merry with their mead, ale, and brandy, given with an intent to make
me drunk. Thus we had many artifices to guard against; but thus had we
likewise, very luckily for us, many a good meal gratis.

Feb. 21.--We went from Goblin to Pugnitz, three miles and a half.

Feb. 22.--Through Storchnest to Schmiegel, four miles.

Here happened a singular adventure. The peasants at this place were
dancing to a vile scraper on the violin: I took the instrument myself,
and played while they continued their hilarity. They were much pleased
with my playing: but when I was tired, and desired to have done, they
obliged me, first by importunities, and afterwards by threats, to play on
all night. I was so fatigued, I thought I should have fainted; at length
they quarrelled among themselves. Schell was sleeping on a bench, and
some of them fell upon his wounded hand: he rose furious: I seized our
arms, began to lay about me, and while all was in confusion, we escaped,
without further ill-treatment.

What ample subject of meditation on the various turns of fate did this
night afford! But two years before I danced at Berlin with the daughters
and sisters of kings: and here was I, in a Polish hut, a ragged, almost
naked musician, playing for the sport of ignorant rustics, whom I was at
last obliged to fight.

I was myself the cause of the trifling misfortune that befell me on this
occasion. Had not my vanity led me to show these poor peasants I was a
musician, I might have slept in peace and safety. The same vain desire
of proving I knew more than other men, made me through life the continued
victim of envy and slander. Had nature, too, bestowed on me a weaker or
a deformed body, I had been less observed, less courted, less sought, and
my adventures and mishaps had been fewer. Thus the merits of the man
often become his miseries; and thus the bear, having learned to dance,
must live and die in chains.

This ardour, this vanity, or, if you please, this emulation, has,
however, taught me to vanquish a thousand difficulties, under which
others of cooler passions and more temperate desires would have sunk. May
my example remain a warning; and thus may my sufferings become somewhat
profitable to the world, cruel as they have been to myself! Cruel they
were, and cruel they must continue; for the wounds I have received are
not, will not, cannot be healed.

Feb. 23.--From Schmiegel to Rakonitz, and from thence to Karger Holland,
four