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To him our farmer went, for he would surely know some means of preventing such a robust churl as Matthew Fottner from being lost to the Church. So he asked him whether you couldn't grease some one's palm, the school at Freising, or the bishop, or some one.
The Bridge Farmer was happy, and went home from Sintshausen with his tail in the air. Now everything must surely go right, and his plan would succeed. They should make eyes in Freising when Matt Fottner got ordained in spite of them, or actually became a missionary who converts the Hindians, and whose masses count even more.
For when Matthew Fottner was punished with solitary confinement for the second time, he resolved to serve no longer in the army and to give up altogether his purpose of reenlisting.
Now things had come to the point where the Bridge Farmer had to make up his mind whether to try Matt again, or send somebody else to Freising who would figure on the Greek from the start. If he did the latter, it would take three years more, and the money for the Fottner boy would be completely lost.
Now he was running around Eynhofen with glasses on his nose and a belly like an alderman. He looked like a regular Vicar, sure enough, who was going to begin reading mass the next day. And all the time he was nothing, absolutely nothing. The only person who remained calm under these blows of fate was the quondam stud. lit. Matthew Fottner.
And when Matt made his visit at the parsonage, he did not as in previous years request the cook to announce him, but handed her his calling card, on which was neatly printed: Matthew Fottner stud. lit. et art. Which means studiosus litterarum et artium, a devotee of letters and fine arts.
"Only for the sake of appearances. Nobody will flunk on that account if he's all right in his faith, and pays his money correctly and in due season. But here in Germany Matthew Fottner can't be ordained." "Well, I'd like to know why not?" "Because those scoundrelly Prussians have made a law against it." "Well now, aren't they a bad lot?" "Right you are; and a lot worse than you think for.
Hey? No, this is the way it was: them perfessers in Freising wanted to keep Matt a good long while, because they made money on him. In this belief he was very much strengthened when Matthew Fottner flunked the fourth year in the Latin school. 'Count o' Greek. Because he couldn't learn Greek.
But whoso has no horses, and makes a pair of lean oxen draw his plow, is a cotter and must hold his tongue. In the tavern, in the town meeting, and everywhere. His opinion is worthless, and no regular farmer pays any attention to the poor beggar. The professor of the Cobbler-Sebastian property, house number eight in Eynhofen, George Fottner by name, was a cotter. And a beggarly one at that.
And so he went to the Latin School at Freising. The first three years were all right. Nothing brilliant, but good enough so he could show his reports at the parsonage when he came home for vacations. And when the priest read that Matthew Fottner was of moderate talent and industry and was making sufficient progress, he would say each time in his fat voice: magnos progressus fecisti, discipule!
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