“Beloved Simplicissimus, when thou findest this letter, go forthwith out of the forest and save thyself and the pastor from present troubles: for he hath done me much good. God, whom thou must at all times have before thine eyes and earnestly pray to, will bring thee to the place which is best for thee. Only keep Him ever in thy sight and be diligent ever to serve Him as if thou wert still in my presence in the wood. Consider and follow without ceasing my last words, and so mayest thou stand firm. Farewell.”
I kissed this letter and the hermit’s grave many thousand times, and started on my way to seek for mankind. Yet before I could find them I journeyed straight on for two whole days, and when night overtook me, sought out a hollow tree for my shelter, and my food was naught but beechnuts which I picked up on the way: but on the third day I came to a pretty open field near Gelnhausen, and there I enjoyed a veritable banquet, for the whole place was full of wheatsheaves which the peasants, being frightened away after the great battle of Nördlingen, had for my good fortune not been able to carry off. Inside a sheaf I set up my tent, for ’twas cruel cold, and filled my belly with the ears of corn which I rubbed in my hands: and such a meal I had not enjoyed for a long time.
XIX
How Simplicissimus Was Captured by Hanau and Hanau by Simplicissimus
When ’twas day I fed myself again with wheat, and thereafter betook myself to Gelnhausen, and there I found the gates open and partly burnt, yet half barricaded with dung. So I went in, but was ware of no living creature there. Indeed the streets were strewn here and there with dead, some of whom were stripped to their shirts, some stark naked. This was a terrifying spectacle, as any man can imagine. I, in my simplicity, could not guess what mishap had brought the place to such a plight. But not long after I learned that the Imperialists had surprised a few of Weimar’s folk there. And hardly had I gone two-stones’-throw into the town when I had seen enough: so I turned me about and went across the meadows, and presently I came to a good road which brought me to the fine fortress of Hanau. When I came to the first sentries I tried to pass; but two musketeers made at me, who seized me and took me off to their guardroom.
Now must I first describe to the reader my wonderful dress at that time, before I tell him how I fared further. For my clothing and behaviour were altogether so strange, astonishing, and uncouth, that the governor had my picture painted. Firstly, my hair had for two years and a half never been cut either Greek, German, or French fashion, nor combed nor curled nor puffed, but stood in its natural wildness with more than a year’s dust strewn on it instead of hair plunder or powder, or whatever they call the fools’ work—and that so prettily that I looked with my pale face underneath it, like a great white owl that is about to bite or else watching for a mouse. And because I was accustomed at all times to go bareheaded and my hair was curly, I had the look of wearing a Turkish turban. The rest of my garb answered to my headgear; for I had on my hermit’s coat, if I may now call it a coat at all, for the stuff out of which ’twas fashioned at first was now clean gone and nothing more remaining of it but the shape, which more than a thousand little patches of all colours, some put side by side, some sewn upon one another with manifold stitches, still represented. Over this decayed and yet often improved coat I wore the hair-shirt mantle-fashion, for I needed the sleeves for breeches and had cut them off for that purpose. But my whole body was girt about with iron chains, most deftly disposed crosswise behind and before like the pictures of St. William; so that all together made up a figure like them that have once been captured by the Turks and now wander through the land begging for their friends still in captivity. My shoes were cut out of wood and the laces woven out of strips of lime-bark: and my feet looked like boiled lobsters, as I had had on stockings of the Spanish national colour or had dyed my skin with logwood. In truth I believe if any conjurer, mountebank, or stroller had had me and had given me out for a Samoyede or a Greenlander, he would have found many a fool that would have wasted a kreuzer on me. Yet though any man in his wits could easily conclude, from my thin and starved looks and my decayed clothes, I came neither from a cook-shop nor a lady’s bower, and still less had played truant from any great lord’s court, nevertheless I was strictly examined in the guardroom, and even as the soldiers gaped at me so was I filled with wonder at the mad apparel of their officer to whom I must answer and give account. I knew not if it were he or she: for he wore his hair and beard French fashion, with long tails hanging down on each side like horsetails, and his beard was so miserably handled and mutilated that between mouth and nose there were but a few hairs, and those had come off so ill that one could scarce see them. And not less did
