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Not far from him, in a half-reclining posture, was a general of the Afghans, also of the bodyguard of the Emperor. A hakeem, or physician, and an astrologer, both in the Moslem style of dress, were seated close together, legs crossed beneath them; while a little apart were two Hindus, as the caste marks on their foreheads showed, a tax-collector from the country and a kotwal, or city magistrate.
But Copernicus was still interluding the active duties of Frauenburg's highly successful governor, tax-collector, judge, and vicar-general, to say nothing of his brilliant essays on finance, with those studies in his watch-tower which were to revolutionise the astronomical conceptions of twenty centuries and wheel the Earth around the Sun instead of the Sun around the Earth.
Three of us boys were always together, and had been so from the cradle, being fond of one another from the beginning, and this affection deepened as the years went on Nikolaus Bauman, son of the principal judge of the local court; Seppi Wohlmeyer, son of the keeper of the principal inn, the "Golden Stag," which had a nice garden, with shade trees reaching down to the riverside, and pleasure boats for hire; and I was the third Theodor Fischer, son of the church organist, who was also leader of the village musicians, teacher of the violin, composer, tax-collector of the commune, sexton, and in other ways a useful citizen, and respected by all.
Undisturbed by visits of the bailiff or the tax-collector, the peasants would not be hostile to the revolutionaries, and thus, while profiting by the new state of affairs, they would defer the settlement of accounts with the local exploiters.
However dead a shot one may be, the gun he carries on such expeditions is sure to kick or go off half-cocked. Trouble will come soon enough, and when he does come, receive him as pleasantly as possible. Like the tax-collector, he is a disagreeable chap to have in one's house, but the more amiably you greet him the sooner he will go away.
He had been city tax-collector, city surveyor, district attorney, and for six or eight years a state circuit judge. In all these capacities he had manifested a tendency to do the right as he saw it and play fair qualities which endeared him to the idealistic.
"Villain!" he shouted, in a threatening voice, "do you not see the tax-collector?" The young fellow drew the hat with an air of embarrassment from his forehead, and crimsoning with rage, but in silence, stepped back into the circle of the murmuring men. "That is just what you deserve, Joe," said Anthony Wallner.
For example: the possession of land is not without obligation both to the soil and the tax-collector; the possession of fine clothing is oppressed by obligation; gold, jewelry, works of art, enviable household furniture, are positive fetters; the possession of a wife we find surcharged with obligation.
A foreigner, who had chanced to be passing through Southern Berkshire at this time, would have deemed an informant practicing on his credulity who should have assured him that everywhere throughout these quiet and industrious communities, the entire governmental machinery was prostrate, that not a local magistrate undertook to sit, not a constable ventured to attempt an arrest, not a sheriff dared to serve a process or make an execution, or a tax-collector distrain for taxes.
Now the name seems rather more absurd than ever. Its pretentiousness is out of tune with these times. I think many of us are getting ashamed of our little vanities without the help of the tax-collector. Stevenson, it will be remembered, once assigned his birthday to a little girl or was it a boy? of his acquaintance.
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