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Conquering Hero And Fool
by
Well, the official ceremonies were over, but the students also had decided to pay homage to the heroes, who had returned home after a prolonged absence. And they went to the capital in full force.
Students are queer people, who read books and study under Dr. Know-all; consequently they imagine that they know more than other people. They are also young, and therefore they are thoughtless and cruel.
The respectful and sensible speeches which the old professors had been making all the afternoon in honour of the explorers had come to an end, and the procession of the students had started.
The leadsman and his sweetheart were sitting on a balcony in the company of the other great men. The ringing of the church bells and the booming of the guns mingled with the sound of the bugles and the rolling of the drums; flags were waving and fluttering in the breeze. And then the procession marched by.
It was headed by a ship, with sailors and everything else belonging to it; next walruses came and polar bears, and all the rest of it; then students in disguise, representing the heroes; the Great Man himself was represented in his fur coat and goggles. It wasn’t quite respectful, of course; it wasn’t a very great honour to be impersonated in this way; but there it was! It was well meant, no doubt. And gradually every member of the expedition passed by, one after the other, all represented by the students.
Last of all came the leadsman. It was true, nobody could ever have dreamt of calling him handsome, but there is no need for a man to be handsome, as long as he is an able leadsman, or anything else able. The students had chosen a hideous old grumbler to impersonate him. That alone would not have mattered; but nature had made one of his arms shorter than the other, and his representative had made a feature of this defect. And that was too bad; for a defect is something for which one ought not to be blamed.
But when the fool who played the leadsman approached the balcony, he said a few words with a provincial accent, intended to cast ridicule on the leadsman, who was born in one of the provinces. It was a silly thing to do, for every man speaks the dialect which his mother has taught him; and it is nothing at all to be ashamed of.
Everybody laughed, more from politeness than anything else, for the entertainment was gratuitous, but the girl was hurt, for she hated to see her future husband laughed at. The leadsman frowned and grew silent. He no longer enjoyed the festivities. But he carefully hid his real feelings, for otherwise he would have been laughed at for a fool unable to appreciate a joke. But still worse things happened, for his impersonator danced and cut all sorts of ridiculous antics, in the endeavour to act the leadsman’s name in dumb charade; first his surname, which he had inherited from his father, and then his Christian name, which his mother had chosen for him at his baptism. These names were sacred to him, and although there may have been a little boastful sound about them, he had always scorned to change them.
He wanted to rise from his chair and leave, but his sweetheart caught hold of his hand, and he stayed where he was.
When, the procession was over and everybody who had been sitting on the balcony had risen, the great man laid a friendly hand on the girl’s shoulder, and said, with his kindly smile:–
“They have a strange way here of celebrating their heroes, one mustn’t mind it!”
In the evening there was a garden party and the leadsman was present, but his pleasure was gone; he had been laughed at, and he had grown small in his own estimation, smaller than the fool, who had made quite a hit as a jester. Therefore he was despondent, felt uneasy at the thought of the future and doubtful of his own capability. And wherever he went he met the fool who was caricaturing him. He saw his faults enlarged, especially his pride and his boastfulness; all his secret thoughts and weaknesses were made public.