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The Apprentice     (Der Lehrjunge)     1812

One day in Rheinfelden, a young man was put in the pillory and fitted with a neck-iron for a theft he had committed, and a well-dressed stranger stood among the onlookers the whole time, never taking his eyes off him. But when, after an hour, the thief was taken down from his place of honour and was to receive a further 20 lashes as a reminder, the stranger approached the executioner, pressed a small taler into his hand, and said: “Give him the lashes a little harder, Mr Holdustight! Give him the best lashes you can muster"; and no matter how hard the executioner struck, the stranger kept shouting: “Better! Even better!” and from time to time he asked the young man on the stocks with a mocking laugh: “How are you doing, lad? How does it feel?”

But when the thief had been chased out of the town, the stranger followed him from a distance, and when he had caught up with him on the road to Degerfelden, he said to him: “Do you still recognise me, Goodstylish?” The young man said: “I shall not forget you so soon. But tell me, why did you take such malicious delight in my humiliation, and in the note that the coachman wrote to me with the willow stump, when I have neither stolen from you nor otherwise offended you in my whole life?” The stranger said: “As a warning, because you had gone about your business so foolishly that it was bound to come to light. ‘Whoever wishes to practise our trade, I am Freddy Tinder,’ he said, and so he was – ‘whoever wishes to practise our trade must begin their business with cunning and bring it to a close with caution. ‘But if you wish to come to me as an apprentice—for you seem to have no lack of sense, and you have now been warned—then I shall take you under my wing and make something of you.’ So he took the young man on as an apprentice, and when the situation on the Rhine soon became precarious, he took him with him to the Spanish Netherlands.