Government by kings was first introduced into the world by the Heathens, from whom the children of Israel copied the custom. It was the most prosperous invention the Devil ever set on foot for the promotion of idolatry. The Heathens paid divine honours to their deceased kings, and the Christian World hath improved on the plan by doing the same to their living ones. How impious is the title of sacred Majesty applied to a worm, who in the midst of his splendor is crumbling into dust!
Ableidinger laughed out loud. After what Franconia had suffered from the invasion of the Swede and his allies, he could only agree with Paine's statement that, "Absolute governments, (tho' the disgrace of human nature) have this advantage with them, they are simple; if the people suffer, they know the head from which their suffering springs; know likewise the remedy; and are not bewildered by a variety of causes and cures."
January, 1633: Frankenwinheim, Franconia
The agricultural newspapers and pamphlets kept coming. Almost every weekly edition of Die Wochentliche Bauernzeitung had a new Brillo story. It was worth sending Tobias to get the new issue every week.
Ableidinger read every Brillo story out loud in the tavern. According to what Tobias heard, there were many villages in Franconia in which someone read the Brillo story out loud every week. He was getting a lot of replies to his circular letters. It was breaking his budget to pay the postage when they arrived.
Other villages were also reading Common Sense. A printer in Bamberg sent a letter requesting the right to print an edition of a thousand copies of Ableidinger's abbreviated version with annotations for teaching its principles in village schools.
"There's time," he said to Rudolph Vulpius. "It won't hurt the children to miss school for just a few days, no matter what Pastor Schaeffer says. I need to go to Bamberg."
"Need?" Vulpius gave him the kind of look Ableidinger was accustomed to giving his own pupils.
"Well . . . I want to meet the printer who will be publishing my pamphlet. That's important. I want to get some idea of how many other pamphlets and books are being published, better than I can from here. I can walk down with Tobias, if you will just put on your other hat as the head of the parish's board of elders and get me permission to go."
"That's important," Old Kaethe said, "but it's not the most important thing. Rudolph should go with you. A couple of other men with him, and a few men from other villages around. We're on the edge of things, here. We need to just look at these uptimers, these men from Grantville."
"We?" the mayor asked.
"I did think," she said, "that I might come along. See what kind of Germans they have surrounded themselves with. See how they are doing things in more important towns and places."
Vulpius nodded. "Watch them. For the time will come, perhaps, when we have to test them. You read their words, Constantin. Think, though. It's going to be more important for us to find out if their actions match their words."
So, not long after Christmas, they went to Bamberg, to the press of Frau Else Kronacher. She did, as promised, pay Ableidinger for his manuscript. Not that she had any obligation to pay him, she pointed out, but the convenience of working from it all at once rather than chasing around Franconia after copies of his various circular letters and piecing them together in the proper order for her daughter Martha to set in type made it worth her while.
Of course, the woman hadn't lost much. Ableidinger turned around and spent half of the money on other books and pamphlets that her press had published. He spent most of the rest of it on warm clothing for Matthias and treats to give his pupils on the festival of Three Kings. Some, however, he reserved for future postage.
"What did you think?" Old Kaethe stomped her cold feet on the ground. The weather was worse on the way home than it had been when they left Frankenwinheim.
Ableidinger pulled the collar of his cloak up. "Paine was certainly an optimist when he wrote, `I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature which no art can overturn, viz. that the more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered, and the easier repaired when disordered.' Still . . . If the uptimers can simplify the system under which we poor Germans have to live . . ."
Kaethe frowned. "Why do the uptimers have to do it? Why can't the Germans do it themselves? Like the ram?"
Ableidinger smiled. In spite of the weather, he had never been so happy in midwinter. Most years, he spent hours praying for the solstice to come, that the turn of the season might start to bring more light to his day. But he had been so busy that he scarcely noticed the passing of the shortest day of the year.