Desire to see Lake Mummel increased in me when I learnt from my godfather that he’d been there himself. However, hearing I was particularly interested in going there too, he said, ‘And what good do you suppose that will do you, eh? All my esteemed son and godson will see when he gets there is a perfectly ordinary lake surrounded by forest. Your excited anticipation will meet with crushing disappointment, leaving you with nothing but regrets, sore feet (because you’ll have to walk there; it’s tough going for a horse), and an identical return journey. The only thing that persuaded me to make the trip myself was needing somewhere to hide while Doctor Daniel (he meant the Duc d’Enghien) and his army marched past below, on their way to Philippsburg.’ His reservations did nothing to dent my curiosity, and I booked a guide to take me there. At which my godfather, realizing that I was serious, said that, with harvesting and oat-sowing over and no work to be done on the farm, he’d take me there himself. The fact was, he was very fond of me; he liked having me around all the time. And since the locals thought I was his real son he liked to show me off, behaving the way any humble peasant might act towards a son whom fortune (because I certainly didn’t merit my present status) had turned into a big cheese.
So off we set, striding over hill and dale until we came to Lake Mummel. The hike took us less than six hours, my godfather being as fit as a flea and as nimble on his pins as a much younger man. We sat on the lakeshore and consumed all our rations, because the distance we’d travelled and the height of the hills among which the lake lies had given us an appetite and induced quite a thirst. When we’d recovered our breath, I examined the lake and soon spotted a number of worked timbers floating on its surface, which dad and I thought must be relics of the raft employed by the Württemberg expedition. I measured the lake or rather calculated length and width using geometry. It would have been a slog, walking all the way round and measuring the lake in paces or feet, so the sketch of its outline that I made on my writing slate included estimated dimensions. When I was done, and since the sky was quite clear, with no movement in the balmy air, I decided to see what truth there was in the old saying that throwing a stone into the lake would trigger a storm. I’d already found the reason for the legend that no trout swam here: the water had a mineral taste.
To put the saying to the test, I followed the shore round to the left until I reached a spot where the water (otherwise crystal-clear) looks almost coal-black because of the lake’s ghastly depth. The very sight strikes fear in the heart. There I began picking up the biggest stones I could lift and lobbing them into the water. My godfather or dad not only refused to help me; he issued frantic warnings, begging me to stop. But I didn’t; I continued like a man possessed. Boulders that were too big and heavy to lift I rolled to the edge of the water. By the time I’d thrown in some thirty or more, the wind was filling the sky with dark clouds. The clouds themselves filled with terrible thunder. My godfather, standing on the far side of the lake near the outflow and loudly condemning my actions, suddenly shouted at me to take shelter before the rain came and the worsening weather blew us head over heels or some other disaster struck. But I shouted back, ‘I want to stay till the end, father. It can rain pikes and halberds for all I care!’ ‘I know, I know,’ dad replied. ‘You’re like every young whippersnapper. You don’t give a fig if the whole world goes under!’
Despite his tirade, I couldn’t stop peering into the lake. I expected to see the usual lines of bubbles that come up after you’ve thrown stones into deep water, whether stagnant or running. But I saw nothing of the kind. Instead, I became aware of tiny frog-shaped creatures flailing around in the depths – or did they perhaps look more like the trails of sparks that fall from a firework when it soars skyward as a properly positioned sky rocket should? And just as those sparks seemed to come closer beneath my gaze, they also grew larger and more human in shape. A feeling of amazement gripped me at first, before gradually turning to horror and dread. ‘Ah!’ I cried out in fear – to myself, I thought, yet evidently with sufficient volume to reach the ears of my godfather, despite the awful thunder. ‘How great are the Creator’s miracles even in the bowels of the Earth and the depths of its waters!’ The words had scarcely left my lips when one of these sylphs, rising to the surface, replied, ‘See? You admit the fact before you’ve even witnessed the phenomenon. What would you say, I wonder, if you’d already reached the centre of the Earth and set eyes on our home – which your inquisitiveness has thrown into such disorder?’ Other water sprites now rose to the surface, popping up everywhere like diving ducks, all looking in my direction and holding up the boulders I’d thrown into the water. I was gobsmacked. The first sprite, clearly the leader, wore clothes that shone like gold and silver. Tossing a shiny gemstone towards me (the size of a bull’s eye, but with the colour and transparency of an emerald), he said, ‘Here: catch this! It’ll give you a handle when you’re telling folk about us and about the lake.’ I caught the stone and stuffed it in my pocket. Instantly, I came over funny – as if I was suffocating. It was the air, I realized; I was drowning in air! I collapsed on the ground and began rolling around like a bobbin, eventually falling into the lake. I felt better on the instant. Thanks to the stone now nestling in my pocket, I was breathing water instead. I could swim about underwater effortlessly, just like the sprites. When they dived into the depths, I accompanied them. It was like belonging to a flock of birds when, abruptly leaving the upper levels, they plummet earthwards.
Having witnessed part of the miracle at least (the part above water) and become aware of my sudden disappearance, dad left the lake in a hurry and scooted off home as if his hair was on fire. There he told folk everything he’d seen: how with the thunderstorm at its height the water sprites had brought up the stones I’d thrown in the water, restoring them to their former places, and how they’d then taken me back down with them. Some believed him, but most just grunted. Others imagined that, like a second Empedocles Agrigentinus (who jumped into Mount Etna to make everyone think, when no body was found, he’d gone to heaven), I’d deliberately drowned myself in the lake after telling father to spread the word and so give me a certain immortality; people would have seen me going around with a long face for a while and have deduced I was half out of my wits with despair, etc. etc. Others again, not realizing how strong the will to live was in me, readily believed that my presumed father had murdered me himself; he wanted me out of the way, leaving him as sole owner of the manor. The only subjects of gossip around this time, both in the spa itself and throughout the district, were Lake Mummel, my assumption and my godfather’s presumed greed.
Thirteen
The Prince of Lake Mummel describes the nature and origin of the sylphs
Pliny, at the end of his second book, writes of the geometrician Dionysius Dorus that his friends found a letter in his tomb, written by himself and relating how, when he’d left his tomb and travelled to the centre of the Earth, he’d found the distance to be 42,000 stadia. However, the Prince of Lake Mummel, who’d fetched me down from the surface (see previous chapter), told me definitely that from the centre of the Earth to the open air, i.e. through half Earth’s diameter, supposing they wished to reach either Germany or its antipodes, he and his sylphs had a journey of precisely 900 German miles. Each trip had to be undertaken via lakes like this one, he said, of which there were as many dotted about the world as the year has days. They all terminated or bottomed out in the place where their king dwelt. We covered this huge distance in less than an hour, which meant that our speed was close to if not equal to the moon’s. Yet the trip involved neither stress nor fatigue. In fact, during our gentle descent I was able to discuss a range of topics with said Prince of Lake Mummel, whom I found most approachable. One thing I asked him was why he was taking me on such a long, dangerous, and (folk would think) out-of-the-ordinary excursion? His reply was modest. We weren’t going far, he said; an hour’s stroll – that was all. There was no danger, since I had him and his escort with me and the all-powerf
ul stone in my pocket. Nor was it any wonder that I found it so extraordinary. He’d have fetched me anyway, but his king had commanded that I be brought into the royal presence; the monarch had something he wished to talk to me about. I’d already been struck by the wonders of nature on Earth’s surface – and I’d caught no more than a glimpse of them. Now he wanted to show me those that lay under the Earth as well as beneath its waters. At this point I asked him another question: please, why had the Great Creator created so many miraculous lakes, particularly since they were useless to humans, it seemed to me – more likely to cause harm. He answered, ‘You’re quite right to ask about things you neither know nor understand. There are three reasons why these lakes were created. First, they nail (in a manner of speaking) all named bodies of water, notably the Great Ocean, to the Earth. Second, they allow us (the way pipes, tubes or well-shafts allow your ornamental fountains) to move water up from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the land (that’s our chief function), as a result of which all the world’s springs, by feeding watercourses large and small, keep the soil moist, stimulate plant growth, and slake the thirst of man and beast. Third, they provide sensible creatures like us with somewhere to live, do our job, and give proper praise to God the Creator of all things. That is why we and such lakes were brought into existence and will remain in existence until Judgement Day. If, however, as that day approaches, for one reason or another we have to quit the post to which God and nature appointed us, the world will inevitably be destroyed by fire. Presumably this will not happen earlier unless you lose either the moon (donec auferatur luna, ‘so long as the moon endureth’, Ps. 72) or Venus or Mars, the morning and evening stars, because all procreation of plants and animals must first cease and all water disappear before Earth spontaneously catches fire from the heat of the sun, burns to a crisp, and is regenerated. However, such knowledge is not for us; only God knows these things. Except we speculate, of course, and your chemists, practising their skills, tend to witter on.’
Hearing him talk like this, alluding to Holy Writ, I asked whether they were mortal creatures who might also, after this world, look forward to a future life? Or were they spirits, who so long as the world existed performed only their appointed tasks? He replied, ‘We’re not spirits, no; we’re mortals. We do have rational souls, but they die and decay along with our bodies. All God’s works are wonderful, of course – more wonderful than any created being can say. However, as regards ourselves, I want you to understand how different we are from God’s other creatures. So I’ll tell you in simple terms what we’re like. His holy angels are spirits. Modelled on God himself, they’re all upright, wise, free, chaste, radiant, lovely, unerring, swift, immortal creatures – fit to honour and extol his name through an eternity of bliss. In this temporal world, however, they serve God’s Church here below, carrying out his most holy commands. Hence their other name: nuncios. And hundreds of thousands of them (no: thousands of millions; a very large number, as God in his wisdom determined) were created at one time. However, an uncountable fraction of this host, having in their arrogance grown too big for their boots, if you like, became fallen angels. That is when your earliest ancestors, created by God in his own image with rational, immortal souls, were given bodies to enable them to procreate on their own until such time as your race had made up for the fallen angels in number. For that reason the world was now called into being, along with all the other creatures, to give earthly man, until his race had multiplied sufficiently to replace the angels who’d fallen, somewhere to live, sing God’s praises, and use all other created things that roamed the planet (of which God had made him master) to the glory of God and the satisfaction of his own nutritional requirements. At that time, what made man different from the holy angels was that he was burdened with an earthly body and didn’t know good from evil. That made him feebler and less nippy than an angel could be. On the other hand, he had nothing in common with brute beasts either, which meant that when, after the Fall and the expulsion from Paradise, his body was subject to dying, we classed mankind as occupying a place midway between holy angels and brute beasts. You see, just as the sacred, non-embodied soul of a terrestrial but nevertheless heavenward-oriented human possesses all the goodness of a holy angel, so the lifeless body of an earthly human (putrefaction-wise) resembles any carcass left behind by what had once been a brute beast. We, on the other hand, place ourselves midway between you and the rest of the world’s living creatures – particularly since, although like you we possess rational souls, those souls die at the same time as our bodies, just as the living spirits of brute beasts disappear with their deaths. OK, we know that God’s eternal son (through whom we too were created) exalted you to the highest rank by assuming human form, satisfied God’s justice, soothed God’s anger and reacquired eternal bliss for you humans, all of which sets your race high above our own. However, I’m not talking eternity here; we know nothing about eternity because that isn’t something we’re capable of enjoying. All I’m talking about is this temporal world in which the Creator has in his generosity given us all the bliss we need in the shape of sound minds, a knowledge of Almighty God’s will, and the satisfaction of our every requirement: healthy bodies, long life, precious freedom, and adequate skill and understanding of natural things. He also (and this is his greatest gift) made us without sin, without need of any chastisement – suffering neither from his anger nor from the least physical affliction. All of which is why I have explained things in such detail, covering not only the holy angels but also the human race and the poor dumb beasts. It has all been for your better understanding.’ I replied that I still couldn’t get my head around certain things: why, when they did no wrong and therefore faced no punishment, did they need a king? And with a king ruling over them, how could they boast of such freedom? Lastly, how could they undergo birth or death if both pain and sickness were unknown among them? To which the princeling replied that they had their king not for him to administer justice or receive their service but in order that, like the king or leader in a beehive, he should direct their affairs. And just as their women experienced no pleasure in intercourse, they felt no pain in giving birth – as I might find plentifully and credibly corroborated in cats, for instance, which while they conceive in some pain deliver in pleasure. Similarly, they don’t die in pain, he told me, or at an advanced and enfeebled age (much less from illness), but go out like a light when it’s finished shining; their bodies simply vanish along with their souls. Compared to the freedom he boasted of, the freedom enjoyed by the very greatest human monarch was as nothing, not even worth a shadow. The fact was, neither we nor any other creature could kill them or force them to do anything against their will, let alone clap them in gaol, because they were able to withstand fire, water, air and earth without any effort or fatigue – to both of which they were strangers in any case. At which I said, ‘If that’s the stuff you’re made of, your Creator has raised your race higher and blessed it with greater happiness than ours.’ ‘No, no,’ the prince replied. ‘You’re committing a major sin if that’s what you think. You’re blaming God in his goodness for something that isn’t so. He’s blessed you with far greater happiness in creating you for eternal bliss and letting you look upon his countenance constantly – bestowing on you a life of bliss in which the recipient obtains in a single instant more joy and delight than our entire race can enjoy from the beginning of creation until the Day of Judgement.’ ‘But what about the damned,’ I asked, ‘what do they have from it?’ He responded with a counter-query: ‘How can the good Lord help it if one of your number, blind to his true destiny, abandons himself to the creatures of this world and their shameful lusts, letting his animal desires slip the reins, himself becoming a brute beast – indeed, in his flouting of God’s will, sinking to the level of the souls bound for hell rather than soaring to the heights of the blessed? The never-ending wretchedness into which such damned souls fall of their own volition in no way detracts from the greatness and nobility of t
heir kind. Their temporal existence will have given them as much chance as anybody of attaining eternal bliss; they’d only to choose the appointed path.’
Fourteen
The other subjects that Simplicius discussed with said prince, and the wonderful things he learnt
I told the princeling that in any case I had more opportunities to discuss such matters on Earth’s surface than I made use of. But there was something else I needed to know: would he please explain why it was that a massive storm blew up whenever stones were thrown into such lakes? Much the same was said of Lake Pilatus in Switzerland, I recalled hearing, and I’d read something similar about Lake Camarina in Sicily – whence the Latin tag Camarinam movere. He replied, ‘It’s because when anything heavy is thrown into a body of water, it doesn’t stop falling towards the Earth’s centre until it reaches a bed (a bottom of some kind) on which it comes to rest. However, these lakes go down to the Earth’s centre; they have no bottom. So any stones thrown into them naturally and inevitably sink down to where we live. There they’ll lie unless we carry them back up to where they came from – and promptly, too, in order to discourage the malice of those who make a habit of chucking them in. That’s a major part of what we do, in fact; it’s what we were created for. You see, if we allowed stones to be thrown in and brought up again without marking the occasion with sudden storms, the end result would be that we spent all our time dealing with the idle mischief-makers who daily, the world over, have nothing better to do than send us stones. From this single task that we’re required to perform you see how essential we are as a race. If we didn’t remove said stones, with so many similar lakes dotted around the world and descending to the centrum terrae, down where we live, and with so much stuff being tossed into them day after day, the very ties that bind the ocean to the Earth would eventually be destroyed. The passages through which the springs make their way from the deepest depths to the surface of the earth would become blocked, causing damaging confusion and bringing about the ruin of the entire world.’
The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus Page 42
