Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘life’

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 200- 204

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 10, 2026| Leave a Comment »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

With paralyzing horror I looked myself in the face, saw
how greedily and flickeringly my eyes burned, how my mouth
was narrow and angry and spoke with cruel calm:
“Weinschrötter, you come before the Inquisition in the
second degree, I ask for the second time:”
“Will you confess or not?”
A cry of pain came from her mouth, but she shook her
head in denial, so that a red flag waved around her.
The one with the cowl scraped in a basin of glowing
embers, and pulled a white-hot iron from the coals.
Then smashing and crashing the terrible image collapsed.
The mirror had slipped from my hand.
Splinters and shards lay scattered on the floor.
The magister entered and said:
“Baron, I’m afraid this means seven years of bad luck!”
“I want to get up and leave,” I ordered. “Get me a
carriage. I don’t want to spend another night in this room.”
“You are too weak, Baron,” he said and then added. “I
know a carriage. The driver Peter will be happy to hitch up if I
send him mail. But it’s a long way to the next town.”
“Get me a carriage,” I urged him. “I’m not staying here.”
He walked out shaking his head.
I was afraid in that room. The man from the Orient had
appeared to me here with a comfort that outweighed all the
sufferings and wanderings of my life, yet demons dwelled in
these dilapidated walls, which were hostile to all living things.
The screams of pain, the curses and lamentations, which still
haunted the tattered leather wallpaper, were hiding in the
cracks of the wall and in the twilight they were like the buzzing
of mosquitoes, yet they had still not succeeded in deluding me
into believing that I had attended a coven, that I was among
larvae. I listened up and let the magister tell me the miraculous
things that the people, tired of the zealousness and the
artificially created crisis, had already accomplished in this
country, and when he, with fiery eyes and a face that I did not
recognize, swore high and dear, that the bright dawn of
freedom would rise from the smoking and stinking debris of
the shattered fortresses, this description moved me so much
that I felt a desire to see the events in Paris with my own eyes.
Supported by the Magister, I climbed down the
crumbling staircase of Krottenriede for the last time and
knocked on the door of the master of the hound.
He was sitting at a table, whistling to himself and looking
at the components of a gold-inlaid rifle lock, which he had
taken apart and anointed it with a feather from a small bottle of
clear bone oil.
When he heard of my intention, he did not want to know
anything about it, and said that now the fun days of stalking the
red buck would begin and that he wouldn’t like it if the son of
his old crony Dronte left without a successful hunt and with
such an abrupt departure. And as for taking that maleficent
fellow, the windy magister along with, it was completely out of
the question, since he will be taking the next few days, to write
various sharp manifests to the farmers all around, whose dogs
would again begin to prowl and roam around and this must be
stopped immediately and punished with severe punishments.
I replied to him very politely that I could hardly be
restrained from staying on Krottenriede, especially since I had
important and urgent business. Otherwise it would hardly occur
to me to travel for miles on a farm wagon in a state of half
recovery. If he were to take it upon himself to leave me in my
infirmity without any other companion than the waggoner, then
this was a matter that he would have to decide with his
conscience.
These words struck him to some extent, but nevertheless
he swayed his head back and forth and said that he did not like
to let the magister out of his hand. I, as a nobleman, must
understand that such good-for-nothings, when they get the
chance would make an attempt to escape. He had confronted
the journeyman with the fact that a couple of times the wood
invoices had not been correct, for which he, the master of the
hound, was himself to blame, nevertheless, it occurred to him
that he could threaten the windbag, on the basis of this fact, pay
him less and let him walk into the hole until he would willingly
return to food and whip. Because, added the old swindler with
a wink, he would never get such a cheap and good scribe in his
life, and for that very reason, he could not let the man out of his
sight.
I stopped and asked him once again to allow the man as
my escort, he finally gave in after some cunning consideration
and said that he already wanted to authorize the windbag and
give him papers so that the rascal with his severed ears would
have to return immediately after he had brought me to my
destination. But he wanted to advise me one thing: to treat the
imaginary one, the scholarly monkey no differently than a pot
de chambre, porter and lackey, and on occasion not to spare a
few kicks or face slaps. For this is the best medicine for such
birds, who secretly think they are better than a nobleman or a
good soldier.
I shook his hand and asked for a temporary leave; so that
he could think that there was still time and that I would start
packing. Instead of partaking in the upcoming lunch, I waved
to Hemmetschnur, who was anxiously waiting in the
antechamber, since he had always been forbidden to enter the
manorial chambers with the exception of the dining room, and
quickly climbed with him onto the waiting carriage, which the
young farmer on the driver’s seat at my command immediately
set into motion.
We rattled down the steep road and were only a few
thousand paces from Krottenriede when a loud bugle sounded
from the heights.
The farmer made an effort to stop the horses, and said:
“The merciful lord is calling us back!”
“You fool!” said the magister. “It’s only the hunter Räub,
who gives a farewell to the high-born gentleman next to me.
Therefore, be quiet!”
So we drove on, and soon the blowing died away, in
which I well recognized the call “Rallie”, in the fresh wind.
In the afternoon, we stopped in a little village.
My weakness increased considerably. Half asleep I
listened to Hemmetschnur, who, after he had gained so much
confidence, told me the story of his cut off ears and how this
had been a severe punishment for a stupid prank he had
committed in Stambul, when he had responded to the waving
and nodding of a Turkish, veiled lady, by climbing over a wall,
and was immediately seized for the cuttings and, at the
command of a man in rich clothes, was wounded by two
burning cuts with a hand-held scimitar, which one of them
pulled out of his belt, and was deprived of his ears. When he
collapsed from pain, weakness and loss of blood, the cruel
man’s servants dragged him out into the deserted street, in the
sweltering heat of the noon, and threw him on a heap of dung
and rubbish, where he remained. Towards evening he awoke
and felt how the fierce wild dogs that they have there in all the
alleys licked his wounds for the sake of blood, and this was the
reason that no inflammation appeared. A compassionate
Muslim picked him up and took him to a Franciscan monastery,
where he was cared for.
And the most distressing thing of all was that he learned
later that the veiled lady had been a nasty old hag who had
wanted to have some fun, which was made worse by the arrival
of her son-in-law, a Pascha as powerful as he was violent, who
had brought it to such a miserable end.
I was not able to take food and I kept seeing the cut off,
shell-shaped ears of the magister in front of me, and how
shaggy dogs fought over the bloody pieces in the yellow dust
of the street.
When we arrived in the Rhenish city toward evening and
the carriage was parked in front of the door of the inn “Zum
Reichsapfel”, I gave Hemmetschnur leave, although he was
very concerned about me and wanted to stay with me. But I
reminded him to cross the river before the city gates closed or
before a messenger on horseback from the master of the hound
came behind them.
Then he was so frightened that his teeth snapped open
struck one against the other. Once again he kissed my hand,
bowed many times and then pointing to the wide, calm stream,
said:
“I go to freedom, my patron! Wherever I see you again,
my Herr Baron, I will serve you faithfully and be yours with
blood and life!”
After I had amply rewarded Peter, the driver, who had
observed the departure of the magister with much head
scratching and frowning, I entered the inn.
“The gentleman is burning red in the face,” said the
waiter, who directed me to my room. “The gentleman should
go to bed; I will immediately call Doctor Schlurich.”
He helped me to undress, and immediately after that I felt
the hot waves and the shivering chill of the fever that was
setting in again. And then there was darkness around me, out of
which an endless procession of sights passed by me, even more
morose and sullen than the face of the magister on the day
when I had first seen him at Krottenriede Castle.
After long weeks of a bedridden life in which I barely
stirred, after countless days in which my inner gaze firmly and
unwaveringly held the image of Isa Bektschi, the hour came
when I, as if awakening from a deep sleep, saw doctor
Schlurich sitting at my bedside. He was a slim man of about
forty years, very distinguished and intelligent-looking, with a
high, clean forehead and beautiful eyes. His black suit was
made of the finest fabric, and in his tie was a bright green
emerald of great value, and his hands were delicate, white and
well-groomed.
“My lord baron,” he said in a pleasant and subdued voice.
“I am glad that your vigorous nature and will to live have won
the not easy victory over a severe nervous fever.”
“And your art,” I added politely.
“My skill can, at the best of times, support the secretive
forces with which the body can defend itself against the
impending decay, can even summon it, can alleviate pain and
restlessness, but must – with the exception of a few cases – as it
were, watch, how the quarrel surges to and fro. The friendly
fighters against death here and there with this and that means to
bring support (and it may be that this is sometimes decisive),
but on the whole the sick person must find the remedy in
himself or bring it forth. This time you, distinguished Herr,
were on the way into the shadow realm, and you have rightly
returned!”

Read Full Post »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 190- 194

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 8, 2026| Leave a Comment »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

Somebody came, put me in a cradle and sang to me, so
that I could fall asleep.
But I was awake again in a moment. Lying in the bed
with the angel heads, I saw in the first morning light the
candles, the light rectangles of the windows, I wanted to move,
but my limbs were too heavy.
“You have a fever!” said a dull voice.
Next to me, in a patched robe, sat the magister stirring
something in a glass.
“I happened to see you in the meadow outside doing
strange leaps, Baron,” said Hemmetschnur. “Johann and I ran
out there and with great difficulty put you to bed. That is all I
know. If I had not still been up the entire night over the cursed
wood bills who knows whether we would not have picked you
up frozen to death in the cold dew.”
He held the glass to my lips, and I drank.
“Am I sick then?” I asked.
A great weakness was in me.
“It seems so,” he returned. “I knew how it would turn out
if one had to lie in this room at night, and especially on the last
of April, at Walpurgis. The master of the hound is already up
and asks vehemently what the noise in the break of day was all
about. I must tell him; otherwise all hell will break loose. Get
some sleep and next time keep your hands off things that are
not fun to play with!”
And he pointed with his finger at the blue pot that lay
shattered on the floor.
His face seemed to me to be as morose and off color as
the nasty day that was slowly creeping up. I closed my eyes
and called inside with all my might for the Ewli, who did not
want to appear to me.
I had indeed become seriously ill and lay weak and faint
in the four-poster bed, whose bruised angel heads made faces at
me when the fever heat rose.
The magister took good care of me, and the master of the
hound appeared once, with his foot still wrapped, sat next to
me for a while and again told me a stunt that he and my father
had performed at the duke’s court, by putting a large water frog
into the night gown of a distinguished lady.
In the evening between eleven and half past eleven I
heard his loud singing. I distinguished the manner of a hunter’s
song:
“A little fox I want to catch,
Red as my beloved’s hair.”
This song made me weep in my weakness, and I thought
with new, hot tears of my Zephyrine in the rose bushes, as she
had said, “I carry under my heart a little vixen of the female
sex,” and how horribly it had turned out.
And yet it had been so long ago that I was allowed to
believe that the pain in my chest had cried itself to death.
My eyes became wet around Aglaja, too, and I saw her
again with the glittering crown of the dead in the flickering of
the candles.
What purpose had my unhappy, miserable life served? To
whom had it been of any use? Passions, all the garbage of sins,
and wicked ghosts were its contents, and now the path
descended gently toward the end. Oh, how I resented myself so
deeply when I looked back at the lost years! Hardworking
farmers plowed their meager field in trickling sweat, craftsmen
worked their hands without rest for the sake of their daily bread,
doctors sat at the beds of the sick, full of care and heavy with
knowledge, scholars researched and pondered with
extinguished lamps, musicians delighted with the sweet playing
of the human heart. And me? Here I lay, a diseased trunk that
bore neither leaves nor blossoms and was devoid of any fruit of
life. Hans Dampf himself had not staggered more uselessly
through existence than I had. But suffering, suffering had been
heaped upon me to the fullest extent, and now I felt more than
pain. For within me was the terrible feeling of purposelessness
and the ripeness of decay.
“Everything served your purification,” said a soft and
mild voice in a language that was completely foreign to me.
Yet I understood it, as if it were my own.
Beside my bed, in the twilight, stood, enclosed in a very
fine, clear bluish light of its own, Ewli.
It was him. Under the black turban between the arches of
the brows was the red horizontal mark; the eyes shone like
black fires, in which the noble, brownish face was without
wrinkles. Around the neck and on the chest were yellow amber
beads on the reddish-brown cloth of the robe.
“Who are you -?” I asked.
My voice was toneless, like the voices one hears in a
dream.
“I am here,” it wafted toward me.
Around the red lips, which crowned a small black beard,
went a mild, understanding smile, which was like a soft caress
for me.
“At last you have come -” I whispered.
“I have come.”
“Is this your true form?” I asked.
“It is the shape you gave me.”
“I gave you?”
“You chose this shape.”
I suddenly saw myself as a child, immersed in adoring in
front of the glass lintel, under which stood the small image of
the one who now appeared to me, as he had so often before. I
feared very much that he would slip away this time too, but
Ewli, as if he had guessed my fear, smiled softly and said, “You
are close to me.”
Then it was as if I saw, over his shoulder, a distorted,
mischievous face with yellow, piercing eyes, and I cried out,
“Another is also close to me!”
“He is everywhere,” answered Ewli. “He always walked
beside you and beside me.”
“Fangerle -” I groaned.
“To name is to call,” the voice continued. “Give him no
name, and he is no more.”
The sickeningly grinning face behind him disappeared
into the half-light, and was no more. A golden gleam entered
the eyes which looked at me benignly, like a reflection of
immeasurable glory.
“You have walked so deeply through hardship and
torment, that he has no more power over you. You are near the
goal, brother.”
“Help me!” I moaned. “I am so weak -.”
“You are tired from the long way and still have more to
walk. Only you alone can help you, for I am you,” he said.
“I don’t understand you -“
I lifted my aching head.
“What then is the goal?”
“Eternal life,” he said, and in that moment, the gloomy
chamber became so dazzlingly bright, that I closed my eyes.
When I opened them again and feared to look into the
void, I saw, to my indescribable consolation, that Ewli was still
with me.
“I am Isa Bektschi, Isa the guardian,” I heard him say.
“So you watch over me?”
“Always over you.”
“And where is my path going, Isa Bektschi?”
With a trembling heart, I looked at him.
“To the rebirth,” he replied, and over his unspeakably
beautiful face, once more shone a bright radiance.
“But death-“
“The immortal returns to God,” It sounded solemnly.
“Every man’s immortal?” I asked, reaching out to him.
“Every human being.”
“So everyone is reborn, Ewli?” Sweet hope descended
upon me.
“Twofold is the way of rebirth according to the law,” he
spoke, and his voice was deep like the sound of bells.
“Unconscious and conscious.”
Fear seized me at this word.
“And I -?” I groaned out. “Help me, Brother!”
“Only you can.”
Agonizing effort was in me, the ardent desire to
understand.
I wanted to stand up, to ask, to plead – but I could not. I
looked at him imploringly, praying in mute fear that he would
stay. But he spoke quietly and insistently, and from his gaze
poured a bright glow into my soul.
“Take note! A powerful ruler and wise man once had a
villain put to death, and there was a voice in him that no human
being should end another man’s life prematurely. When now
the condemned knelt on the blood leather to receive the fatal
stroke he looked at the ruler with a look in which there was so
much fervent hatred that the wise ruler was frightened. Then
the ruler said:
“If you desist from evil, I will give you life.”
Then the evildoer laughed and cried out, “You only dare
not let me be killed, for you fear the revenge that my departed
spirit will take on you.”
The ruler looked at him and said:
“As little as your head, separated from your body can
move towards me and pronounce the word revenge, that is how
little I fear revenge from you!”
The condemned man laughed and shouted.
“Executioner, do your duty!”
The sword fell down, and to the horror of those present,
the head of the slain man rolled towards the ruler, stood in front
of him on the cut neck and formed with the lips, clearly
recognizable, the word “Revenge!”, while the gaze took on a
horrible rigidity due to the extreme effort and willpower. The
faithful saw it in great fear. Then the wise man spoke:
“Fear nothing! I may have done wrong in having this
man killed, yet I have protected myself from his anger. For, see,
he had to use all his willpower at the moment of death in order
to carry out what I had told him. And thereby no power has
remained for his later evil intentions. His will has been
consumed in a useless effort, and when he returns, he will be
without consciousness of what has happened to him. If only he
had thought of how to retain consciousness beyond death, he
would have become an Ewli, one who returns. But no evil one
can become an Ewli!”

Read Full Post »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 130- 134

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 27, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

“Enter and make the sacrifice, of concealing your own
pain, so that the dying may fall asleep without a soul martyr.”
I felt a burning pain that took my breath, clenched my
teeth and went slowly into the next room. Through the veil of
tears that, despite all my intentions, inexorably ran from my
eyes, I saw a small table, with a bloodstained sheet that
covered, something lying there, the mere outlines of which sent
horror through my nerves. Then I stepped up to the bed and
knelt down.
Zephyrine opened her eyes with great effort. Her face
was white as snow; her lips were torn by her own teeth. I
grasped her hand, light and cool as a rose petal, and pressed it
to my heart. Then she smiled. Whispering, her lips moved.
“It -is- a – little – son – as I – asked for it – from heaven –
and for me a little vixen -a little Aglaja- Later may I see the
children – ?”
The doctor, who was standing on the other side of the
bed beckoned to me, “Yes.”
“Certainly, dearest -as soon as you are asleep,” I said,
thinking that my heart must burst. But suddenly fear entered
her gaze. She tried to straighten up, but fell back powerlessly.
“Or – must- I- die?”
“Zephyrine!” I cried and covered her hand with kisses.
“Don’t talk like that -you sin. Everything is fine. Only you must
sleep, rest and gain new strength after what you have suffered.”
“I – have suffered it – gladly – for you-and for me,” she
smiled. “I am so -joyful- that I -may- stay -with- you.”
Her hand pulled -me- closer- with a strange strength.
“But I want- your face – to stay – close – to – me.”
I drew as close to her as I could. Her tired eyes suddenly
widened, fastened on me with an expression of thirsty desire,
held me tightly – her gaze remained staring deep into my eyes.
I sat like that for a long time.
Then someone stepped behind me and touched my arm.
It was the doctor.
“You have held your own, poor Herr Baron. She crossed
over easily and blissfully.”
And only then I saw that on Zephyrine’s angelic face was
the holy radiance of eternity.
I could not cry, could not think.
Aglaja lay before me. White and beautiful, as I carried
her image in my heart.
Was the bell still ringing? Or was it the raging blood that
hummed in my ears?
“Do you feel strong enough to look at the cause of
death?” the doctor pulled me out of my brooding.
It was all so indifferent now that she was dead.
But the sight that now came to me was so terrible that it
forced a sobbing cry from me. I drew back and barely felt it
when my head hit the door jamb. A small well-formed torso lay
there. And this small body carried on the shoulders two necks,
and on the necks sat two heads.
One of them had fine, dark hair, the other one golden red
curls.
“Moreover, this strange monster was a true
hermaphrodite, man and woman at the same time -“
I fought back, ran past the crying midwife into the other
room, threw myself over the table, and a dry sob choked my
throat.
The doctor sat down silently next to me and waited.
When I had regained my composure I told him about the
drops that that wretch had talked us into and which I had left
undestroyed in recklessness.
Doctor Hosp thought for a long time and then said:
“I remember having heard once, that an Italian doctor
had succeeded by certain poisons to produce monstrous
deformities of the fruit in pregnant women. But it seems to me
not very credible, that such interventions in the most secret
workshop of nature -“
A terrible thought rose in me.
Without caring any more about the doctor, without
listening to his anxious questions about what I was going to do
next. I tore open the door of the weapons cabinet, took out a
double barreled pistol, tore my hat and coat from the hook and
rushed out into the snowfall.
Just as I stepped out of the garden, a carriage drove
slowly by.
I shouted to the driver to take me to the Fassl house as
fast as the horses could run. He looked at me stupidly. I took
several gold pieces, pressed them into his hand. He pulled his
hat, the blow worked. The whip whistled, the horses leaped out.
When I came to, I was standing in the half-dark hallway
of the house. Someone was rubbing me over the face with a
wet sponge that smelled of lavender vinegar.
Only one word droned in my head, “- Gone -“
“Yes, Herr, you must believe me,” said a stolid woman.
“Thank God that the crook is gone. Already two months ago he
left in the night and fog, and his things have been taken away
by the court.”
I heard something else about a young girl who had died
after a forbidden operation that Postremo had performed.
Gone!
I let out a maniacal laugh.
I was taken to the waiting carriage, and I left.
The snow swirled, the wind whistled through the open
windows. The houses moved with night-blind windows. She
was dead, she was dead!
Never again —.
I was only an empty shell, clothes draped on a soulless
body. I ate now and then, fell asleep on chairs, and found
myself dressed in bed. My eyes were inflamed, my clothes,
which I never changed, unclean and damaged. I did not know
the time of neither day, felt neither heat nor cold and let my
people do as they pleased. Sometimes burning longing ate at
me, and I ran restlessly through the rooms and the garden
sobbing, calling Zephyrine’s name, calling her Aglaja, too, to
lure her back. For days I sat at her grave, until the gravediggers
kindly reminded me that the gates were closed. And to my
consolation they showed me the corner where the
unconsecrated ground was, a little under which lay my wife’s
favorite dog, Amando.
Amando, who had come to her last resting place, would
not leave, had refused food and drink and had died of grief and
hunger.
When I began to feel the healing effect of time, I sent for
a notary public and gave the house and garden, along with a
sufficient sum to a foundation for crippled children, who from
birth had to carry miserable and deformed bodies from birth. I
myself moved into the large inn “Golden Lamb” and made my
departure from the city, where everything pained me; since I
was reminded by everything and everyone, that just a short
while ago Zephyrine’s eyes had rested on it.
From her I had kept only a little tuft of her hair and the
silver ring with the fire opal, which first Aglaja and then she
had worn. Her fingers had been as slender and fine as those of
my cousin. The little curl of Zephyrine’s, however, mixed so
much with Aglaja’s in Muhme’s pale blue box, that one could
no longer distinguish and separate them.
I wanted to go to a foreign country. Just far away from
here. When I walked haphazardly through the streets I often
noticed that I bumped into people and they looked at me
strangely. Ordinary people in their unconcerned way probably
pointed at their own foreheads and laughed. All this did not
touch me in any way.
So, wandering aimlessly outside the city, I came to a
place called Lustwäldchen. There it was taken care of that the
attention of the people remained active. Nobody cared about
my behavior, which, even unconscious to myself, was certainly
conspicuous enough by nervous twitches in the face and other
consequences of my mental suffering. Here there were various
booths and huts, dancing bears, cake bakers, fortune tellers,
canvas theaters, plus vendors and all kinds of market criers.
Boys and girls frolicked together in a circle on blue and white
or yellow and red painted wooden horses to the sound of music.
I passed tents from which came the false cries of
trumpets and the sound of drums. A sword swallower in tinsel
trousers stood with his neck bent back in a circle of gawkers,
and next to him dirty hands were fishing pickles out of a barrel.
And in the midst of the swarm I saw – like an unreal
apparition – Laurette on the arm of a tall, lean man with a
brown face. She wanted to pour out with laughter at the crude
and mean jokes of a buffoon, who pulled off his pants on a
podium and showed a hairy devil’s butt. Two southern servants
in dark livery stood behind the couple. Laurette did not see me.
I walked on, ignoring the fatigue of my feet, and then
stopped in front of a large booth on which a painting on canvas
captivated me. In front of a smoking fire stood an old wizard
with pointed cap, and a ribbon with the signs of the zodiac
slung around his shoulder and hips. His left hand was buried in
his white beard; the right held a small staff toward the smoke,
in which a figure wrapped in a white veil, with closed eyes
appeared dimly. Under this not completely artless image, but
nevertheless in screaming colors, the following was written to
read:
“The famous necromancer, magician and magister of the
seven liberal arts Arkadius Chrysopompus from Ödenburg,
called the Hungarian Doctor Faust.”
A colorful harlequin, who just a moment ago was playing
the tinkling sounds of a Savoyard lyre was now sounding a
brass horn, inviting the audience with all kinds of joking,
contorted gestures and loud shouting to visit the performance
that was about to begin. Two grenadiers in white coats, who
had colorfully dressed, busty girls on their arms, were the first
to enter. Then went a few citizens with their wives and some
young people of both sexes went up the three steps, paid a
pittance and pushed their way through the red curtain, which
the crier lifted. For some reason I followed and soon sat in the
midst of the people on a bench in front of the small, dimly lit
stage.

Read Full Post »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 125- 129

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 26, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Rebirth of Malchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

In an intemperate fury, unable to speak a word, I pointed
at the devastation.
The gnome spat at the maltreated flowers and struck at
them with his foot.
“This is for you and la putana – you understand me?” he
shouted. “O Dio, Dio! I am ruined. You have caused me to lose
twenty thousand ducats!”
“You bawdy dog!” I snorted at him and raised my hand
again.
He quickly drew his lancet from his pocket and flashed it
in the sun.
“Next time it will not be good for your arm,” he
threatened. “Pay attention! You will not have any fun with me!
But take a seat, my Herr of Dronte! “
I sat down and listened in mute rage to the whining
conversation he was now starting. It was a vile outrage that he
had been accused of playing matchmaker of the girl to Count
Korony. Have I never heard of King David’s virgin bedfellows?
Was it unknown to me that in England Doctor Graham
discovered a rejuvenation cure for old men, who are treated
with virgins in the same bed, so that the withered body can be
renewed by the youthful aura of the girls? And did I not know
that for such a curative every conceivable precaution is taken,
so that the honor of the girl remains unharmed! Who could dare
to confuse such a medically proven healing method with the
shameful expression “matchmaking”? And who finally would
give him the twenty thousand ducats that I had deprived him of
by kidnapping Zephyrine. Hey?
I answered him with great self-control, that his efforts
were in vain. I was gladly prepared to pay him compensation of
five hundred gold pieces. The money exceeded my assets by a
significant amount.
He rolled his eyes, wrung his hands and renewed his
attempts. He began to haggle, and when he realized that his
efforts were in vain, he declared himself satisfied with a sum of
one thousand ducats. That was his last word.
With a heavy heart I went into the house and fetched the
money, the loss of which hit me hard. But for Zephyrine’s
peace of mind, this sacrifice was not too great.
When I went back to him with two hundred ducats and a
bill of exchange for my banker, he had placed a small crystal
flask on the table, in which there was an oily clear liquid.
“Here’s the money -,” I said, pushing the gold rolls and
the paper toward him. He sniffed them most carefully and
shoved everything into the pockets of his coat.
“And now -!” I said, pointing to the path that led to the
garden door.
“Wait! Wait!” he cackled and pointed to the vial. “A little

how do you say? – Gift. Give every day’ three drops to the
Mother, and you will have a bello ragazzo – a son – and also, se
volete, a little girl -“
I pointed again.
“Va bene,” he murmured. “Addio, Barone!.”
Slowly he shuffled down the path, his hump dragging
like a snail its house. I followed him slowly, until the garden
door had closed behind him and the furious barking of the dogs
in the kennel had slowly died away. Through the bushes of the
fence, however, I could clearly see how he with a grisly
grimace, his lips moving in inaudible words, shook both fists
against our house.
When I returned, the flask was still on the table. I made a
movement to throw it in the bushes. But then I took it in my
hand, pulled out the glass stopper and smelled it. Again, the
smell of bitter almonds that seemed to cling to everything that
was in its vicinity.
I didn’t smash the shiny thing against a stone, did not
pour its oily contents onto the earth. Some curiosity drove me
to take it with me and to tell Zephyrine about it.
“Three drops a day, and a son is sure for us,” said the
villain. And, if we want, a girl, too!” I tried to laugh.
“Do you wish so much for a son, my dear?” breathed
Zephyrine, and a fine blush passed over her pale, poor face.
“Oh, yes,” escaped me, as I took her in my arms.
What did I care about the money? Everything I had, I
would have given for her, the only one, and with pleasure I
would have, like countless ones in the shadow of life earn
bread for her and me with my hands.
The flowers had long since faded, red and yellow leaves
danced from the trees, and the icy Boreas drove the first flakes
against the windows of the parlor where Zephyrine lay in pain.
Fever had set in during the night; the quickly summoned
midwife shook her head and said:
“The woman does not please me at all; a doctor must
come and come quickly! She is also too weak to get down on
the chair.”
There was only one competent doctor in the vicinity, the
white-haired Doctor Anselm Hosp, and I hurriedly sent for him.
While I waited in the next room and covered my ears to
not hear the shrieking cries and the confused moaning of my
wife, my hope for a good outcome darkened more and more.
The pain and labor had lasted for days; the poor body of
Zephyrine was terribly distended, and convulsions passed over
it. There was no doubt that an obstacle stood in the way of the
simple and natural course of the birth, the nature of which even
the wise woman could not discern. Then I noticed that the odor
of bitter almonds, which I detested still lingered in the house.
Zephyrine, to whom I had given the vial with the drops of
Postremos right after the ugly scene in the garden, claimed at
that time to have knocked it over and broken the crystal vial,
which is why the smell of almonds would not go away. Why
did the thought of the gift of the hunchback suddenly seem so
frightening?
The old doctor came with a big black bag in which
instruments clinked. This sharp clinking went through my
marrow and legs. I stepped quietly with him to the bed of the
woman in labor and was startled when I saw the distorted,
dilapidated, face of my Zephyrine covered with cold sweat, in
which her large, bright eyes wandered and flickered. Sharp
dark red spots stood out from the bloodless cheeks.
“You -” she sighed barely audibly.
I stepped close to her and whispered:
“Dearest, confess the truth – have you tasted of the
hunchback’s potion?”
A faint smile flitted across her suffering face.
“Only three drops -every day-“
“Why did you do it?” I snapped at her. “Why did you tell
a lie, when I asked for the poisoner’s bottle?”
“You -wanted- a- son- so – badly.”
Like a breath, the words came to me. Then an expression
of agony came into the wide-open eyes, the body stretched, the
hands reached for the knotted cloths that had been tied to the
bedposts for support. And how she cried out -!
The doctor made a brief examination and then beckoned
me into the next room.
“Baron,” said the doctor, “I am sorry to have to tell you
that it is a case of displacement of the child and therefore the
necessity of sectio caesarea has occurred.”
I staggered back.
“A Caesarean section?” I stammered.
The doctor looked down at the floor.
“This bloody procedure, which, properly performed, is
usually survived by strong and healthy women, but in our case,
because of the terrible weakness of the Baroness and especially
in the case of the high fever, the cause of which must be an
external poisoning of the blood, it is a dangerous and uncertain
operation. I cannot conceal this from you. Besides, I must
operate immediately and only with the help of the midwife,
although a second doctor would normally be necessary. But I
don’t dare wait any longer until a carriage can go to the city
and back.”
I felt as if I had been struck hard on the forehead. What,
Zephyrine in mortal danger? That wasn’t possible. That was
nonsensical. What would become of me? Where was the
meaning of life? Had the man from the Orient, whom I thought
of every day with great gratitude, with his appearance in the
Greeks’ alley brought the highest happiness of my life, so that I
would now lose it so cruelly and be pushed into the abyss of
nameless pain? No, that could not be, that was impossible. If
she died, I would die too.
A cry of the most terrible pain tore me out of my
contemplations. I wanted to follow the doctor into my wife’s
room, but he beckoned me sternly and resolutely to go outside
and await the outcome of his terrible undertaking. I let myself
fall down on a chair, bare of all will and looked dully into the
flakes outside. A bell called with a deep sound in the sinking
glow of the autumn day, and a dog began to howl. I recognized
him by the voice. His name was Amando and he was
Zephyrine’s favorite. This high, drawn howl made me almost
insane and increased my fear, since I was well aware of the
foreboding of loyal animals. In between came sobbing sounds,
suppressed cries from the next room. I heard the doctor
groaning in some strenuous activity, giving half-loud orders,
hearing the plaintive exclamations of the midwife, the clinking
of vessels and metallic things, the splashing of water and the
moving of chairs. Terrible things were going on in there.
Then a woman cried out. But it was not Zephyrine who
screamed. It was the wailing midwife. Why did she scream?
Clearly was to be heard, as the doctor rebuked her in an angry,
suppressed voice.
I held on to the back of my heavy chair, my whole body
shaking.
Then it was quiet inside, dead quiet.
The doctor stepped out and looked around confusedly. In
the light of the wax candles that I had lit, I noticed that his face
was dripping. His hands showed reddish marks.
Wordlessly I looked at his mouth.
“You need inner strength,” he said slowly, and a solemn
glow spread over his face.

Read Full Post »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 80- 84

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 17, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

And when I thought of it, it shook me coldly. I quickly
went up to the sleeping mortuary attendant, grabbed him by the
shoulder and called out:
“Wake up, man! Robbers are outside –“
The peasant, who was wearing a coarse shillelagh,
jumped up and looked at me in alarm.
“Where?” he slurred.
“Outside,” I said again and closed the door behind me. I
heard him quickly slam the heavy latch shut.
As soon as I stood outside in the breeze, crooked fingers
clawed at my tattered coat, two eyes shone like brass, and from
a black gaping mouth he bleated:
“Throw them away; throw them away from you all at
once!”
“What do you mean, cursed one, that I should throw
them away?” I shouted in his face.
“Our Lord Christ’s cross -?”
Fangerle bent back as if I had struck him in the face,
twisted and turned like a worm and began to run, cross-country.
The wind raced behind him, whistling and whirled up his
coattails, and as he was carried away into the twilight, it
seemed to me as if instead of him a giant bird with black wings
soared over the furrows, just as owls fly. I stood without money,
abandoned and damp from the dew on the lonely road.
But then I remembered the satchel with the soul mice.
Who was screaming so miserably in the hunting bag of the evil
one -? The evil one!
A paralyzing fright crept into my legs. Calling on the
name of God a hundred times, I went towards the next place
and did not dare to look around.

The gypsies, with whom I had long been walking, the
brown Romi, as they called themselves, had wandered back
across the border, and I had to separate from them, if I did not
want to be married by the provost to the rope maker’s daughter.
My misery was boundless. Here and there I found some
work and food in the farms, I even received a damaged piece of
clothing that was even better than my rags, but most of the time
I was starving and freezing to death. One day I was lucky and
found half a loaf of bread on a country lane, which had been
lost from a cart. And when I saw the ruins of a castle on a
mighty, wooded hill, I decided to light a fire in a hidden place
in the walls, so that I would not have to spend the icy winter
night without the comfort of close warmth.
After some climbing around in the rocks I soon found a
still fairly preserved vault, on the whitewashed wall of which
still the remains of Al Fresco paintings could be seen. Among
other paintings also the wedding of Cana was depicted (as I
could see from the remains of clothing and heads, as well as
the large, ancient wine jugs), and when I saw the mural, which
was in a bad state of disrepair, I noticed that one of the wine
jugs bore the barely legible inscription:
“Hic jacet”, or “Here it lies”.
Perhaps it was a joke that the painter made for himself,
telling the thoughtful observers that in these jugs and in the
wine that fills them, in fact something lies and rests, namely
the spirit that enters into the body of man with the drink and
gradually unleashes all passions, which overwhelms and rapes
the mind, through intoxication; but perhaps it was also said that
all gaiety slumbers in the round belly of the pitcher and after
drinking the drink, it would froth up in laughter, cheerfulness
and songs. About this and the like, I pondered until the lack of
the warming fire made itself violently known and forced me to
tramp up and down in the spacious vault for a while, in order to
warm myself and to let my stiff hands be used for starting the
fire.
When passing the unfortunately only painted brown jug,
I could not help but tap the thick belly of the vessel with a bent
forefinger, even though its rounded appearance was only the
skill of the painter, who through the distribution of light and
color had achieved a high degree of plasticity. But when I
playfully tapped at the seemingly round curvature of the
drinking vessel, I felt as if it had a dull, wooden, and hollow
space. I knocked again, and two or three more times. The
sound gave way at the place where the Latin words were
written; it differed from the sound of the walled environment.
Following a sudden impulse, I peeled off the paint and
the lime with my blunt knife, dug a little and immediately came
to a wide, rotten storage cache. I increased my efforts, and soon
the old wood was crumbling away in brown flour and damp
splinters, exposing a small niche in which lay a round,
greenish-white mold covered sphere.
After some hesitation, in which I saw that the object was
a decomposed human head, I plucked up my courage, reached
in and pulled out a completely decomposed leather sack, which
made a fine sound when I lifted it out. It was heavy with
metallic contents.
Then I made a fire, probably also for this reason, to calm
my hammering heart by doing an indifferent work. When the
little fire was burning and flickering merrily, I proceeded to
examine the leather container, which the inscription on the
wine urn had advised. Those, to whom this sign had once been
made because of the danger of forgetfulness, had been dead
and gone for many years, perhaps buried under the rubble of
the castle.
The bag offered little resistance. It fell apart as I carried it
to my fire, and its contents rolled ringing on the damaged stone
floor.
My breath was taken away by the sheer joy of it.
Doubloons, sun-crowns, guilders rolled out of the greasy,
wet bag and flashed in the glow of the dancing flames.
I laughed, shouted, and leapt around the fire. I let the
blessing run through my unwashed fingers, shook the coins
into my hat, stroked them, and twisted individual pieces
between thumb and forefinger so that they reflected the embers,
paving the floor with them and throwing ducats in the air to
catch them again or to search for the unrolled ones among the
debris.
But then reason prevailed. How easily the firelight, my
foolish shouting and stamping could attract passersby and
betray me and my refuge! In great haste and yet cautiously I
tore my sweat-glued shirt and produced by knotting and
folding a kind of money bag in which I concealed the not
inconsiderable number of gold pieces and hid them on my bare
body. When I was finished with everything, I pulled the
smoldering wood apart and thoughtfully descended the hill of
ruins to reach the next town in broad daylight. This I succeeded
in doing and after a short time of sneaking, searching and
cautious questioning, I found the store of a junk dealer.
I told him that I was a runaway soldier and that I needed
clothes, linen, shoes and a warm coat. Fortune demanded that I
had come across a reasonably honest man, who, though not
cheaply, did not cheat me for inordinate profit, and even had a
bath prepared for me against good money and an ointment that
freed me from the torment of the vermin. The only thing that
bothered me was the hurry, with which all this had to proceed,
and the visibly growing restlessness of the man, as daylight
gradually began to fade.
At last, however, his insistence became tiresome to me,
and I asked him gruffly whether the chosen people practiced
hospitality in such a way, and how he seemed to hold it in low
esteem that I had willingly let him earn a nice piece of money.
For I was well aware of the price at which worn clothes and
worn linen and clothes were traded. Nevertheless, I would have
paid what I had received without question as if it had just come
out of the workshop of the tailor and garment maker. Then the
Jew laughed and said:
“The gentleman has probably also been rendered a
service so that he may have cleaned and equipped himself in all
secrecy, so that the bailiff does not even look after him, when
he crosses the street. If the gentleman were a Ben Yisroel, one
of my people, it would be a pleasure for me to house him. But
because the gentleman is from the others, it must not be so.
Because it is Friday evening, which we Jews call Eref Shabbiss
and it is against our custom, to suffer strangers in our festive
house. May the Lord forgive; I know well that he is a Purez, a
distinguished man, who has suffered from the Balmachomim,
and may he go his way in peace and forgive that it cannot be
otherwise!”
Thereby with a deep bow he tore open the iron door of
his store and politely beckoned me to leave.
Only when I was standing outside on the street did it
occur to me that in his way he had acted honestly toward me.
For it would have been easy for him to keep me in his house
and betray me to the king’s troops lying not far away in their
winter quarters. Despite the armistice, they could have picked
me out and abducted me, and with some skill the Jew would
have not only had a reward, but also the money hidden on my
person, which would have not gone unnoticed to his quick eyes.
Thus it was not by my cleverness, but by my good fortune, that
I had escaped the greatest danger to my life.
For the sake of safety, I decided to wander deeper into
the country and far away from the border to make use of a mail
coach.
So I trudged on my way in the thick snow and strove
towards a village in which I intended to spend the night.
At the entrance of the respectable and, judging by the
clean houses that were spared from the war, prosperous
location stood an artwork, the sorrowful mother with her son in
her lap. The base of the sandstone had been freshly plastered,
and so I immediately noticed a few figures and strokes on the
white surface drawn with charcoal which I knew as “marks”, as
the country and traveling thieves call their secret signs. When I
was with the gypsies I had learned such science, which is
useful for everyone to understand.
But these signs on the wayside shrine were about murder
and burning and I shuddered when I deciphered their meaning.
Undecided what to do with them, by no means to
carelessly disregard the threatening message for other people I
stopped.

Read Full Post »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: Chapter 1, pages 50- 54

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 11, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

“And now attention!”
He opened his mouth wide, put his lower lip tightly to the
glass and let the wine gurgle down his throat with a loud belch.
“Hell, plague, and whore child!” cursed Finch. “He does
it, by the devil’s ear-washes – he does it!”
Only a residue was left in the glass, not worth
mentioning. But still too much.
For before it ran down, Montanus opened his eyes wide,
as if in a sudden fright, so that one saw the blood veins swell in
the white eyes, and his face became dark blue. Then the boot
fell and broke into pieces. The hands let go of it and reached
into the air. A gurgling came from the open mouth. And then fat
Montanus fell like a sack to the floor, so that the chair, which
he was dragging along, crumbled under the weight of his body.
Haymon, who had studied medicine for many years and
understood some of it, knelt down by him, let his hand rest on
the chest of the fallen man for a while, then stood up and
groaned, “Died! Apoplexia! Has already gone to Hell, our fat
goose-eater. Fiducit!”
Sweat stood on his brow. I felt nauseous.
But Hercules bent down nimbly, reached into the pockets
of the dead man, found the purse and shook a few coins and a
Marien ducat onto the table.
“There you have your winnings, Nebuchadnezzar”, said
Haymon and immediately pushed Finch the silver watch with
the chain and the stone. Then he tossed me the pennies and
nodded:
“Take it! He will never need it!”
Then he weighed a ducat in the flat of his hand and said
to the suffocated:
“Heart brother! This gold fox will be drunk to your
memory!”
But the dead man gave no answer, and so Haymon shook
him a little, so that we heard the wine rumbling in his stomach.
“He doesn’t say no!”
“And now someone call Venus,” ordered Haymon.
“It would be a pity if we left the money for the
Manichaeans in the bag. The Jew shall see for himself how he
comes to his own, and thus the bear remains firmly tied. – Do
not stand there, Mahomet, like a stuck calf, but call Venus to
fetch some wine and bring poor Montanus on to some straw in
a quiet chamber!”
Then I went out into the dark corridor and called out to
Venus in a trembling voice.


On the evening of the day when the Jew Lewi told me
that my father was no longer going to send any money and that
after so many pranks he was now leaving me to my fate, I
drank myself crazy and full.
Later, the Portuguese came and told us that Phoebus
Merentheim had arrived a few days ago and had been
employed as a parlor boy by the tall Count Heilsbronn on the
Gerbersteig.
I left immediately and the entire corona with me. We put
a cracked night tile on the head of the stone Roland at City Hall,
and on the wall of the beautiful and virtuous Demoiselle
Pfisterin, who always had her back turned as we walked
languidly by, on the wall just below her window Hercules drew
with red chalk a delicate buttocks and wrote with big black
letters under it:
All the kisses I sent you, connected, you are quite charming!
Then we went with many hussahs and hellos over to the
city fountain and drove wooden wedges in its four copper
dragon tubes, so that the water above, beneath the feet of St.
Florian began to bubble. But we courted the mayor on the top
five steps of the staircase and stuck a goose tail feather in each
pile, because it was said that the Mayoress was dissatisfied
with him in puncto puncti.
Soon, however, I remembered Phoebus again with his
snooty rice soup face, and I urged on to the Gerbersteig.
“Shit, Mahomet – take it easy, he won’t run away from
you now!” Haymon held me back. “You shall drink his blood
today!”
For they still had something to do at the pillory. When we
arrived at the goose market, the Portuguese had already
prepared a paper, a hammer and nails, and while we were
keeping watch, he struck the paper against the pillory so that in
the morning light everyone could read it and our tormentors
and enemies could be recognized:
“Shmule Levi, a Jew and a bloodsucker,
Abraham Isaac’s son, likewise,
Liborius Schmalebank, calls himself a
Christian,
Gotthelf Titzke, goes to church service every Sunday,
Simche from Speyer takes a hundred percent.”
We moved on again, and in the dark we shouted at the
top of our voices:
“Mordio! Firerio! So help us!” until all the windows
were lit up and the sleepy city soldiers came trampling down.
In the meantime, we were already on our way to the
Gerbersteig.
“It is as I tell you,” murmured the Portuguese,
“Merentheim lives in the same room as the Count of
Heilsbronn and is with the Ansbach Student Union.”
“Didn’t the Count of Heilsbronn steal the red haired Jule
from you, Portugieser?” teased Galenus.
“Shut up, or I’ll let out all my water against you, so you’ll
drown miserably”, growled the Portuguese angrily. “I have
already wiped fifteen of you off my club with two fingers.”
“Give peace!” admonished Finch. “Otherwise take your
blasphemous speeches before the Committee. – You’d better
watch out how little Phoebus will shit his bed linen with fear!”
So I stepped forward, just in front of the window, which
the Portugieser had pointed out to me, pulled out the little saber
and began to wet my feet on the pavement.
I shouted at the top of my lungs:
“Merentheim! Dog fart! Come out and present yourself!
Pereat!”
Then the window opened, and a stark naked guy looked
out.
“Pereat!” I shouted. “Pereat Phoebus Merentheim!”
“Camel!” echoed down from above. “What in thunder do
I care about your Merentheim who today at two o’clock went to
his kin over there?”
“I hope you don’t choke on your stinking lie!” I shouted
against him.
The man above laughed:
“You shall have your share, brothers! You just have to be
patient, Hans Unknown, until I’ve donned my shirt and have a
sword in my hand!”
And he slammed the window shut so that the glass shards
rained down.
But then we saw a little light wandering in the room until
it was dark again. We heard footsteps in the corridor; a key
turned in the lock, and in the doorway appeared the tall Count
Heilsbronn, dressed in shirt, pants and a long sword under his
arm and his hat with the scarlet and white feathered cap of the
Ansbachers on his head. The moon was just coming out from
behind the clouds, and it was light enough to see the wild,
scarred face of the old braggart.
“All by the rules, Herr Brother!” interposed the Bavarian
Haymon as we wanted to quickly draw our blades. “You,
Portuguese, serve as second for the Ansbacher Herr and me for
Mahomet! Get ready! Go!”
I pushed nimbly, but didn’t hit him. He parried as fast as
lightning and was at home with all feints. I hit a wrong quarte,
because he drove under me and sliced, burning my upper arm. I
quickly fell back and struck hard, slid off and stabbed him deep
in the chest. The sword fell rattling from his hand.
“Stop there!” immediately roared the Portuguese and
held his blade in front of me.
“That sits,” gurgled Heilsbronner. “A lung foxer.”
His pitted face looked green in the moonlight.
“Take me – to bed, Herr Brother – to”
He fell into Haymon’s arms, spat out quite a bit of bloody
foam and rolled his eyes. There was a dark stain in his shirt that
spread like spilled ink on a bad piece of paper.
“By all the sacraments, help me hold the man,” gasped
the Bavarian Haymon. “He makes himself heavy as if -“
We jumped over and took hold.
“When I fall asleep, it’s over for me”, whispered the
Ansbach man and blew blood again.”The rosary above my bed
is moving back and forth by itself. If only I had had my heavy
intoxication, you might have long stood there and shouted
pereat -“
And shrilly:
“It crushes – me – my – heart -“
We lowered him to the ground. I broke out in a sweat.
“He’s gone,” shouted the Portuguese. “You take to your
heels. The windows are already opening.”
From above they shouted.
“Damned boys and ragamuffins! Won’t you be quiet
down there?”
“I want to salt their hams with rabbit shot,” one shouted
rudely.
We heard many feet pattering, coming closer. The guard
ran up.
“One of them never moves. – Guard! Guard! Mordio!”
clamored a woman.
We ran as fast as we could, a jumping stick flew between
my feet, so that I would have fallen. Haymon stayed beside me,
the other was off. We had heard screaming. He had jumped
over a fence and sank deep into a buried cesspool. They had
him all ready.
“Brother!” The Bavarian Haymon breathed in quickly
from the long race and leaned against an old wall. “Your stay
here is no more.

Read Full Post »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 15- 19

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 4, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

Then I screamed so loudly that my father let go of him.
“The toad can’t stand it, if I chastise the scoundrel,” he
said angrily, he will never be a right fellow in his day!”
Spurs clanking he went out. I was more afraid of this
clink than of anything else.
Then they gave me sweets and stroked me.
A young maid kissed my bare calves.
“Sweet boy!” she said.
In a mirror they showed me how a piece of glass had hit
me on the root of my nose and tore a small cut between my
eyebrows.
A scar remained from it.


I was playing in the garden with my little cousin Aglaja,
whom I loved very much. I had woven a wreath from black,
shiny ball berries, which I placed in her copper-colored hair,
which shone golden in the sun. She was the king’s daughter,
enchanted in thorny hedges, and I set out to save her. The
dragon that guarded her had to be played by black Diana. With
clever eyes the dog waited for the new game.
Then, accompanied by a maid, the barber came hurriedly
through the garden with a brass basin, and a servant appeared
at the door of the house, it was Stephan, who shouted at him to
hurry.
Aglaja threw her wreath of berries to the ground, and the
two of us both ran behind her to grandfather’s room,
which we were usually only allowed to enter with his special
permission. Such visits were always very solemn and only took
place on the big holidays of the year or on birthdays, when we
had to recite little poems and were given sweets in return.
It seemed to both of us a great dare, to go uninvited into
the room of the stern old man, but curiosity drove us forward.
Grandfather was sitting quietly in his sleeping chair. He
wore, as always, a gray-silk sleeve vest with embroidered
bouquets of roses, black pants, white stockings and shoes with
wide silver buckles. On his watch chain hung a bundle of
golden, colored and glittering things, cut things, cut gemstones,
corals and seals, which I had sometimes been allowed to play
with.
In front of him stood my father with bowed head and he
did not notice us children at all. When the gaunt barber, dressed
in a patched jacket stepped closer, he grabbed him by the arm,
his face turned red and he said half aloud:
“Next time run faster, damned Kujon, when you do him
the honor!”
The miserable barber stammered a little, and with his
hands flying grabbed his red bandages and switchblade, and
pushed grandfather’s sleeve up into the air, touched the eyelids
of the upturned eyes with his finger, then felt around on the
arm, while he held the basin under it. Thus he waited a while,
and then he said shyly:
“It is of no use, free- glorious graces – the blood will
never flow again!”
Then father turned around and stood with his face to the
wall. Stephan gently pushed Aglaja and me out the door and
whispered, “His Grace has gone to his fathers.”
And when we looked at him questioningly, since we
could not understand this, he said, “Your grandfather is dead.”
We went back into the garden and listened to the noise
that soon started in the house. To the right of the hallway was a
spacious room in which, as a very small child I remembered
seeing my mother being laid out between many candles. This
chamber, in which otherwise all sorts of equipment stood, they
now cleared out and dragged in large bales of black cloth,
which smelled nasty.
Grandfather had preferred Aglaja to me, and had given
her treats and candy more often than he had given to me. He
had kept these good things in a turtle box, which smelled of
cinnamon and nutmeg. She cried a little, Aglaja, because she
was thinking that it would all be over now, when grandfather
would go away. But then we both remembered the other box he
had, which we were only allowed to look at very rarely. That
was his golden snuff box, given to him by the Duke of
Brunswick. But on this beautiful, sparkling box, on its lid, there
was a second little lid and when this popped open, a very small
bird appeared, flashing with green, red and violet stones, which
bobbed with the wings and trilled like a nightingale. We could
hardly get enough of seeing and hearing it, but grandfather
slipped it into his pocket as soon as, after a short while, the lid
closed by itself, and told us to be satisfied.
I said to Aglaja that now we could look closely at the bird
and even feel it, since grandfather was dead. She was afraid to
go up, but I took her by the hand and pulled her behind me.
No one was in the corridor, and the room was empty.
Empty stood the wide armchair in which grandfather had spent
his last nights. On the little table next to it were still the bottles
with the long notes.
We knew that grandfather had always taken the can from
the middle drawer. This drawer was made of colored wood
decorated with ships, cities and warriors from the old times and
on the drawer, which we tried to open, there were two fat
Dutchmen who were smoking pipes and being served by
kneeling Moors. I pulled at the rings; but not until Aglaja
helped me, did we manage to open the drawer.
There lay Grandfather’s lace jabots and handkerchiefs, a
roll of gold ducats, a large pistol inlaid with gold, and many
letters in bundles, shoe buckles and razors, and also the box
with the bird.
I took it out, and we tried to make the lid jump. But we
did not succeed. But while we were working around, the big lid
came off, and a thin plate detached itself from it, which
concealed something. It was a small picture, which was painted
in fine enamel colors. A picture which made us forget the little
bird completely.
On a small sofa lay a lady with her skirts pushed up, and
right next to her was a gentleman with sword and wig, whose
clothes were also in strange disorder. They were doing
something that seemed to us as strange as it was weird. In
addition, the man was being attacked by a little spotted dog,
and the lady lying down seemed to laugh. We also laughed. But
then we argued very excitedly about what this was.
“They are married,” said Aglaja, blushing.
“How do you know?” I asked, my heart pounding hard.
“I think they are gods…” whispered Aglaja.
“I saw a picture, where the gods were like that. But they
didn’t have any clothes on.”
All of a sudden it was as if in the next room where our
dead grandfather lay, the floorboard creaked. We shrunk back,
and Aglaja cried out. Then I quickly threw the can into the
drawer, pushed it closed and pulled my cousin out of the room.
We slid into the garden.
“Aglaja…” I said, grabbing her hand. “Are we going to
get married like that…?”
She looked at me, startled, tore herself away and ran back
into the house. Confused and bewildered I went to Stephan,
who was cutting roses from the stalks and gathering them in a
basket.
“Yes, young Herr!” he said. “So it goes with all of us!”

Next to me sat Phöbus Merentheim and Thilo Sassen. We
three were the most distinguished. Behind us squatted Klaus
Jägerle, the whipping boy. He was allowed to study with us,
was given food, and if we didn’t know something, punishment
was carried out on him. His mother was a washerwoman and
his father wove baskets, although he only had one arm. The
other arm was cut by an enemy horseman, when he was
protecting Thilo’s severely wounded father with his body. In
return Klaus was allowed to study with us and to come to the
table at noon. Klaus was very industrious, shy and depressed,
and had to put up with everything that his classmates cooked
up when they were in an exuberant mood. He was almost
worse off than the hunchback son of the grocer Isaaksohn, they
had once put him at the door and spat in his face one after the
other, so that the disgusting juice, mixed with his tears, ran
down his new gentleman’s sport coat.
I was in great fear because I had learned nothing. For
before me stood the small, poisonous teacher of French in his
inky, tobacco-colored jacket with the bent lead buttons, the
goose quill behind his ear, talking through his Spaniol-filled
nose. His pale face was full of freckles and twitched incessantly.
In his left hand he held a book, and he waved the black-rimmed
knotted index finger of his right hand in front of my face.
He always did it that way. All of a sudden, after he had
studied our faces maliciously for a while, he would go after one
of the students like a vulture and always found the most
insecure out. It was his habit, to vocabulaire at the beginning of
the lesson, that is to say, he threw a few French words in the
victim’s face, which had to be translated immediately.
This time he had chosen me.
“Allons, monsieur-,” he hissed. “Emouchoir-. Tonte-
Mean. – At once! Quickly!”
I was startled and stammered:
“Emouchoir – the fly tonguing, tonte – the Sheep shearing – mean… mean, that is – that is -“
He neighed with delight.
“Ah – you don’t know, Cher Baron?”
“Mean -, that is –“
“Assez! Sit down!”
He bleated, and his little black eyes sparkled with
amusement. Slowly he took a pinch from his round horn can,
ran back and forth with two fingers under his pointed nose and
then poked the can at my neighbor.
“Herr Sassen! – Not either? – Merentheim? Also not? –
Jägerle, stand up and say it!”
Poor Klaus jumped up as if like a feather and said in a thin
voice:

Read Full Post »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte: pages 10- 14

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 3, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel


The magician: “O Sheikh, I am going to the other world;
procure for me a right in the hereafter!”
The Sheikh: “I can give you one piece of advice; If you
follow it, it will be for your salvation.”
Turkish legend
“When the angel of death touches your heart, the soul
leaves its narrow house, faster than lightning. If it can take its
memory along with it, it remains aware of its sins. This is the
path to purity and that of the entrance to God.”
Secret Doctrine of the Beklashi

What I am writing down here, hoping that it will fall into
the right hands according to the will of God I, Sennon Vorauf,
have experienced in that physical existence which preceded my
present life. These memories have come to me by a special
grace beyond that transformation which is called death.
Before I realized this, I suffered from them and thought
they were inexplicable, agonizing kinds of dreams. Besides,
however, I also had to go through all kinds of shocks of an
unusual kind. It happened, for example, that the striking of an
old clock, the sight of a landscape, a fragrance, the melodies of
a song, or even a mere association of words would assail me
most violently with the thought, that I would have quite
certainly already once heard, seen, breathed in, or somehow
experienced it before. I was in this or that place, which I saw in
my present life for the first time, and already had once been
there. Yes, often enough, in conversation with new
acquaintances, I was struck by the idea that I had already been
in very special relations with them. Since it was impossible for
me to understand before the onset of this realization, it was also
impossible for me to provide explanations for the indescribably
exciting movements of my mind and emotions, much to the
grief of my parents, which often led into hours of brooding, the
unknown cause of which disturbed them not a little. But
through frequent repetition and the ever sharper imagery of the
story I became aware, even as a boy, that they were nothing
more than reflections of fates which my soul had suffered in
another body, namely before the birth of my present body;
moreover, these “Dreams” represented experiences that were
completely alien to my current circle of experiences and
frighteningly distant from my present circle of thoughts. I had
never heard of such things or even read about them somewhere
or otherwise experienced them. I began to record these
“dreams” of my own accord and thereby achieved that from
then on in certain favorable moments I had the so-called
wakefulness to remember such memories with extraordinary
accuracy.
More and more clearly and coherently from these “lucid
dreams” (as I called them in my case) the overall picture of a
life emerged that I had lived before this under the name of a
German nobleman (I will call him here Baron Melchior von
Dronte), had lived and ended, when his body fell to the
transformation of death and then became free to be my soul as
Sennon Vorauf.
In the peaceful and blessed life filled with inner peace,
which I lead, the retrospective view of the wild and
adventurous existence of Melchior von Dronte broke through in
a disturbing, confusing and frightening way. What he was
guilty of was my guilt and if he atoned, he atoned for the soul
that came back, for his and therefore my soul.
I am fully aware that many people will read this book
with incredulous smiles, and perhaps in some places at times
with disgust and revulsion. But at the same time I hope that the
number of people of deeper feeling will be large enough not to
let this writing perish. To those who are able to remember
details from previous forms of existence, who are conscious of
a previous life, I would like to dedicate this book to them; I
would like to make this book their own.
Just as I have replaced the real name I had with “Dronte”,
I have replaced those of various persons, whose descendants
are still alive, with invented names. Moreover I touch here the
fact that I have called people “Dronte” in this life, whom I
knew from the time before my death. Most of them were not at
all aware of a previous existence. Nevertheless, there were
moments and occasions with them, in which clearly
recognizable flashes of memory flared up in them in a flash of
recognition, without them having succeeded in determining the
source of such disturbing feelings or having the ability to hold
on to them. I am certainly not saying anything new to those
who, like me, have brought parts of an earlier consciousness
into the new life.
The raw, crude and often coarse nature of the following
biography of a life, I could not in truth love, as unpleasant and
hurtful some of it may seem. I was not to embellish and smooth
out the terrible clarity with which the memories surfaced in me,
and thus to write a pleasantly readable book. Everything had to
remain the way it was as it formed from a time whose spirit
was different from ours.
However, from the deepest, most personal feeling this
book should speak to the immortality of the soul, and this
confession is to possibly awaken this confession in others.
Above all, I am inspired by the hope that those who believe in
the wandering of the soul after the death of the body will not be
given completely worthless indications in this book. Others
who have not yet progressed on the path that I have walked,
may still at least read it for the sake of its colorful content.
I remember very clearly an incident from my fifth year of
life.
I had been undressed, as always, and lay in my pink
lacquered, shell-shaped child’s bed. The warm summer evening
wind carried the chirping of many insects into the room, and
the wax candle in a silver candelabra flickered. It stood on a
low cabinet next to the glass lintel, under which the “Man from
the East”, or the “Ewli”, as he was also called, was located.
This was a span-high, very beautifully formed figure,
which a relative, who was in the service of a Venetian, had
brought from there as a gift from the nobility.
It was the figure in wax of a Mohammedan monk or
dervish, as an old servant often told me. The face had the
sweetest expression for me. It was completely wrinkle-free,
light brownish and with gentle features. Two beautiful dark
eyes shone under a jet-black turban, and around the softly
curved lips a small black beard could be seen. The body was in
a brown-red robe with long sleeves, and around the neck the
dervish wore a necklace of tiny amber beads. The two fine wax
hands were on arms hanging down with the palms turned
forward, equal-ready to receive and welcome anyone who
should approach. This immensely delicate and artistically
executed piece in wax and fabrics was highly valued in my
family, and for that reason alone, it had been placed under a
glass dome to protect it from dust and unskilled hands.
I often sat for hours in front of this expensive figurine for
unknown reasons, and more than once I had the feeling as if
the dark eyes were animated by being alone with me, as if there
was a faint trace of a gentle, kind smile around its lips.
That evening I could not fall asleep. From the fountain in
the courtyard came the sound of water splashing and the
laughter of the maids washing and splashing each other and
with similar shenanigans teasing each other. Also the cicadas
and crickets in the meadows surrounding the mansion were
making noise. Between all that sounded the muffled sounds of
a French horn, on which one of the forest boys was practicing a
call.
I climbed out of bed and walked around the room. But
then I began to be afraid of the moment when old Margaret
came into my room every night to put out the light in case I fell
asleep with it on, and I went back to my bed. Just as I was
about to climb over the edge of the bed shell with my bare legs,
it was as if a voice softly called my name. I looked around
frightened. My eyes fell on the man from the Orient. I saw very
clearly how he raised one arm under the glass bell and
beckoned to me.
I began to cry with fright, looking steadfastly at the little
figure.
Then I saw it very clearly for the second time: he waved
his hand at me very hastily and commandingly.
Trembling with fear, I obeyed; in the process tears
streamed unstoppably down my face.
I would have loved to scream out loud. But I didn’t dare,
for fear of frightening the little man, who was now very much
alive and waving more and more fiercely, in anger, such as my
father, whose short one-time wave was not only for me, but for
all the inhabitants of the house, an order that had to be obeyed.
So I went, crying silently, towards the cabinet on which
the waving dervish stood. I had almost reached him, despite my
anxious hesitant steps, when something terrible happened. With
a horrible roar and in a cloud of dust, debris and splinters, the
ceiling of the room collapsed over my shell bed.
I fell to the floor and screamed. Something flew whizzing
through the air and smashed the glass dome and the waving
man made of wax into a thousand shards and pieces. A brick
that had flown over me.
I screamed at the top of my lungs. But there was
screaming all over the house, outside at the well and
everywhere, and the dogs in the kennel howled.
Arms grabbed me, pulled me up from the earth. Blood
was running into my eyes, and I felt a cloth being pressed
against my forehead. I heard the scolding, agitated voice of my
father, the wailing of old Margaret and the moaning of a
servant. My father hit him with a with a stick and shouted:
“You donkey, why didn’t you report that there were
cracks in the ceiling? I’ll beat you crooked and lame…!”

Read Full Post »

An Ascension Story!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Someone has to go first, so I guess I will. I have been on an ascension journey this past year (actually for many years) and that journey is not what I expected and the stages have not been easy to recognize. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so. That’s why I’m going to share how ascension can be an extraordinary, ordinary life. . .

I’ve known for years that the new age energetics would require the activation and integration of the shadow. I don’t know how I knew this, but I always have and I’ve worked hard to turn my own self defeating thoughts, beliefs and actions into wisdom and empowerment. I thought the healing process would only take a few years of hard work and thirty years later I’m still discovering deeper layers that need healing. I’ve seen people that I love, people able to transmute black shit energy into harmless and empowering energy falter and stumble and finally have their physical bodies ravaged and destroyed by illness. My wife through strokes and brain damage and my best friend through colon cancer. At 68 years old my own body has faltered and stumbled a few times, but I’m still slugging on.

Ascension is not about the physical body anyway, it is about the soul and the integration of all the astral bodies. I envision the new world to be a multi-universe like Amber in Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber, or 4th density if you will. Said another way, I envision our physical world merging and integrating with the astral worlds as they were in the beginning. But that is beside the point. We use our physical bodies to generate and permanently activate all of our astral/etheric bodies. In the end we live in a world that seems to be the physical world but it is not as rigid and solid as it once was. Perhaps we need to drop our physical bodies at some point and perhaps we don’t???

We speak of ascension and prosperity consciousness. For me, I had to lose everything, hit bottom, down size, and start over from scratch. That means retiring, living on the fixed income of social security. But it works! I can do it. I’m not rich, but I can pay my bills and don’t have any debts. My writing projects and patrons give me a little spending money to help out and to me that is prosperity! My cup is full because it is a small one. What I share with other people is the overflow.

I live in a small apartment in a public housing project with my dog Valentine. I have a kitchen/living room; bedroom and bathroom of my own and a place to park my high mileage car. I live by the Mississippi river and have two parks nearby including a dog park that we can walk to every day. That’s more than a lot of people have.

As common in public housing complexes there are waves of infestations that could be seasonal. I’m talking things like cockroaches and bedbugs. Things that are very difficult to get rid of once they appear. A few years ago some cockroaches appeared and I put Borax under and round the kitchen and bathroom. No more cockroaches. This fall my neighbor was infested with bed bugs. My apartment was inspected but turned up clean. Then a month later I started getting some bites. I knew I had to do something myself so I got a UV/Ozone light to sterilize and kill the bedbugs. No more bedbugs! The light kills bacteria and viruses. The air is cleaner and safer and my health is better. But I didn’t trust someone else to clean up the mess, I cleaned it up myself.

Do you understand what I’m trying to share with you? I live in an ascended world among those who don’t live in an ascended world! There are things that come up, but I’m able to deal with them or get the help I need. I was invited to a Thanksgiving meal today by my nephew and his wife. They live down a minimum maintenance road in the country. I subconsciously dreaded going there in case the road was too bad for my old car, but I went anyway. Sure enough, I drove past their road in the snow and got stuck in some bad holes. There was no phone service and I had to walk ( about a half mile) to my nephew’s and ask for help. My brother towed me out and my car was not damaged that I can tell. The point being that I was afraid something would happen and it did. But I got the help I needed and it strengthened the bond between me and my brother and meant a lot to my nephew and his wife that I showed up. I confronted my fear and acted on it. This is living in an ascended physical world my friends! For some reason I can watch Youtube and not have all the ads showing up. I put on an ad blocker but was forced to remove it by Youtube. Something happened and I’m not getting ads and Youtube is not screaming at me. I don’t know what happened. . .

I have permanently activated all my astral/etheric bodies and live with a multidimensional awareness as my normal awareness. I seek to follow the guidance of my higher self or my future self and it seems to be working even though it can be scary sometimes. But I have learned to trust the process. I’ve had enough proof that it works. Have you?

Read Full Post »

Hermetic Mysteries: Mental Requisites and Impediments, Part 1

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »

A Modern Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery

Part III: Concerning the Laws and Vital Conditions of the Hermetic Experiment

Chapter 4: Mental Requisites and Impediments, Part 1

Introduction: The Hermetic art demands a pure and disciplined mind to transform the soul’s essence into divine light. This chapter explores the mental qualities and obstacles for those pursuing this sacred science, emphasizing wisdom, faith, and moral integrity.

The Qualities of the Adept

Geber, in his Sum of Perfection, outlines the mental requisites for mastering the Hermetic art. Success requires a sharp, searching intellect, capable of probing nature’s deepest principles with subtlety and reason. The adept must possess natural sagacity, free from fantasy or impulsiveness, to discern truth from illusion. A stable mind, grounded in rational inquiry, is essential to navigate the complexities of this sacred science.

Geber stresses that the art is not for those with weak or corrupted faculties—whether physical or mental. A soul swayed by fleeting opinions, clouded by imagination, or lacking discernment cannot achieve the divine transformation. Only those with clarity and perseverance can uncover the “true Radix,” the root of alchemical wisdom.

The Impediments of the Mind

Many obstacles hinder the pursuit of Hermetic science. Geber identifies those with “stiff necks”—lacking ingenuity or curiosity—who fail to explore nature’s depths. Others, driven by fantasy, mistake illusion for truth, their minds clouded by “fumosities.” Some are fickle, shifting beliefs without reason, unable to sustain the disciplined focus required. Worst are those who deny the art’s validity or seek it for greed, fearing to sacrifice personal gain for divine truth.

The greatest danger, as the Book of Enoch warns, lies in misusing alchemical knowledge for selfish ends. Such minds, led by “Mammon,” defile the divine light, turning sacred wisdom into sorcery. True adepts, guided by piety, reject these profane motives, ensuring the art remains a holy pursuit.

The Path of Purity and Faith

The Hermetic art demands a heart free from avarice, pride, or deceit, as Job declares: “If I have made gold my hope, I have denied the God above.” Only through faith, humility, and moral integrity can the adept align with divine wisdom. This science, as Norton’s Ordinal emphasizes, is a “singular grace” bestowed on those proven worthy, taught “mouth to mouth” with a sacred oath to protect its sanctity.

Closing: This chapter unveils the mental requisites and impediments for mastering the Hermetic art, emphasizing purity and faith. The journey into its practical secrets deepens in our next post, unveiling further wonders of this sacred pursuit.

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »