VIII
How Simplicissimus Found His Second Marriage Turn Out, and How He Met with His Dad and Learned Who His Parents Had Been
So I made fine preparation for the wedding: for all seemed rose-colour to me. Not only did I buy up the whole farm whereon my bride had been born, but began also a fine new building besides, as if I would rather keep court than keep house: and before the wedding was over I had already more than thirty head of cattle on the farm; for so many could it maintain all the year round: in a word, I had the best of everything and such fine household plenishing as only folly like mine could devise. But soon I must whistle to a different tune, for I found my bride too knowing; and now, all too late, was I ware of the cause why she had been so loath to take me: and what vexed me most was that I could tell to no man my silly plight. I knew well enough that ’twas reasonable I must pay the piper; yet the knowledge made me not more patient, still less better in life; nay, rather I thought to betray the traitress, and so began to go a-grazing where I could find pasture: which kept me rather in good company at the spa than at home, and for a year at least I left my housekeeping to take care of itself. And for her part my wife was as slovenly as I: an ox that I had had slaughtered for household use she salted in baskets like pork, and when she was to prepare a sucking-pig for me she tried to pluck it like a fowl: yea, she would cook crayfish with a roasting-jack and trout on a spit: from which examples a man may judge what manner of housewife I found her: and withal she would drink freely of the good wine and share it with her good friends: and that was a sign of my coming disasters.
Now it fell out that as I was walking down the valley with some fops of the spa to visit a company at the lower baths, there met us an old peasant with a goat on a string, that he wished to sell, and because methought I had seen him before, I asked whence he came with his goat. At which he doffed his cap and “Your worship,” says he, “that I may not tell you.” “How,” said I, “surely thou hast not stolen the beast?” “Nay,” answered the peasant, “but I bring him from a village there in the valley, the which I may not mention to your worship in the presence of a goat”38 which caused my company to laugh, and because I changed colour they deemed I was vexed or ashamed that the peasant did answer me so neatly. Yet my thoughts were otherwise, for by the great wart that this peasant had, like an unicorn, in the middle of his forehead, I was assured ’twas my dad from the Spessart, and so would first play the conjurer before I would make myself known and delight him with so fine a son as my clothes showed me to be. So I said to him, “Good father, is not your home in the Spessart?” “Yes, your worship,” says he. “Then,” said I, “did ye not some eighteen year agone have your house and farm plundered and burnt by the troopers?” “Yea, God-a-mercy,” quoth the peasant, “yet ’tis not so long ago”: but I asked him further, “Did ye not, then, have two children, a grown daughter and a young lad that kept your sheep?” “Nay, your worship,” says my dad, “the daughter was my child but not the boy: yet would I bring him up as mine own.” And by that I understood I was no son of this rough yokel: and that in part rejoiced me yet again troubled me, for I thought now I must be some bastard or foundling, and therefore asked my dad how he had come by the said boy or what reason he had had to rear him as his own. “Ah,” says he, “I had strange luck with him: by war I got him and by war I lost him.”
But now being afeared lest some fact should come to light that would disgrace my birth, I turned the discourse upon the goat again and asked if he had sold it to the hostess for cooking, which would seem strange to me as knowing that her guests used not to eat old goat’s flesh. But “Nay, your worship,” quoth the peasant, “the hostess hath goats enow and will pay naught for such: I do bring her for the countess that is at the spa to bathe. For Doctor Busybody hath ordered certain herbs for this goat to eat: and the milk that she gives therefrom the doctor taketh to make a medicine for the countess, that is to drink the milk and so be cured: for they say the countess hath no stomach, and if the goat help her ’twill do more than the doctor and all his sawbones together.” While he thus talked I considered how I might have further speech with him, and so offered him for the goat a dollar more than the doctor or the countess would give: to which he readily agreed (for small gain will easily turn folk), yet on condition he should first tell the countess that I had bid a thaler more: and if she would give as much she should have the preference: if not, he would bring me the goat and would in the evening let me know how the business stood. With that my dad went his way and I, with my
