The Adventurous Simplicissimus

the effect of wine, and drunkenness itself, were until now quite unknown to me: and this left in my roguish remembrance thereafter all manner of merry pranks and fantastic imaginings: their strange looks I could see; but the cause of their condition I knew not. Indeed up till then each one had emptied the pot with a good appetite: but when now their bellies were full ’twas as hard with them as with a wagoner, that can fare well enough with his team over level ground, yet up the hill can scarcely toil. But though their heads were bemused, their want of strength was made good: in one man’s case by his courage, well soaked in wine: in another the loyal desire to drink yet one health to his friend: in a third that German chivalry which must do his neighbour right. But even such efforts must fail in the long run. Then would one challenge another to pour the wine in in buckets to the health of the princes or of dear friends or of a mistress. And at this many a one’s eyes turned in his head, and the cold sweat broke out: yet still the drinking must go on; yea, at the last they must make a noise with drums, fifes, and stringed instruments, and shot off the ordnance, doubtless for this cause, because the wine must take their bellies by assault. Then did I wonder where they could be rid of it all, for I knew not that they would turn out the same before ’twas well warm within them (and that with great pains) out of the very place into which they had just before poured it to the great danger of their health.

At this feast was also my pastor: and because he was a man like other men, he must retire for a while. So I followed him and “Pastor,” said I, “why do these folk behave so strangely? How comes it that they do reel this way and that? Sure it seems to me they be no longer in their senses; for they have all eaten and drunken themselves full, and swear devil take them if they can drink more, and yet they cease not to swill. Be they compelled thereto, or is it in God’s despite that they of their free will waste all things so wantonly?”

“Dear child,” answered the pastor, “when the wine is in the wit is out. This is nought compared with what is to come. Tomorrow at daybreak ’twill be hardly time for them to break up; for though they have already crammed their bellies, yet they are not yet right merry.”

So I answered, “Then do not their bellies burst if they stuff them so continually? Can, then, their souls, which are God’s image, abide in such fat hog’s bodies, in which they lie, as it were, in dark cells and verminous dungeons, imprisoned without knowledge of God? Their precious souls, I say, how can they so let themselves be tortured? Be not their senses, of which their souls should be served, buried as in the bowels of unreasoning beasts?”

“Hold thou thy tongue,” answered the pastor, “or thou mayest get thee a sound thrashing: here ’tis no time to preach, or I could do it better than thou.” So when I heard this I looked on in silence further, and saw how they wantonly spoiled food and drink, notwithstanding that the poor Lazarus, that might have been nourished therewith, languished, before our gates in the shape of many hundred expelled peasants of the Wetterau, whose hunger looked out through their eyes: for in the town there was famine.

XXX

Still Treats of Naught but of Drinking Bouts, and How to Be Rid of Parsons Thereat

So this gormandising went on as before, and I must wait on them as from the beginning of the feast. My pastor was still there, and was forced to drink as well as the rest: yet would he not do like them, but said he cared not to drink in so beastly a fashion: so a valiant pot companion takes him up and shows him that he, a pastor, drinks like a beast, and he, the drunkard and others present, drink like men. “For,” says he, “a beast drinks only so much as tastes well to him and quenches his thirst, for he knows not what is good, nor doth he care to drink wine at all. But ’tis the pleasure of us men to make the drink profit us, and to suck in the noble grape-juice as our forefathers did.” “Yes, yes,” says the pastor, “but for me ’tis proper to keep due measure.” “Right,” says the other, “a man of honour must keep his word”: and thereupon he has a beaker filled which held a full measure, and with that in his hand he reels back to the pastor. But he was gone and left the tippler in the lurch with his wine-bucket.

So when they were rid of the pastor all was confusion, and ’twas for all the world in appearance as if this feast was an agreed time and opportunity for each to disgrace his neighbour with drunkenness, to bring him to shame, or to play him some scurvy trick: for when one of them was so well settled that he could neither sit, walk, nor stand, the cry was, “Now we are quits! Thou didst brew a like draught for me: now must thou drink the like”; and so on. But he that could last longest and drink deepest was full of pride thereat, and seemed to himself a fellow of no mean parts; and at the last they tumbled about, as they had drunk henbane. ’Twas indeed a wonderful pantomime to see how they did fool, and yet none wondered but I. One sang: one wept: one laughed: another moaned: one cursed: another prayed: one shouted “Courage!” another could not even speak. One was quiet and