James Fenimore Cooper The Headsman [txt]

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it might have, except as it was likely to establish his reputation with
the crowd. Still, it would seem, that by one of those singular
coincidences that are hourly occurring in real life, he had unwittingly
touched a sensitive chord in the system of his fair fellow-traveller. Her
eyes sank to the deck at this abrupt question, the color again stole to
her polished temples, and the least practised in the emotions of the sex
might have detected painful embarrassment in her mein. She was, however,
spared the awkwardness of a reply, by the unexpected and prompt
interference of Maso.
"Hope is the last of our friends to prove recreant," said this mariner,
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"else would the cases of many in company be bad enough, thine own
included, Pippo; for, judging by the outward signs, the Swabian campaign
has not been rich in spoils."
"Providence has ordered the harvests of wit much as it has ordered the
harvests of the field," returned the juggler, who felt the sarcasm of the
other's remark with all the poignancy that it could derive from truth;
since, to expose his real situation, he was absolutely indebted to an
extraordinary access of generosity in Baptiste, for his very passage
across the Leman. "One year, thou shall find the vineyard dripping liquors
precious as diamonds, while, the next, barrenness shall make it its seat.
To-day the peasant will complain that poverty prevents him from building
the covering necessary to house his crops, while to-morrow he will be
heard groaning over empty garners. Abundance and famine travel the earth
hard upon each other's heels, and it is not surprising that he who lives
by his wits should sometimes fail of his harvest, as well as he who lives
by his hands."
"If constant custom can secure success, the pious Conrad should be
prosperous," answered Maso, "for, of all machinery, that of sin is the
least seldom idle. His trade at least can never fail for want of
employers."
"Thou hast it, Signor Maso; and it is for this especial reason that I wish
my parents had educated me for a bishoprick. He that is charged with
reproving his fellow creatures for their vices need never know an idle
hour."
"Thou dost not understand what thou sayest," put in Conrad; "love for the
saints has much fallen away since my youth, and where there is one
Christian ready now to bestow his silver, in order to get the blessing of
some favorite shrine, there were then ten. I have heard the elders of us
pilgrims say, that, fifty years since, 'twas a pleasure to bear the sins
of a whole parish, for ours is a business in which the load does not so
much depend on the amount as the quality; and, in their time there were
willing offerings, frank confessions, and generous consideration for those
who undertook the toil."
"In such a trade, the less thou hast to answer for, in behalf of others,
the more will pass to thy credit on the score of thine own backslidings,"
pithily remarked Nicklaus Wagner, who was a sturdy Protestant, and apt
enough at levelling these side-hits at those who professed a faith,
obnoxious to the attacks of all who dissented from the opinions and the
spiritual domination of Rome.
But Conrad was a rare specimen of what may be effected by training and
well-rooted prejudices. In presenting this man to the mind of the reader,
we have no intention to impugn the doctrines of the particular church to
which he belonged, but simply to show, as the truth will fully warrant, to
what a pass of flagrant and impudent pretension the qualities of man,
unbridled by the wholesome corrective of a sound and healthful opinion,
was capable of conducting abuses on the most solemn and gravest subjects.
In that age usages prevailed, and were so familial to the minds of the
actors as to excite neither reflection nor comment, which would now lead
to revolutions, and a general rising in defence of principles which are
held to be clear as the air we breathe. Though we entertain no doubt of
the existence of that truth which pervades the universe, and to which all
things tend, we think the world, in its practices, its theories, and its
conventional standards of right and wrong, is in a condition of constant
change, which it should be the business of the wise and good to favor, so
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long as care is had that the advantage is not bought by a re-action of
evil, that shall more than prove its counterpoise. Conrad was one of the
lowest class of those fungi that grow out of the decayed parts of the
moral, as their more material types prove the rottenness of the vegetable,
world; and the probability of the truth of the portraiture is not to be
loosely denied, without mature reflection on the similar anomalies that
are yet to be found on every side of us, or without studying the history
of the abuses which then disgraced Christianity, and which, in truth,
became so intolerable in their character, and so hideous in their
features, as to be the chief influencing cause to bring about their own
annihilation.
Pippo, who had that useful tact which enables a man to measure his own
estimation with others, was not slow to perceive that the more enlightened
part of his audience began to tire of this pretending buffoonery.
Resorting to a happy subterfuge, by means of one of his sleight-of-hand
expedients, he succeeded in transferring the whole of that portion of the
spectators who still found amusement in his jugglery, to the other end of
the vessel, where they established themselves among the anchors, ready as
ever to swallow an aliment, that seems to find an unextinguishable
appetite for its reception among the vulgar. Here he continued his
exhibition, now moralizing in the quaint and often in the pithy manner,
which renders the southern buffoon so much superior to his duller
competitor of the north, and uttering a wild jumble of wholesome truths,
loose morality, and witty inuendoes, the latter of which never failed to
extort roars of laughter from all but those who happened to be their
luckless subjects.
Once or twice Baptiste raised his head, and stared about him with drowsy
eyes, but, satisfied there was nothing to be done in the way of forcing
the vessel ahead, he resumed his nap, without interfering in the pastime
of those whom he had hitherto seemed to take pleasure in annoying. Left
entirely to themselves, therefore, the crowd on the forecastle represented
one of those every-day but profitable pictures of life, which abound under
our eyes, but which, though they are pregnant with instruction, are
treated with the indifference that would seem to be the inevitable
consequence of familiarity. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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