‘That must be an interesting story’, I said, and asked him to tell it to me to help pass the time, which he did:
‘When Christian of Brunswick was defeated at Höchst while trying to join up with Count Mansfeld, his forces, not knowing where they should retreat to, were dispersed all over the countryside. Many came to the Spessart, since they were looking for wooded country where they could hide. But they often escaped death down on the plain only to find it up in our hills, and since both sides were quite happy to continue plundering and killing each other on our lands, we country folk joined in too. Much of the time it was too dangerous to stay at home with our hoes and ploughs, and it was rare for a farmer to go off into the woods without his musket. During these turbulent times I was once in a wild part of the forest not far from my farm when I heard some shots close by and immediately after came across a beautiful young noblewoman on a splendid horse. At first I took her for a man from the way she rode, but when I saw her raise her hands and eyes to heaven and heard her call on God in French and in a pitiful voice, I lowered my musket, which I was about to fire at her, and uncocked it, since both her cries and her gestures told me it was a woman in distress. I went up to her, and when she saw me she said, “If you are a true Christian, I beg you for the love of God and remembering the Day of Judgment, when we must all account for our deeds and misdeeds, to take me to some honest women who with God’s assistance will help me bring the child I am carrying into the world.” This earnest exhortation, together with the sweetness of the woman’s tones and her beauty and grace, which shone through despite her distress, aroused my compassion and I led her horse by the bridle through thorn and thicket to the densest part of the woods, where I had found refuge for my wife, child, servants and cattle. And it was there, not thirty minutes later, that she gave birth to the boy we have been talking about.’
With that my Da concluded his story and went back to his wine, of which I had put out a liberal amount. When he had emptied his glass, I asked, ‘And what happened to the woman afterwards?’
‘Once she had been delivered of the child’, he said, ‘she begged me to be its godfather and to see it was baptised as quickly as possible. She told me her name and her husband’s, so they could be recorded in the register, then opened up her satchel, in which she had many valuables, and gave me, my wife and child, the maid and another woman more than enough to reward us for our pains. But while she was doing this, and telling us about her husband, she suddenly died, first of all commending the child to our care.
Because of all the unrest, which meant people did not stay in their homes, we had great difficulty finding a pastor to bury the mother and baptise the child. Once that had been done, however, the burgomaster told me to look after the boy until he was grown up and keep the woman’s property to cover our costs, apart from some rosaries, precious stones and jewelry, which I should keep for the child. My wife fed the lad on goat’s milk and we were happy to have him and thought of marrying him to our daughter when he grew up. However, after the battle of Nördlingen I lost both, the girl and the boy, together with everything we owned.’
‘You have told me a fascinating story’, I said to my Da, ‘but you’ve forgotten the best bit. You have not said what the woman, or her husband or the child were called.’
‘I didn’t realise you would want to know, sir’, he replied. ‘The lady was called Susanna Ramsi and her husband Captain Sternfels von Fuchshaim, and since my name is Melchior, I had the lad christened Melchior Sternfels von Fuchshaim. That is what was recorded in the register.’
And that was how I learnt, though much too late, both my parents now being dead, that I was the son of the hermit and Governor Ramsay’s sister. All I could learn of my uncle Ramsay was that the people of Hanau had driven him out, together with his Swedish garrison, at which he was so furious that he went quite mad.
I drowned my godfather in wine and had his wife sent for the next day. When I revealed who I was they refused to believe me until I showed them a black hairy birthmark I had on my chest.
Not long afterwards I rode down to the Spessart with my godfather in order to obtain a certificate attesting my descent and legitimacy which, with my godfather’s testimony, I easily obtained from the registrar of births. I also went to visit the pastor who had been in Hanau and looked after me. He gave me a written statement as to where my father had died and that I had been with him until his death and then for a while under the name of Simplicius with Colonel Ramsay, the governor of Hanau. In fact I had a lawyer draw up a document based on the statements of eye-witnesses recounting my whole story for, as I told myself, you never know when you might need it. In all the journey cost me four hundred thalers because on our way home we were caught and robbed by a party of troopers. My Da or, rather, my godfather and I only just escaped with our lives and arrived back on foot, stripped of everything we had.
At home everything was going from bad to worse. As soon as my wife heard that her husband was a nobleman, she not only played the
grande dame
but completely neglected the housekeeping, which I suffered in silence, since she was pregnant. I also had some bad luck with my cattle and most of them died, including the best of them.
All this I could have put up with, but by Christ! it never rains but it pours. At the same time as my wife had her baby, her maid also gave birth and while the latter’s child resembled me, my wife’s was the spitting image of the servant. Moreover that very same night the lady I had jilted at the spa had a baby left on my doorstep with a letter saying I was the father. Having thus become the father of three children at once, I felt that any moment more were likely to creep out of every corner, which caused me not a few grey hairs. But that is what happens if you lead such a godless, dissolute life as I did and give way to your animal lusts.
But it was no use complaining. I had to have them christened and pay the hefty fine imposed by the authorities. The fact that at that point the region was under Swedish rule and I had served in the emperor’s army only served to increase the amount I was made to fork out, all of which turned out to be merely the prelude to my complete ruination. Although I was despondent at all these disasters, my good wife took them lightly, teasing me day and night about the fine son that had been laid at my door and about the huge fine I had to pay. If, however, she had known what had happened between her maid and me she would have tormented me even worse. Fortunately the whore was obliging enough to allow herself to be persuaded (by as much money as I would have had to pay in fines on her account) to put the blame on one of the dandies who had visited me now and then the previous year and had been at my wedding, but with whom she had actually had no other dealings. I still had to get her to leave, however. My wife suspected I knew about her relationship with the servant, but I could not do anything about it, being unwilling to point out that I could not be in her bed and the maid’s at the same time. And all the while I was irked by the idea of not only having to bring up a servant’s bastard while I could not make my own offspring my heirs but having to hold my tongue and just be glad no one else knew about it into the bargain.
I spent the days tormenting myself with these thoughts while my wife did not let an hour pass without enjoying a glass or more of wine. Since our marriage she had grown so attached to the bottle that it was seldom far from her lips and she was always pretty inebriated by the time she went to bed. Her drunkenness quickly sucked the life out of her child and so inflamed her own innards that soon after they dropped out and made me a widower for the second time, at which I almost died laughing.
Thus I found myself free once more, but my purse rather empty and my household overburdened with servants and cattle. I took Melchior, my godfather, as my real father, his wife as my mother and the bastard Simplicius, who had been left on my doorstep, as my son and heir. I handed over the house and farm to the two old people, together with all my money, apart from a few gold pieces and jewels, which I kept back for dire emergencies. My experiences with women had left me with such a disgust for their company that I resolved never to marry again. The old couple, whose knowledge of farming was unsurpassed, immediately remodelled my household, getting rid of those servants and beasts that served no useful purpose and taking on others that would bring a profit. My old Da and Ma told me not to worry, promising that if I left them to run things they would make sure there was always a good horse in the stable and enough money over to allow me to take a drink with any honest man. It very quickly became clear to me what kind of people I had put in charge of my estate. My godfather went out with the labourers to cultivate the fields and haggled worse than any Jew over cattle, wood and resin. My godmother concentrated on breeding cattle and was better at making – and keeping – money from the dairy than ten women like my late wife. In a short time my farm had all the necessary equipment, animals and poultry and was soon recognised as the best in the whole area. I, however, spent my time going for walks and philosophising since, seeing as my godmother made more out of the bees with wax and honey than my wife had from cattle, pigs and all the rest combined, I could rest assured that nothing would be overlooked.
One day my walks took me to the spa, though more to get a drink of fresh water than to revert to my old habit of associating with the fashionable crowd there. My godparents’ thrift was beginning to rub off on me, and they advised me it was not worth spending time with people who wasted their own and their parents’ property. Nevertheless, I ended up joining a group (of respectable citizens, not the spendthrift dandies) because they were talking about something unusual, namely the Mummelsee, a supposedly bottomless lake on one of the highest mountains in the neighbourhood. They had sent for various old country folk to tell them what they had heard about this mysterious lake and I enjoyed listening to what they had to say, though I assumed it was all fabrication since it sounded as spurious as some of Pliny’s tales.
One said that if you tied up an odd number of anything – peas, pebbles or whatever you like – in a handkerchief and dipped it in you would find an even number when you took it out, and vice versa. Another claimed, and most of them quoted examples to confirm it, that if you threw one or more stones in, a terrible storm would immediately get up with torrential rain, hail and high winds, no matter how clear the sky had previously been. From that they got onto all sorts of bizarre things that had happened there and all the fantastic spirits such as brownies and water sprites, that had been seen and had even talked to people. One told us that when some men were herding their animals by the lake a brown bull had emerged from it and joined the other cattle but a little mannikin had appeared and tried to drive it back under the water. The bull, however, had refused to comply until the mannikin wished all the ills of mankind on it if it did not return, at which they both disappeared into the lake.
Another said that once, when the lake was frozen over, a farmer crossed it safely with his ox and several tree-trunks that were to be cut up into planks, but that when his dog followed him the ice broke and the dog fell in, never to be seen again. Yet another told us what he claimed was the true story of a huntsman who, following the track of some game past the lake, had seen a water sprite sitting on the water, playing with a pile of gold coins in its lap. When he aimed his rifle at it the sprite ducked under the water and a voice could be heard saying, ‘If you had asked me to relieve your poverty I would have made you and yours rich for life.’
I listened to these and other similar stories, all of which sounded like fairy tales you tell to amuse children, laughed at them and didn’t even believe there could be an unfathomed lake so high up a mountain. But other country folk came, old men you could trust, who told us that in both their own and their fathers’ time royalty had gone to see the lake. A Duke of Württemberg, for example, had a raft made and went out on it to measure the depth of the lake. However, after they had let down a lead weight on nine bobbin-lengths of twine (a measure the Black Forest peasant women will know more about than I or any other mathematician) and still not reached the bottom, for no apparent reason the raft, despite being made of sound wood, started to sink so that they had to give up and return to the shore. The raft could still be seen by the side of the lake, he said, and in memory of the event the coat of arms of the dukes of Württemberg and other things had been carved on a rock there. Others had witnesses to the fact that an Austrian archduke had even proposed to drain the lake, but that many people had advised against it and the plan had been abandoned after a petition by the locals, who were afraid all the surrounding countryside would be flooded. Some of the above-mentioned princes had also had several barrelloads of trout emptied into the lake, but in less than an hour they had all died before their eyes and floated away down the outlet stream. And this despite the fact that the river below the mountain (the valley it flows through takes its name from the lake) is fed by the outlet stream from the lake and is full of these same fish.
The result of the testimony of these last speakers was that I now almost completely believed the previous ones and was determined to see this lake of marvels for myself. It was clear from the various contradictory views expressed that opinion among the others who had heard the stories was divided. I said that the name
Mummelsee
obviously came from the German word
mummeln
, to wrap up, to disguise, which suggested there was something hidden about it and that not everyone could fathom either its nature or its depth, which was still unknown, even though persons of such high rank had attempted to discover it. With that I took myself off to the spot where, not much more than a year ago, I had first set eyes on my late wife and drunk the sweet poison of love.