Chapter 16
CHAPTER XXXV. V. This left room for the controversy to go on. It was maintained by the advocates of the ecclesiastic court that there was nothing to inhibit a decree, since the stranger ex mero motu had confessed he had been at the promontory of noses, and had got one of the goodliest, etc., etc. To this it was answered, it was impossible there should be such a place
as the promontory of noses, and the learned be ignorant where it lay. The commissary of the bishop of strasburg undertook the advocates explained this matter in a treatise upon proverbial phrases shewing them that the promontory of noses was a mere allegoric expression importing no more than that nature had given him a long nose in proof of which with great learning he cited the underwritten authorities which had decided the point incontestably nonuli ex nostratibus eadem loquendi formula utun quinimo et logistae et canonistae vide parche barneias in d l provincial constitut de congec vide vol lib for titul i n seven qua etiam in re conspire om de promontorio nas tichmac ff d tit three fall one eight nine passim
vide gloss de contrahend empt etc nec non j scrudre in cap para refut per totum cum his cons rever j tubal sentent et prov cap nine f f eleven twelve obiter et librum cui tit de teris et phrase belg ad finem cum comment en bardi belg vide scrip argentor artens de antique ec in episc coince hoven folio argent fifteen eighty three praecip ad finem quibus ad rebuf in el obvenire de signif nom efef fol et de jure gent et civil de protib aliena foid per federa test joha luxius in prolegum quem vellim videas de anali cap one two three vide idea had it not appeared that a dispute about some franchises of dean and chapter lands had been determined by it nineteen years before it happened i must say unluckily for truth because they were giving her a lift another way in so doing
that the two universities of strasburg the lutheran founded in the year fifteen thirty eight by jacobus suomis councillor of the senate and the popish founded by leopold archduke of austria were during all this time employing the whole depth of their knowledge except just what the affair of the abbess of quedlingburg's placket-hole required in determining the point of martin luther's damnation the popish doctors had undertaken to demonstrate a priori that from the necessary influence of the planets on the twenty-second day of october fourteen eighty three when the moon was in the twelfth house jupiter mars and venus in the third the sun saturn and mercury all got together in the fourth that he must in course and unavoidably be a damned man and that his doctrines by a direct corollary must be damned doctrines too haec mira satisque horrenda planetarum coitio sub scorpio asterissimo in nona coelis datione quam arabes religioni depitabant efficit martinum lutherum sacrilegum hereticum
christianae religionis hostem acerimum atque profanum ex horoscopii directioni ad martis coitum religiosissimus obiet eius animas gaelestissima ad infernus navigavit ab alecto tisiphone et megara flagellis igneis cruciata pereniter lucas gaureius in tractatum astrologico de preteritis multorum ominum accidentibus per genituras examinatis in reading this my father would always shake his head by inspection into his horoscope where five planets were in coition all at once with scorpio in the ninth house with the arabians allotted to religion it appeared that martin luther did not care one stiver about the matter and that from the horoscope directed to the conjunction of mars they made it plain likewise he must die cursing and blaspheming with the blast of which his soul being steeped in guilt sailed before the wind in the lake of hell-fire the little objection of the lutheran doctors to this was that it must certainly be the soul of another man born october the twenty second eighty three which was forced to sail down before the wind in that manner
inasmuch as it appeared from the register of islarben in the county of mansfeldt that luther was not born in the year fourteen eighty three but in eighty four and not on the twenty second day of october but on the tenth of november the eve of martinmas day from whence he had the name of martin i must break off my translation for a moment for if i did not i know i should no more be able to shut my eyes in bed than the abbess of quedlingburg it is to tell the reader that my father never read this passage of slawkinbergias to my uncle toby but with triumph not over my uncle toby for he never opposed him in it but over the whole world now you see brother toby he would say looking up that christian names are not such indifferent things had luther here been called by any other name but martin he would have been damned to all eternity not that i look upon martin he would add as a good name far from it tis something better than a neutral and but a little yet little as it is you see it was of some service to him my father knew the weakness of this prop to his hypothesis as well as the best logician could show him yet so strange is the weakness of man at the same time as it fell in his way he could not for his life but make use of it
and it was certainly for this reason that though there are many stories in half and slawkenbergius's decades full as entertaining as this i am translating yet there is not one amongst them which my father read over with half the delight it flattered two of his strangest hypotheses together his names and his noses i will be bold to say he might have read all the books in the alexandrian library had not fate taken other care of them and not have met with a book or passage in one which hit two such nails as these upon the head at one stroke the two universities of strasburg were hard tugging at this affair of luther's navigation the protestant doctors had demonstrated that he had not sailed right before the wind as the popish doctors had pretended and as every one knew there was no sailing full in the teeth of it they were going to settle in case he had sailed how many points he was off whether martin had doubled the cape or had fallen upon a lee shore and no doubt as it was an inquiry of much edification at least to those who understood this sort of navigation they had gone on with it in spite of the size of the stranger's nose
had not the size of the stranger's nose drawn off the attention of the world from what they were about it was their business to follow the abbess of quedlingburg and her four dignitaries was no stop for the enormity of the stranger's nose running full as much in their fancies as their case of conscience the affair of their placket-holes kept cold in a word the printers were ordered to distribute their types all controversies dropped twas a square cap with a silver tassel upon the crown of it to a nutshell to have guessed on which side of the nose the two universities would split tis above reason cried the doctors on one side tis below reason cried the others tis faith cried one tis a fiddlestick said the other tis possible cried the one tis impossible said the other god's power is infinite cried the nosarians he can do anything he can do nothing replied the anti-nosarians which implies contradictions he can make matter think said the nosarians as certainly as you can make a velvet cap out of a sow's ear replied the anti-nosarians he cannot make two and two five replied the popish doctors tis false said their other opponents infinite power is infinite power said the doctors who maintained the reality of the nose it extends only to all possible things replied the lutherans
by god in heaven cried the popish doctors he can make a nose if he thinks fit as big as the steeple of strasburg now the steeple of strasburg being the biggest and the tallest church steeple to be seen in the whole world the anti nosarians denied that a nose of five hundred and seventy-five geometrical feet in length could be worn at least by a middle-sized man the popish doctors swore it could the lutheran doctors said no it could not this at once started a new dispute which they pursued a great way upon the extent and limitation of the moral and natural attributes of god that controversy led them naturally into thomas aquinas and thomas aquinas to the devil the stranger's nose was no more heard of in the dispute it just served as a frigate to launch them into the gulf of school divinity and then they all sailed before the wind heat is in the proportion to the want of true knowledge the controversy about the attributes c instead of cooling on the contrary had inflamed the strasburgers imaginations to a most inordinate degree the less they understood of the matter the greater was their wonder about it
they were left in all the distresses of desire unsatisfied saw their doctors the parchmentarians the brassarians the turpentarians on one side the popish doctors on the other like pantagruel and his companions in quest of the oracle of the bottle all embarked out of sight the poor strasburgers left upon the beach what was to be done no delay the uproar increased every one in disorder the city gates left open unfortunate strasburgers was there in the storehouse of nature was there in the lumber-rooms of learning was there in the great arsenal of chance one single engine left undrawn forth to torture your curiosities and stretch your desires which was not pointed by the hand of fate to play upon your hearts i dip not my pen into my ink to excuse the surrender of yourselves tis to write your panegyric show me a city so macerated with expectation who neither eat or drank or slept or prayed or hearkened to the calls either of religion or nature for seven-and-twenty days together who could have held out one day longer on the twenty eighth the courteous stranger had promised to return to strasburg seven thousand coaches slawkenbergius must certainly have made some mistake in his numeral characters
seven thousand coaches fifteen thousand single-horse chairs twenty thousand wagons crowded as full as they could all hold with senators councillors syndics beguines widows wives virgins canons concubines all in their coaches the abbess of quedlingburg with the prioress the deanes and the sub chantress leading the procession in one coach and the dean of strasburg with the four great dignitaries of his chapter on her left hand the rest following higgledy-piggledy as they could some on horseback some on foot some led some driven some down the rhine some this way some that all set out at sunrise to meet the courteous stranger on the road haste we now towards the catastrophe of my tale i say catastrophe cries slaughanbergius inasmuch as a tale with parts rightly disposed not only rejoiceth gaudet in the catastrophe and the peripatia of a drama but rejoiceth moreover in all the essential and integrant parts of it it has its protasis epitasis catastasis its catastrophe or peripatia
growing one out of the other in it in the order aristotle first planted them without which a tale had better never be told at all says slauchenbergius but be kept to a man's self in all my ten tales in all my ten decades have i slawkenbergius tied down every tale of them as tightly to this rule as i have done this of the stranger and his nose from his first parley with the sentinel to his leaving of the city of strasburg after pulling off his crimson satin pair of breeches is the protasis or first entrance where the characters of the personae dramatis are just touched in and the subject slightly begun the epitasis wherein the action is more fully entered upon and heightened till it arrives at its state or height called the catastasis and which usually takes up the second and third act is included within that busy period of my tale betwixt the first night's uproar about the nose to the conclusion of the trumpeter's wife's lectures upon it in the middle of the grand parade and from the first embarking of the learned in the dispute
to the doctor's finally sailing away and leaving the strasburgers upon the beach in distress is the catastasis or the ripening of the incidents and passions for their bursting forth in the fifth act this commences with the setting out of the strasburgers in the frankfort road and terminates in the unwinding the labyrinth and bringing the hero out of a state of agitation as aristotle calls it to a state of rest and quietness this says hafen slauchenbergius constitutes the catastrophe or peripatia of my tale and that is the part of it i am going to relate we left the stranger behind the curtain asleep he enters now upon the stage what dost thou prick up thy ears at tis nothing but a man upon a horse was the last word the stranger uttered to his mule it was not proper then to tell the reader that the mule took his master's word for it and without any more ifs or ands let the traveller and his horse pass by
the traveller was hastening with all diligence to get to strasburg that night what a fool am i said the traveller to himself when he had rode about a league farther to think of getting into strasburg this night strasburg the great strasburg strasburg the capital of all alsatia strasburg an imperial city strasburg a sovereign state strasburg garrisoned with five thousand of the best troops in all the world alas if i was at the gates of strasburg this moment i could not gain admittance into it for a ducat nay a ducat and a half tis too much better go back to the last inn i have passed than lie i know not where or give i know not what the traveller as he made these reflections in his mind turned his horse's head about and three minutes after the stranger had been conducted into his chamber he arrived at the same inn we have bacon in the house said the host and bread and till eleven o'clock this night had three eggs in it but a stranger who arrived an hour ago has had them dressed into an omelette and we have nothing
alas said the traveller harassed as i am i want nothing but a bed i have one as soft as is in alsatia said the host the stranger continued he should have slept in it for tis my best bed but upon the score of his nose he has got a defluxion said the traveller not that i know cried the host but tis a camp-bed and jacinta said he looking towards the maid imagined there was not room in it to turn his nose in why so cried the traveller starting back it is so long a nose replied the host the traveller fixed his eyes upon jacinta then upon the ground kneeled upon his right knee had just got his hand upon his breast trifle not with my anxiety said he rising up again tis no trifle said jacinta tis the most glorious nose the traveller fell upon his knee again laid his hand upon his breast then said he looking up to heaven thou hast conducted me to the end of my pilgrimage tis diego the traveller was the brother of the julia so often invoked that night by the stranger as he rode from strasburg upon his mule and was come on her part in quest of him
he had accompanied his sister from valladolid across the pyrenean mountains through france and had many an entangled skein to wind off in pursuit of him through the many meanders and abrupt turnings of a lover's thorny tracks julia had sunk under it and had not been able to go a step further than to lyons where with the many disquietudes of a tender heart which all talk of but few feel she sickened but had just strength enough to write a letter to diego and having conjured her brother never to see her face till he had found him out and put the letter into his hands julia took to her bed fernandez for that was her brother's name though the camp-bed was as soft as any one in alsace yet he could not shut his eyes in it as soon as it was day he rose and hearing diego was risen too he entered his chamber and discharged his sister's commission the letter was as follows seor diego whether my suspicions of your nose were justly excited or not tis not now to inquire it is enough i have not had firmness to put them to farther trial
how could i know so little of myself when i sent my duenna to forbid your coming more under my lattice or how could i know so little of you diego as to imagine you would not have stayed one day in valladolid to have given ease to my doubts was i to be abandoned diego because i was deceived or was it kind to take me at my word whether my suspicions were just or no and leave me as you did a prey to much uncertainty and sorrow in what manner julia has resented this my brother when he puts this letter into your hands will tell you he will tell you in how few moments she repented of the rash message she had sent to you in what frantic haste she flew to her lattice and how many days and nights together she leaned immovably upon her elbow looking through it towards the way which diego was wont to come he will tell you when she heard of your departure how her spirits deserted her how her heart sickened how piteously she mourned how low she hung her head
o diego how many weary steps has my brother's pity led me by the hand languishing to trace out yours how far has desire carried me beyond strength and how oft have i fainted by the way and sunk into his arms with only power to cry out oh my diego if the gentleness of your carriage has not belied your heart you will fly to me almost as fast as you fled from me haste as you will you will arrive but to see me expire tis a bitter draught diego but oh tis embittered still more by dying she could proceed no further slockenbergius supposes the word intended was unconvinced but her strength would not enable her to finish her letter the heart of the courteous diego overflowed as he read the letter he ordered his mule forthwith and fernandez's horse to be saddled and as no vent in prose is equal to that of poetry in such conflicts chance which as often directs us to remedies as to diseases having thrown a piece of charcoal into the window diego availed himself of it and whilst the hostler was getting ready his mule he eased his mind against the wall as follows harsh and untuneful are the notes of love unless my julia strikes the key
her hand alone can touch the part whose dulcet movement charms the heart and governs all the man with sympathetic sway oh julia the lines were very natural for they were nothing at all to the purpose says slaukenbergius and tis a pity there were no more of them but whether it was that senor diego was slow in composing verses or the ostler quick in saddling mules is not averred certain it was that diego's mule and fernandez's horse were ready at the door of the inn before diego was ready for his second stanza so without staying to finish his ode they both mounted sallied forth passed the rhine traversed alsace shaped their course towards lyon and before the strasburgers and the abbess of quedlingburg had set out on their cavalcade had fernandez diego and his julia crossed the pyrenean mountains and got safe to valladolid tis needless to inform the geographical reader that when diego was in spain it was not possible to meet the courteous stranger in the frankfort road it is enough to say that of all restless desires curiosity being the strongest
the strasburgers felt the full force of it and that for three days and nights they were tossed to and fro in the frankfort road with the tempestuous fury of this passion before they could submit to return home when alas an event was prepared for them of all other the most grievous that could befall a free people as this revolution of the strasburger's affairs is often spoken of and little understood i will in ten words says slawkenbergius give the world an explanation of it and with it put an end to my tale everybody knows of the grand system of universal monarchy wrote by order of m colbert and put in manuscript into the hands of louis the fourteenth in the year sixteen sixty four tis as well known that one branch out of many of that system was the getting possession of strasburg to favour an entrance at all times into swabia in order to disturb the quiet of germany and that in consequence of this plan strasburg unhappily fell at length into their hands it is the lot of a few to trace out the true springs of this and such like revolutions the vulgar look too high for them statesmen look too low truth for once lies in the middle
what a fatal thing is the popular pride of a free city cries one historian the strasburgers deemed it a diminution of their freedom to receive an imperial garrison so fell a prey to a french one the fate says another of the strasburgers may be a warning to all free people to save their money they anticipated their revenues brought themselves under taxes exhausted their strength and in the end became so weak a people they had not strength to keep their gates shut and so the french pushed them open alas alas cries slaukenbergis twas not the french twas curiosity pushed them open the french indeed who are ever upon the catch when they saw the strasburgers men women and children all marched out to follow the stranger's nose each man followed his own and marched in trade and manufactures have decayed and gradually grown down ever since but not from any cause which commercial heads have assigned for it is owing to this only that noses have ever so run in their heads that the strasburgers could not follow their business alas alas cries slaughanbergius making an exclamation
it is not the first and i fear will not be the last fortress that has been either won or lost by noses the end of slaughanbergius's tale chapter thirty five part two
