Bartholomew Sastrow: Being the Memoirs of a German Burgomaster. Bartholomäus Sastrow
States denied its jurisdiction. A suspension of six years was the result, but after the reconstitution of the chamber and the closure of the debates, I did not succeed, in spite of two years' stay at Spires, in getting a judgment.
Weary of being involved in law for thirty-four years, my father wound up by acquitting the heirs of Rode of all future liabilities in consideration of a sum of one thousand florins. As it happened the original debt was seventeen hundred and five and twenty florins; in addition to this, my father had refunded to Bruser one hundred and sixty-four florins expenses, his own costs exceeded a thousand florins and he had waited forty years for his money. The whole affair was nothing short of a downright calamity to our family; it interrupted my studies and caused the death of my brother Johannes. "Dimidium plus toto," says Hesiod, and the maxim is above all wise in connexion with a law-suit at the Imperial Chamber.
Writing, as I do, for the edification of my children, I consider it useful to mention here the subsequent fate of our godless adversaries. The seventy-fifth Psalm says: "For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is red, and he poured out of the same, but the dregs thereof all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out and drink them." Yes, the Almighty has comforted me, he has permitted me to see the scattering of my enemies. The two principal ones, Hermann Bruser and his fraudulent wife, fell into abject misery; they lived for many years on the bounty of parents and friends; finally the husband became valet of Joachim Burwitz who from the position of porter and general servant at the school when I was young had risen to be the secretary of the King of Sweden. The devil, however, twisted Bruser's neck at Stockholm. He was found in his master's wardrobe, his face all distorted. His daughter, dowered in fraudem mei patris, did, for all that, not escape very close acquaintance with poverty. She sold her houses and her land; and at her death her husband became an inmate of the asylum of the Holy Ghost, where he is to this day. Bruser's son, it is true, rose to be a secretary in Sweden, but far from prospering, he committed all kind of foolish acts everywhere. His first wife, the daughter of Burgomaster Gentzkow,[16] died of grief at Stralsund, where he had left her with her children at his departure for Sweden. He was found dead one morning in his room; his descendants are vegetating some in the city, some in the country.
The author of the plot, the honest dispenser of advice, Johannes Klocke, managed to keep his wealth, but he was racked with gout and had to be carried in a chair to the Town Hall; he died after having suffered martyrdom for many years. The four sons of Nicholas Rode were reduced to beggary; the house Bruser sold in order to cheat my father actually belongs to my son-in-law. As for Burgomaster Christopher Lorbeer, so skilled in prolonging law-suits, does he not expiate, he and his, every day, the wrong in having lent himself to corruption. Erckhorst, the man who tempted him, was robbed while engaged in transporting from one town to another two large bundles of velvet, silk, jewellery and pearls, the whole being estimated at several thousands of florins. His second wife was the byword of the city for her levity of conduct; at every moment she was caught in her own dwelling-house and in the most untoward spots committing acts of criminal intercourse with her apprentices. What had been saved from the thieves was devoured by his wife's paramours. Absolutely at a loss to reinstate himself in his former position, Erckhorst made an end of his life by stabbing himself.
My father's other debtor, the woman Leveling, was left a widow with an only son. Her property in houses and in land yielded, it was said, a golden florin and a fowl per day. That fortune, nevertheless, melted away, and Leveling, worried by her creditors, was obliged to quit her house with nothing but what she stood up in. Lest her son, a horrible ne'er-do-well of fifteen, should spend his nights in houses of ill-fame, she kept a mistress for him at home; after that she married him at such an early age as to astonish everybody, but he cared as much about the sanctity of marriage as a dog cares about Lent. During the ceremonies connected with rendering homage to Duke Philip, the duchess lodged at Leveling's and stood godmother to his new-born daughter, which honour had not the slightest effect in changing the scandalous life he led with a concubine. One night, in company with a certain Valentin Buss, he emptied the baskets in the pond of the master of the fishmongers. An arrant thief, he was fast travelling towards the gallows. Buss, who wound up by going to prison, would have been hanged but for Leveling, who in order to redeem himself parted to the council with his last piece of ground, namely, that in which his father's body rested in the church. One day at the termination of the sermon, Leveling, sword in hand, pursued my father, who had just time to reach his domicile and to shut the door in his face. On the other hand, Master Sonnenberg, who sheltered the old woman Leveling while she was negotiating with her creditors, was not content with egging on her son to all sorts of evil deeds, but had the effrontery to say to my father: "I'll tame you so well that you shall come and eat out of my hands."
After having squandered his inheritance, Leveling died in the most abject poverty; his daughter Marie, the duchess' goddaughter, sells fish in the market. Such was the end of the wealthy popinjay. Mother and son followed the traditions of their family without having profited by the lessons of the past; one of the woman Leveling's relatives was, in fact, that Burgomaster Wulf Wulflam, reputed the richest man on that part of the coast,[17] whose wife was so fond of show and splendour that at her second marriage she sent for the prince's musicians from Stettin and walked from her house to the church on an English carpet. For her own wear she only used the finest Riga flax. So much vainglory was punished by the God of Justice, who expels from His kingdom the proud and haughty. The only thing she had finally left of all her magnificence was a silver bowl with which she went begging from door to door. "Charity," she cried, "for the poor rich woman." One day she asked from one of her former servants a shift and some linen for a collar to it. Moved with pity, the latter did not refuse. "Madame," she said, "this linen was made of the flax you used for your own wear. I have carefully picked it up, cleaned and spun it."[18]
The arrangement made by the Levelings with their creditors gave to my father the passage of the Muhlen-Strasse. Inasmuch as the premises were tumbling to pieces, masons, carpenters, stonecutters and plasterers were soon set to work and began by expelling the rats, mice and doubtful human creatures that had taken up their quarters there. The best tenement adjoining the city wall with a beautiful look-out on the moats and the open country was occupied by the concubine of Zabel Lorbeer. She was one of the three Maries, and had presented him with either seven or eight bastards. My father, finding the door locked one morning, ordered the workmen to knock down the wall which fell on the bed where the scamp and the girl were sleeping; the only thing they could do was to get out of the way as quickly as possible. Lorbeer brought up his progeny according to the principles that guided him; and finally had his son beheaded to save him the disgrace of the gallows.
A short digression is necessary in connexion with the three Maries.[19] They were sisters, exceedingly good-looking, but the poet's "Et quidem servasset, si non formosa fuisset," essentially applied to them. Many traps are laid for beauty, and they one after another fell into them. They lived on their charms, being particularly careful about their appearance and dress in order to attract admirers. Their attempts to obtain such notice were seconded by an unspeakable old crone, Anna Stranck, who had been a downright Messalina in her time, and of whom it was said that she could reckon on the whole of the city among her parentage, although she had neither husband nor children, but that she had had illicit intercourse with every male, young, old and middle-aged, fathers, sons and brothers. Anna Stranck invented for the use of the three Maries a kind of loose coif, the fashion of which our womenkind have religiously preserved; even those who have discarded it wearing a velvet hood based upon that model. They brought their hair, black or grey about two inches down on the forehead. Then came as many inches of gold lace or embroidery, so that the real cap, intended to keep the head warm did not in the least cover the brain. I am purposely quoting the name of Anna Stranck, for it is well to remind people to whom the headgear was due in the first instance; and may it please our dames to preserve it for ever in memory of the woman, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother of their husbands.
I now resume my personal narrative. During the rebuilding of this new property, I was fetching and carrying all the while. One day my father sent me to our own house for the luncheon for himself and for the carpenters. The workmen were just knocking down a chimney; they were working higher than the chimney on a gangway made of boards which at each extremity overlapped the stays. A great number of large nails were strewn