The Treasure Chest Page 6
Now it seemed there could be a catch in this so that neither yes nor no was a good answer. But the representatives tell us the spirit of divine wisdom shone within them and their answer was pleasing in the eyes of the Emperor.
So this gathering of Jews formed itself into the Great Sanhedrin, and that was an amazing wonder in our own times. For the Great Sanhedrin is not an outsize Jew in Paris, like the giant Goliath, who was a Philistine anyway, but sanhedrin means a gathering and was the name of the High Council in Jerusalem in the old times long ago. It consisted of seventy-one men who were considered the most sensible and wisest in the whole nation, and their pronouncements on the law were accepted and applied throughout Israel.
The representatives of the Jews reinstated such a Council, saying there had been no Great Sanhedrin for fifteen hundred years until this one under the protection of the illustrious Emperor Napoleon.
These are the laws proclaimed by the Great Sanhedrin in Paris in the year 5567 after the creation of the world, in the month of Adar of that year, on the 22nd day of that month:
1) Jewish marriage shall be of one man and one woman. No Israelite may have more-than one wife at one time.
2)No rabbi may declare a married couple divorced unless the secular authorities have previously announced the marriage dissolved according to the civil law.
3) No rabbi may confirm a marriage unless the couple have previously been declared fit to marry by the secular authorities. But a Jew may marry a Christian’s daughter and a Christian the daughter of a Jew. That is no impediment.
4) The Great Sanhedrin acknowledges that Christians and Jews are brothers because they worship one God who created heaven and earth, and it therefore commands Israelites to live with Frenchmen and Italians and the subjects of any land where they dwell as with brothers and fellow citizens if they acknowledge and honour the same one God.
5) Every Israelite shall as commanded in the Law of Moses use justice and neighbourly love towards Christians because they are his brothers, as well as towards those of his own faith, within France and the Kingdom of Italy and elsewhere.
6)The Great Sanhedrin recognizes the country in which an Israelite is born and brought up, or where he has settled and enjoys the protection of the laws, to be his homeland, and commands all Israelites in France and the Kingdom of Italy to look upon that country as their homeland, to serve and defend it, etc. Jewish soldiers, while serving as soldiers, are released from those observances not reconcilable with the military life.
7)The Great Sanhedrin commands all Israelites to bring up their children to love work and to encourage them to take up useful skills and trades, and urges Israelites to acquire fixed property and to renounce all activities that might cause them to be despised or hated by their fellow citizens.
8)No Israelite may charge interest on money lent to the head of a Jewish family in need; that loan is an act of charity; but capital invested in business may earn interest.
9)The same applies to money lent to citizens of other religions. All usury is forbidden, in France and the Kingdom of Italy and elsewhere, not only in dealings with fellow believers and fellow citizens but also with foreigners.
These nine articles were published on the 2nd of March 1807 and signed by the president of the Great Sanhedrin; Rabbi D. Sinzheim of Strassburg, and other High Councillors.
The Sly Pilgrim
A few years ago an idler roamed around the countryside pretending to be a pious pilgrim, saying he came from Paderborn and was making for the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and already at the Coach and Horses in Müllheim he was asking, ‘How far is it to Jerusalem now?’ They told him, ‘Seven hundred hours. But you’ll save a quarter of an hour if you take the path to Mauchen.’ So he went by way of Mauchen to save himself a quarter of an hour on his long journey. That wasn’t such a bad idea. You must not scorn a small gain or a bigger one won’t come your way. You more often get a chance to save or make threepence than a florin. But eight threepennies make a florin, and if on a journey of seven hundred hours you can save a quarter of an hour every five hours, over the whole journey you will save – now, who can work that out? How many hours? But that wasn’t how our supposed pilgrim saw it! Since he was only after an easy life and a good meal he didn’t care which way he went. As the old saying goes, a beggar can never take the wrong turning, it’s a poor village indeed where he can’t collect more than the cost of the shoe leather he has worn out on the road, especially if he goes barefoot. Yet our
pilgrim intended to get back as soon as he could to the main road where he’d find rich people’s houses and good cooking. For this rascal wasn’t content, as a true pilgrim should be, with common food given in compassion by a pious hand, he wanted nothing but nourishing pebble soup! You see, whenever he saw a nice inn by the road, for instance the Post House at Krozingen or the Basel Arms at Schliengen, he would go in and very humbly and hungrily ask for a nice soup made of pebbles and water, in God’s name, he had no money. And when the innkeeper’s wife took pity on him and said, ‘Pious pilgrim, pebbles are not easy to digest!’, he said, ‘That’s just it! Pebbles last longer than bread and it’s a long way to Jerusalem. But if you were to give me a little glass of wine too, in God’s name, it would help me digest them.’ Now if she said, ‘But good pilgrim, a soup like that won’t give you any strength at all!’ then he replied, ‘Well, if you use broth instead of water then of course it would be more nourishing.’ And when she brought him his broth and said, ‘The bits at the bottom are still a bit hard, I’m afraid,’ then he’d say, ‘You’re right, and the broth looks a little thin. Would you have a couple of spoonfuls of vegetables to add to it, or a scrap of meat, or maybe both?’ If now the innkeeper’s wife still felt sorry for him and put some meat and vegetables in the bowl, he said, ‘God bless you! Now just hand me a piece of bread and Ι’ll tuck into your soup!’ Then he would push back the sleeves of his pilgrim’s habit, sit down and set to work with relish, and when he had eaten the last crumb of bread, drained the wine, and finished the last morsel of meat and vegetables and the last drop of broth, he would wipe his mouth on the tablecloth or his sleeve, or perhaps he wouldn’t bother, and he’d say, ‘Missus, your soup has strengthened me as a good soup should, what a shame I can’t find room for the nice pebbles now! But put them by, and when I come back I’ll bring you a holy conch from the seashore at Ascalon or a Jericho rose.’
Treachery Gets Its Just Reward
When in the war between France and Prussia* part of the French Army moved into Silesia, troops from the Confederation of the Rhine* were there with them, and an officer from Bavaria or Württemberg was quartered on a nobleman and was given a room hung with many very fine and valuable paintings. The officer seemed delighted, and when he had been in the house several days and was treated very kindly there, he asked his host to make him a gift of one of these pictures. The nobleman said he would be glad to, and left it to the officer to choose the one he liked best.
Well now, if you are allowed to choose your own present, common sense and good manners demand that you don’t take the best and most valuable thing on offer, and that’s not what is meant. This officer seemed to be aware of this, for of all the paintings he chose one of the least impressive. Yet our Silesian noble was not happy with that and pressed him to take the most valuable one instead. ‘My dear colonel,’ he said, clearly ill at ease, ‘why must you choose the worst one, and one that I’m attached to for other reasons too? Won’t you take this one here, or that one over there!’ But the officer wouldn’t listen to him, and seeming not to notice that his host was growing more and more anxious he took down the painting he had chosen. And there, on the wall where it had hung, was a large damp patch. ‘What’s this?’ said the officer to the nobleman who was now as white as a sheet, and he sounded angry, and he poked at the wall and a couple of newly laid and freshly painted bricks fell out, and behind them was hidden all the nobleman’s money, gold and silver. He thought he had lost it all now. He expected the en
emy soldier to take a large part of it at least, without making an inventory or recording the deal, he was resigned to that outcome and asked him only how he knew that the money was hidden behind the picture. The officer answered, ‘I’ll call in my informant at once, I owe him a reward anyway,’ and soon his servant led in – would you believe it? – the master bricklayer himself, the one who had bricked up the hole in the wall and had been paid for it.
Now that is one of the most dastardly tricks the devil can chalk up on anyone’s list of sins. For a tradesman owes it to be loyal to his customers and to keep quiet about their affairs, provided they are not wrong or unlawful, just as if he was sworn to an oath of secrecy.
But what won’t people do for money! Often exactly what they do to earn a good beating or a stretch in jail or on the gallows, though those are very different goals! Our master craftsman and scoundrel was to discover this. For the worthy officer had him taken outside and paid on the spot with one hundred strokes, good coins of the realm all of them, not one of them a fake. But he returned the nobleman’s property to him untouched.
Let’s applaud both deeds and wish that everyone who has a soldier quartered on him receives such an honest guest, and that every act of treachery gets a similar reward.
Mixed Fortunes
Seldom have good and bad luck come together in so curious a way as in the fate of two sailors during the last war at sea between the Russians and the Turks.* In one battle things got pretty hot, for cannon balls came whistling past, planks and masts splintered, fireballs flew, and now one ship, now another, started to burn and there was no putting out the flames. It must be terrible to have no choice but to jump to one’s death in the water or be burnt alive! But our two Russian tars were spared that choice. The powder chamber on their ship caught fire and a terrible explosion blew the vessel to pieces. These two sailors were shot up skywards, they turned somersaults over each other high in the air and then fell back down into the sea just behind the enemy fleet, and they were alive still and unhurt, and that was a stroke of good fortune! But the Turks were sailing towards
them, they hauled them like drowned rats out of the water and took them on board; and since they were enemies their welcome was a brief one. Nobody wasted much time asking if they had eaten before they set off from the Russian fleet, but put them in chains in the damp, dark ship’s hold, and that was bad luck! Meanwhile cannon balls were still whistling overhead, planks and masts splintered, fireballs flew, and whoosh! now the Turkish ship with the two prisoners on board blew up too and shot skywards in a thousand pieces. The sailors went up with it and dropped back into the water again alongside the Russian fleet, were quickly pulled out by their friends, and they were still alive, and that was a great stroke of good fortune! But these two fine men had to pay for their release from captivity and for their double escape from death with a great sacrifice, for they each lost both their legs. They had been broken or horribly mangled when they were blown out of their chains as the Turkish ship exploded, and as soon as the battle was over they had to be amputated below the knee, and that was a terrible misfortune again! But both survived the operation and lived on for some years with only stumps of legs. In the end they died, first one and then the other, and after all they had experienced that wasn’t the worst thing to have happened.
This story is told by a man who can be believed and who saw both the legless sailors himself and heard their tale from their own mouths.
The Commandant and the Light Infantry in Hersfeld
In the last campaign in Prussia and Russia* when the French Army and a large part of the allied troops were in Poland and Prussia, a contingent of the Baden Light Infantry was in Hessen and stationed at Hersfeld. For the Emperor had taken that state at the beginning of the campaign and stationed troops there. The inhabitants who preferred the way things had been before defied the new order and there were several acts of lawlessness, particularly in the town of Hersfeld. In one incident a French officer was killed. The French Emperor was engaged face to face with great numbers of the enemy and couldn’t allow hostilities behind his back or let a spark spread into a great fire. The unfortunate people of Hersfeld thus had cause to regret their rashness. For the Emperor ordered the town to be looted, set alight at each corner and burnt to the ground.
This town of Hersfeld has many factories and thus many rich inhabitants and fine buildings; and all of us with a heart can understand how its unfortunate people, those fathers and mothers with families, felt when they heard the dreadful news. The poor whose possessions could be carried off in one pair of arms were just as much affected as the rich whose goods couldn’t all be loaded on a train of wagons. Great houses on the town square and small dwellings in the alleyways are all the same when burnt to the ground, just like rich and poor in the graveyard.
But the worst didn’t happen. The French Commandant in Kassel and Hersfeld interceded and the punishment was reduced. Only four houses were to be burnt down, and that was lenient. But the plundering was to take place as ordered, and that was hard enough. The wretched townsfolk, hearing this latest decision, were so cowed and robbed of all presence of mind that the benevolent Commandant himself had to urge them, instead of weeping and pleading in vain, to remove their most precious possessions in the short time that was left. The dreadful hour arrived, the drums sounded over the wails of anguish. The soldiers hurried to their place of assembly through the crowds fleeing in despair. Then the stalwart Commandant of Hersfeld stood before the ranks of the infantry, and first he painted a vivid picture of the sad fate of the townspeople, then he said, ‘Men, you now have permission to loot! Those who wish to take part, fall
out!’ Not one man moved. Not a single one! The order was repeated. Not one pair of boots stirred, and if the Commandant had intended the town to be plundered he would have had to do it himself. But no one was more pleased than he was that things turned out as they did, that is easy to tell. When the townsfolk learnt this, it was as if they woke from a bad dream. No one can describe their joy. They sent a delegation to the Commandant to
thank him for his kindness and magnanimity, and offered him a handsome gift to mark their gratitude. Who knows what they might not have done! But the Commandant refused and said he wouldn’t be paid for a good deed.
This happened in Hersfeld in the year 1807, and the town is still standing.
Kannitverstan
All of us surely have daily occasion, in small places like Emmendingen and Gundelfingen as well as in Amsterdam, to contemplate if we are so minded the transience of earthly things, and to find contentment in our lot even if we don’t live in a land flowing with milk and honey. But it was by the strangest roundabout way, in Amsterdam, and all because of a mistake, that a young German who was learning his trade encountered and recognized the truth. For when he arrived in that great and rich city of commerce full of splendid houses, swaying ships and industrious people, he was immediately struck by a large and handsome building whose like he had not yet seen all along the road from Duttlingen to Amsterdam. He gazed long and with amazement at this sumptuous mansion, the six chimneys on its roof, the fine cornices, and the tall windows each larger than the door of his father’s house at home. In the end he could not
refrain from addressing a passer-by. ‘My good friend,’ he said, ‘could you tell me the name of the gentleman who owns this marvellous house with its window boxes full of tulips, daffodils and stocks?’ But the man, who probably had more important things to do and who unfortunately understood as much German as the questioner Dutch, namely none at all, paused only to snap ‘Kannitverstan’ before hurrying on. This was a Dutch word, or really three words, meaning ‘I can’t understand you’. But our good fellow in foreign parts thought this was the name he wanted to know. ‘He must be a very rich man, this Herr Kannitverstan’, he thought, and walked on. Passing in and out of many streets he eventually came to the inlet of the sea that is there called Het Ey, which means The Y. Here were row upon row of ships, mast after mast, a
nd at first he wondered how he, with just his two eyes, could possibly take in all these marvels, until after a while his gaze remained on one great ship which had arrived from the East Indies and was now unloading. Long lines of crates and bales were already piled up on the quay. More were still being rolled out, together with casks full of sugar and coffee, rice and pepper, with – excusez moi – mouse droppings among it. He watched for some time and then asked a man who was carrying a crate on his shoulder the name of the fortunate person for whom the sea brought all these goods ashore. ‘Kannitverstan,’ was the reply. So now he thought, ‘Aha, so that’s how it is! It’s no wonder. If the sea delivers a man these riches he can easily build such houses on this earth and put tulips in gilded pots at his windows!’ Now he retraced his steps, and his thoughts were sad indeed as he contemplated how poor a man he was among so many rich people in the world. But as he
was thinking, ‘If only I were as fortunate as this Herr Kannitverstan’, he turned a corner and came across a great funeral procession. Slowly and sadly four horses decked in black were drawing a hearse, likewise draped in black, as if they knew they were bringing a dead man to his resting place. A long train of the deceased’s friends and acquaintances followed behind, two by two, shrouded in black cloaks, silent. In the distance a lone bell tolled. Now our stranger was seized by that feeling of melancholy which is spared no one whose heart is in the right place when he sees a funeral, and he stood reverently hat in hand until they had all passed by. But he went up to the last person in the procession, who was calculating what he could make from his cotton if the price increased by ten guilders a hundredweight, took him gently by the sleeve and sincerely begged his pardon. ‘That gentleman,’ he said, ‘for whom the bell tolls, must have been a good friend of yours, you walk behind so downcast and so deep in thought’ ‘Kannitverstan,’ came the reply. Then a pair of large tears welled from the eyes of our good young man from Duttlingen, and he was at once heavy at heart and yet easier in spirit too. ‘Poor Kannitverstan!’ he cried, ‘what can all your riches bring you now? No more than my poverty will bring me one day: a shroud and a winding sheet; and of all your lovely flowers a bunch of rosemary perhaps on your cold breast, or a sprig of rue.’ With these thoughts he followed the cortége as if he were part of it, right up to the graveside, watched the supposed Herr Kannitverstan lowered into his place of rest, and was more moved by the Dutch oration at the graveside, of which he understood not a word, than by many a sermon in German to which he paid little attention. Finally, with a light heart, he left with the others, made a hearty meal of a portion of Limburg cheese in an inn where they spoke German, and whenever again he was inclined to feel depressed because so many people in the world were so rich and he so poor he just remembered Herr Kannitverstan of Amsterdam, his great mansion, his ship laden with riches, and his narrow grave.