Now whenever this encounter comes into my remembrance forthwith my skin doth prick me everywhere, as if I were but now in the midst of the battle. ’Tis true I doubted for a while whether I should so revenge myself on mine own blood, and specially against such true servants that would suffer themselves to be hanged with me—yea, and broken on the wheel with me, and on whom, by reason of their numbers, I had often lain softly in the open air on the hardest of earth. But I went on so furiously in my tyrannical ways that I did not even mark how the Imperialists were at blows with my lieutenant-colonel, till at last they came to me, terrified my poor lice, and took me myself prisoner. Nor had they any respect for my manhood, by the power of which I had just before slain my thousands, and even surpassed the fame of the tailor that killed “seven at a blow.” I fell to the share of a dragoon, and the best booty he got from me was my lieutenant-colonel’s cuirass, and that he sold at a fair price to the commandant at Soest, where he was quartered. So he was in the course of this war my sixth master: for I must serve him as his footboy.
XXIX
How a Notably Pious Soldier Fared in Paradise, and How the Huntsman Filled His Place
Now unless our hostess had been content to have herself and her whole house possessed by my army, ’twas certain she must be rid of them. And that she did, short and sharp, for she put my rags into the oven and burned them out as clean as an old tobacco-pipe, so that I lived again as ’twere in a rose-garden freed from my vermin: yea, and none can believe how good it was for me to be free from that torment wherein I had sat for months as in an ant’s nest. But in recompense for that I had a new plague to encounter: namely, that my new master was one of those strange soldiers that do think to get to heaven: he was contented with his pay and never harmed a child. His whole fortune consisted in what he could earn by standing sentry and what he could save from his weekly pay; and that, poor as it was, he valued above all the pearls of the Orient: each sixpence he got he sewed into his breeches, and that he might have more of such sixpences I and his horse must starve: I must break my teeth upon dry Pumpernickel, and nourish myself with water, or at best with small beer, and that was a poor affair for me—inasmuch as my throat was raw from the dry black bread and my whole body wasted away. If I would eat I must needs steal, and even that with such secrecy that my master could by no manner of means be brought to book. As for him, gallows and torture, headsmen and their helpers—yea, and surgeons too—were but superfluous. Sutlers and hawkers too must soon have beat a retreat from him: for his thoughts were far from eating and drinking, gaming and quarrelling: but when he was ordered out for a convoy or an expedition of any sort where pay was, there he would loiter and dawdle away his time. Yea, I believe truly if this good old dragoon had not possessed these soldierly virtues of loitering, he would never have got me: for in that case he would have followed my lieutenant-colonel at the double. I could count on no cast clothes from him: for he himself went in such rags as did beforetime my hermit in the woods. His whole harness and saddle were scarce worth three-halfpence, and his horse so staggering for hunger that neither Swede nor Hessian needed to fear his attack.
All these fair qualities did move his captain to send him to Paradise—which was a monastery so called—on protection-duty: not indeed as if he were of much avail for that purpose, but that he might grow fat and buy himself a new nag: and most of all because the nuns had asked for a pious and conscientious and peaceable fellow for their guard. And so he rode thither and I behind him: for he had but one horse: and “Zounds;” says he, “Simbrecht; (for he could never frame to pronounce my name aright) when we come to Paradise we will take our fill.” And I answered him: “Yes,” said I, “the name is a good omen: God grant it that the place be like its name!” “Yes, yes,”
