught sight, a short distance away, of some green people with yellow tin instruments under their arms, which reminded me vividly of spinach with eggs. - "Who are they?" I asked. "'If they wear red and white jackets,' says Fischer, 'they are grooms; but if they look green, they are capels.'" - "That's a strange practical dualism that prevails here," I thought; "the Capellmeister is also the porter and the grooms Capelle!" - But we moved in through the narrow gate into the paradise of high-county revelry.

Behind the gate of honour stood about 20-30 small, colourful children, dressed in red, blue, yellow and striped jackets and white bloomers: all of them, however, had red nightcaps on, and looked like the colourful paper cuttings that I used to tie to the tail of my dragon when I was a boy; but the conductor was the dragon. - I beg you, my dear fisherman," I said, "how can you put sleeping caps on such small children; what are they supposed to wear when they are old? - "These are no ordinary nightcaps," said Fischer in a lecturing tone, "but Phrygian ones, such as are worn in Naples and Ischia; nor are they the children of day labourers from the estate, but real little fishermen's children from Castellamare and Sorrento, who have taken the trouble to come here on purpose to sing something, and they are men and women."" - "You jest," I say; "the latter at least I cannot believe, for surely they are all boys." -You'll see in a moment," says Fischer, and walks up to the colourful crowd. "Good day, children," he called, and lo and behold, he was right: half of the poor little ones took off their nightcaps and the other half made a deep bow, completely forgetting their leggings.

We were now in a wide avenue of spruce trees that led down to the beach of the beautifully surrounded lake. I had been in S. before, but had never noticed such a tree walk. In order to orientate myself, I turned to a day labourer who, in his 'Sünndagnahmiddagschen' and leaning on his handstick, looked at the whole thing with a devilishly thoughtful look. - "My dear fellow! has this avenue always been here?" - "Oh, what do you want, sir, there are some beautiful plum trees here; they've been cut down and the old spruces have been planted for us before the trees came down; that's the kind of people you'd expect to see in such a case!" - "He'd better watch out," I say, "what he's saying is rebellion." - Dismayed, the duke's subject sputters: "Oh, don't take it like that, I thought you weren't one of the B.s!" and throws himself sideways into the bushes.

At the end of the avenue, on the shore of the lake, which lay deep blue in front of us, a scaffolding began, which extended quite a distance into the lake and was thus supposed to represent a kind of molo; the far end of it was protected from the sun's rays by a tent, and this was the point from which the nobility was to watch the spectacle to be expected.

To the right and left of the above-mentioned molo, however, a small donkey-drawn cart with a cofent-barrel of cofent: thin, weak beer (from conventus meeting). had entered the lake, and on one of these stood the pig-boy, on the other the goose-boy, both pupated in bacchusse, and bellowing Mecklenburg dithyrambs: "Hurah, de Fru Gräfin sall leben!" Her pupa was made extraordinarily simple by a shirting shirt and a wreath of vine leaves; her attribute was a wooden cup, which looked exactly like the vessel in which the maidens used to put the butter. At this sight I felt strangely melancholy and lamented: You poor young gods! Your godhood has already played out this afternoon; tomorrow your cup will have turned into the trident, not into that of Neptune, no, into that of the dunghill, and your shoulders, now dazzled by the innocent colour of the Greek shirting robe, will play in all the colours of the rainbow, when the innkeeper notices that you have not yet forgotten the divine Cofent ton, or that you want to lull yourself into a dolce far niente in the manner of the old heathen gods.

These gloomy reflections were suddenly interrupted by a piteous whine of children's voices. I don't know how it happened, but I was startled by the thought of the infanticide of Bethlehem; looking around, I saw the black bandmaster, like a magician, swinging miraculous circles over the little colourful children who crowded around him and looked like the conjured spirits of the jumble.

Me.

What are they weaving around the black man there?

Friend Fischer.

Don't know what they are cooking and creating.

Me.

Float up, float down, bend, bend.

Friend Fischer.

A singing guild.

Me.

They sprinkle their incense,

Friend Fischer.

And sing to it.

Yes, they sang, and what they sang was made known to us by printed notes that were passed around. Since I still have such a note, I will not withhold their song from the gentle reader.

Reception.

Hail to thee, wreath of blossoms

Lady of graceful splendour: -

Hail Agnes!

Feel how deeply moved

Every heart is moved today:

When your angelic image

Blessing appears! -

Hail God, our God!

Bless you, faithful God!

Fatherly mild. -

Who with pious mind

Over the earth far away!

Kindly directs our gaze;

Faithfully remembers thee. - &c. &c.

Hardly had the thin children's voices died away, when suddenly a band of travelling horsemen, in the form and shape of Mecklenburg Gensd'armen, burst in upon the people, amid the thunder of cannon and loud shouts. "Make way, make way for the high lords!" The people broke away, the warriors held the field, just like a Parisian mob. Here it was a matter of quick decision: either gooseherd or swineherd, either left or right; I kept to the right and swore to the flag of the divine swineherd. When everything was now firmly in place and I had pushed myself with one foot into the lake, there was a mute silence of expectation and out of pure devotion the people did not shout hurrah once. Now it would otherwise have been the time, for the queen of the feast approached slowly, swan-white and also so proud, and behind her the feast stewards and feast mistresses, here encouraging, waving, there scolding, then the guests, then the homines minorum gentium, as there are chambermaids and footmen, and last of all the colourful tail of the dragon, the little fisherman's children, whose task was not yet completely solved.

The nearer the procession came to our Bacchus, the more restless the latter became, and when the celebrated one of the feast stood opposite him, he burst into such a tremendous roar of joy that we were horrified at it, and even his own ass had to refrain from trying to outdo him, shaking his head. Then, emptying his cup, he waved it around his vine-wreathed head and shouted, "Cheers, sister!" Unfortunately, however, this imprudent young god had badly studied the initial grounds of his Bacchusship and had left an oversized nail sample in his vessel, which now described a semicircle in the air that began at the white robe of his mistress and ended at my white straw hat, putting us in rapport, as it were, through a chain of Cofent. - "A thousand," said Fischer, "that was a fine flattery!" - "Now listen," I say, "if you call it flattery, when you pour Cofent on a lady's clothes, it's easy to play the pleasant; I've been nicely flattered too, look at my new hat."" - "Oh, who's talking about the dousing," replies Fischer; "this part of the Actus the Madam, as it seemed to me, also took rather ungraciously; I mean the words 'Prosit Sister'." - "And what do you find in it but impudence?" I asked. - "Dear friend," he answered, "you seem to be badly versed in mythology: old Jupiter gave birth, I don't know in which year of his world government, to Bacchus from his hip, and furthermore he gave birth from his brain case to the most sensible, cleverest of all goddesses, Minerva, - ergo!" - ""Well, ergo?"" - "Ergo, when Bacchus says, Prosit sister, to the connoisseur it means, Prosit goddess Minerva!"

Meanwhile a high nobility had gone to the tent intended for them, and an adoring public stood gawping and crowding on the shore of the lake, when repeated cannonading from the land to the lake and from the lake to the land gave us the sign that the games were about to begin. In the middle of the lake lay the fleet of colourfully penned and manned vessels and in their midst the Admiral or Orlog ship. All in miniature, of course, but still quite nice, for the fleet consisted of barges, the admiral ship a large wooden barge called a prahm, its caronades were pumped king shot firecrackers and the admiral a master fisherman. The crew was dressed in respective blue or red jackets and wide white leggings; the Phrygian nightcaps were also not missing. They were divided into two hostile parties, the blue ones representing the colours of the countess, the red ones those of the count. With the first cannon shot, the battle began; the fighters rowed in pairs in noble competition towards the goal, namely the tent, and as once on the Hippodrome in Constantinople the battle of the Greens and Blues kept the court and the people in anxious suspense, so here the court and the people anxiously awaited the decision between the Reds and the Blues. At last the last pair had reached their destination and now a questioning murmur arose among the people: "Who will win? - De Graf hett wunnen, was the answer. - And really, in this fight the count had won. This almost became the occasion for the first hurrah, - but

The Respect and the Police

They frightened the peasant back anew;

And all still remained silent, as before.

Then the bandmaster rose with the choir:

They sang of heart and of love,

Of a blessed golden time,

Of fidelity, of woman's dignity,

Of pride and of motherliness;

They sang of all that is beautiful

That men's eyes have seen;

They sang of all that was high;

We just couldn't understand it.

It was too high and too strange for us,

We couldn't understand it,

And the feelings that were stirring

They would touch on laughter.

They sang to the tune of the Barcarole from the Silent of Portici the following song:

O feel, how radiantly rich a blessing,

Today here near us: Birthday day!

Sing of the day that is God's way,

And give thanks from the heart.

But feel it deep, to God's praise!

Feeling! stir thyself! -

How maternal, good, wise, and prudent-

Feeling! stir yourself! - &c. &c.