Frederick Schiller - The Short Stories

- "Your sudden escape made you a very suspicious person. Why did you flee?”

- “Because I had enough of the bullying of your people!"

- "You were menacing to shoot at them!”

- “But my pistol is not armed!”

People then checked his weapon, and there actually was not any bullet inside.

- “Why do you carry a hidden weapon with you?”

- “Because I carry valuables with me, and because people have warned me against a certain Boss who is active in these territories.”

- “Your answers prove very much of your brazenness, however, of nothing good about your case! I give you until tomorrow to tell me the truth!”

- “I will stick to my declaration!”

- “Bring him to the tower!”

- "Why in the tower!? Mister High Officer, I hope, there is still Justice in this country. I demand satisfaction!?”

- “I will give it to you, as soon as you have justified yourself!”

The High Officer examined the case the next morning: the stranger wanted, hence, really pass himself for an innocent man; any commanding attitude toward him did not do anything with his obstinacy; it would, maybe, much better to treat him with decency and restraint. He gathered the town council and called for the imprisoned.

- “Forgive me my previous agitation, Sir, if I was, somehow, abrupt with you yesterday!”

- “Very well, if you so request!”

- “Our laws are pretty severe, and your act has made a lot of noise. I cannot release you without failing my duty. The appearances are against you. I wished that you could tell me something that could be refuting them.”

- “But I have nothing to confess!”

- “Hence, I must report the incident to the government, and you remain until then under custody.”

- “And then!?”

- "You are running the danger of being accused for begging beyond the border, or, if things go well, to fall under the authority of an investigator.”

He remained silent for a minute and seemed to be fighting a violent inner battle; then he turned rapidly to the judge.

- “Can I be alone with you for a moment?”

The Counsellors looked embarrassed, but yet retracted at the commanding wink of their chief.

- “Now, what do you demand?”

- “Your attitude ,yesterday, Mister High Officer, has never encouraged me into confession, that’s why I have defied your authority. The modesty with which you deal with me, today, has given me confidence and respect. I believe that you are a noble man.”

- “What do you have to tell me?”

- "I see that you are a noble man. I have wished, long time ago, to become a man like you. May I have your word?”

- “Where will this lead us to?”

- “This head of yours is grey and honourable. You have been for long in the world, have gone through real sufferings. Right? You must have become more human?”

- “Sir, why all this questioning!?”

- “You are a step away from eternity, soon... soon you will need to call for God's mercy. He will not refuse it to a human being.....Don’t you guess anything yet? With whom do you think you are talking to?”

- “What is this? You are scaring me!”

- “Don’t you guess it yet? Please, write to your Prince, how I did put myself into this situation, and that I, by free choice, was my betrayer, that God may once be gracious to him as he is to me now. Old man, please put this request to your Prince on my behalf, and let a tear fall on your report: I am the Boss.”

Wollmar and Edwin, two friends who live together in a peaceful hermitage in which they have retreated from the tumult of the busy world, discuss during a walk about the remarkable destinies of their lives in full philosophical leisure. Edwin, the fortunate one, embraced the world with a joyful tenderness which put the gloomier Wollmar into a miserable mood because of his misfortune. An alley of lime trees were the favourite place of their debates. At one time, they walked again there on a lovely May day; I account the following discussion:

Edwin

The weather is so beautiful, the whole nature is cheering up, and you are so thoughtful, Wollmar?

Wollmar

Alone me, please! You know this is my way to corrupt your mood!

Edwin

But is it then possible to be so much disgusted by the cup of joy?

Wollmar

If one finds a spin in it; why not? You see, Nature depicts itself to you, now, as a young lady with red cheeks on her wedding day. To me, it seems like an old matron with exaggerated red make-up on her yellow-green cheeks and with inherited diamonds in her hair.

How she ridicules herself in this Sunday attire! These are just old clothes worn already a thousand times. Even this green, flowing dress train of hers, she wore already before Deucalion, just as perfumed and just as colourful!

For thousand years, she has only fed herself with the proceeds from death bulletins, made artifice from the bones of her own children and lightened such decay with blinding tinsel.

She is an indecent monster who has been a thousand times warmed up from her own death, who fattens herself, patches together her rags and makes them well into new fabric ,carries it to the market and again, makes them into nasty rags! Young man, do you know very well in what society you are maybe, now, walking!? Did you ever think, indeed, that Nature's endless circle is your forefathers' tomb, that the winds which bring you the scents of the lime trees, maybe blow to your nose the dispersed force of Arminius, that in the refreshing source you maybe tasting the crushing bones of our great Henry!?

Pfff! Pfff! Should maybe the Roman conquerors who divided the majestic world into three parts, just the same way young boys share a bouquet among them and put them afterwards on their hats, extort from the throat of their weakened descent a moaning opera aria!? The atom which gave divine thoughts to Plato’s mind, which made Titus' heart tremble with pity, shudders maybe, now, with the ardour of an animal in Sardanapale's veins, or will be dispersed by the ravens in the carrion of a recently hanged local thief. Disgraceful! Disgraceful!

We have made our Harlequin masks from the sanctified ashes of our fathers; we have fed our bell hood with the wisdom of the ancient times. You seem to find that amusing, Erwin?

Edwin

Forgive me! Your observations remind me of comical scenes. How? Picture our bodies wandering away from our spirits, as people affirm in these laws! Imagine the same bodies, after the death of the machine, still keeping the administration under the command of the soul; the same way as the spirits of the deceased repeat the tasks of their previous life, quae cura fuit vivis, eadem sequitur tellure repostos.

Wollmar

Hence, Lycurgus' ashes may still lie, until now and for eternity, in the ocean!?

Edwin

Do you hear, there, the voice of the tender Philomele complaining? As if she were the urn keeping Tibullus’s ashes, which could sing so tenderly as she does?

Maybe the sublime Pindar is ascending with every eagle into the blue firmament? Maybe is vibrating in every courting Zephyr an atom of Anacreon? Who can tell if it is not the bodies of their former seducers which fly in tender little flocks of powder into their mistresses' hairlocks? If it is not the usurer's remains which are captured within the hundred year old rust on the buried coins?

If it is not the Polygraphs' bodies which are damned to be melted into letters, or turned into paper; to groan, now, eternally under the pressure of the printing machine and to help eternalize the nonsense of their colleagues? Who can prove to me that our neighbour's painful kidney stone is not the rest of an unskilled doctor who, as punishment, now guards like an uninvited doorman the formerly mistreated bladder, condemned to this dishonourable jail, until a doctor's consecrated hand frees the cursed Prince? Do you see, Wollmar!? From precisely the cup which created bitter angers in you, my mood creates merry jokes!