He often told his travelling-companions about his former life.

He had originally been destined for the ecclesiastical profession, but though he surpassed all the other pupils in the school, he was deprived of the hope of ever becoming a priest, for the Church wants no cripples.  He was the child of poor people, and had been obliged to fight his way through his career as a student, with great difficulty.

“How shabby the broad top of my cap often was!” he said.  “I was so much ashamed of it.  I am so small.  Dear me, anybody could see my head, and could not help noticing all the worn places in the velvet, if he cast his eyes down.  How often have I sat beside the kitchen of a cook-shop, and seasoned dry bread with the smell of roast meat.  Often too my poodledog went out and stole a sausage for me from the butcher.”

At other times the little fellow had fared better; then, sitting in the taverns, he had given free-play to his wit, and imposed no constraint on his sharp tongue.

Once he had been invited by a former boon-companion, to accompany him to his ancestral castle, to cheer his sick father; and so it happened that he became a buffoon, wandered from one great lord to another, and finally entered the elector’s service.

He liked to pretend that he despised the world and hated men, but this assertion could not be taken literally, and was to be regarded in a general, rather than a special sense, for every beautiful thing in the world kindled eager enthusiasm in his heart, and he remained kindly disposed towards individuals to the end.

When Moor once charged him with this, he said, smiling: 

“What would you have?  Whoever condemns, feels himself superior to the person upon whom he sits in judgment, and how many fools, like me, fancy themselves great, when they stand on tiptoe, and find fault even with the works of God!  ‘The world is evil,’ says the philosopher, and whoever listens to him, probably thinks carelessly:  ’Hear, hear!  He would have made it better than our Father in heaven.’  Let me have my pleasure.  I’m only a little man, but I deal in great things.  To criticise a single insignificant human creature, seems to me scarcely worth while, but when we pronounce judgment on all humanity and the boundless universe, we can open our mouths-wonderfully wide!”

Once his heart had been filled with love for a beautiful girl, but she had scornfully rejected his suit and married another.  When she was widowed, and he found her in dire poverty, he helped her with a large share of his savings, and performed this kind service again, when the second worthless fellow she married had squandered her last penny.

His life was rich in similar incidents.

In his actions, the queer little man obeyed the dictates of his heart; in his speech, his head ruled his tongue, and this seemed to him the only sensible course.  To practise unselfish generosity he regarded as a subtle, exquisite pleasure, which he ventured to allow himself, because he desired nothing more; others, to whom he did not grudge a prosperous career, he must warn against such folly.